Category: home life

Walking the Dog in Springtime #SOLC26 9/31

Walking the Dog in Springtime
(after Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke with You”)

is even more ridiculous than walking home from daycare with a toddler
or scouring the pavement for that one glove, lost in the last week of winter
partly because he has to smell every inch of newly-exposed mud
partly because of my desire to breathe in the rain-washed air, partly because of his desire to breathe in everything
partly because of his enthusiasm for the disgusting remnants the melting snow has revealed on the edge of the sidewalks
partly because I have to pull him away from all the people and dogs that are also out enjoying the sunshine
it is hard to believe when I’m with him that there can be anything as still
as unforgiving as an icy walkway possibly studded with salt
in the warm Ottawa 2 o’clock light we are wandering through the neighbourhood
like neurons connecting through sunlight

*I stayed home sick today, but I still had to walk Max. We had a lovely midday meander.

Tuning in #SOLC26 6/31

After I broke my wrist in December, I took a few weeks off from walking the dog. In fact, I took a few weeks off from walking at all; I had no desire to find out what might happen if I slipped on another patch of ice. Can one break a currently-broken wrist? What if I slipped and broke my left wrist? What does one do with two broken wrists? I decided that I didn’t want to know the answers to these questions so, since Ottawa is definitely icy in the winter, I stayed home and “let” my partner and the kids walk the dog.

The children were compliant but not thrilled with their new duty. Mr. 15 wondered pretty regularly exactly how not icy it would have to be before I would take up my former duties. “Winter lasts a long time, Mom,” he stated bleakly. Mr. 17 tried to talk me into “just” using my left hand – but walking Max, our large energetic black lab mix, is a two-handed endeavour. Still, I missed my daily walks, so in mid-February I tentatively rejoined the dog-walking rotation: anytime the sidewalks were mostly clear, I took the dog.

Things were different now. Where before walking Max was just something I did, now it required my full focus. I scanned the sidewalks for icy patches; I looked ahead to spot other dogs that might cause Max to pull on the leash; I checked the streets for any vans he might need to try to attack (he really hates vans and buses). To protect my right hand, I needed my wits about me, so I did not put in earbuds and listen to podcasts as I used to do. I didn’t even look for things to photograph – something I love to do. I just walked the dog.

Suddenly I could hear those much-detested vans earlier and help settle Max before they arrived. When the weather broke for a February thaw, I heard the birds. And I noticed anew that people who passed me spoke several different languages – one of the many things I love about our neighbourhood. When I felt steady on my feet, my mind was able to wander. I hummed songs and just sort of thought.

This morning, as my mind meandered, I remembered the first time I realized that headphones (or MP3 players, I guess, though I didn’t know it at the time) were going to change the world. I was walking down the Champs Elysees, trailing the students I had accompanied overseas. The iPod was relatively new, and several kids had brought theirs on the trip. As some of the boys exited yet another patisserie (I’d be willing to swear that all they did on that trip was eat), I realized that Ben was bopping down the wide sidewalk of the great boulevard with his ears full of his own music. He wasn’t hearing the language swelling and swooping around him or the street noises that rose and fell as we passed various stores or even the thrum of the traffic. He was taking in the sites with his own soundtrack. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I told the kids to take out their headphones and be in Paris. I know that at some point I gave up the fight. 

My objection seems almost quaint today. Now, students sit in class, an earbud in one ear, strategically hidden behind a shock of hair or under a hat. They are vaguely offended when I ask them, again, to take out their personal life soundtrack. During silent reading time, they insist that they “read better” with music on. When I ask, many can’t think of a time that they aren’t listening to something unless they are forced to take their earbuds out. They hate the “silence” and tell me it’s uncomfortable. In my office, most of my colleagues have something in their ears all the time so that they can “concentrate.” I, too, often go through the world with someone else’s voice in my ears. 

My broken wrist may have broken that spell for me. Sure, I miss my podcasts, but I am enjoying the space that I’ve found. I can’t call it silence because the world is full of sounds, I’d just forgotten that they could be enough. Maybe I’ll get sick of it soon. Maybe I’ll slip back into the sense that every minute needs to count as two – or that every minute is mine to control in some way – but I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t. I think that maybe it’s time for me to remember that the world provides its own soundtrack and that my mind is happy there. It turns out, I like the space that comes from being a little tuned out.

What to Wear on Wednesday #SOLC26 5/31

When I was in high school, friends of mine kept track of how many times our Chemistry teacher said a particular phrase. I think it was “um,” but surely that is too banal. Surely we had better things to do in Chemistry than tally the number of times our poor teacher hesitated every class period, day after day, right? Of course, we also kept track of at least one teacher’s outfits: ah, there’s Tuesday’s skirt! Right on cue, Thursday’s dress! And my sister’s class once united to torture a student teacher by tearing out their notes, day after day, then pretending she had not given the previous day’s lecture. 

Clearly, this was before cell phones.

I am now in my 50s, and some days I feel lucky if the students even notice if I’m in the room, but these memories explain this morning’s dilemma: what to wear to school? I have plenty of options, but it’s March and I am sick of every item of winter-adjacent clothing I own. Plus, of course, I couldn’t wear the green palazzo pants today because I want to wear them tomorrow when we have a guest speaker. Why do I need to wear those pants for a guest speaker who I’ve never met before and may never see again? I do not know, but this morning that was my only fully-formed idea about clothing. As a result, I stared longingly at the green pants for several minutes. 

Eventually, I reached for a black dress with white stripes, but I suddenly feared it might be my “Wednesday” outfit. I put it back, deciding that my safest bet was something navy – because when was the last time I wore navy? Minutes later, I realized that I probably hadn’t been wearing anything navy because I couldn’t find my navy shoes or any cardigan that coordinated even vaguely with navy. 

At this point, getting dressed – something that normally takes me no time at all – had taken me quite a bit of time indeed. I texted my carpool buddy that I was running late and, ignoring the nagging voice in my head – the one with a distinct Southern accent – that whispered “No white before Memorial Day,” I grabbed a white cardigan. I finally located my navy shoes, then ran downstairs to grab breakfast. I threw together a lunch, and took my breakfast to go. My carpool buddy arrived, and we headed off to school: me, confident that I was not wearing a Wednesday outfit and knowing that, at the very least, my shoes were appropriate. No tally sheets for this teacher!

No tally sheets, that is, unless my students are keeping track of days when I have completely forgotten to put on any make up. Sigh.

At least tomorrow’s outfit is ready to go, and – who knows? – maybe the guest speaker will be really impressed by my green palazzo pants. Maybe he’ll add them to a secret tally sheet of “really well-dressed teachers for a Thursday in March.” I bet I top the list for that one.

Lost and Found

Tuesday morning. 8:10am. 

The phone rings one traffic light before the entrance to the highway, and the computerized voice in the car announces that my spouse is calling. My stomach drops: this is likely not good. “I hope nothing’s wrong,” I say to my carpool buddy as I press the “answer” button on the steering wheel.

“Hi Honey,” his voice is tense. I catch my breath. “Things are a bit akimbo here and we’re hoping you can help us. Mr. 17 is trying to find his clean clothes. I know you put Mr. 15’s clothes in the dryer before breakfast. Is there any chance you saw Mr. 17’s clothes when you did that? Do you know where they might be?”

I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“Um, yes. I put them in the laundry basket and put the basket on the stairs leading up to his bedroom.”

My spouse is disbelieving. “Are you kidding?”

“Not even a little.”

The message is relayed to the child, and the missing clothes – in a bright blue basket – are, indeed, discovered on the middle of the bottom step, the one he had to walk on to get downstairs to look for his clothes. Through the line, I hear my child’s voice ring out, “Got ‘em!”

My spouse and I guffaw; my carpool buddy and I guffaw some more, and the call ends, seconds after it started. Now we’re on the highway, heading towards even more 15 and 17 year olds who could very well be, at this moment, running through their own homes in their underwear, desperately looking for the laundry that their parents put directly in front of them.

Or maybe it’s just my kid.

Man vs Max

Max found a Labubu – and ate it

Our dog Max is a rescue. What he was rescued from, we don’t exactly know, but we do know that he came to Canada from Lebanon, we assume in a large dog crate. This explains many things. First, Max is an anxious dog. Second, he does not love crates. According to our dog trainer, his anxiety presents as aggression – so, she assures us, he’s not really an #$@hole; he just acts out because he’s nervous and doesn’t know what’s expected of him. As a teacher who often works with students who need a little extra attention, I feel like this is something I should have picked up, but the dogs I grew up with were decidedly not anxious, so I had no idea.

One thing that helps nervous dogs, apparently, is having a space in the house that is their safe space. Before we knew what he was doing, Max had chosen under our kitchen table as his space, which is not ideal because, well, that’s where our feet go. He’s generally ok with feet being there, but “generally” is not really enough when it comes to where your feet go while you eat. So… we are trying to help Max find another safe place in the house.

Max’s absolute favourite place to sleep is on our couch – with a stuffie

We started with a large hard-sided crate, which we put in the TV room by the sofa where we often hang out. Max was not impressed. He absolutely, 100% refused to go in the crate. Heck, he would hardly go near it. He growled at it and, when we put his favourite toys inside, whimpered a little, but he did not go get them. He spent weeks steadfastly refusing to go near the crate, giving it a wide berth while giving us the side-eye. Finally, we realized that he had probably flown from Lebanon in a crate, so we retired it to the basement (a place too scary for him to even contemplate; he will barely look down the stairs).

Months later, we put a dog bed in the kitchen near his table-lair. We have been trying to teach him the “place” command, and he will kind of do it, especially if treats are involved, but it’s out in the open, and he’s made it clear that he might go there to humour us, but this is not where he intends to sleep. So two weeks ago, we got *another* crate – this one with metal sides that he can see through. (Thank goodness for friends and family who are supporting us and our anxious dog by providing us with various types of crates and beds in our quest for calm.) 

We set up crate number two in a different corner of the TV room, and this time he didn’t growl or whimper. Then we got smart: we put Max’s food dish in the far corner of the new crate. To eat, he would have to go in. He’s half Lab, so he loves food, but he’s still Max, so he was tentative: he tested things out with one paw… then two… then he s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d in to eat his food. Such a brave boy!

Max with two feet in

We added a towel to make the bottom of the crate more comfortable, and two days later, Max managed to put three paws in the crate. Then, yesterday, he discovered a better solution. When Andre put a treat in the far corner, Max pawed at the towel and pulled the whole thing towards the door. Once he’d pulled the bowl close enough, he grabbed the treat and triumphantly trotted back to his safe space under the table to eat in peace. 

Anxious, but not dumb, this dog. Sigh. In the question of Man vs Max, I think Max is winning.

Update: tonight he put all four paws in the crate! 

What happened on Tuesday

What happened was a thunderstorm with a massive burst of lightning and a thunderclap so loud that I jumped out of bed even before I understood that the dog was barking.

What happened was that the dog went crazy, running and barking and shaking, after the thunderclap that shook our house and shook me out of bed, so now I was wide awake and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I talked to my visiting in-laws about the much-needed rain that was pouring pouring pouring down.

What happened was that the rain started coming down so hard after that giant clap of thunder that it took us a second to register the blaring of the fire alarm. “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” a vaguely female electronic voice stated with an oddly calm urgency. She managed to time her words in between the deafening blares of the alarm. Lights flashed from every unit, the already nervous dog went wild, and even my father-in-law, who’s lost a lot of his hearing, had to cover his ears, while my mother-in-law jumped up, and I ran to the back door to let the dog out, then both of my children came loping downstairs, blearily asking what was going on as if our house was not suddenly and obviously full of noise and strobe lights and chaos. “It’s the fire alarm!” I yelled, and my voice was not calm or electronic and my words were not timed to fall between the blaring blaring blaring of the alarm, so I had to repeat myself several times even though what I was saying was painfully obvious.

What happened was that I ran down to the basement to try to turn off the insistent incessant alarm, and the frantic dog escaped from the backyard and tore down the driveway, seeking refuge anywhere that was not our shrieking, strobing house, so my son ran out the front door and intercepted him, then somehow the terrified dog and my somewhat-less-terrified mother-in-law ended up in the backseat of her car, trembling and meanwhile I dragged a chair into the basement and stood on it, ineptly pushing and jabbing at one unit, trying to stop the noise.

*What happened was that one week earlier, Max had encountered a skunk and even though we had washed him and washed him, his wet fur now smelled distinctly of skunk, even as my mother-in-law sat with him in the back seat of her decidedly not skunky car, calming him.

What happened was that I could not make the alarms stop screaming, maybe because they’ve only gone off twice in five years and both times Andre was the one who stopped them, but now he wasn’t home, so I called him at work and when he didn’t pick up, I kept calling and calling while I pushed and held and twisted and pulled and tried everything I could think of to stop the sirens. When that didn’t work, I got off the chair and threw all the fuses, desperate to make the noise stop, but then I was in the dark with the strobing lights and the blaring noise.

What happened was that Andre called back, alarmed and annoyed, and he told me to unplug each unit until I found the one that was the center of the storm of sound, and then, if they still wouldn’t stop sounding to just “throw them in the freezer” and I thought that sounded odd, but we’d once put a bat in the freezer (it’s a long story) and the noise was so loud that I didn’t think too much about it: I stood on the kitchen chair and unplugged one alarm then another while the kids did the same upstairs until suddenly, mercifully, the noise stopped, but when one of the units let out an errant “beep,” I threw them all in the chest freezer in the basement.

What happened was I had planned to meet up with colleagues for lunch, so once I had four alarms in the freezer and the dog coaxed out of the car and everything more or less back to normal, I left. As I drove to the restaurant, I wondered about those frozen fire detectors, but they were there now and quiet, so I continued. And all was well. I came home, took them out of the freezer, and took my younger child to the dentist to talk about braces. It took awhile.

What happened was that as the fire detectors defrosted, they decided they were not done: they started to scream. My mother-in-law put the (still slightly skunky) dog in the backyard, and he tried to escape again. My father-in-law decided enough was enough so he put the alarms back in the chest freezer, and when I came home I decided that I was done with alarms for the day, so even though I’m off for the summer and even though Andre was working, I ignored the clearly unsolved problem.

What happened was that Andre came home and said, incredulously, “You put them in the FREEZER?” and swore that he had said to put them in the cooler which is the ice chest and which does not actually freeze things – especially not fire detectors – and while I can admit that he might have said that, I also reminded him that we have put weirder things in the freezer, so he shook his head and went upstairs to change his clothes then went downstairs to take four frozen fire detectors out of the freezer. 

What happened was that freezing the alarms (twice) had caused condensation to build up and the batteries to get low, but this time I knew better so, barefooted and disheveled, I took the dog outside before the chaos (re)commenced. 

What happened was the dog treed a raccoon and one of our cats got into a fight with a neighborhood cat, and as I tried to calm things down, two little boys, brown as berries and attracted by chaos, wandered by and stopped for a chat. One told me that he was four and he could lift this rock and he could spell his own name. He was astonished to learn that I was a teacher and wondered why I was sitting on my front steps with a dog. I said, “because it’s summer” and he didn’t ask about the thin sound of fire alarms seeping up from the basement and only wandered away with his cousin when Andre came up and asked if I knew where the compressed air was. I did not.

What happened was that Andre, looking somewhat wild, begged me to go ask our neighbours if they had compressed air while he went downstairs to blow dry the fire detectors and even though this request was patently insane because who has compressed air, I got up from the porch and went door to door, barefoot and trailing a dog, asking. The two oldest neighbours laughed out loud and delightedly asked how our fire alarm was holding up. I didn’t tell them that four units were frozen and dying and currently being blown dry in an attempt to bring them back to life but in a silent sort of way because that was even more insane than asking 75-year-olds for compressed air on a Tuesday night. I tried four houses; no one had compressed air.

What happened was I came home empty-handed and finished blow-drying the four dead-ish detectors, leaving one after another on the basement floor, dazed, with their poor half-dead eyes winking weakly on and off until Andre fetched them and put them back in their places – except for one that we dubbed the “problem child” and put back into the cooler (not the freezer) until further notice.

As far as I know, one week later, it is still there.

Immigrant

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teacher can safely assume that every child in a class of 25ish can, with relative ease, find a person in their life who has immigrated to the country. Oh, and we live in a place where that is a good thing.

I no longer take this for granted.

My child chose to interview me because I am an immigrant. Some days I am highly aware of myself as an immigrant; others, it seems like a word that pertains to other people. As an American immigrant to Canada, right now I feel horribly connected to my birth country: people who, like me, have immigrated, only to the US instead of to Canada, are being targeted and deported – sent to rot in foreign jails from which they may never return – for no reason other than being immigrants. Yes, yes, I realize that there are trumped-up reasons for their deportation, but even the Cato Institute (not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking) has determined that many of the men recently deported to an El Salvadorean prison had no criminal record and had never violated immigration law. The immoral actions of the current US government must surely give many immigrants pause.

So, when my child started asking me questions, I was a little tense. He was conducting the interview in Frenglish because I refused to answer exclusively in English for a class that he’s taking in French. Soon, he learned that I had lived in five places (and two countries!) before I was ten; that I have taught in four countries; that people in the US don’t take their shoes off when they enter a home. (“Wait? Really? That’s weird. Why don’t I know about that?” he asked. I said that his American relatives probably just laugh at him behind his back. Hee hee hee.)

He learned about the visa process and what it was like to move to a country where I could not yet hold a job and didn’t really have any friends.

“What did you do?” he asked.
“Learned to knit,” I replied, which is sort of true.
“I never really thought of you not knitting,” he said.
Oh, my sweet child. One is not born knowing how to knit.

After the interview, he drafted his “article”. It was still in Frenglish, though the French was coming along. Tonight, he’s polishing it, so we’ve spent quite a long time making sure the French grammar is right and double-checking accents. “I trust you more than Google Translate and BonPatron,” he tells me.

I point out that I am American. He is literally writing about me being American. I am not a native French speaker and still have a bit of a Southern accent when I speak. He says my French is still “really good,” and I decide to accept the compliment.

He decides he wants pictures to accompany his article. He’s particular – he wants me at specific ages and doing certain things.
“Do you have any in the snow?” he asks.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I tell him, but I live in Ottawa now, so of course I do. I send him what I can.

After a few minutes he says, “Do you have any of you looking normal?” which makes me laugh – I love making silly faces for the camera. Still, for him, and to make immigrants look good, I find some “normal” pictures. 

For you, however, I will share some of the funny ones.

There: faces of an immigrant. Remember this the next time another person gets deported. They might be a lot like me.

I Can Do Hard Things #SOLC25 31/31

Not for the first time this month, I nearly forgot to write. Tonight seems egregious, since it’s the last post of the March Challenge, but there it is. I’m the mom who would forget to leave the house with a spare diaper, even with the second baby – even when the second baby was over a year old. Apparently I have trouble forming new habits.

Of course, part of the reason I almost forgot to write is that I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. Wrapping up a month’s worth of daily writing and publishing is definitely part of the challenge, and this year is no different. I’ve been trying to put into words what I’ve learned this time around, or at least what I experienced. In my head, I’m close to knowing; in writing, I’m a little farther away from conclusions.

This March, I’ve sort of shoehorned writing in around other things. Some years I feel like it’s been more central to the month; this year it’s been more part of the fabric of my days. Predictably, some days have been tough, but mostly I had something to say when I sat down to write. As usual, I feel that I haven’t commented on nearly enough blogs, and I’m missing reading some of my “regulars.” I’ve come to recognize that this is ok.

Mostly, this March has been a reminder that I can do hard things – and I’m allowed to do them in a way that works for me. Write in the evening instead of in the morning? I can do that. Some days comment on only three or four other blogs? I can do that, too. Write a two-sentence post? Sure. Or use almost all pictures? Ok. Heck, accidentally post about extremely similar dinner conversations in the space of three days? Go for it. This month I have forgiven myself over and over for things that, as it turns out, others don’t even notice. Who knew that writing every day would help me continue to shed the shoulds that have governed my life for so long.

Tonight, I went to a class at my gym that I have never tried before. It “includes a little more intensity and choreography than our usual.” Since I can barely keep up with the “usual,” I wasn’t sure that I was making a good choice, but I did it anyway. I had to stop a few times, and for one entire “choreo” track, I gave up and just did my own basic steps. No one cared and I got a great workout. Once I got home, I had to wait a while to stop sweating – which is part of why I nearly forgot to write. The whole thing was more than my usual, but I can still feel the buzz of energy from having finished.

March is like that: it’s more than my usual, but the buzz – from the writing, from the community, from the challenge – lingers long afterwards, and it’s totally worth it. 

See you on Tuesdays! (Um, yes, that’s tomorrow.)

Dinner Party Conversation #SOLC25 29/31

We may have been talking a little too much about politics in our house over the last few weeks. Just now, when I told Mr. 14 that I was writing about tonight’s dinner table discussion with friends – the US, Trump, tariffs, deportations, Signal – he rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows what you’re going to say.”

“What should I say instead?” I asked.

“Tell them that someone thought tariffs were a great idea,” he suggested. “Tell them that we had a big fight and we threw the person who thought tariffs are good into the backyard with the dogs.

“At least that will be different,” he added. “I mean, what Canadian thinks tariffs are good?”

So, um, yeah: that’s my 14-year-old’s take on Trump’s tariffs.

Back up two hours to the dinner discussion my son found so predictable. There, the 16-year-old daughter of a friend tried to fathom the Signal war planning fiasco. “Wait – what?” She squinted her eyes a little and looked at her mother and me like we were trying to pull a fast one. “They talked about bombing people in a group chat?” She paused and let that sink in. “Like, seriously? Grown men? Real bombs? In a *group chat*?” When we mentioned that they had accidentally invited a journalist and that some of them were outside the US, she was incredulous. “Do they even know how group chats work?”

Around the table, people talked about not buying fruit that came from the US, avoiding products they used to rely on, cancelling streaming services. The teen whose parent is cancelling streaming services was unimpressed, but consoled herself that “at least TikTok is Chinese.”

With that, we are treated to a TikTok video of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh demonstrating how he ties his turban while he talks about his Conservative opponent. (For the non-Canadians, the NDP is the furthest left of the three major Canadian political parties; we are having an election on April 28.) She calls this “hair porn” and we all watch, fascinated.

Not long after this, we piled into the living room to watch our movie. As we settled in, three families, four children, two dogs, I kept thinking of one of JD Vance’s lines from the leaked Signal chat, one which has been on repeat in my head, though not in the way he meant it. “I think we are making a mistake,” he wrote.

For once, I think the VP got it right. Maybe we should throw him in the backyard with the dogs.