Holy Sh*t!

Advisor: Due to the graphic nature of this story, people without children should be warned the contents may deter you from ever having children.

During the eight years of having children I have seen some pretty scary things. I have seen barf on my furniture (tons of it) and barf all over the kid’s beds (and the kids). Eric and I have also been barfed on too many times to count.  There has been lots of pee in beds and poo in underwear. I’m sure by now you’ve got the picture. But nothing, no nothing, could have prepared me for what I saw this week.

We recently decided it was time to potty train our two year old. We went cold turkey on her. We took away her diapers, put her in underwear and that was that. There were tons of accidents but she made quick progress. We sometimes let her run around with nothing on at all because it just seemed easier and less messy.  How ironic.

On this night, I was in the kitchen and Eric was upstairs. Chloe was also upstairs but she was unattended. All I remember hearing was Eric yelling ( had screaming but Eric didn't like that), “She’s pooped all over the carpet!”  Calm down I thought to myself. Have you never seen your kid’s poop before? It wasn’t until I rounded the corner that I realized the carnage that had taken place.

The smell hit me first. It was as if I had walked into a wall of shit.  Then I saw it. Well, really I just saw part of it. There, on the stairs was a dripping puddle of poo. This was no grab a Kleenex, pick it up and throw it in the toilet poo.  As I made my way farther up the stairs the realization of what had taken place sank in. There was diarrhea everywhere. There was mounds of it on two stairs and then, what seemed like, a hundred more, smaller markings.

I was in shock. This was going to be impossible to clean up. Cue Eric and I begin adult tantrums over how we were going to deal with this. Conveniently, Eric was on the way out the door. His parting words to me were, “Good luck”.  I would have killed him right there but I didn’t want to step in the mine field of shit that lay in front of me. Instead, I maturely yelled after him, “I’M NOT CLEANING THIS UP!!!”

That was obviously an empty threat. My first thought was to grab a claw hammer and start ripping up the carpet. This seriously seemed easier than actually trying to clean it. I went to the cupboard and we were, of course, out of carpet cleaner. I grabbed my Forever New, a product I bought about ten years ago meant for cleaning my bras (as if I have time to give my bras special attention).

With Chloe standing beside me practically taunting me, I began the seemingly impossible task of cleaning up all what seemed like a year's worth of crap.  I was cursing everything - this stupid house, stupid Eric and this stupid, white carpet.  Yes, in my naïve youth, I too put down white carpet.  Chloe’s taunting turned to cheerleading as she would adorably say, “right there, right there” every time she found a new shit stain.

After what seemed like an eternity I had made some headway.  The carpet had been scarred for life for sure but the scars had become faded shadows of something terrible, something I wanted to put in my past. I really thought I had seen it all but that night taught me otherwise.  Poo in the toilet will be welcomed in this house from now on.

Six Weeks of Hell

Here are the tips my sister offered me on my first night of boot camp:

1.       Work out with intensity

2.       Wear black

3.       Don’t make weird faces

4.       Don’t make funny noises

Whoa. What? I hadn’t thought about making weird faces and funny noises.  I was nervous enough about working out at all.  For almost a decade I have considered walking around the river a serious form of exercise.  Now I was going to be doing something that could potentially make me look and sound like a crazed woman.  But it was time. It was time to get back some muscular strength and give my body a fighting chance as it slowly approaches forty.

We gathered in the gym on the first night. There were ten women in all. The anxiety was palpable. About half of us had children and the others I affectionately refered to as skinny bitches.  We eyed each other up a little and checked out everyone else’s workout gear.  I was in all black as were a couple of the other moms.  We knew how to hide the bulge. The skinny bitches didn’t need to worry about rule number two.  After a little pep talk we got down to it. Here is a summary of the work outs so far.

Session One – We are sweating, exhausted and ready to collapse and go home when our instructor says, “Nice warm up ladies.” 

I heard one of the other girls say she thought her uterus was going to fall out. A promising sign of progress, I hoped.

After what feels like a hundred lunges I was terrified to have to get out of bed the next morning.  And, as I expected, the next day is excruciating. It is painful to get out of bed, to walk down the stairs and to sit and get up from the toilet.   This continues well into the next day.

Session Two – One of the participants falls twice during two different exercises.  It served as comic relief (that sounds mean) but was a stark reminder of the dangers associated with getting off of the couch.

Session Three – Mid-way into the warm-up I pulled a muscle from mid ham-string to butt.  It rendered my right leg almost immobile leaving my left (already exhausted) leg to have to do all of the work.  All along I had feared a back injury.  It would have to be my ass that gave out first. But I wasn’t about to give in to the very loud voice in my head screaming, “Quit now! Save yourself!”

Let me take a moment to express that as well as doing boot camp I have also taking to eating only healthy food since Easter.  At this point, Easter feels like it was a decade ago. No pizza, waffle, pancake, cookie or anything else worth eating has passed my lips. I was eating spinach salad with one and a half boiled eggs for lunch until on the sixth day I started to gag.  I have been eating plain Greek yogurt for breakfast which I can only get down with excessive amounts of fruit.  I have forsaken my favourite beverage – tea, bag in, two milks and one and a half sugars – for green tea.  Kill me now.  And do you want to know how much weight I had lost last weigh-in? ONE POUND.  All of this sacrifice for one stinking pound.  But I won’t be beaten. Oh no. I will carry on until I have lost at least four pounds at which point I will celebrate by going back to eating exactly what I was four pounds ago.  Back to the workouts…

Session Four – While performing one of the exercises which involved bicep curls while running on the spot and kicking my heels up to kick my butt at the same time I became very self-conscious at the thought of all of my body parts flapping everywhere. I went to my happy place, got through it and put it out of my mind. The next day at school, one of my grade eight male students asked me if I liked my work out last night and proceeded to mock me (for the rest of the day) doing the very exercise I wouldn’t even want to see myself doing.  Time to cover the windows…and wear two sports bras.

Session Five – This workout saw us doing a group challenge and boy were we up for it.  We aren’t even half-way through and we are already feeling stronger and more confident.  There was a broken nail and a little lost blood but it was otherwise an inspiring night of fitness.

Five nights of workout behind me and it would appear that this whole working out thing is becoming part of my daily routine and something I actually look forward to. While sitting on the couch eating a bag of salt and vinegar chips is still my idea of the perfect night, this had offered me a glimpse of a healthier and stronger me.  Who knows what the next six weeks will bring. All I know is I’ll be keeping a straight face and wearing black.

Capturing Creativity

Creativity – for some it’s an elusive term reserved for artsy friends who paint and talk about theatre.  Most of us believe that we either are, or are not, born creative.  And while it is true that many people have a much easier time expressing themselves creatively, a new book would suggest that we all have creative minds and it is more about recognizing creative moments than thinking only certain people are blessed with ah-ha moments.

I have not yet read Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine: How Creativity Works (a small oversight considering I am writing about it) but I have been reading a lot about it in a series of articles in The Globe and Mail about creativity.  It is really quite fascinating and it confronts many of the myths we have about those ‘creative types’.  In the closing paragraphs of his book, Lehrer says, “The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system…”  We are all hardwired to be creative so why is it that so many feel they don’t have a creative bone in their body? 

Creativity, to me, is the physical expression of a feeling.  And those ‘creative types’ know how to express those feelings when they have them.  Whether it be through art, music, theatre, woodworking, scrapbooking, writing, design (you get the idea) people who are creative seem to know how to instinctively channel the moments of inspiration they get.  Maybe they feel more confident in revealing that side of themselves. But how did that confidence get there?  Maybe they were nurtured in a creative environment. But there are too many examples to prove this might only be a small contributing factor.

Whatever the science is that makes some people seem more creative than others is beyond me (a good reason to actually read Lehrer’s book).  And does it really matter if some people are never able to express themselves creatively? I think it does. I think it matters because everyone is made up of the feelings and thoughts and visions they have. And putting them out there, whether others see it, read it, look at it or not gives those feelings and thoughts and visions a sense of completion.  It validates them and makes them real.

I think creativity also speaks to the importance of the arts.  And when we appreciate the creativity and talents in others, we may have the opportunity to feel something we didn’t know we were capable of.  And while in the presence of someone else’s creative expression, a creative moment may be born to us. 

I was once at a dinner party hosted by a man I really respect and admire (hello Kelly Walker! Google him!). He is the kind of person that when he speaks you just want to listen because he is so full of wisdom and warmth. Anyway, after dinner, he sat down to play on his grand piano – among other things, he is an accomplished pianist.  When he started to play and sing (he also has a magnificent voice) I was overcome by the unexpected emotion that swelled in me.  It was as if the song and his voice and the piano reached right to my core and grabbed hold of me. Tears were pouring down my face. And let’s be clear – I don’t cry in public – I barely cry in private. I have no idea where this raw emotion came from. It just came and I went with it.

As I looked around the room, I expected to find everyone else having an equally emotional moment.  But no, mine were the only eyes weeping – a slightly uncomfortable moment. Point is, the music that night spoke to me and I really can’t explain why. But I loved feeling something so strong and it made me want to express myself in some, even insignificant, way.

To those of you whose creativity seeps from every pore – my enduring admiration. And if you haven’t found your creative outlet at least be open to the possibility that, after all these years, you may just have the same amount of creative bones as all of those artsy friends.

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Here is the poem I wrote about that night and the piano…

Streets of London

The delicate notes of the piano ring

The pianist moves and starts to sing

The most beautiful notes hang in the air

A moment captured, my soul bare

The piano man and his haunting song

Tell me that my tears aren’t wrong

I’ll remember this time, when a song so moved me

And took me on this most beautiful journey.

Don't Talk to Strangers

The Tori Stafford case has generated a lot of discussion amongst parents on the amount of freedom we give, or do not give, our kids.  How much is too much? What are they ready for and when? What do I let my kids do in comparison to other parents?  Many factors come in to play when we define our ‘comfort zone’ with our kid’s freedom.  And these include things like our own personal experiences as children.  What is acceptable for me may not (and is not) acceptable with all of my friends.

In general, I seem to be a little more liberal in the freedom I am allowing my eight year old son.  He walks to and from school without an adult – he is with at least one friend.  He is allowed to cross the train tracks in our backyard and play in the field behind our house and the rock pit a few houses away.  He is allowed to ride his bike around our neighbourhood and even go to the park near our house without one of us with him.   I have a very good friend whose knees would tremble just reading this list. 

And the details surrounding the Stafford case would seem to tip in her favour of more protective parenting. Just like with the Paul Bernardo case in the 90s, it would appear to be a reminder that our children are not safe: that they could be ripped from your life just walking home from school by a complete stranger.

I recently read an interesting article that said statistics don’t support that our worst fears would ever come true.  It gave an American figure stating that the chances of a child being abducted and killed by a stranger are about one in a million.  This is comforting news.  Still, I am not sure that it is enough to counter the fear that your child could be that one in a million.

I grew up spending my weekends on a farm. I was left largely unattended with my sisters and cousins for hours at a time.  We would be in the barns jumping from haystack to haystack. We climbed ladders that seemed as if they could collapse at any moment.  I spent entire afternoons at the creek trying to make rafts that wouldn’t sink. For Pete’s sake didn’t my parents think about the fact that I could have drowned? 

Well, actually, I know my mom would have thought of that and would never have allowed me to be at a creek by myself. But it was my Dad who took us to the farm each weekend and while he helped with the work, we were left to our own devices.  No, my mom probably wouldn’t have had any of it due to her over-protective nature.  And how sad it would be to have those moments, those times of magic and adventure, taken from me in an attempt to protect me.

And it is that sense of adventure and magic and freedom and independence that I want to give my own children. I don’t actively think of these things when I send them out the back door and tell them to be careful. It just feels right to me.  The first chapter in Sidney Poitier’s memoir The Measure of a Man has always resonated with me and I have thought of it often over the years.  He talks about growing up in the Bahamas and how even as a child as young as four or five he had the freedom to roam and explore. It sometimes resulted in consequence but it mostly resulted in fun and learning and a natural sense of understanding right from wrong.

We are bombarded with information and news about the terrible things that could happen to our children.  And sometimes we are crippled by that fear.  Should I be more protective? Should others be less protective? Obviously we all do what we are comfortable with which means there is no right answer.  How much freedom is too much? I have no idea.  And I really don’t have to worry anyway because while my son is off playing in the field with his friend, his friend’s mother is there to watch over the both of them.

A link to the article I mentioned:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/marcus-gee/statistics-dont-support-over-protective-parenting/article2382210/