Saturday morning at the firestation

What's that, you say? You want more pictures of adorable, happy boys having fun on a beautiful day? If you insist...

On Saturday morning, we went to a pancake breakfast at our local firestation, a fundraiser by the local Lions Club. The breakfast itself, at $6 per person, is somewhere between forgettable and downright inedible, but the chance for little boys to play on firetrucks and police motorcycles is priceless.

Swimming in shame

Oh, the shame! Yesterday was 'parents' day' at the boys' swimming lessons, where parents are supposed to hop in the pool with their kids and get a hands-on idea of how the kids are progressing, what they are working on, and where they need improvement. For whatever reason, we somehow missed getting our notice about this last week, so while Beloved hopped in the pool as usual with Simon for the parent and tot lessons, I sat red-faced and miserable on the deck. I even asked the instructor if I could hop into the pool in my jeans and t-shirt, so great was my shame, but she gently suggested that wouldn't be necessary, and instead I spent a guilty 30 minutes observing from the deck and wondering what psychological damage I was wreaking to my eldest son.

Judge: We have reached the sentencing portion of this trial. Do you have anything to say for yourself?
Grown-up, bearded, scruffy looking Tristan in shackles: I'm sorry for all the bad things I've done. If only my mother hadn't missed parents' day in the pool when I was four, who knows where I'd be now...

Apparently not so much. Only two parents of six were in the pool, and when I asked Tristan about it, he didn't even realize I was supposed to be in the pool with him.

Grown-up Tristan, handsome and content, in conversation with his girlfriend: Oh, you got your hair cut off? Oops, no, I guess I didn't notice.
Pretty girlfriend: Argh! Men!

When I was registering the boys for their swim lessons, I was a little wary about scheduling them both for the same time slot. Two wet preschoolers plus one wet parent (Simon is too young to be in on his own) is a lot of chaos mixed in with the regular chaos of 30 other families in the changerooms, but it's working out pretty well. We go as a family, and Beloved and I alternate who stays dry and who goes in the pool with Simon, then we each bring a child into the changeroom. Gratuitous props to any of you who do it on your own, without a dry parent as backup! Two wet kids I can wrangle. Two wet kids PLUS one wet mommy is a little too much, especially when you're rushing out to get home in time to watch Survivor!

In the parent and tot class, I am often the only mommy, which was a bit of a surprise, but it's nice to see all the daddies in the pool with their 2 - 3 year-olds. And I have to laugh at Simon's fearlessness. I dunk him, he comes up sputtering and laughing. I put him on the side and he jumps back in before I can even get my arms out. (Well, the jumping is new this week. Up until now, he just kind leaned forward and tipped stiffly into the pool. It's very hard to catch a 30 lbs slippery board-baby in time to make sure he doesn't belly-flop into the pool.)

It's very interesting to watch Tristan interact with his swim instructor. He watches her with wide-eyed intensity (when he isn't wandering off) and is usually one of the first to follow her instructions. I haven't decided whether this is encouraging or annoying, after having spent the rest of the day practically howling at the boy to get him to listen to my words at home on the eighth or tenth utterance, let alone the first. He is, according to the instructor's assessment, very strong and doing exceptionally well at this level.

Announcer: And now, the Canadian national anthem begins as the gold medal is awarded for the 2024 Olympic men's 400 metre freestyle to Canada's own Tristan....

Too posh to push?

There is an interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen this morning that talks about how the rates of birth via caesarean section are rising, and how the added cost is straining the medical system. (But, I can't help but ask, will the medical system be dealing with hemorrhoids for years after all that straining?)

According to a report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information called Giving Birth in Canada: The Costs, the rate of births by c-section have climbed to 24%, as compared to just 17% in the early 1990s.

The cost of a birth by c-section averages $4,600, while a vaginal delivery costs $2,800. (This, of course, is cost to the 'system'. It is one of the miracles of medicare that I walked out of the hospital after each of my sons' births paying only the $200/night upgrade from a ward room to a private room, and even that was reimbursed at 50% by my supplementary medical coverage.)

The Citizen article says that in some Canadian cities, caesarean rates are approaching 30% of all births, almost twice as high as considered medically necessary by the World Health Organization.

What I want to know is how people are getting these 'convenience c-sections'? Although I'm well-acquainted with the idea through the countless hours I spent on fertility and pregnancy message boards when I was carrying Tristan and Simon, I truly thought they were an American phenomenon.

When I was endlessly pregnant with Simon, as he moved off the large-fetus charts and onto the 'you are gestating an elephant-calf' charts, I begged for an induction - just an induction, mind you, at a week after my due date - and they wouldn't hear of it.

Personally, I don't get why anyone would choose a c-section over a vaginal birth. In fact, when my labour with Simon stalled somewhere around the 20th time in the 20th hour of labour and the spectre of a c-section began to materialize, I was terrified. To me, a c-section would have been a bit of a disappointment. There is an undeniable sense of empowerment, and a celebration of your body's capabilities, that comes with pushing that baby out. (She said, in the hazy afterglow of two years past.)

I also can't imagine having to deal with healing from surgical incisions in addition to dealing with everything else that came with caring for a newborn. The sleep deprivation and the cracked and blistered nipples alone nearly put me over the edge; the idea of trying to cope with incisions and whatnot, and of not being able to pick up my then two-year-old eldest son for weeks, is almost unimaginable.

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely not criticizing caesarean births. Heck, that's how I got here. (Breech baby, stubborn from the womb.) But it really does surprise me that (a) someone who is otherwise healthy and capable of delivering vaginally would choose a c-section, and (b) that an obstetrican would allow it, especially given the cost is 60% higher - let alone the additional health risks and longer recovery times associated with c-sections.

It's all very interesting! What do you think? First, I'm curious as to whether the costs in Canada are similar to those in other countries. What do you think about elective c-sections? Would you? Did you? And since we as taxpayers are footing the bill, so to speak, should obstetricians permit medically unnecessary c-sections?

I may be past my best-before date, but at least I'm not spoiled!

Continuing with our all-memes-all-the-time theme... As seen at Decomposition and Mystery Mommy.

Are you spoiled? (My initial answer before completing the meme is a resounding YES!! And I like it that way!) You are if you can check of 40 of the following:

Do you have...

 your own cell phone (we have one for the family, but I don't have my own)
 a television in your bedroom
x an iPod (not an iPod, but an MP3 player)
 a photo printer
 your own phone line
 TiVo or a generic digital video recorder
X high-speed internet access (i.e., not dialup)
 a surround sound system in bedroom
 DVD player in bedroom
 at least a hundred DVDs
 a childfree bathroom
X your own in-house office
x a pool (12' seasonal kiddie pool)
 a guest house
 a game room
X a queen-size bed
 a stocked bar (does three bottles of red wine and half a bottle of something called firewater count?)
X a working dishwasher
 an icemaker
X a working washer and dryer
 more than 20 pairs of shoes
 at least ten things from a designer store (is Roots a designer store? If so, my answer is yes. I am all Roots, all the time. Cell phone, purse, clothes for me and the boys. It's all a little embarrasing, actually.)
 expensive sunglasses
 framed original art (not lithographs or prints)
 Egyptian cotton sheets or towels
X a multi-speed bike
X a gym membership
 large exercise equipment at home
 your own set of golf clubs
 a pool table
 a tennis court
 local access to a lake, large pond, or the sea
 your own pair of skis
 enough camping gear for a weekend trip in an isolated area
 a boat
 a jet sk
 a neighborhood committee membership
 a beach house or a vacation house/cabin
 wealthy family members
 two or more family cars
X a walk-in closet or pantry (closets)
X a yard
 a hammock
 a personal trainer
X good credit
X expensive jewelry (define expensive? Real diamonds and pearls and rubies? Yes. Worth keeping in a safe deposit box? No.)
 a designer bag that required being on a waiting list to get (there's waiting lists for designer bags???)
 at least $100 cash in your possession right now (snort - I had to fish money out of my desk drawer to buy a sandwich)
X more than two credit cards bearing your name
 a stock portfolio
 a passport (expired last year)
 a horse
 a trust fund
X private medical insurance (additional drug coverage through work)
X a college degree, and no outstanding student loans (but Beloved is still paying $400/month)

Do you:
 shop for non-needed items for yourself (like clothes, jewelry, electronics) at least once a week  do your regular grocery shopping at high-end or specialty stores (is Farm Boy a specialty store?)
 pay someone else to clean your house, do dishes, or launder your clothes (not counting dry-cleaning) (I wish!!)
X go on weekend mini-vacations (these are the *only* kind of vacations we go on)
 send dinners back with every flaw
 wear perfume or cologne (not body spray)
X regularly get your hair styled or nails done in a salon
 have a job but don't need the money OR  stay at home with little financial sacrifice
 pay someone else to cook your meals (again, I wish!)
X pay someone else to watch your children or walk your dogs (what does daycare have to do with being spoiled?)
 regularly pay someone else to drive you (does the bus count?)
 expect a gift after you fight with your partner (hmmmm....)

Are you:
 an only child
 married/partnered to a wealthy person
X baffled/surprised when you don't get your way (who, me?)

Have you:
 been on a cruise
X traveled out of the country
 met a celebrity (define celebrity? define met? I once cornered Margaret Atwood in a bathroom for an autograph, and shook Mikhail Gorbachev's hand... I'm going to leave this one as a blank.)
X been to the Caribbean (I was nine. Barbados.)
X been to Europe (Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, France in 1995, then Paris on our honeymoon.)
 BEEN TO HONG KONG
 been to Hawaii
 been to New York
 eaten at the space needle in Seattle
 been to the Mall of America
X been on the Eiffel tower in Paris (twice!)
 been on the Statue of Liberty in New York
 moved more than three times because you wanted to
 dined with local political figures
X been to both the Atlantic coast and the Pacific coast (but in different countries)

Did you:
X go to another country for your honeymoon
 hire a professional photographer for your wedding or party
 take riding or swimming lessons as a child
 attend private school
 have a Sweet 16 birthday party thrown for you

Twenty-six. As unspoiled as the virgin wilderness! (I know, I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face too.) To paraphrase Andrea, the Internet has decreed me as not spoiled, and so it shall be known forevermore.

And that sound you hear? It's Beloved's and my mother's eyeballs rolling in their sockets.

The ABCs of Me(me)

Oh look, it's another meme from Phantom Scribbler. Plus, I got tagged by Renée of Froggie Mom on the 'weird facts about me' meme, and these two dovetailed nicely.

Accent: Not that I know of, but when I first moved here I was told I had a Toronto accent. Eh?

Booze: Not usually. I'll have a glass of wine or a beer on the odd social occasion, but alcohol is a big migraine trigger for me, and a three-day hangover is rarely worth it. My brother is slowly educating me on the world of good red wines.

Chore I hate: washing lettuce. (Really, I despise washing lettuce. Don't mind washing peppers, or cukes, or whatever, but I really hate washing lettuce.) Cleaning the backyard of poop-dogs in the spring. Ironing. Making the bed.

Dog or cat: yes. One of each. I am admittedly a dog person, and not nearly so cruel to my pets as some people might have you believe.

Essential electronics: laptop. TV. Coffe maker. Hairdryer. Simon's CD player for lullabyes.

Favorite cologne(s): eau de fresh-washed preschooler (tied for first with eau de fresh-washed Beloved).

Gold or silver: yes please. Rubies and diamonds, too. (My wedding rings are white gold with yellow gold detail, and my heirloom ring from my mother is white gold with a ruby.) But silver looks nice on me, too, especially in the summer.

Hometown: I was born in London, Ontario but after 18 years I guess I now call Ottawa home.

Insomnia: Sometimes. But not lately.

Job title: Senior communications advisor.

Kids: Yep. Two now, maybe more by this time next year???

Living arrangements: nuclear family with grandparents the perfect distance of a 20-minute walk away.

Most admirable trait: Infernal optimist.

Number of sexual partners: You really want to know? This is personal stuff - promise you won't think me a tramp, okay? Three.

Overnight hospital stays: Two, one for each baby. Two nights for Tristan, one for Simon. Trips to the ER? Countless.

Phobias: This could be a whole post unto itself. Executive summary: things that grow (weeds, some more than others), things that rot (mould), things with wings or more than four legs (insects - again, some more than others; spiders are fine, but junebugs terrify me), things that go bump in the night, inanimate objects coming to life, lightswitches that don't work...

Quote: "My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?" (Erma Bombeck)

Religion: Recovering Catholic.

Siblings: One brother, five years younger and six inches taller than me.

Time I wake up: Between five-thirty and six. Big improvements since daylight savings time, so much so I'm reluctant to see it in type!!

Unusual talent or skill: I can clap with one hand.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Hmmm, nothing comes to mind. There are plenty of which I'm not overly fond, but I don't think I'd outright refuse to eat any vegetable.

Worst habit: I leave things wherever I happen to be when I lose interest in them or get distracted by something else (as opposed to putting them away), and then become pathologically oblivious to them. I also hate clutter. This is a very bad combination.

X-rays: Teeth. Lungs for pneumonia. CAT scan for headaches when I was a teen. Probably various limbs during trips to the ER when I was a kid, but nothing stands out in my memory.

Yummy foods I make: Guacamole (my mother and Simon fight over it). Chicken fajitas on the barbeque. Peppered steak brochettes with grilled veggies.

Zodiac sign: If you've read more than three of my posts, this is almost as obvious as the question about how many kids I have. Leo, of course.

The movie meme

Thank goodness for memes on a bad day. Saw this orgininally at Phantom Scribbler and Mystery Mommy, but it's been everywhere. It's from this list of "movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies." (Looks like, as usual, I know enough to fake it but not credibly. Again.) The ones I've seen are in bold.



"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher (one of my favourite movies)
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg (really, I must get around to watching this)
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming

I gotta admit, as a pop-culture junkie I expected to have seen more of these. And so many of them I've seen parts of, even can recite scenes from, but I don't think I've ever seen the whole movie.

I'd list Empire Strikes Back, Fight Club and any Monty Python from this list as my favourites. I'm surprised Bull Durham isn't on here - I think it's a star among sports movies. Are your favourite movies in here?

The gift of life, and so much more

It’s National Organ Donation Week here in Canada. I had a post on the topic half written before I realized I was repeating myself nearly verbatim from last year. (Those of you who know me well are of course shocked and scandalized to think I would repeat a story I have told once or twice or thrice before.)

So, I’ll wait here a minute while you go read that post from last year, and then you come on back and we’ll talk some more. Go on, really – I just re-read it myself and it’s a pretty good post. It’s about my dad, and his liver transplant in 2001, when I was about five months pregnant with Tristan. And if you’ve got a little bit of extra time, read this wrenching story of a five-year-old girl in Illinois named Annika who has endured two liver transplants, and will probably need a third.

In case you’re in a hurry and you only pretended to click on the link, here’s the important bits.

In 2003, 250 people died in Canada while waiting for waiting for new organs.

In the United States, 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant.

In 2003, just over 1,700 organ transplants were performed in Canada.

At the end of 2004, over 4,000 people were on an organ donation list in Canada.

All you have to do is sign an organ donor card (here’s the Canadian and American versions for you) and tell your family what you want. Yes, it can be that simple. If you want to do more, and you’re in the Ottawa area, join the living green ribbon campaign on Wednesday on Parliament Hill. I hope to be there.

Last night, my folks invited us over for dinner. The boys had run off downstairs, and I asked my dad if I could talk about his transplant on my blog. We sat and talked for the better part of an hour about the chronology – was it 1995 or 1996 that he started getting really sick? – and the details. It seems like another lifetime, the bad times when my dad was sick.

We talked about the false alarms. He had been on the list for a liver transplant for a year or so when the first call came. They waited for hours, my mother and father, having already been admitted to the hospital but then left to wait as the hours ticked by. They were told that the donor had hepatitis C, like my dad, but they had to wait to find out whether the liver would be too damaged by the disease to transplant. After hours of waiting and anticipation, they were told to go home. But wait! As my dad got dressed again and prepared to leave the hospital, they were stopped and told to wait yet again. They weren’t sure yet – maybe the liver was still good. For three more hours they waited alone in the hospital room before word finally reached them that the liver was not viable.

The second time they got a call, they were told my dad was the back-up recipient and would receive the liver only if the intended recipient couldn’t make it in from Thunder Bay in time. This time, they didn’t even admit him to the hospital. The recipient made it on time, and my parents went home, again, to wait.

We discussed last night, from the safe distance of four and a half years and 600 km, how the liver disease was horrible to endure, how the waiting and the not knowing were agonizing, but most of all how the hope was crushing. In his case, the fourth time was the charm. The fourth call came, and the liver was healthy, and the transplant was done. When they removed my dad's liver, they found it riddled with cancer. It had been a ticking time bomb of cancerous cells.

Last night, after a reflective discussion about the days of my father’s sickness and transplant, I listened to Simon’s belly laugh as Papa Lou played with him. I watched my father’s eyes shine as he laughed right back at Simon’s antics. It was a moment, a perfect moment, the joy of my father and my son loving each other, and it was a gift. A gift from a stranger we will never know.

Imagine if it were your father, your wife, your son or daughter, your friend. Imagine watching them waste away, knowing that a call could come at any moment to rescue them, with the grace of God and a surgical team, from death itself. And imagine how you would feel listening for a call that does not come.

Discuss organ donation with your family. Sign a donor card. Give the gift of life.

Good-bye to an old nemesis friend

When Beloved and I moved in together, way back in 1995, he came with baggage in the form of two slightly neurotic cats. The skittish tabby was Tiny (in name only) and the fierce, ill-tempered black one was Ben.

Ben and Tiny had been with Beloved for a couple of years before I came along and bumped them down the totem pole of Beloved's affections. I still remember one of the first times I visited, having Ben stand on my lap and butt his head against me as I sat next to Beloved on the couch. "Awww, he likes me!" I said, having been forewarned of his tendency to hate everyone except Beloved. It was only after a few minutes that I realized he was not so much being affectionate as trying to shove me out of the way and away from Beloved. It was a moment that would come to define our relationship.

When we lived in a little two bedroom apartment perched in the attic of an old house in the Glebe, Ben would wake us up every single day between three and four in the morning, yowling for breakfast. You didn't walk past Ben too quickly, or he would try to sink his teeth into your achilles heel on the way by. My friends took great joy in baiting him, because it didn't take much to turn him into a hissing, spitting ball of angry black fur.

That's why when Beloved and I got married and moved into a town house and I could finally get the dog I had been dreaming of for years, I didn't have a lot of problem relegating the cats to the finished basement family room / office when the dog and the cats proved incompatible. We tried over the years to integrate them, but Ben's fierceness coupled with the fact that we were enjoying not being yowled awake hours before the first sparrow's chirp eased our guilt about how this integration never seemed to work out. And so the cats dropped another notch down the totem pole.

And within a couple of years after Katie the golden-retriever/shepherd mix arrived, the boys followed... dropping the hapless cats another couple of notches down the family totem pole. I bet you didn't know totem poles even had basements.

The cats have always been well-cared for, and had each other for company in the 'cat cave', as we came to call the basement. One Christmas we returned from a brief visit with my folks in London to find Ben lethargic and obviously sick, with mucus around his anus. It was New Years Eve, and the emergency appointment to the vet ended up costing us more than $700... to have the vet shave Ben's ass, do a few tests, and tell us that his illness was likely gastrointestinal upset as a result of a new food we were trying.

Both cats were fat, Ben especially. At his largest, he was 18 lbs. That's why when he started dropping weight in the last year, we knew something was up. Then a few months ago, he started licking bare patches into his fur. But he was still feisty and spry, and although we suspected his days were numbered, as long as he seemed content (by Ben's standards, anyway), so were we.

That changed yesterday. It was obvious he was suddenly in pain. His feet slid out from under him and he just lay on the floor before getting up. Beloved brought him to the vet, who could without invasive testing diagnose more than one ailment, which probably still did not account for his pain and obvious lethargy. We could do more tests, we could try a pill-a-day for the rest of his life (those of you who own angry cats can imagine how much fun this would be for the cat, let alone the person trying to do it), but none of these things would be guaranteed to make an improvement. He was fifteen years old. It was time to let him go.

He wasn't my cat, despite the fact that we lived together for more than ten years. He was, to the end, Beloved's cat, and it's for Beloved that my heart aches.

As I said, the cats lived in the basement, and while Beloved or I were often downstairs (the computer was down there, and Beloved's office) the boys only came down occassionally, so much so that they often confused which cat was Ben and which was Tiny. When Beloved came home from the vet without Ben, we decided to leave the door open and let Tiny join us upstairs if he so chose. He can fit through the baby gate to the basement stairs while the dog cannot, and he spent much of yesterday on the stairs, not courageous enough to come all the way up.

Yesterday, Tristan was aware that Beloved had taken Ben to the vet, but we had been evasive on exactly what had happened. We said that Ben wasn't coming back, but Tristan didn't seem overly concerned. He was, however, tickled at the idea of Tiny coming upstairs and spent quite a while near the stairs, coaxing him up. You can imagine why Tiny was reluctant, with Tristan, Simon and Katie as a welcoming committee on the far side of the gate!

This morning, we had all just tumbled out of bed and into the living room when Tristan asked when Ben was coming home. The need for honesty caught up with me, and I told him, "Ben died, honey. He died." To my surprise and regret, Tristan began to cry. I hadn't expected him to grasp the concept so quickly, or with such empathy. He cried for a few minutes, gentle tears running down his cheeks, while Beloved and I tried with choked voices to combine platitudes with honesty to reassure him.

The short attention-span of the preschooler is sometimes a gift, and Tristan was soon more interested in coaxing Tiny upstairs than in mourning Ben. A few times, he asked a version of "when is Ben coming back", and one more time he cried when he grasped the finality of it. I found myself invoking God, and heaven, because they are comforting ideas and at least make the concept of death manageable and bearable, especially for a four-year-old.

Good-bye, Ben. I promise to take good care of our Beloved for you.

For a good cause

1912 Edition of
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Available for Raffle

$5/ticket
All proceeds will benefit Annika Tiede, a five year old girl from Normal, Illinois who is on a waiting list for her third liver transplant

Annika was born with biliary atresia, a congenital liver disease that most often results in death without a liver transplant. She so far has had two, and the second is now failing, resulting in frequent internal bleeding. Her doctors have placed her back on the waiting list for a third transplant.

Her health insurance situation is tenuous, so her family has signed up with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association, a non-profit which assists families with fundraising to meet the expenses of needed organ transplants. This raffle is one of the activities in support of the COTA fundraising project.

COTA is online at http://www.cota.org/
Annika Tiede’s page on the COTA site can be viewed at http://www.kintera.org/FAF/home/default.asp?ievent=164243
Every $5 donated on this site qualifies you to claim one ticket for the draw for the Peter Rabbit book. Simply forward your email receipt to andrea@athenadreaming.org, who will assign you a ticket number.

The draw was scheduled to be held on April 22, 2006 but the minimum number of tickets have not yet been sold. This may be your last chance!!

There are now two stories already attached to this little book. The first is from Marla, called The Very Long Tale of How Marla is Offering the Tale of Peter Rabbit with a Few Other Tales Thrown In Because Marla Finds Brevity Painful

The second story is from me. Yesterday, I realized I had almost missed the deadline to buy my raffle tickets, and while I was at work, I pulled out my credit card and very surreptitiously made my donation. I was just putting my credit card back into my wallet when my boss's boss came into my cubicle, startling the holy hell out of me and catching me red-handed conducting Internet commerce on the company's computer, and proceeded to ask me whether I had bought a 50/50 ticket from our social committee that day, because the ticket sold before his was the winner. Sure enough, as I had been buying my raffle tickets, karma took note and I won more than $100!

So buy a raffle ticket today... it's good karma! And check out the other cool things up for raffle, too!

Kids on the loose in the 'hood

Silken Laumann is a Canadian Olympic medalist , national sport hero and, more importantly, mother to two kids, age six and eight. She's here in Ottawa promoting a new book called Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities. One of her key messages caught me by surprise, coming from a former professional althlete: take your kids out of organized sports. [Edited to add: according to an e-mail I received from Silken's Active Kids, the Citizen actually attributed this idea incorrectly. The e-mail stated: "Silken is not suggesting that we pull our children out of organised sport. Silken is encouraging all of us to create more opportunites to allow our kids to play so they experience joy from movement and in time will want to pursue more a more organised sport."] She argues that kids need to face long stretches of unstructured time with no organized activities, when kids should be outside the house playing, riding their bikes and having fun moving their bodies for the sheer joy of it.

In theory, I love this idea. I wasn't the most athletic kid (in fact, it was a heady day that I wasn't the last one picked for a team) but I still have the most wonderful memories of riding my bike all over the neighbourhood by the time I was six or seven years old, and running in a big pack of neighbourhood kids. We played hockey in the street, skated on the frozen pond in the empty field, played tag and hide and seek and all sorts of those games. I even walked to school from the time I was in junior kindergarten, by myself.

The problem, of course, is that we're not in the 1970s anymore, Toto. It makes me so very sad to think that my boys won't have this kind of freedom to roam. On the weekend, we conceded two major milestones to Tristan's eventual freedom. We let him ride his bike (on the sidewalk, of course) all the way to the stop sign and back by himself. Total distance of about six driveways. And the first three times, I pretended to be busy in the garden but instead hunched behind the car and watched him the whole time.

Later in the weekend, he asked if he could stay out and play by himself while I went in to start dinner. It was the first time he was allowed to stay out in the front yard unsupervised, and when we heard the screech of car tires on the road a few minutes later, Beloved and I nearly died of fright - but the car was at the stop sign and Tristan was safely on his bike in the garage. My heart still constricts at the memory.

Silken Laumann's book, which I am about to request from the library and haven't yet read, provides 20 pages of information, resources and ideas on getting kids to be physically active without registering them for swimming, soccer, T-ball and hockey. She suggests parents organize "Play in the Park" evenings, where one or two parents supervise a whole group of children. Isn't this what parents in our parents' generation did instinctively? Now there's a 'not my kid, not my problem' mentality at the park, from what I've seen.

In an article in today's Citizen, Silken acknowledges that our culture of fear has led us to organize and structure our children's lives. She says, "It's about starting a dialogue, where people are asking, what are we doing with our kids? Could kids walk to school again? How can we get them playing in the parks and open spaces of our community again? We show people how."

I am 100% behind this idea, which even has its own Web site with a community action plan, an activity guide and a movement you can start where you live. I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of kids getting out and being physically active, but I have mixed feelings about organized sports. (I started to go on for a bit on my angst over organized sports, but I think I'll save that for a whole 'nother post.)

The weather has been so unbelievably gorgeous the past couple of weeks, and there isn't an evening we've stayed in the house. We go to the park, we go for a bike ride/wagon pull, we play in the driveway. The house is a disaster and I'm woefully behind on laundry, but when the sky is clear and the temperatures above freezing, I can't convince myself, let alone my preschoolers, to stay inside.

I think kids are hardwired to want to run and ride and play. So what happens? Do they become jaded to play as they age, or is it something we're doing that discourages it? Does all this rigourous scheduling of activities make kids lazy when someone isn't directing their energies? And then, of course, there's the whole issue of the kids being able to entertain themselves and think creatively without parental intervention, which I haven't even touched on but which is a huge concern of mine.

I'm interested in your thoughts on this one. My kids are just on the threshold of this kind of thing, taking tentative baby steps out of my yard and into the big world, and I'm full of thoughts on how the world should be, just like I was full of righteous ideas on handling fussy eaters and non-sleepers and tantrums in public -- before I had my own to deal with!

I've got all sorts of themes tangled together in here, but I'm interested (as always) in your thoughts. When do you let your kids play outside unsupervised? Do you / would you let them walk to school, or the corner store? At what age do you think they'd be ready for that? Is 'stranger danger' more frightening than obesity and heart disease and diabetes and the other worst-case outcomes from inactive living? Is it naive to think we can make enough of a difference in our communities to allow our kids the kind of freedom we enjoyed?

Linky love

(With props to Andrea, from whom I blatantly stole the phrase that titles this post.)

When in doubt of what to write about, you can always just post a run-down of cool stuff you've recently stumbed upon on the Interwebs. With bonus commentary, bien sûr.

I have one of those new Google personalized home page thingees, which I used at work to peek into my Gmail account. The firewall prevents me from actually opening any of the mail, or going to the Gmail home page itself, but I can see if there are messages in there and who they are from. It's actually a little bit torturous, seeing mail in there and not being able to read it. And yet I continue to peek...

Ahem, I seem to have sidetracked myself from my point, which was that I also have a Reuters "odd news" feed on that page, which is how I found this news story. The first one is about how women in Cyprus are planning to make the world's longest bra chain on April 30, to heighten awareness of breast cancer. They hope to string together as many as 100,000 bras, which will form a chain more than 50 miles long. I think I have about half that many in my "these bras don't fit any more, or have pokey bones sticking out of them, so I don't wear them, but I am pathologically unable to throw them away" drawer. Too much information?

Without even attempting a segue, hows about we talk about families? (Yah, I know, if I worked at it a little harder, I could come up with a segue. But it's early and I've only had half a cup of coffee.) And you know what? Even having said that, it's going to take some back story to get there.

When I first started blogging, I had just spent an evening with a bunch of girlfriends, admiring their lovely and lovingly rendered scrap books. (I loved the idea behind scrapbooking, and even had some of the requisite supplies. But I could never get the opportunity (read: time) and the organizational capability and the creativity to intersect. But I still went to scrapbooking nights, mostly to mooch the food and wine and admire my friends' books.) One of my friends said that in scrapbooking, she sees herself as the family historian and that idea stayed with me.

When I'm blogging, I always have that idea of myself as the family historian (and documenter of minutia) in mind. So I really like the idea of JotSpot's Family Site. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet, but it looks way cool, especially if you have a large and geographically dispersed family.

I particularly like the idea of an online family calendar with everyone's birthdays and milestones. I'm pretty good at remembering that stuff, but I feel horrible when I do miss something. And I like the geneology, too. I've got a book (inconveniently written in Dutch) that documents my family way back to its ancestry with the de Beers - yes, those famous diamond people - and my links to my great-great-great-great-great uncle, an actual canonized saint. Sadly, neither the righteousness nor the riches seem to have trickled down the bloodline to my generation.

Oh alright, if you want a segue so badly, how about: "And speaking of fun online time-sinks..." or "And on the subject of your relative importance in the world..." (get it? relative importance?? I slay me.) ... the useless and yet somehow compelling little aplet called BlogInfluence allows you to rate your 'influence' in the Blogosphere by aggregating your Google page rank, your Technorati and Bloglines stats, and some other Meaningful and Relevant bloggy data.

Lucky for you, that's all I've got for today's ramble. Don't worry, I'm out of time, not out of arcane links and obscure commentary - there's lots left where that came from!

The persecuted preschooler

Ahem. I would like to register a complaint.

Back when parenting was just a theory, people told me all sorts of things to watch out for. They said I should sleep when the baby sleeps, and that no matter how many receiving blankets we had, we’d need more. Check.

They said that when baby learned to walk there would be lots of bumps and bruises, and that when he started to talk he would melt my heart every single day. Check.

They said I should stop wearing white shirts because they would be spattered by an endless parade of leaked substances, from breastmilk to the alarming neon orange residue of alphaghettis. Check.

They said I might have to learn to let the baby cry, and that the first day I left him at daycare would be the day I came to understand what heartbroken really feels like. Check.

They said that a smiling, gurgling six-month-old is perhaps the most endearing creature on the face of the planet, and that the tantrums of the two-year-old are like thunderstorms in a perfect summer day. Check.

They said it would be the most rewarding, difficult, exhilarating, frustrating, heretofore unimaginable experience of my life, every. single. day. Check.

What they didn’t tell me is that my four-year-old would be more moody than a menopausal woman deprived of chocolate and coffee crossed with a lovesick fourteen-year-old girl.

How can a child who is so sweet, so good-natured, so clever and so loving be such a tremendously unpleasant creature? Within the same hour?? This is, by the way and in case you haven’t figured it out, one of those posts where I pretty much beg you to say, “Oh yes, me too!” Please.

I expected the “He’s looking at me!” kind of complaint at this age. I expected to referee a lot of roughhousing, and settle a lot of disputes over toy possession. I didn’t expect the “Everybody is mean to me!” whine on a daily basis. (Uttered whenever he is compelled to do pretty much anything, from eating his dinner to taking off his shoes before coming into the house.)

He has more than one weapon in his martyr’s arsenal. When he is contradicted (“No, you cannot ride your bike in the house.”) he yells, “FINE then!” and runs up to his room to sulk. He will look at me with his stormy grey eyes brimming with tears and tell me he's "not having a very good day" because of one small thing that has happened in an otherwise near perfect day. It's both frustrating (especially for an infernal optimist like me) and disappointing to see him fixate on the negative aspects to the exclusion of the positive.

If this is just a phase, I don't mind riding it out. I've tried to sit down with him and explain all the wonderful things that happened in a day to offset the single bad thing, but he just squirms and is obviously having a hard time listening to it. I've tried to reason with him that everybody is not so much being mean to him as enforcing rules that we all have to live by. None of it seems to sink in.

My friend Twinmomplusone wrote a post the other day about four-year-olds that got me thinking about this. She has TWO of these mysterious creatures - imagine!!

So, for those of you who have four-year-olds, or have recently endured the phenomenon - please tell me: is this moodiness typical of your average four-year-old? And how do you deal with it? Most importantly, is five better? Or (cringe) worse?

10-pages-in book review: Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

This is the 15th edition of the 10-pages-in book review, and one of my favourite books to date. I'm reading Will Ferguson's Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and you can officially add Will Ferguson to my list of literary crushes, along with Douglas Coupland and Nick Hornby.

Will Ferguson has a lot in common with Douglas Coupland, now that I think about it: both are Canadian and of more or less the same generation as me, both have a satiric touch that makes me laugh out loud, both spent time teaching ESL in Japan (Ferguson brought home a Japanese wife on his return to Canada), both are ferverent nationalists in a Gen-X slacker kind of way, and both have a keen eye for our national idiosyncracies and write about them with such effortless panache that I stop mid-paragraph to admire the prose sometimes.

Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw is part travel memoir, part history book, part love letter to Canada. In each chapter the author visits a different city (or town, or Fort) in a different province, and in visiting describes both the modern-day place and the history that sculpted it. In effortless strokes, he links his own personal history to the history of the nation, and his descriptions of the quirky characters that make up the threads of our national tapestry make me that much more fiercely proud to be Canadian.

One of many unforgettable vignettes describes a turn of the century shipbuilder who walked - walked! - 1000 kms from Minnesota to Saskatechewan, back to Minnesota and finally back again, and then built a giant ship on the prairies, determined to sail home to Finland. From Saskatchewan. Who would've guessed that Saskatchewan isn't landlocked?

From the fur trade to prairie prohibition whiskey tunnels to polar bears to the übercolonial Victoria, this is a gorgeous series of sketches of Canada, and Canadians. But it's the author's personal insight and observant eye that make this book so entirely charming. Pardon the long passage, but I loved this bit of description of Will and his son taking a 'rest stop' on the side of highway one traveling night:

Things I learned while standing on the side of the highway in the middle of the night, trying not to get peed on as I hold a three-year-old so that he doesn't trip or fall down a ditch as he looks up and the night sky and asks questions about the moon while he pees (invariably) into the wind:

(1) Although warm initially, pee very soon becomes cold.

(2) If you get pee on your shoelaces, there is nothing you can do. Your shoelaces will never dry, and you will never get the odour out. Best to throw them away and start anew.

(3) There are a lot of stars. Man, there are a lot of stars. Out here, beyond the refractive fog of city streetlights, the sky is awash with them. The Milky Way - it's like a river of rhinestones; it spills across from horizon to horizon. Thousands and thousands of stars.

(4) Cars on the highway travel really fast. You can hear the rishing pitch of Doppler-effect waves pushed in front of them, then blast past, rattling the air. When we are inside our cars, hurtling across a landscape, we don't realize how quickly we are moving - until we stop.

Walking back to the car, shoelaces damp, son on shoulders, I say in my wise and fatherly way, "You know son, long ago, sailors and sea captains could guide their ships by using the stars."

"Really?" he says. "How?"

I stop. Think about this for a moment. "I have no idea."

The book is peppered with self-deprecating and gentle (oh so Canadian) humour like this. I don't often have a lot of patience for non-fiction books, but this one is so entirely endearing, not to mention educational (did you know the name Moose Jaw has probably nothing to do with the jaw or any part of a moose, and instead originates from the Cree word moosgaw, meaning "warm breeze"? Or that polar bears are so dangerous that the town of Churchill has demarcated "do not enter" zones in polar bear season?) that I could go on quoting from it for quite some time.

I've read some of Will Ferguson's other books, and didn't find them quite so appealing. I wasn't overly fond of How to be a Canadian - while clever, I found it to be a little bit contrived. I did enjoy the biting satire of Happiness(TM) , but it got just a little bit long toward the end. This one, though, is by far my favourite. I can't believe the sheer volume of things I learned about this country I love so much - and in his eastward progression that starts in BC, I've only made it as far as Ontario and still have all of eastern Canada yet to go. I'm already wondering how I can plan a trip to visit some of these places - Saskatchewan and Manitoba have never been more fascinating.

Canadian history has never been so engaging, so charming, so funny and so interesting. They should teach this version in school!

A long weekend in broad strokes

Our internet connection died on Saturday, which would have been horrendous on a dreary winter long weekend, but was barely noticed on this busy and sunshine-filled couple of days. (If you had told me I'd spend two of four days of a long weekend with neither shopping nor Internet, I'd've told you I wouldn't make it through half of it with my sanity intact.)

I spent most of Friday rehabilitating my gardens after a long winter. I raked, I pruned, I turned the earth - and it was good. I only meant to do 15 minutes of work and ended up spending two hours on it. If only I could sustain that kind of enthusiasm throughout the season.

Friday night we went out for dinner with my folks to a great little upscale burger joint called The Works. If you ever get the chance to check it out, I highly recommend the sweet potato fries. And the boys were tickled by beverages that arrived in pyrex measuring cups.

My father and the waiter sustained an ongoing banter throughout the meal, starting with the waiver my dad had to sign to have his burger cooked only to rare. They actually had a waiver (how very un-Canadian), and to the statement that he indemnified the restaurant of any gastrointestinal dismay as a result of undercooked meat, he added a clause that the choice of vehicular or helicopter ambulance would be his. To which the waiter something else clever that escapes me, and my father rejoindered that his remains should be available for takeout in a white styrofoam box. The waiter replied that all remains become the property of the restaurant, and get fed back into the meat grinder. It was that kind of conversation, reminiscent of many, many childhood experiences watching my dad kibitz with whomever would play along. It's one of my favourite things about him, to this day.

I don't know whether it was the day spent outside, or the loud music and laid-back atmosphere of the pub, or just a cosmic warm spot, but it was one of the best restaurant meals ever with the boys. Tristan was a little squirrelly, but occupied himself driving toy cars on the bench beside me, and Simon entertained himself for the best part of an hour with two ice cubes, a lemon wedge, and 52 ml of water in his small-sized measuring cup. We took a loping drive back across town on roads I never drive through neighbourhoods I forgot exist. It was like being on vacation in my own city, and it was lovely.

All the bending and turning of the yard work must have loosened something in my caboose, because I was pulling Simon's pyjama bottoms up when the subtle forward-leaning movement caused something to shift ever so slightly in my back and I was briefly but painfully unable to move. I think I pinched the sciatic nerve, given the intensity of the pain radiating down my leg, and I couldn't sleep that night because every time I turned on to either side, pain radiated down my hip and into my leg. I spent Saturday gingerly running errands and gasping when I forgot and moved too quickly.

We spent a good portion of Sunday outside as well. (How will I ever reclimatize myself to an office after four days of sunshine and fresh air?) We went to the park, we wandered the 'hood, and we sated ourselved on turkey dinner chez mes parents. It was the first time we could open the back door and shoo the boys outside to entertain themselves - and it was good.

Today, the boys, the dog and I went for a wander through a little conservation area a few clicks from our house. There's a kilometre or so of trails, plus another click or so of boardwalk through marsh grasses beside the Rideau River. It's lovely in any season, but we don't get down there in the winter, so being back makes the arrival of spring official. The river is as low as I've ever seen it, which I can only guess means they are filling the Rideau Canal for the summer boating season. Winter really is over - every year, I can hardly believe we've made it through another one.

There really should be more long weekends sprinkled through the year. The house is as clean as it ever gets - which, for what it's worth, is not really very clean, but what the hell. Playing is more fun. The garage is reorganized, and the dead leaves are out of the flower beds. The tulips and daffs are peeking out, and the worst of the dog crap is lifted. Most of the laundry is done, and the cupboards are overflowing with chocolate eggs. And I got a sizeable chunk of a good book read. It's been a good weekend!

(Hmmm, look at all the stuff I managed to get done without Internet access. I wonder if there is a message hidden in there somewhere? What's that? La la la, I can't hear you....)

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You're in trouble now

As if it weren't bad enough that I bombard you with pictures of my boys on a semi-regular basis... I have now harnessed the considerable power of the Interweb to bring you live streaming video of my lovelies!!

This one is a little test, but it captures my current heart-melting favourite of Simon's gestures, the thoughtful man.

Click the link to go to You Tube, which should load the video automatically: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkmVzE0b3qY

The audio is a little out of synch at the end, but it still captures Simon pretty well.

Try it and tell me if it works! (But be warned, if it does work you will be assailed with regular snippets from my nearly limitless supply of footage...)

Edited to add: hey, lookit this! I can just embed it right here!! It takes a second to load, though.

Oh no!!!

Today's carefully crafted post was eaten by blogger at the last minute - I'm heartbroken!! And no time to recreate it. Ack!

I'll rewrite most of it over the weekend, but this is all that remains...

Found while link surfing at Grumpopotamus:

Get yer own here!

Mrs., Ms., and Missing the point

There was an article in the Citizen this morning (sorry, not in their online edition, but it's a syndication of this London Times article) about the movement in France to stop differentiating between madame and mademoiselle, the French versions of Mrs. and Miss. Feminists are calling the distinction between the two a 'flagarant example of sex discrimination' because it forces women to reveal their marital status, whereas men have the simple honourific of monsieur regardless of their marital status. They are not advocating an equivalent to the English Ms., but a straight choice between madame and monsieur.

I think this is a great idea. I think we should do it in English, too. Let's get rid of Mrs., with its matronly baggage, and the coquettish Miss, and just go with a simple choice between Mr. and Ms. I skip this box wherever I can, and choose Ms. when forced to do so, not out of any disrespect to my marriage but because I think the distinction is anachronous in modern society.

French culture seems to be ahead of the curve on this one, and on the issue of marital name change, too. In the province of Quebec, a woman keeps her birth name upon marriage unless she files legal paperwork to change it. I'm quite frankly a little surprised to see how many women still change their names.

When I got married the first time (the infamous practice marriage), I actually cried the night of our wedding at the idea of being Mrs Whassisname. I had spent 20 years forming idea of myself based on being Miss Donders, and the formal reality of being Mrs Whassisname left me feeling cut off from my past and my identity. Three years later, before I realized divorce was on the horizon, I started talking about switching back to my birth name. He was not impressed. When we did get divorced, I remember clearly the day I received my new provincial health card in the mail - the first official document that restored my birth name - and I cried again.

Most of you know, too, that the boys have hyphenated surnames. I thought I was okay with them having Beloved's surname officially, and my surname as a second middle name - until it was time to fill out the paperwork and leave the hospital when Tristan was about 40 hours old. I couldn't do it. Sometimes, when I'm spelling it out for the third time over the phone to a pharmacist or receptionist or the like, I expect the boys might curse my willful modern attitudes some day... but I hope they'll be the kind of guys who understand why this sort of thing does matter.

As a sidebar, even the language we use to discuss names is laden with meaning: women have a "maiden" name (an archaic term I've been studiously avoiding) which is the name you give up on marriage to take on your husband's "surname". Interesting, no?

What do you think? Are you proud to be Mrs. Hisfamilyname? Would you be offended if your wife kept (or reclaimed) her birth name? What possible use is served by the distinction between Mrs., Ms., and Miss?

A confession

When we moved into our house, three years this June, one of the things I was most excited about was having a patch of lawn to tend. I come from people who grow thick, lush carpets of grass and have many happy memories of playing on said green carpets.

The back lawn, despite three years of dog business and a 12' diameter dirt circle where the pool sits for three months of the year, is in surprisingly good shape. It's a little patchy in places, and the weeds are creeping in, but I'm altogether satisfied with it.

The front lawn is my nemesis.

When we moved in, the front yard was perfect. By the end of that summer, it was dry and had small dirt patches throughout, which I attributed to neglectful watering. The following spring, I carefully seeded it and hired a lawn care company to do some organic fertilizing and weed control. (That was the summer Simon was a newborn and I knew I wouldn't have time to properly take care of the lawn.)

The lawncare company thought we might have grubs, and we discussed options - either chemical or organic. I chose organic - at twice the cost, mind you - but they never got around to doing the treatment. And they weren't so great with the weeding bit either. They'd spray the occasional dandilion with some vinegar solution and that was it. I figured at least they'd try to pull them, but I spent most of the summer doing that myself and wondering what exactly I had paid them for.

That September I seeded, and seeded again in April of last year. I spent last summer seeding, fertilizing, watering, and managed to coax a lovely crop of weeds to grow, because at least the weeds were green and covered the dirt.

This year, the whole front lawn is one big dirt patch, nary a blade of grass to be seen. When you rake the dirt, you can see the nasty little grubs. Ugh! Grubs freak. me. out. (Why? Blog for another day.) The robins are thrilled, and in fact the ground looks like it's been aerated, there are so many beak-holes in the dirt.

So after three years of dismal success, I have capitulated. I'm sick of spending the time and the money and having nothing to show for it. I'm going to resod the whole sodding thing, and I'm going to hire a new lawn-care company. (whispers) And I'm going to let them use pesticides.

(cringe of shame)

I know. I am completely opposed to the use of pesticides in cosmetic lawn care. I am deeply offended by it. I walk past lawns that are acres and acres of uniform emerald blades and feel deep regret that the earth is being poisoned - that we are poisoned - simply so this lawn can be weedless and perfect. A few years ago, I successfully lobbied the condominum corporation of our last house to stop using Par III on the common grounds, and signed a petition to get our city to stop using cosmetic pesticides on city property. I'm mortified at the idea of having one of those little paper flags ('an evil person who doesn't care about your children and your pets and the future of the planet lives here') marking me as a neighbourhood scourge - but I don't know what else to do.

I've been worn down by my three year battle with the front lawn. I've tried, really I have. I gave it my best shot, hundreds of dollars and countless hours. It doesn't have to be a Stepford lawn, perfect and uniform - but the curb-to-driveway dirt farm is just depressing. Not to mention messy - the boys are thrilled to have so much black dirt so easily accessible each time you step out the front door, I assure you, but I'm a little tired of cleaning it out of the carpet. And the car. And their clothes. And the dog.

Oh, the guilt. I promise, I'll just do it this one year, to get us back on track with a healthy, normal lawn. We'll just get rid of those creepy, grubby creatures, and I'll spend the rest of my life pulling dandilions by hand... as long as I can kneel in the grass to do it.

Don't hate me.

But where does God buy his car?

Tristan starts Catholic school in September, but I still haven't found just the right place to start introducing the concepts of God and Jesus and the Church. We had a few goes of it at Christmas, but I don't think much sunk in. Luckily, a perfect opportunity presented itself in the car recently.

Tristan: "What's that little store over there?"
Me: "Um, that's not a store, sweetie, that's a church." And please give me credit here for restraining myself on the topic of what they might be selling.

(pause)

Tristan: "A church?"
Me (carefully): "A church is where people go to talk to God."

I'll bet you can see this one coming, can't you?

Tristan: "God?"
Me (feigning casualness): "Um hmmm. God. (pause) Some people believe God created everything - the grass, the trees, the stars and the moon. (with growing confidence) Some people believe that God is the father of all of the people in the world."

(cringe a little bit, consider some revisions, wait to see how this dust settles first)

(thoughtful pause)

Tristan: "Mommy?"
Me: "Yes, sweetie?"

Tristan: "Where did our car come from?"
Me: "A car store."
Tristan: "Oh. Okay."

I'm both pleased and unsurprised that our first philosophical discussion on religion has turned out to be rather circular in nature.

Another unsatisfied customer

The guy who stumbled in here based on this search result is going to have to get used to dealing with his disappointment, I think.

Grey matters

I have always vowed to age gracefully, and naturally. It's been fairly easy; I come from people who generally age with grace. I still have clear skin, and I can pass my few wrinkles off as laugh lines.

So no collagen to pucker withered lips; no botox for these laugh lines; no tucks to breath new life into deflated breasts. I admire women like Susan Sarandon, and Meryl Streep. Women who wear their years with honour and pride. And I have kept my resolution to age naturally, and gracefully, all the way to the tender age of 36.

You see, I've become a plucker.

In theory, I had no issue with grey hair. I always thought a thick white streak was kind of sexy, in a funky kind of way. Hey, even überfashionista Stacey on What Not to Wear has some lovely grey streaks tucked behind her ears - it must be hot.

I've never coloured my hair - not even highlights. It's a lovely chestnut colour, with a good dose of coppery highlights when the light is right. And chestnut, it seems, is a perfect foil for grey.

It has begun. The invasion of the colourless follicles.

I frankly don't know where they keep coming from. I've become a grey-hair stalker, combing methodically through my chestnut locks in search of grey traitors in much the same way I imagine a mother examines her child's head for nits. And when I do find one, I carefully separate it from the herd before yanking it unceremoniously out by the roots, at which point I feel obligated to inspect it carefully from all angles.

Grey hair is quite a bit coarser than its darkly youthful cousin. I wonder why?

And yet, despite this careful weeding of my tresses, I still manage to find long strands of it shining defiantly and weedlike in the garden of my head. (Hey, look, that line may qualify me for some sort of bad writing award, don't you think?)

Why, by the way, are there never any strands that are half grey? They are all uniformly grey from root to end. I've put a lot of time into this obsession, you might be beginning to notice.

My scalp is still tingling with the last violent uprootal, observed and snatched from my scalp while I was overseeing nightly toothbrushing. I'm beginning to wonder which is less appealing, healthy chunks of grey hair or patchy spots of bald head, plucked clean as a naked chicken.

It's a tough call...

So tell me, my fellow women-of-a-certain-age (and men, too!), to what lengths would you - do you - go to minimize the effects of aging? Hair dye? Anti-aging cream? Nip and tuck?

Three is the New Two

We’ve just come back from our consultation with our reproductive endocrinologist (RE), aka our fertility doctor, to discuss what we’re going to do with our frostie.

(For those of you new to the conversation, we have a single frozen embryo, our ‘frostie’, left over from the IVF that resulted in Tristan.)

First, the facts: the frostie has an approximately 75% chance of surviving the thaw. (This is much higher than I thought.) Then, given my age at the time of conception, there is a 13 to 15 % chance of the embryo transfer leading to a successful pregnancy. (This is much lower than I thought.) And I don't know if this is reflected in the percentages or not, but the doctor said that embryos that were created in the same cycle that also led to a successful pregnancy have a better chance than those that were created during a cycle that did not lead to a pregnancy.

The minute I saw those numbers on paper, because the RE has this habit of writing down what she says, I wanted this embryo – this baby – fiercely, without ambivalence, and with my whole heart.

So many thoughts, so many feelings, so much to say… bear with me, this may be my least coherent, least linear post ever.

More details. Facts are my friends.

I will do this as a non-medicated cycle. Because there is no waiting list for frozen embryo transfers (FET) right now, I can call the clinic any time after June 1 to inform them it’s the first day of my cycle. From there, we do a month-long ‘test cycle’. I go in for blood work to check my estrogen level some time just before I ovulate, and go in for an ultrasound around the same time to make sure my uterine lining is nice and thick. Four days after ovulation, I go back in for more blood work to check my progesterone levels. Assuming the hormone and lining measurements are within the right range, the next cycle will be the one that counts.

For that cycle, I think I also do an estrogen check, and I’ll use an at-home ovulation predictor kit to detect the surge in luteinizing hormone (LH) that indicates ovulation is about to occur. Three days later, they thaw the frostie early in the morning, and the embryo will (assuming the odds are with us) be transferred into my uterus later that morning.

No drugs, no waiting – just a cheque for $1500, and more hope and vulnerability and anxiety than I can stand...

And now we roam from the factual to the esoteric. Here’s a few more details that are flavouring my emotional soup.

The clinic is moving in two weeks, to be a private stand-alone clinic instead of being part of the Ottawa Hospital. A sidebar note for those of you who have cycled at the Parkdale clinic: when we went through our IUIs and IVF, I remember being upset that patients waiting for an ultrasound as part of their fertility treatments had to share the waiting room and ultrasound facilities with the high-risk obstetrical unit. It was horribly painful to see those beautiful, fat bellies in the depth of my own doubt and sorrow and fear.

Did you know that the hospital administration recently dismantled the 5th floor ultrasound clinic entirely, making it necessary for patients to go all the way into the hospital proper and to the LABOUR AND DELIVERY ward to have any ultrasounds done? Can you imagine? Even for someone like me, who rarely grudged someone their successful pregnancies or beautiful children, who never faced the pain of an unsuccessful IVF or worse, a treatment that went to hell right in the middle, couldn’t have faced going to the L&D ward and hearing and seeing all those brand new babies every second day at the most crucial part of a cycle. Unbelievable. The RE said that was one of the main factors that led to the decision to be a standalone clinic.

Anyway, back to me. Because it’s all about me, isn’t it? The clinic moving shouldn’t have much of an impact on me and our cycle, except that the new location is a little bit closer to home, and a lot more convenient to get to, and to park at. This, to my view, is a tick in the “the universe wants this to happen” column. (I’m all about what the universe wants right now. It’s how I’m dealing with the whole thing, on an emotional level. If the universe, or God, or Fate, or whatever else you want to call it, wants this abstract concept of a frostie to become an actual living person, via me and my comfortable uterus, then so be it. And if the universe, in its ultimate wisdom, doesn’t think that a third child is in our best interests… well, I’m a little bit too emotionally invested in the concept right at this moment to consider that alternative. But you get the drift.)

And then the RE was telling us how a big collective of obstetricians, including mine, are moving from the building next door to the clinic to a medical centre about 10 kms in a direct line closer to my house, which would be extremely convenient – if I happened to get pregnant. Which really must be the universe trying to tell me something, right?

(Do you get the feeling it’s going to be a long couple of months? Yah, me too.)

So that’s where we are. In the “more than you really needed to know” file, (and yes, that file will fill to overflowing over the process of this cycle) my last two cycles have been 30 and 29 days, and my most recent day one was April 3. If I have two 30-day cycles, I will have a day 1 on June 1. If I have one 30-day cycle and one 29-day cycle, day 1 will fall on the last day of May and I’ll have to wait until late June to call in my day 1 for the mock cycle. Transfer will either occur in early July or early August.

All my pregnancies to date (three of them) have been conceived between May 9 and June 15. I’m not sure what the universe is telling me here.

Let the obsessing begin.

Aren't we overdue for a meme around here?

My evening routine was disrupted. No time to post. My morning routine is a disaster today. No time to post. When all else fails, you can always find a meme somewhere.

This is hardly cutting edge psychological analysis, but fairly accurate nonetheless...

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have medium extroversion. You're not the life of the party, but you do show up for the party. Sometimes you are full of energy and open to new social experiences. But you also need to hibernate and enjoy your "down time." Conscientiousness: You have medium conscientiousness. You're generally good at balancing work and play. When you need to buckle down, you can usually get tasks done. But you've been known to goof off when you know you can get away with it. Agreeableness: You have high agreeableness. You are easy to get along with, and you value harmony highly. Helpful and generous, you are willing to compromise with almost anyone. You give people the benefit of the doubt and don't mind giving someone a second chance. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism. You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic. Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy. Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is medium. You are generally broad minded when it come to new things. But if something crosses a moral line, there's no way you'll approve of it. You are suspicious of anything too wacky, though you do still consider creativity a virtue.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Blogging your brand

Poor Beloved. Not only does he have to put up with all the time I sink into blog, and every family moment being potential blog fodder, but he has to endure a blogosphere play-by-play as it tries to pass for polite dinner conversation.

(Sidebar: I just had an interesting insight. Are blogs to women of our generation what soap operas were to the women of the previous generation? Discuss.)

So I was telling Beloved about this blogger, who happens to be a columnist for one of our national dailies, and her post about buying $140 designer jeans for her daughter. Her two-year-old daughter. Once we got past the whole idea of spending that much money on a single pair of pants for a toddler, we started discussing her blog in general, and how I can't quite warm up to it because I think she posts stuff just to be inflamatory and get people talking about her.

And Beloved said, "So what?"

I thought about it, and he's right. Who says blogging has to be sincere, or genuine, or authentic? Maybe her life really is just like she posts in her blog, but I think she torques it to get people talking - if not to her, at least about her. She's using her blog to promote her brand, and if it's working, more power to her. It's that old axiom, I guess, about say whatever you want about me in the papers, just make sure you spell my name right.

She's drawing a surprising amount of venom and vitriol, though. I've been writing this blog more or less daily for a year, and she gets more hateful comments in a day than I've gotten altogether. (Come to think of it, I've never gotten a hateful comment. Touch wood.) Someone's even gone to all the trouble of making a mockup of her blog. And while I don't agree with a lot of what she writes, or have a lot in common with her, I kind of admire her ability to stir things up.

What do you think? Go ahead, choose a topic - blogs as modern-day soaps, $140 jeans for toddlers, truth and accuracy in blogging, blogging to promote your brand - surely there's something worth commenting on!

Once more, with feeling

Sometimes stubbornness can be a good thing. No, really! Maybe not so much in your average preschooler, but it has its merits.

Like me. I'm stubborn. Tenacious. Don't tell me I can't do something, because it pisses me off and makes me try harder. After I sulk and lick my wounds for a while, anyway.

Today I start yet another second language training course. Rather than being in a class of six people for four hours a week, it's just me and the teacher for six hours a day, twice a week, until the middle of May.

Those of you who've been around for a while will recall that I recently passed both my reading and writing exams with flying colours, and proceeded to fail my oral exam. The week I took the test was perhaps one of the most stressful of the year for me. I should have delayed it, but hind sight is always clearer, isn't it? Besides, I'm stubborn.

They mail you a little evaluation after the fact, and tick off areas you need to improve to achieve your next level. To my credit, there weren't too many tick marks - I must have been close. I got busted on things like 'your sentences were frequently strung together without the linking necessary to convey the message clearly.' Beloved looked over the evaluation, gave me a long look and said, "You can't do most of this stuff in English these days." He was right. I'm not sure if it made me feel better or not.

Alors, on essaye encore. My teacher is the same one I had before, and I like her a lot. Six hours a day of one-on-one language training is intense, though - at least in a classroom you can nod sagely while the other students are talking and zone out for a minute, or be relieved when somebody else continues to be perplexed by the subjunctive for the third day in a row. Private lessons means its all me, all the time. The Dani Show, in neither official language. Yikes!

Sunshine and suburban strolling

I'm a little confused. It's Monday, but this is definitely going to be a ramble. Sorry for the break in routine!

I read on the weekend (did you notice that almost all my Monday posts begin with "I read on the weekend" or some variant thereof?) an article that said tanning releases endorphins, similar to the 'runner's high', that make you happy and relaxed, but that can also be addictive and cause symptoms of withdrawal.

That pretty much explains November. It might also explain why I feel so great after spending several hours outside with the boys yesterday - despite the pink sunburn stretching my cheeks a little too taut. (I need more transition time between scarves and sunscreen!)

Not a bad day, all in all. In the morning we went for a walk. Well, it was more like a jog - in the lurchy kind of way you jog to keep up with a preschooler on a bike while dragging another preschooler behind you in a wagon - and played at the 'play park' (Simonism) for a bit.

While Simon napped, I worked out our tax returns. I was surprised to find out that that we paid almost $7500 in child care last year, just for part-time care. Did I mention that the House is sitting today for the first day under Stephen Harper? I'll let the dust settle from the IVF funding debate before I start crowing about the "Choice in Child Care Allowance" (turns to the side and spits) again. But be warned, it's coming.

By the time Simon woke up, I was squirrelly from number crunching and we had no plans for dinner, so we set off on another wander, this one to the Farm Boy that just opened near us. I heart Farm Boy! It's great having a market within walking distance of the house, and especially lovely to have fresh fruits and vegetables that are - gasp! - fresh. We picked up a couple of pepper steaks, some Asian noodle salad and some multigrain rice pilaf and had ourselves a barbequed feast for dinner. Delish!

We celebrated the end of a gorgeous day with a family trip to Dairy Queen. This is one of those things I remember so clearly from my childhood that I'm happy to carry on to the next generation. Nothing says summer like ice cream running down the chin of a happy preschooler!

And the final stop on my ramble today is with what I chose not to watch on TV last night. Every year, I try to tune in for at least a little bit of the Juno (Canadian music) awards, but with Pamela Anderson as the host last night, I just couldn't bring myself to watch, especially when I knew she'd be going on about the whole seal hunt thing. I kind of wish I had at least caught Jann Arden's comment though. Apparently she walked on stage and said, "I just want everyone to know that my brassiere is made entirely of seal eyelids."

Okay, so for this entire post I have been debating on whether or not to call down the gods and admit to this or not, but I can't help myself. You know how I was looking forward to a certain day on the calendar? You know what time my boys woke up yesterday? 6:25 am. (I was astonished.) You know what time they woke up this morning? Me neither... the house was still silent when I slipped out the door at twenty of seven.

It'll never last - but I'll take what I can get!

Reader mail - funding for reproductive technologies

Last week after I posted about demanding public funding for IVF, I exchanged a series of e-mails with Janet, a regular blog reader from elsewhere in Ontario. I'm posting chunks of our conversation here, with Janet's permission, because while I disagree with her, I think she raises some interesting points worth debating and I'd be interested in your opinion, too. A lot of you are familiar with the state of reproductive technology in Canada, and a lot of you are not. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a thought to contribute.

Janet's original e-mail (which, rest assured, was very polite, respectful and full of compliments about my writing style) and reply to my response have been edited together here:

I simply don't think taxpayers should be paying for these treatments at this point in time, and here's why:

I am the parent of a child with a developmental disorder, and along with that comes many issues, not the least of which are long waiting lists (1-3 years, no joke) for services like speech therapy. There are wonderful services out there, but they are expensive and right now, unfortunately, are"only for the rich" (to quote the link on your post today).

I do think more potential parents need to become aware of the risks that go along with multiple birth pregnancies that are often a result of IVF. And I know that this education is not happening. And if it is, not effectively so.

Also, in our province (I also live in Ontario), autism funding is cut off at the age of six (as if these children will somehow have no need of services after six). One of my friends has to pay $7,000 PER MONTH out of her own pocket for her daughter's treatment, simply to ensure her child will be able to communicate with others, never mind function in society. None of this is covered.

As a parent, I really do realize that the emotional side to this issue cannot be ignored. But by asking for government and taxpayer involvement (and suggesting that a potential under-population propblem could be resolved through IVF), the issue is now open for practical debate, and there are some very practical issues involved.

The other issue, which I think is a real hot button, is one of personal responsibility. As a 37-year old woman (and not in my ideal age range for reproduction without inherent risk) I'm not sure that taxpayers should pay for my fertility treatments because I've decided to wait until my natural fertility has declined significantly to address my reproductive desires (N.B. I'm talking ONLY about age-related infertility here).

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I really believe that in this kind of a situation, I should be paying for fertility treatment out of my own pocket if I really choose to have another child, at an "advanced" age, reproductively speaking. For God's sake...I'm finding new, wiry grey hairs on a daily basis!! Is this the best time for me to be having another child? As much as I may want to? I don't know. It's such a personal decision, and that's one reason why I think it should have a personal solution.

There does seem (among women our age) to be a belief out there that just because the technology exists, we can and should use it. I'm just not so sure that is always the case.

Until our society can afford to take proper care of its existing citizens, I'm not sure we should be asking society to fund potential pregnancies. I certainly don't want to fund overseas adoptions for couples/individuals who decide to go that route, and I'm not sure what the difference is here. Maybe I'm missing something? I would love to hear your point of view on this.

And here's the bulk of my replies:

I think comparing funding for autism and special needs to funding for reproductive techologies is like, to use a tired old metaphor, comparing apples to oranges. They have more differences than things in common. While I don't argue that maybe we should be funding special needs more - I'll readily admit my ignorance on this subject - I do believe that IVF should be funded and here's a few reasons why.

First, and I know people hate this argument, but unless you've been through the hell that is infertility, you really have no idea what a basic human right it is to want to parent a child. When you have spent your entire existence simply assuming that the largest part of your life, and perhaps, if you are like me, your singular goal, will be mothering and then to find out for medical reasons beyond your control you are about to be denied that.... as I said, it's impossible to put into words if you haven't been there.

ARTs are funded unevenly in our country. In Ontario you get full funding for three attempts at IVF if you have two blocked tubes, but you don't get that same coverage if you live in other provinces. And if your IVF is due to male factor, or other factors beyond bilateral blocked tubes, you don't get coverage. The government has seen fit to bless some forms of ARTs, the older ones, with funding but still calls IVF - a procedure that is 25 years old! - experimental. You mention (and I have to admit, I bristled at the suggestion) that maybe there are dangers to the children that are conceived under ARTs. One thing about IVF, which is not funded, versus IUI, which is funded, is that with IVF you have much greater control over the number of embryos, therefore significantly reduced numbers of triplets or other high-order multiples. Almost all of the risks inherent to IVF (and believe me, this is something I've researched very very carefully) are from the risks associated with conceiving multiples and most of the fertility clinics I know of, certainly the Ottawa Fertility Centre, do not take the risk of multiples lightly. I had only three embryos and my clinic refused to transfer more than two due to the risk of triplet pregnancy. To say that there isn't enough education of patients going through the process is insulting to both the doctors and the people they are treating.

So, while I appreciate you taking the time to write, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. For what it's worth, by the way, we do have tax credits to trim the costs of adoption, both domestic and overseas, and I'm in support of those, too!

One last point from me, and only because it's one that drives me crazy. Of all the families I know who have gone through IVF, and I know at least 20 in real life and know of hundreds of others through contact on IVF message boards (and blogs!), 'advanced maternal age" is almost never the issue. I'd say never, but maybe there are a few of them out there - but at least of the 20 or so in my tight little circle, all have had things like burst tubes or severe endo or male factor infertility - there was no real factor of personal responsibility, just of medical necessity. I think the image of the career girl who finally gets the urge to procreate in her mid-thirties and turns to IVF when it takes too long the old fashioned way is a creation of the media. Even factoring out the cost, the uncertainty and the needles and the hormones and the intrusiveness of an IVF cycle makes it far from a casual undertaking.

***

What do you think? Consider the debate officially opened, but please be respectful. It's a sensitive issue on all parts, and I'm extremely proud of the high level of respect commenters have always shown here.