Weekend wrap-up
20 October 2003My belt is a notch tighter now. How the hell did that happen? Not that I'm complaining.
The morning commute has been something of a pleasure lately. It's still twilight when I roll up to the Centre Street bridge, the arches lit up from beneath, then once I cross the river and continue east past the needle deposit boxes (even the junkies are courteous, thoughtful and tidy in this town) the dawn breaks across the islands and the remaining fall colour bursts into flame. A few times the temperature has crept down to freezing, but most mornings are still quite bearable.
I could almost like this city, for a few weeks each year.
My energy level soared this weekend. After lethargy, sloth and a mild cold last week, I was in constant motion. On Friday after work we tore off to a garden centre where the remaining stock had been reduced to half-price, and loaded the van to bursting: small evergreens and a weeping caragana for the front, juniper ground cover, Siberian dogwood, spirea, chokeberry, sumac, other things I can't remember. That should fill in most of the gaps along the back fence. It will look a bit sparse for the next few years, but then things do apparently grow here, so they need to look sparse at first. We planted everything in a furious rush the next day, and will probably do one more small load now that we can see what still needs vegetation.
On Saturday morning I put in 95 km on the bike, a solo trip out to Bragg Creek. (I missed last week's announcement that the group ride time had moved back from ten to eleven, which makes all kinds of sense given the 20 degree temperature increase that occurs during this hour. It's not that it's too cold at ten, but rather the full layer of clothing you have to peel off by eleven, that necessitates the shift.) I wasn't the least bit tired when I returned, just wolfed down some food and carted the kid off to play in the park then, eventually, with great reluctance, fall asleep while cruising in the jogger.
That night, a faculty party and a late return. Maddy had been bunked with Annette's sister. The plan was for us to collect her after the festivities, drop her comatose form into the car seat and bring her home to bed, all without waking her. The plan would have succeeded but for Annette, babe in arms, missing the last step off the back porch and crumpling to the ground, spraining her ankle. That woke the kid up, but only barely.
On Sunday we rose late then trooped up to the oval to watch a world cup short-track meet with Annette and a couple of friends, and Mads of course (who did not yell at the skaters this time - last year she would regularly bellow "Hey skaters! Be careful! Don't fall down! Hey skaters! Where are you going?"). We all agreed that if your pleasure is staring at firm, muscular, lycra-clad asses, there is no finer spectator sport than short-track speedskating. Quite, quite spectacular. Probably the only thing that comes close is the low-angle camera shot directly behind the bobsled start, though I actually find it a bit frightening when the brakeperson's derriere zooms in and out of view, filling the screen, as they build momentum for the big push (thinking of the old SCTV schtick, it's the 3-D butt-cam). Short-track is, I think, the finest. Better than long-track, where the sprinters are simply too massive. After being presented with one particularly powerful, pulchritudinous posterior, I turned to my (male) companion and muttered under my breath, "Damn, now that's my idea of the 'Nutcracker on Ice'." Asses aside, the racing was excellent, particularly the relays.
Then Annette went to Liz's to return the babysitting favour while Maddy and I put the hot-water heater through it's paces: one bath, one shower, one load of dishes and four loads of laundry. The evening passed peacefully once the dinnertime tantrum had followed its course (nap too late, too short, kid grumpy, then Annette cut the pie twice, not once, and all hell broke loose for half an hour). Such ended my weekend.
Over the last three nights I've gone to bed very late once and early twice but on both those occasions been woken by Annette coming to bed twenty minutes after I'd fallen asleep, a very bad time interval because, like Mads having a short nap just before dinner, it's exactly enough to recharge you and leave you laying awake for hours. Ergo I am tired this Monday morn. Annette should either stop working so late on lectures, or work considerably later.
At this juncture, after mentioning Maddy's hideous reluctance to go to sleep before eleven, my own sleeplessness and other very mundane domestic matters, I feel compelled to add that toilet training was essentially completed back in the summer and, save for the occasional accident, we've enjoyed clear sailing ever since. Only nights remain unconquered, but the day of the pull-up will soon pass, to mix up the metaphor. Things aren't quite so easy for our friends, who's son is Maddy's age. He'll pee unassissted and unreminded, but he refuses to crap in the toilet. Instead he will go into the bathroom by himself, take off his pants and underwear, pull on a diaper, shit in the thing, then go tell his mother to clean him up. I think I would kill myself, I really would.
Beyond that, we've been on a hideous yet exhilarating spending spree since I began working, which suggests that I'll still be working full-time until we receive next year's tax refunds, and only then might I think about tapering back a little. (Fine by me really, what the hell else is one going to do in the middle of the weekday during a Calgary winter, except possibly ski?) We have been making lots and lots of seemingly painless $250 purchases that, amazingly, add up to a thousand after only four of them: the plants; fabric for curtains & chairs in the living room; the oak art deco fireplace mantle; skeleton school (whereby I will learn to plunge headfirst down the entire bobsled run on a small sled, reaching 125 km/h by the bottom, assuming I escape turn 8 in one piece and don't smack the wall too hard coming out of Kreisel and don't sand my face off in the last turn because my neck can't hold my head up at 4G). I still haven't bought speedskates, though earlier this week Annette did buy herself a relatively expensive pair of ski boots. (She and I are in agreement, skiing is so damned expensive now that it's not worth doing if you don't have decent enough gear to get out there and really scare yourself on steep terrain.) When she brought them home and proudly displayed them I could only smile and tell her that, subconsciously, she'd just decided not to have more children. Voting with her feet, as it were. I suspect that there is some truth to this, which would explain her weak, defeated look after I made the remark.
Talking to Mads
More vaguely weird, impressive stuff came out of her mouth this weekend. Legally, she is still only two, if only for this week. It's all a bit frightening.
At the park on Saturday afternoon, she hollered at me from atop a large piece of play apparatus: "Dad, it's very curious that this has two slides." Curious. I think that particular construction must be Pooh-derived (from the original 1960s cartoon, of course, not the vapid shit Disney pumps out these days).
While helping the little dear put on her shoes I sang some short pointless little rhyming ditty, as I am wont to do, and she replied by singing back an equally short pointless little rhyming ditty, along the lines of "why did you sing that song?/it wasn't very long." Doggerel, just like Dad! I clapped my hands and proudly congratulated her on the success of her rhyme. Then she grew very offended and claimed that she hadn't sung a rhyming song, she'd sung a "spurious song." That was her exact word, spurious, though I have no idea why or what it could mean in that context. Probably it was random. A friend later commented that we'll need to look for a kindergarten with a rhetoric program.
Struggling to get her into bed last night, negotiating over whether she should fall asleep by herself - "I'll make a deal with you, okay Dad?" - she demanded some assistance, and we compromised:
"Fine," I said, "I will rub your back for one minute, then I'm going back to reading on my bed."
"Well," she equivocated, "I don't have fur and a tail like a cat; also I don't have ears on the top of my head like Vita."
Translation: don't rub too hard, you're not petting the house-beast. Annette thought this hugely funny, since she herself once made the same complaint.