Home At Last

Jon and I are going to the bank today. We are going to reopen our mortgage and get the ball rolling on officially buying my parents' house, mortgage payments, school taxes and all. My dad (like many dads, I'm sure) has "strongly suggested" (the way dads do) that we secure our mortgage before rates skyrocket.

I am curious to finally meet our new mortgage consultant face-to-face. We've had numerous conversations over the phone since selling our condo back in the fall. During our first chat, I thought she was pretty gung ho to be at the office when she clearly had dentistry issues. Her voice sounded like she had a mouth full of gauze, or sedatives. Call after call to the bank and without any improvement to her tone, it became apparent to me that she did not have any dental work done at all. She really does talk like someone with a mouth full of marbles.

Last week, when I called to announce that we were ready to reopen our mortgage and claim the eleven grand in penalty fees that the bank so heartlessly withheld from us, she asked some routine questions like, "Whad ith your cuwwent wowking thatuth?"

"Well, I am self-employed, but I'm on maternity leave with my baby. And my husband just started his own business." On the other end of the phone I heard what I can only describe as the sound of our chances of securing a mortgage going down the toilet.

"Mhm," she replied.

Two years ago, I managed to secure our condo's mortgage on my own with my meagre publishing salary. This time around, Jon and I will both be signing our lives away to the bank and both our incomes have improved since then. However, the economic climate has changed significantly over these past two years. Without the backing of an employer, will we be able to get what we hope to get?

We do plan on playing our wild card: we're bringing the baby along. If our consultant is on the fence about giving us a mortgage for the amount we need, we hope that Marshall's smile will help sway her decision, like a new puppy or a kitten might.

We only hope she isn't allergic to babies. And that the baby doesn't spit up or poop on her.

"When I was your age..."

"What in our youth were we deprived of that kids of today might take for granted?"

My grandmother saw a lot in her long life. She raised some of her children in a house without electricity or running water. Food was kept cold in a hole in a nearby creek on warm days. Preserves were pickled and jarred for the winter months. My grandfather hunted deer to give the family a supply of meat. By the time my father--the youngest--came along, electricity and plumbing ran through the house and an automobile was parked in the yard. However, Dad attended a two-room school house until he was a young teenager. He had to hold the antenna to get a clear enough picture of the hockey game on the black-and-white television set. Before my grandmother passed away, she had witnessed such domestic innovations as the vacuum cleaner, the washer-dryer, Jell-O, Windex and the microwave oven.

As I watch my little boy nod off in his Fisher Price electric swing, I wonder what of my generation will he look back and marvel at when he grows up? What in our youth were we deprived of that kids of today might take for granted?

I don't know about you, but I think I had a pretty good childhood. I grew up in a peaceful neighbourhood with plenty of parks to play in, a wooded area to build forts in, a backyard to chase the dog in and an above-ground pool to splash about in. As my sister, brother and I got older, we were lucky to get a Nintendo gaming system from Santa Claus, complete with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Paper Boy and Tetris. We blew into the cartridges or wedged them into place when they didn't function properly in the machine. Sometimes we'd give the machine a good whack when it wasn't behaving, followed by a carefully timed sequence of mashing down the power button. We struck gold the day Dad came home from the flea market with a cartridge containing 96 games in one. Who cares if 25 per cent of the games were in a foreign language? I don't think we ever grasped the rules to Mahjong.

My dad gave me his first work computer when his company provided him with an upgraded one. It was a "portable" Kaypro II. It weighed a ton. It held two floppy disks. The green-on-black screen was tiny. You could knock someone out with the massive keyboard. I loved it. We fought over who got to play the next round of Space Invaders; I also wrote my first short stories on it and proudly printed them off on Dad's dot matrix printer. Ah, don't you remember the shrill sound of the dot matrix? Dad would have to print off two hours' worth of reports on some nights. The volume on the television set would get progressively louder and louder as the pile of accordion-folded pages grew and grew.

Television. Forget remote controls. I think my parents had children so that we could change the channel for them. One of us would have to reluctantly get out of our seat, pound the two-digit channel onto the calculator-like grid of the wood-encased colour TV, and usually have our prime spot next to Mom stolen by one of the other siblings. At least our folks didn't make us hold the antenna if the picture was fuzzy. We had an outdoor antenna that towered over the roof of the house. Dad had rigged up an indoor rotor that spun the antenna in any direction to get the best signal. We weren't allowed to touch that. God only knows what it looked like from outside when we did get our hands on it. I can imagine it rotating 720 degrees one way, 90 degrees the other way, and then another 360 degrees. At a relatively high speed.

I remember the summer our town finally got cable television. I was thirteen. Prior to that, I had made friends with the new girl in school who lived up the street. We went on bike rides, lounged in the pool, played our cassette tapes. Our friendship fizzled out as soon as she discovered MusiquePlus. We spent a few days in her air-conditioned house watching a constant loop of music videos in silence. Eventually, I knew I didn't have a chance, so I quietly left her living room.

And then I discovered music! And mix tapes--real mix tapes on actual cassettes. I listened religiously to the radio, my finger pressed down on the "pause" button, until my song came on the air. I hummed along, proud of myself for capturing the very first note of the song. And then, with fifteen seconds left to go, I cursed the damn DJ for getting on the air prematurely to announce the latest bloody contest. My mix tape perfection was ruined.

I cried the day 990 Hits stopped playing Top 40 and became an oldies station. What were we going to listen to now on the AM-only radio in my mother's Chevette?

When I got older, I used to tape the late-night college radio shows to hear new sounds that not even MusiquePlus played yet. That's how I discovered the Smashing Pumpkins. I couldn't help but smile the day I overheard one of the cool kids on the bus say, "Have you heard that song Today by the Smashing Pumpkins?" to which his friends grunted, "No." I was ahead of the game, musically! I thought. Don't worry, cool kid. They'll catch on one day. I was on to the next band by the time the Pumpkins released that shit double album.

This blog post could go on for days, now that I think of it. I only touched on a fraction of the technological changes we've seen in our generation. I haven't even uttered the "I" word, yet. The Internet--which became a part of our household in 1998--really has changed everything. With the Internet, how will my son write a class project? How will he make friends? How will he feel, considering I have shared photos of and anecdotes about him to friends and complete strangers alike--to masses of people--without his consent? Ugh, my head hurts just thinking about it.

It has been one hour since I began writing this blog entry. My baby is still sound asleep in his Fisher Price electric swing. Back in my day, my mother would have had to wind up the hand-crank swing a handful of times, risking waking me up with each turn of the handle.

Well, thank goodness for change.

Life in Slow Motion

Before I had Marshall, I remember my mother telling me that I will relish the chance to do the groceries on my own once the baby is born. I didn't think much of it at the time. Now that we are nearing Marshall's five-month mark, I have to admit that Mom was right (aren't they always?).

"Why don't you take Marshall with you when you go on a grocery run?" Jon asked me the other day. "Think of all the new things he can see and discover." I felt a pang of mother's guilt. Why don't I take him to the grocery store? Why am I keeping him from ogling the brightly coloured fruit or batting his baby lashes at the cashiers? And then it hit me: the mundane routine of grocery shopping alone, without my kid, is one of the only actions I can do at normal speed.

Life with a baby is one interruption after another. Baby needs a diaper change. Baby is hungry. Baby wants to be held. Baby is having a hissy fit. I remember the days when I used to do my groceries, pick up my prescriptions, grab a couple of bottles of wine and return a video in the span of a half-hour--on foot. Nowadays, it's a feat when I can brush my teeth before noon. And there are entire days when I pace around the house in my pajamas against my will. It seems that as soon as I can get my boy to sleep, possibly put on a wash and cram a couple of cookies in my mouth to soothe my nerves, he's screaming again. Time for ME to eat, Mommy! he wails in baby talk. Shake a leg, woman!

Dishes get done in intervals. Laundry looks at me pleadingly from overflowing baskets. Fold me! Please! The bathroom gets washed hastily when my parents tell me they're coming over.

And the dog, the poor dog, gets walked sporadically. Our walks are nothing like they used to be, when I'd cram a handful of dog biscuits in my jacket pocket, slip on my shoes, clip the leash onto Shadow's collar and away we go. Baby has to stop spitting up before I can wrestle him into his snowsuit. I have to weave the stroller out of its parking spot in the garage and strap my howling son into it. I have to bring the boy back up to his room after he drops a shit bomb in his stroller. Once the baby is back in the stroller, I locate the dog, locate his leash, yell at the overly excited dog to calm down (who in their right mind wants to calm down when they are being yelled at to calm down, anyway?) and, finally, away we go. Only half-way down the driveway do I remember that my pockets do not contain any biscuits. To hell with it. There's no turning back now. Away we go, dammit.

The only thing I have managed to do more quickly since Marshall was born is eat. And that's because he's usually howling to be picked up/fed/generally entertained fifteen minutes into supper. The other night, Jon and I managed to scarf down an entire large pizza in five minutes, I kid you not.

No wonder I have heartburn. And no wonder I don't blog as often as I wish.

And on cue, here comes another baby tantrum. It's a miracle I got to wrap up this entry. Gotta go.

Rub a-Dub Dub

As the old cliché goes, opposites do attract. I should know. I married mine.

He is covered in tattoos, while I have only one modestly concealed tat. He rides motorcycles, while I continue to insist on never learning how to drive stick shift, let alone ride on two wheels. He thinks it is acceptable to talk on the phone while on the can, while I find it appalling... which leads me to wonder, has he ever called me from the bathroom?

Another of our differences is our shopping habits. Jon is impulsive, while I hit the shops with the mantra: "Do I need it or do I want it?" Don't get me wrong: he doesn't renew his wardrobe every month. However, he often gets things--BIG things--knowing that, worst case scenario, he can return/resell/exchange them if he changes his mind. It's not so much a spending issue, since he usually gets these items at a good price. Rather, it's our lack of space that gets me scratching my head when he comes home with his new finds. And where, do you suggest, will we store this?

Case-in-point, about two years ago, he bought a small motocross bike for a song. We had no room to store my car in the garage, let alone another bike! And when did he have the time to ride around on an undersized motor bike? Experiencing a case of buyer's remorse, Jon posted an ad online and sold it a few days later--for a profit, mind, you.

Jon's latest impulsive acquisition happened last week. As he was driving out of the drive-through, burger in hand, and past the hardware store, he slowed down when a couple of employees walked out the main door hauling a bathtub. Let me clarify. This was not any old tub. It was a massive, heart-shaped tub that neither of our bathrooms can contain within their current dimensions. Câline de bine.

"Hey, where are you going with that?" he asked the employees.
"This is a demo. It's going in the trash," one of them replied.
"Is there anything wrong with it?" he inquired.
"No," they said.
"Well, it's going in my truck!" concluded my husband.

This transaction was soon followed by a giddy phone call from Jon. "I got a tub!" he said.
"You got a what?" I asked, untangling the baby's fingers from my hair.
"A bathtub. I got a heart-shaped tub!"

And was it ever heart-shaped. My mom and I peeked out the window when he rolled up to the driveway that evening with the big shiny tub in the bed of the pickup truck. "Geez, he wasn't kidding. That tub is shaped like a heart," I muttered. "Where the hell are we going to put that?"

"Maybe you can put it in the backyard. You can put some fish in it," my mom replied. Thanks, Mom.

So, we found a place for the tub for now. It is standing on its side and leaning up against stuff. Unless we win the lottery, I'm afraid we won't be bathing in it any time soon. We do intend on renovating our bathrooms in the future, but that will mean replacing the old furnace with a leaner, greener one, installing new plumbing, knocking down our bedroom wall, and designing a walk-in shower. And until then, we have bills to pay. And the damn baby just keeps growing out of his clothes.

I promise to announce the day I take my first soak in the tub. In the meantime, if any of you are shopping for a classy heart-shaped bathtub, give my husband a shout. It could be yours if the price is right.

Oh, I should mention that while Jon loves his bath time, I admit I'm more of a shower person. Opposites do attract.

To Baptize or Not To Baptize?

The idea of little unbaptized babies floating aimlessly in purgatory hurts my heart. Is that enough reason to have our boy baptized?

I have a dilemma.

Marshall is nearing the four-month mark, meaning that he is within the ideal age range to be baptized. The issue is: do we baptize him or not?

Jon and I are both Christian. He is Catholic and I am Protestant. We decided on a civil marriage because we found it hypocritical to organize a church ceremony in a building that we rarely go to, led by a minister who doesn't know us at all. Our good friend Marc-Etienne married us in the garden of a lovely restaurant one August morning in a simple, spiritual, yet non-religious ceremony. And we were thrilled with the way things panned out.

"Can't you have a civil baptism?" my dad asked the other day. While that idea seemed interesting for a split second, it got me thinking, What would he baptized into? The Church of Non-Belief? Is there a Church of Fence-Sitters? Sign me up.

I can't describe myself as a very religious person. Lately, I've only stepped foot inside a church for weddings and funerals. I, like many people, only tend to pray when things are going badly. And the only times I say grace are at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Funny: these are the three times of the year that my mother serves us turkey. So, essentially, our family says grace whenever we eat a large bird. But I do believe that there is something beyond life on Earth. I guess I am covering my bases in case I do end up at Saint Pete's gates after I die. I have to have something on my CV.

Saint Peter: Did you go to church when you were alive?
Me: Occasionally. And when I did, I always put at least a fiver in the donation basket.
Saint Peter: Did you pray to God when you were alive?
Me: I did when I needed Him most. And I apologize for anything blasphemous He may have heard me say.

With the birth of my son, I have found myself giving a little shout out to God when things are going well. Jon and I are thankful for having a healthy, happy little boy. We are thankful for having the opportunity to raise him in a loving home in a terrific neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the idea of little unbaptized babies floating aimlessly in purgatory hurts my heart. Is that enough reason to have our boy baptized?

Here's the hitch: what will the Church say when I call up the minister asking for our baby to be baptized? Will he think we are hypocrites for conveniently turning to religion and expecting the Church to comply? Will he turn us away?

Marshall will know about different religions and beliefs, regardless of whether he will be baptized. Stripped down, all religions--even the Church of Non-Belief--abide by The Golden Rule. What a wonderful lesson to teach a child!

Who knows? I may choose to send Marshall to Sunday School, like my mother did when we were little. Recently, I have been reflecting on those early years, when Mom dressed us in our Sunday best and we piled into her car, listening to the CJAD trivia show on our way to church. Mom loves to sing, and what better place to belt out happy songs than in the United Church? Mom also had her hands full with three children very close in age. She got a breather when we wandered over to Sunday School half-way through the service. Eventually, Sunday mornings got a little too chaotic with school projects to finish and household chores to tend to.

While I may not visit God's house anymore, knowing that there is an ear to hear my concerns and my appreciation reassures me. Whether that ear exists is anyone's guess. We all find out eventually, only it's too late to tell our friends about it. And if I intend to cover my own bases for that day, it is only fair that I cover them for my boy, too.

Now, let's hope the Church allows us to do it.

Crafty Monday!

I am a pretty crafty gal. My closets are stuffed with crafting materials past and present, from stained glass grinders to calligraphy pens to crochet hooks. Unfortunately, caring for baby leaves me with little time to satisfy my bricolage needs.

So, this morning I rolled up my sleeves and got down to crafting business. My photo collection of Mr. Man is getting pretty massive. So, I decided to go Photoshopping and make Marshall his personalized baby book with the Baby Einstein plastic book he got from Santa for Christmas and my nifty printer.

The end result looks pretty darn good. However, Marshall was not too keen on reading. Poor kid. I guess I'll have to get his opinion on a better day.

Bad Dog

"How could this tiny, obnoxious creature leapfrog over me on the family totem pole and get more attention?"

I hear that all mothers of infants hit their occasional breaking point. I hit mine the other day when finally getting around to making the bed at 4 p.m. while toting an inconsolable baby on my hip... and then, I almost stepped in it: a glistening puddle of dog vomit on the bedroom carpet. I slumped onto the wrinkled bed and cried along with my son.

Bad dog.

Shadow is my boxer-Boston terrier mix. I've had him for close to three years. We have been through a lot together. I remember coming home one night to a living room full of foam and fluff violently torn from my armchair. On another night, he managed to wolf down 40 of my thyroid pills, which resulted in a very expensive trip to the 24-hour veterinary clinic.

Bad, bad dog.

After scraping through obedience school, my little troublemaker and I are on better terms. However, he has felt power shift within the family since Marshall's arrival. "How could this tiny, obnoxious creature leapfrog over me on the family totem pole and get more attention?" So, he's taken to moping around the house, spending most of his time pouting on his dog bed and ignoring me.

I have another confession to make about my dog. He's a shit-eater. Seriously, he eats poop.

Ughhh, bad, bad, bad dog.

I know, it's gross. And when I do catch him in the act, I give him heck. However, I am learning to come to terms with the fact that shit just happens to be my dog's vice.

Now, this terrible habit should have its perks. In theory, as the owner of a shit-eating dog, I shouldn't have to pick up after him. Right? Wrong. It so happens that my dog only eats the poop excreted from my parents' dog, Kobe. He also eats deer poop. That explains why he's the first to jump in the car when we visit my folks in the country. It's like taking a trip to the buffet restaurant! He's that guy with the elastic-waistband pants and a plate in each hand.

I don't have the energy to correct my dog's bad habits right now. While I can't control his intake of poop snacks on his outdoor romps, I can at least keep him from licking the baby's face. For the most part.

Bad dog.