The kids are really into this slang word right now – “savage.” Savage is what you say when someone insults someone else, or something bad happens, or something good happens to someone else but not to you. It’s not really for use when something good happens to you – yet – but as far as Sir Monkeypants and I can tell, throwing it out there, followed by a couple of dabs, is pretty much always cool.

As a result, we’ve been trying to slip it into conversation as much as possible so we seem young and hip. I think it might finally replace “totes” and “word” in my vocab.

Oh, I just remembered! If something is really good it’s “legit.” I’m so hip it’s painful.

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In other news, for the past few weeks I have been doing the grocery shopping on Sunday mornings with Captain Jelly Belly, while Sir Monkeypants takes the girls to swim class. The Captain and I talk about all sorts of things, some silly, some serious, and that’s cool (“legit” for you young folks out there).

This weekend we got to talking about what it would mean to win the lottery. We talked about how sure, it would be great, but it also means a lot of stress and strained family relationships for the winner. Family will feel happy for you, at first, but it’s always hard to see someone who has been on a par with you suddenly have no worries. He said he’d gift his family members a one-time payment to placate them, but then we talked about who would be chosen (siblings? cousins? close friends? how far does it go?) and what would happen in a few years when someone fell on hard times, while he was still getting new cars and taking family vacations and paying outright for his kids’ educations. Does everyone get the same, regardless of their status? How firm would you be with the one-time thing, if it meant causing hard feelings?

So that led to an interesting point: how much money do you think would mean that your family and friends might come looking for a payout or helping hand? If you won say, $50 on a scratch card – obviously not. What if you won 100 thousand? Is that enough that your parents and your siblings might expect a bigger Christmas gift, or for you to pay for a group vacation? What if you won a million – not quite enough to retire for the rest of your life, but enough so you wouldn’t have to worry about university or braces or a sudden flood – is that the level when you’d be expected to share the wealth?

And what if you won something like, 20 million dollars? Would each of your siblings expect say, a million a piece? What if you have 10 siblings? What would be fair, and what would be expected?

I wonder.

That led to a discussion of how borrowing money among family members sometimes (ALWAYS) leads to trouble, and I shared my personal rules: if you’re the borrower, don’t be a dick when it comes to putting everything in writing and setting a payback schedule, and then try to stick to that schedule as best you can. And if you’re the lender, be sure you can afford to view that money as a gift – always hope for repayment, but don’t lend it in the first place unless you can afford to ruefully-but-cheerfully write it off (and then refuse future loans).

Hopefully that sunk in – it got a little lecture-y. I think he was still dreaming of winning the lottery.

There is a girl in our Guides unit with ADHD. She’s a sweetheart and cute as a button, but she does have trouble sitting, especially when we are doing a series of crafts – she is not a big crafter. I did some looking around online for an alternate activity for her and came across the idea of making a sensory bin. It’s just a shoebox-sized tupperware container of mixed dry beans – I used five different kinds for colour. The kid can bury their hands in the beans and feel them, or you can include small cups so they can sort or pour the beans, or you can hide buttons or small toys in the mix for them to find.

I’d love to tell you how it went, but so far I haven’t used it at Guides, because Little Miss Sunshine is obsessed with it. She’s been playing with it constantly since I made it a week ago. I guess I’ll have to get another box of beans.

TL;DR – Bean Box Win.

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Today I am heading out for Black Friday shopping for the first time ever. Usually I’m completely done my Christmas shopping by now and I’m just planning baking and our activities for December and humming little Christmas songs. This year I have left everything to what feels like the last minute; in fact I just don’t seem to be in the spirit at all. I see houses with their lights up already and I’m like, isn’t Christmas three or four months away still?

I haven’t even gotten out the Christmas CDs yet. Call the Men in Black, I have been replaced by an alien replica!

Anyway, I still have several people on my list to shop for so I figured I’d do a Black Friday wander about the toy and electronic stores and knock this stuff out. My son recommends bringing pepper spray, because all he knows of Black Friday is crazy videos on YouTube of Americans trampling over each other at 6 a.m. to get a cheap TV. But it’s not really like that here in Canada, is it?

I guess we’ll find out. Better break out the Christmas music to get me through!

All three of my children have one subject that is the bane of their school life.

For the Captain, it’s Visual Art. Oh my heavens – trust me when I say you have never seen a child do so poorly in art. I usually try not to slam my own children in public like this, but he’d be the first to tell you that art is just not his thing. Last year, Grade 8, was the last year he was required to take it, and he was still barely able to draw stick figures in pencil. He’d never have got through without his art teacher, who ironically did not always mesh with the other kids due to her strict adherence to rules and lack of interest in creativity, but it worked very well for him to be given tasks like, “Draw a circle and paint it completely within the lines in a solid primary colour.”

Needless to say, now that he’s in high school, it’s sayonara art. I’m down with that – it’s not his thing, and it’s not like he’ll need it to get by in the world. The worst case is that he won’t be able to draw a hundred copies of Thomas the Tank Engine when his train-obsessed toddler demands it. I think they’ll both survive.

For Gal Smiley, it’s unfortunately English. She has never been good at expressing herself in words, and it’s even harder for her when she has to write or type them out. She struggles with abstract ideas like theme or characterization – she is a woman of action and prefers to talk about What Happened, and little else. I feel for her – she has five more long years of high school English ahead of her. But we have taken a “Let’s just do the minimum and try to get through it” attitude that serves us both well. There’s no sense in pushing her or expressing disappointment. Instead, we just try to help her as much as we can, and to her credit, she also works very hard in this area to try to improve. So we’re getting there.

Our real problem these days is Little Miss Sunshine, age 10, Grade 5. She hates, hates, hates gym. And I empathize, oh do I ever. Gym was my own horror show in school – no matter how much I tried, I was forever an uncoordinated weakling with no speed, no balance, no game. Every year I was required to take it, I got a C- in gym, and an A+ in health, balancing out to a nice B that was in no way reflective of my physical skills. I dropped it like a hot potato the minute I could, which sadly, wasn’t until the end of Grade 9.

Little Miss Sunshine does what she can. We always emphasize that gym class is about participation and attitude. That we will be thrilled if she just approaches each class with a smile and tries her best, and comes away with a pass. But it’s hard for her – she is frustrated when she’s always the last in the race, the first out of a game, the one who causes groaning whenever she is put in goal. She feels like a failure and a loser, and I get that. And, just like her mother, she’s rather injury-prone, resulting in a lot of meltdowns and freakouts over bumps and bruises. Somehow she always seems to end up with a ball in her face (or, in one memorable case, a rubber chicken), or at the bottom of a pile-on, or flipping into a pile of rocks when she is accidentally tripped during a soccer game.

This past Thursday I got the call again – she’d fallen in gym during Bordenball and another boy had fallen on top of her, and she was pretty upset. I’m sure she was banged up and bruised, but it wasn’t physically serious. I could tell, though, that it was a tough mental blow. She was embarrassed and sad and angry, and so I came and got her and took her home for rest and pampering and a mental health day. Sometimes we all need one of those, I think, and if you can’t get a little TLC after a horrible gym class, then what is life all about, anyway?

It’s five more long, long years of gym class for Little Miss Sunshine and me. But we’ll make it through, and if nothing else, we’ll learn to be tough. Warriors. Fighters. Superheroes who dream of a life without gym class. Someday, honey, it’s coming.

There is a scene from Seinfeld that sticks out in my mind. Elaine has come over to Jerry’s apartment, and she is in a bad mood. She takes a juice from the fridge and is annoyed by the fact that it says to “shake before drinking” – she swears she won’t shake it because you have to shake everything these days and it is totally unreasonable. Then Jerry slowly shakes her juice while giving her the side eye.

(and, it’s on YouTube, of course – isn’t everything?)

Huh, on rewatching she doesn’t seem quite as infuriated as I recall. But I think of this moment often these days, as I am increasingly enraged by little things that have me envisioning myself on the lawn, shaking my fist at people, in the very near future.

For example, I watch Jeopardy every night – already marking myself as an honourary Senior Citizen, and I have to admit, I am really drawn to the commercials for the Acorn stair lift, which would bring such joy to my life. I have always been mildly annoyed by people who say “please” at the end of each category request. “World Geography for $200, please.” “Rock Bands B for $1000, please.” It slows the game down, and grates in my ear. Tip to all future Jeopardy contestants: Alex HAS to read you the question. It is not an “if you please” situation. Step up and order your category with authority, dammit!

Even more annoying: the way Alex exclaims “Hello!” whenever someone makes a big bet. Alex, you are not a 25-year-old from the year 1998. It’s as jarring as if you did a Z-snap. For the sake of my sanity, do not do this. Please.

(and, of course someone on YouTube has made a supercut of Alex saying “Hello!”, which has made me want to shove a pencil in my ear, and also to die laughing. That’s what the internet was invented for, right?)

And THEN, a couple of weeks ago, my grocery store decided to reorganize and move EVERYTHING around. This has caused no end of grumbling around here and if you are my friend on Facebook, I know you have had to hear about this repeatedly. I’d apologize, but really, it is THE WORST. I used to have a list where everything was laid out perfectly. I could practically shop with my eyes closed, be in and out in 45 minutes, never miss a thing. Now grocery shopping is an unwanted adventure were I wander the aisles aimlessly, searching for items like I’m on safari, throwing random things in the cart as I come across them. I still haven’t been able to find the juice boxes. WHEREFORE THE JUICE BOXES, SUPERSTORE? Sigh.

I actually thought to myself I should keep a list of these little things that annoy me, and then turn them into a blog post, but then I envisioned myself ranting away about The Jeopardy and The Groceries, and young people looking at me like I was an old crone and OMG, they would be right. So I have abandoned my list idea for now, but it’s lurking. You have been warned.

Today is laundry day, and that means that over the course of my work-from-home-day, I do five loads of laundry. We are five people, and that makes five large loads. I can sometimes get away with four loads in the summer, when there’s no socks or pants or sweatshirts to fill things up.

Lately, I have been thinking that it is probably time to welcome my fourteen-year-old to the wonderful world of Doing His Own Laundry. I know lots of other families do this. But I don’t understand how they make it work – I’m always hung up on the expense and bother of having the machine do extra loads when it doesn’t really need to.

For example, say he sorts his laundry into lights, darks, and socks/underwear. Then he washes these three little loads – when? Once every other week I think would be the minimum, otherwise he’d be out of clothes; he might even need to go weekly for things like socks and underwear.

So now our house goes up to 8 loads a week? And what happens next year, when Gal Smiley turns 14? We’re doing 11 loads a week? When we could be doing only five?

To that I say…HM.

Perhaps the answer is to have them do ALL the laundry, just only once every other month or so. Or to have them take on some PART Of the laundry, like say the sorting or the folding, as a first step.

Any advice on this difficult time of transition is most welcome.

My kids made some very nice pumpkins this year (unicorn, panda, barfing man) and I could show you a picture, but instead I will include this picture from the CBC’s Facebook page, because it is the best pumpkin ever:

Am I right or am I right? So totally doing that next year.

It’s Halloween, and I enjoy Halloween. I like handing out the candy at the door and seeing the kids. We usually get hundreds of kids here, but this year is very cold and wet and rainy so I don’t know what to expect. I’d complain, but the last several years have been gloriously clear and warm, so we seem due. And if we have tons of candy leftover, so be it, right? I’d love to be able to be all, “oh heavens, what will we do with the leftover candy?” but even I can’t pull that off with a straight face, as we all know it will be going straight into my belly.

This year is the first year that Captain Jelly Belly, at age 14, won’t be going out door to door. We have put a firm foot down about it – Grade 9 is our cutoff. He’s a little pouty about it, to tell the truth, but he negotiated that, in exchange, he be allowed to watch a bona fide horror film, something he’s been asking about for a few months now. He’s a pretty good negotiator and I’m tired of putting him off so I’ve said yes.

And now, what to choose? Personally I am not a horror fan. I want him to be scared but not too too scared. The Saw movies, for example, are still right out. And I don’t feel he’s quite ready for say, Quentin Tarantino. But I don’t want his first horror to be something stupidly cartoonish, either, like Bride of Chucky or Sleepaway Camp, which I watched at a Grade 8 sleepover party in my youth and left me scarred forever with both its murders and its terrible, terrible acting and dialog. I mean, they can’t all be Citizen Kane, but at least put in a half-assed effort, am I right?

Anyway, I recommended Scream to him, which I think is a very fine film, but Sir Monkeypants things perhaps he won’t get all the cool meta moments having never seen the basic version. We tried to get a copy of the classic Friday the Thirteenth or Halloween, but they are nowhere to be found, and I did find a pack of all six? seven? Nightmare on Elm Street DVDs at Walmart but I have no desire at all to own seven Nightmare movies at a cost of $50.

So we have borrowed a few things from my sister, including The Thing, a movie that’s not quite horror but is TOTES AWESOME and has some great jump scares, and I have a copy of the crappy remake of Poltergeist from a couple of years ago that might fly. I’m sure we can rent something suitable on iTunes as well. Hopefully he survives it – I think he will, he’s pretty chill about such things. He’ll be watching alone, though, as his father will be taking the girls out. I wonder, if while I am handing out candy at the door, I will hear a small voice on the couch in the main room asking me to please come sit beside me NO REASON.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

My book came out!

It’s a wee little book of short stories, featuring ten strangers who are all guests at the same wedding reception.

You can order it from these fine locations, in eBook or Paperback format.

I’m a teensy bit excited.

First, an update on Girl Guides: things are settling down a bit, but it continues to be a huge time suck. I go back and forth between feeling like I am getting the hang of things, and feeling like I am thisclose to throwing in the towel because the whole thing is impossible. It’s funny how I used to shake my head at teachers, and wonder how they could possibly do what they do – hardest job on Earth, I’d say – and now I am kind of among their ranks, planning lessons and activities and trying to organize a gaggle of girls, which is much harder than you’d think. At least Sir Monkeypants has stepped in to be my full support staff – making phone calls, dropping stuff off, picking stuff up, craft prep, not to mention taking on a huge share of the housework. And my co-leader Jen is the Bomb Diggity. So there’s that, but I’m not sure I would return for a second year.

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Second, we are having an awkward situation with one of the children – I will try to keep this anonymous, but it’s one of the girls. She has another girl in her class this year that she just can’t seem to “click” with. My daughter wants very, very much to be this girl’s friend, and this girl is not receptive. And that is okay! A girl should be allowed to choose her own friends! We are long past the age where everyone is expected to play nicely with everyone else.

Some mothers go a little Mama Bear when they feel that their child’s feelings have been hurt, but I tend to do the exact opposite – assume it’s all my kid’s fault and apologize profusely. It comes from years of assuming everything is my own personal fault, I suppose, and the struggle to try to fix every thing that goes wrong ever. When my kid comes home with a conflict, it’s less of, “Tell that other kid to suck it!” and more of, “Take a hard look at yourself and figure out what you did wrong, and what you could do differently in the future.”

But my daughter here isn’t really doing anything wrong. It’s just a mismatch. For example, she got this girl’s number so she could call and invite her over on the weekend. But when she calls, the other girl is always busy – just running out the door! just sitting down for a mid-afternoon snack! Her parents aren’t home, and she isn’t supposed to be talking on the phone! And then she says she’ll call back later, but of course, she never does.

If my daughter tries to pin her down to a time to get together – “How about next Saturday afternoon?” – it’s always, “My parents won’t let me, they don’t know your parents.” I even, at my daughter’s insistence, wrote a long letter to this girl’s parents, introducing myself and giving them every possible way to contact me and inviting them to stop by and say hello, and suggesting we work via email to get the girls together. Crickets.

And that’s okay! Because a girl should be allowed to choose her own friends!

But this is what comes of generations of girls who are afraid to hurt feelings. Who couch the truth and make excuses and hope others will just get the hint. I know, I have been one of those girls, I still am one of those girls. I’m someone who doesn’t know how to say no in a polite but firm manner.

So I get it.

But now I’m left with the mess on our side. I have already had gentle conversations with my daughter along the lines of What A Good Friend Acts Like, and How Much Effort A New Friend Is Worth, and How Sometimes A No Doesn’t Quite Look Like A No. But she is determined – more than that, she believes she and this girl are best buddies! and are just having some scheduling issues. It’s time for a talk on the subject of She’s Just Not That Into You, I suppose.

Sigh. Kid politics are rough sometimes.

I have been absent from life, for a single reason: Girl Guides. My youngest daughter’s unit was going to close because no one wanted to be a leader, so I caved. She loves Guides; Guides has done great things for her and her older sister. I didn’t want the unit to fold, so I signed up about three weeks ago.

Since then I have breathed Guides. My every waking moment is spent reading about the program, or designing upcoming meetings, or ordering stuff online, or taking a First Aid course. I go to sleep at night thinking about Guides. I wake up thinking about Guides. Today I spent three of my hard-to-come-by work hours pickup up and sorting cookies.

The other night, I was super stressed about the patrols – how we divide up the girls into smaller groups – and then I had a dream in which they arranged themselves nicely. I AM DREAMING GUIDES.

It’s a situation.

I hope it all settles down eventually and I can go back to Life As We Know It. I’m publishing a book this fall, if I ever actually get around to being able to upload the files. I’m working extra hours, after taking August off, if I ever actually get time to put together a website or two.

Sir Monkeypants is helping as much as he can – taking the brunt of things around the house, schlepping stuff around, making phone calls on my behalf to places we want to book. This past weekend, he and Little Miss Sunshine took on the task of going through two giant Tupperware bins full of craft stuff that we inherited from past Guiders and documenting what’s inside.

I was typing up the list afterwards and found out the bins included things like:
* pushpins, used to make Grade 2 clocks
* milk bag clips
* one craft box with pencils and glow sticks inside, also little aliens and lipstick pens and some earrings
* plastic sheets for doing needlepoint crafts like Ba likes to do (his mother)
* plastic Madonna bracelets.

All EXACTLY on point, no? I knew immediately what all these things were. He’s a crafting genius, that guy.

Ugh, this summer, am I right? Cold, rainy, and depressing. It’s labour day, and it’s cold, rainy, and depressing – a fitting end to a blah season.

Yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher and I stacked up the plates and put them in the cupboard like I have done a thousand times before. About two minutes later, there was a loud BANG from the kitchen and then this happened:

One of the plates, near the bottom of the stack, spontaneously exploded. Right there in the pile! It was so eerie, and it took forever to clear all the shards out of the cupboard – we ended up rewashing all the dishes in that cabinet because there was fine little ceramic dust all over.

I’m trying not to take it as some sort of sign.

Tomorrow we start Grade 9 at a new school for one kid (who has much shorter hair! He looks amazing!). Grade 8 and Grade 5 for the girls at the same old place. I’m looking forward to getting back into the routine – as usual I’ve left a ton of work and housework and writing work sitting around for the past four weeks and now I’m swamped and behind on everything. It’ll be good to have the house back and knock a few things off the list. With the weather being already fall-like, I’m ready.

Hopefully I won’t be sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time waiting for more explosions, though.