New strategy for dealing with panic attacks:

Do the dishes.

Because the attacks manifest themselves as apparent catatonia. Because the thought process/spiral ends up being "You can't even perform the most basic human tasks". Because they usually need doing.

I'm not the kind of person who gets the overwhelming urge to tidy when I'm freaked out. (I live with one, though.) When I'm really panicky, I tend to shut down. So these days, when I feel the attack coming on, I force myself to do at least one real, mundane, basic household chore. It seems to be doing the staving off trick. Note how I'm typing now, not huddling on the floor.

Skype and trauma

The kid said "I love you" for the first time today. Rather, he wailed it, to the computer screen, which showed a blocky, choppy image of his daddy, Skyping from Mali.

(Brag: Chas can locate and name Mali, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, as well as their continents/countrys, on our ancient, lawn-sale-booty globe. Asks excellent questions like, "Mummy, why Russia green?")

To follow up on the August 6th post...

Chas has, for the last month, occasionaly and randomly interjected the following into conversations:

"Mummy eat spicy noodles? Mummy sick."

The three P's

...of finishing writing at almost-3 are pee, pour a drink, and proofread.

This time, I was the sick one. Spent a week on the livingroom floor, building increasingly elaborate buildings for Chas to knock down. Treehouse on all day. Occasional forays onto the deck, when I was feeling really adventurous.
I managed to continue to feed the kid properly, (Thank you, Good Food Box) but all I could stomach was Ramen Soup, my Very Sick Girl Staple. I blush, as a foodie, to confess the recipe: Oriental style Mr. Noodles, with a few finely sliced mushrooms, some slivered cabbage, and scallions thown in at the same time as the soup pack. You need that soup pack. Fatty steam cures just about everything.

Permanent effects of the sick week include:

- Chas' embarassing familiarity with even more television shows. He's at just the right age to wholeheartedly embrace Bob the Builder, ("I be Bob! Backhoe loader my buddy!") but somehow, thanfully, the siren song of Dora fell on deaf ears.
- Chas' great concern for my health every time he sees me eating an asian-ey noodle dish. "Spicy noodle. Mama sick?"

We have succeded

The infant child is weaned. No nur-nur for 17 days. Every now and then, I do a little jig in honour of this new milestone. In fact, I think I'll jig right now.

Project Tit Withdrawal

Countdown to the final wean has commenced. Chas, for many moons now a nightime nurser only, is getting turned down when he wakes up throughout the night. Reasons this makes my life crazy, non-blog-posting hard:

- You know the snotty old line about how if a kid is old enough to ask for it, he's too old to be nursing? Well, my poor, articulate kid can wail, "Nuuuurse!" in the night in a way that would break the staunchest Ferberizer's* heart.

- Ultra-clinginess during the daytime. "Handdown shirt! You, Charlie,** want handdown shirt!" Constant admiration and admiration of my tits, all day, from junior. He wants to make it clear that, no, really, I totally love them. They should not be going out of style. Can't I just keep one? Look, mama, if you let me hold them both, I can make them dance. "Nur-nur dance! Silly!"

Totally, mom, you gotta let me keep these.

- Nursing him back to sleep at night wakes me up for ten minutes. Singing/cuddling him back to sleep can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to oh-well-I-guess-we're-awake-now at four in the morning. I envy the mothers of newborns, for whom this zombie state of sleeplessness has at least the virtue of novelty.

Oh, ye not to far off day when I ditch my beloved son to sleep with his daddy and betake myself to the spare room bed, to loll in deep and dream-filled slumber, ignorant of, or at least ignoring, the pathetic screams of "Mama! Mama! Nono Dada! NUUUURRSE!" from the floor below. That night is nigh, my darling little leech. That night is fucking nigh.


*If you have a kid, you know what this means. If you don't, you don't need to. Still curious? May I introduce you to my friend, Mr. Google?
** What he calls himself. Kind of like "Watashi wa." "I, myself." "You, Charlie." I very much dig it.

I used to smoke like a fiend while writing.

I couldn't get anything done on any project - personal, academic, journalistic - unless I could be smoking. I was usually a pack-a-week, social smoker, but not when I had an asssignment due. It's the only time I ever chain smoked - well, that and, when I was an actor, during technical dress rehearsals, which are hellish, living-envy-the-dead days and everyone's on something.

I haven't had a cigarette since I was about three weeks pregnant; I quite suddenly went off them, and had no idea why. Since the kid's been around, there've been a few times I've been out, and my Fella steps outside for one of his increasingly occasional smokes, and I'll think, Yeah, that'd be nice, without any real urge.

I've recently been having a bit of writer's block, and I've only just figured out that the block corresponds exactly to my finishing the easter candy. I can see the office waste-paper basket from here, and it's full of wrappers of one kind or another. I have a caramel in my mouth as I write this; I bought a bag in anticipation of writing a few record reviews tonight.

I have become a total sugar junkie.

Complete and utter writers' block/brain failue. Mostly the result of sleep deprivation, which is in turn the result of the extension of Project Night Wean. I feel good about my discipline, though. As I've been, in my day, a bit of a fuckup, and a bit of a mess, I'm a little hung up on providing structure and routine. Also, I'm rebelling against the irreproachably loving and supportive but chaotically bohemian way I was brung up. So I have a bedtime schedule, dammit, and I stick to it, dammit. Anyway, after a couple of nights in a row of Chas falling to sleep sans sucking, I knew we could do it this way from now on.

He lets me know pretty clearly that he's done for the day. Often he'll put his baby doll, Carew*, in the dolly cradle, rocking it back and forth, saying "Seeepy. Seeeeepy." I have to catch him in this stage, not let him get overtired and antsy. We brush our teeth in the bathroom, me holding him up to the mirror, doing our routine:

"Brush the teeth in the front!
Brush the teeth in the back!
Brush the bottom teeth!
Brush the top teeth!
Brush the teeth on the left!
Brush the teeth on the right!
Brush the teeth on the outside!
Brush the teeth on the inside!

Now freestyle! DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!"

Then I change his diaper and we round up the bedtime animals: Little Baabaa, Kitteh, and Koala. Upstairs and into his little blue bed, with still some protests and gesturing at Mummy's big bed. Into pyjamas, and no, we're NOT getting into the big bed, sweetie. We might read a book two or ninety times, Goodnight Moon or The Going to Bed Book.He lies down, cuddles Baabaa with one hand, and I lean over the bed so he can cop a reassuring feel with the other, and I sing him to sleep. His current favourite (Read: only acceptable) bedtime song has both an explicit drug reference AND a questionable racial appelation. Hope he finds a new one before I end up singing it in front of Other Mums.

The whole process can take thirty minutes, or two hours. In some ways, it is a lovely, fleeting, wonderful chapter in my child's life. In other ways, though, it is tiring and tedious and a complete drain.




*Named, by my father, after the baseball player.

I have eaten the kid's easter chocolate that his Grandma sent him from Saskatchewan.

In my defense, he is really too young for marshmallow bars.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any slimier...

...We have added another couple of bodily fluids to the mix. While wiping the BLOOD off of the kid's split lip (Lack of sleep+growth spurt+sickness+climbey adventurous child=lots of fall down go boom) I noticed that the abbrasion under his lower lip from yesterday's faceplant has gone all PUS.

Factor in the ants all over our kitchen, and the rainstorms, and it's all starting to look terribly seasonal. Pardon me while I go swipe a little sacrificial blood across our threshold, would you?

The BRAT Diet

"Bananas, rice, apples, toast," said Anne, our nurse down at the Women's College family clinic. The diet of choice for the discriminating fluxy child. Gets potassium and other nutrients back into the kid, as well as being, shall we say, beneficial for the digestion and the bowels.

(Look, I don't really like talking about poo. As foul-mouthed as I've always been, my swears and humour have never been very scatalogical. So this has been a bizarre aspect of becoming a parent for me: talking about shit. All the time. With descriptions. And it's worse when he's sick.

Yucky. Swash.)

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with interesting and tasty ways to get the BRAT into the brat. Especially since, for most meals, I eat exactly what he eats. For conveniance sake, but also because if I'm eating something else, the Dude assumes that whatever I've got must be better, and won't take a bite of his lovingly prepared baby food.

This was breakfast this morning. It was pretty damned good.

BRATty Rice Pudding

2 cups (or thereabouts) cooked basmati rice
soymilk
1 pink lady apple, peeled and cored
cinnamon
treacly brown sugar/maple syrup

Put the rice in a saucepan with just enough soymilk to cover it, and bring to a simmer. Add a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Take the pudding off the heat, and dish it out.Grate the apple, (I use my mini Kitchenaid hand blender attatchment) and either stir it into the rice pudding (for kids) or pile it on top. (Very fancy looking for the Fella and I.) Drizzle a little maple syrup on top of it all.

You could probably add some raisins or dried apricots at the beginning if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I'm aesthetically opposed to rehydrated fruit.

About the "two cups of cooked rice" that will make frequent appearances in my recipes: I always make two meals worth of rice at a time, so if we have curry one night, I can make rice pudding, or a grain salad, or add it to soup the next day. My beloved rice-cooking pot (Which really deserves a post of it's own) makes about four cups of rice altogether, so half of that will go in the fridge at the end of the night. And we're eating SO MUCH rice these days because of the BRAT mandate. Wheaty goodness will resume once the Dude is well.

Today, on Sick, Sad World!!!

First, the wee sma' Dude had a cold. He got over the cold, and developed a fever. He started throwing up the same day that I got the Insane Viral Sinus Migraine. Two days later, he started having vile diaorrhea and we spent an Extra Super Fun day and night in and out of St. Joe's Pediatric Emerg. (His new word that night, after enduring two rectal thermometers and a pee-catching bag taped over his crotch, was "Go". As in, gesturing madly at the door, sobbing "Go, go-go-go, GO!")

He recovered for about a day, then sickened with his own Insane Viral Sinus Migrane. Then he got a cold. Then he got well for the better part of a week, only to start with the diaorrhea again, though rather less liquid and odourous this time. Now he's got the worst cold yet, and the wettest, saddest cough ever. I feel like I'm drowning in toddler fluids, and haven't had a decent night's sleep in a month. So that's why I've been not so posty with the tasty recipes.

Randomness is the mother of Deliciousness

My vegan, zucchini-hating fella was out having dinner with his filmmaking partner, so it was all about the zook and cheese at our house tonight. And there were some bits and bobs of leftovers that needed to be used, so it all went into the pan.

Hey, this is my first recipe for this new blog, yes? So I think I should admit that I'm a pretty chaotic cook sometimes. I add, substitute, alter ingredients. I make stuff up. I'm trying to keep better records of my own invented recipes, though, cause I'm going to be writing them up here.

Also, not only do I come from a pretty intense family tradition of French and Ashkenazi home cooks, I'm also a former line cook and a (half) trained pastry chef. So the randomness isn't coming from nowhere; I do actually know what I'm doing. I'm just a bit of a kitchen riffer.



East Meets West Rice Casserole

1 clove of garlic, diced
half an onion, diced
a couple of tbsps of olive oil
about half a package of paneer cheese, diced
1 small zucchini, diced
1 can of white kidney beans
2 cups of cooked rice
oregano, basil
about a quarter cup of parmesan, or maybe more

In a nice, hot, deep cast-iron skillet, saute the onion and garlic together til they're transparent. Add the paneer, mix it all around the pan. When the paneer cubes are a little browned on most of their sides, add some salt and pepper, then the zuchini. Deglaze the pan with a little white wine or soy sauce. Stir in the beans and rice. When these are warmed through, stir in as much oregano and basil as you like, as well as about half of the parmesan. Top the casserole with the rest of the parm, and slip it under a high broil for a few minutes, just til the cheese on top is a little toasty.


My in-house reviewer was all "Chee! Bean! Um-Um-Um! Moremore!" It was pretty swell, yo.

Saturday afternoon is for the toddler gallery crawl.

And I do mean crawl. It took wee Chas and I over two hours to do a walk that, solo, would take about twenty minutes. Over to Ossington and down to Queen to return last week's DVD to Black Dog Video ("Woof-Woof! Black! Tail!" at the sight of the sign, every time.) Through the slightly Gehennan corridor behind the Queen and Ossington bus stop, then on down Queen.

He's pretty good about not picking up random trash on the street. In fact, my little Virgo dude is fastidious; he points out each pile of trash and says "Yucky!" or even "Swash!", which is his word meaning, "Mother, I simply must, must wash my hands immediately." He runs up and down slopped entrences, though, sits on each and every chair, bench and stoops, plays air piano on windowsills. He knows damned well that the two choices for transportation are to walk, or to be carried, and, when dawdling and presented with the choice, always has to think very hard before giving me a decided answer.

One of the Katherine Mulherin galleries has an exibit featuring sloppily painted black copyright signs on newsprint; Chas ran in and out of that display about a dozen times, yelling "C!C!C!"

And I scored vintage dresses at the Marylou Flamingo sale this morning, while my dad took the kid to Babygym.

It's the penniless socialite lyfestyle. I spent a day shopping and looking at art. It didn't cost me much, but it was not what I would call a productive day. Then I remembered that I was going to start some kind of blog, or something, and hadn't I better get to it?

Slut's Wool is...

a charming English term for dust bunnies.

the inevitable fact that I'd rather write than sweep the floor.

The hipster housewife diaries.