Librarians love us

At the risk of ticking off relatives who can’t stand the jumping around, and everyone else as I do this before actual work, here’s the Emma library story.

We were at the library twice this week. They started the summer reading club and we had arrived just after everyone else in charge of that had gone on their lunch hour. The meeting was the next day, so we could sign up then.

As a side note, Meaghan & I hadn’t realized it was lunchtime, and joked that as long as Ron (at home) had bread and peanut butter, he wouldn’t starve. When we got back home, Ron was just finishing up his peanut butter on toast.

Anyway! They had a book sale. I filled two boxes full of romance novels, not even looking at most of them, just going for particular covers. They color-code certain lines, so I grab the ones I know I like. That’s how I got this:

Funny enough, but it would have been even funnier (and serve me right) if I had read it already. I lugged home two boxes and gave them $13. Meaghan didn’t find anything. I also checked out a couple quilt books.

Next day, we hustled there bright and early (for us), got there just in the nick of time. Boy, they start on the dot for story time… anyway, it was a Canada Day theme as it was Tuesday before Canada Day. After the story, and the singing (that’s when Meaghan escaped upstairs), the library helpers asked all the kids stuffed in the basement what they liked best about living in Canada. Some answers were:

“my sisters lives here”

“it’s green”

“it’s big”

“it’s nice”

And then she called on Emma in the middle of the crowd. In a clear voice, with perfect enunciation, she volunteered her answer.

“Because it’s better than the United States!”

And beamed.*

I slid just a little further back into the alcove nearest me and watched all the parents giggle and cover their semi-shocked open mouths. Then we had the chaos of craft time and nobody pulled me aside for anything. We made a toilet paper roll beaver, and had 12 pairs of scissors to share with something like 57 children.

Then I got Emma all signed up for the club where she promised to read thirty whole books all by herself, by August 12th. They are going to let us come back for next week’s meeting too.

* the beaming was because she Followed The Rules and was Being Quiet, not shouting her answers and also raising her hand at the appropriate time. “Wasn’t I quiet when she said to be quiet Mommy? Didn’t I do good at raising my hand?” “Yeah honey, you did great.”

This time it was different

Over the weekend, we helped Sarah pack up most of the crap in her room, stuff it in our dinky car, and then I drove her down to Fredericton. She’ll spend the summer working (when she finds a job) and then in September will start classes at the NB College of Craft & Design.

It will be her first day of “real” school.

Yes, we have already sent one kid off into the wild blue yonder of “real life”. But this time was different, and my feminist cred is gonna slip here, but… this time, it’s a girl-child! It’s totally different!

Alas, we managed. We stuffed what she really needed into her new room downtown (easy), I spun her around the grocery store (she’s familiar with it, knows how to shop), impressed her new roomies with the fact she knows how to cook more than KD (one guy’s face looked like he just saw heaven), and then…

And then I had to just… Leave her there. That was the hard part.

Skip past the melancholy glaces into her half-empty room, the mental fingers in my ears as I try not to think about it…

The smiles when I see an email that says, “I bought second-hand curtains, they’re awesome!” (paraphrased, not a direct quote), or the note on Twitter that she unfurled her freshly laundered blankets that night and found emma’s pajama pants tangled up in them. Or seeing how she has a stuffed full calendar of people to visit, things to do, places to go.

Yeah, she’ll be fine.

Not so sure about the rest of us.

For your general amusement

Emma did a little project the other day, with hardly any help. I think Meaghan might have helped a little. Emma had asked me and I had to keep putting her off, then eventually pointed out she really could do a lot of the work herself. (But, hellooooo mama guilt anyway)

Her idea was to take her barbie dolls and do her own version of America’s Next Top Model. She had no prompting for us, and all I really helped with was suggesting how she could set up the backdrop and what to use. (and I actually adjusted it after a small crying jag because it kept falling dooowwwwnnn… OHNOES!)

Anyway. Here’s Lakeville’s Next Top Barbie Model.

This is the group shot. Click through for the rest of the set on the right of the page. I’m on the edge of my chair wondering who will win.

(p.s. She also made runway videos, but I haven’t posted them anywhere. But still. She made ‘em. )

Trick or Treat, here’s a kitty

Mom nagged me on the phone today saying I better update, so here ya go. Also, she wants you to know that I’m an awful mother because I got a picture of the Halloween sunset, but NOT a picture of her granddaughter in a princess costume.

To be fair, the sunsets are rarer than Emma in a princess dress. For her costume, all Emma did was root around in the dress-up pile a bit.

It was just her and I roaming the neighbourhood, as Meaghan is far too mature for something so childish, Sarah had to work, and there are no little kids near here. Seriously, we were the only ones out walking. Every so often a minivan would stop at the houses around us, but that was it. Nobody came to our door. (Is okay, more treats for us!)

We went to eight houses and were gone about an hour and half. We went maybe 500 yards. At each house, we had to come in (both of us) and close the door (it was cold, almost freezing), then pick out candy and catch up on the news. About halfway through we came to a house with a dog. Emma is, for reasons unknown to us, terrified of dogs. Any dog. Even chihuahuas. If it barks or wags, it scares her. The first dog they had she hadn’t noticed until she got near the door, so she was pretty wary. The second, someone had let out from a room upstairs and literally came charging in from seemingly nowhere, so she was pretty rattled. (Okay, utterly terrified and screeching.)

The owners felt really bad, so after a bit the lady came over to Emma with a sleeping kitty in her arms. “That better be fake,” I said. It was, and thankfully the BATTERIES to make it purr were worn out as well.

It’s okay there too, because Emma brightened right up and has lugged that thing around ever since. Not sure I’m going to visit them again soon, not because of the dogs, but I’m cautious of what else they might give her to lug home.

On the candy front: we had only purchased one box of small chocolate bars to give out because we knew we would not see a lot of kids. The key to not having a load of candy is not going to a lot of houses. See above where we visited eight places; each one gave out LOTS. Emma still came home with a cloth grocery bag more than half full. A few cans of pop, tons of bags of chips, loads of chocolate and four apples - she has plenty.

YES. We accepted APPLES from people we KNEW.

Anyway.

Today I had to run around a bit so I took Sarah to buy markdown candy for her own stash. Which she proceeded to graph results for after she unpacked them at home. (and took pictures)

At one grocery store, there were some young guys from Jamaica in front of us joking around and flirting with the clerks. A guy they knew was behind us that they were talking to over our heads, and eventually one of the guys said “Feel da rhythm!”

I muttered, “If dancing breaks out, I’m a-taking pictures.” They laughed.

21

I still remember the small weight of carrying him on my hip, the jingle of the bell on his little baby shoes. I remember his first Halloween costume, the one I made for him. He was a clown. I still remember, loudly, how he would run everywhere - would he ever just *walk*? - and the time he ran right into the wall. I remember when he could sit on my knee and I had to bend over to hug him.

Now, I have to look up - waaaay up - and he’s fully grown. I’m kind of astounded.

Happy Birth-o-ween Addison.

Wall-E

I took Emma to the movie theater this afternoon, as a treat because it’s expensive and something we just rarely do. Especially considering we’ll be getting the DVD even if we hadn’t seen the movie. In our house, a Pixar movie means an automatic purchase. Emma, and indeed the rest of the family, is a huge fan.

So, we went to see Wall-E.

And here’s where I’d love to tell you what a moving, wonderful story it is, but … I have no words. The words I just typed don’t even begin to describe it. A magnificent film that should receive every award in existence would not even begin to cover it.

Within the first minute, my eyes filled with tears. Ten minutes in I was just trying not to sob. I’m sure any feeling adult in the room was the same. And in the ending scenes it was the same. A roller coaster, swept along in the imaginative storyline, the world - indeed what could very well be *our* world - Pixar has not only done it again, they have blown their previous works out of the water. The competition should be quaking in their boots as anything else is just a cartoon.

The technical details of the animation of a garbage-ridden planet will leave you breathless in its horrific degradation. And this isn’t a film where the pure beauty of a class of professionals pushing themselves to the limit and breaking boundaries is such a joy and awe-inspiring moment. No, it’s the combination that you rarely see; one of fine craftsmanship in both the view and the storyline.

I can barely even express the storyline - the depth of feelings intertwined with what is shown on the screen, the sparse dialog that leaves you welling tears and laughing in the next moment.

And while the irony of it was not lost on me - leaving the theater and seeing the garbage on the floor, overflowing the two meager bins, being assaulted by Wall-E merchandise cropping up in stores now at limited quantities and low prices - there’s still the spirit of Pixar embedded in the file, thumbing its noise and wagging a finger even as it receives funding from its own corporate overlords.

Somehow, we don’t mind, for the creative talents they employ and the stories they have to tell need to be told, need to be unleased in almost any way possible. As long as we don’t fully succumb to the lure of consumerism.

Which, I think, was their ultimate point.