Monday, January 25, 2016

Supper

My stomach spoke. It said, “I just want to eat everything.”

And I said, “How about a peach?”

And it said, “Yeah right. How about something buttery? How about something salty? How about something decadent or spicy? Something loud, something crunchy, something belligerent that’ll mosh around in your mouth setting off every taste bud like a laser beam security system in a jewelry store.” It was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Do you have anything like that? Can you deep-fry macaroni and wrap it in bacon and dunk it in a vat of jalapeño cheese?”

I said, “You think I have a vat of jalapeño cheese just kicking around?”

My stomach shrugged, which felt funny.

I went to the fridge, because my stomach wanted me to and my stomach is like that girl in grade nine that can pretty much talk you into anything because you want to be her even though you don’t really like her as a person. I said, “See? This is what we’ve got.” 

My stomach grumbled.

I pulled out asparagus and mushrooms. I said, “This is healthy. This will make you feel better without making me feel worse.” 

My stomach said, “Okay. But bread it. Bread it in butter and flour and salt.”

I said, “Or we could have a peach?” 

My stomach said, “No. We couldn’t.”

I could’ve written this blog post in one sentence. It would’ve said, “Yesterday, I had breaded asparagus and mushrooms for supper with a side of cheesy spaghetti.” 

But whatever. 

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Two



Sullivan is two today. 

Two is just so old to me. He’s not a baby anymore; he has a personality and friends and funny little quirks and obsessions. He’s figuring out what he likes and I’m figuring it out at the same time. We’re both getting to know him at about the same rate, which is just a crazy thing. 

I like lists, so here’s a list of things I know about my son so far.

1. He loves drums and drumming and drummers. He doesn’t care about cartoons – I tried to introduce him to Dumbo and 101 Dalmatians and he couldn’t care less about either of them – but he will sit with Barclay and watch Rush DVDs for as long as I’ll let him, clutching a pair of chopsticks in his little fists, drumming on his knees. When Neil Peart comes on the screen, he calls out excitedly, “Mom! Uncle Neil! Bass drum! Cymbal! Drum sticks!” He drums on the table with his fingers at meal times and on pots and mixing bowls the rest of the time. His attention span is long, but only for drums. Coloring? Not so much. For his birthday this year, we got him a copy of a drummer magazine. He loves it, even though it’s just a bunch of articles about drummers and pictures of their setups. 


2. He also loves video games. He thinks Mario sounds like Geddy Lee (lead singer of Rush, see above), and I don’t mind it because it keeps him occupied while I do my makeup in the mornings. 


3. He’s really, really into baking (does he sound like a 40 year-old bachelor yet?). His favorite thing to bake is muffins, and he knows what ingredients he needs and where to get them and mostly what steps he needs to take. He can be right in the middle of drumming, even, and if you say, “Sully, wanna bake muffins with me?” He’ll freak out, jump up, and sprint into the kitchen for the muffin tins. It’s pretty sweet.


4. Despite his loyalty to Rush, his all-time favorite song is Hard Time by Seinabo Sey, which is a solid choice in my book. He asks for it repeatedly and nearly falls over when I put it on. It has a good beat, so that’s probably why. 


5. He has a bunch of friends and he talks about them all the time. When he’s eating food he’s really into, he’ll comment on how they would probably like it and how he should share it with them. When he’s being made to eat food he’s really not into, he’ll cry, “Want feed this to Wreennnnnn…” (Wren is one of his favorites to talk about, but when they’re actually in the same room they don’t interact at all.)


6. He’s becoming a tad more comfortable around strangers lately. Last night, we went for supper and he struck up a conversation with some young ladies at the table next to us. “Hi! Hi, friend! One, two, two friends!” Unfortunately, he’s also at a stage where he’s very interested in bodily functions, so the very next thing he asked them was if they poop on the toilet. And then he started singing a song that went something like this: “I poooooop. I peeeeeee. On the tooooooiiiiiiiiilettttt…” We shut that down. It’s not dinner conversation, and it’s not even factual; he’s not potty trained at all. 

7. He rarely gets super hyper or busts out laughing, so it’s pretty rewarding when he does. He’s got a sense of humor, but minimal expression of it. He’s a chuckle-to-self kind of kid, and I like that about him. You can tell when he thinks he’s being funny, because he’ll tuck his chin into his chest, chuckle to himself and say, really quietly, “Nice.” 

I’m really excited for this next year. I like Sullivan – like, as a person, not just a son. I think he’s cool and funny, and I like hanging out with him, and I can’t wait to see what he grows up into. It’s probably because he’s a mini version of Barclay, and I feel all of those same things about Barclay. 

Yep. That’s probably it.

Monday, January 18, 2016

2016, in Preview

I usually go into a year kind of blind - like that time we went to Scotland and didn't book any hotels ahead of time. We didn't want to tie ourselves down to any definitive plans; we didn't want to risk missing something because we were looking for something else. It ended up being a trip full of close calls and getting lost and even finding ourselves locked in a train station at one point but it was the best trip I've ever been on and I'd do it the same way again. 

I usually go into a year like that. 

I've never been the type to sit on top of New Year's Eve like it's some high place that looks down over the months ahead and plan anything out, but this year feels a little different - not that I can see the future, just that I can't stop imagining it. 

It's starting off busy. I've been presented with this amazing opportunity to help teach a six week online creative writing course in a cute little virtual classroom starting today. The participants (I think there are going to be 42 all together?) started poking their noses into the discussion boards this weekend and introducing themselves and it's just so dang exciting to finally be doing something like this. From there, 2016 is shaping up to explode into a flurry of other fun writing-related things - if my nerdy grade three wanna-be-writer self could see me right now, she'd be jumping up and down on top of her desk (and then she'd probably fall on her head and die, because she always was kind of a klutz, bless her [my] heart).

I know there's always the danger of being consumed by a dream when it starts to come true, so I've been making sure to block that stuff off into a specific time of day and use the rest of my time for still, you know, living my life. I've started making a little list of mini daydreams for the year ahead, which is kind of fun. They might not happen, but that's what makes them daydreams as opposed to goals or resolutions.

1. Learn a new skill. Something really random. Something I've never even considered before. I want to learn it quietly and inconspicuously, and then I want to bust it out when no one's expecting me to. I imagine I'm walking through a mall with some friends and a man approaches us and says, in urgent, broken English, "Excuse me, do any of you speak Mandarin?" And my friends all start to shake their heads and say, "Oh, sorry..." But then I bust out my new skill. And I'm fluent. And everyone's jaws just fall on the floor. Wouldn't that be fun? 

2. Meet some of the friends I only know online. This used to be a super sketchy thing to admit to anyone. When I was in high school, chat rooms were a Thing, and all of the grownups were really concerned that every person on the internet was a murderer. Since I started blogging though, I've met really cool people from all over the globe and we've become actual friends. Like, we talk regularly and I'd invite them to stay in my guest room if they were passing through town. I'm 100% certain that none of them are axe murderers, and at least 87% sure that none of them are knife or gun murderers.

3. Explore a new city. Barclay and I love exploring new cities. We like figuring out the public transportation system, finding hidden gems, hitting up tourist traps, and walking around aimlessly. Some of the notable cities we've wandered around together in the past few years include MontrealSeattleVancouverEdinburghNew YorkLondon, and LA. Next on our radar? Probably Chicago. We want to find a cute little jazz club, hang out by the Bean, visit the Chicago Music Exchange, and pretend we're Harriet and Carl Winslow from Family Matters.

4. Find a cool new thing here in my own city. There are always cool new things. This one should be easy.

5. Become lots more organized and keep my house cleaner and paint my nails more often and vacuum under the bed more than I do now and learn how to do my hair and makeup and eat more vegetables. (This one is open to interpretation.)

6. A while back, I heard of this program where piano teachers could volunteer to teach lessons for free at inner-city schools to kids who wouldn't otherwise have the chance to take music lessons. I was going to sign up, but then I had Sullivan and it felt impossible. Now it might not be. I should at least look into it. 

7. Read every single book that I got in 2015. This is actually the tallest order on the list. I got a lot of books in 2015. Like maybe a stack as tall as myself. Chapters gift cards are the best. Oh, but that leads me to 8 -

8. Build a sweet reading nook in the living room. With lots of storage (see 7). 

Done. Daydreamer, out.

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Your Tongue is a Rudder

An interesting thing happened to me on the Internet a couple of days ago. I conducted a kind of oblivious, involuntary social media experiment. With variables and data and stuff. The results were a little shocking to me at first, because they involved being sworn at and called a few derogatory names, but I'm not really upset about it so much as fascinated by it.

Some time ago, I wrote an essay about babies and sleep called The Answer to the Question. It was a short, fairly matter-of-fact piece about how I used to get really worked up over Sullivan's awful sleep habits. I wrote about how I felt like I was drowning in a lot of advice that didn't work, and how one day a friend told me his constant wakings were a fairly normal thing (not something broken, not something that needed to be fixed) and about how that person's words helped me feel a lot better about the whole thing. I wanted, in writing that essay, to help someone else feel better too.

I wrote it for Coffee + Crumbs, which has a fairly large following and focuses on more literary essays, with minimalistic design choices and a very encouraging, we're-all-in-this-together approach. In short: not the kind of place you'd find click-bait listicles designed to get all the mommies virtually clawing each others' eyes out on Facebook. As is almost always the case at C+C, the comments on that article were 100% positive; people could relate, they'd been there too, they were relieved, they were encouraged or they knew someone who would be...they were nice. All of them. Every single one. A rare spot on the Internet, for sure.

Today, the article was reposted on another mom blog, which I'm just not going to name here.

They, the editors at said mom blog, changed the picture, the title, and the caption. That's it. They didn't change a single word of the actual essay (dependant and manipulated variables, right there. Did I ever tell you I won a science fair once?).

Hypothesis: Same essay, same not overwhelming in volume but generally agreeable response. I checked Facebook Monday morning expecting to read a comment or two from a couple of other mothers who were in the trenches too and appreciated a word of encouragement.

Results: What actually happened felt a little like opening my front door to get the morning paper and being greeted by wolves on the porch. Except, instead of wolves, angry Internet Moms. They read the part where I said that people often asked me how Sullivan was sleeping and took it to mean that I was throwing a Royal Internet Hissy Fit about being asked that. They didn't finish reading the article; they took instead to the Facebook comments section and called me loads of colourful names, said I was too easily offended and self-centred, said I was what was wrong with moms today, etc. It was a lot to wake up to. 100 or so comments by 8 AM. More now. (It wasn't the meanest I've seen the internet, and a lot of the anger was directed towards Moms in General, not specifically me, but it was still, at the very least, unsettling.)

I was confused at first. It was the exact same essay. Perfect strangers, the first time around, had generally seemed to enjoy it and even benefit from it. Perfect strangers, now, were personally offended by my idiocy, selfishness, and general all-around horribleness. It didn't make sense.

Conclusion: Internetting is hard and confusing.

You might think I'm a little bit silly for what follows; I'm not apologizing, just warning you.

I know the General Rule of the Internet is that you DO NOT READ THE COMMENT SECTION. People always say this to me when I tell them a story about something I read in the comment section. They say, "Suzy! Why were you reading that? It's the dregs of the internet!" So I've been trying to give it up... But what about when it's your comment section?

Besides, Sullivan and I were both sick on Monday, so I didn't have a lot else to do. And besides (again), I wanted to know why the two identical essays had had such opposite receptions (science!). So I read the comment section of my article on the Nameless Mommy Blog's Facebook page. Nay, I studied it.

A thing that struck me at first was how many people mentioned they hadn't finished the article. A thing that became obvious soon after was that a large number of people hadn't actually read the article at all, just the caption and title, which I hadn't written. I thought it was kind of weird for a stranger go to out and say horrible things about another stranger based on the title of an essay they'd written, but this is the Internet, so. Whatevs.

That was when I broke the second the rule of the Internet: not only did I read the comments, I entered in and replied to one. Or two or three. Oops.

Everyone knows that you shouldn't engage with angry people in comment sections. Everyone knows this. But I am the kind of person who wants to, for whatever reason. If someone calls me an idiot for something I strongly believe in and have put out there into the world, that's fine. But if someone calls me an idiot because they think I believe something I don't at all, I can't help but say, "Hey there, please don't put your words in my mouth." Also, if this many people think I said something I didn't, I thought, maybe I did say it without meaning to. I'm okay with asking someone to help me understand why I've offended them. So I did that.

(In a nice way, of course, because I recognize that people on the Internet are also people off the Internet.)

It was a matter of random selection...I had a lot of angry commenters to choose from. The woman ranting and raving about 'this generation?' The woman swearing a blue streak with a profile picture of herself cradling a golden-haired child? Nah, I thought, they won't hear me. There was a girl who said something kind of snarky about how I needed to 'get over myself.' It had started a good-sized thread of ladies venting about me and People Like Me and how awful we were and how we were going to wreck it for everyone else. Okay, her.

"Hey," I began, "So, I'm the one who wrote this essay..."

We had a decent conversation; I feel like we ended up in a good place and she understood me and I understood her and she apologized for hurting my feelings and I said she hadn't and we sent each other smiley face emoticons. I was surprised. So I did it again, almost more out of curiosity than anything. I picked a woman who said I needed to work on my people skills and that everyone in my life was going to stop caring about me and leave me alone soon. "Hey!" I said, working on my people skills, "I'm not here to argue or defend myself; I was just wondering if..."

We went back and forth a bit and in the end we were talking about our kids and our Christmas holidays. It wasn't a bad little chat (she was just tired; it had been a long holiday and she was really ready for her kids to go back to school).

That day, I learned some things about writing on the Internet and, I guess, about writing anywhere and, I guess, about saying things in general. Some of them are very obvious things that I knew before now, but now I really know them, you know?

1. People who write mean things on the internet are people too, and people aren't perfect, not even faceless internet people. We call them trolls, here in blogland, but they're people. They get really fired up about things (sometimes important things, sometimes not) and they feel like they need to share their opinion in a place where other people will see it and validate it (much like I'm doing right now, actually). Sometimes they're really rude about it, but that doesn't always mean they're automatically wrong. Some people have this uncanny ability to be both rude and right. Sometimes it's because they believe strongly that an attitude they've encountered in cyberspace is actually harmful and that they need to be the bastion of truth to a weary world, regardless of if they hurt someone's feelings in the process or not. They might even feel that the person deserves to have their feelings hurt. I'm not saying it's right; I'm saying that trolls are more complex than just I'm an angry old man living in my mom's basement and I want to make a young woman cry today. Maybe they want to hurt someone with their words but sometimes they just honestly don't realize that the person they're aiming their vitriol at could conceivably read it (this was the case with a commenter I talked to on Monday, who was pretty dang embarrassed that I saw her comment).

(I guess the part of this that surprised me was that some trolls don't know they're trolls. They think they're just right. Here's a question you should probably ask yourself before you put your opinion on the internet: Do you think your rightness trumps everything else, including someone's feelings?)

2. You can say something (in an article or in a comment or in a conversation), and people might hear something else. Even if you feel like you're being very clear. Even worse: You can say something, and people might make a snap judgement about it based on another thing entirely, something out of your control. Some people have even decided that they're just going to hate you and what you've said before they've heard it. It's too bad, but you need to be prepared because it happens.

3. When this happens, you will not always be able to talk to every single person who misunderstood you or decided not to give you a chance to explain yourself. This is impossible, for one thing, and futile, for another. Because generally people make their minds up like they're building a brick house. The foundation is, unfortunately, largely based around their first impression, however brief or erroneous (in this case, the first impression was, unfortunately, the title and caption of my essay). They're rarely willing to (or able to) knock it down, get a new foundation and start from scratch unless they've got a really, really good reason to. So be careful: in many cases, you get one chance.

4. Sometimes, it'll actually be all your fault. You might have written something offensive or insensitive or just stupid, and the people of the internet would love to hold you accountable. Set down your pride and personal bias and go back to read what you've written again. If you screwed up, that's okay, because you're a person too. Either fix it, if possible, or make a note of it and try not to repeat the offence. You don't deserve to be called names, but this is the internet.

Which leads me to number 5. You can't write a lot of things on the internet and expect everyone to always love you and agree with you. I've seen it happen before where someone called a blogger ugly, and when someone else called them out on it they replied, "Yeah, well. She put her picture on the internet, so it's fair game." This logic makes me mad (we would never let it fly on an elementary school playground so why do adults think they can get away with it?) but it's also the reality of the internet, sadly. Some people do actually just sit around hating strangers' faces. It's weird, but they probably have other issues.

6. Be careful who you trust with your words. The blog who published my piece yesterday only changed a couple of seemingly innocuous things about my post, but the title was just a little more click-baity, and the caption was just a little more provocative. These things were designed to set the tone for the rest of the essay. They were designed to put people on the defensive (if people argue in the comments, the article will get more traffic, which means more $$$ for whoever's running the website) (You're welcome, Nameless Mommy Blog). I never want my words to put people in that mindset. I want to write encouraging things and helpful things and things that make people happy. So from now on, I'll probably try to stay away from websites whose goals don't align with mine. I just don't have time for that, that's not why I write. I'm thankful that there are relatively safe spaces on the internet to write; it's become one of my favourite little hobbies.

I guess that's it. I didn't learn anything else. Six things is a lot of things to learn in a day though. If you learned at a rate of Six things every day, you'd know 2,190 new things every year. Imagine if you lived to be 100.

Words, you guys. Dear internet trolls and internet regular people: can I leave you with some sweet Brand New lyrics?

Your tongue is a rudder, it steers the whole ship
Sends your words past your lips or keeps them safe behind your teeth
But the wrong words will strand you
Come off course while you sleep
Sweep your boat out to sea it's dashed to bits on the reef

Sunday, January 03, 2016

2015 in Music

2015 was good, musically. Music isn't the most important thing about a year, but it is one of the first places my mind tends to go when you ask me how that year went.

"Suzy," you might say, scratching the back of your neck because that's what you do, "how was your 2015?"

And I'd stop and think for a minute, wondering if you have lice or not, and then I'd say, "Very good, actually."

And you'd say, "Why? What about it?"

And I'd just start listing bands. Bands I saw and bands I heard about and bands I spent a lot of time listening to and bands that released new albums and so on.

And in five or six years, if we were to meet again and you were to ask, "Suzy, when last did I see you?" my brain would click along for a minute and then I'd answer, "I don't remember the exact year...but it was the year Dan Mangan played Darke Hall with Hayden." It sounds obsessive but it's not; it's just a thing.

So, My 2015, In Music:

Live

The music scene in Regina right now is a little sad, not a lot going on compared to other years, but I managed to see some fun shoes with some fun people. There was the time back in March when a little old lady gave me two tickets to see Dan Mangan and Hayden on the condition that I call her the next Monday and tell her how it was. I took Robyn and it was amazing. In May or June, a little jazz club called The Capitol opened up downtown, and Barclay and I hit it up a few times for live jazz, which is always fun. In August, we went to Montreal and checked out a drum festival - that counts as live music, right?

Folk Fest happened in August too - I always go to Folk Fest. This year, the notable acts were Bahamas, Basia Bulat, Alysha Brilla, Jenny Lewis and Blue Rodeo. I won a couple of tickets to the main stage in a contest put on by the CBC (I was the only one who entered, so. Hullo). I took Hannah. For sure the best part was standing in a crowd of mind-losing-50-something-year-olds as Blue Rodeo played Lost Together (the one thing I'm excited for in old[er] age is to go see bands who were big when I was younger and pretend like I'm young again while the actual young people stand there silently, staring at me like I'm crazy. I think that'll be fun).

My friend Ashley used to work at a large venue near where I live, and sometimes when shows wouldn't sell out she'd give me the leftover tickets. I took Barclay to a Pink Floyd cover band for his birthday, and a group of about ten girl friends to a Stevie Nicks/Mick Jagger/Rod Stewart/Heart cover show in October. Both experiences were absolutely ridiculous, but in the best way. I have a newfound affinity for artist impersonators.

In September, Theresa took me to see the Regina Symphony Orchestra, which was so stinking moving, and in October, I won tickets (yes, I win a lot of tickets. Because I enter a lot of contests) to see Hawksley Workman. His show was okay, but he didn't play Warhol's Portrait of Gretzky, so whatever. The opener, however, was a woman named Fiona Bevan. Her, you guys...

So, yeah, not a lot of live music this past year, but a pretty good free show streak for sure. For those concerned about supporting your favourite artists, I'm kicking off 2016 by actually paying for a concert.


Not Live

Here's a little collection of my favourite songs this year (not all of them are actually from this year, but they'll probably always remind me of it), which I found on the radio (Seinabo Sey) or blasted on repeat in my car (Pink Floyd) or fell in love with at a show (Fiona Bevan) or let play in the background while I wrote during nap times (Cloud Boat). Yep. Good year.

Friday, January 01, 2016

I Always Wake Up On January 1 With That Death Cab Song in My Head

2016. You guys, it's finally the future.

(Oh man, how has it been 16 years since Y2K? I told a kid about the Y2K bug the other day and they thought I was making the whole thing up.)

Y2K.

Anyway, it's the first day of the new year, so of course I had to sit down and get all my profundities out. Recap this past year, make some resolutions, whatever whatever. Blogger stuff.

2015.

I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll just do what I always do when I'm trying to describe something really big and abstract and conceptual:

If 2015 were a person, it would be a woman.

(Personification is a bit of a crutch for me, I've realized.)

She would have brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses - because she'd be a tad near-sighted. She'd be kind of business-y, but still fun. Like, she'd wear high heels, but when her feet got sore she'd kick them off and run around barefoot. She'd be efficient and motivated and her intense personality would rub off at least a little on everyone around her. In that way, at least, she'd make us all better people for knowing her. She'd be a bit emotional, and at times she'd freak right out and make weird choices. But, you know, that's what would make 2015 human.

So I wouldn't think of her as being even-keeled and mature like 2014, but she also wouldn't be unpredictable and erratic like 2013. She'd be a little quieter, a little more self-assured. She wouldn't sprint, like some years do; she'd walk at a fairly brisk pace but I feel like I could keep up with her. Warmer, definitely, than any year that came before her. She'd be the type to give hugs, and I'd like that about her.

Are you rolling your eyes at me? Stop it.


But seriously, 2015 was wonderful. It was a year of friendship, which sounds vague and dumb, but which was actually pretty huge and important for me. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones and got to know some of the ones I already had better and more intentionally. It was something I was praying for last year, a lot, and it was one of those prayers that was answered so completely this year in such random and unexpected ways that I didn't really realize the running theme until I sat down right now to write this. That's cool. That's one of the reasons I like writing things down.

Some of those friends will read this and HEY, YOU (if you think this might be about you, it probably is), you're an answer to prayer and I'm happy about you.

2015 was also a year of starting things and working hard at them and taking them seriously. It was, in a way, a year of gardening - metaphorical gardening, of course, which might be the only kind of gardening I ever do - planting seeds and weeding and watering and waiting. In 2016, I guess I'll see what comes up, if anything. I'm hoping for a lot of sweet flowers, but I also recognize that gardening can be a bit of a trial-and-error-type-thing. So. We'll see.

What else? Oh yeah. In 2015, my baby turned into a grown man who now slouches into the kitchen in the morning scratching his belly and saying, "MOM. ME WANT EAT COFFEE." (I give him water in a coffee cup and this is acceptable.) Basically, he's a mini Barclay, which is fine by me because I really like Barclay and don't mind having two of him. Motherhood still feels really new and surprising to me, but in a more comfortable way now, if that makes sense. We're having a lot of fun over here.

I could say a lot more about 2015, about trips and shows and projects and people and writing and stuff, but these posts tend to ramble on and become a little self-serving (I guess they start out that way too, but maybe it's just that it's harder to forgive the longer they get). Plus, nap time is over. So I'll just say Happy New Year and leave it at that.

Happy New Year.