Wednesday

Thank you all for your good wishes. The boy was reunited with BunBun this morning and gave him a fervent cuddle. “Liam hugging BunBun now,” he said, wrapping his arms so far around the bunny that it was gripped in the crooks of his elbows in front of him, and rocking it back and forth in a mildly violent fashion.

Meallanmouse and I met for lunch today (pasta chips at L’Etranger, how I have missed you), and while I was out I picked up a new notebook as well as doing a quick stop at Archambault to look at double bass method books (Eva’s a fretless bass, okay? Regular electric bass books keep telling me to put fingers on my non-existent frets, and double basses just happen to have the same tuning and thus fingering as an electric bass). I stopped at Indigo to get a book as well, but ended up leaving it behind after carrying it around for a while. (Gratuitous and self-serving stock check: they had one copy of my second book on their shelves, and two of my third.) When I got home there was mailbox joy in the form of the first cheque for the urgent work I did in July, which means Hydro and Bell can be paid. Also in the mailbox was my first issue of the Strings magazine to which I subscribed as a birthday gift to myself. (Of course, that was before I bought Eva as a birthday gift, so I ended up with two from me to me.)

I’d forgotten how public transport allows me to read a lot. I began Stephanie Cowell’s The Players last night, and as of now I’m something like two hundred pages in, with only fifty more to go. I’ll be finished tonight. And finish it I will, most likely in a warm bath, because I will need the break after an afternoon of reducing this script. This is the fifth time I’ve gone over a version of this story (three different versions are required for the project, let’s call them X,Y, and Z: I went over X twice, and this is the second [and significantly longer] edition of Z), and I’m already cross-eyed. And now we have the added twist of working within very specific coding tags, so I have to be extra careful of what I delete and add.

Very pleasant weather we are having. We have only had the air conditioner on for all of five days this summer so far. In fact, HRH took it out just before we left for our long weekend away, and it won’t be replaced unless absolutely necessary. I approve.

Absent Friends

Of all the days to have forgotten BunBun at daycare…

The boy is very out of sorts today (not surprising; we did two six-hour drives in four days and had lots of fun with Nana and Granddad and cats and cousins in between). After a couple of half-hearted nibbles of rice and carrots at dinner, he cried for no apparent reason as we changed him for bed (we suspect because HRH sat him on his lap to slip his pyjama shirt on — usually this is fine, just not tonight for some reason). He sort of settled down during the stories, but insisted on holding every regular toy I brought in to put in his crib (his arms got quite full) and sang snippets of the Cars soundtrack while HRH read. And then he had a little heartbreaking crisis when BunBun was not awaiting him in his crib after his stories. He didn’t have a tantrum — he whimpered BunBun’s name a bit, sat up and looked around, and said, “BunBun? BunBun in?” When I told him that BunBun had stayed to play with his caregiver, there were some big fat tears that rolled down his cheeks, a sob or two, and he lay down and pushed the little white rabbit he calls Peter away when HRH tried to give it to him. “No, no Peter,” he said, lying down and turning his head away, lower lip trembling. “Oh, BunBun, BunBun, BunBun in,” we heard him mumbling as we blew him kisses and closed the door.

He fell asleep in five minutes anyhow. But a bad day to have left BunBun behind.

Also: this morning I found that the tiny chip in his left lateral incisor at some point got chipped again, and is now a huge chip. Argh.

Ping!

Guess what just landed in my inbox? The first of the two revised files to edit! And I get to start all over again! This isn’t a simple cut and paste; this is a full-version reworking.

I am so very glad this complete reworking is through no fault of mine; it appears the translators only did a portion of the full file at first. The work I did before on the original version of these two files isn’t completely useless, it’s just… a small fraction of the larger file. The original file isn’t a unified chunk of the larger file, either; it’s fragmented and scattered all the way through the file as a whole. It will take a week to edit, and the only reason it’s a week instead of two is because I have the first full file to refer to (which took me two weeks on its own back at the beginning of July).

Well, a week for this file and a week for the one that will soon follow. It’s all money for my time. One must cog in order to buy kibble and Cheerios, after all.

That Writing Thing

Last week I found myself writing down interesting words that I came across in order to spur writing at a future date, ending up with a page of completely unrelated but fascinating and mysterious words. This was generally as close to writing as I got. One of those days I wrote a new paragraph in Wings & Ashes, the story I’ve been trying to work out this month. Then we were visiting family for four days, and I never get writing done there.

Today, however, upon hearing some news, I found myself handwriting a 700-word scene. Like W&A I’m not going to transcribe it to computer immediately, and if I did I wouldn’t share it because it’s very triggery for people with/who have family members with fatal illnesses. It’s just a scene to tuck away somewhere. The last page needs reworking because I said the same thing three different ways — basically because the narrator needs to work it out and restate it three different ways in order to understand it, but still, what’s sauce for the character is not necessarily sauce for the reader.

Am writing. Go me. (Cautiously, of course, because one mustn’t scare the idea pigeons away.)

Also done today: laundry, sweeping, finishing Jasper Fforde’s latest, First Among Sequels (O how I love Fforde with much love!), and picking up that parcel (two of the four used books in it are slim and I have basically already gone through them as they are NF/reference-type books that I now may never read again, sigh). Huh. When I write it all out it sounds more impressive.

Home Again

We’re home from the wilds of southern Ontario, tired, achy, trying to settle back into daily life. The cats were thrilled to see us in their own ways, Maggie following us around and Cricket hiding behind the TV; Nixie was being ill and very sorry for herself, but it serves her right from climbing up onto the kitchen counter and stretching to nibble the lowest shoots of the spider plant. I came home with a pile of historical fiction and non-fiction from my mother and Liam came home with new trains. As usual we didn’t get to do half of the things we’d planned to do, which is sigh-inducing as some of it has been put off over the past couple of trips as it is. We did get to spend time with my cousin and his family, which was really great, as was the food (as always). The weather was lovely, and the drive down was excellent (only one stop! not too hot!), with the drive back feeling twice as long and cranky, as usual.

We’re catching up on phone messages and e-mail, so please be patient with us. I see Liam’s monthly post didn’t go up as I thought it had, so I’ve manually published that too. Some of the news waiting for us has not been so good, and our thoughts are with certain friends in hospital themselves or with family members there instead.

Naturally, the postman attempted delivery of a box of books hours after we left on Friday and is now languishing at the post office. Although that cheque I’m waiting for hasn’t arrived, and is now a week later than when cheques arrived on average when I was working in-house. Hmph.

I met Charlize this morning, and oh my goodness, I had forgotten that a six week old baby is very tiny. Such wee feet! Such feathery eyebrows!

Twenty-Six Months Old!

It is becoming increasingly apparent to us that we have a child instead of a baby, a child who can hold conversations, communicate abstract concepts, and with whom we can negotiate instead of legislate.

Among his favourite books these days are My Working Mom, Seuss’s In a People House (which he can read almost all of, so long as a parent supplies some of the connecting text), and Fish Wish. He reads the action depicted in pictures, describing what’s happening, often with snatches of actual story text interspersed. Lately he’s taken to running his finger along underneath certain words and saying the word itself. He’s not actually reading it, although it’s the first step: he’s recognising that these letters in this sequence means a particular word. Words that are mostly similar, such as ‘fish’ and ‘wish’, fascinate him. Compound words like ‘starfish’ and ‘jellyfish’ are very interesting as well.

His current favourite film is The Incredibles, although Lilo & Stitch is a close second. On Saturday mornings we sometimes allow him to watch Kids’ CBC on TV, so he has discovered and loves Arthur (which is fun because HRH worked on the show), enjoys Lunar Jim, and gets up and dances to the Doodlebops.

Among the new words in his vocabulary are enormous, cheeseburger, we, I, burgundy, too and also, sea anemone, trailer, whatever, Benjamin (as in Peter Rabbit’s cousin), and “yes, Mother” (a direct quote from the animated Tom Kitten story). If you ask him if he’d like something, he pauses for a moment then says “Ahhhhh…” as if he’s considering it, followed by a perky “okay” or “no”. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ are used nine out of ten times, and without prompting (including when he and his younger cousin were racing around and around his grandparents’ house and he accidentally ran into a chair: he bounced, blinked, said “I sorry!” and kept on going). If we get in the car he asks, “Listen to Cars music too, now, please, again?” Sometimes we say sure, and other times we say that we need to take turns when we’re in the car and Mama or Dada wants to listen to something else for a change.

In his world, every computer is connected to the Pixar website and can immediately play Pixar trailers. Except Grandad’s computer; it shows plane and train pictures instead.

He’s taken to going into the pantry and surveying what’s available before requesting what he wants for breakfast. Lately oatmeal with added raisins and a swirl of maple syrup is his thing, spurred early this week by seeing the new bag of oatmeal on the shelf. (He asked for the raisins with it; I offered the syrup.) He spoons the stuff up with great gusto and eats it in no time flat, only asking for parental help to chase the last bits of oatmeal around the edges of the bowl. At his grandparents’ house he fell in love with organic kamut flakes, and I can’t blame him: they’re sweeter and crispier than regular cornflakes. After warning him away from the green tomatoes in the back garden and waiting impatiently for them to ripen, I gave him half a red cherry tomato this week and he spit it back out again. Blueberries may be the most awesome part of August; peaches, not so much. I made homemade cherry popsicles and he loves them. Sauteed mushrooms over pasta with freshly grated cheese tossed with a bit of butter is the best meal ever. He has definitely discovered doughnuts, and they are the food of the gods. Chocolate milk is a huge treat when we’re out. He drinks from a regular glass at the table, and only uses his booster seat when he’s in a particularly active mood and we need him to sit in one place for a bit.

He asks for crayons by specific colour. Circles are his newest favourite thing to draw. When he colours in an outline drawn by one of us or in a colouring book he no longer scribbles randomly: he colours very specific portions of the image. Red may be his favourite colour, followed closely by blue, if the frequency of the request for a crayon of that colour is any indication.

When he leaves somewhere he says goodbye to everything he can see (and can’t see), including ‘up’ and ‘in’ and ‘out’. He played in a big pool for the first time this month with his caregiver, and after resisting it he fell in love with it. He loves to play soccer and kicks the ball around the yard, and he likes flopping over a swing on his stomach to swing back and forth while staring at the grass. Lying on our stomachs and watching ants is still a great way to spend twenty minutes or so. He’s so good at walking while holding someone’s hand now that we can walk through stores instead of locking him in a stroller or a shopping cart.

We appear to be raising a small geek (which will come as no surprise to most, I’m sure). Not only can he recognise Superman and Spiderman along with their associated logos, he appears to have absorbed the Doctor Who revival as well. This will amuse PDaughter:

GRANDMA: [speaking of her sister] … so I made her go see the doctor

LIAM: The Doctor!

GRANDMA: Yes, Liam. Do you like your doctor?

LIAM: The Doctor! Sonic!

(As in, a sonic screwdriver. The one used by Doctor Who. Yeah. Grandma was mildly baffled.)

He “sings” along to songs on movie soundtracks, echoing repeated or random phrases in the song, and inserting movie dialogue at the appropriate places. When he hears tracks from a film score he can describe what’s going on in the film at that time, making him the only person I know who can visualise and identify musical cues better than I can.

He wears size 3T shirts, 2T pants, size 5 diapers, and size 3/4T pullups. Toilet training is going so well that I bought him his first set of underwear last week, which he wears with great pride and excitement in the late afternoons and evenings. He’s barely fitting into his size 6 1/2 shoes, and has worn through the toes of his racecar sneakers. Good thing we have a pair of size 7 sneakers in the wings.

Maybe it’s because our friends all have bright kids who are being raised in a similar fashion, but to me Liam doesn’t seem any different from them developmentally. And yet I’m told by people who work with kids not associated with our circle of friends that Liam is unlike other children his age. Whatever. He’s Liam to us. He is normal for who he is. We read to him; we communicate basic values like responsibility and sharing and turns and respect and courtesy; we insist on a regular early bedtime, naps, and toothbrushing; we share time with him and ask questions and talk to him. And if that makes him unlike the average kid, then I don’t know that it’s the kid in question who’s different, or the parents.

Daily Meh

Despite the fact that we’re away this weekend, I did a huge grocery order this morning. We do need to eat before we leave, and there’s nothing worse than coming home to an empty fridge and pantry. A hundred dollars goes way, way too depressingly fast in the supermarket. And the cheque for the urgent work I did in July did not arrive today, which is disappointing because HRH gets paid after we come back. The credit line is my fridge’s friend.

However, the price of gas here just dipped under a dollar per litre, so that’s good news.

I’ve been beating my head against this story I’m working on, and against pretty much everything in progress. None of my writing interests me and hasn’t for a while now, which is bad. And the last thing I need to do is start something new, which just perpetuates and/or exacerbates the problem. Not that there’s anything new knocking at my brain. I feel so disconnected from the creative process these days. All the tricks I recommend to people because they generally work — free writing, working on character sketches in various ways and so forth — do nothing for me and never have, mostly because I can’t shake the feeling that they’re a waste of the time and energy I could be using to do Real Work. Not that any Real Work is being done these days, or that this stupid perception is true, but that doesn’t change my inability to work with those kind of exercises. I just can’t get excited about my work.

It’s a slump. It will pass, eventually. When? I have no idea. In the meantime I’ll keep trying.