Sisyphean Laundry Basket #SOL24 24/31

All day, I’ve been meaning to write.
All day, I’ve been meaning to prep for the week.
All day, I’ve been meaning to mark.

But I couldn’t. Because, you see, I need to fold laundry. A LOT of laundry. Maybe five loads? Maybe more? I was going to post a picture, but I can’t – it’s too embarrassing.

I promised myself I would do it before I sat down at the computer.
I did not promise myself I would fold laundry before I went grocery shopping. Done.
I did not promise myself I would fold laundry before I walked the dog. Done.
I did not promise myself I would fold laundry before cooking, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom. Done, done and done.

It’s not like I haven’t been productive. I have, more or less. But now it’s almost bedtime, and the laundry is there, staring at me. I’ve had to create a giant pile so that I could reuse some of the baskets for – you guessed it – more laundry.

I usually don’t mind folding laundry – just turn on a TV show and off I go, but today, the knowledge that the minute I am done, the very second I put the laundry away, there will be more… I just couldn’t do it.

There is a reason Sisyphus wasn’t a woman. If he had been, rolling that boulder endlessly up the hill would have just been another thing on his to-do list every day.

The well-loved cat #SOL24 23/31

The text came in just before 10.pm.

Hi neighbours. Sorry for the late evening message. Tippy is at our place and is not willing to leave, maybe because of the cold. We can try to send her out if you are able to let her in.

Tippy is our cat. At least, we are the ones who brought her home from the Humane Society seven years ago. At this point, we are pretty sure she has several others families.

Tippy when we first got her, seven years ago. She has always loved kids.

For instance, she has definitely adopted the family two doors down. They have two girls, each a year younger than one of our boys, and no other pets. To visit them, Tippy climbs one medium-height fence and one tall fence and then paws at the sliding door on their back deck.

Not long after we got her, she began accompanying our kids to the bus stop every morning. After they were gone, she circled back to pick up the girls and accompany them to their bus stop, then she came home just in time to scoot inside as we left for work. Eventually, to her disappointment, the kids all started walking to school, and she was left to find other neighbourhood children to shadow.

The pandemic, awful for so many humans, was Tippy’s heaven. She woke and had breakfast with us, then got everyone settled for school. Mid-morning, she went out our back door, scaled the fences, and hung out with the girls for a few hours. At their house, she developed a routine: explore to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be, then settle in a sunny corner by the front windows and wait for various people to adore her. After a good nap, she would ask to be let out their back door, then come back to our place.

This is one of Tippy’s napping places in our house.

The neighbours – with our permission – got a cat bed and a scratcher, food and water bowls, and plenty of toys. Tippy makes good use of her time at both houses.

A few months ago, we got a dog. Max is an enthusiastic black three-year-old mix of Lab & “something pretty big.” He likes cats, but the cats are significantly less sure of him. Tippy is, generally, not impressed. The neighbours, too, worry. Last night, after the text about the cold weather (it really wasn’t that cold), Andre went over to pick her up As Tippy was passed from one father to the other, our neighbour asked if she was adjusting well to the dog. “We’ve noticed she seems a little nervous lately,” he apologized, “The girls are concerned.” Andre reassured him that all was well.

Max is pretty convinced that everyone should love him, too – even the cats.

Andre carried Tippy home, we all settled in to bed, and she took up her usual spot, waiting for me to finish reading so she can snuggle with me all night. No doubt, Tippy is a well-loved cat.

Tippy and I read together almost every night.

Maybe a myofunctional therapist #SOL24 21/31

“Ok,” she said, “push your tongue hard against this popsicle stick for thirty seconds.” He does. Then, they repeat the exercise once on each side. Next, she has him hold his tongue to the roof of his mouth “as if you were going to cluck like a chicken, but you stopped in the middle.” He chuckles, but he does it. Later he will hold water in his mouth and breathe through his nose for three minutes, then hold a spacer between his teeth and move his tongue in various figures. At some point during the session, she says, “I’m just really interested in tongues!” Fascinated, I text my friends – the ones who will understand this kind of text – about how cool this all is. This morning, for his fourth dental appointment in ten days, I took Mr. 13 to a myofunctional therapist. This is basically a physical therapist for your tongue. Who knew?

I get a kick out of anyone who is passionate about their job, and this therapist was clearly passionate. As we discussed her work, she asked if Mr. 13 knew what he wanted to do as an adult. He does not, but he had several great ideas when he was little: first, he wanted to be an animal translator who learned animal languages and then told people what the animals were saying; then he wanted to be an inventor who lived in the middle of the jungle and just invented things and gave them to someone who came to his cabin maybe once a month; more recently, he wanted to be a fountain designer to design the cool fountains where the water jumps around. Now, he just wants to be rich.

I was still thinking about unusual jobs when parent-teacher interviews started tonight. My first one was with a parent whose student will graduate in a few months. The student is fantastic, so the conversation was easy, and eventually the parent shared some of her concerns for “the next step.” Her biggest fear right now? He has no idea what he wants to do. I nearly laughed. “Stick with me here, but do you know what a ‘myofunctional therapist’ is?” She did not. “Neither did I,” I said, “until last week.” I explained the job and continued, “Nobody offers this as a job option when you’re in high school. Nobody says, ‘hey, you could do this really fascinating niche job, and you might love it.’ Kids have to explore and learn and find their own way for a bit – and who knows where they’ll end up? He’s not really supposed to know what he’s going to do with his life – he’s only 17.”

Parent-teacher conferences often leave me convinced that most things will work out, one way or another. The students will grow up. They’ll make mistakes and they’ll learn. Most kids figure things out, more or less, along the way. I’m pretty sure her child will, too, though I don’t see myofunctional therapy in his future.

Two poems #SOL24 18/31

Two poems for today. First, a book spine poem created from the books I just checked out of the library based on recommendations from other bloggers so far this month. Sensing a theme? (I also got Thornhedge, but it didn’t fit the poem.) I love all the recommendations and ideas I get during March. Will I finish these all before they’re due? I doubt it, but I’m not sure if that’s really the point.

Second, a poem for my recently restless nights.

The middle-aged woman’s sleeping prayer
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray that I won’t wake to pee.
If I should feel a sudden heat,
I pray that I won’t drench the sheets
And if I’m up throughout the night,
I pray my kids’ve turned out the lights.

Tomorrow I’m going to get my sh*# together and write earlier in the day.

Hammer/Nail #SOL24 15/31

Mr. 13 is remarkably willing to go to appointments, provided we abide by one simple rule: the appointment must be scheduled during the school day. He’ll do almost anything to miss school. Unfortunately for him, his parents work, and he has a *lot* of upcoming appointments, so when the dentist observed that one of his canine teeth still has not fallen out and that X-rays showed a potentially impacted tooth, I scheduled the orthodontist for this morning, the last day of March Break. He was not impressed.

Nevertheless, he got up with only a bit of groaning and walked with me to the orthodontist. After we filled in all the paperwork, we were put into a consulting room where his x-rays were up. Right away, I could see the problem: one tooth looked stuck. But Mr. 13 is a curious sort, and he was looking at far more than one tooth. After a minute he said, “I think these are old.” The technician pointed out that they were dated Tuesday; they were recent. Mr. 13 nodded politely, and she went to get the orthodontist.

As soon as she was gone, he said, “Mom, those are definitely old.” He showed me the teeth he’d lost that were still present on the x-ray along with the teeth that hadn’t fully grown in but were, quite obviously, in his mouth. When the orthodontist and tech returned, I pointed out the problems. “Let me take a look,” said the orthodontist, but all he had to do was glance at Mr. 13’s mouth to know that we were right.

“Hmph. We need a new x-ray.”

“He just had one on Tuesday,” I said.

As it turned out, he had not had an x-ray on Tuesday. I was confused. Why were we here? No one was sure. The technician took Mr. 13 for the x-ray, then everyone reassembled in the tiny room. The new x-ray was displayed and the “impacted” tooth was, in fact, not impacted at all.

“Maybe he could just, you know, try to wiggle it for a little while?” I asked. I know my child; he is not a tooth-wiggler. He would prefer to keep everything as it is, thank you very much.

But no. We were already at the orthodontist’s, and he suggested sending Mr. 13 to an oral surgeon. Mr. 13 asked if the appointment would be during the school day. I rolled my eyes. Next, the orthodontist explained that he would need braces on the upper teeth to “close the gaps” and on the bottom to “correct the overbite”. All of this, of course, after this tooth came out and the new one grew in.

The orthodontist left, and the technician continued the explanation: braces will take two years, followed by a retainer for two years, then a small wire behind the teeth to hold them in place, and a retainer for the rest of his life. She sent us to billing for the estimate.

Billing booked us for an appointment in December (during the school day) to check on the position of the erstwhile tooth, then showed us the price of braces and all the ways we could pay for them. I tried not to let my jaw drop too far open. When she was finished, we paid for our visit, took the estimate and headed home.

As we walked down the front steps, Mr. 13 said, “Um, Mom. I don’t think my teeth are too far apart. And no dentist has ever mentioned that I have an overbite before. Do you think I need braces?”

“Have you ever heard the saying ‘if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’?”

He had not. I explained. He nodded sagely, “Yeah, this guy definitely only has a hammer.” We continued walking until we arrived at the diner we love, my bribe to get him to the orthodontist this morning. As we sat down, he confirmed, “So, I’m probably not getting braces, right?”

Nope, kiddo, probably not. Hammer/ nail.

Grief at 6 weeks #SOL24 14/31

“You can’t write your way out of this,” says my therapist, and I know she’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Anyway, the words won’t come out properly, so it’s not like I have a choice.

She says she’s not crying as much as she expected. Apparently her therapist told her, “You’re going to have to actually feel your feelings.”

We repeat the phrase to each other and laugh at ourselves because we aren’t crying until we are crying – and then we start laughing again because we’re crying about not crying and does this count as feeling your feelings?

At the gym, the coach shows us the workout: lifting again, the weights carrying some of our grief. But today all of her muscles hurt and she didn’t sleep well and she’s just so angry that she finally has time to take care of herself only her body won’t cooperate. I know what she means, but it’s not my child who died, not my body that aches so deeply. We do what we can and cry again.

“I’m so tired of crying,” she says, and I agree, “yeah, six weeks is way too long to mourn a child” and “what are you thinking anyway?” because apparently right now all we can do is cry, then laugh, then cry again.

With that, the coach erases the whiteboard, grabs her phone and orders us all something from Starbucks. We change our shoes and head out for a walk, which doesn’t fix everything – or anything – but at least we are outside, together, sipping hot drinks in the sun.

Cheesy #SOL24 13/31

Tonight’s dinner will be raclette. The potatoes are already boiled, the cheese is laid out, and the raclette grill is warming. Soon, the whole family will be melting the cheese then pouring its oozy deliciousness over the potatoes. Everyone is excited.

As I prep, I’ve been thinking of the first time I ever had raclette – which was also the first time I’d ever heard of it – in France during my junior year abroad. My (French, obviously) boyfriend and I had been together long enough that I was finally starting to meet his friends. That day, we drove into the countryside for dinner with a group of people I’d never met before. After aperitifs, we sat down at a table with this odd contraption on it. Small potatoes were piled in bowls interspersed between the guests. Long trays were layered with thick slices of cheese and various cured meats. Here and there were small bowls with cornichons. Everyone was talking and laughing and I had no idea what was going on.

Pause here. Prior to arriving in France that September, I had eaten cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese mozzarella cheese (on pizza) and Velveeta. Surely I had seen brie before, but I’m not sure I had tasted it. I had definitely heard of blue cheese, but all I knew was that it stunk. Similarly, I had never drunk more than a sip of wine and certainly had never had an aperitif. Also, I didn’t exactly speak French. I mean, I had *studied* French, and I did very well on grammar tests. I could even write a reasonable paragraph. I could not, however, actually talk to people.

So, when I moved in with a family that spoke only French and who cooked only French and Alsatian food, I had had to either figure things out or, I suppose, go home. Then I met Jean-Luc, whose English was also limited, and promptly fell head over heels for him. That turned everything up a notch.

Now it was maybe January, and I had gotten used to only understanding some of the conversation and not always knowing exactly what I was eating, but tonight I really wanted to make a good impression on Jean-Luc’s friends. I wanted to be part of the gang. But what does one do when seated in front of something like this (see below) and given a tool called a pelle – which I knew darn well meant “shovel”- and a wooden paddle?

At first, no one noticed my unease and, I had become expert at copying those around me. Soon enough, however, Jean-Luc realized that I was a neophyte and started helping me pile various meats on the grill and melting cheese underneath. Raclette, I discovered, was essentially an excuse to eat all the cheesy potatoes you could. It’s not especially refined and lends itself to laughing and chatting as you wait for something to melt or cook – or accidentally take your neighbour’s pelle. We had a fantastic evening. I was hooked.

My American friends in Strasbourg also discovered this dish, and by June we were all more than happy to go with Erin to a raclette restaurant for her birthday (even though raclette is, at its heart, a meal often served in the winter). There, we saw “real” raclette: a heater brought up to a giant wheel of cheese while a server scrapes the melting cheese onto a plateful of potatoes.

After I left France, I doubted I would find many places willing to serve melted cheese as a large part of a meal. I was going home to a land of cheddar, Swiss and mozzarella. I knew there was always fondue, but somehow that seemed almost as unlikely as raclette. And, sure enough, none of my friends at home had ever heard of raclette. It became just a delicious memory…

Until I got engaged to a Canadian. We were looking at things to put on our registry (“just in case”) when I noticed the raclette machine. My fiancé was taken aback by my extreme enthusiasm for something which he thought was, well, kind of normal. I tried to explain – France, cheese, years ago – but he just shrugged and said, “well, let’s put it on the list.” So we did. And we got one.

Pretty much every winter we find raclette cheese at the grocery store and drag the raclette machine out of the basement. We boil the potatoes and find the meats; we cut some veggies and, often, gather friends. Then we put the cheese in the shovels and thrust them under the heat. While it bubbles away, we grill the meats and veggies on the warm stone. We scrape it all onto potatoes and eat until we’re bursting.

I love it every single time. And now, dinner’s ready!

At the dentist #SOL24 12/31

While I was out with a friend this morning, the boys’ dentist called and asked if we could come in 20 minutes early to help with a scheduling hiccup. By the time I got the message, I knew we would have to hoof it to be there at the new time, but I called back and said yes, anyway. Unfortunately, when I told the kids, Mr. 15 said “yes” with his mouth but not with his brain, and hopped into the shower at the last minute. We managed to make it, but I dropped the boys at the door so that they could go in while I parked.

When I got in, Mr. 13 was already in with the hygienist. I love that my kids are independent enough to handle moments like this on their own. Just a few minutes later, Mr. 15 was called; he loped into the back, trailing after a different hygienist. I settled back to enjoy a little quiet time.

As I played a game on my phone, another mother came in with her two boys who rushed ahead of her to the receptionist’s desk. “Hello,” she chirped at them, “Who have we here?”

A small voice said, “Johnny Bear” and everyone chuckled. I looked up to catch the younger boy, maybe 6, holding his stuffie over his head so that the bear could “see” the receptionist. His mother ruffled his hair, grinned at the women behind the desk, and gave their names. The trio moved into the waiting room and the younger boy snuggled up next to his mother.

Oh, I miss those days, I thought.

Just then, the older boy – maybe 8 – made a snide comment under his breath. His mother heard, and snapped at him. He slumped in his seat, pouting. The water cooler bubbled and suddenly Mr. 6 really wanted a paper cone of water. Then his brother did, too. Mom heaved a sigh and asked, “Do you really want the water, or do you just want it because you heard the bubbles?” Mr. 6 assured her that he really wanted the water. Mr. 8 grumbled.

Mom stood up and got some water for the six-year-old. More mumbly-grumble from the eight-year-old. “What?” she asked.

“I said I want to do it myself. I want water AND I want to do it myself.”

Mom looked from the younger boy, holding the fragile cone of water, to the older boy, arms folded stubbornly across his small chest. “Ok,” she said, “Can you wait for me to come watch?”

He jumped up from his seat, ran to the cooler, pulled off a paper cone cup and waited for his mom. She watched carefully until she said, “and that’s enough!”

Delighted with himself, he sat back down to taste his independence. Mom turned back to her youngest, who had not, in fact, spilled any water. Just as she sat again, the hygienist came out and called one of their names. She heaved a deep sigh, gathered first one child, then the next. She took the now-empty paper cones and threw them out as they all trooped into the back together, Mr. 6 clutching Johnny Bear in one arm.

Nope, I thought, I don’t think I miss those days that much after all.

Bangs #SOL24 10/31

On Friday, my best friend from high school texted me a picture of my high school yearbook senior photo.

Look at those bangs! They started about ⅓ of the way back on my head. Every morning, I carefully curled them, brushed them to the side, and then hairsprayed them until they were stuck together in one giant flap of “feathered” hair. And, though you can’t tell here, that blue sweater has sparkles in it. Sparkles! Oh, the 80s.

That picture was still on my mind on Saturday when I went for a hair cut. Chuckling, I pulled out my phone and showed my stylist. I couldn’t quite tell if he was horrified or impressed. He chatted on about 80s and 90s clothes and hairstyles, while I stifled a laugh: He wasn’t around for those eras, so what does he know?

The picture must have stayed on his mind, too, because after my colour was done, as he was starting the cut, he said, “You keep saying you want something different. How about bangs?”

It was my turn to look horrified. “No, no,” he reassured me, “not like in the picture. You know, something more modern.” I still looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think it would look good.”

So I said yes, and now I have bangs again for the first time, I think, since that high school photo. Way back then, in English class, Libby had once declared, “everyone looks better with bangs.” (At least I think it was Libby. It could have been Anne. At any rate, one of the stylish girls.) I haven’t thought of that comment in a long time, but she might have been right. If nothing else, I like the new look: it hides some of my wrinkles.

Better things #SOL24 9/31

I have better things to do. I could be writing or reading other people’s blogs and commenting. I could be tidying the house before guests come, or just tidying in general. I could be folding the laundry put in the wash first thing this morning or running some errands. I could be working out or doing yoga.

To be fair, I’ve already been out for a walk and gone to the hairdresser. I’ve had my tea and played with the dog. But now? Yeah, I have better things to do.

I could be looking at the work my students turned in yesterday or planning ahead for the next unit. I could be catching up on emails or finding the numbers of all the places I need to call for various appointments for various people.

Still, I’ve already cleared out the fridge and reheated leftovers for lunch. I’ve already started and abandoned a list of the things that I will, in fact, have to do sometime soon. Because I definitely have better things to do, like calling my sisters or reading a book, taking a nap or knitting. At this point, even watching a movie would probably be better.

So many things are out there, just waiting to be done. But it’s the first day of March Break and outside it’s rainy and gray. I’m on the couch, wrapped in a soft blanket, and the dog is sleeping at my feet. So instead of doing any of the many things I could be doing, I’m allowing myself a luxury I rarely have time for: playing mindlessly on my phone.

Do I have better things to do? Nah, not really.