he’s a poor boy, empty as a pocket

kelly sent me a link to this shop while i was at work the other day, and their philosophy made me cry.

It’s pretty simple, really – teaching kids to celebrate their individuality and approach the world with a compassionate spirit and sense of social responsibility is one of our very best opportunities to make the world a better place. A lot of us have spent our fair share of years on the corner, holding a picket sign wondering if we were really making an impact on anyone. And some of us have decided that maybe, just maybe, it might be easier to start from scratch – to put down the picket sign and pick up the bottle.

next week is the end of month four. we’re almost halfway to having the canadian in our arms, and i have no idea what to do. sure, i can change a diaper, i know how often babies need to eat, i know what’s safe and not safe, i’m fully prepared to be sleep deprived for the rest of my life, we’ve got all of our ideas about diapering (and not diapering) and breastfeeding and attachment parenting, and we’ve at least begun to think about vaccinations and education and toy guns and slutty barbies and television and whether or not it’s good to stuff our toddler into anti-war tshirts and how it’s definitely bad to stuff our toddler into “princess” and “ladies man” tshirts. but i have no idea how to raise a child who won’t be silent about things that matter. no idea. i see other people doing it, raising children who give a damn, who’d rather have live music or crayons than television, who’d rather play outside than play videogames, little girls who like the way they look, boys who are nothing but respectful, and i hope we can pull it off. i’m not nervous about giving birth, or having a tiny infant relying on me 24 hours a day, or being a city parent, but i am nervous about being a model for a very tiny person who will have the future of the world resting on his or her shoulders. i’ve never cared what anyone thought of me until now.

at least the canadian will have an entire family of socially conscious humans, only a few republicans (ha), people who grow things and make art and music and do good things. not to mention tremendous godparents. and lots of short little vegetarian friends who won’t make fun of his/her hummus and veggie burgers.

kelly & pj accepted our proposal :)

other fun things that happened at home: surprise visit from mikey’s dad, hangout with the wheeling crew at clint & kelly’s (campfire, hotdogs, downpour, treefrogs singin me to sleep), country driving, afternoon with jess & the kiddos (who got to stay home from school just to see us, yay!), mother’s day with mothers and grandparents, lots of rest. paisley has been sulking for several days because she misses earl. they were best friends, and now i kind of want to get a jack russell when we move home and have a yard (insane, i know, but at least i had the sense to veto mikey’s jack russell request for his First Dog Ever). he’s the cutest. mikey has decided that he probably doesn’t want a horse because of the large butthole factor. this does not surprise me. he had a banjo lesson with chris on wednesday and his banjo-ing is getting really good. saturday shows are done for the summer, and they aren’t playing at the brunswick house anymore but promised me their new venue in october or november will be baby-friendly. if not i’m getting the hell out of dodge.

it’s nine million degrees in our apartment because they won’t turn off the heat - they did in the other building, but apparently we have not been complaining enough over here. i don’t think i’ve even slept eight hours this week. it’s miserable.

i bought a flickr pro account today because new camera picture size quickly maxed out my monthly limit for free uploads (i don’t think i’ve ever even come close). now i have unlimited everything, and since the files are so huge you can make good prints directly from them. i’ve never used them, but i’m sure the quality is decent. there are lots of pictures from home up now: uh huh. i think this is my favorite:

he’s going to be such a good dad. i think there is a spanish word for the relationship between your child and the child of his or her godparents (the word for godparents’ godchild’s parents is compadre), but not in english. kelly & pj are our compadres, and the canadian’s godparents, but ella is just t.c.’s… ella. she is the cutest. she turns everything into a fiddle, and hearing her answer to “where were you born?” (new jersey) makes me melt all over the place. she is very excited about emmy & mikey’s baby - i hate being far away.

i found a 30 gig ipod on the street yesterday, and judging by the contents a coworker guessed the owner was a gay male (there was lots of dancey stuff), i said brooding straight male (there were a couple of sulky, obscure indie bands), and mikey didn’t have a gender opinion but just thought they had terrible taste in music. turns out it’s a girl. perhaps an angry one. i can’t wait to see what she looks like when she comes to get it from me at work next week, but now i’m really worried about losing my ipod and being judged by my music taste. they would likely peg me as a 70 year old man.

i’m very stressed out about lost.

listening: mikey practicing banjo, paul simon in my head

“and you didn’t even know she was your sister”

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they’ve got money but they don’t have cash

i got it. i got it. i got it. i almost didn’t get it today, because i forgot our debit cards have a daily limit of $1000. almost cried. decided maybe that limit doesn’t apply to ATMs since we’ve been robbed of more than that amount twice… three times? i’ve lost track. anyway, i was right, ran back to the camera store looking like i’d robbed a bank, and GOT IT.

…only with a much sweeter lens. oh mama, it’s amazing. i only know how to do like, two things, but it’s amazing. the sun was behind buildings by the time the battery was fully charged, so tomorrow is my first big play day. daylight, party, bluegrass, whee!!! i keep folding down the screen of mikey’s laptop so i can look at it, sitting there all beautiful on the table.

i have had the dixie chicks’ first album in my head for weeks. i haven’t heard it in years, except sometime this winter when we were bead shopping in this uber-hipster store in kensington market and they started blaring “long time gone”. it was very unexpected, out of place, and perfect. it made the store 100% less pretentious, unless the dixie chicks are really cool here and i haven’t caught on yet, which is entirely likely. today i looked through all of my available trades and no one has it to give. surely i can find it used for 99 cents somewhere.

today i was doodling possible girl middle names on a piece of paper, and then doodled elliott’s definite middle name, which lead to a pondering of st. ignatius and his spirituality. i was thinking about the examen of consciousness and finding god in your everyday activities, and how i’m pretty good at this but it takes effort. this lead me to thinking about seinfeld, and how i’m infinitely more able to find seinfeld in my everyday activities without even TRYING than i am able to find god. eep.

mikey was downstairs visiting walter, and now he is back so that means movie time: the darjeeling limited. no, we haven’t seen it yet. we don’t go to movies. why? because it’s $25+ for tickets for both of us, and we don’t have that kind of cash when we’re always wanting cameras and banjos.

i can’t wait to go home. it’s a disease, and everyone has it. the idea of charleston is so appealing to me, though. i mean, i can get a HUGE house, yard, mountain (my own MOUNTAIN) and tons of dogs for less than $600 a month!!! and the people are great (you know this). i dunno, it’s really enticing. if i get a job up here with a significant pay raise, i might tough it out here for another year or two. i’d like to save some more money and see a few more shows, but other than that wv is really calling me home.

cornbread and butterbeans and you across the table

it has just come to my attention that my webpage looks messed up in firefox. i don’t know why this is or how to fix it. sorry.

today after church mikey and i were walking home with a couple of bags of groceries, and he was fantasizing out loud - for the hundred millionth time since moving to the city - about living in the country. specifically in cameron, wv. specifically with clint and kelly as neighbors. in today’s fantasy, kelly and pj have also moved to cameron… we’re all neighbors. two kellys. three if you count me - i go by kelly to my friend’s toddler, josh. he can’t get it right, so we have just accepted that i’m kelly. anyway, we’re all neighbors. we have gardens, and lots of land, and of course there’s gavin - mikey’s horse (destined to lose the triple crown to a pig or anteater).

anyway, i pointed out to him that when we live in the country, 40 minutes from civilization, we won’t be able to just get a couple of bags of groceries for half of the week because the store is too busy and he’s getting cranky and we don’t want to bother, so we leave with what we’ve got and know we can go across the street when we need more food, 24 hours a day. or to go to the bank. or to buy a single can of beer, or paper towels when we realize we’re out. i can’t buy two bananas on my way to work every single morning so they are perfectly ripe - none of that letting an entire bunch of bananas sit in your fruit bowl for a whole week before you get to the end business. you have to plan our your errands and get everything all in one shot, and if you forget something, tough. and usually you have to do this on the weekend, which is the worst time to shop.

practially every saturday of my childhood was spent running errands, and this was of course before huge walmarts and targets, when you actually had to go to different stores for different things. it seemed like it took my mom an hour and a half to formulate our battle plan every saturday morning, making lists on little slips of paper divided into columns for each store. ben and i then fought for half an hour over who got to sit up front. many arguments could have been spared if someone had just taught us how to call shotgun, but then we probably would have been doing so three days in advance. we always had to go to the bank (no debit cards, no atms), get gas at some point, lunch at another point, and groceries. those were the four givens. already four different stops in at least two towns. if we needed a birthday card for someone, that was another stop. the hallmark was right by the little professor bookstore, so i would beg to go buy a book, which was a fifth stop. if we needed socks or underwear or pingpong balls or school supplies or fishing tackle some box department store was a sixth. if we needed a hardware item - which it seemed like we ALWAYS needed for years after they built a house when i was in third grade, ace hardware or 84 lumber were additional stops. if ben had money for baseball cards the card shop was another. we almost always had to go to the feed store for pet stuff, and later this evolved into the local feed store for grain and a box tractor store for other pet supplies like medicine and barn things. if it was summer, we had to cross the river into the dreaded ohio (i hated it even then) go to to my mom’s favorite nursery in hannibal for plants. ben and i would cross the road to a one-room church and examine the really old gravestones of dead children (and they were all children).

we loved cemeterires when we were kids, and my mom loved photographing things in them. she is a very slow photographer. we had lots of time to play when we visited old country cemeteries. we would take rubbings of the really old headstones with crayons and run around, excitedly looking for families who had all died on the same day. we’d call the other over, shake our heads knowingly, and say “it must’ve been a house fire.” we’d scour the weeds for decrepit, forgotten little headstones that were starting to fall over the hill. one time mom wondered aloud if the bodies slide to the ends of the caskets when they are buried on a hillside, and i still wonder this. or we’d go digging through the weeds around the bases of trees looking for really old ones that were being overtaken by tree trunk. weeds meant poison ivy two days later.

also walking home from church today, i stopped dead in my tracks, aghast at what was right beside me: a lightpole entirely covered with poison oak. do they know what it is? does anyone care? are city people immune to these things? i didn’t know poison oak could grow out of nowhere and up a light pole in the middle of the city. i got itchy just looking at it. if i got poison oak in the city i wonder if the doctor would know what to do with me. my fourth grade math teacher used to tell danielle and i to scratch our poison ivy open in the shower and pour bleach in the blisters. neither of us ever had the nerve to do this.

i do love that i have never seen a single spider or centipede or moth or fly or wasp in my current 17th floor dwelling. our balcony door is open 24 hours a day when it’s warm. i guess city insects do not come in the house, unless you are a cockroach. i’ve never even seen my husband use a flyswatter. i don’t think we’ve ever owned a flyswatter. i wonder if he’s as good at fly killing as my dad - that man is stealthy when it comes to killing bees and flies. it’s impressive.

one time dougie found a scorpion in their yard when we lived across the road from each other. i don’t know what this was about, but he brought it up the hill in one of those little baskets that you use to attempt to organize your pens and scissors and batteries and kitchenshit into drawers. another time he found a baby flying squirrel. we would also catch salamanders and little turtles safe snakes. clint and i used to catch crawdads by the bucketful. one time we had the idea to catch enough to cook for dinner and when we got back to the campground with our bucket of crawdads everyone laughed at us and said you can’t eat crawdads. someone kindly pointed out that we could use them for bait. that same camping trip someone caught a huge snapping turtle (real food, apparently), and we had to tie it to a staked-down rope to keep its headless body from wandering away before it was time to cook it.

i seriously don’t know what i’d do trying to raise a kid past toddler age in the city. i’m ready to move home. anytime after the canadian is born and i line up my therapist would be fine.

listening: the carolina chocolate drops

i can’t stop laughing

i was just talking to my mom on the phone about the kentucky derby, and asked her who the last horse was to win the triple crown (the three biggest thoroughbred horseraces in america - the kentucky derby is the first, then the preakness and the belmont - i grew up always knowing this, and clearly mikey did not). she couldn’t remember, but had a guess, so after we hung up the phone i got online to look. i muttered “she was right” or something like that, and mikey said “what?”

“i said my mom was right about the name of the last horse to win the triple crown. there hasn’t been one in my lifetime, and just one in yours.”

“what?”

“only one horse has won the triple crown in your lifetime - 1978.”

“what other animals are in it?”

my eyes only just stopped watering. the mental image i have right now is amazing.

and the whirlwind is in the thorn tree

it technically looks like i’ve done nothing productive all day, but really i’ve been laying around, exhausting myself by growing a fetus. we had a fire alarm at 6a.m., and i listened to the sirens circle around a two or three block vicinity TWICE before they arrived at our building, twenty minutes after the 1970’s hatch-like blaring began. sleep was downhill from there. i did manage to drag myself to the post office to mail out etsy orders and season five of the simpsons, which i swaptree-ed for season three of oz (they have every single season of oz downstairs used for 19.99 - resist, resist, resist! you are buying a really damn expensive camera next week!). i went to indigo to look for a book that they did not have, but i decided to buy a little board book that i’ve read and laughed at and adored the illustrations of approximately seven times since i was knocked up. urban babies wear black. it’s amazingly adorable. when i reached its home on the third shelf down, third bookcase from the right, i was delighted to see that there is a small series of these treasures, including one called country babies wear plaid and eco babies wear green. after reading all of them and having a momentary identity crisis on behalf of my child, i bought two.

i can’t stand to buy books in canada (unless mikey orders them for me at his work at a discounted price), but baby board books are almost on par with US prices. we found a few eric carle board books for $2 each at a remainder store awhile ago and i almost collapsed from excitement. i think we have already spent more money on books than clothes for this child, because the only clothes we’ve bought have been dirt cheap at my work’s thrift store (i think i’ve spent $14 total, most things were fifty cents and one dollar), one tiny denim jacket at our equivalent of tj maxx, and a couple of majorly-on-sale old navy finds. not unlike what we spend on ourselves, i suppose, although three baby/pregnancy books are all i’ve bought for myself since before christmas. i’ve been good. saving camera monies.

the other day at work a couple of coworkers and myself were talking about something that i can’t even vaguely recall, and i compared it to wearing your crush’s football jersey. “why would you do that?”…. “you know, on game day?” this is apparently a purely american phenomenon. i explained that the guy wears the home or away jersey, whichever is appropriate for that night’s game, and he gives the other one to a girl. they SQUEALED, and then immediately looked like they’d missed out on a massive aspect of being an adolescent girl. at that moment i felt very happy to be an american, because wearing ________’s jersey is pretty much the only good thing to come of junior high. how did they survive?

last night was the beach party. it was great fun, and i lasted until 11:30 before i curled up in a papasan chair and drifted in and out of consciousness.

 
more…

mikey and i are going to watch capote. hopefully he will not be too jealous of my inexplicable love for philip seymour hoffman and can still enjoy the movie.

i realized this afternoon i have not been more than two feet from my bag of almonds and sigg of water all day. i’ve been carrying them around like a toddler. i blame the latter on the fact that it’s exactly the color of a can of coke.

1.] circuit board bookmarks by debby arem designs // 9.00 per pair
2.] crush pocket mirror by mirrorgirl // 7.00
3.] almond soap by morgan street // 5.00

listening: nothing - johnny cash in my head
reading: newest issue of mothering

“you’re not supposed to raise him, jack”

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i just realized…

…reading back through the past couple of months, that i never told about the night we found out we were pregnant. it was very amusing. i told mikey on monday that i was suspecting i might be, and every time he’d say “how do you feel?” and i’d say “um, pregnant”, he’d whimper. on wednesday i felt so awful that i called off of work, and was so excited at the prospect of a baby i was afraid i’d be hugely disappointed if i let myself think that i was pregnant any longer and then it ended up negative, so i bought a test. mikey begged me to wait as long as possible so he could finish his schoolwork for the day, as he was preparing for a huge talk and knew his concentration would be completely blown if it was positive. i put on a movie, and by 8:30 i couldn’t hold my pee any longer. i told him i had to go, but i’d put the stick on a shelf and we could look when he was ready. as soon as i started peeing two lines appeared IMMEDIATELY, and i had to tell myself about 332473892479 times that the directions said they could fade in and out even with a negative, and to wait ten whole minutes. approximtely 47 seconds later he came in and asked if it was time. we waited a few more minutes, then peered at two lines. i think he muttered “oh god”, and we both cried a little, and he said to paisley, “i’m not even used to you yet!”. then we called our moms. his mom was blown away - first two grandbabies in one month. my mom was not surprised, as i’d called her as soon as i started wondering and she laughed knowingly when i told her that my boobs hurt. other than mikey, my mom, and kelly, not a single soul knew that we even thought we might be. we sat and stared at each other for awhile, vowed not to tell another soul until we’d had a blood test to be sure, then went to bluegrass. we picked up sarah, and i remember the car ride was very awkard because he and i were just staring out the windshield in shock - i think she thought she’d come into the middle of a fight. scott & alex were already there, and we were at a weird table that we NEVER sit at because it was busy, and i got a glass of water. as soon as julia and ella got there, ella took one look at me, blurted out “why do you look so tired and why are you drinking water?”… and before she even finished her thought her eyes were widening and she was biting her lip. she stared at me. i stared at her, and i think i nodded a little, and she suppressed a scream while they dragged me out of my chair and towards the washrooms. if i didn’t already know i had good friends here, i should have known then. it took them 2.5 seconds to figure out something they shouldn’t have even suspected. a doula from tennessee overheard our conversation in the washroom and gave me a huge hug and her phone number. i don’t remember music. it was freezing cold, we were really close to the door. ella kept putting her huge down coat over my uterus area because she was afraid the baby would get cold. after they left, mikey whispered “should we tell scott and alex?”, and i said sure. i forget what he said. alex yelled “i knew it!!” and we all swore not to tell anyone else. we started to leave early, but rob had just gotten there to play fiddle or dobro, couldn’t tell you which, and whined at us so we stayed for a couple of songs with him. that’s all i remember. i was exhausted. the next day people at work knew, and the canadian was immediately assumed to be a girl who would marry coworker quentin’s new baby boy… immediately nicknamed “olive”, which later in the day became “olive schesnuik” (bride of matthew). everyone said it would be such a nice catholic wedding. the next day was a doctor visit, going to mikey’s work to order a book and getting a blessing from the archbishop of toronto. that’s about all i remember for the next two or three weeks, except some of the phonecalls we made. mary and kelly cried; mikey’s dad laughed; my grandma did a superb job of pretending that she had no clue and that my dad hadn’t already spilled the beans even though i told him not to; colleen asked for quilt color preferences; i forget what andy said to mikey but it was LOUD; my brother said “yeah, i know” in his unimpressed, monotone drawl; mario asked what i thought of wednesday night’s episode of lost, and when i thought nothing of it and started to answer him, he yelled “I’M JUST KIDDING, congratulations!”; dallas said “so ya’ got a bun in ya’”, not a question, a statement; dougie said “that’s awesome… we’re trying to have an accident of our own”.

it’s 11pm. i could have gone to bed at 8:30. oops.

i wish i had a river i could skate away on

we have one small medicine cabinet mirror in our apartment. i don’t really know what i look like from the shoulders down these days, so after i got out of the shower this evening i backed up against the bathroom door so i could see as much of me as possible whilst standing on my tippy toes. here is what i look like:

i still have chicken legs with thighs that don’t touch, you can still see my ribs, i have scrawny arms and collar bones that stick out……….and a gut. pregnant emily = a sneetch. do i have a star on my belly? well, that is private information.

tonight i watched the pursuit of happyness (rogers video direct - a decent canadian equivalent of netflix - has ruined any life i have off of the couch), which was pretty good. i would not have been interested if it wasn’t based on a real guy, but it’s the story of several million people, at least, so i gave it a shot. there is a mini-documentary in the extra features about speed cubers. why am i so fascinated by things like this? this is why i own a copy of spellbound. people like this interest me to no end. i wish i was mind-blowingly talented and amazing at some that is, by design, useless. if there is a full length documentary about speed cubers, i want to watch it over and over.

tomorrow is wednesday. friday is a beach-theme-party (canadian friends don’t throw NON-theme parties, ever, as a rule). then weekend. in one week is sarah’s going-away (to pickle lake for the summer) party before everyone in attendance takes the silver dollar by storm. then we go HOME, HOME, HOME, from thursday - monday. a baby horse is due to be born while we are there. i really, really, really hope this happens. or at least happens a few days early. i must snorgle a baby horse, must.

things i have mistakenly put in the fridge so far this week: peanut butter, an empty popcorn box, an empty pickle jar. things i have broken: zero! maybe i’m getting some thought processing back, a little.

1.] dr. seuss no.2 earrings by stacy’s designs // 18.00
2.] rubik’s cube necklace by tinyminds // 9.00
3.] penguins’ day at the beach bracelet by alwaysamy // 10.00
4.] horse lover necklace by the lovely teaspoon // 7.00

got no use for the red rocking chair

things i accomplished this evening:

• watched five consecutive episodes of seinfeld whilst dog-cuddling.
• talked to a jehovah’s witness on the phone for half an hour - he was super young and nervous and “doesn’t have much experience talking to catholics”. i had to remind him of the first line of the lord’s prayer because he got so frazzled, and he said he’d do some more research on my questions and call me back next week. i’m going to be ready for him when he does, poor kid. i was nice to him. i didn’t mean to make him nervous.
• took a bath and read some more of the snake-handling-church-book that is very good; listened to mikey play banjo.
• packaged etsy orders.
• discovered facebook chat & am currently talking to my mary about rocking chairs and job interviews with the fbi.
• now, instead of doing the few dishes in the sink, i am going to bed. last night i had 9/11-ish dreams, which has never happened. planes were crashing into buildings in toronto and leaving plane-shaped-holes in the sides. we walked all over the city taking pictures of the plane-holes with my new camera. it was not scary, but i was tired by this morning from all the walking.