we are home

when i bought bagels and coffee on the corner before we got out of dodge, my change was $3.04.

maggie got her new phone number and got a 304 number. i was so happy to read this that my eyes welled up.

*sigh*

happy 4th birthday, dorothy & dietrich

hazel does not get to see madeleine for at least six weeks. she’s handling it okay though. they shared some cheerios and had a good talk and she thinks she can handle the time apart. because really… she’s just happy to be getting out of here during the summertime trash strike. although she is sad to miss her first pride parade.

also, while i was cleaning the bedroom and packing this morning, i found two more magazines shoved under the edge of the bed… and threw in two old hoodies to make it feel like a more legitimate destash :) off to the freestore they went… no need to do anything else until our first full week back in TO!

i will try to update a little bit from home. can’t make any promises…

everybody’s worryin’ about where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done

i am so. hot.

oh my god.

i’m so hot.

i cooked supper with three burners and the oven going in our two-foot-square kitchen and i still have not cooled off. i can’t wait to spend the next five weeks with people who have air conditioners. except for the camping part. we leave on saturday and i’m pretty much ready. i need to go to the cloth diaper store in the bloor west village and get a swim diaper for hazey. i need to do whatever laundry we accumulate between now and friday. i need to clean out the fridge. i need to see andrea (& sophia & madeleine) - who i will be absent from until mid-august and i’m not sure how to handle this - and rachel (& izzy). today ella i had a super-cheap date. she had a coupon for buy one get one free iced coffees at mcdonalds, so we drank our coffees and toured the local dollar stores - one of our favorite hobbies. i found pthalate-free bath toys for hazel, the uber-fine kind of pixie dust glitter for a project, and a tiny wren house shaped like a mushroom. because… we totally have wrens up here on the 17th floor. in the middle of toronto. and they can get through our pigeon net, you know.

i’ve finished all of my new year’s resolution things through july - here are weeks twenty eight, twenty nine, and thirty:

bag of craft supplies to the freestore.

organized fabric.

a few odds & ends to freestore - mostly magazines. also, two notebooks that were half full of to-do lists that i, for some reason, have felt the need to keep for the past five years. did i think i’d ever need to look at them again? did i think specific notations about when i did laundry and emailed maggie would ever be important to archaeologists? because i won’t, and they won’t.

i did keep a list of john’s top three favorite bottles of scotch, which was not in vain, because THAT NIGHT mikey wanted to know. i also found this list - i have no idea what it is and it’s driving me mad.

4 toys
2 pens
1 glitter glue pen
1 reese cup
2 cadbury eggs
1 sharpie
1 bow
2 gluesticks

also this list, which i think jess, my mom & i made of ways that we could never ever spend our lives:

terrorist
stripper
briefcase city job
policeman
abortion clinc
slaughterhouse

and before i forget, here is my friend maggie’s med school application essay, which i happen to think is quite fabulous so i asked her if i could share…

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i got a nikon camera, i love to take a photograph

paul simon didn’t mean a dslr, but whatever. they aren’t going to make kodachrome anymore. a former art teacher may or may not be - how do they say - shitting her pants? kodachrome is to her as the sponge is to elaine benes.

yesterday afternoon i was walking down the sidewalk with hazel - the eastern, shaded sidewalk - and someone stopped dead in their tracks two feet away from me and said “your baby should be wearing sunscreen!!”… giving me the most accusatory glare i’ve ever received from a stranger in response to something about my child (who will hopefully never touch the realm of accusatory glares i’ve received about my bumper stickers). hello? is sunscreen opaque where you come from? because in my part of the world, the delicious-smelling banana boat kids spf 50 is CLEAR. piss off.

hazel always wears sunscreen, friends. she is very delicate. she also prefers the company of giraffes.

she also prefers to not sleep anymore, which has done horrid things to my brain. i don’t even know where it is. somewhere… with the two silver rings that i can’t find that i’m pretty sure are NOT still at chris’s cottage. i think they are in the car. but they might be at his cottage.

six hundred and seventy four days / eight months

the thursday after the first night that we ever set ears inside the silver dollar, i called my mom raving and she wanted to know how long i thought it would be until mikey was on stage with any of them.

so hazel was eight months old a few days ago:

- her sleeping has not changed (she still is) and her mobility has not changed (she still isn’t), but she’s way different and way more fun over the past month.
- she knows how to wave hello / goodbye and is generally interacts much more with people, and tolerates other people for longer periods of time.
- she is usually amused by other people’s attempts to entertain her instead of just confused - if you make her toys talk or filp your sunglasses up and down really fast or any other baby-amusement-things, she will almost always smile or laugh instead of just staring at you with her brows furrowed.
- she still babbles incessantly and now says “mama mama mama” :)
- she cut her third tooth to the right of her bottom two.
- the car is much easier - she can be entertained by toys and snacks. no more crying fits.
- she continues to be obsessed with food - in the past month she’s had papaya, olives, tofu, cheerios, a wee bit of cheese, rice, watermelon, and probably some other stuff - still have not found a food that she doesn’t like. she can feed herself little finger foods and it’s quite adorable to see.
- being on her belly is somewhat more tolerable since she can push herself up really well and scootch around a little.
- her hair is growing back.
- she will sit in the bathtub splashing and screaming until the water goes cold if you let her. she can’t scoop up a cupful of water, but if she happens to pick up her cup and it’s already full of water, she will attempt to dump it on her head.
- she’s still in skinny clothes and small fuzzibunz (not for much longer, i don’t think - her legs are her only chubby feature), and i found some size one disposables at my parents house that still fit her with room to grow… i can still circle my hands all the way around her waist :) not sure how much she weighs - so “heavier” will have to suffice.
- her favorite toys are a little people ark full of animals (great yardsale find!), wooden stacking rings, nesting cups, other little stuff like that, a velvety/silky little taggie blanket… and of course her spatula. she now has bright measuring spoons to go with her spatula and she’s pretty in love with them. still doesn’t care too much about stuffed animals, blankets, or have anything like that that’s her “comfort” thing. i was starting to think this was weird until kelly pointed out that it’s probably because she nurses for comfort - duh.
- she loves books. absolutely loves them. plays with board books “by herself” and i’ve been trying to get through her regular storybooks because she now only sometimes gets really grabby / rips at them. i don’t have to read to her with her arms pinned down.
- when she wakes up from a nap we can hear her in bed just talking to herself for awhile - it’s so cute.
- since paisley has not been here to tell her when daddy’s home, she has learned the sound of his key hitting the lock and her head snaps towards the door, and then she dazzles him with her snaggletooth grin.

academic brilliance

“i just turned in a paper - a theology paper - with the word motherfucker in it.”

hazel is eight months old today :)

but i didn’t take her photos because we got back from up north at 2pm and it was rainy and the light was terrible and she was crabby. tomorrow, dear readers, tomorrow.

i only have positives about our little two-day stint in the country. chris’s family cottage is right on one of the two jillion lakes in ontario. i have forty-one bug bites and, like my maggie, am relishing every single one becaue it means i was out. side. we swam. we boated. we ate well. there was constant music. there was fire. there was laughing. chris wrote a tune for hazel, who got to eat cheerios, pasta, hummus, and the tiniest possible cheese curd (she’s canadian, after all). i don’t have to be sad about being back in the city because we’ll be in west virginia in two weeks, and i don’t have to look out these windows again until august.

kristine introduced me to a cream that might, just might, save my ruined hands.

listening: bruce
reading: coal tattoo by silas house

new year’s resoultion: weeks 23, 24, 25, 26 & 27

i still need to do three more things in the next two weeks so that all of july is taken care of, then i will get back on track when we return at the beginning of august.

23.] full laundry basket of stuff to freestore. mostly binders & photo albums. i emptied the last of our old photo albums into small photo-storage boxes, and finally got rid of binders of stuff like……… high school photography class paperwork and my rcia binder. i did keep our marriage prep stuff because it’s useful in fights. there’s some other random office supplies/desk stuff in here - i forget what.

24.] mikey thinned his books and packed up four boxes to store in wv. i put my pregnancy books in there. sniff.

25.] when ella & erin come over they inevitably end up fondling my craft supplies. i made use of this habit by dumping a huge jar of mixed (read: ignored) beads and charms onto a tray between them. they compulsively sorted them all into little ziplock baggies. i rewarded them for their efforts with lots of destash. most of what they left behind will be sold as supply on etsy.

26.] hazel got lots of lovely gifts for her baptism. as always, when putting away new things, i end up finding old things that we don’t want anymore. does anyone else keep every single drawstring fabric/gossamer bag they ever get a gift or wedding favor in, and then never actually remember to reuse them, so in 2009 you still have bags that you got in 1887? does anyone else have more phone cords than they have phones?

27.] since paisley is gone i took the liberty of purging her toys. hopefully she won’t notice. i excavated the layers of hair & toys that she never plays with at the bottom of her tub - most are demolished and i threw them away. i’m giving a couple of good toys that she finds uninteresting and some abandoned bone-knots to her wv-dog-siblings (or… aunts and uncles? how is she related to my parents’ dogs?). i kept her two favorite pelts (Dollar Store Puppy and One-Eyed Carrot Man) even though they gross me out. i am a tolerant mother.

i think they look alike…

tonight at dinner:

mikey: “what would you call a bunch of asparagus if you used it to put on makup?”

emily & erin: *stare*

ella: “what?”

mikey: “mascara-gus. isn’t that a good one?”

erin & emily: *stare*

hazel: “heeeeeeebbbbbbbbbbbbbb!!!! ttthpppppffffffttttttttttt”

ella: *cackling, wiping tears* “how did you come up with that???”

mikey: “well… i was thinking about asparagus, and other words like it, and how if the tips of the asparagus were all black it would look like you put on makeup with it.”

ella: “… oh what a twisted web your mind weaves.”

mikey: “do you see why i can’t write a paper?”

it’s 10:12 p.m. and hazel is still awake, sitting on my lap while i type this. the entrance of the third tooth, which cut through today, has been about 472438947298347983% less fun than the first two. last night i had to go to bed with her at 9:30 to get her to sleep. she hasn’t let me out of her sight in two days. i love you kid, but throw me a bone here.

also, my hands are the worst they’ve been yet. I AM NOT. DOING. ANYTHING. TO. THEM.

kkb hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fetgcccccccccccccccc55555ees]]R.’;/;.;

well said, hay-mizzle.