Rosh Hashanna

Someone please tell me why all the Jewish holidays are at the least convenient times?

The High Holidays come during harvest, canning, and winter planting. Pesach comes right when I want to do summer planting. Plus I have a million little starts that need fussing over.

This is just a long way of explaining why I've spent the evening harvesting the parsnips and carrots, baking nine loaves of bread, three honey cakes, and ten pots of blackberry jam. I'm not normally this productive.

Once upon a time, Jewish cooking was a great thing. But Internet, these are not our glory days.

Munchkin is certainly theologically prepared. Her favourite song as of late is Hallelujah. If you've never heard a five-year-old croon Leonard Cohen, you haven't lived.

She also likes Bruce Springsteen from The Seeger Sessions. As a result, she responds perfectly to the following prompt:

"G-d gave Noah the rainbow sign . . . "
"No more water the fire next time!"

Doom Dog

My mother's dog, Strawberry, hates me. Strawberry is a small, grumpy shih tzu. Shih tzus are not the picture of health and virility at the best of times. this one is obviously the shih tzu runt. But not runty in a cute way. Just stringy. When she's wet, she looks like a drowned rat.

Strawberry hates me.

Strawberry has always hated me. I think she thinks I'm an intruder on my mother's main activity of feeding and otherwise pampering Strawberry. I demand she pee outside in the snow. I try to prevent my children from feeding her cereal and ice cream. I do nothing but thwart her desire to eat food that's bad for her, pee on the carpet, and sit on a pillow.

Strawberry is fifteen years old. She will never die.

Or so I thought. This morning my mother called me to say that she needed help. Strawberry had been, well, emitting. From three orifices. Orifi? Anyhow, it was bad. My mother had been cleaning all night and was beside herself. She assumed that Strawberry was preparing to die. Strawberry was wandering around, stunned.

Because I am a good daughter and do not believe in cheap grace, I bundled up the children and off we went. I secreted the children in another room with my mother and set out to attack Strawberry's presents.

Did I mention this dog hates me?

I have three children. I have never smelled anything so bad in my life. Rotovirus has nothing on the smell that this dog made. And this dog made this smell in every room in the house, sometimes in several forms in every room.

I cleaned it all up. I got out the mop. I got out the bleach. I mopped up the entire house.

She wandered a drunkard's path on to the landing and threw up. Then she threw up on the bookshelf. Then she went to sleep.

It had been totally perfectly clean.

I cleaned it up again. I mopped the floors again. I took out the garbage again. Then, I took a breath.

My mother's house smelled exactly like a vet's waiting room. It was bleach-on-vomit. I hadn't identified "vet smell" before, but now I know exactly what it is. It is the smell of bleach on top of worse-than-roto-virus-doggie-puke.

Strawberry didn't die. She'd eaten some moldy carrots from a forgotten lunch, plus most of the ziploc baggy. She's still with us; or rather, with my mother. She still hates me.

I think she will live forever.

Firefly has said his first word. It's "woof."

Back Ache

Sometimes a zeitgeist takes the blogosphere. Minimalism, for example. The entire Christian blog community convulsed with pretend-amishness a few years ago. In the mommyworld, it's usually some reheated hippie stuff. Some new gloss on not vaccinating, or birthing in the living room, or never letting your kids within ten miles of plastic.

Right now a lot of people are into "living simply."

I have three children five and under. The only way I could simplify would be to ditch two of them. there is no socially acceptable way to do this, so we're going to have to work out a way to be happy with complications.

Well enough. But why does "living simply" translate into "moving to a farm"?

In that vein, I recently read This Life is in Your Hands and The Egg and I. The former is about an organic vegetable farm (affiliated with Helen and Scott Nearing) and the latter about a chicken farm.

Nothing about a farm looks simple or uncomplicated to me. I keep a fairly intense garden. I'm kind of glad that when something doesn't work out, it's easy to dispose of the evidence. I definitely keep a closer eye on the kids because of this quality. Cows, sheep, that sort of thing, they definitely fall into the "awkward disposal" category.

Second, I'm not sure that I'm responsible enough to own animals. I'm responsible enough to own children, but the standards are much lower for that. No one is going to get e coli if I forget to change the sheets this week.

Finally, as I explained in my previous entry, I'm heavily lettuce-centric. I'm not sure that there's a huge market for that.

Nesting Doll

My mother went to Texas. She brought Munchkin a Russian nesting doll. Munchkin is entranced. She carries it everywhere. I asked her why. Munchkin says, "mummy, she has no feet."

This is quite true.

Genome started yelling, AAAAAAAAAAH.

I yelled back, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. LET'S ALL PANIC.

Genome said, "Mummy, shhhh! You as noisy as Firefly!"

That isn't the silliest thing I've done today. the silliest thing I've done is suggested putting a toy soldier in the time out chair, because it hurt Munchkin's feet when she stepped on it.

The winter garden is in. If I had a theme for it, it would be "lettuce." And kale. And more lettuce. So help me, the range is limited for outdoor gardening in Canada in the winter.

Fashion Maven

I've always admired people whose children look coordinated and stylish. When confronted with my own children, insisting that they wear X or Y, I surrender immediately. Unless it's Shabbes, I just can't force myself to insist on clothing that is appropriate for the occasion, let alone coordinated.

With that in mind, allow me to share some of the recent outfits my daughter has selected.

For a trip to the park: Tutu, Hello Kitty leotard, bright pink knee socks, fairy wand, doll, fairy wings.
For Kumon: A "Spidergirl" dress, Spiderweb mask purchased from the dollar store and altered to add an elastic strap.
For the community centre: one purple sock, one white sock, both worn with sandals. cord skirt, pink. Pink shirt bearing bubblegum logo. Masquerade mask on a stick. Straw hat.
For Maariv, evening prayers, at synagogue with her daddy: A complete Care Bear outfit.

Genome is rather more subdued. He simply wishes to wear the same shirt (Star Wars) every day for the rest of his life. He can't understand why I cruelly insist on watching it when he's worn the shirt so many times that even unobservant neighbours are making comments. I'm afraid that please of "I wash it when he's asleep!" don't really make me sound better.

He would also prefer to jettison pants altogether. I suppose he is a sans-culottes at heart, but if I get my head cut off, I'm going to be irritated.

His yarmulke has Spiderman drawn in puff paint and is usually cocked one way or the other, or flying off. His tzitzits fall to his ankles.

Most curiously, he pulls the outfit together with a pair of rubber boots, even on the hottest day of the year. I'm not sure whether this indicates a lack of observational powers (other people rarely wear boots unless it's raining quite hard), or an excellent understanding of the local climate.

Minutia

The other day, Genome was angry and wouldn't speak to me. To voice (as it were) his displeasure, he hid in the closet. With two feet sticking out. He lasted perhaps twenty seconds before he hurried out.

"Genome, why did you leave the closet?"
"Der GHOSTS in dat coset!"
He hurriedly closed the door, giving it an extra shove for good measure.
"Keep the ghosts in DER."

Genome is becoming a young man. Yesterday he cheerfully suggested that his toy be fixed with duct tape.

Someone suggested that if I didn't allow (nay, encourage) my children to read the types of books that they do, it's possible that they wouldn't communicate in knight-and-ghost talk. This is in all likelihood true. On the other hand, that Jack is out of its box, and I can't say that the results aren't colourful. I'll have to cook up some theory of being inspired by Bruno Bettleheim and advancing their psychological development in some way.



I live in one of those rainy single-season coastal cities that never gets particularly hot, nor particularly cold. It only becomes really hot for a brief period, perhaps a week or two interspersed with rain. This means that owning a pair of shorts is really surplus to requirements, let alone a proper summer wardrobe, one capable of keeping the wearer cool while maintaining his dignity. Come heat, people dig in their closets for whatever seems vaguely appropriate, unwilling to spend any actual money for what amounts to seven days of wear.

This week has been hot. About half the people I see are in their gym strip. Not "sports-styled" clothing. Actual gym strip, ratty shorts and occasional school athletic logos. Other people choose to wear the same Summer Outfit they've had since they vacationed to Disney World in August of 1985. One man in his late middle age looked particularly fetching in a pair of neon-on-neon shorts. Those were ravingly cool when I was a child. It was orange neon flowers on a green neon background. Do you remember orange neon? I never see it around now.

I can't wait until winter. That's when all our children go sledding in their rainboots, stuffed with several pairs of cotton socks.

Subway

Last week, the Captain was riding the subway home from work. Our subway system has no turnstiles. Instead, your ticket is checked by a highly paid, unionised employee who is also in charge of general crowd control, policing, and so forth.

Since the employees are highly paid and unionised, there aren't a whole lot of them. And since there aren't a whole lot of them (and, I assume, they're giving priority to resolving potential or actual Situations over checking tickets), not a lot of ticket-checking goes on. It's not uncommon to go months, even years, without being asked to show proof of fare.

So on Friday, the Captain was asked to show his proof of fair. He absent-mindedly pulls out his transit pass. The transit cop points out that he hasn't scratched out whether this is a transit pass for zone one, two, or three. Quite true, he hasn't. He scratches out zone one.

Walking home he notices that he has forgotten to replace his pass this month. He is riding on July's.

My daughter is on acid. She hears orange, thinks it's very pink today, and feels sorry for eight having to be there by mean Mr. Nine. She's usually having a good trip, but it's been known to go the other way.

My older son is on marijuana. He's happy and laid-back. He always has the munchies. He really, really likes Scooby Doo.

I don't know what my younger son is on. He buzzes around happily doing something or nothing, and then at the ninety minute mark he erupts in shrieking, the world's most hideous broken alarm clock. He does this at ninety minute intervals throughout the night, and sometimes throughout the day. He has this shriek that penetrates your reptile brain and urges you to suffocate him for the good of the tribe, lest a sabertooth tiger eat you all.

On the other hand, it's plausible that like a skunk or a hedgehog, his shriek is a way of signaling to sabertooth tigers that eating him isn't worth the aggravation.

I could be on anything, except I've got a massive addiction and I haven't had it for three days. In other words, today I could plausible feature as an addict in Intervention.

The problem is I didn't do any drugs (i.e. have any fun) to get here. It's just a manifestation of living with the world's loudest broken alarm clock.