Category Archives: The Boy

Five Random Things Make A Post

1. Yes, I know I haven’t done the monthly Liam post. They take up a stupid amount of of time and energy and brainpower, none of which I’ve had lately.

2. Why does every outing with the boy have to be ruined by the five minutes at the end between turning off the car and getting in the front door?

3. Liam pointed at the cedar tree by the front steps on our way to this morning and said, “Look, snow!” “That’s not snow,” I said, “that’s ice crystals that have formed because the very moisture in the air is freezing.” And then we had a talk about Frozone from The Incredibles and how he needs water in the air to make ice. Freaking cold, yes, but everything is white and strangely beautiful. Sun would make it even more beautiful, but not for long because the frost would melt. Also, I saw the seaway steaming on the way home from dropping him off yesterday morning. It’s that cold. (Yay for sublimation! Science is cool!)

4. Two inches into my garter stitch lap blanket, I want to rip it all back and do it in stockinette stitch instead.

5. There is an inch of ice on the bottom of the boy’s bedroom windows. And I don’t mean measured from the top to the bottom, I mean from the window out into the room. Also, there is frost forming on the inside of the back door. (I am Canadian; I talk about the weather a lot.)

And a bonus:

6. Irony is doing your errands in the West Island and driving right past the bank branch where you need to deposit (in person, therefore during business hours, therefore when the car it at your disposal) the US cheque that arrived in your mailbox while you were out.

Forty-Three Months Old

This is going to be a short one because Christmas happened, so there was lots of other stuff journaled about the boy to refer to if you want update-type stuff.

Poor kid, he was sick on Christmas Day, then sick with bad colds not once but twice in the next ten days. It made for a very tense holiday period because we couldn’t toss him out in the snow the way we wanted to. So there was a lot of book-reading and movie-watching instead. This is the month that will be remembered as the month the boy officially entered the world of Harry Potter. Sure, he’s kind of known about it before, but this month he watched the first two films (Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter and the Flying Car. What, you know them by different names?) and really got into them. He can name all the houses and identify that he’s a Gryffindor (“That’s the house I live in!”). The basilisk in Chamber of Secrets makes him a bit anxious, but he’s pretty brave about it. Of course, being brave means watching the snake from behind a chair or casually from around the corner in th hall, but he does it. The other day he requested a lightning-shaped scar drawn on his forehead, which e wouldn’t allow to be washed off for three days. He then dashed around with a rolled-up piece of paper in the shape of a wand, pointing it at things and saying ‘magic words’ that resembled people’s names from the Potterverse. This exchange occurred in my office:

    SPARKY: [points his wand at the computer monitor] Dumble-a-dumbledore! [makes a static/lightning strike sound]

    MAMA: Wow. What was that?

    SPARKY: That was my magic wand! Look, all the letters are gone from there!

    MAMA: Uh-oh!

    SPARKY: Yeah!

    MAMA: Well, can you put them back now?

    SPARKY: [earnestly] No! They’re all in the wand! And I don’t know how to get them out!

(I see through you, small child. I know you’re trying to get me to stop working to play with you. )

We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series of books, and he’s really getting into them. (I, on the other hand, am going crazy with all the sentence fragments, and am calling a halt to the month-long odyssey at the end of this story arc.) He’s getting better at reading, too. He can somewhat reliably read ‘cat,’ ‘dog,’ ‘in,’ ‘out,’ ‘wow,’ ‘mouse,’ ‘book,’ ‘train,’ ‘Canada’ (you had to know that one would be among the first words read), ‘home,’ and others I’m forgetting. I think we’ll try the Nate the Great series next. I tried reading him the first Time Warp Trio but his sense of humour isn’t quite there yet.

We are encountering the three-year-old push for independence and control of his environment. There’s a lot of “no” and “after I finish this” and “no, you do it,” which are fine in some contexts and just sheer frustration in most others. We know he’s being better-behaved at school than he is at home, and it’s somewhat frustrating to hear people say, “But he’s such a thoughtful, well-behaved, polite child!” Yes, we know that, and it would be nice if he demonstrated some of that at home these days. I know he’s working things out, and pushing to ascertain boundaries, and testing structures to make sure they’re consistent, but wow, it gets old fast.

He has joined the first-ever local pagan three-to-nine-year-old kids’ circle, and had a blast at the first introductory session with masks and the drum and snacks. I’m so excited about this, because he’ll hear about elements and deities and seasons and cultural celebration from someone who isn’t me, so he’s more likely to listen. (It’s just the nature of things, and I understand that.) And at school they’re doing a month-long unit on sound and music, so he comes home with all sorts of little tidbits of information there too.

The other day he picked up two bits of thread from his snowsuit and twiddled them together in his fingers. “I’m knitting!” he told HRH when he glanced in the rearview mirror. HRH told me this story when they got home and I couldn’t help but think of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe story about Sam and his hockey team knitting. He’s bright, he’s eager to learn, and I’m sure it won’t take long before he’s wrapping string around sticks and somehow managing a rough approximation of a knitted object.

Other Liam-themed posts this past month:

– Mama is cool because she has awesome movie music
– Liam rediscovers The Philosopher’s Stone
– poor Liam is sick on Christmas Day

2008 In Review

Things I Did In 2008 That I Have Never Done Before:

– finished, submitted, and handled the edits on my fifth book (there is only one fifth!)
– received only SIX edits/queries on that book
– took up cello lessons for the second time, after a ten-year hiatus (there is only one second time!)
– knitted not one but THREE complete objects
– wrote a synopsis and outline for a YA novel in one afternoon
– then pretty much finished writing that YA novel within six months once I started
– joined not one but two social networking/contact sites (Facebook and Ravelry, to add to last year’s Shelfari and Last.fm)
– started shopping for a new cello, something that is going to take me years to do before I find The One
– voluntarily left my former luthier and moved to a new one, with whose services I am very happy indeed
– headlined a Pagan festival as a special guest along with Serena Fox of Circle Sanctuary and presented a workshop on an intro to hearthcraft
– adopted a kitten from the Animal Rescue Network (that’s for the ARN thing, because I have certainly adopted kittens before)
– baked my own bread for an entire year (thirteen months if we count from when I started, which was November 2007)
– gave a guest lecture at the university level
– made a specific trip to meet someone I met via the Internet
– performed a handfasting for two of my dearest friends (yes, I’ve done a legal wedding, but this was a purely spiritual ceremony)
– performed a baby naming/blessing ceremony for another set of dearest friends, the subject of the ceremony being my second godsdaughter
– stopped using shampoo entirely (having a baby did wacky things to my body chemistry, and while some things were good, the uber-sensitivity my scalp developed to sodium laurel/laureth sulfate was the worst; I now use a silicone-free mild conditioner with the occasional baking soda/water mix instead, and my hair is happier, too)

Things I Did in 2008 That I Am Proud Of:

All of the above, plus:

– performing in my second “public” cello recital ever (“public” is in quotation marks because it was for a bunch of people I don’t know, but was in a private venue)
– cutting my hair to above-shoulder length after having it very long for years and years
– joining a new RPG for the first time in, um, a number of years that I do not remember
– teaching myself a new hobby/skill (knitting!)

Good Things About 2008:

– meeting Bodhifox in person at the Fearsranch and proving beyond any doubt that he is a kindred spirit
– the boy being accepted part-time into a wonderful preschool (and subsequently coming home counting in French, singing songs I have not taught him, and bearing lots of art not proposed or initiated by me!)
– discovering the novels of Barbara Cleverly
– joining the local library, thereby cutting down my book purchasing
– the loan of the Mystery Cello from my cousin, the turn of the century German cello that requires about 5K$ worth of repair before it is restored to a playable state
– meeting Brendan Myers and having dinner in Old Montreal with him and other like-minded souls
– meeting Serena Fox at the Hamilton PPD 2008
– a fabulous co-coven spiritual retreat at Samhain, so awesome that there are now three planned per year instead of one
– the resolution of the ongoing tension with the unbalanced downstairs neighbour: She voluntarily moved out! The entire building is much, much happier and more secure
– a lot of spending has been curtailed/refined/refocused: We make all our own bread and take-out has returned to a real once-in-a-while special treat
– a good crop of veggies harvested from the garden (not enough to last the winter — not even half a month, actually, but the thought is there)
– being diagnosed with fibromyalgia (you may think that would be a Bad Thing, but having that diagnosis was a very good thing because it clarified so much, gave me a plan for dealing with it, and allowed me to move forward)
– adopting Gryffindor and seeing him and the boy romp together
– two dear friends giving birth to lovely little girls!

Like last year I’m sure there’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what stand out in my memory. Possibly more than anything else I am more thankful for my friends, appreciative of them and their strengths, proud of their accomplishments and successes, and love spending time with them. This is light-years beyond my enochlophobia and agoraphobia of previous years. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with myself, and trust myself more. I’ve also further refined my stop-spending-time-with-people-who-drain-me technique, with excellent benefits to my psyche and physical health.

Not-So-Good Things About 2008:

– my very dearest and oldest cat Maggie went to the Summerlands after seventeen years of love and companionship
– the pregnancy book was cut from the fall publishing lists and is on hold indefinitely
– losing Emru to leukaemia
– learning that the repairs of the Mystery Cello would require over 5K$, which shelved the project indefinitely
– ongoing financial balancing (the credit line is still looming over us, but everything else is okay)

How Did I Do With My 2008 Wishes?

– Rediscover my CD collection

Er, well. At least I didn’t bring a whole bunch of new ones into the house and ignore the old ones. This year everything kind of languished. I’d cull except every time I look at the CDs to sort through them I remember exactly what’s on each one and know that I might want to listen to it someday. Argh. My CD buying has really, really dropped off sharply in the past few years because I don’t hang out in music stores any more, nor do I go see movies and become enchanted by their scores.

– Make time for practising my spirituality in a more aware fashion

Not so much. It’s not that I’ve lost what I had, just that I did want to make a specific effort to do more things with awareness, and I didn’t get there.

– Make a stronger commitment to practising the cello

We have a winner! I mean really, how much more serious does it get? I’m taking lessons again after a ten-year hiatus, and still sitting second chair in orchestra. I am very, very proud of this particular resolution and how it has manifested.

– Let up on the second-guessing of the decisions I make, and the self-doubt I feel about my work

Still chipping away at this one, but it’s going to be an ongoing thing till the end of my life. I do feel a lot more confident about my ability in general, but I still have those slippery moments of Oh gods this sucks and why am I trying? I’m trying because it’s a first draft, and the subtlety can be woven in later.

– Remember frequently that I am a wonderful, kind, talented person

Not sure about this one. I got a lot better at saying If someone has a problem with this/that, then that’s their issue, which kind of connects to this wish because I don’t expend as much energy worried about what people think of me. I have definitely gotten better at telling myself that I or what I do is cool when it is. I still can’t accept a compliment gracefully, and I still dismiss too much of what people say about me when it’s nice things. I am getting better at being happy and/or satisfied with myself and I what I do, though.

– Focus my time so that I don’t waste as much of it

Lists have been my very best friend this year. Learning how to say no now that I understand how to manage my energy thanks to the fibro has helped immensely, too.

– Take up formal study of another spiritual path to complement the ones I already practise

Yes, but not in the way I’d expected/planned to go. This ended up being a focus on Germanic spirituality instead of Druidism. There’s time enough for it all in my life.

– Take care of my body so that the chronic pain thing doesn’t negatively impact my life, as it’s beginning to once again (I’m hoping it’s the damp and the cold that’s made it increasingly bad over the past month)

Another winner! Having a firm medical diagnosis of fibromyalgia went a long, long way to understanding how my body was working and how to deal with it.

Wishes for 2009:

– Further refine and develop my cello skills
– Finish and polish and start querying Orchestrated
– Keep on writing
– Start making all our own pasta
– Plant, harvest, and preserve more vegetables from the garden
– Save more money (I did end 2008 with a nice balance in the bank but it’s earmarked for cello stuff in the future, and while it sits there it collects interest, hurrah!)

========

If I had to assign a value to 2008, I’d say that again, it’s been an overall good year. Looking back at 2007 I see that I didn’t note much about how tense it was financially for us and how much of an effect that had on our day to day life and relationships within the family. That stress was much less present this year, and HRH and I have done a lot of repair on our own relationship. Things are certainly better than they were last year, for which I am very, very thankful. In 2007 my default mood was frustrated and tense; in 2008 I learned to let that go, both through the understanding that stressing just creates more stress, and as a result of things getting better job-wise for HRH and the general financial situation easing. Of course, with the market plunging as it is and the publishing industry closing doors and freaking out quietly behind them, I will likely not sell another book for a few years, but my freelance work keeps a steady trickle coming in.

May 2009 be even better for us all!

Grumpy

So there’s been all sorts of lovely things happening lately, but some disappointments too. Such as today, when the boy woke up with a hacking, barking cough, which was enough to send HRH to the phone to cancel our much-anticipated trip out to t! and Jan’s place for the day.

I love my boys, I truly do. But I’m used to them being gone for most of the week, and they’ve been home for a full seven days now. This plus all the holidaying has drained me pretty badly, and I’m turning into the Irritable Me that I’m not so fond of because I haven’t had any time to myself. I have an outing planned for myself tomorrow, which will help.

The boys are currently watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (which has been renamed as “The Hogwarts Express” by Liam) on the new TV and the boy was just dancing with excitement in the middle of the room, riveted by the Sorting Hat sequence. He jumped and cheered when Harry was sorted into Gryffindor house. “Gryffindor! Just like me!” he exclaimed. He’s enchanted (no pun intended) by the characters and the settings. I suspect that he doesn’t remember the first time we watched it with him in the room a couple of years ago. We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series before bedtime, but seeing how much he’s loving the Potter universe I may try reading him the first book soonish. I suspect I’ll be making him a Gryffindor scarf as well, which would thrill him to no end because not only will he have a Hogwarts scarf, he will match his Da.

I suppose I will go sit with them and knit, since I can’t focus on work when the boy is running in and out of my office. I managed to get about nine hundred words of Orchestrated written yesterday while he napped, which cheered me up a lot, but there’ still lots of work I want done by the end of the year. I have a pile of cello work to do as well at some point. If the office downstairs is empty I may go down there in a bit to practise.

A Boxing Day Retrospective Upon Christmas Cheer

First of all, I am thankful for the many blessings we enjoy simply by virtue of living in one of the most affluent countries in the world. We’re not wanting for a roof over our heads, food on the table, clothes on our backs, boots on our feet. (Well, actually, yes we are wanting those boots at the moment, because HRH’s pair wore through last winter and have not yet been replaced, and mine developed a hole that lets in all the cold icy slush two years ago and I discovered that the right heel on my backup older pair had crumbled away to absolutely nothing when I put them on in lieu of the holed ones, but I digress. We have money to buy new ones thanks to Christmas generosity.) We also live in a country where socialised medicine keeps us healthy, even if people grumble about waiting lists. We have our immediate family alive and well and able to be with us on a special day.

We are, I know, lucky in comparison to something like 97% of the world.

Also, I have a stand mixer. Which probably 99.8% of the world does not. So you see how I am extra-blessed.

I learned a valuable lesson this year. Just because Santa cuts down on the amount of presents under the tree (and he did, he really did, for which I am also thankful), that does not mean that the total amount of money invested in gifting others decreases proportionately. Because I have not even dared to total up the value of the gift cards that were hung on the tree or tucked in to the Santa sack that has replaced individual stockings. Let us just say that since I talked HRH down from a 42″ flat-screen TV to a much more practical 36″ screen, the gift cards from Best Buy that each set of parents gave to HRH pretty much covers the purchase price. (I think they didn’t want HRH to feel left out because I got a stand mixer. Did I mention that Santa gave me a KitchenAid stand mixer? In brushed chrome?)

New soft flannel jammies, a hat/scarf/gloves set, gift cards to HMV and Indigo and Tim Hortons, new sheets and tea towels and oven mitts… it was a lovely gifting all round. Curiously, we did not receive books or DVDs or CDs, but we did get the gift cards so we can make our own choices there. I don’t think there has ever been a Christmas when I did not receive a tangible, physical book as a gift. I am in an odd sort of withdrawal and rapidly granted the boy’s request to go to the bookstore on Boxing Day. (I’ve already finished the book Aurora gave me at Yule. I am twitchy, although my mother brought a handful of ones I haven’t read down for me to read and I read half of one last night.) I suspect the boy has more than a few of my book-obsession genes, because he asked me several times yesterday if the bookstore was open yet. Of course, in his part of the bookstore there are shelves of Thomas trains and accessories, and I suspect that his gift certificate will go towards expanding his collection. Still, there are books in the same place, and it’s nice that we share enthusiasm for a common destination. I have also noted that people seem to have Gotten Wise to the whole HRH-passes-his-chocolate-along-to-me thing because there is Less Chocolate this year. I will cope. Mostly because my Yule stocking was sponsored by Saxon Chocolates. Also, my mother brought down her almond bark and double chocolate cookies.

The boy had a wonderful day despite being ill. He had a quiet morning watching WALL*E until the grandparents came over, and then did a great job handing presents out although he was quiet and increasingly less enthusiastic in general. He drooped a bit more and more as time passed and started feeling warm to the touch, until he was curled up in HRH’s lap, murmuring to me, “May I open another one, please?” He remembered his pleases and thank-yous despite feeling awful, though, and once all his gifts were open he found my hand and drifted off to his bedroom to curl up under his comforter with BunBun. He slept for an hour while we finished opening our gifts and when he woke up he played with some of his new toys (Santa brought him Mavis and Emily, two engines for which he has pined for about six months — thank you, eBay) and ended up drifting back to his room to lie on his bed and listen to a storybook or work on a puzzle or curl up under the comforter again, shivering. His cheeks were a brilliant red, he was clingy (but only Mama or Dada would do) and when I eventually took his temperature it was hovering just under 101 F. We let him direct his activities and kept an eye on him. He (sensibly) refused all food except a raw carrot (inspired by me peeling them for dinner) and some juice, and stated repeatedly when anyone said the word “turkey” that he didn’t want any, despite assurances every time that he didn’t have to eat if he didn’t feel like it.

Dinner was fabulous, as usual (why pretend modesty here? although I cannot take all the credit because my mother in law made her most excellent mashed potato dish and this year made a mashed sweet potato side that was drowned in cherry brandy!). The only failure this year were the rolls made with the organic six-grain stone-milled flour rolls, which over-rose on their second rise and fell back in on themselves. I baked them anyway and we had sort of bread wedges with a heavy crumb, and they weren’t awful but they weren’t the lighter rolls I’d wanted. The perfect turkey and gravy more than made up for it, though. The boy watched me make gravy while HRH carved the turkey (white slices that dripped with juices! heaven!), and when flopped over HRH’s shoulder said that he didn’t want any turkey scraps from the carving board but his little mouth was opening every time he watched HRH nibble on one, so HRH just popped a piece into the boy’s mouth next time it happened. The boy’s eyes went round as he chewed and he decided that the turkey was pretty darn okay. He ate the equivalent of a whole slice while in HRH’s arms, had some bread and water when we all sat down to dinner, then asked to be excused to play while the adults ate their meal. He came back when we were done, his cheeks a much more normal colour, and asked for dessert. His fever had broken, and he only spilled a spoonful or two of chocolate ice cream on the older-than-me linen tablecloth. He also ate a home-made shortbread cookie, so was evidently feeling much, much better (he hadn’t asked for a single sweet all day, you see). Then he discovered the box that the stand mixer had come in and proceeded to shriek with glee as he was pushed or pulled around the house in it while others cleaned up, so the grandparents got to play with him in regular Liam mode for the final hour or so. And the clean up went quickly too, when I’d decided that I only use my Royal Doulton china and good silver one time per a year and putting them in a dishwasher once every 365 days wouldn’t ruin them, so there was just the pots and pans and serving dishes to wash. (We saved the god-gods-that-many sea of stemmed crystal glasses to wash by hand after everyone had gone.)

Even the turkey stock smelled fabulous. It was a really very excellent turkey year. (We scraped the last spoonfuls of the brandied sweet potatoes into the stock pot, too. Waste not, want not!)

I cried a bit when my parents left, like I do every Christmas. We see them so rarely, and my mum and I are so close, that brief visits like this, however lucky we are to have them, just aren’t enough.

When everyone had gone the boy found the guitar that we had given him as the last Christmas present that morning. At the time he had pushed it away and said he didn’t want it (this was just before he took my hand and went to curl up in bed of his own accord, so we knew he didn’t mean that he didn’t want it, really, he meant that he didn’t want to play with it right then), but now he was thrilled with it and dragged it into the living room to play it. He kept trying to rest it on his shoulder like a cello. So as a lovely end to the day HRH and I were treated to a Christmas concert. Next week we will have to make a trip to Jimi’s music store to get a new set of strings for the guitar, since they’re the original strings and I broke the high E when trying to tune it before wrapping it on Christmas Eve.

This morning the boy ate two bowls of cereal and had two glasses of milk at breakfast, so he seems to be back to normal. He has already reminded me that I promised to take him to the bookstore. It’s a lazy day; everyone’s still in pyjamas. I will now go through my book wish lists and note down the titles I really want to pick up today (Apart from All the Windwracked Stars and Red Seas Under Red Skies, that is!). And I won’t use the entire gift certificate; I’ll save some for a rainy day.

I hope you all had or are having as wonderful a celebration of whatever kind you hold with family and friends.

Merry Christmas!

The turkey is brining, the stuffing is made, the rolls are doing their first rise. Today’s best Christmas present so far was the boy waking us up at seven instead of some ungodly hour as is his usual wont. The downside of this is that he’d thrown up in his bed at some point during the night and hadn’t told us. Ah, well. Both HRH and I had collywobbly tummies last night, so it only makes sense that the boy did too. Everyone is in much better health today. It must have been something we ate yesterday.

The boy brought his stocking to our bed and said, “Thank you!” every time he pulled something new out of it, and “Ah, cool!” when he’d liberated whatever it was from the tissue paper in which it was wrapped. He then bounded into the living room and pouted only a bit when we told him we were waiting for both sets of grandparents to show up before we opened the sea of presents under the tree. Yes, Santa came last night! I thought he’d been sane and had cut down on the number of gifts he’d dropped off, until I remembered that the local grandparents hadn’t brought over their set of presents yet. Oh well. At least the boy’s the very appreciative type and sincerely thanks the gifter both before and after he’d unwrapped something.

As is traditional, Nigella is my co-pilot today. Her cooking times suggest that I cook the bird for about three hours, while Butterball tells me to do it for four. I trust Nigella more. Besides, I can always push dinner back by a half-hour if I need to roast it a wee bit longer.

It’s nine-thirty. I should probably change out of the t-shirt and jeans I’m wearing into something a bit more classy before the grandparents arrive at ten. Although my socks are red and my t-shirt is green!

I send you all love on this lovely sunny winter’s day, and I hope everyone’s Yule week has been and continues to be as blessed as ours is.