Better notes

In addition to having learnt to write "I don't love you Mummy," Clara has branched out into sidewalk prose.

I walked up the hill to the kindergarten classroom to get her yesterday afternoon and saw, in foot-high letters on the walkway, a note to me, something she must have written there during recess: "Clara and Mummy" festooned with love-hearts.

Awwww.  Dearest Clara, I love you too.

Ducks

Rainy morning drop-off today, involving a trek along a puddley sidewalk with each of us (Winton, Clara and Mummy) clutching an umbrella maimed in a unique way: Clara's with a broken wing, Winton's with a bent handle and mine with a spontaneously collapsing stem.

When we arrived at school after our cold, wet trek, I realized that in getting the umbrellas organized, I had left Clara's backpack (incl. lunch) in my car.

What's better than a several block long walk in the rain with two small children and three damaged umbrellas?  Doing that walk three more times (once back to the car to fetch the backpack, then back to school, then back to the car again with only the younger and currently more mucus-ridden of my slippery wet ducks).

Still, school is doing some good, as Clara is now able to leave me notes.  While I was cooking dinner she presented me with one that read "I do not love you Mummy."  Good stuff.

Fishpastetartarsauce!

The above is Clara's "swear" word of choice.  It's quite good.

I'd like to apply it to mammography:

1) For there is no amount of smushing of my right boob that will make it show up fully on film.

2) And because I got called back for a second mammogram, not because they had seen anything but because the last one hadn't squished my right boob enough.

3) And then the clinic was far busier than usual and my visit lasted for an hour longer than expected, at which point I had to wage war with an extremely unsympathetic nurse in order to be given leave to put a shirt back on and go get my children from school.

4) And then the roads were far busier than usual and I drove sweating and swearing past at least 2 speed cameras that probably got me on film.

5) And then the only parking that was available required me to parallel park, which I suck at.

6) And then I had to sprint seven blocks, in the Doc Martens which have been eating my feet since I got them a month ago, to be at Kindergarten just in time to get my daughter.

7) And now I have a requisition for a follow-up ultrasound in my bag, so that I can plan to go back to finish what they couldn't get done today.

Fishpastetartarsauce, fuckers.

What it takes to get me grounded

Yesterday, Husband was off for Veterans Day.  He did the double kid drop-off and pick-up.  I had the luxury of simply coming to work and then going home.  It was so easy.  I was so calm.

This morning, it was me again.  The kids were good.  The rain was not their fault.  Nor was the bad traffic.

And yet, when I was trying to dress for work, and when Winton dropped a penny behind my bed and started unmaking all my freshly smoothed covers to find it, I got crotchety.  And later, when we stopped the car in a big puddle on Roland avenue, and when Clara carped at me that I hadn't parked close enough to school and then dropped all of her car snack (cereal) on the floor, I got crotchety again.

I eventually pulled into the parking lot here at work full of self abusive thoughts (why am I so damn crotchety?  what the hell is my problem, for life is really not THAT hard? ) and more productive ones (we all need charts indicating our respective responsibilities in the mornings and evenings and then maybe I won't have to think about things as much and won't get cranky?  maybe??). 

And then, because I was busy self-abusing and planning ahead, I got out of the driver's side of the car, leaned across to my absurdly heavy backpack on the passenger seat, and using my right hand at an odd angle, lifted and twisted the backpack onto my back, setting fire to a ring of muscles all along my right lower ribs.

Cue Johnny Cash, for it burns burns burns, the ring of fire.

But at least I'm not as worried about being cranky for no reason anymore.

incubated

It's cold in our house at night, drafty.  I sleep in a single bed (avoiding Husband's snoring because I am a light sleeper).

This morning, after an uncomfortable and too-light sleep, I greeted my bed companions, all of us a bit too warm from cramming into close quarters:

Pepita (under the covers)
Winton (under the covers where he'd been taking refuge since waking from a nightmare at 3.40AM)
Pumpkin (on the covers)
Hardie (on the covers, looking ashamed because he knows he's not allowed on the bed)

What's that noise?

The dog?  In the hallway?
The dog?  In my room?  In the dark?  In the dead of the post-electoral night?
Both cats?  Sumo wrestling?

Nope.

It's Winton.  Sleeping on my carpet because I told him he couldn't sleep in bed with me.

Birthday Party Faux Pas

Two birthday parties this weekend.

The first, for a grown-up friend, involved me awkwardly kissing a woman who didn't want to be kissed on the cheek and Winton, with great care and deliberation, providing the gift (a baby doll he had stripped naked).

The second, for a child, involved me commenting to one person that I thought her daughter was adorable, in clear sight and sound of another mother and daughter.  It wasn't intended as a slight, but I bet it sounded like one.

Sigh.

What Winton Said

Clutching the dollar bills that came in his Halloween card from grandma:
"Mummy, I love you even if I have money."

Small bodies

Last night, in the cold that Hurricane Sandy has left in its wake, Pepita was under the covers with me.

She purred, her chest leant up against mine so I could feel her purring like it was coming from me.

And I thought "Oh, but I used to have babies that lay in bed with me!"  It was a moment of terrible sadness to think that my purring cat was the nearest I would ever again come to curling my body around a very small child and watching it sleep.