“I don’t expect things to ever be as good as they are at home – I’d say that’s an impossibility. There will never be family, crickets, darkness, stars, campfires, or quiet in this city. Someday there might be music and drop-in friends.

Something monumental needs to happen on this side of the border. The drive back gets longer every time.” -July 2007

A month later we found music. Monumental. And we get to see whole bunch of those folks in just over a weeeeeeeeeeek at clifftop!

Anything’s impossible ’till it ain’t.

I think that ever since we’ve moved home I’ve had this nagging fear in the back of my brain that we’d just drift away from all of our good friends in Toronto, and that they’d forget about us, and that eventually we’d just never see them again. I know this isn’t true and it’s just a complex I have – it’s why, if we had a class or worked together six years ago I won’t say hi to you in Target because I just assume that YOU don’t remember ME, even though I remember kids who moved away from my town in grade two.

But, wonder of wonders, our friends do remember us and were above and beyond welcoming. I had no idea how much I really missed their stories and hugs and music and how much I was homesick for their kitchens and cooking and teapots. We had places to spend the night, places to take afternoon naps, we were fed, entertained, Mikey got school things accomplished, we had the perfect little compact stroller to use for the week (I really need to get one of those contraptions for when we’re traveling and have a backpack full of stuff to tote around every day in addition to a toddler), we had playdates and lots and lots of laughing. We talked about futures the past and Hazel was promised lots of “I’ll tell you about it when you’re older” stories. We trekked all over the city to see lots and lots of people and when we got tired of trekking we planted ourselves in a pub near John’s and everyone came to us. When Hazel started to melt down I took her the half block home to chill out and Mikey stayed for awhile longer visiting. I miss that sort of convenience of city life.

I want to go back soon. I wasn’t sure how well she’d handle the travel and the activity after six months of calm, slow West Virginia life (um, sort of), but she was a champ. She cried for ten minutes of the combined sixteen hours of driving. When we took her out to the bluegrass brunch at the Dakota Tavern on Sunday morning and then decided to stay for hours, she got tired and fell asleep in the ergo to the sounds of those boys singing just like she did when she was a baby. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, she’s not a baby anymore.

Sigh.

Listening: Hazel and Mikey chatting downstairs
(Hazel is) Reading: Green Eggs & Ham
(I am) Reading: new issue of Mothering
Working on: wedding jewelry and other custom jewels; furniture painting; new bead sorting; a new group blog; a million other things I need to catch up on

We’ve starting to seep in, a little bit, to this house that is not our house. It’s much more colorful. And it might almost be time to collect it all into boxes and go.

After topping off a bag of stuff for Goodwill yesterday, I went through our closet putting together outfits for the wedding festivities this weekend, and I ended up with another full bag to donate. I’m on a roll! Maybe I’ll be caught up the week after next, after we’ve gotten back from Toronto. The turnover rate of stuff entering and exiting our life, even since we unloaded the last uhaul, is astounding. Particularly because we DON’T SHOP. We know people who shop as a hobby and are constantly acquiring new and better things, and we’ve never done that in our entire adult lives. So why do I feel like we always get so much new (or newused) stuff between moves?

Week fourteen.

At this time tomorrow, we’ll be on our way to our beloved city. Friends, a wedding, music, playdates, chinatown beads (for a custom project and for my mom – I WILL control myself!), the dollarama, Tankhouse Ale… aahh! We’re coming back home next Wednesday. See you back here then :)

Listening: The Avett Brothers
(I am) Reading: just finished Jesus Land – brutal, and very good
(Hazel is) Reading: Gallop!

This paragraph from A Parchment of Leaves made me cry so much (for Canada) that I had to get out of the bathtub, dry off my feet, and paint my toenails red so I could pretend it was summer. Ironic, eh?

I imagined the music drifting over the creek like mist on an autumn evening, spreading itself out with its high notes pressed tight against the mountains. I felt like a bird had been let loose beneath my ribs. Everybody was clapping to the music or stomping their feet, and some of them were even up and clogging. I had not been so happy since leaving Redbud. Being amongst that music and the people hollering to one another, touching one another on the shoulder while they talked, drinking from the same jar of moonshine – all that made me feel at home at last, somehow.

Mikey walked by in the hall… “are you crying in there?”… “no, I’m painting my toenails”…”hmm.”

If I were returning to work after my maternity leave ended, yesterday would have been my first day back. Maybe Hazel would have spent the past two days in YSM’s daycare, which is amazing and full of wonderful people who I would completely trust with my child, where I am nearby and probably would not even cry having to leave her there for the day. Or maybe she would have been here at home with a babysitter, or with her daddy. All would have been fine and good for her in their own ways, but they all would have left me heartbroken. All of yesterday and today I keep thinking, “I could be missing this right now.” Missing her pull open her bottom drawer and fling her skirts and pants everywhere. Missing her clapping herself to sleep in her crib for her afternoon nap. Missing the morning banana-hair-treatment. Missing her sitting on the floor beside me right now, reading aloud an old issue of Look magazine. A whole day’s worth of hugs and cuddles and books and smiles for other people and none for me. It’s not that I don’t trust other people to take good care of her – I just don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want daycare workers – even amazing ones who are my friends – shaping her little life. My dad was always home with me and Mikey’s mom was home with him, and we just can’t do any other way.

I am so grateful to live in a country whose government takes parenting seriously and supports new mothers and fathers, where I don’t personally know a child under the age of one who is with anyone other than a parent during the day. And we’re all the wives of grad students and/or students ourselves, so it’s not like we can stay home because we’re well-off. Thank you, Canada, for this past year.

That said, I’m so glad that even though my leave is officially over, I don’t have to go back to work. I know it works very well for lots of families, but Hazel is learning and progressing so fast right now, I can’t imagine that she would stay on this track away from Mikey and I all day, and I don’t want to miss a thing. I’m so glad she doesn’t have to go – that I’m able to work from home, that starting at the end fo next month we’ll be living rent-free until next summer, that Mikey will be able to hole up every single day and work towards fall employment, and we’ll be able to make do (in a place that costs 1/3 of this city’s living expenses) with saved money, my Etsying, Ebaying, taking care of other people’s kids, making custom wedding jewelry, and anything else I can figure out a way to get paid for doing.

I don’t care that we’ll be living poor, and I don’t care that our student loan repayment committments are damn near as lengthy as marriage and having children, I don’t care that we’ll have to figure out how to live in the middle of nowhere with one car, I don’t care that I can’t have a pair of Frye boots… I love beans and rice. I love plain buttered & herbed pasta. As long as we aren’t living on credit cards I will be happy.

Remind me of this in four months when I’m whining about money. And feel free to contribute to my boot fund, which thus far does not exist.

adorableness & morning reads

banana-hair

Mikey and I both took a facebook quiz about which Seinfeld character we are, and we both got Jerry. It said something like everything always evens out for you. Hopefully they keep evening, and Mikey will have his dream teaching job next fall, and we’ll figure out what to do with ourselves for the summer. It might end up being staying at Darla & Trevor’s even if they have moved home by then. They may or may not be back at that point, but told us we are welcome to stay a couple of months longer if we don’t have anywhere to go in June and they are home.

We don’t have much of a plan, and, oddly, I don’t care.

Listening: Abigal Washburn
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: 2005 issue of Look magazine
Working on: work work, meh
Packing progress: packed some summer clothes and the last four large things on our walls, which I was clinging to because I hate bare walls, but I let go. Our walls are now totally nekkid except for silhouettes and a clock.

That’s right kids – the heat is back on. We didn’t even make it four whole months with no heat. At the end of May we *thought* it was off, but upon sticking our hands down to the baseboards found that it was still on very, very low. They didn’t actually turn it off until June. JUNE. Welcome to Canada, where on Sunday morning we saw a girl in a tank top and jeans chatting with a girl in a furry parka.

So that’s it – fall is over. At least I had a few days to put Hazel in the cute sweaters that people got her last year and that she has finally grown into, and she was totally comforable indoors AND out.

When she woke up from her nap today she immediately positioned herself on the floor in her Book Deshelving Stance, and tried with all of her might to wrap her mouth around the word “books”. I could tell exactly what she was trying to say – she was pulling and paging and flinging and smacking, all the while muttering “beesh” and “boosh” and “bbcchhhh” and other B “words”. Eventually she gave up, and then at supper she paused in her pea-shoveling to gesture at the book Mikey was reading and said “beesh”.

“Hazel, can you say BOOKS?”, he asks encouragingly. She peers at him for a few seconds, looking up from underneath her eyelashes, a pea poised for entry, and says, very quietly, “books.”

He and I bolted upright, grinning at each other across the table, sure it was a fluke. He says it again.

“Books!!”

“BOOKS!!” she screams back and flaps her arms wildly and smacks her tray, peas flying, legs kicking.

“Hazel, say books!!” (we’re very excited here)

“BOOKS!!”

“Say books!!”

Now she’s shoving peas again and it comes out “beesh, beesh, beesh”, and that’s the end of that.

We’ll try again tomorrow. Now really IS the time to stop swearing.

Listening: Chris Coole
(I Am) (for real) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: Hidden Hippo – the newest addition to her collection of very very magical Clare-Beaton-illustrated books
Working on: Luca’s birthday present
Packing progress: took everything off the bedroom walls and… piled it all on the kitchensewingoffice table

tonight was the last sunday that chris will play the local until fall (which freaks me out – what if he doesn’t start until november like last fall? will we ever see him again??). a bunch of our friends were there, and hazel got really into a song that tony & kristine hopped up on stage to play/sing with chris. she bobbed and flapped her arms and sang her little lungs out. i gotta tell ya’, it was the cutest thing ever, and i am happy that our musician friends appreciate hazel’s “art” and don’t get annoyed when she sings with them. after the song ended chris started talking about hazel, things like: “…but she cries when she doesn’t get her way. and she’s SUCH a baby.”

and a woman at the bar yelled “but we love hazel!! hazel is a rockstar!!”

mikey and i looked at each other. do you know this person? no? do you? afterwards she came up to me (and hazel) and started gushing over her and talking about how you can tell she’s been listening to music since before she was born, and how you can tell which songs she really likes…. who is this woman? hazel is smiling and cooing at her.

eventually it was revealed that one night when tony had hazel walking her around he introduced her to this friend of his. okay, much less awkward that you keep squishing my daughter’s feet now that i know you’re a friend of a friend.

is it always going to be this uncomfortable when hazel makes friends that i don’t know? how do i just… let her go off into the word and make friends with people and not worry incessantly that she’ll become really attached to some little creepy kid. or some really dangerous friend? what is going to happen when she makes friends with kids who like to build fires for fun? what if she IS that kid? she is MY kid after all and i kind of have a problem with fires.

all of a sudden i see twelve year old kids alone on the subway and it terrifies me. we were going somewhere the other day and this little pack of skate-shoe-wearing preteens were making their nervous-looking friend repeat “dundas, dundas, dundas” over and over, lamenting the fact that their cellphones didn’t have a signal underground, and they put her on our train and then presumably went off to get on their own train. this girl was sitting in the seats across from us and i was very, very close to asking her if she knew where to go once she got to dundas (i assume it was the mall – there is nothing else there). i was so scared for her. she’s so tiny. and i see elementary-aged schoolkids coming home from school on the subway in little herds all the time. hazel isn’t riding the subway alone until she’s at LEAST seventeen. that gives her two years to work it all out before she’s legally allowed to start drinking.

not that……….. she’ll be riding the subway where she grows up. or drinking legally at age nineteen. i don’t even know what i’m rambling on about.

i knitted half a dishrag tonight and watched a documentary on asteroids that was terrifying. i’m trying to think of anything but that.

since hazel has been on a napping strike for three days i decided to swaddle her this afternoon to see if that would help. she went right to sleep and was out for three hours. i put her to bed hours ago and she hasn’t woken up once. amazing – all because of something that she resisted vehemently until we stopped doing it.

or maybe it’s because they turned the heat off.

listening: nothin’ – the backstabbers in my head
reading: columbine

she’s been eating so much that she only nurses during the day once in the morning and once in the afternoon, both before naps. this is kind of freaking me out. sample of other things she eats:

yesterday – 2/3 of a banana and two cubes of sweet potato for lunch. the rest of the banana mixed with half a cup of papaya and three cubes of peas for dinner. she seemed to want more so i kept feeding her papaya until there was only one tiny container left in the fridge. she ate over a cup. she also sucked on a few olives in her little mesh feeder while i prepared dinner – don’t think she actually got much through the mesh.

today – another half-cup of papaya and two cubes of sweet potato and a quarter of an avocado for lunch. 2/3 of a banana and three cubes of peas for dinner.

it doesn’t really seem like lots of food, but even two weeks ago we couldn’t often get her to finish more than a few ounces of anything, because she was still nursing all the time and wasn’t hungry. she liked it, but just wasn’t hungry. now she is giving up her daytime nursing for real food. eek.

today we were at winners in the checkout line waiting to buy our photo frame when the woman in line behind me (older, platinum blonde, heels, huge sunglasses, white pants – Total City) started cooing at hazel and talking to her and then asked me if i liked the white patent-leather-with-huge-gold-things-heels that she was going to buy. i didn’t, but of course didn’t say that. i said they were cute.

“i don’t know if i want to spend eighty dollars on them, though!”

“well……… are they comfortable?”

“oh yeah, really comfortable.”

(still gushing to hazel)

“well then why not?”

(then she looks down at my feet)

“you probably don’t have this problem, perfect feet!”

(i have no idea what to say here)

“actually my feet are really narrow – i hate shopping for shoes.”

“well honey, look at mine! i have MAN feet! well…. i *am* transgender.”

(cackles happily, slaps my shoulder………. well so she is. i hadn’t even noticed.)

“then i guess i shouldn’t complain about my feet, should i?”

she cackles again, tells me she just turned sixty and anticipates having a shoe-buying problem for the rest of her life. fawns over hazel’s little shoes. i’m done paying. i tell her happy birthday and gather up my bag. she tips her chin to look over her gigantic sunglasses at hazel and tweaks her little foot one last time, tells her how beautiful she is one last time.

this kid is going to grow up in a world so much more narrow than the one she was born into.

listening: nothing at all. hazel is sleeping. mikey is at the dollar.
reading: columbine…….. can’t put it down. i can’t yet tell if this is because it’s really good or just because i am fascinated with gore / crime / criminal psychology
listening: actually, the person upstairs is slamming something against the wall over and over. awesome.

please take note of hazel’s attire. this is what i dressed her in for her morning playtime, because we’d left windows open all night and it was a little chilly on the floor. now it’s afternoon and it’s a little above seventy degrees. i should have changed her into something a little cooler before we walked the dog and ran a couple of errands across the street, but figured she’d be okay because it’s nice and breezy outside. she got a little sweaty, but she will live to see another day. HOWEVER. as we were walking up the steps out of the underground a random bank of montreal employee came up behind us and was cooing at hazel, who was all snuzzled up in her ergo. we had just gotten outside & were still in the shade, not yet up to the sidewalk, and she says “is it warm out now?”… “yeah, it got really nice.” … “oh, no wonder she’s dressed like that then!”

she proceeds to grab hazel’s fleecy foot and make baby noises. then the breeze blows. the beautiful, warm, spring breeze. and this woman shudders and tells me that maybe i should put some more clothes on her.

WHAT. IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??? AIR MOVING. DOES NOT EQUAL COLD.

for the love of jesus, mary, joseph, moses, etc. etc. etc.

get me out of here. i am sick of this city. i am sick of living in a tiny apartment. i know i know. woe is me and my first world problems. i have an apartment right downtown in the middle of one of the best, safest, cleanest, most fun cities ever, and i have food and a roof and all of that wonderful stuff. i don’t care. i want out. take me home.

things i want that i can’t have here:

- i want a craft space that i can babyproof. a craft space from which the dog will be banned.
- i want to put my baby to bed or down for a nap and not have the coming and going of people in and out the front door wake her up, because our apartment is to terribly laid out that the entryway houses the front door, the bathroom door, and the bedroom door.
- i want a washer and a dryer that i do not have to share with other people. sharing with some people is okay, but sharing with dumbasses who use EIGHT dryers (EIGHT, when there are only eight not in use) to dry two washers of laundry is unacceptable. you do not use two dryers to dry two different pairs of shoes, which knock the doors open anyway because the dryers are such crap, so that you have to run over every thirty seconds and slam the door shut and restart the dryer. you just don’t do it. not on stay-at-home-mom-laundry-mornings, and ESPECIALLY not in the evenings when everyone else in the building is trying to do laundry.
- speaking of that, i want to live in a place where my laundry does not get stolen.
- i want to live in a place where the landlord is a bit more sensitive – there s poverty all around us, hardship all around us, and most of the people do NOT speak english… well or at all… yet management only posts notices in english.
- i want to live in a place where the benches at the playground are not five feet away from eight or so dumpsters of rotting garbage. better yet, where the playground itself is away from the garbage.
- i want to live in a place where hazel doesn’t have to hear our neighbors beating on each other and throwing things.
- i want to live in a place where you can leave your windows open all the time and not have your feet turn black from walking barefoot around your apartment in all the street grime that blows in.
- i want to live in a place where buying a nice glass domed cake plate is not totally laughable. i really want one – the most plain, boring, un-cut, un-beveled anchor hocking domed cake plate ever. i want to bake a cake and put it inside and look at it and feel happy and then eat it. but where the hell would i put it? i want enough space so that mikey and i aren’t constantly running into each other, literally, and it would be even nicer to live somewhere where i can have a cake plate sitting on the counter or have a dining table big enough that it will hold a whole spread of food and four people, and a cake plate in the middle. andrea suggested putting it on the back of the toilet to house spare toilet paper. too bad it wouldn’t fit there, either!
- i want to paint my walls.
- i want to babyproof.
- i want to use normal-sized cookie sheets in a normal-sized oven and i want to NOT be able to see the top of my fridge.
- i want a yard.
- i want to control. the fucking. temperature.

that might be all i want. sorry for the profanity.

listening: putumayo kids folk playground
reading: columbine – so, so, so good… can’t put it down

1.) i can’t stop thinking about how next wednesday night i get to go to the dollar. alex will be in from edmonton (scott is already here), so it seemed like the perfect time to put hazel to bed, leave a bottle with mikey in case she wakes up, and hope for the best. i will have been dollar-less for 28 weeks. even though my life has been far from bluegrass-less since hazey was born – i think we go out to hear music MORE now – i have been dirty-broken-bar-bad-draft-beer-less. so we are going out with lots of girlfriends. no boys allowed. the day after that i get to watch the season finale of lost online in the morning and then go see will oldham that night, and then cram in as much music as scott & alex are able before she flies back, which i’m pretty sure will be friday and sunday. my heart might explode from the joy.

2.) aside from a few typos & improper word choices, i’m really really excited about a new magazine at home called wv living. you won’t think it’s a wv magazine if you glance at on a shelf. it’s martha stewart living shaped, with matte paper and beautiful photos. very classy. check it out. published in motown, quarterly for now – i have no idea if they plan to someday make it a monthly but i hope they do. i am hooked. oh, and i could also do without the shoutouts to target & walmart in the “style” section… thinkin’ they can slide those in with all the local shops, ppsh.

3.) i need to call the embassy to be sure, but i think we *might* be able to just apply for a passport in the states for hazel instead of the millions of hours of “application of birth abroad” crapola that i researched whilst pregnant. either i totally, totally missed that huge detail back then, or it’s a new thing that comes with the passport requirements going into effect on june first. if you want to come visit us after that you must have a passport to get home. i have to say, i’m a little excited to get tiny baby passport photos taken of her. they’re gon’ be so funny.

4.) today hazel CHUGGED water after her afternoon nap. i have heard her chug milk, but watching her chug water out of her sippy cup in her tiny little shorts and tiny little tshirt made her seem like such a tiny kid instead of a baby. ugh. i gotta say though, i can’t wait to see her dance. today it occured to me for the very first time that she will in all likelihood, if genetics are a factor, be dancing to john’s fiddle before we leave this country. my brother was pushing chairs around the kitchen when he was hazel’s age. i walked at nine months. she is so much fun to watch – the past six and a half months have been so mind-blowingly interesting, i can’t wait to see what she does with her next sixty years.

5.) got the new mothering through my mail slot today but got no further than the letters to the editor, which made me happy enough: tourists from new york came up to the royal ontario musem (two blocks away) and when their two year old needed to nurse, the mom went asking after a nursing room. they basically told her, in a rather dumbfounded way, that the ROM does not have a nursing room – you can breastfeed anywhere you want in the museum. she was so pleased & surprised that she wrote a letter to mothering magazine. yay canada! or… at least ontario. or at least the ROM. i don’t even know if breastfeeding in public is a legally protected right in this province / country. i have never heard of anyone having a problem. the only place i know of that actually has a nursing room is sears.

6.) when i was young in the mountains,
i never wanted to go to the ocean,
and i never wanted to go to the desert.
i never wanted to go anywhere else in the world,
for i was in the mountains.
and that was always enough.
-cynthia rylant

listening: foggies in my head :)