Just making sure everyone keeps their gloves up

This post requires a little context, so before you continue you need to go read this.

Thanks for coming back!

I was recently discussing the topic of gossip with my friend Keely. Being human and all, we like gossip. There is something very appealing about discussing the lives of others. However, I think it’s important to have an established set of rules so the gossip stays within the boundaries of good clean fun.

As you may have figured out by now I have had the same group of friends for the last 20+ years. I have of course met other people I call friends during this time, but my main core best girlfriends have retained their title of ‘best friends’, if you will, since we were teenagers. Now that we’re adults we are more or less drama-free, but there is usually at least one of us going through something that is gossip-worthy. At the moment, it’s Valentina. I think more so because she is the only one of us not currently in a committed relationship. The rest of us bitch and moan about our men from time to time but it’s pretty much same old same old at this point and not nearly as fun as having a front row seat to Valentina’s boy stories.

Politika almost never does anything gossip worthy…..at least, I don't think she does. She does have the added advantage of living two provinces away so it would be easy for her to spin a juicy situation into a pretty mundane one by the time it gets to us. One thing is springing to mind, and that is the recent act of moving her mother-in-law into the basement suite of the new house she just purchased. Politika deciding to live with her M-I-L was definitely a topic of conversation, but it wasn’t as much gossiping as it was deciding who was going to organize the candle light vigil when she inevitably goes to prison for murder.

Keely and I are probably the worst offenders because not only do we like gossiping, but apparently we like gossiping on the internet. I guess that makes us verbally slutty. It’s all justifiable though because I have created some self-imposed rules to govern by:

Gossip rules according to FoN

1. No gossiping about things that friend A may not have already shared with friend B. Once friend A shares the potential gossip with friend B on their own accord - it’s fair game. For example, if friend A tells you about something regarding themselves or something that Friend B did, you cannot tell Friend C unless there is less than reasonable doubt that Friend C already knows about it anyway. There are two exceptions to this rule:

• If the bit of gossip is happy gossip and you were not specifically told to keep the news to yourself you can share it. Examples would be an engagement, new job, pregnancy, birth of a child, etc., and; (see rule 6 for additional information)
• No gossiping to mean people. If there is even a suspicion that a piece of gossip could be spread beyond appropriate borders and/or come back and bite Friend A, B or C in the ass and cause trouble, shut it.

2. It’s OK to suspend rule #1 and share a bit of gossip if you yourself are involved in the gossip and would be considered a direct subject of the gossip. Especially if it’s pissing you off. Valentina had a recent tryst with my ex-boyfriend. That is a great example of when it’s OK to suspend rule #1. I still love her though. And, I would also like to take this opportunity to go on record to say, "See? I told you he was weird."

3. No telling men anything.

4. Don’t say anything in the course of gossip that you wouldn’t be totally comfortable with the subject of the gossip knowing you said it. Preferably (and when possible) say what you need to say to the subject of the gossip prior to saying it to others.

5. Make a best effort to gossip between only close friends and only with people you know love who you’re gossiping about (see rule 8 for additional information).

6. No gossiping when expressly forbidden about anything negative, and/or when you are not sure if you are within the limits of rule 1. However, if friend A has something positive you are dying to share, you have to negotiate an appropriate timeline with her you both agree on. For example, I was the first to know when Politika had her babies, but she wanted to tell Keely and Valentina herself. I told her I would be able to keep my mouth shut for no more than a few hours, Politika asked for a full day and we finally settled on about a 12 hour window. That news was fair game once her time limit expired. Her too bad if she hadn’t told the others by then.

7. Gossiping about strangers to close friends is allowed, although be careful when gossiping in public.

8. Gossiping to and about outsiders* is OK as long as it (a) is appropriate to the subject matter and can be used to provide insight into a situation, and (b) safely falls within the context of rule #1.

9. No gossiping on internet social networking sites such as blogs or Facebook. There are two exceptions to this rule as well:

• Talking in ‘code’ is acceptable provided you are assured beyond a reasonable doubt that no one other than your intended gossip-ee will have a clue what you’re talking about, and;
• if you are messaging through private email and you know no one has your password.
  

10. When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

* - an outsider is considered to be someone who is known to friend A, B or C, but only on a casual, passing or acquaintance basis.

I'm a somebody!

Check it out! Right over there! To your right, right THERE!! I have a follower! Hi Jen!! I'm the Pied Piper! I'm Charles Manson! I'm MOSES. Ohhhh, I'm already drunk on the power. What do I do now? Should I start writing the State of the Union? Do I need to consider hiring a staff?

Jen, I kid. I'm just one of the people, so lets keep it real, K? I think it might just be you and me for a while anyway. And I totally promise never to insist you sacrifice your first born.

Worst. Experience. Ever.

Well, I guess that might be exaggerating just a tad, but after I get into this you will be completely horrified. Trust me.

My youngest, the lovely Lena Lemon (daycare nick-named her that. Stupid nicknames are fine. Nicknames you can give up when you out grow them. Sorry Bronx Mowgli, you’re screwed forever), is a lucky lass because she has the most beautiful hair ever. It is a perfect strawberry blonde colour that holds the exact right amount of curl. You can give her one pony or two and her hair will immediately obey by forming perfectly soft and bouncy ringlets. She is SUPER cute.
She also goes to daycare with other people’s children who are not nearly as cute as she is. I can understand why these kids would feel jealous. Wouldn’t you be jealous if you had to spend all day with the most adorable person ever? I know I would be, but I don’t think I would feel the need to infect the beautiful person with BUGS. That’s right everyone, my beautiful little lady caught the lice.

As it turns out I am the worst mother of all time because it took the daycare to inform me Lena had lice. They phoned me at work to let me know that my daughter is super gross and I was to come and pick her up immediately. After throwing up in my mouth a little I left work, drove to the daycare and was immediately shamed. The director lady sat Lena on her lap, flipped her hair up and sure enough – tiny brown bugs crawling all up in my baby’s head. How did I miss that? Her hair is long, but it’s not super thick or anything. Surely if I was paying any attention whatsoever to this child I would have noticed the BUGS in her HEAD, right? I guess not. I suck.

Lena is only two years old so I had to give some thought as to how I was going to tell her about these bugs. She’s the kind of kid that could really go either way with that little bit of news; she would either (a) think it was cool, or (b) have a complete melt down and go totally hysterical for hours. As it turns out it was (c) – she couldn't have cared less. She was just so jazzed to be sprung from daycare early and was already planning an afternoon of riding the couch while eating her pudding cups, picking her nose and watching Treehouse with her buddy Elmo. Anyway, on my way home I stopped by the pharmacy and spent an obscene amount of money on lice killing paraphernalia in hopes of clearing this little problem up that afternoon. Yeah, not so much.

Not only did those little fuckers survive the first dose of ‘Lice Killing Shampoo’ (seriously – that is what it’s called. I naively assumed it would kill lice when you used it. Nope.), they managed to live through the hours of combing, laundry, picking at each individual strand of hair, more combing, more picking, some crying and screaming (from us both), more laundry, selective hair trimming and on and on and on. We went through this nightmare for seven solid days before I had to wave the white flag of surrender. Lena couldn’t deal with one more day of me picking at her head, I couldn’t stay up doing laundry and vacuuming until midnight anymore and I was totally out of ideas. I had also missed about five days of work trying to deal with this because she was banned from the daycare until she was declared cootie-free. Our lives had to go back to normal for the sake of us all so I came to an extremely painful conclusion…… I had to shave this girls head.

Here is Lena before –

















Here is Lena after –














Still cute, yes, but I really miss her hair. The upside to this story? Lena sat perfectly still the whole time I was shaving her head and when we were finally done and she saw herself in the mirror sans hair for the first time do you know what she said? “I LOVE IT because now I look like JAKEY!”. My little strawberry blond princess was thrilled to bits because now she had the same haircut as her seven year-old brother.

I guess the ‘girl’ must not kick in until you’re three.

A sappy Christmas tale with a moral to bash you over the head

Now that November is drawing to a close I’m starting to feel all Christmas spirity (that is so a word). I really, really love Christmas. It’s definitely the best holiday by far, and it lasts for weeks. Most people start getting a little twitchy when they hear Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer for the hundredth time around December 20th, but I still sing along every time and I don’t even care if everyone feels like punching me.

This holiday seems to bring out the best in people, and I find that most people are much nicer and more giving this time of year. This is a pretty friendly town anyway, but the holidays seem to make people extra friendly. We even have a group of volunteers armed with quarters and Santa hats who wander around downtown during the month of December plugging parking meters that are about to expire. How cool is that?

I love Christmas every year, but there were a few years in the ol' FoN household that were pretty lean, to say the least. I remember a few times making the kids eat their cereal one at a time because they needed to share the bowl of milk. The argument in my house wasn’t whose turn it was to play on the computer; it was whose turn it was to get the fresh bowl of milk at breakfast.

This one Christmas was particularly bad and I was really sweating how I was going to make this holiday fun for the kids without gifts. Now, they wouldn’t have been totally deprived, the hubby and I both have fairly well-off extended families who always give the kids nice gifts at Christmas, but it REALLY sucks as a parent to have to choose between keeping the phone on and having something under the tree for your children come Christmas morning.

I didn’t exactly advertise the true dire straights of our financial position, so I’m not sure how many people really knew how poor we actually were (luckily I didn’t have many visitors for breakfast). At least one of our friends clued in though. I’m going to call her Donna.

Donna and her then husband Shit-for-Brains (he turned out to be quite the fucktard, but that’s a story for another time) called us up one night and asked if they could come over for a Christmas drink. I was initially panicked because not only did I not have any booze to offer them, I didn’t have ANY beverages to offer them. What was I going to say? “Sure! Come on over for a glass of tap-water cheer!”? Hearing my, ummm, uhh…..she quickly followed up by saying she had a bottle of rye and some coke she would like to bring. We didn’t get to see her very often so I said sure, come on over (a bottle of rye will get you in the door at my house every time).

Donna and S-f-B showed up about an hour later with a bottle rye, some mix, and a big bag of something. “What’s in the bag?” I asked. “Are you going to do your laundry while you’re here?” “No”, she said laughing. “We brought a few things over for the kids”.

In the bag that Donna brought were gifts for my kids – three gifts each, actually. She had them beautifully wrapped with their names on each, but nothing filled out in the ‘from’ tag. She then told me that she and Santa were buddies and that sometimes he gets her to help out on the extra busy years by delivering gifts for him a few days before Christmas if he doesn’t think he’ll make it to certain houses Christmas morning. The other four gifts, she said, were for me to give the kids because she knew how ‘busy’ I was and that I might not get a chance to go shopping.

I was so grateful to this woman that I almost started bawling right there; I didn’t even know what to say. Donna is not the type who goes looking for accolades, so she then promptly poured us all a stiff rye, put on some tunes and started dancing in my kitchen. We had a great night; had a few drinks, played some cards and didn’t mention the gifts she brought for us again.

I don’t see her that much anymore, maybe once or twice a year, but I will always remember what she did for us that Christmas. She probably doesn’t even remember doing it, but I will never forget the random kindness she showed us for no other reason than to make sure we had a good Christmas.

We’re not poor anymore, thank god. Not only do my kids all get their own milk with their cereal at breakfast time, but they have about four different types of cereal to choose from. My oldest daughter kind of remembers being poor, but my son has no recollection of it at all. If I told him he had to share his cereal milk today he would laugh hysterically at such a thought. The baby wasn’t yet born so she will grow up a privileged south-ender having no idea what going without whatever she needs is like. I’m simultaneously happy and horrified by that thought.

So the next time you’re in the store ready to go postal because the crowds and the Christmas carols are making you a little stabby, think of Donna and her bag of toys and bottle of rye. Then look around at your friends, neighbours, strangers, whoever, and go pull a Donna. Figure out what their bag of toys and bottle of rye is to them and go all Santa on their ass.

Whom doth rocketh??

Hey internet! J just earned 88% on her final Macbeth exam! Not only is she very clever but she has impeccable timing because about 30 seconds after I got the email from her English teacher (we were emailing anyway and she decided to share the good news) J called to see if she could have the new boy over. For the two hours that she's home after school without parental supervision. I was so loving her at that moment I said yes without really thinking. I kind of regret it now, but I do have a built in seven year-old spy on retainer so hopefully he'll keep me in the loop. I get the feeling sometimes he's a double agent though because whenever I ask him what went down while we were out and he says, “nothing” he usually has a ring of dried chocolate around his mouth.

Random Tuesday Thoughts for Keely

Why do some people not flush the toilet in public bathrooms? What makes them think I want to see their pee? Is it just straight up laziness, or are they in someway ‘proud’ of their discharge? We're women for god sakes - only men can get away with that kind of thing because they don't know any better.

Why do celebrities give their kids such ridiculous names? Ashlee Simpson just named her new son Bronx Mowgli. Unless you’re a cartoon character or a puppy that name is stupid. Can you imagine coming into this world the son of Ashlee Simpson and being named Bronx Mowgli? That kid is going to have it rough. She could have named this poor child Haywood Jablome and he would have had it easier.

I’ve been selected for jury duty! This is not really so much something to ponder as it is TOTALLY COOL. I know most people dread this kind of thing, but I have always wanted to be on a jury. I’m not asked my opinion much at work anymore and I really like giving it so jury duty is perfect for me. I also have very clear, self imposed rules regarding fairness so I will be a perfect juror. Hopefully I can be the foreman. Do they really have those or is Law and Order not exactly accurate? I hope not because I get most of my legal knowledge from that show.

I think the Beatles were talking about JC’s unit when they said “We’re bigger than Jesus”. Where do you think the phrase ‘rock out with your cock out’ came from?

A Star is Born

I TOTALLY want to be a singer. I love singing and I sing all the time – in the shower, in the car, at my desk, just randomly walking down the street, (OK, not that one but I really want to do that someday) etc., etc. The problem being of course is that I can’t really sing. I mean, I’m not horrendously terrible, but I would definitely be one of those poor souls shamelessly mocked if I ever tried out for American Idol. The mean one would probably tell me I can’t sing and I’m fat. The most complementary thing I can say about my singing voice is that I generally don’t get booed if I’m karaoking. Mind you, those people are all really drunk so I’m not sure they are a reliable indicator of my singing abilities.

My lovely daughter shares my love and desire for the performing arts and also longs to be a singer. If desire would meet talent, she would be headlining broadway musicals by now. Unfortunately, talent and desire are not mutually inclusive. That hasn’t stopped her from trying, however.

She auditioned for quite a prominent youth musical theatre group last year and was accepted. She was one of the youngest people in the company that was mostly derived of kids in grade 11, 12 and first year university (she was in grade nine). I can be reasonably assured that her enthusiasm and acting abilities secured her a space in this group, not the singing. They were hopeful they could teach her to sing. And failing that, well…..no part is too small right? Yeah, tell that to the kids who land in the chorus every production.

My darling daughter decided not to audition again this year citing her desire to concentrate on school and improve her grades. The time commitment was too much, she told me. Well, it’s November and so far ‘J’ has not done a spectacular job of even showing up for school half the time so that argument doesn’t hold water with me anymore. I suspect her opting out of the theatre company had more to do with the fact that she did not have a lead role in the productions than it did improving her GPA. She is, after all, a star!!

And, she kind of is. I know most mothers say this, but honest to god my child is one of the most unique human beings I have ever met in my entire life. Just the fact that I know her makes me more interesting, never mind that I actually gave birth to this person. There are many things that make her unique and not the least of which is her burning desire to perform for people. For years and years she had absolutely no fear whatsoever - it was truly amazing what she was able/willing to do at a very young age. At twelve years old and with only 15 minutes notice she gave the eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral in front of 300 people, and it was good. Regrettably if not predictably, the usual teenage insecurities have been creeping their way into her psyche for the last few years and have managed to slowly whittle away at her fearlessness. Fortunately, her desire for performing is much stronger than her insecurities. She still jumps at every opportunity to be a part of anything that involves an audience. It’s just that now she is nervous about it.

But, as mentioned earlier the not being able to sing thing a problem since most of the opportunities for performance at her age are musicals. But lucky for J the music teacher at her high school understands her, and knows how strong her desire to star in a musical is. This woman has been teaching my daughter to sing for the last few weeks, on her own time and for free, so J can have a lead role in her high school production of a Christmas Carol. She stars as Tiny Tim (this is funny ‘cause my girl is a wee one) and the production runs December 8, 9 & 10th.

I’m somewhere between scared to death for her and busting with pride because she is not willing to let a tiny thing like not being a great singer stand in her way of singing in a musical, complete with her very own solo for a whole song. This production is performing for the entire school at an assembly. Can you imagine doing such a thing unless you were some freaky Whitney Houston protégé type? Doesn’t the very thought of it make you want to go stick your head in the oven? I guess not if you’re J. It’s her dream and she’s doing it, and screw all y’all that say she shouldn’t.

I’m scared because high school kids can be serious assholes, and if J bites it they will make fun of her for the next two and a half years. It is totally amazing to me that she is willing to take the risk and follow through with what she is so passionate about, regardless of the consequences. Not that I’m assuming she’ll bite it, she might blow the doors off the place, but the potential for disaster is definitely there and she knows it.

I’m seriously jealous of her. I’m certainly not what you would call a shrinking violet, but I don’t have anywhere near the capacity to put myself out there like J does. I don’t even advertise this stupid blog so no one is even reading this. Well, maybe one person (hi Keely!). There are many things I would love to do and I find so many reasons why I can’t do them – I can’t afford it, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the talent, etc., etc. My daughter’s life will be so much more fulfilling because of her strength of character and burning desire to be what she wants to be. She is content (and very proud most of the time) to let her freak flag fly. That is a fantastic and very rare trait in a person.

But, at least I can live vicariously. I will be front row centre all three nights of her musical ready to marvel at her accomplishment wishing it was me!