Category Archives: The Boy

Weekend Roundup, Imbolc Edition

Yes, I missed last weekend’s roundup. I’ll do it eventually and backdate it [It’s done, here.] The most important bit was the spinning 102 class, and I have that in note form written to people who asked about it via e-mail.

This was a fun weekend, but draining. Friday I went out to lunch with MLG, where I had truly delicious braised lamb shanks and a pint of cider, and then as the weather was lovely, I walked him to class. It was a tutorial, actually, but wow did that feel odd; I’ve been out of school for a decade (my shiny new MA is no longer so very shiny or new) and the university neighbourhood has been polished and reworked, and two new metal and glass buildings have sprung up where there were once boarded-up lots.

(Many joke intros ran through my head on the way home. “So a cellist and a drummer walk into a pub…” was one of them. So was “So an EngLit MA and an MBA guy walk into a pub…”)

On the way home I stopped to deposit Emily’s second cheque (so close to the end of this project!) and pick up immediately necessary groceries, and I swung into Winners to do a quick look round because I could, and I so rarely do. While there I saw a pair of burgundy shoes on for half-price and wavered for a moment, but then told myself sternly that I shouldn’t even try them on and left.

Saturday morning we all went out on errands. While out we finally found an Anakin figure as well as an Ahsoka figure, and the boy was thrilled to finally have people to fly his starfighter. We also picked up a new Scrabble game, as ours has gone AWOL (most likely to people who love it and use it frequently), as the boy saw me playing an online Scrabble-clone game on the iTouch with Emily and various other people, and was frustrated because he couldn’t play. I promised that a real board would be easier to use, and it was. He loves it, and calls it Scramble, and we got about five rounds in before he decided he’d had enough.

Saturday afternoon Ceri called and asked if I wanted to go over and play, so I packed the spinning wheel, my Phat Fiber box to show her, and my cotton, and off I went when the boy went down for his nap. We had lots of fun, although spinning the cotton continues to elude me. I tried shredding it and spinning from a cloud and it sort of worked, but it keeps drifting apart. I’m trying to find the sweet spot between overspinning it and getting it to hold together, and it’s just not happening. I saw another video where a woman was long-draw drafting right from the unsplit roving; I think I’ll try working on that again, since the cloud doesn’t work, and the splitting roving to narrower pieces doesn’t quite work either.

I soothed my annoyed spirit by making my first foray into the Phat Fiber samples and spinning a quarter-ounce of lovely dyed Merino wool from Ambrosia and Bliss. It was my first experience with Merino, and I suddenly see why people like or hate it it so much. It’s very spongy, with lots of tiny crimp; quite unlike the smooth BFL and Corriedale I’ve been working with. It made a lovely chain-plied 20 wpi yarn:


Why, yes, 20 wpi is heavy laceweight/really light fingering weight, thank you for noticing. And for noticing that it’s chain-plied, too, which means there’s three strands in that plied yarn. You’re very kind. I draw ever closer to confidently spinning the gorgeous Lorna’s Laces fibre Ceri bought for me my spinning wheel when I got it. And while taking pictures of the yarn on the bobbin I accidentally discovered a setting on my camera that I dubbed Awesome Yarn Shot, which does excellent close-ups. It’s so much better than the so-called macro setting, which just gives big blurs. Both those pictures are taken with the Awesome Yarn Shot setting. Go on, click View Image to embiggen the picture of the skein and see how lovely the yarn is. That’s a standard-size business card with it. (Yes, there’s a bit of variation in the grist of the yarn but hey, it’s my first Merino.)

Sunday morning we headed over to the Preston-LeBlanc household for an Imbolc brunch. Things were a bit rocky because the boy woke up at 4:30 and decided to come snuggle with us, and I didn’t have the energy to march him back to his own bed. I should have, because he squirmed and kicked and played with cats and talked and made everyone tremendously grouchy, so when he said at 5:30 that he was hungry and wanted breakfast both HRH and I had had quite enough. HRH fed him a piece of bread with some juice, and told him to go back to bed. The deal was he could sleep with us if he slept on HRH’s side of the bed and not the middle, and lay very still so that he’d actually fall asleep. This happened, thank goodness, and we all got another hour of dozing in. Once up, I made a fabulous pesto-cheddar quiche with a homemade pie shell, and off we went. I also packed up the wrap I’ve been working on for my eldest goddaughter since, what, October?, having sewn the buttons on the night before. We were greeted with mimosas and happy people, and the morning was subsequently wonderful. Our plates were full of raspberries, blueberry scones with crumb topping, and bacon, and quiche, and it was all fabulous. We made Brigid’s crosses with pipe cleaners afterward, and then we gave my goddaughter her wrap. She loved it, and I wish I’d been less tired by that point so I could have made more of a fuss over her. The new batteries I’d put in the camera that morning turned out to be dead, so I took photos with their camera and will post them when they get to me.

When we got home we fed the boy and then we all napped. After the boy’s nap we went out to pick up the groceries we needed for the rest of the week, and thanks to the encouragement of fellow Twitterers I went back and tried those shoes on. They’re so incredibly comfortable, and both HRH and the boy approved, so I bought them. And finally, we went to the library, where I collected the new Tracy Chevalier book Remarkable Creatures and the latest 44 Scotland Street book by Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. And I snagged the Clone Wars Visual Dictionary for the boy, which interests both HRH and I so much that we may have to own a copy of it.

The boy clamoured for Scrabble game before dinner, so all three of us installed ourselves at the kitchen table at his direction and we played a really solid game. The boy did lose interest again after five rounds, but he brought toys into the kitchen and played while HRH and I kept going, and we played his turn for him too.

It was, overall, a lovely weekend, although I was wiped by Sunday noon.

Weekend Roundup, Spinning Workshop Edition

Saturday morning I had a really good cello lesson. We worked on the Boccherini a bit, a Mooney etude, and spent the last half of the class looking at fingerings for orchestra at my request. I was rather chuffed to see that about half my fingerings were right. My teacher, bless her, has said that we’re going to have an easy recital slate because we have so much to do for orchestra. I was in a great mood when I got up, I was in a great mood there, and in a great mood when I left, which is really encouraging. The incredible sun helped a lot, I am thinking. I stopped by the Courtnell-St.Martin abode to pick up what Tal called a medieval yarn torture device, which, as I suspected, turned out to be an antique skein winder. It needs some TLC in the way of repair and cleaning, but it will be very nice once it’s back in working order. They piled me with books as I left, so I now have the first three volumes of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series to read. I then went to Ceri’s, as I had my Phat Fiber box to show her, but I was met at the door by Scott, who told me that Ceri was in bed with a bad migraine (are there such things as good migraines?), so our planned knitting meeting and tea-time would have to be postponed.

Sunday morning the boy and I headed out to the monthly pagan playgroup. After a week at home I was taking him come what may, even though he still had the occasional chesty cough. Their craft was a north/Earth collage to match the other cardinal direction/element collages they’d done: we cut out a conifer-shaped piece of green construction paper and a picture of a stag, which the boy coloured brown very carefully then glued on the tree, finishing it with a roundish dab of gold glitter above the stag. His crafting abilities have really progressed in the year we’ve been attending the playgroup. I very proudly taped it to his door to complete the elemental set when we got home.

Sunday afternoon was my Spinning 102 class with Leslie, and as Bonnie theorised would happen, I discovered that I am much more advanced than I thought I was. Although it was worth the time and money just to sit with other people and spin, and talk about the different ways we each had of doing things. I got to try fibres I’d never tried before (pure alpaca, Rambouillet, carbonized bamboo, mohair locks) and preparations I’d never tried before (real rolags, batts, the locks in a cloud), and it was so useful to have someone more experienced look at what I was doing and say that it was fine (the hand motions, not the yarn, although that was fine too!). The only really new technique I learned was spinning from the fold, and the only real ‘aha’ kind of tip I picked up was to spin it off the knuckle of the bent index finger, not to keep the finger pointed. I also reinforced that while spun bamboo looks very lovely indeed, I do not spin it very well; it is very slippery. It was, all in all, a really terrific three hours, and I’d love to do it again. I’ve never seen Ariadne Knits that full of people; there were the three of us spinning, and about a half-dozen people knitting on the other side of the store, and various people coming in to shop throughout the afternoon. Then again, I usually have the boy with me, and I deliberately choose a quiet time like as soon as they open so as to minimize potential disaster.

The other woman taking the class had a Majacraft Pioneer, and she let me try it at the end of the day. Oh, it was just lovely. It’s certainly on my list of wheels to consider if at some point I feel the need to upgrade from my basic Louet. I picked up the half-pound of Corriedale I asked them to put aside for me to take the bad taste of Coopworth out of my mouth, and the high-speed bobbin I ordered in November finally arrived, too. I’ll get to try some of the cotton, at last!

I was wandering through a Ravelry forum on Friday and discovered a link to a set of DIY hackle comb instructions (screw plastic hair picks or wide-tooth combs to a piece of 2×4, clamp to table, use!) and it finally sank in that I don’t need a drum carder in order to blend fibres. So now I’m thinking I can blend bamboo and other slippery or short fibres in with other things and make use of its properties while making it easier to spin. I’m also intrigued with the colour-blending possibilities: rather than trying to dye a specific colour, I could blend two or more other colours of fibre together on the hackle to achieve the colour I’m aiming for. A $20 DIY hackle is much less expensive than investing in a drum carder.

All in all, another good weekend. I was very thankful for it after a week home with the boy.

Monday!

Yes, it deserves an exclamation point. It is Monday, my son is at school for the first time in seven days, and it’s gloriously sunny out there. Lovely things happened this weekend, although it was much too closely scheduled and stressed me out that way, and I’m thoroughly drained from the week of dealing with a boy who was home only so that he wouldn’t pass his cold along, because he certainly had the energy to go.

The roundup will follow at some point. I hope everyone has a fabulous day.

It’s Imbolc today/tomorrow/when the sun hits 15 degrees of Aquarius, however you celebrate it. I’m going for a week-long thing, myself. We started with pagan playgroup yesterday, and lit candles to Brigid this morning and read about the things she’s associated with with before the boy went to school. So a blessed Imbolc to one and all, or Candlemas, or la Feile Bride, whatever you call it. May all your groundhogs assure you of an early spring.

Week Crash

Tuesday morning the boy woke up around four-thirty, gasping and calling for me. When I got to his room he was sitting up in bed, fighting tears.

“Mama, I can’t breathe right,” he said.

This has happened often enough now that I don’t panic. I pulled out the mask and both inhalers, and told him to take a deep breath. As he did, he started coughing a deep, resonant cough.

Yup, I thought. The asthma’s a flag for a chest cold. Here we go.

The deep barky cough didn’t come often; maybe once a half-hour. But I called preschool anyway to let them know he wasn’t coming in, and that knowing how his colds go he’d probably be home all week. Tuesday was okay; we went out to get him a new puzzle, and did the groceries together. He was just sick enough to not go to school in order to keep from spreading germs, but nowhere sick enough to actually be quiet or restful at home. By Wednesday evening, though, I was chafing, because my work was piling up and he wanted to be at school with his friends instead of at home with me. His educator called me yesterday and she said that if he was the same — no fever, no runny nose, just the occasional dry cough — to bring him in on Thursday. And we would have done it, too, except late yesterday afternoon his nose began to run heavily. So today HRH stayed home, bless him, because I’ve already lost two days of work, and it’s only fair that he take a day off, too, so that my work week isn’t entirely torpedoed. Grandma e-mailed to see if he was on for their traditional last-Friday-of-the-month-together day, and so he’s covered for Friday, too.

Things we have learned or rediscovered over the past two days:

1. If the boy is left to decide when we go out, we will spend the entire day at home… until he remembers that I said we could go to the bookstore, at which point he will make a fuss because we haven’t gone yet. This point will usually happen when there isn’t enough time left to get to the bookstore before we’d have to turn around and come right back home for lunch and nap, or dinner.

2. Star Wars: Episode One, when seen through the eyes of a four-year-old, isn’t nearly as awful as it was when seen through the eyes of a critical twenty-nine year old.

3. It is great fun to surprise a sick child with a toy that he doesn’t expect. It’s just as much fun to build up a friend’s legend by ascribing the gift of said toy to someone other than oneself. (The X-wing MLG passed along to him was, and I quote, “The coolest gift ever.“)

4. The last quarter of the day is the hardest for everyone.

5. It is possible for an energetic four year-old to sit quietly in my office with me if he has a pile of art supplies and scrap paper, but not for long, and not often enough.

6. I can spin while the boy is here; I cannot write or edit. It’s a different kind of work, as I build up my saleable yarn. Unfortunately the boy always wants to “help,” which doesn’t.

7. Sitting down and sharing lunch together is really nice.

I only lost my temper once, just before HRH got home Wednesday evening. I know, I know; anger leads to the dark side. But it was in response to careless play with a lightsabre that ended in me being hit across the face and my glasses being knocked off because someone wasn’t paying attention, looking in the opposite direction entirely. The lightsabre was very firmly grabbed, pulled out of the offender’s grasp, and sent none too gently to the other side of the room while the offender was informed that he wasn’t getting it back for another day, as he obviously couldn’t play responsibly with it.

The landlord was supposed to show up yesterday to finish plastering and sanding the hole in the bedroom wall, but he didn’t, which also contributed to my grumpiness because I really needed to nap but instead stayed awake watching for him because I didn’t want him to wake the boy once he’d gone down for his nap. After dinner I had a massive headache, was exhausted, and really wanted to play hooky from orchestra but soldiered on, and I’m glad I did, as things went pretty well for me. I’m going to have to look at specific places with my teacher at this week’s lesson, though; I just can’t get some of the faster runs with the proper bowing.

To my intense astonishment, the Coopworth actually spins up and finishes all right. It’s fine in fingering weight two-ply, navajo-plied sock weight, and bulky weight single. It must be the finishing process. I’m stunned. I still wouldn’t sell it for full price, but a seconds category in the shop isn’t a bad idea; a sort of catch-all category for for things that didn’t quite work out, or were made from sub-par fibre.

Lovely fluffy snow happening out there right now. A very nice change from the dismal, grey overcast light we’ve had for so long. Snow brightens everything up.

Weekend Roundup

I’ve been trying to work up the energy to do this post, but it’s hard. Saturday pretty much killed me, and various small irritations on Sunday piled up and got bigger, and by this morning I was ready to classify the whole weekend a loss. Which isn’t accurate at all, and intellectually I can look back and see all the good things that happened; I’m just in a bad headspace, and the fibro is winning today.

Saturday morning the boy and I took HRH to the airport, where he rented a car to drive to the Ottawa anti-prorogation rally. The boy and I came home, made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, then headed out to attend the double-barrelled Aubin-Murphy progeny birthday party at Fundomondo. The boy had been looking forward to this for weeks, so it was a crushing obstacle for both of us when he encountered the giant indoor play structure and realized that it overwhelmed him. He desperately wanted to play on it, but it scared him at the same time. There were about twenty minutes of very stormy tears before I could coax him into the party room for some snacks and juice. Part of the problem was that the last time he’d been, he was young enough to play in the little kids’ section, and this time he was definitely not. But he’s old enough to get halfway up the big kids’ structure, look down, and be terrified. In the end we spent our time curled up on one of the couches together, playing with the games on the iPod Touch (and Debra showed us a rollercoaster game on hers, which thrilled him to no end). He was awkwardly caught between the ages of the older children and the youngest, who has been his playmate at the caregiver’s, but who was sticking to her older sister like glue, racing around the play structure with no fear. I think he might have been okay if he’d had someone of his age up there with him to distract him and encourage him along. He was very upset that I couldn’t play up there with him.

For my part, it was lovely to see and speak with adults I don’t see very often. And I got a cup of coffee and a piece of cake out of it, too.

(Small irritating thing of the weekend Number One: When we were divesting ourselves of our winterwear, the staff member who greeted us asked the boy if he’d like a grilled cheese or a hot dog for lunch at the party, and the boy said, “Chicken nuggets.” The man said, rather snottily, “We only serve healthy food here.” To which I wanted to say, “You’re offering my son hot dogs and you saying you’re serving healthy food? We make homemade breaded chicken nuggets, thank you very much, which I guarantee are one hundred percent healthier than your hot dogs.” I need to rethink my “keep mouth shut and don’t engage” policy, because I’m really tired of being the one to bite my tongue to avoid confrontation when people deserve to have their rudeness pointed out.)

After the party the boy indulged me and let me go to the yarn store in the same mall, where I picked up two braids of Fleece Artist roving (why I didn’t pick up all three there I do not know; perhaps I will stop by this weekend and see if the last one is still available). We got home and assembled the Knex kit that had been in his loot bag, then played with Lego and coloured until HRH called to be picked up from the airport again. After dinner the boy asked if he could play Rock Band, so we set it up and he absolutely smashed his way gleefully through Blitzkrieg Bop on the drums. Twice. Allowing him to do something so exciting just before getting ready for bed may not have been the best of plans, but we had a heck of a lot of fun.

Astute readers will see that there is no nap in this daily summary, and that is correct. I suspect that had something to do with the tears at the party as well; it all coincided with what should have been his naptime. Anyway, all this to say that when the boy’s teeth had been brushed and his pyjamas put on, he came into my office to tell he was ready for our storytime, and he looked at the computer monitor, where he saw dear little Zoe, Neil Gaiman’s cat who was dying from a esophageal tumour (and whose exquisite portrait graced my desktop for a good three months last year). And without a pause, the boy said, “Is that cat dead?” and started crying. Yes; before I’d had a chance to tell him who it was, and why I was reading a post about her. We soothed him for a good ten minutes, because he was extremely distraught about this cat whom he’d intuited was dying, and that propelled him into wanting Maggie, and asking if Zoe was going to go to the Summerlands, and was she going to be well again there, and what happens to their bodies?, and it was hard for everyone. We talked about writing “your friend Neil” a note to make him feel better about Zoe, telling him that she would meet Maggie in the Summerlands, and it really touched me that this child wanted to reach out to a man he’d never met to make him feel better about his loss. He is, at times, so intensely empathetic.

He passed out within four minutes after his story, before my cuddle was even over. I wasn’t surprised. It had been a very emotional day for him.

HRH and I were then initiated into the joys of Settlers of Catan, a board game that we’d heard about for a good sixish years but had never played. The upstairs neighbours bought a set, and we all settled down with Bailey’s and cookies and had a really good time. HRH and I are planning to buy an expansion set for it so we can do this semi-regularly.

Sunday we decided to do absolutely nothing. Friday I’d broken into the light brown Coopworth I had bought over Christmas week, and I was horrified at the quality of it; it’s full of neps and vegetable matter. It’s frustrating because under all the crap I can tell there’s a fluffy, soft, silky long-stapled wool. So Sunday I decided to wrestle with it and try to determine the best way to spin it, because I wasn’t going to waste it. I got some Aran/bulk two-ply done, but I decided to experiment with a laceweight single, theorizing that it might be easier to pick out the neps and dried grass that way. The Coopworth has grudgingly agreed to be spun laceweight, but only with plenty of cross-lacing, and by supported long draw. Neps were mostly minimised this way, but it’s still annoying. And I discovered that I have *another* bag of Coopworth stashed, in dark brown; it’s what was included in my wheel when I bought it. A quick peek into the bag shows vegetable matter and a few neps there, as well; I wont know the extent of it till I haul some off to predraft it and try to get it spun. Research on Ravelry forums this morning has turned up the general opinion among wheel sellers and buyers that the fibre included in the Louet wheel kits is of seconds quality; apparently some LYSs open the boxes and switch out the crappy fibre for good fibre instead, which is really nice for the beginning spinners. Reading this, though, I wondered if the LYS I bought this bag of fibre from did something similar, but put the lousy-grade fibre taken out of the box on the shelf to sell to an unsuspecting spinner, like me. Either way, I’m not impressed. People have assured the spinners of low-quality fibre that the Louet stuff in general is good, which has otherwise been my experience.

While I spun and muttered nasty things at my fibre, HRH and the boy played video games. The boy’s getting to an age where he’s got more fine motor control and a better understanding of how to manipulate controls to obtain a desired outcome, and to understand instructions. He has also reached the age where he finds the Raving Rabbids hilarious. HRH still has to talk him through things, and often has to direct a lot of the action, but it was great to hear them giggling together in the next room. We also got him going on the Wii Fit balance games, and the Shaun White snowboarding game that Scott worked on, and much fun was had.

For dinner I made a fabulous turkey pot pie with half the breast we’d frozen from Christmas dinner, and slurry stock from the 2008 Christmas bird. I usually use phyllo pastry to top my pot pies but I forgot to defrost it in time, so I made a basic shortening dough which worked brilliantly. Lacking anything else I added diced potatoes and parsnips along with the onions, and it was delicious. While I cooked, HRH whisked the boy downstairs to look at the upcoming weather, and while they were down there they logged on to WOW and the boy made a character of his very own. When I went down to get them I discovered that the boy had made a gnome rogue, and had already mastered how to move around, how to initiate an attack, and the key combos to follow through. He very proudly showed me how he took down wolves to sell the meat in order to gain a pair of leather gloves.

When he was in bed, HRH and I headed out to our sort-of-monthly-but-not-really steampunquian game, which was fun for most of us but oddly paced. When I got home I slept badly, being woken up once by a cat and once by the boy, and in between having stressful dreams about the steampunquian party being caught in a dangerous underground situation, and then about having a huge emotional confrontation with one of the player characters (one that I suspect is coming eventually, but it was very upsetting in the dream nonetheless), and finally about stage managing a play where no one was ready for anything and the second lead actress didn’t show up after intermission so I had to go on with a script in my hand while still stage managing. And something that frustrated me on the way out of the game the previous night started gnawing at me, so today has been unpleasant as a result of it all. And it’s grey and rainy and I’m just generally out of sorts.

But so far I have done work associated with the cello manual, and solved a wifi Mac mystery with the help of my research skills and my local Mac allies (which took up way too much of my time today, but at least now I know that it’s nothing I’m doing wrong — in fact, I am doing everything extra-right — it’s someone else who hasn’t secured their computer properly and my Mac is picking up their file-sharing signal), and have handled correspondence, among which was contact made by a previous client who will have more work for me soon, and who put a friend in contact with me for a small contract with them. So!

I missed the window I had for cello practice when no one was in the building, and because it’s so grey outside I can’t tell what time of day it is, which messes with my sense of how the day unwinds and things are paced. No, looking at a clock doesn’t help; I can’t internalise it. And so the day feels like it has gotten away from me.

I need to repeatedly remind myself that when the fibro rears its ugly head, I am not a failure, and that it’s okay to be quiet and not get things done.

Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Friday and Saturday

This was a heavily scheduled weekend! It made for a long post, so I’m breaking it into two parts: this one (Friday and Saturday), and Sunday.

Going back into last week a bit, the layout of the cello manual is going very well, and it’s looking more and more like a real book. Today I get to finish photo sizing, adjusting placement, and adding captions, and then I have to look at the ordering of sections to maximize the use of the space available so that people don’t have to turn pages in the middle of an exercise or to compare the before/after kinds of photos.

The landlord is currently here, patching holes made by the plumber who had to come in to handle a leak last week. We averted disaster by moving things in the basement and setting up buckets and giant Tupperware storage containers underneath the buckling ceiling, because it was coming down at some point; the only question was when. Fortunately HRH got home in time to take a drill to the bending gyprock and drain it safely, and only our bathroom sink was out of commission (a pipe rusted through between the sink and the main drainpipe, so when the sink drained it flowed out a no-longer-existent join and poured right down inside the wall; fun).

We upgraded our ISP plan last week too, because we’re really being dinged for bandwidth use. We were looking at alternative to Sympatico, because my Sympatico address doesn’t work and hasn’t for a year; they claim it’s all right on their end and all the fixes we’ve tried on our own and via customer service have been useless. I’ve phased use of the address out, but there’s a SMTP issue as well that doesn’t allow me to use Sympatico server to send my domain e-mail since I switched to the Mac, but I’m phasing a lot of those out as well, so it’s less of an issue. We were more concerned about being charged a fee for change of service in the first year with a new company, as we’ll be moving to the south shore at some point, so when Sympatico confirmed that an upgrade wouldn’t be considered a new plan, we decided it was easier. The new wireless modem we ordered to go with it arrived on Friday but I haven’t set it up yet, figuring that if something goes wrong I’ll want it to happen after I’ve finished the layout on the cello manual and sent it to Emily for approval today. So the modem switch currently scheduled for tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to being able to use my laptop in bed, and the Touch anywhere in the house.

And last but not least, also on Friday we got the appointment to register the boy in kindergarten at the school right around the corner from his current preschool, and if the stars align his teacher may very well be one of the educators who was doing a stage in his preschool last year. I’ve tracked down all the papers we need, and the appointment also covers applyign for the certificate of eligibility for English instruction (bless my mother who has lept every single report card I have ever gotten, from elementary through high school; not only that but my parents had my own certificate of eligibilty in their safety deposit box, so I’ll bring that to the appointment as well). We were all misty-eyed; he cannot possibly be old enough to get on a school bus without us and go to school already. We were concerned about the living here and registering in a school in another zone under another school board entirely, but they didn’t bat an eyelash and said that if we hadn’t moved by the time school begins, we’d just have to be responsible for getting him there and taking him home every day. As this is essentially what we do every day as it is, there isn’t an issue.

Saturday morning I had my weekly cello lesson, where we worked on musicality, using the Lully Gavotte as the focus. I learned a tonne of stuff about using the weight of my bow arm and staying in the string, which was really nice considering I hadn’t worked on my lesson stuff at all during the week. (There was lots of work, and orchestra, and I looked at the orchestra stuff and not the lesson stuff, okay?) We looked at the Boccherini minuet, which I’m starting next, and talked about my solo for the spring recital; I think I’m going to do the Bach Gavotte in C minor. HRH dropped me off at my lesson and while I was there he took the boy to get his hair cut, then picked up birthday presents for a party happening next weekend. They came back to get me and we dropped a snowsuit off in Pointe-Claire for a little boy coming over from England next month (half an hour early, argh, but my lesson didn’t go twenty minutes overtime the way it usually does), drove home to drop off the cello, and then we went to get groceries. Back home we did a whirlwind cleaning session, had lunch, then the boy napped; under duress, but he did, thank goodness. When he woke up we took him over to the local grandparents’ place for his very first sleepover ever, which was very exciting. Back home I made a scallop gratin with extra butter and garlic, and spooned the extra sauce over pasta for a very nice and easy supper. Then I started getting ready to go out to Capricornucopia, the annual January cooperative playwriting and -staging extravaganza hosted by various friends born in January, with audience participation.

While I was getting ready my cell phone beeped, telling me that I had a text message. I don’t get many of those, so I went to check it out, and when I read it I laughed and laughed. During the week a friend had asked if I’d be interested in recording a message to be used in a game he was running on the weekend, in which key information and plot points would be delivered to the players. I agreed, he sent me a script, and we discussed different ways of recording it. The Mac mini has proved recalcitrant in recording till now, refusing to recognise my microphones or pickups, but I had the idea of using the MiniDisc in record mode as a sort of preamp while running GarageBand, and it actually worked. I sent the first message to him in mp3 format, and it had worked so well that he had the idea of recording a longer sequel message to be accessed by the players if they got to that point in the game and needed the next set of information. Well, evidently they did, because the text message I received Saturday evening was from one of the players, sent in character, thanking me for the tip. And since the point of the first message was to maintain cell phone silence so they couldn’t be traced, I texted back that I’d told them not to use cell phones, which the GM tells me got a good laugh from the players. It was a lot of fun to do, and I’m told that the players not only didn’t recognise my voice (which boggles my mind, as many of them know me, but pleases me as well) but thought the recording quality comparable to a video game tutorial or something. I am terribly chuffed. I am also glad that we did this only a couple of days before the actual game, because I don’t think the GM or I would have been able to keep the secret much longer than that.

We then headed out to Capricornucopia, which was wonderful because we got to see people we don’t see often enough, as well as people we see often but always enjoy seeing more of. This year’s play was a Choose Your Own Adventure style, where the playwrights had chosen key points at which the audience voted, and the actors were given different scenes to follow according to the audience’s vote. It was ambitious, and hilarious, and featured on the spot singing, dance numbers, and jazz hands (because jazz hands make everything better).

Afterward t! and Jan came home with us and slept over.

More! Go on to Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Sunday

Fifty-Five Months Old!

It was Christmas, which always kind of decimates the January monthly post. The boy had a terrific holiday season, ranging from Santa to various parties at school and with friends, such as the godfamily singalong. He helped make cookies and pies, and to prepare meals, and was very helpful in general. He really got into the spirit of things, and having a four-year-old child in the house means you can’t help but get into the spirit along with them. He’s still a little unclear on the concept of a secret, though, and was so excited that he would often run up to people and say, “We got you a present, and it’s [insert gift here]”. Fortunately we did a lot of clapping hands over ears or mouth, and what bits of information managed to escape were either missed by the giftees or were about gifts the recipient already knew about.

He was terrific about opening gifts this year. Last year he was ill and lost interest in the process, and at recent birthdays he’d been more excited about ripping the paper off and seeing what was inside before jumping immediately to the next gift. This year, though, he returned to his previous behaviour of opening and playing with the item inside, exploring it thoroughly before moving on to the next thing. Unless it was clothes, of course, which didn’t interest him much at the time, but he was been enjoying them very much as we take new shirts and socks out of the drawers come time to get dressed of a morning. He got piles of new books (we had to remove the basket of toys on the bottom shelf of his bookcase in order to make room for them), clothes, and a few very carefully selected toys. This was a Star Wars Christmas in a couple of ways: we got him the Clone Wars animated movie, and the local grandparents gave him a ship from the Clone Wars line. It was also a Lego Christmas, as he got kits from the upstairs neighbours, the Oakville grandparents, and MLG.

And holy cats, the progress he’s making on following directions in those kits. On the harder kits we’ve been getting him to sort the blocks and help put together the simpler parts while we assemble the bulk of the unit, but he got a kit of small work vehicles on Christmas day and he pretty much followed the pictograms to assemble one on his own, being talking through the harder bits by myself or HRH. It’s thrilling to watch that kind of thought process, the ability to turn a picture into a fine motor process with actual three-dimensional items.

He got very upset about our Christmas tree. You see, we left on the 23rd, and there was no point leaving it up while we were gone; for one thing, it would be prime cat disaster material, and for another, it would be a fire hazard. We got it early in order to enjoy it for two weeks, planning to take it down the night before we left. The boy cried and cried, and said that he wanted to keep it, and that Santa had to put presents under our tree. (He was going to put presents under the tree at the house we’d be in on Christmas, we pointed out, but this did not calm the angst about whose tree under which Santa would be placing whose presents.)

It’s winter, and there’s snow, which means he’s ecstatic about being outside and rolling around in the stuff. Back when the local grandparents bought him the wagon for his second birthday, we asked them to get one that could be converted to a sled of sorts by switching the wheels for skis. For the first time this winter HRH swapped them out, with the boy’s help, and the boy has been gleefully dragging it all over the yard. They took it down to the corner store, and while it bumps and scratches on the barer patches of the sidewalk it really flies when it’s on snow. It’s like a new toy. Also in backyard news, the slide from the back deck has been built again, this year with extra banking so that when the boy goes down on his saucer he really zings around the perimeter of the yard and ends up pretty much at the base of the stairs to the upper apartment. He only has to get up, grab the saucer, and drag it a couple of feet to the deck stairs, drag it up the steps, and he’s ready to launch himself off the back deck again.

His nap is officially being phased out. He naps only twice a week at school now, otherwise staying awake through the general rest time in another room with an educator and his best friend at preschool, working on letters and words and reading. Unless, of course, he very obviously needs a nap, in which case he has a lie-down. At home we’re playing it by ear. If he’s running on high, then we do the nap thing in order to give him a break. If he’s fine, then we carry on without it.

With zero surprise to any of us, the new TMBG album has been a super hit. So much so that after owning it for three days he was singing a good chunk of the songs and acting out the videos. They’re doing a dinosaur unit at preschool this month, and he informed one of his educators that he was going to be a paleontologist when he grew up. “Ah,” she said to the educator who had been running the material, “so you’ve gotten to the paleontology part of the unit?” “No,” said the dino-unit educator. “We haven’t.” And they both just looked at the boy, who went on to burble happily about what paleontologists do.

We’re about to embark on the kindergarten open house merry-go-round, which terrifies me to a small degree. I happened to see an ad in the local paper for one this past week, so I casually looked it up and discovered that kindergarten registration happens at the beginning of February. In two weeks. With education being a provincial responsibility, and children being on the civil roll, one would think the government would think to point out the necessity of upcoming registration via mail, but apparently not; one is supposed to pick this up by osmosis or something. Perhaps daycares generally mention it, but the other kids in preschool with the boy have siblings so everyone else knows, and mentioning it to us may have slipped his educator’s mind. We’ve already missed the open houses for the more exclusive schools (last November, how helpful), so now we get to catch what we can. And there’s the added tangle of moving at an undetermined time this summer to be closer to HRH’s job (and oh, the money we will save on gas alone) so will there be problems registering for a school in anther zone and under another school board’s aegis while we’re still living here? The Internet is remarkably unhelpful in this respect. Actually, the Internet is remarkably unhelpful about the whole kindergarten issue; I am mostly directed to contact individual schools. Which makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose, but isn’t comforting at all for someone who likes to research intensively before walking into an actual person-to-person encounter. I hate not having information. I’m also told by the Internet that I should have obtained a certificate of eligibility for instruction in English a year ago to make sure we have one on time in case there are bureaucratic issues, which is not constructive in the least. If I don’t know I have to do it, I can’t do it. It will all work out, I’m sure. I’m just going to quietly deal with anxiety attacks here in the corner until it is.

And finally, the other big news of the month is the removal of the back of the car seat to make it a booster seat only! This is a huge relief for everyone. The boy is at a height and weight where it’s possible, and it’s much less fuss. We’re all thankful.