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Showing posts from May, 2010

what we talk about when we talk about flying (with infants)

the algebra of sets ; pen and ink on paper (old math textbook paper). 1) Terminal 3 at Pearson is a pattern-carpeted ghetto. 2) When you get on an airplane with an infant, essentially you're entering into a cage match with a twenty-pound wrestler. 3) The match is fixed. 4) You lose. 5) Note to Mister Professor, sitting across the aisle from us with his half-his-age wife and two young children: putting your hand over the mouth of a tantrum-throwing four year-old is an *extremely* poor silencing strategy. 6) Also: forget the newspaper. And *really* forget that "Learning Portuguese" book. Those things went out the window when you started messing around with that young, skinny thing (well *of course* she lied about wanting kids). 7) A poop will happen. Fortunately, Oona's came in Terminal 3. 8) It deserved it. 9) My own never-been-in-a-bathroom-on-an-airplane streak remains: intact. 10) Is there a more fitting example of the queasy uselessness attendant in most of our (m

in Saskatchewan, when it rains, it snows

The day before Victoria Day, I went out for a walk along 8th Street, probably the least pedestrian-friendly street on the planet. Trucks with modified mufflers hunt you at crosswalks. The weather was something between the set of The Thing and a Meatloaf video. But on Victoria Day the sun came out. So we all went out to my childhood home to have a barbecue. It's being sold at the end of the month, and I'll never see it again. Strange (and *quiet*) to wander the house so empty. So small. It seems like another lifetime ago. And then today it's been black skies, and rain, mixed in with snow. Flying back tomorrow. Mom asked me what I'll do if Oona has a poop on the plane. I just looked away, like someone showing me a J-7 spades.

we are all just waves washing over

Oona with Auntie Mary Ann, on the back deck over at Uncle Colin's place, as he was kind enough to feed us the other night. Good timing too, because the next day it rained. And then the day after that it stormed. So: lots of *inside time* for Oona Balloona (or -- as some of you are calling her these days -- Oona Saskatoona) and me, and we all know how fun inside time is with pressing heaps of family. There are egos and voices and thoughts on real estate, both interior and otherwise. Meals are minor crises. And then children show up, like little insane people, more than willing to dish out head-butts. Needless to say that, as the visit wears on, Oona is having a few meltdowns. She's used to hanging out with a dad who reads books about World War Two (C says I should get a t-shirt that says I heart WWII ) and a mom who feeds her a bottle while watching TMZ. By the end of the trip she'll have had so much stimulation that I should be able to keep her locked in the basement for th

new Saskatoon moon

Well, there you have it, the whole reason for this trip: so Oona could make some new friends. I mean, let's talk turkey (or in this case, Chicken Licken) ... when it comes to Grandma, it's never too early to start the long con. And here she is putting the touch on Auntie Mary Ann. But hey, it's not all about work. When she's not conspiring to get herself named as beneficiary in various wills and trusts, Oona likes to have a good time. In fact, she's quite the little swinger. Otherwise, the trip so far? Pretty good, I'd say. My record for having never visited the washroom on an airplane remains intact. And Oona was good (read: sleepy) for most of the two flights. On the downside, the plane's seat almost broke my ass (not broke as in crumbled or cracked, but more something like the eraser end of a pencil after it's been in a cupboard for twenty years, and turns that hard, angry red), and the mind-flattening heat here has been a complete horrorshow, restric

the great escape

This one rainy day (escape, this thought)... ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. The string series continues. So Oona and I are making a break for it this week, leaving mom behind to sit by the window and wonder on her (many) parenting mistakes ... namely, we're flying out to Saskatchewan so Oona can see Grandma, and get tickled by the similarly dimpled and dough-fingered. I've told C more than a few times that I hope she makes the best of it (I know *I* would, oh dark card rooms and lonely divorcées of the world) but I suspect she'll just mow the lawn every three hours, plant a million flowers, rearrange the furniture seventeen times and drink a few gallons of wine against a more-or-less-constant backdrop of Midsomer Murders and Magnum PI reruns. There will be at least one major purchase (outdoor wicker furniture? faux antique chest?) but it's really the pizza bills that will be horrendous.

what we have here is a failure to communicate

One thing about hanging out with Oona: I'm talking more. Whereas at work I avoided conversation like the plague -- and shut my eyes in its presence, waiting and wishing for the speaker's face to melt, or break out into open sores, or snakes, and their limbs to fall off, and their bodies to burst into flame -- now I talk all the time. I tell Oona about the weather (boo clouds!), and encourage her to poop before naptime. I point out the cats to her, because her delight in them is about the only thing keeping them from an episode of American Mysteries (title episode: Fatty and Scaredy, Two Missing Idiots ). I say OhmyGoddoyouhavetocrowdmeonthebedallthetimewhenI'mtryingtoread and then push and roll her back to her own side while she laughs maniacally. We ask questions about her favourite dolls, and who that smiling baby in the mirror is. Yesterday we even talked a little politics (poor ol' Gordon Brown) and hockey (poor ol' Vancouver Canucks, about as mentally tough as

cold ghosts

finite sets ; pen and ink on paper (page from an old math textbook). Reading Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From and Haruki Murakami's After the Quake and Kafka on the Shore . Both writers bleed on their pages but the former is that thick American stuff, that noir stuff at the heart of their history, while the latter is thinner and slower, more like a seeping ghost. In the supermarket yesterday watching a mother ask her five year-old what he wanted for supper. Unsurprisingly, he wanted the purple stuff. My back is getting better, slowly but surely. It seems to be more of a sitting or prone problem than a vertical or moving problem; I stood for four hours at my easel yesterday and walked away with a whistle. They've got Bono and Bob Geldof as special guest editors of The Globe and Mail today. Making me wince. Apparently, it's all for the sake of Africa. I hope someone's told the Africans. (The best part was where they showed all the covers their design staf

unbendable logic

logic ; pen and ink on paper (page from an old math textbook). If my body was a novel, then my back would be the unreliable narrator. It runs the show, full stop. Story, themes, character development ... it's the vertical dramatic axis of my life. And it's completely untrustworthy. You simply cannot count on it to carry the plot forward. When it goes, it goes, and all the other crummy little characters go down with it. We stiffen, and we stagger, and then we find ourselves looking up Chinese stretching exercises on the internet. Maybe it's my own fault. Maybe I'm abusing the storyline. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed that armoire up the stairs by myself, sliding it up on a blanket, while my lovely wife watched impatiently from the landing, and I felt my spine bend backwards like one of Uri Geller's spoons. And then afterwards she checked it for scratches.

three days in

Three days into this parental-leave business and still not quite *with it*, as my grandpa used to say. It's a big change, from rushing off to work in the morning to waiting around for someone to poop (actually, there are some similarities there). At the office I'd just blaze through my morning, knowing full well how wool-headed I was in the afternoon; now we don't even get out of the house until three or so (which has, this week at least, been the time for the sun to finally come out). I understand the rhythms of the day well enough -- it's basically just play, eat, play, eat, poop, nap, repeat ... again, not entirely different from the office -- but I'm still not making enough hay with my quiet time. But then the last few months have been a real drag, and I'm tired ... Chicken Licken is asleep right now and I'm tempted to put my head down, too. And the second I drift off is when, of course, she'll wake right up.