Smart Spelling

Back in the day when my kids were itty bitty wee ones, when they were cute and little and could be tied to a chair to get them to sit still, (with a sweater people...I tried to avoid rope...left too many burn marks), I used to sing that annoying song The Wheels On the Bus to them all the time.

(Gotta admit, I kinda wish I had used that version...)

When I wasn't singing them the bus song...the cleaner version...I was prancing around, shaking my booty and belting out my wedding song.

Ah, memories. How sweet they are. I can still see my mother and MIL's faces when the music started.

I digress. From an early age, the school bus has played a role in my children's lives; morphing from a silly bonding song where they were subjected to the off key hollering of their tone deaf mother to what is now their primary mode of daily transportation, where they spend almost two hours of each day being bumped and shuffled along until the bus safely arrives at the end of my driveway.

The distant rumble of the school bus serves as an alarm for me to get my ass off the computer and grab a vacuum. I wouldn't want them to know I spend most of the day on the Internets, surfing for porn reading blogs, while wearing a bathrobe.

I do have an image to maintain.

Yesterday, as they scampered up our long driveway and burst into the house like a pack of rabid rhinoceroses, they brought with them more excitement than normal.

I am unaccustomed to such an entry. Usually they are fighting and arguing and racing to rat one another out over who said the dirtiest word on the school bus.

This cheerful entry had me suspicious.

"Hey peeps. What's up?" I asked as I looked for evidence of a sugar high. No candy wrappers in sight. No sugar on their breath. Hmmm...

"Mom! I'm trying out for the spelling bee competition and if I win I get to go to the Scripps National spelling bee in Washington!" Waves of excitement are rolling off this kid now.

"Well, it can't be as simple as that, kiddo. They don't just hand out tickets to that event to any hillbilly."

"Well, I've got to win the school competition, the regional competition, the national competition and then I go to Washington," she replied nonchalantly, as though it were as simple as bending over and tying ones shoe laces.

"That's a lot of competition. Are you up for it?"

"Absolutely. I love spelling."

Not one to kill the joy in my child's eye, I hugged her and tried to block out my own painful memories of losing the school spelling bee to a snotty little jerk who wore suspenders and constantly teased me about being flat chested. Pimply little freak.

"Will you help me study?" How can I turn down those beautiful blue eyes? Besides, surely this is better than listening to the joyous sounds of elephants rutting when she breaks out the ole French horn.

I love this. I love watching her excitement to learn. I love witnessing her cutthroat competitive streak. This is one of those moments that make all the other parenting crap I've endured worth it, I think to myself.

And then she hands me the list. With hundreds of words on each page, double sided, and an inch thick. Suddenly I'm not loving this parenting moment so much.

"Um, how long do you have to learn all of these words?"

"A week."

Seven days. No problem. Let me just go find my magic wand and magical top hat.

Not wanting to let my bad attitude color her experience, I buckle down and start tossing out words. It went well. For about four words. Then it got decidedly more complicated.

"MAIEUTIC." I have to admit, by now I'm not even paying attention. My mind is elsewhere. Like imagining George Clooney alone on a tropical beach, with me, feeding me peeled grapes.

"Can I have the definition, please," Fric asks very politely, like a seasoned veteran of spelling bees.

"How the hell should I know? Get thee to a dictionary." Like, duh.

"Well then can you at least tell me what is the origin of the word?" She's looking at me like I just crawled out of a hole and grew a second nose.

"Um, a smart one?" I offer.

"Didn't you go to school, like university?" she asked all haughty and snotty sounding.

"Ya, but I must have slept through the day they taught us that word."

Moving on.

"POIESIS," I stammer. How the fuck does one say half these words, I think to myself as I scan the list looking for any word I recognize.

"I don't think that's how you say it, Mom," Fric argues.

"Just spell the damn word." Kids these days. Give them an inch, they run off and try to choke you with it.

"I'd like the definition please."

"So would I. Go get a dictionary."

"Mooooom!"

"Fine. It means 'chicken of the sea.' I was just teasing you before. I know what all these words mean." Beads of sweat are starting to pop up on my brow now. I haven't felt this much pressure since I was a teenager and trying to pass my driver's exam and I forgot to disengage the parking brake.

"You're lying."

"You're getting smarter by the minute, kid."

"Sheesh. Never mind. Remind me not to go to the same school you went to."

"Looking at this list, honey, I'd have to agree. I don't know where my tuition dollars went to but it certainly wasn't teaching me the English language."

Cue rolling of the eyeballs.

We continued on this path for an hour. The longest hour of my life since Bug was crowning and I was trying to push his oversized head out my teeny tiny pink parts. Come to think of it, this hour was almost as painful too.

I never thought I'd say it, but I really wish she'd just stick to practicing the French horn. How I miss the sounds of animal carnage coming from her room.

I'm all for helping my child learn. And I applaud any activity that increases my child's knowledge and vision of the world. But there has to be a line drawn in the sand. It's bad enough I don't know what the hell I'm doing as a parent, but to participate in providing proof to my children that I don't know everything, that I'm not as smart as God, well, that's just foolish.

Tonight, when I hear the rumble of the school bus, I'm hiding. I'm not as dumb as that spelling list made me look.

Letter to My Dog

Listen up dog, things have got to change. Because after last night, you are lucky that I am not packing you up and dropping you off in the middle of some random farmer's field, leaving you to be some bitch or bait for the nearest coyote, wolf or fox.

Quit looking at me with those puppy dog eyes dammit. All right. So it's a blatant lie, everyone knows I would never leave you to be raped and eaten by a hungry wild critter. But keep up the shit you pulled last night and I promise you I will start buying the cheap dog food. You know the type...tastes like sawdust, makes you shit like you've never shit before.

That's right Nixon. See who wears the pants around here? And those doggie treats I keep buying for you, you know, the ones you love but give you wicked gas; gas you have no problems releasing when your ass is inches from my nose, those treats are gone.

I mean business.

You see dog, I did my time getting up at all hours to check on small children. I put in my hours feeding and changing babies. They've grown older. And, dammit, so have I. One of the perks of your babies growing older is that they sleep through the night. And piss in the pot. Not all over the damn floor.

I may call you my baby, rub your belly and stroke your fur, but it's only a term of endearment. You aren't really my baby. You're my dog. I picked your scraggly ass out of a litter and paid good coin to have you shit on my floors sit on my lap. Unless science figures out a way to squeeze a four-legged critter that is in desperate need of a nail clipping out of my old and abused uterus, you need to stop abusing your powers of the puppy dog eyes and cuteness and cut this momma a break.

Did you really need to sleep all damn day like a teenager and then pace the entire length of the house all night long? You know I'm a light sleeper. Your little claws clicking on the hardwood and tile were like Chinese water torture for me last night.

Did you really need to jump up on the bed incessantly, flop down for two seconds, thereby lulling me into a false sense of security and then jump back off the bed to resume your midnight pacing?

What ever happened to my sweet Nixon, the one who would bury his ass by my face and sleep the night by my side, snoring like a lumberjack and farting all night long? Remember that? I would squish you and shove you and curse at you and you would just burr in closer? Always with your ass in my face? Those were the good nights. How I miss them.





I love you my little nose picker. I really do. Don't make me get medieval on your ass.

Did you really need to jump up on the window and pretend to be 'Tough Dog', barking at the deer, moose, dog, cat, bear, fox, squirrel, bird, facking boogey man or whatever was on the other side of the glass and start barking like a rabid idiot?

News flash Nixon, we live in the bush. There are animals out there. They'll eat you. So shut up at night or I'll send you out there and see how big your shrunken raisin testicles really are.

Did you really need to whimper at the door, whining to be let out, not once, not twice, but three times last night? And each time I stumbled my sorry, naked, freezing ass to the door and let you out, you did NOTHING. You sat and stared at the sky. While you communed with the heavens, I sat on the couch in the complete darkness, shivering and wishing I were back in bed.

Do you have any idea how cold tile floor is in the middle of the night when you are standing in front of a door, naked, waiting to let in a damn dog? It's cold, dude. REAALLY cold.

And with all three trips you took outside to stargaze, did it not cross that pea-sized brain of yours to say, oh, go to the facking washroom? Was it really necessary to shit right beside the front door, where I almost stepped in it in the darkness? You couldn't have gone during one of the times I let you out? What the hell do you think I drug my sorry ass out of bed for in the first place?

Hint dude: It wasn't so you could howl at the moon.

I love you Nixon. I really do. Ask the Internets. They'll tell you I call you the World's Greatest Dog, Ever. Because in my eyes, you really are. You helped take all that pain and heartache I carry and make it all a little less heavy. You sit on my lap at night and snore softly and my heart grows three sizes, just like the Grinch.

I even think it's funny when you growl at Boo when he tries to move you so he can sit next to me.

But Nixon, I'm only one man's bitch and his name is Boo.

So quit with the shit at night or I'll feed you to the fishes lock you in the laundry room at night. Face it, neither of us wants that.

But mess with my beauty sleep again and I'll show you just how well this bitch wears the pants.

Update: The letter seemed to really work. Heh, heh. Last night he was as good as gold. Seems he really does know who is boss. Ya, I know. I'm delusional.

Another Christmas Bites The Dust

I'm not at all sad to see Christmas day come and gone. It always amuses me that I shop for months, spend hours of my life wrapping presents and sweat half day slaving away in a kitchen; all for the day to pass in a swift blur with nothing but some photographic evidence, a few garbage bags stuffed with ripped packaging and a closet full of plastic crap toys to show for it. All that and a headache too.

(Although, I confess, mine may have been well deserved and of the vino variety.)

Family gatherings and holidays in general still bring the tender hurt out in my heart. It's hard not to be hyper-aware there is one little body, one small boy who isn't taking up floor space, drooling on the hardwood and wondering when he will be able to get his hands on that empty box sitting in the corner.

Yet I found it distinctly difficult to sink into a maudlin funk as my four year old niece sat on my lap and tried to stuff a candy cane in my ear while I watched a roomful of other beloved children wiggle and giggle with Christmas excitement.

Like my favorite chocolate, Christmas will now and forever be bittersweet.

A balm to our wounded souls is our family knows how to have a good time. A good time which includes renting a city transit bus, stuffing it full of a dozen or more excited and noisy children, some slightly tipsy parents all holding their own personal thermos of magical Christmas elixir and going on a tour of the city to appreciate the season's light show.





The neighbours were all peaking out their windows, wondering what the hell we were up to.

Picture a herd of small children running up and down the aisle, squealing with delight as the bus jostled down city streets as the cool older children sat at the back of the bus screeching out Christmas carols at the top of their lungs while we parents sat and tried to ignore them all.










Festive, and safe. The best type of Christmas there is.

(My ears are still ringing two days later.)

That was only the start of our Christmas celebrations. It got better from there.

(But never any quieter.)

A new holiday classic was created when Boo's three year old nephew mistook Boo's groin for a candy cane and nearly castrated my darling husband. Picture a pretty blonde boy hanging one inch to the left of Boo's package while Boo tried to entice him off with sweets and swallow the dirty words that surely sprung to mind.

How I wished I had a camera in my hands at that moment.

Thankfully, no manhood or any parts thereof, where injured by the misguiding chomping of a sweet three year old's pearly whites. Boo's inner thigh now sports a nice set of teeth marks, but worst yet, his ego is slightly bruised by the fact we adults were much to busy laughing to offer sympathy (or help) during his time of crisis.

(In our defense, we may have been slightly tipsy.)

Then there was the traditional unwrapping of my thoughtfully wrapped packages on Christmas morning. It doesn't get any better than watching your children's eyes light up like a Christmas tree when they discover what was hidden underneath the ribbons and bows just for them.

I will never grow tired of that joy.

Toss in some magic moments when I kicked everybody's butt in a game of Monopoly, and it turned out to be a Christmas I could really sink my teeth into. (Not that I'm competitive or bragging or any such thing...)

Boo had his moment too, as I was sadly robbed of victory. While I put in a good effort, I knew I was beat when I spied my professionally wrapped parcel. My cries of "Cheater!" fell on deaf ears when I ripped open the paper.





My preciousssss, my preciousssss.

Suddenly I was distracted by gigabytes and hard drives. It's always hard to admit defeat, but somehow stroking my shiny new laptop made it that much more bearable.

I have since called a moratorium on all adult gift giving. If I can't win, I don't want to play. Not to mention, at this price rate, soon we will be homeless and bankrupt.

Next year, we're sticking to home made presents. I'm bound to win with all the crafty genes I inherited from my mother flowing through my veins.

Then again, like the season of Christmas itself, duct tape is a wonder.

I hope your Christmas was filled with as much joy and love as mine was.