Adoration of the Sacrament: Praying and Preying

I'm locking my doors these days.

You do that when there was an attempted murder and abduction on your block.

I live across the street from a Catholic church. On Fridays from sunrise to Saturday's sunrise, they have what is called the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This is where they leave a blessed communion wafer up at the altar, thus meaning that the body of Christ is there, open for all to see. A handful of parishoners sign up to be at the church at all times; "You don't want Jesus to be alone," my mother says.

This past Friday at about 6:40 pm - not late - a woman was in the church alone when a man walked in and asked her for some coffee money. She told him she had none but instructed him how to find the priests.

He left but came back shortly with a big shard of glass and demanded the purse off the woman. After he found she truly had no money, he tried to take her. She managed to get away but he cut her on the back of her head. She called police and they found him at the park just over the bridge.

I talked to the pastor today about the incident. Apparantly, he was a drifter; not even from town nor had he any familial ties around here. "It doesn't shock me that someone would do that. What is shocking is that it would happen in our town," the priest said.

Hey, padre, if our county can be the number one crystal meth producers in Ontario, you can bet that there are a whack load of meth users too.

All the same, I wonder if the church is going to rethink the Adoration policy. I'm rethinking my own policy of allowing my children to play on the front yard.

Preparing to Say Goodbye to Superdiaperbaby

I think we turned a corner.

Since Thursday, Baby Boy has been using the potty more times than not. He still wants to wear diapers but, woo-hoo, I think he's only had six dirty nappies in four days. He even woke up dry on Saturday.

Mind you, I don't know how diligent I should be. He doesn't want to wear underwear or go commando, so I don't want to push my luck and have this be a "one step forward, two steps back" kind of exercise.

Speaking of shit, the federal government has a preliminary appointment of a new supreme court judge. Before the guy gets instated, MPs will get to ask him questions and then decide if he's an appropriate appointee.

Critics say this may lead to the American way, where it just ends up being another political game where whatever party has the majority will obviously approve of a judge that falls in line with their party's agenda.

Granted, this could very well happen, but I like the openness of it. Sure, we've elected some serious yahoos, but if the guy is some anti-choice, bigotted homophobe, wouldn't you like to know ahead of time?

Madonna, Don't Tell Me You Have Dishpan Hands Too!

Madonna told a reporter in London, "I must admit, I have to pat myself on the back. It's not easy to be married, to have a successful career, to have children." She was commenting on how difficult life can be being married to someone as ambitious as she is.

Whatever.

You think you have it rough, Madge? I just wonder, have you ever changed a diaper or mopped barf off the floor at 3 a.m. or is that the work of one of your round-the-clock nannies? Have you had to buy your family clothes or are you still relying on the freebies the scads of designers send you? Have you ever found yourself rushing to make it on time to pick up Lola and Rocco from school because of a meeting that ran late or that your minivan was stuck in traffic or because you ended up picking the slow line at the grocery store again? Do you and Guy have the money to treat eachother to date night every once in a while? I heard that's important, you know.

Yeah, you deserve a pat on the back, honey. Except when I give it to you, it'll be more like a shove into my seemingly bottomless laundry pile. Have you ever seen one of those before?

I'll Pass on That Steak For Now, Thanks.

Guess what movie we saw on Friday?

I think Middle Child drew an excellent Captain Jack Sparrow. He also drew a ton of skeletons.

It was practice for seeing the Body World exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre on Saturday with Baby Sister and her boyfriend. Middle Child couldn't have been keener. He wanted to see everything and wanted me to read every sign that accompanied the displays. There were tons of medical people visiting and a handful of them would interrupt us and answer Middle Child's questions (thank you ENT doctor from Buffalo, NY and the angioplasty nurse from McMaster-Chedoke Hospital in Hamilton).

He got to hold an adult brain as well as two livers (one diseased and one healthy). He had no qualms about viewing the pregnant woman display but had more interest in the embryos from weeks four to eight (thank you U of T medical student for the quick run-down on the neurological developments at each stage).

Daughter, on the other hand, got freaked out and left with Baby Sister. I had her calmed down initially, but other people's comments were sinking in to her and she started to walk around with her eyes shut, humming to herself.

She had the best time at every other part of the Science Centre - "That was funner than Wonderland!" - but in the car, she started to worry. "Does this mean I don't want to be a doctor?" We assured her that she has lots of time to decide what she wants to do when she's a grown-up and that, maybe in time, seeing real bones and organs won't disturb her any more. She said she was used to seeing these things covered in blood, like they're shown on TV, "but here they looked like zombie meat."

I didn't have the opportunity to get Baby Sister's boyfriend's take on it. He was a butcher.

Mother Nature is a Bitch

I am the picture of calm.

I am the picture of calm.

I am the picture of calm.

If I say it enough, will it be true?

The schools in the entire county are closed for the second snow day this scholastic year. Not too bad; pandemonium has only broken out now at nearly 10 am.

It started out as a slow burn when I asked Middle Child if he really wanted to go to the Body World exhibit tomorrow as planned. My sister emailed saying that Daughter told her he didn't want to go. As it turned out, she was trying to ditch her brother.

Now, Daughter is yelping and running around the room with Middle Child standing beside me calling her "poopy-head" and "stupid girl" and "stinky fish pizzahead".

Meanwhile, Baby Boy is rolling around in my just folded clean laundry, bare-assed naked, happy as a pig in sunshine because he used the potty twice this morning.

Now, I Must Clean

I was given some free tickets to a Carlos del Junco gig here in town (thanks Jules!) and took my baby sister. Not my kind of music, but I appreciated the artistry. Seriously, they were all supreme musicians with that wonderful ability to really tell a story out of their instruments. Baby sister loved the $4 beer and wine. Can't get that in the big city!

I had my middle sister and her family, as well as my parents and the aforementioned baby sister and her boyfriend over on Sunday to celebrate Daughter and Baby Boy's birthday. I was wondering why it felt like I didn't have enough food; that I was missing something. I was slapped with the answer this morning as I stared at the tubs of meatballs in Diana Sauce in the freezer. I now have three pounds of the stuff. I'm thinking meatball sandwiches tonight.

Baby sister's boyfriend gave all the kids rather big bags of candy. Middle sister's kids liked it well enough but my three tore right into the Pop Rocks, Bazooka Joe, Fizz, licorice, etc.

Candy, cake, cousins and gifts. It was a banner day at the house.

He Won't Grow Up To Be a Nutritionist

I give the kids the option to choose their birthday dinner. I thought Baby Boy would certainly choose McDonalds or something, but he didn't.

"I want crackers."

"Crackers?"

"Yeah, the fish ones."

"Anything else?"

"I can pick more? Okay, crackers and cinnamon rolls."

This Sucks

They're making vacuum cleaners in vibrant colours now. I came home with this one and Husband sighed, "Couldn't you have found a normal-looking one?" In all honesty, I could not.

I went to the store with Daughter. She wanted the one that was apple green with silver sparkles.

We saw Nanny McPhee two weekends ago with all the kids. It was Baby Boy's first theatre experience and he did okay; we just need to remind him about a quiet voice inside.

This weekend wasn't as much fun. We "visited old people" as Husband puts it.

We first hit his grandmother who was getting ready to celebrate her 87th birthday. She implored my kids to eat all of her food that was expiring soon.

Then we went to my grandmother's who had a wicked tikka masala ready for us. It was the first time she made it and it was the best I've ever ate. She told me her son (he's a jackass and I don't call jackasses "uncle") possibly has the beginnings of Parkinson's Disease. What goes around, comes around. I hope he suffers miserably and then dies alone.

We went to my parents' and, to our surprise, my sister's kids were there. My kids are really great about visiting people. They're very polite and they find their own fun, but I know it can be a drag for them. Seeing their cousins, even for an hour, made it all worthwhile.

It was raining when we left for the 90 minute drive home. When we got there, we were greeted with a whollop of wet snow which bent two of our spruce trees in the front yard.

"Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."

Baby Boy had a cold Monday and I gave him some medication which knocked him out after lunch.

He was resting comfortably when I got the phone call.

"Jennifer? Hi, this is (Middle Child's teacher). Um, we had a little incident and the principal needs you to come to the school immediately."

It turned out that after gym class, Middle Child's teacher annointed him with the seemingly prestigious role as "the caboose" in the line-up back to their classroom. One boy decided he'd rather be the caboose. Middle Child told him that he couldn't; that it was his turn. Then the boy pushed Middle Child to the ground.

Even when he was a baby, Husband and I nicknamed the kid "The Hulk" because he'd be all mild-mannered but then the shit would hit the fan and he'd totally lose his cool.

That's what happened on Monday.

Middle Child got up, pinned the kid to the wall and bit him on the shoulder, leaving a pretty decent mark.

The teacher and principal were great about the whole thing. "He's not entirely to blame, is he?" the principal said to me when I got there. "Yeah, but it doesn't excuse his reaction," I replied.

I took him home where he wrote a letter of apology to the boy ("I'm sorry I bit you. The next time I will solve my problem with words," he wrote. "I'm not going to say he was right or anything because he wasn't right," he explained). We agreed to a suitable punishment (no Star Wars anything for five days) and then I called Husband to concur.

When I explained what had happened, Husband proudly said, "That'll teach that kid not to mess with The Hulk."

Gian Ghomeshi turned me into a 10-year-old

My cousin used to have this husband who used to play songs he'd like over and over again. I remember once, during a ride back home from babysitting his son, he had Eric Clapton's "Tears From Heaven" (I think that's the title) on a loop. We must have heard that song fifteen times in a row.

Okay, my uncle had recently died and the guy was obviously bereaved, but c'mon. I always thought that practice was unusual and, frankly, a tad dramatic. I knew a lot of people doing it ... when they were 10.

Now I found myself doing the same with "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by Stars the other day. I heard it on The National Playlist on CBC Radio and I was gobsmacked.

What is my attraction to the song? Is it that the lyrics are something I can relate to as I'm empathising with my sister and the on-going divorce hassles she's experiencing? Is it the odd arrangement? Is it because I'm PMSing?

Yet Another Grey Hair

Maybe I was tempting fate.

When I pick the kids up from school, most times, I let Middle Child (always out first) play in the front of the school while I chit chat with the other parents as I wait for Daughter (always one of the last kids to leave).

Today, I went to my friend's house with Baby Boy. She lives around the corner from the school so she suggested that I leave Baby Boy with her and I would go get all our kids and bring them back. When I got there, Middle Child's class was the first to be dismissed.

"Where's (Baby Boy)?" Middle Child asked.

I told him and then added we would all walk to my friend's house together with her boys, whom Middle Child thinks the sun rises and sets upon.

"Can I play outside?" he asked and, of course, I said he could, thinking he'd remember my rule of "be sure my eyes can see your eyes."

Yeah, right.

He was there one minute. The next, he was gone. Thankfully, the three remaining kids met me right at that moment, so we went looking for him. "Oh, he probably just went to my house," sluffed off the younger of my friend's children.

And he was right.

Needless to say, Middle Child has been punished.

Needless to say, I'm rethinking my allowance of letting him leave my side.

Just Pricing Really Big Bats For Now

Wanna hear smooth?

Daughter sits near this boy in class. On Friday, he asked if this boy she always plays with is her boyfriend.

"No!" she laughed. "We're too young for that stuff!" (Ah, good! She listens!)

"Well, when you are old enough, can I be first in line?"

He phoned today and asked if Daughter wanted to have a playdate Sunday. I told her he could come to our house instead.

I picked up the kids from school and was met by my friend Slowplum.

"Did you read your emails yet?"

Turns out A Million Little Pieces may not be entirely memoirific. The Smoking Gun went looking for some mug shots of the author for their large collection when, ho ho, they couldn't find much. The one they did get looks like James Frey was a little hungover but that's about it: just some preppy who smoked a little pot and drank a bit too much Rolling Rock, not some freakazoid crackhead, oozing toxic crap out of every orafice. But, whatever, looks can be deceiving.

A few things in the book had me wondering about its veritability, but they weren't the things that were picked on by The Smoking Gun. No, I questioned how a boy from the suburbs from a nice family, who was loved, could get into the shit as far as he said he did. I questioned how someone who was so fucked up from the tons of different drugs he was purportedly doing could graduate from university.

Real, fake or somewhere in-between, A Million Little Pieces is still a great read. One could question the written tales of ancient history too. I'm not one to poo-poo the author with possibly taking liberties with facts. Rather, I'm more discouraged because the author took liberties with basic rules of punctuation.

It's like grammar karma!

And the cover is gorgeous!

If you're a comment-reading person, you ought to know that my friend Slowplum was true to her word. She brought me some peppermint bath salts. She labelled the container "Bath Candy" and Middle Child confessed that he took a piece. "That was the worst candy I've ever tasted!"

She also lent me a book: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

I devoured it in the course of an evening and into the night, getting into bed at 2.

The book is a memoir of Frey's experiences in rehab (Hazeldon, I would deduce). It was gut-cringing, eye-blinding and even foul-smelling. The guy must have sat down at his computer and just let it flow. You can tell it's coming from a deep, dark place of the soul.

Unlike William S. Burroughs accounts of his drug-soaked past, or that 60s era diary-esque Go Ask Alice which was required reading when I was a girl, I don't think Frey intended to scare or to gross anyone out. His account of the pain he endured getting caps and root canal without anethesia was detailed enough to put you in the chair with him but not with a mirror as well. The part of him pulling out his toenail, on the other hand, I'd rather not discuss. I'm someone who can stand the sight, sound, and smell of vomit, but that was when I put the book down and got myself a glass of water.

Being a stickler for punctuation, however, I was distracted by his complete disregard for quotation marks, commas and question marks. Ditto the freedom to capitalize just about anything (someone's House, they had Kids, my Room, the Dealer). But then again, I don't think James Joyce really got away with it either.

However, I really enjoyed it. I just went to look online to find out more about the author; see what else he has written about. Well, wouldn't you know it, it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Yeah, I could just see someone like Husband's suburban aunt reading about vomiting up chunks of stomach.

Someone found the food colouring

and gave it to Baby Boy.

Mmmm! Cheddar!

I'll be a little lighter today.

If you're an old gal like me, you'll remember Christopher Ward doing the yearly "Fromage" show in Much Music's early days. We were discussing it over New Year's dinner with deep sighs of respect and our lament of its passing. Frankly, Ed the Sock just doesn't have it quite like Chris did.

So, if you enjoy cheese like I do, please watch this video, put out in the 80s by the Calgary Flames.

And I can't stand Brett Hull so it makes it that much sweeter.

I am woman. Hear me meow.

Husband goes back to work tomorrow after having over a week off. I can't say I've seen much of him. Our Christmas is all travel. We hit my grandmother's, his grandmother's and my parents' all in two days and there are a LOT of people at these homes. So, no, I can't say I'm by his side the whole time. And when we've been home, he's holed himself with the XBox playing Madden.

Usually, I don't mind him doing his thing. Particularly after work, I know the guy needs to wind down a bit. He never brings crap home and, after his "alone time" he is always easy-going, helpful and generally in a good mood.

But I had my mother-in-law this week. And Husband had me doing all of the entertaining.

It started off okay. She didn't really want to do much, so I just made sure the kids didn't knock her out or annoy her too much. I cooked nice meals, made sure she had her bagels, cream cheese, soy milk and a never ending supply of coffee. I kept my bathrooms spotless and Pine-Sol fresh. We had a previous engagement at my cousin's where she was hosting a big family party for her son's 16th birthday, so she came to that. I guess she was fine (I told Husband to keep her company because I was expected to help out). There was a great spread. But then she broke a tooth off her third pastizzi. Even that didn't annoy her that much.

She was in pretty good spirits, if you don't count the bitching about her mom and siblings, but that's par for the course. She brought out her fortune telling cards, for lack of a better term. I'm not into that. I don't even read my horoscope. But I played along (unlike Husband who chuffed it off, calling it "bullhooey" or something like that). Middle Child loved the illustrations and I fostered his new interest by getting him a half-price calendar of "fantasy" illustrations (fairies, dragons, wizards, mermaids, etc).

We had a kid-friendly New Year's Eve party with friends and their children. I fast-forwarded the clocks by three hours so the kids could count down midnight at what really was 9 pm. The kids had a great time, allowing us moms to be more relaxed than usual (I had five or six drinks). The dads and my mother-in-law spent most of the three hours playing Scrabble, which is MIL's favourite game ever. My friend even said she enjoyed her company out on the porch for smoke breaks.

They left and, it's a blur how it started but, as we were tidying up, MIL got on the subject of Catholic education. She couldn't understand how intelligent people like my friends and I would subject our children to such archaic, expoitative and harmful teachings. "Frankly, it's a little hypocritical of you to call yourselves feminists and then support such a hurtful organization that may very well damage your precious children."

And it got better than that. Oh yes. She cut down just about everything I believed in and stood for. She mocked my opinions. She questioned my intelligence. She refuted my culture. She even, at one point, went on a litany of, essentially, what a shitty weak-assed woman I was. For example, she insisted that I wasn't at all close to nature and that would be my downfall. "I'm the champion recycler on my block," I argued. "I turn off the lights when I leave the room. The house is cooler than it could be in winter and warmer than it could be in summer. I walk my kids to school. I buy organic and locally when possible. Why do you say I'm not close to nature? Because I don't enjoy camping? Because I don't live near mountains and an ocean? I do the best I can with what I can."

Oh, but I fraternize with the masculine too much. Okay, I admit it. I love men. So, I disagreed with her. Women are not better than men. I was raised to believe that I was any man's equal. No, but, you see, I'm just not in tune enough with my feminine side. Huh? I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, an aunt, a neice. Go further. I'm creative. I'm intuitive. I'm fucking sensitive, or else I would have put my hands over my ears and walked away when she went on her rampage, just like Husband did. Don't tell me what I am and what I'm not. That was truly insulting, especially to a near 40-year-old. I'm not a child. I've had experiences and, like anyone else's, they have value. From my experiences, I have opinions which hold as much water as anyone else's.

The arguement or debate or whatever it was stemmed from the topic of organized religion, which is something I hate to discuss. I live in a community where it's nothing to blab about your church, and I find that weird and intrusive. Spirituality is a personal thing. To me, it's like telling me how you like to wipe your ass. I just don't want to know. Flip that around and I can also say I don't like to discuss my beliefs, thank you. How can I go to church and be pro-choice? Gee, I guess the same way you can protest government cutbacks to environmental issues and smoke at the same time.

She kept pressing but I wouldn't budge. All I would say is that, true, organized religion has had its moments of unholiness for certain, but billions of people in the past and present have found grace from it. For some, it gives them a set of guidelines on how to stand upright. "But that's common sense," she argued. "But some people need to be told. Not everyone is as intelligent as you are," I responded.

In the end, we saw that our feminism enacts in different ways. She wants to single-handedly change the world. And I just want to go through life doing no harm, teach that to my kids, and hope other people are doing the same. My wish is that she respects my decision as I respect and do my best to support hers. It's the womanly thing to do.

So Be Good, For Goodness Sake

Have you beennaughty or nice?

Daughter's best friend reminded her of this website. We did it last year and, boy, it was accurate. I know it's all in generalities and only has a handful of reports, but it was pretty cool. The kids bought it, anyway.

Three Hours I'll Never Get Back

Husband and I ditched the kids yesterday and caught King Kong.

What a waste of my time.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Everything that is being said about the special effects in this movie is bang-on. Frankly, the guy who played King Kong was great. I think he also did Gollum in those series of movies that, I'm told, I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't seen them.

What got me were the tiny details; the physics of it all. I mean, with all that dropping and catching and throwing around, the Naomi Watts character should have died or, at the very least, had motion sickness. Arms should have been ripped off at the sacrifice scene. And why wasn't the wind whipping around up at the top of the Empire State Building in December? And she was in a sleeveless gown.

It's kind of like taking a crazy long time to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and then doing stick figure hands on God.

Husband's rebuttal was simply put: "Jen," he sighed, "it's a movie about a 25-foot gorilla."

Staples Calendars Suck Bobo

I usually give my mother one of those calendars you get a photocopy shops where photos are enlarged on the colour copier and then coil bound with the months.

The place I usually go has a cut-off of November 30 and my sister hadn't given me any photos of her kids by then. So I scrambled for a place that would do it with a fast turn around. Staples just opened up in town and they said they'd do one in 24 hours.

True to their word, I picked it up yesterday and I'm so disappointed. Not only is there some weird photocopied smudge on my nephew's cheek (he's Mr. December), but there were no annotations for holidays nor was the coil bound the whole way. And, it's a little thing but a big thing, there was no little hole drilled at the top for hanging.

I asked if they had such a drill and the person said they didn't but I could use their 3-hole punch (why???). And then she adds, "I use thumbtacks." Even in December? Must be pretty long thumbtacks, honey.