Renos. People Have Been Known to Survive...

We've been trying to get our house renovated since February.

It is now nearly October. We've had five contractors come in and look at our home, talk to us a lot, then disappear and never return calls. We feel so used and cheap. Was it something we said? Our friends all get their houses renovated....why can't we??? What's wrong with us???!!! Do they know something we don't? Is there a secret handshake or ... do we just smell?

I know that renovations are said to be frustrating. If it's anything as frustrating as the lack of renos, I'm just going to have to move. And I've actually gone to see houses for sale. That's how serious I am. "Watch it, Mister or I'll go look at something and pretend to be really interested..."

Charlie has absolutely no respect for carpets or house plants - so our house looks....bad. Real bad. It looks like we're a family of incontinent whackos who get excited at loose threads from the carpet and go completely apeshit while we run around with the loose end and weave our little webs of destruction. Or something.

The biggest issue is the basement. Well, that's what I tell them, but in reality, there is only one issue: the squirrels. Once I evict those furry little bastards, I'll be grinning for days. I'll have that dopey smirk on my face and I'll be muttering things like, "I showed them! I got them....all of them...heh heh...now they're dead. All of them. Poor little squirrels. Ahahaha!" And people will walk away from me and whisper to their children to stop staring.

You may wonder why I simply haven't called The Terminator (I'm honestly not making that up - it's the real name of a pest control company. I swear!). The reason is that they deal with humane removal with absolutely no explosions. And I want the roof blown completely off. I want to see disembodied bushy tails flying all over the place. I want a Jerry Bruckheimer kind of reno. I want the street closed for the big blast. And I don't even care what it looks like. I just want them gone.

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm slipping into a kind of squirrel-obsessed dementia, but that's what happens when you're home a lot. This is why I need to get out of the house more. So as I am on my job hunt, I'll try to avoid telling interviewers that the real reason I need the job is to take me away from the squirrels. Because they know I'm on to them.

Once Bitten

Once you've done some acting, you never stop.

It's like crack. Highly addictive, only not as risky.

Even though my first stage appearance was as a Christmas tree, I loved it. I had no lines. I just had to walk downstage and stand there blinded by lights. That's all I had to do, and people seemed to like it. It turns out that it's actually slightly more complicated.

I am morphing from a Christmas tree into the fantastically flawed Catherine in Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water. This is a challenging play for me on several levels, not the least of which is the fact that it centres around three sisters dealing with their mother's death. Stephenson's script revolves around the theme of memory and how so many of them can be completely imagined.

Catherine is endearingly deranged, and you can't help but like her and want to strangle her at the same time. Rehearsals start today.

Come see it!

Critiquing the Critic

So, again, I've been enlightened by my favourite magazine and this month there was a motivating article about how to give and receive criticism.

This matters to me because getting criticized is, for me, the worst. I hate it.

REAL SIMPLE came up with a systematic approach for not answering everything in a performance review with: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Here are:

THREE STEPS FOR GIVING CRITICISM. (With thanks to Charlie, for being my tester.)

1. Tell them what's working.
   

I'm so pleased with the snuggles you give and with how impossibly cute you are.

2. Tell them what's not working.

Look, every one of us has some things he needs to change to improve his game. With you, it's that our carpet is now yellow. And, uh, just a reminder here, but our bedroom isn't actually a toilet.

3. Tell them what's missing.

It would be great if you could hone your bladder control. I know that when you're more comfortable with holding it until we get outside, you'll be more loved. So why don't we try some positive reinforcement through food and set you up for a lifetime of dependency and perhaps an eating disorder.

Charlie and I practiced this. And sure enough, he didn't once say, "Yeah, well what do you know, lady?!" In fact, he was very calm and accepting of it all.

THREE STEPS FOR RECEIVING CRITICISM.

1. Listen.
2. Resist the urge to prove them wrong.
3. Be open to making changes

This was fantastically easy because Charlie had no criticism whatsoever.

But for real, I learned the first one a while ago. I take notes. It almost always freaks people out when I start taking notes of their critique. (In fact, I once had a micromanager who was so upset that I wrote down a fully retarded and unfounded critique, that she forced me to cross it out before she let me leave the room. Honestly! I committed it to memory though...moooahaha!)

I'm still working on 2 and 3.

Weigh in. What are your thoughts on giving and receiving criticism?

Charlie Day One: The Rules

While I was out with Charlie for his nine hundredth piddle of the morning, I showed him the squirrels. They were hanging off the roof, evaluating the situation.

I had a little talk with him.

ME: You may think we adopted you because you're cute and furry...
CHARLIE: Well, yeah.

ME: We want you to be a highly-trained, lethal one-dog SWAT team.
CHARLIE: A what?

ME: You see those furry bastards up there? These are armed and dangerous subjects. They are not your friends.
CHARLIE: Okay.

ME: You will be required to administer stronghold assaults.
CHARLIE:Okay

ME: You will be actively involved in fugitive tracking.
CHARLIE:Okay

ME: You may have to shoot to kill.
CHARLIE: Okay.

ME: Now, let's check our supplies: puppy food?
CHARLIE: Check.

ME: Chew toy?
CHARLIE: Check.

ME: M-4 Assault Rifle?
CHARLIE: Check.

Be afraid, squirrel gangstas. Be afraid....

Five Things My Dog Taught Me About Life

1. Toys that look like you are creepy. (And must not be tolerated.)
2. When it's all a bit overwhelming, just shit on the carpet. You'll feel better.
4. Finders keepers. (Until I poop it out later, then you can have it. Maybe. )
5. Being cute give you a MAJOR advantage in getting away with stuff.

Squirrel in da House!

It was inevitable.

I'm just glad it happened before the dog was here to dismember a rodent on the living room carpet. A less-than-agile member of the terrorist squirrel gang that lives in our roof fell though an open window this morning and ran around our house in a panic.

No wait. That was me running around our house in a panic as the squirrel smoked a joint and reminded us to "keep it down" because he and his amigos have business upstairs.

Then he absconded with a bag of Superstore almonds and, gave us the tail.

Asshole.

Fur Ball Countdown: 27 hours!

This little furball is coming home with us tomorrow! When I told Nic we were adopting him, she nearly wept with gratitude, although straightened up once I told her we were absolutely not naming him "Fluffter".

We've decided on Charlie.

Well, Charlie when he's good and sweet, and Charles Philip Arthur George! when he's naughty. Like that'll work.

As a family, we decided that we needed more chaos in our lives. Charlie's job is to provide the chaos and charm and pee-stained carpets. And maybe some snuggles and good ol' lovin' too.

I'm sure Charlie will be the subject of many future blog posts. Stay tuned....Fur Ball

Introducing...

Our newest family member.

Name to be determined.

Time Management

We live five minutes away from Nic's school. This is why we're always late.

This is the time vs. proximity phenomenon at work .

Two variables are inversely proportional (or varying inversely) if one of the variables is directly proportional with the multiplicative inverse of the other, or equivalently, the closer you live to a place you need to be, the more late you are likely to be. Or something like that. Without fail, it's always the people who live the furthest away who get there on time.

So, I have started my campaign to get people out the door in the morning with military precision.

It's not working.

Nic gets, ahem, distracted. She insists on tying her shoe laces like a ballerina's slipper which always results in my having to undue the laces and start all over and usually involves swearing at peices of string, then all of us running up to the school and my kissing her goodbye in a breathless panic, only to return home thinking, 'there's GOT to be a way'.

So, I drew a clock, with the things we need to do on said clock. Like, "8:15 Eat Breakfast" and then "8:30 Brush Teeth and Hair...Not With Same Brush". Seemed like a brilliant plan - teach my kid to read, tell time AND get to school all in one step.

Like I said, it's not working.

Nic came home yesterday and looked at my big clock drawing on the fridge and said, "But Mom, I can't read." Argh. That's the point, honey! That's why I printed so neatly!

But this is, of course, a kid from the digital generation who, when I ask her to go look at the clock, yells back, "IT SAYS EIGHT DOT DOT TWO FOUR!"

"Doesn't that mean it's past bedtime, sweetie?"

"I DON'T KNOW, I CAN'T TELL TIME!"

Not working.

Bottle Rehab

Roo is in bottle rehab. Yesterday, I cut her off. Completely. No More Bottles. Nobody is permitted to speak the word, "bottle" in our house, lest it cause the caterwauling to commence anew.

God, WHAT am I talking about? I need some caffeine.

....

Okay, that's better. Roo has been on a bottle for her entire life. She loves it, it's her drug of choice. And given that she's two-and-a-half, it's time to stop. (Also, given that I hate fiddling with nipples, and such....boy, does that ever sound weird.)

So, I thought about weaning her gently, but realized there is no gentle way to do this. It's not like I can cut it in half or simply show her pictures of a bottle. We're going harsh. I have become...

The Nipple Nazi.

So, I called up Amy Winehouse and she swore at me and, I think she threw something at the phone, but for the most part, this is what I learned about rehab:

• Roo may become paranoid. She may or may not obsessively think that we are all out to get her and that the bottles are all in the garage, if only she could reach it!
  

• Roo may become preoccupied and desperate in searching and acquiring the bottles. She might start stealing bottles from babies, lying, and even attempting to operate the garage remote.
  

Oh, man. This isn't going to be easy.

Or she could just suck it up (sorry, Roo) and realize that growing up can, indeed, cause nausea.

Messed Up and Modern

I am a modern mom. This means I have guilt issues, and only a moderately clean home. This also means I don't particularly care how clean my home is but spend inordinate amounts of mental energy trying to decide which specific thing I said or did will cause my children years of therapy later on. Like, which top five horrible things I did today make me a bad mother?

Granted, I can walk Nic to school and play with Roo. This is all good. But...since I'm a "modern mom", I've had a taste of the workforce, both good and bad. And the good is quite good. Using your skills, having adult conversations, and being able to wear nice clothes are some of my favourite parts of working. Alright, truthfully, it's all about wearing nice clothes - the rest is a perk. But what do you do when your adoring offspring stare longingly at you as you head out to work and you feel like a turd because you are leaving them to go off somewhere and wear nice clothes. It just doesn't seem right. (The issue, not the clothes - the clothes are always right. I mean, come ON!)

And don't think you can rationalize this with a man because men are stupid.

KIDDING! No really, men just don't have the same issues. Do they spend mental energy trying to decide which particular thing they said or did that will cause their children years of therapy later on? Probably not. It's more like, "You know, I poured the milk on the kids' cereal this morning. I didn't have to do that, but I did. Damn, I'm good."

You'd think that, if all they had to do with this whole procreation thing was have sex, they'd be trying everything in their power to be more involved with their children. And here, as a woman, who went through eighteen months of the Body Snatchers and then Oh My God Kill Me Now Labour, you'd think I'd be skipping out the door every day: quick kiss, What's your name again? G0sh you're cute, gotta go!

So what's wrong with us? Are we more evolved emotionally or less? Maybe we're just messed-up and the men are sitting around smoking cigars and thinking, "Man! No wonder these people have been exploited for centuries! This is GREAT!" I see the whole child-rearing thing this way: it's like barbecuing. It is! The woman buys the meat, prepares the marinade for the meat, assembles and cooks the rest of the meal, and the man turns on the BBQ and may or may not perform a complex flipping procedure with said meat, and tah dah - HE made dinner.

See? Same 'ting.

So maybe we need to be more like men. Think about a man who feels terrible because his house isn't immaculate. You'd wonder, wouldn't you? And if he wasn't actually Mick Jagger, he wouldn't even consider the possibility that he could be a bad father.

Wowzah! It's a Schnowzah!

We're getting a dog.

We don't know what kind yet, but I'm leaning toward Schnauzers, and not just because it's fun to say. I want a dog that won't drag me across the street when it sees a squirrel. But I also want one that doesn't look like a toilet brush.

And I have a lead on some Schnauzers...


Okay. The REAL reason I want one is because if we get a German dog, we can call it Herr Ball.

Bonding. James Bonding.

Chris and I bonded today.

And all it took was a broken lock.

When a man walks into the bathroom while you're taking a piss, and gets a full view of your pants around your ankles, you've bonded. That's the kind of intimacy akin to getting drunk together and trying to write your names in the snow only to realize that one of you has a distinct advantage over the other one, collapsing in a snow drift laughing, and blaming each other for the fact that we're freezing and hammered and likely to die out here all because you had to prove that you can do cursive writing with your urine.

In fact, according to an ancient Mongolian law, Chris and I might actually be married now because he's had lavatorial if not 'carnal' knowledge of me. No wait, I think I have to witness him replacing a toilet paper roll before it's official.

New Developments

It occurred to me that I'd really better post something soon because every time anyone loads this page, they see a cat's butt.

But also because, well Things Have Happened.

I left The Company That Shall Not Be Named. (This is actually a really good thing because I went there yesterday to visit and felt the soul-crushing depression of it all come seeping back.)

I started working for an online magazine for which I no longer work. (This is actually a really good thing because I don't need to take as many drugs now.)

Consequently, I am not working.

That is to say, I am not spending my days playing the "Guess What Mood I'm In Today" game with my flaky manager, and being yelled at by some little twerp who bought himself a title. Good times. I do, however, miss teaching a radically cool workshop that for some mysterious reason got canned by the powers that be. Those powers, well, there is much to say, which likely shouldn't be said.

So the best part is that Mr. Harper is now paying me to walk my kid to school. Granted, the salary sucks, but it's a good life!

And speaking of school: what is UP with it? The day after Labour Day we all trudge off, squeaky clean and bushy-tailed and ready to rock. Forty five minutes later, they dismiss the kids. My plans for a tequila-soaked orgy with my neighbours were totally wrecked. The next day, it was a normal-length day, but Nic told me that she watched a movie and went for a walk. These are your tax dollars hard at work...

I guess it's Frosh Week. Beer bongs weren't on the supplies list though.