Tag Archives: meme

Monday Listicles – The totally random edition

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This week for Monday Listicles Stasha asked us ten completely random questions, so here’s probably more information than you ever would have wanted about me since I am physiologically incapable of giving short, to the point, answers.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, and find line 4. What is it?

I had a hard time figuring out which was the book nearest to me, as my bedside table is always overflowing with books but this one was the first one to fall off the pile as I approached it: The Lost Art of Real Cooking by K. Albala and R. Nafziger

“our favorite ways for cooking with fresh and bountiful vegetables.”

2. How many times a day do you say Hi?

Not as often as those who live in an English-speaking country… I counted 32 the other day, a surprising amount considering I only say hi to my two kids, rarely to the husband and to a few English-speaking friends here.

3. Have you ever worn a uniform?

Except for a very brief stint in public school (fifth grade) I have always worn a uniform, my very first uniform (when I was five and six years old) was a white Oxford skirt, grey and burgundy striped tie (yes, a tie), burgundy sweater, grey pleated skirt, grey socks, dark blue shoes and navy blazer – please take a moment to imagine that. Yes, my parents were mean. And also, yes, the school was British. For junior high and high school my uniform wasn’t much better but at least I didn’t have to wear a tie.

4. What do you think about the most?

Depressingly, my kids. Or food. Or food for my kids. Also, I think about poop way more often than is necessarily healthy. Occasionally, I also think about a hot, young, rich, well endowed, sex god-like man who falls madly in love with me and whisks me away on secret, wildly passionate and romantic getaways (who is not into freaky s&m mind-control crap with stalker-like tendencies).

5. How many keys are on your key ring?

I had to go look at my key ring to check. Who doesn’t know what keys are on their key ring?? I now have seven keys: door key, little gate key, big gate key, garage key, mail box key and two gate keys for the new house (i.e. barn we’re attempting to turn into a house).

6. What was the last thing you bought?

I am on a shopping hiatus, I can only buy stuff for the kids and as I’ve already done all of their clothes and shoes shopping the only things I’m buying lately are depressingly mundane, like groceries. So probably the last thing I bought was milk, or eggs, as we seem to consume eggs by the truckload. I may, in fact, have to invest in a couple of hens. Though I may first need to come to terms with the concept of chicken shit.

7. Are you growing anything these days?

Since it’s the beginning of summer I’m growing plenty:

and today I found this:

fledgling eggplant

8. What is under your bed?

Mostly nothing, not even dust bunnies as I have allergies. Occasionally a baseball bat, its presence is directly related to how paranoid I am at any given moment.

9. What is most important in life?

Love + health = happiness

10. What is the strangest word you used this week?
 

This is a tough one, as I regularly use strange, archaic, or completely made up words, this week I did find myself describing someone as having an “Agamemnon complex”. I may, possibly, have made this condition up.

This time I was sleeping and….

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The witching hour. That’s when the baby would wake up every night. Every night for what felt like eons but was actually only a couple of years. The witching hour in this case was 5.30am. He’d wake, have milk and a diaper change and go back to sleep till 8. So lucky, people would say, you get to sleep till eight with a baby! I didn’t feel all that lucky, never sleeping more than five hours in a row, interrupted, night after night after night. But that day, I think, I got really lucky.

The baby cried and I woke up, I stumbled down the hall to his room in the dark. I heard a noise and thought it was the cat. Damn cat.

I fed the baby, and changed him, and made my sleepy way back to bed. At seven a.m. the housekeeper burst into my room: I think someone was in the house, she said. I don’t remember how, but in the next instant I was standing in front of the baby’s room, not yet having really processed the information just given. I had my hand on the door and couldn’t go in, my husband, behind me, stepped in front and went in. The baby was fine, sleeping peacefully in his crib, and I regained the ability to breathe. Someone had, indeed been in the house; they’d come in for the car. Stupid car. They searched the house for the keys, they came upstairs and went through the husband’s pockets. Thankfully he left his clothes outside our room, they most likely heard the baby crying and went downstairs. That was the noise I heard. They took the spare, opened the gate, and left with the car and a watch that was just lying around. The police told us they were probably specialized thieves, they had targeted that car, the husband’s car had signaled a flat a few days earlier and that apparently is another method they use to take cars, create a slow flat, or the appearance of one, wait for the car to pull over and then they jack it. That didn’t work so they came looking at home.

I was lucky that day, because they chose to come searching at the witching hour. I’m a very light sleeper, had they come at any other time I would have heard them and woken up, I would have gone downstairs to kick the cat out for waking me and I would have run into the two guys searching for the keys instead. The police had an idea who they were, and they’re not known for being very nice. Efficient, yes, but not nice. I pretty much stopped complaining about the baby waking me every night after that. And we installed an alarm system.

Linking up with MamaKat’s pretty much world-famous writer’s workshop today, with the prompt “this time I was sleeping and…”

Mama’s Losin’ It

Ode to a fine old broad

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I went to Brazil last week to see my Grandmother. I usually go in February for her birthday, but I didn’t go this year cause I had just spent two months in Houston at my Mom’s and since she is slowly starting to decline I decided to take a last-minute trip to see her. Don’t get me wrong, she’s perfectly healthy, her body is just, well, old. And she’s starting to look like she may be getting done with the whole living thing… she’s started retreating into herself, not talking much, it’s like she’s in her own little world, which is fine, at her age she’s allowed to do whatever the hell she wants. And since the stars aligned just so, and I could leave the kids for a few days I decided to go see her, just in case. In case of what, I sometimes wonder, since I’m pretty sure she’s going to bury us all.

My Grandma turned 102 years old this year. 102. It constantly boggles my mind that she could possibly be that old. She was born in 1910. There were no cars back then, her preferred mode of locomotion was a horse. Seriously, a horse. There were no telephones (they existed, like cars, but nobody had them), no TVs, no computers, no wi-fi, no iPhones, no color photographs, no cameras for personal use, there were no washers, nor dryers, nor, well, electricity in the house where she was born, in fact. Because she was born at home, of course. She had something like fifteen siblings, but only eight made it to adulthood. She had four daughters from three separate husbands, only one of which died. This means she got divorced twice. Two divorces seem commonplace nowadays, but she was born at a time when women couldn’t even vote. She had my Mom when she was 43, which means she was practically decrepit for her time, and yet my granddad was ten years younger than her, At some point, for reasons beyond my understanding, she kicked him out of the house. She always worked for a living, she raised four daughters and buried three, she learned to drive, she used to smoke (and roll her own cigarettes, of course) and she quit, before the surgeon general realized that smoking was possibly not great for our health.

She never said a word when my Mother went to live in sin with a man almost thirty years her senior and proceeded to have two kids with him. In the thirty-six years that I have known her I have never, not once, seen her without dyed hair and painted nails.

with my Mom, her youngest daughter

With me, last week in Sao Paulo

She was a hard ass, she was not a coddling grandmother, I couldn’t step out of line cause she was always there, ready to tattle. I resented the crap out of her as a teenager and yet the day I turned eighteen she changed completely. My life was then my own and she never, ever commented on any of my decisions. The day I got married, she gave me all her jewelry and her blessing and then visibly relaxed.

She told me the most wondrous, amazing stories when I was a kid, I wish I had written them down, and she always sang me to sleep.

And now? Now she is doggedly hanging on to life with tooth and claw. She had a hard life, but she loved it, she still loves it, and I believe, she will love it till the end.

Dancing on her birthday with one of her physiotherapists, whom she probably would have married had he been available…

Linking up today with Shell for Pour your heart out.

Passport, ticket, bags, and a crap load of emotional baggage

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I’m writing this on a Tam airlines flight from Milan to Sao Paulo, watching the Big Bang Theory, feeling guilty.Whenever I fly with the kids I dream about the days when I flew alone, just me and my backpack. Apparently, after you have kids you become physically incapable of flying light.

I’m on my way to visit my 102 year old grandmother in Sao Paulo (Brazil), I haven’t seen her in a year, and since she’s not doing as well as she was I decided to take an impromptu trip to visit her. I’m only going to be gone for six days (two of which are travel days), and yet I managed to board the flight with a suitcase (well, two in fact, but one is just a suitcase containing another suitcase that I borrowed from my Mom when I was in Houston) and a carry on trolley along with my purse. Jesus.

Also, along with the physical baggage, there’s an entire Louis Vuitton trunk of emotional baggage. I carry classy emotional baggage.

I feel guilty for leaving the kids. I feel guilty both for the physical act of leaving and the fact that part of me was happy and excited to do it. I get to fly alone! No wrestling toddlers and strollers and enough luggage to invade Germany through the airport, no dirty looks at security checks that take an hour and a half of stripping myself and two screaming kids practically down to our underwear, no singing and playing games and bribing and trying to make over-excited, tired, whiners go to sleep without incurring death glares from all those who surround me.

I get to spend time with my Grandma and my Mom (who’s meeting me there, hence the returned luggage) like an adult, I can drink, go out to dinner, and go shopping at a moments notice. I am responsible for no one and nothing. And that makes me happy. Ah the wracking guilt, though. For the first time in years I packed the day I was leaving, I forgot half the stuff that I wanted to bring, and I didn’t care. Lately, a trip down the road entails the organizational preparation of a military incursion into hostile territory. It was just so liberating to not give a damn that I forgot my jacket.

I’ll only be gone a few days, the kids have their Dad, the Nanny and their Grandma will move in on Thursday, when they’ll probably really start to miss me, as an added distraction. I’ve even got an aunt on standby in case they get hit by the blues; plus the Husband has fun activities planned for the weekend. I’m positive they’ll be fine. And yet I feel guilty. Guilty that I didn’t take them with me, guilty because I didn’t want the expense and the hassle, guilty because they’re so little and I remember missing my parents when they were gone, guilty because I’m not doing my job. I’m basically taking a vacation from my family. And yes, I know in my mind that I’ll come back more relaxed, more patient, more fun, but in my heart I feel a little bit like a traitor.

Linking up with Shell today at Things I can’t say for Pour your heart out.

Things that make you go hmmm… Monday Listicles

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It’s Monday, and I just couldn’t resist Stasha’s listicle this week, courtesy of Erin, one half of the Sisterhood of Sensible Moms (the other half is Ellen): ten things that make you go hmmmm… Go check out the post in which she announces the topic, there’s video, and though she said not to watch it, or rather, because she said not to watch it, I did, and guess what I’ve been humming all day now? Thanks Erin, I’m stuck in the nineties and it’s my own damn fault!

So 10 things that make me go hmmmm…

1. the dog stroller. Really?

2. old ladies with pink hair. Why?

3. a child’s inability to understand the word no, despite the fact that for many of them it’s the first word said.

4. men driving fiat 500s. Don’t they want to have sex?

5. thongs. If I’m wearing panties, I’m wearing panties, if you definitely can’t see a panty line chances are I’m not wearing any, it just feels more honest this way.

6. vanilla ice cream with lots of hershey’s syrup. Hhhhhmmmmmm

7. a cold coke on a hot day.

8. Fifty Shades. I read all three, I simply cannot tear myself away from a series; I hated every one, whilst simultaneously desperately lusting after Christian Grey and wanting to stab him repeatedly (and not in a sexy s&m way). They are really, really bad, don’t read them. (if I’ve offended you with this opinion I have a review coming up that explains my sentiments)

9. my bed. It’s my haven, it’s perfect, I never want to leave it.

10. Ryan Gosling. He actually makes me go hmm, hmmm, hmmmm

Now, if only I could get that damn song out of my head!

I’ll marry you

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The other day I had the following conversation with the Boy as he was sitting on my lap cuddling before bed:

Mama what’s in that box?

It’s Sister’s christening outfit, you have one too.

Oh… what’s christening?

Long explanation here, which I won’t relay cause frankly I can’t remember anything other than the fact that we seem to be stuck on religion lately and I ended with: then there’s your first communion and your confirmation if you decide to do it and then you can get married and these are the sacraments (yes, I decided to leave the last sacrament out of the conversation with a four-year old).

Get married?

Yes one day when you’re old like daddy you could fall in love and decide to get married (notice what I did there?)

Okay, well, I’m going to marry sister.

Oh, baby, you can’t marry your sister.

Why not? (indignantly)

Because you can’t. (please don’t make me explain this!)

Okay, then I’ll marry you, Mama.

I’ll marry you, Mama…. How many little boys have said this in all innocence to their mothers, and how many of them have actually ended up marrying their mothers?

Oh, don’t be gross! Of course I meant women who were very similar to their mothers! I’m thinking just as many as girls who realized well into their marriages that they have, indeed, married their fathers. Life is a cliché sometimes, isn’t it? And yet my heart melted just a little bit at those words because for now, for just a short time, I’m still the center of his universe (after Sister, of course).

Linking up with Bits of Bee today for Quotable bits.

Temporary insanity due to extreme temperatures, or something along those lines.

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Since starting this new blog I’ve been trying to flex my atrophied writing muscles by attempting to post at least thrice a week, which is apparently harder than it would seem, so I’m looking for inspiration out in the ether through some of my favorite bloggers’ weekly link-ups, and what better place to be on a Thursday than MamaKat’s pretty much world-famous writer’s workshop.

This week, one of the prompts was to “write about a time you stole something”, and a very old memory came to the surface…

When I was twelve my Dad decided to move us all up to Calgary (Canada) for about a year for work, as I was already an angsty preteen (i.e. massive pain in the ass) my parents decided to spare themselves the hell that would have been having me around for the move and shipped me off to spend the summer in Italy with my aunt. I had a grand time, I got to fly to Europe by myself, I even got to switch flights in Frankfurt, where, for some reason I wasn’t carted around by a flight attendant. In retrospect, I wonder what the hell my parents were thinking letting a twelve-year old traipse off to Europe on her own like that, but it was the eighties and everyone was more reckless.

But none of this is the point of this story.

I get back to Calgary after my summer on the Italian riviera, and the harshest of realities sets in. I’m away from my friends, it’s damn cold, the days start to get shorter and by the way my Mother loathes it there. And then it starts to snow. And snow, and snow, and… you get the point. Keep in mind that I grew up in Houston, Texas where cold is 65°F. I went to a tiny French school (tiny as in all of middle school fit into one classroom), so I resorted to making up an alternate Houston life for my new friends, in which I had a twin sister, who inexplicably was left behind to fend for herself in Texas, and a whole host of other inanities which I thought would make me seem more interesting in the circumstances. This entirely too long preamble to say that I wasn’t adjusting to the move very well.

Anyway, every day at lunch we were allowed to leave school and go to the nearby park, on the way we would stop at a small Korean convenience store for candy or ice cream or something. Again, not entirely sure why they let a group of thirteen year olds out of school unsupervised. And, I don’t know how it started, if on a dare or what, but every day we would steal stuff from the convenience store. A candy bar, a bag of chips, a soda… we would always buy something, but we stole more than we ever bought. We’d go outside and compare our loot and laugh at how unbelievably daring and cool we were. And the store owner knew. I still remember a look he gave me one day, I don’t know why he never said anything, but the simple memory of that look brings me shame to this day.

Soon after, we stopped going to that convenience store and maybe halfway into February when my Mother realized that the snow would just never stop falling and the days, it seemed, would never get longer, she threatened divorce and we moved back to Houston, to my old school and my old life.

I never, not once, stole anything again. I still wonder why I did it in the first place.

On a side note, Calgary is a lovely city, the weather is indeed abysmal but there are things that more than make up for it, but my Mom is Brazilian, she hadn’t even seen snow till well into her twenties, she simply isn’t built to live it subarctic climes.

Mama’s Losin’ It

The hours go slow, but the years they go so fast

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Cliché, I know. But I hate seeing my kids growing up! I’m not in a big rush to let go of the baby, toddler, preschooler phase, I don’t mind diapers and bottles and late night calls for water. Well, honestly, at this point I could probably live with eight hours of uninterrupted sleep… but I don’t mind the little “annoyances” for lack of a better word, of having small children. What I do mind is this constant anxiety I have at the fact that every minute that ticks by they’re getting older and moving inexorably away from me. I can’t tell if it’s selfishness, insecurity or what that stems these feelings but I have them, I don’t want my kids to grow up. So I let them reach their milestones at their own pace, I found myself asking my three-year old if he was absolutely, positively sure he wanted to be out of his diapers already, I try to let them be babies for as long as I possibly can. The logical consequence of this reticence of mine is, of course, that they both do everything early, they walked, talked and ran early, they tried new foods and were ready for more grown up games before their time. So I guess the joke’s on me.

The years, they really do go by so fast, and the harder I try to hold on to them the faster they go.

Ironically, though, the days, they go so slow. And I get frustrated and upset and irritable just like any other mother. It’s infuriating. Here I am not wanting them to grow up, but rolling my eyes at their tantrums, yelling at their messes, sighing in frustration at their fighting. Probably not enjoying their childish antics as much as I should, or could. In fact, as I’m standing over them pissed off for some reason or another I can see my future self regretting the stupid little things that so make me angry now but that are indelible signs of their babyhood. And I wonder why does everything have to be so fraught with contradictions? I wish I could just let go and enjoy the moments that I have, that I could shut off my brain, that I could look at the present without all the baggage from the past and anxiety for the future.

The years, they go so fast, as for the days though, I wonder if their going slow is just an illusion because we’re so caught up in living life we don’t see it slipping through our fingers. These small people we’re entrusted with turning into adults, they are little for such a short time…

Linking up today with Shell at Things I can’t say.

Monday Listicles – Home sweet home

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I’m at a bit of a loss with Stasha’s listicles this week, ten words that describe your home… because we just recently bought what will someday soon become our very first home that we own and not rent. But right now, it’s not much of a house. So do I describe my future home, now that I’m a proud homeowner, or do I describe the house I’ve been renting for the past six years, where my kids were born and that is currently my “home”. Hmmm…. Maybe a little bit of both….

First a look to the past:

1. family – the house we live in now is where we started our family

2. bittersweet – I’m a little sad that this house that holds so many memories isn’t our homestead

3. adulthood – though the husband and I had lived together in two other apartments prior to this house, this is the one we actually tried to turn into a home, our first home as adults (took us long enough!)

4. fear – though this house is in no way to blame, we’ve lived some wonderful and some terrifying moments in it, so I hope that leaving it behind will also symbolically mean leaving behind the husband’s illness.

5. leaky pipes – I’ll be very happy to forget all about them!

And then a look to the future:

1. Very, very old stable cause that’s what my future home is today, built in the seventeenth century it was a house for horses, and the top floor was a house for stable boys.

2. ruin – like the ancient ruins, literally.

3. blood, sweat and tears – which is actually three words but it’s the idea that I’d like to convey of what it’s going to take to turn it into a home.

4. dream – the Husband and I have been looking at houses/apartments/land to buy for the last 10 years but never found anything that suited us.

5. compromise – because this house won’t be the perfect house, our quest for the perfect house has ended, now we own an actual, real house (or we will once we’re done renovating.)

Link up for Monday listicles!