you're just a little snitch

You would not want this entry to include a visual. I spent most of the day cleaning up the basement with the Boy, and I am sweaty, dishevelled and still grimy despite numerous handwashings. I look like a mom, which I always sort of do anyway, except today I look like the version of mom who has been putting off both the shower and the trip to the mall to buy clothes, although not for the same length of time.

I accept this as my due, however, as my sweat purchased a much cleaner basement. Many baby items were moved into our creepy crawlspace, and other pieces of disassembled furniture were assembled. Instead of a t.v. area with a mattress crowding out the coffee table, I have a t.v. area. On the other end of the room where there used to stand ranks of totes, boxes and furniture pieces, I have a guest bed, a crib full of toys and a rocking chair. I still need to assemble the futon, sort the crib toys & finish the curtains I started last week, but the room is more liveable than it's been since we arrived. As a person who takes her basements very seriously, this is a blessing.

Blake is on day 4 of swim lessons, and week 3 of Jumping Jack Splash (the toddler activity program). On Wednesday when those two activities converged, he was too excited to understand much of what was about to happen. My favourite part was in the morning, when he narced on me.

We were lounging in the theraputic pool with the other toddlers. Blake, for no reason I could determine, gave me a healthy kick. I pushed him away, which may have been a bit rough, but I figured that it's all in the spirit of Animal Mother. Except that he lost his footing and slipped back into the water.

"You pushed me down into the water!" he yelled when he emerged.

"No, you kicked me, I pushed you and you fell in the water." He immediately marched over to the instructor, pointed back at me and exclaimed, "I kicked her and she pushed me into the water!"

My own son tattled to the teacher on me. I don't know whether to be proud, amused or horrified. I think amused, as he also managed to snitch on me in my absence. My mom brought him home today with story of his interaction with my grandmother, telling her that I wouldn't buy Buzz Lightyear chicken nuggets for him because I only had $5. She immediately upgraded her gift to him from 5 to 8 dollars. Tomorrow I'm going to buy him the "nuggins" and take a picture of him holding the box next to a recent copy of the Toronto Star.

My own kid is shaming me into buying cartoon-related boxed meat. Charming.

Labels: basement, blake, house rich

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 7/19/2007 09:08:00 p.m. -

 
ten years

Two days ago, my tenth anniversary of this online journal quietly came and went. No cake, no cards, no fireworks, no telegrams…just me and my slippery memory. But since that's what I started with, that's enough.

What I find most amazing about this milestone is that I am one slender month away from celebrating it where it all began: in my parents' basement. Back then, the basement had silver reflective wallpaper in hexagonal patterns and orange shag carpeting halfway up the walls, and it was always at least ½ full of my dad's stuff. Now it's suave and sophisticated, with blue walls & new blue carpet, finished with white moulding, plus a sunshine yellow bedroom and a functional kitchenette. Now, 2 weeks before Nic moves in, it's so empty it echoes.

I started this journal because I was very nearly completely alone, my social life having noisily exploded that spring when the Poet-Ophelia-me-Alexi thing wound up. I was wracked with guilt over what I had done, guilt that was even more intense because it had all come to nothing in the end. I could only blame alcohol for so much; the rest I had to take home with me. And it was social China Syndrome. The only people who wanted to see me on my 21st birthday were Dirk, Scherezade & the Lawyer. I was out of the city and home for the summer, working away in my parents' house for next years' tuition and eating my heart out with solitude. I wanted new friends, and the Internet seemed as good a hunting ground as any.

Also, since I was 8 I wanted to be a writer, and I hadn't given up on that dream at 20. I thought that this would be a good chance to write something that other people would read. The Internet was less saturated with personal writing then, and I could still stand out with my white-on-black website and my picture of myself in Ophelia's PVC dress and my grandmother's fishnets.

It was good for me, it really was. I got feedback and praise from strangers, which boosted me out of that dark place for at least a few hours. My writing improved and improved and improved, until I got to a place where I could read my own entries without wanting to jump out of my skin with embarrassment. I met Stacy, I met Javina; later I met moms in the same boat and even later, knitters. I love that so much of my life is available to me, and I can search out little stories and moments to give myself whenever the present seems overwhelming.

I also love that I am a happily-ever-after story, at least for now. I've dated, married, graduated, moved, given birth and changed jobs, all in the time I've done this project. I've travelled from sitting alone in a psychedelic cellar to sharing an office in my new house with my sweetie and pausing my sentences to zip a pre-schooler into a Buzz Lightyear costume. There is less dancing, and no sleeping away the weekend on Dirk's couch, but more snuggling and far less unhappiness. It is a very good life, la dolce vida to be sure.

Thank you for being with me for some or all or none of the journey. I owe at least a piece of my happiness to you, my readers, for just doing what you do and for letting me into your lives for the space of a few minutes. You make me very happy. You always have.

And here it is: my first post in all its ugliness. Enjoy if you can.

Labels: basement, blake, dancing, family, friends, house rich, nostalgia, on-line diaries, the boy, threshold experiences

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 6/16/2007 07:23:00 p.m. -

 
notes on a move

• Yesterday I woke up at my usual time, wound up tight with excitement. This dissipated during the 8 hours of packing as we waited for the call. By the time we picked up the keys and took my parents to a really nice dinner at a really nice restaurant next to the lawyers' office, I was completely spent.
• Then I went to Drunken Knitting and a rock concert.
• Six hours of sleep. That concert whipped a moose's ass, but still. 8 straight hours of packing plus 7 straight hours of social events followed by 6 hours of sleep makes for crankiness. Plus, I had to leave before Laura Barrett. I want REVENGE.
• Our goal today: move the bookshelves, because books are easy to pack and stupidly heavy so do them first; move the stuff in the closet and the garage because it's all still in storage boxes; move the stuff in the kitchen because we don't need it. We moved all the bookshelves, half the kitchen, both desks, the trunk and the glider rocker. Next weekend is going to DESTROY ME.
• Things I have abandoned to the second-hand market: a model car with a glue company logo painted on the side, "Mr. X" by Peter Straub, a street map of Toronto that's easily 15 years old, a Donny Osmond LP with his big smarmy face grinning in a floppy cap, a tray of videos, and the deed to real estate on the Moon.
• I threw away the two Corona bottles I used as candlesticks when I was an undergrad. They were covered in dust and blobby melted wax and each had a long black cotton ribbon tied in a bow (under the blobby wax). I thought they made me goth & romantic & shit. Can you believe that it took me till age 30 to let go of that idea?
• Dinner was goat cheese and broccoli pizza. I'm thinking of sending the bill to Friendly Rich. Also, the bill for my divorce proceedings, as his show last night included a naked man setting his genitals on fire, immolating not only his wiener, but the last lingering traces of my heterosexuality. "Look at Rich! He's Friendly!" Stacy commanded. But I could not.
• I hit a wall an hour ago when I was supposed to be entertaining Blake. He entertains himself, but my Dad doesn't want him around the furniture moving and assembly. I don't know what else he's supposed to do.
• I've gone from ecstatic with the heady joy of home-ownership to complete emotional burnout several times. And now I'm going to finish my single Steamwhistle and melt into a puddle of goo.

Labels: basement, friends, house rich, knit, music, outings

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 5/12/2007 08:26:00 p.m. -

 
r is for 'report cards'

Sorry about falling off the face of the earth like that. Last week was probably the worst week to buy a house, considering that I was getting sick, report cards were due on Monday, and the Boy was arranging job interviews like a crazyman. I spent all weekend in the basement: marking, cursing, calculating, _{chatting with Mason on Fb about how much damn marking I had to do}, flipping through the Ikea catalogue, and festering. My morning shower on Monday was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes.

So did the fact that I still had an entire set of essays to mark as of 9 p.m. that night. The Boy rescued me, as that is his superpower (he marks to stop the wailing & gnashing of teeth and I love him for that.) This is the first time he's had to bail me out like this in at least a year, which means that I've come an awfully long way. I took a sick day today to deal with my cold and re-mark the papers (to add comments and check my perceptions against the finished product); so far it's turning out an awful lot like my weekend. Rocketbride needs a good washing.

"It's kind of a shame that I'm doing some of my best festering outside of Ferg, but change of location is no excuse not to try for excellence." - october 10, 1998

"Nerds, geriatrics and moms. You forgot moms." - me

And revisiting the concept of festering leads us to...

Zeena (Warrior Princess from Ferg res) invited a bunch of people on the Fb out to a party this Saturday, but a number of us are felled by exams, papers, and in my case, parenthood and pending home ownership. I kind of want to go, but the whole idea of 10 p when:

1. I'll be knitting at the Dick on Friday, probably into the wee hours, then
2. getting up early to give the Blake breakfast, etc. so that I can be ready for the house inspection at 10 am

...kind of kills my desire to head back into town for another late night. Plus, it almost guarantees that I'll spend all of Sunday recovering. I missed church last week because of report cards and I missed an operetta and a baby. Don't want to take that chance again.

To recap: the scary thing about this Facebook fenom is that I'm getting more invites than I did before. Not scary because of the invites, but scary because it makes it all the harder to give up. As Mason likes to say, I've grown accustomed to this Facebook.

Labels: basement, bat masterson, res

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 4/18/2007 10:07:00 a.m. -

 
the internet: more like highschool every g.d. day

I've had an unusually busy weekend: yesterday was entirely taken up with a visit to the Nightshades' villa and today was a blur of sleep-church-veggies-real estate. Our agent took us around four houses in our price range, which, um ranged in quality. We looked at a quad (a self-contained quarter of a four-house block), a new-ish 3-bedroom with hedonist-size tub, a spacious older 4-bedroom missing part of the fence, and our agent's first house (coincidentally back on the market). The quad was new & clever but I would always feel like an awkward kid trying to fill someone else's shoes. The three bedroom was clearly designed for a family with wee kids, but it will go faster than I want to make an offer. The four bedroom is kind of awesome, but it's a little bigger than I wanted & will need a new furnace & appliances. Our agent's old house has been changed in one or two places but is essentially the same as she left it in 1983 (plus new smoky smell!).

We also took a detour around to the first house we tried to buy this year. It's not ready to be shown, so we tramped around in the mud and peered in the windows. The developer is doing some neat things in there: the hardwood floors have been brought back, the rooms cleaned & painted, the ceiling fixed and the kitchen gutted. We also heard that he's finishing the basement, which'll bring the resale up more than anything else. Still, the question remains: can I bring myself to pay eighty thousand more than I was willing to pay in February, even if all my renos are done for me?

I've decided to let this stew for a week. In lieu of making a conscious decision, I started work on a log cabin pillow for the new house. Knitting: the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Also, I joined Facebook yesterday. Nic asked, in typical Nic fashion, if we minded that a bunch of our wedding pictures were on his Facebook. "You've already put them up, haven't you?" I replied. I wanted to check it out, but you have to register. So I did.

I feel so gross. I feel almost bulimic, and despite my years of body-image problems, I've never crossed the line into unhealthy psychological syndromes. And yet, after 10 years on-line and three distinct but continuous on-line journals, it's Facebook that makes me feel so disgusting and filthy that I want to do the virtual equivalent of vomiting up everything I've posted. Except maybe 'vomit' describes the posting process.

The worst part is that, now that I've satisfied my curiosity as to which pictures my brother's posted of me (you can find them on this site, too, if you want to see), I can't bring myself to delete my profile. Ick.

Labels: basement, friends, knit, on-line diaries, outings

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 4/01/2007 07:52:00 p.m. -

 
sigh. drink. death.

I think that my difficulties with this journal have a lot to do with my drop in self-esteem. I'm having trouble with my morale lately (hate my body, hate my haircut, hate my social life) and I think that clearly spills into my enthusiasm for documenting the daily activities. I've been keeping this diary for so damn long that I know I need to write through the block – and that what is torture to produce isn't torture to read a few months down the line – and so all that's needed is mulish persistence and the energy to keep stringing the words together.

So here we go.

Today I had tea with Poppy in her house. We were supposed to get together over the March Break, but I was bad about calling and it never happened. This is the second of the make-up dates (third, if you count Lesbian Brunch), and it went off beautifully. Poppy was still feeling under the weather, so we eschewed a public café in favour of her living room. Fortunately, she and her wife are neat people, and the house didn't need to be cleaned frantically upon my arrival (unlike, say, when I entertain in my home). Poppy & I curled up in arm chairs while her very pregnant wife lay on the sofa, and we had tea and chatted. It was very civilized - I love to watch other married couples and judge myself by their example (it's just one more way to dislike myself). I also like seeing their house: I am beginning to see the possibilities of home ownership, and they are quite pleasant. (Before, I had trouble visualizing my life beyond the housewarming party.)

With that in mind, the Rocketfamily went on a brief post-prandial drive tonight through the price-appropriate areas of B-ton, so that the Boy & I could do some serious thinking about priorities. When we made our lists, we turned out to be pretty similar – the only major difference is that he's wary of repairs and gardens and I'm not. Our real-estate agent is taking us out on Sunday, so it looks like we'll be spending next month in other people's kitchens. Sounds like fun, n'est-ce pas?

The truth is, I'm really excited about this. Not only can we move out of the basement, but we can pay off our own damn mortgage rather than someone else's. Sure, it's not Toronto, but our old life is not ready to be resumed even if we were to live in Toronto. Most of our friends have fallen out of touch, and when you have to put too much effort into every gathering, it ceases to be fun. (Remember, I'm feeling pessimistic, so you may not want to take too much stock in what I'm saying now. Tomorrow I may have made dancing plans with Scherezade (yoo hoo!) and have recanted on this whole vein of sadness. That's the problem with me at present: I'm Too Damned Gloomy to be borne.)

Labels: angst, basement, bat masterson, home town

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 3/27/2007 08:49:00 p.m. -

 
do you expect me to talk? no, i expect you to buy

Wow, my track record for March is sucking rocks. Let's see if I can't put my vacation to better use.

Went to the zoo today with Sarah & Hestia & Gwen & Proserpina & the Boy & the Blake. We unwittingly picked the best day for zoo trippin', and the place was PACKED. (Unlike last year, when we battled howling icy winds instead of overflowing parking lots.) The three tots enjoyed the mild weather, fearlessly stomping through all puddles with no thought of danger. My boots filled up with water (again), but it wasn't until the end of the day that I realized that both soles are cracked clean up to the lining. What great value for something I've been wearing less than three months.

It was kind of a weird day. We spent a lot of time waiting in lines to get in, and then waiting on the highway to get home. I did my best to be cheerful, and I think I did okay, but my wet feet really undermined my mood. At least we had good food (Opera Sarah packed a wonderful lunch) and the kiddies had a good time running through the trails.

The exciting news is that we've been pre-approved for a gigantic mortgage. How gigantic? {evil villain voice} A quarter of a million dollars!! Hee. In Gomorrah, that wouldn't buy us much, but in B-ton, we have much more choice. And the best thing about buying at that range is that we're looking at older houses in well-established areas with green spaces and schools. Since we're rapidly entering the school years with Blake, this is essential. (My pipe dream is to send both Blake & the Boy off to the same school in the morning, holding hands and packed lunches.)

Although it's tremendously exciting, I have the feeling of spinning my wheels while the car's in neutral: now that we have the go-ahead, I just want to buy the damn house already! The only problem is, which house?

Labels: basement, friends, outings

- 1 comments/foxes -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 3/13/2007 01:35:00 p.m. -

 
things i meant to mention

1. My dad is retiring, and may be in a position to loan us money for a house downpayment.
2. The Boy's dad's wife left him last weekend.
3. My uncle is getting married. No one was invited.
4. My uncle may be getting married because his partner has cancer. Or not.
5. I earned $15 on Monday eating chili.
6. I just finished marking 17 nearly-identical final exams. Why the cheating? Because some chucklehead pulled the fire-alarm 10 minutes into the exam and the kids had about 30 minutes to consult.
7. I wore The World's Ugliest Shirt today and several people told me how nice it looked on me (including Mason).

I think I need to lie down for awhile.

Labels: basement, bat masterson, family

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/31/2007 02:55:00 p.m. -

 
several good things

Hola amigos. It's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I got a lot on my plate these days.* It's report card time, which has meant a lot of soul-searching, a lot of procrastinating, and a lot of time in the over-heated Silent Study Room at the local library. I'm not done, not by a long shot, but I managed to continue my unbroken streak of reporting semester marks by the end of the semester (for my first three years, I was still frantically marking term work after the exam was written. Not no more. It took four years of bumbling around, but I finally got on top of this. I feel pretty good.)

Things are going well these days. Why?

• We've almost paid off one of the Boy's 3 student loans, which would leave our debt load under 30,000 for the first time in 2 years. (This is exciting if you want to save money and, I dunno, move out of the freaking basement).
• The Boy possibly-maybe has a job until June, which is also excellent, and he's going to get a summer job (hopefully at Old Navy, or some other mall store where he can be supervised by my students.)
• Blake has shown some progress on potty training as long as he is forced to run around bare-bottomed.
• I started a knitalong that is gaining momentum even as I tap away.
• My mom asked me to make something for my grandmother, which is a big deal, because my mom ignores my knitting as much as she can. (The downside is that she wants it made out of eyelash yarn, the upside is that I have some freeloading stash that fits the requirements.)
• I've "earned" $30 this week for taste-testing pre-market foods (iced tea and snack crackers), which I've spent on empanadas, exciting Patons yarn, and lots of books from the perpetual discard sale at the library.
• Speaking of which, I'm so chuffed. One dollar for this, this, this, this, and this. The first two were audio books that have lost their CD and are otherwise in good shape (rare for used children's books). The third is a gorgeous magical realism story set in downtown Toronto with recognisable (but not touristy) landmarks. The fourth is new, and a story I enjoyed when I was younger. The last is a gift for a girl who appreciates her Degrassi High. A dollar! Exciting.

We've been having fun with the Munch book since it came home yesterday. Both the Boy & I speak highschool French, which is enough to navigate most children's books (we discovered this when the Boy brought home a bunch of hand-me-down books that included "Attention, Leon!" by Richard Scarry.) Blake has always been a strong auditory learner; we've known this since he started to enjoy and then recite the poetry of William Blake and Edward Lear. For his it's not so much the meaning of the words, since he's still building his vocabulary anyway, it's the interesting sounds and the quality of the story. And Robert Munch is Robert Munch, no matter what language he's in. We're having a blast.

* (c) the eerily-similar-to-my-first-boyfriend Jim Anchower

Labels: basement, bat masterson, blake, family, the boy

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/28/2007 08:19:00 p.m. -

 
you roll yer dice & move yer mice. no one gets hurt.

The scene opens this morning, way earlier than I wanted to be up. Blake & the Boy are in the middle of a potty session, so I started puttering around. Clean dishes put away, I folded up the dishcloth and opened the drawer to put it away.

(shudder)

We first noticed the mice spoor on Christmas Day (I saw some mouse come pooping in, on Christmas Day in the morning). We cleaned, but obviously not enough, because they came back and ripped into previously-inviolate dry goods. There being nothing I could do about it at the moment, I showed the evidence to the Boy & went to work.

When I came home, I set about cleaning it all up. It's disgusting, stomach-twisting work, but I wanted to do it myself to make sure it gone done properly. Plus, I know from past experience that my negative feelings about mice scat can turn into arguments when the Boy tries to help me. So I started in sorting, tossing, vacuuming, and wiping down cleared surfaces with Lysol. My dad, observing the vacuum from his seat in the den, asked what was going on. So I told him, knowing what would happen.

Within minutes both of my parents were down in the basement, and my mom had started cleaning out the only remaining space in the cabinets. My dad got a box for our stuff (so refugee chic) and Blake & the Boy were dispatched for mousetraps. Now, I have a completely unreasonable reaction to my parents being in my space, in my business or close to my stuff: I go into a silent freak out. This comes from years of resenting privacy intrusions, or what I thought were privacy intrusions, and the feelings have not lessened as I aged. I like to keep myself well-protected from the casual put-down, in which my parents are abundant.

But this was a necessary evil, I soon realized, as my Mom was feeling the exact same level of panic & revulsion that I was, and she also needed to clean up in order to make sure that it was done right. This realization made it no easier to watch her clean out the stuff that had fallen behind our bed, however. Crawling horror would about describe it. So I helped the best I could and made periodic escapes to the bathroom, where I could close the door and read the copy of At Knit's End that I stashed next to the toiletries.

It's done now, and I even found my yoga mat. (yay!) I'll keep you updated on the continuing saga of When Mice Attack.

I think I even made a semi-resolution today: don't be such a spaz. Specifically, don't make immature ploys for attention (especially from Mason, especially when he is in conversation with someone else) because then I get to burn with shame knowing that it will take weeks of suave behaviour to put my rash attention-grabbing behind me. I just don't have that kind of time, so I need to stop doing stupid things. I'm sure this will be just as easy to do as to say.

Labels: basement, bat masterson

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/08/2007 07:42:00 p.m. -