January 15
At a friend’s hockey game or out for a walk down by the lake or curbside at the Santa Claus parade.
January 14
A hockey game means a pile of things for me. Especially Saturday Night hockey. Family together in front of the television. Warm nights inside while it is winter outside. Beer. Good food (I never eat food I am not excited about when a game is on) like chili, rapini, pizza, old cheese with crackers and soup.
Toronto hockey means commitment to a team that has tried your patience for fucking years. Yet when it comes to hockey, it’s blue and white. It’s Lupul and Kessel and iron faced Wilson and a goalie like Gustavsson who is sometimes brilliant. Yeah, it used to mean Hal Gill, a guy named Sundin, Tucker, Roberts, Cujo, Salming, Inge (where are you?), Sittler….
And tonight they may just win.
that which excites me
I often need a kick in the pants to get going on something creative. I suffer from deep-seated issues of ‘I suck’. So I read a lot of books that say Just do it when it comes to ignoring voices at the back of my head that tell me That is terrible and you Have NO talent.
I discovered a book in my post Christmas shopping. It is called ’365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life!’.
Noah Scalin created 365 skull-themed projects. His challenge to us who read his book is: do the same (except maybe something else besides skulls).
I thought for weeks about what I wanted to do and what would inspire me enough to create something every day for the next 365 days.
I decided to focus on That Which Excites Me. Which sounds sexual in a way, but is anything but (unless I have to draw Eric Bana at some point which is highly likely).
It’s what makes me smile that day, or feel a bit more buoyant. Or maybe it makes me cringe or grimace. It is something that stands out for me that day. It will sometimes be quite silly. Not always deep.
I’m not sure this is going to change my life (especially with an exclamation point!). But it will make me work.
So I start posting tomorrow. I started the project on January 14, but I wanted to get a few under my belt before I went public. In case I was immediately a big failure. So far, so good…
january blue
Seems lately there are so many geese flying overhead. They are moving north. Winter hasn’t really even come (a man on the street today told me he just came from the East Coast and the snow is up to here). Shouldn’t the geese be moving south or is that an antiquated idea?
Riding a high from a great Value Village score, the house is quiet as my son plays at another boy’s house and my daughter studies for a test in her room. Post Christmas is neat, empty, clean, quiet, light blue.
The moon in the sky the other morning….
I made the kids stop eating Cheerios and look. It was like the setting sun except it was 7:30 in the morning and it was the moon.
I think, even when we don’t officially proclaim them to be resolutions, we make them in our heads anyway. Mine is to be less aware. I’m going to be coolly inattentive. We’ll see how that goes.
BTW- I went to Starbucks and had a most delightfully waited-on experience.
are there things I don’t like about Christmas?
I go on the Jezebel site a lot. I recently noticed they had an article on Things I Hate About Christmas. It included things like gift cards (and I love them!!), mistletoe (how can you hate that?) and old-timey carolers (which I am fine with as long as no one makes ME dress up like that).
So I was thinking: what would my list be? I love so many things that I hear other people criticize. I love shopping at Christmas time. I love listening to the same Christmas music and watching the same Christmas specials. I love coloured Christmas lights and Christmas trees and I love saying Merry Christmas.
This is what I came up with:
1. I really really don’t like that Paul McCartney song ‘Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time’. I figure that is the background music to some really bloody, horrible gorey plot of revenge, madness and psychopathy.
2. Grass. I am conflicted. I hate driving in snow and I love the mild weather right now. But I really hate the idea of a green Christmas.
3. Christmas cake. This may come as a duh to most, but I spent years LOVING Christmas cake. It was always one of my presents under the tree as well as a birthday present so I could start eating early. But I grew out of it a few years back. I still get them wrapped under the tree but I don’t eat them anymore – I give them to my Dad.
4. Tinsel. We put tinsel on our tree when I was growing up and my mom was very particular about how many strands went on each branch (three). My child version of me grew very frustrated. So my grown-up version of me renounced tinsel. Too much bother.
5. December 26. I am not sure that this technically counts but I hate Boxing Day. Why? Christmas is over. 365 days till Christmas. I’m always a little sad. I have to stop myself from taking down the tree that morning, as I hate the reminders. I always figured I would grow out of this someday. I haven’t.
Merry Christmas.
4:30
4:30 in the morning is very quiet. Also very dark.
My cat watches me from over there. She thinks I have come down to feed her. I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept drifting from my Stones bio and I wandered downstairs by the light of my son’s nightlight.
I haven’t turned the tree lights on. It stands by the back window, glittering with silver and gold and pink and blue and green balls. The angel stands straight.
I’m going to be 47 tomorrow.
It is true what they say, how inside your head you are still a kid. I may know how to pay bills online and I can drive and I can feed my kids and fill the fridge with nutritious (mostly) food. But inside me, I am still scared a lot. I am dreamy and wishful and awkward and emotional. I struggle to figure people out and I struggle to figure myself out.
When I talk with my daughter, I don’t feel so much older than she is. I may be more realistic (hate that word) which is part of growing up. But I know her confusions and her embarrassments. I love hearing the things that make her giggle.
You don’t giggle when you are almost 47 the way you giggle when you are 10.
My cat is gone. It is cold at 5 in the morning in our house.
frost
I dropped my son off at school early this morning. I got out of the car with him. He walked well ahead of me. I watched him put his knapsack by his portable steps. Another boy was there.
This boy has never been in my son’s class before. My son likes hanging out with him. He told me this boy is usually early too.
“Put your hat and mitts on!” I yelled after my son.
I watched them chat as my son put his hat and mitts on. Then they made their way up the stairs and away from me toward the bigger pavement portion. But they moved off the pavement to the walkway, and headed down the hill, still chatting. Then they walked onto the grass.
I thought, They aren’t supposed to be on the grass in the morning. The rule is, Pavement only before the first bell.
I don’t know why.
But as it was early, no teachers were yet on duty. So they walked on the frost-burned grass.
Another student asked me as she passed: “Is that snow or frost?”
I told her: “Frost.”
It was thick frost this morning.
My son and his friend found the frozen trail of water that ran past the soccer posts. He followed his friend and they stepped carefully along, talking still. Then they turned back, toward the soccer posts. They ran their hands up two different frosty posts and then shook their hands/mitts. Water flew off.
They came back up the hill and headed again to their portable. The stair railings were also covered in frost and he and his friend picked a railing each and ran their hands along it. They collected just tiny bits of snow. Miniature snowballs. Then they tried to throw them at each other. The frost melted in the air.
They laughed.
It was busier. Their teacher came.
I watched another teacher show up and immediately reprimand a child that was headed off the pavement, onto the grass.
I don’t think my son and his friend were looking to make trouble. It was all so natural, yet just as I had recognized, they must have also felt: We aren’t supposed to be here.
Way to get away with something, if ever so small.
Good for them.
whoops (should be the title of my bio)
I used a word I shouldn’t have.
I was walking the yard and some girls came to complain about a boy who was bugging them. In an effort to make sure I was thinking of the right boy, I said: “The chubby one?”
I immediately regretted it, explained to the girls that I should not have used the term, apologized, searched for a better term (sturdy?) and moved on.
Yet I sit at home, riddled with guilt.
It is tough living in this time. I suddenly feel the way my Dad must have felt when he called a grown woman a “girl” and I got all in his face.
School is the worst for walking so carefully and then suddenly stepping on a bomb.
Once a teacher asked if I knew of a certain student and I said:
“You mean, the tall black girl?”
I was immediately shushed and told the school does not like labels.
But I wasn’t labeling; I was describing. If I write a story and a person is black, I will write that they are black.
If they are chubby, I will write that they are chubby.
But I’m not stupid. I get it.
Just tell me that I’m allowed to make mistakes. Right?
needle
Driving my son to school this morning, I bring up the topic of flu shots.
I got my flu shot yesterday because I was getting bloodwork done already. When I saw the flu shot signs, that grey veil came over me: Crap.
My kids are really ridiculous (f*#@ing infuriating) when it comes to getting their flu shots.
So I suggest to my son:
“Let’s get it over with – let’s go right now and get it done and then you are set.”
GASP from the back seat when I said “go right now”.
“No!” he shrieks.
I roll my eyes. This is a talent I have perfected over time, rolling my eyes while driving.
“You have to get it done at some time,” I tell him.
He immediately wants to know when his sister is going to get hers.
“Next week some time, that has nothing do with you!”
Patience drying up…
“Why do I have to get a flu shot?” he whines from the back. He is actually cowering.
“For God’s sake,” I yell, “you behave like you’re going to get a knife through the heart!”
Do you ever wonder what people see as they are driving past you and you are yelling at your kids? Must not be pretty.
“Do you think Mommy likes taking you to get your flu shot?” I ask of him.
He stubbornly looks out the window.
Patience gone.
“No! No I don’t!” I tell him. “So maybe you could f*#@ing help me out and say: Sure Mommy let’s go get my flu shot now, I’ll be a big brave man.”
I breathe.
We get to kiss and ride. He opens his door and races out.
“Bye Mommy!” he yells back.
My arm really hurts, by the way.
