going "in country"

I have been bad with the posts because I am entertaining overly demanding family members..well, really family member who expect me to get out of bed every day, skip the bonbon eating and Oprah and entertain with sights, education walks, etc. Honestly, going out EVERY DAY!

In an effort to completely deplete what energy I have left, we are about to leave for a week in Vietnam where we will meet up with Middle Brother who has been touring Southeast Asia in an attempt to recover from the exhaustion brought on by working full-time. In any event, I had assumed that I would be escaping the bone chilling cold of Hong Kong envisioning palm tree lined beaches and tropical cocktails. So, imagine my dismay when I discovered that Vietnam, or Hanoi anyway, is equally as freezing. I am really starting to get annoyed with countries that erroneously put themselves forward as warm but are in fact prone to cold snaps; if I could figure it out, I would try to sue someone for false advertising.

That all being well and good, I am pleased to announce that I am about to pay money to freeze my ass off in another Asian city...will report upon return.

and, i'm out...

So, for those of you not in the know, I and the other Lemony Lemonades have upped stix and moved our collective butts to Hong Kong. That's right people, I have moved from the T dot to the H dot K dot, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

None of this has been easy - including packing up my beloved condo, which Mr. Lemony Lemonade had to wrench from my overwrought grasp (I considered chaining myself to it but couldn't work out the best way to do this as chain is expensive by the foot). Of course, let's not forget 15+ hours on a plane with a three year old and an insomniac three year old at that. Gratefully, she didn't insist on getting out of the plane and seemed relatively content to play with her toys, put baby Charlie to bed ad nauseum and watch DVDs.

The moral of the story is this...www.snoreonto is just no longer appropriate as I have flown the coup and am on to bigger and better things (e.g. Christian Bale is in town filming Batman Continues On for the Umpteenth Time...and he is a really, really good actor...). I will be moving myself, not only to new real-life diggs but also new cyber digs as soon as I work out a really wicked url for my blog, something both ironic and laconic, if possible. Trust me, you will be the first to know. Till then....cheerio!

Shoes, beautiful shoes...

My most favourite thing in the whole wide world is shoes of all kinds, shapes and price points. I am an equal opportunity addict - and I am addicted; as sick and twisted and vacuuous as it is, I love shoe shopping above all else. OK, finding the perfect t-shirt, that's a close second because a truly great t-shirt is like the orgasm of shopping. But when it comes right down to it, I would give up a thousand beautiful tees for shoes, wondering shoes. I love shoes, lurv shoes, I lik'em a lot, I love a dub dub them.

Having had a daughter, I am beyond excited at the prospect to sharing my obsession because we all know, a boy just wouldn't do. Which brings me to boy shopping, the exact opposite of shoe shopping. Boy shopping is everything that is wrong with the world, of course that would also include such things as Britney Spears' heinous weave and the fact that the Olsen twins are billionaires. The reason that boy shopping is so very wrong is that they shop sans passion. I go to the mall and I am on a permanent contact high, overwhelmed with the choice, mentally jockeying around the dollars and cents trying to justify this must-have sweater and that must-have necklace while Mr. Lemony Lemonade (in this case, acting as the poster boy for all boy shoppers) is like, yeah, that's ok, ummmm, yeah, ok....all I need is a white t-shirt, so, can we go to the white t-shirt section now? White t-shirts? white, freakin' t-shirts? Who goes shopping for JUST A WHITE T-SHIRT? And it's not even like he's all that interested in the crummy white t-shirt either. I go shopping for a white t-shirt and I will finger, stroke, fuss and try one 100 shirts, balancing the merits of each and if the one that I want, the one that I really, really want, because it has a really cute collar or just the right length of sleeve or sits just so on the hip, isn't in my size, I will likely still buy it because I need it that badly. Mr. Lemony Lemonade doesn't find his size, he shrugs his shoulders and heads for the car. One time he refused to buy shoes that he liked because he thought that they felt a bit tight. HE THOUGHT THAT THEY FELT TIGHT? In the shoe shopping world that means, RUN TO THE NEAREST CASH REGISTER AND CHARGE IT. You don't overthink shoe purchases - you just buy. Bottom line, boys don't deserve to shop, what they do deserve is to sit around wrapped in paper towel because that's the punishment for desecrating the beauty of shopping.

Which brings me to today. Baby Girl and I went on our first official shoe shopping expedition because Baby Girl needed running shoes. I had finally accepted that I wasn't going to be able to to justify $70 Nike Shox to Mr. Lemony Lemonade AGAIN (Baby Girl had a pair when she was like one year old and they fit for about three and a half hours) so, I headed over to my fave The Shoe Company. Unfortunately, Baby Girl has recently decided that anything not pink is FOR BOYS and that's how she says it, like, you are an idiot mother and clearly I need to speak louder and slower so that you can understand and get it through your thick skull that I KNOW EVERYTHING. Her recent penchant for all things pink means that she has been making some very dubious fashion choices lately because, let's be honest, pink isn't exactly a ubiquitous sort of colour. Pink should really be reserved for a splash of colour not so much for a whole, heat-to-toe outfit. Anyhow, we got to the shoe store and before I could say, what about these fancy, pink, suede, old school, sneakers, she had removed her own shoes and had put on a pair of bright pink wellingtons with purple spots. As if that wasn't heinous enough, the boots also had antennae and bulging eyes. Once I was finally able to wrestle her attention away from the AWESOME wellies, we reviewed the rather extensive sneaker options, however, Baby Girl quickly rejected each sneaker in turn citing increasingly "boy shopping-esque" excuses; the first pair was "too tall", the second pair "for boys", the third pair was "for Victoria" (not sure what that meant) and the fourth pair was "too fast". I was about to despair when Baby Girl finally alighted on a pair that delighted her. Interestingly, they were the oldest looking pair of running shoes. When I say "oldest" read, they didn't look like they were made by a drag queen or a crafty bedazzler. These shoes were completely devoid of cartoon characters, glitter, flowers, butterflies or other embellishment. She put them on and promptly declared them GORGEOUS. Just when I thought that I was going to weep for joy at her obvious shoe shopping talents, she did the one thing all shoe addicted mothers hope for; she ran back to the display, got another pair of the same running shoes and said, "Mommy, here's your pair." God knows that if I could, I would have crammed my foot into the pint-sized Adidas silver and pink sneaker because the only thing better than wearing new shoes is wearing MATCHING SHOES with your three year old - oh yeah, that's cool. Anyhow, I did obliged by putting on a woman sized pair of sneakers to which Baby Girl exclaimed, "I LOVE THESE SHOES". I couldn't agree more!

My own personal Darwin award...

Today, I almost became the subject of one of those Darwin Award emails where the author of the awards delights in the novel and amusing ways in which imbeciles and the mentally weak manage to get themselves killed. The sort of emails that always end with a smug quip such as, "thank God that moron is no longer swimming in the gene pool". Well, first, I have news for you people, even if I manage to get myself bumped off in a freak toothpick accident or meet my maker at the hands of a small electrical applicance, I have managed to procreate, so the joke's on you because my wacky genes are guaranteed for at least another generation SO THERE. Which brings me to my near death experience.

I have long known that under different circumstances, my Mother would have been an adept assassin for hire. However, it wasn't until my mother got her first SUV that she really came into her own. It was at this point that all her personality peccadillos converged into sharp focus. I suppose that it surprised us all that when she got what I like to call "the instrument of death", my mother discovered her true trucker self. Leaving aside the fact that as an owner of an SUV, my mother has the carbon footprint of a T-Rex, it is undeniable that she has taken on a sort of larger than life SUV persona like when she steps into the SUV, she is KING OF THE WORLD. My mom readily admits to the rush of power she feels behind the wheel of 600 tonnes of Detroit steel, so at least she admits she has a problem and that is the first stage to recovery. However, that being said, she hasn't really shown any real signs of moving on to whatever step two is (begging forgiveness? making amends? checking into the Betty Ford?...really people, does anyone know what comes after step one?). She also now refers to pedestrians and drivers of small (read: normal) sized vehicles as nuisances, not to be tolerated but to be squashed like the bugs that they are. The carmakers also have their part to play in this little drama as the enablers of all time. Every new model they cook up some new fangled gadgetry that really just ends up making the SUV more threatening than before. Take the reverse alarm in my mother's newest SUV. Because the SUV is so ridiculously oversized, the car makers finally realizing that instead of letting armies of megalomaniac moms and the similarly oversized vehicularly endowed run over curbs, posts and anyone under six foot because they can't see a freakin' thing out the back of the vehicle, they will placate their consciences by installing a little alarm that will warn drivers of these instruments of death that they are about to squash someone. All this means is that my mother now reverses staring straight ahead as the little alarm will no doubt let her know if there is anything to be worried about.

Now, where was I? Of course, my near death experience. Many of you will likely not believe what I am about to relate because in a city of over five million people and thousands of kilometres of roads, the events that I am about to describe would require an unbelievable confluence of circumstances. The sort of circumstances that could be thrown off by the slightest inteference - a left instead of a right, missing the elevator, deciding to go to the bathroom before leaving the office, returning for a forgotten item. In this case, the planets were perfectly aligned and if I hadn't lived it, I wouldn't believe it myself. I swear that (more of less) every word of what I tell you is true, save embellishments and pointless digressions.

Which brings me to the non-event of my near death. I was crossing the street to go to the bank around lunch time today. As I was crossing the street out of the corner of my eye I registered a car had misjudged the light. As the light turned red for the car, it turned green for those of us waiting to cross and simultaneously, I stepped off the curb as the car, frantic to correct its error in judgment, attempted to charge through the pedestrians. Of course, like any God fearing Toronto pedestrian, I KNOW MY GODDAMNED RIGHTS and those rights include crossing on a green no matter what is coming in the opposite direction. If anyone tried to interfere with my pedestrian rights, they were in for a look of death, likely a finger waggle, possibly a full arm gesture and, if I am feeling unusually nervy, a cuss word or two. In this case, I turned to unleash any combination of finger, arm waving and/or cuss word when I found myself staring right into the eyes of my Mother. I would love to say that she was grim, determined, possibly even apologetic looking but instead, I saw what I can only interpret as the face of a woman at peace with the world. So, while I was within a hair's breadth of becoming a stupid, infinitely forwarded, joke email, my mother had achieved SUV nirvana. The best bit is that while I slinked off, head hung low so that no one would notice me, a rather confident and bossy pedestrian took it upon himself to hold up the pedestrian traffic so that my mother could pass. As I hustled away from the melee, presided over by the Good Samaritan Pedestrian, I heard him mutter something about stupidity and gas guzzlers.

I of course quickly called my mother to confirm that what I thought had just happened had actually just happened and I am pleased to announce that my state of shock and near-death experience was of no interest whatsoever to my mother, however, she did express great concern that I not tell anyone in the family about the "incident" and of course, I am keeping my promise...

i don't want to be a fat guy

Dieting is so very boring. I would love to say that pregnancy was my downfall but it was so much more. First university (delivery pizza, beer), then work (sitting for 10 hours straight, bagels, business lunches) and then pregnancy (great excuse for eating Dairy Queen for breakfast) and then anxiety and depression (also great excuse for eating Dairy Queen for breakfast). Before becoming pregnant, I had managed to shed a whopping 50 lbs. but then gained it all back plus and then lost it and then gained some of it back again. So, after learning from the news television in my office building's elevator that being even slightly overweight can increase mortality by 351%, I resolved to get back on the wagon and lose the pesky pounds. I'm not sure what is more disturbing, the mortality statistic or the fact that I now consider a television in an elevator a reliable source of medical information.

Mr. Lemony Lemonade is always my biggest champion when I try to eat well. Easy for his lean and lithesome butt; he's not cursed with the genetic makeup of an eastern european weight lifter. Truly, when it comes to losing weight, I am totally buggered as I seem to have been blessed with one of those metabolisms that needs only 5 or 6 calories a day to function effortlessly; anything over that, and it goes straight to my hips. It's not so much that I put on weight, it's just that it won't goddamned go away. I once watched a documentary on a woman in England who claimed that she didn't eat or drink anything as she had developed the ability to suck all the water and nutrients that her body required out of the air. She claimed not to have touched food or water for, like, eight years. She didn't exactly look the picture of health, appeared dazed and disoriented and sounded like a complete looney toon, but I could relate. I am certain that if I stopped eating altogether, I could last a good six to eight months before anyone would even notice.

As for what form my diet will take, Mr. Lemony Lemonade, in spite of his cougar-like physique, is no stranger to the diet and so, perhaps a page out of his book is just the ticket. I remember one particularly successful diet was his imaginatively titled "apple and vodka diet". I would like to tell you that there is something fancy about this diet but really, Mr. Lemony Lemonade just ate apples and drank martinis for like a week. The final insult was not that he walked around like a wino for ten days, but the fact that he dropped five pounds! Then there was the "apple and soup diet", again, imaginatively named and as the name suggests, consists of eating apples and soup. Although not quite as entertaining as the apple-vodka diet, Mr. Lemony Lemonade dropped another five pounds. It's clear that Mr. Lemony Lemonade could go on the cheescake-lard diet and lose another five pounds. I suspect that he may have supernatural powers of weight loss and that he just sort of wills the extra pounds to flee his body. Of course, his motivation is the much feared "man titties", worse than cellulite, saddle bags and muffin tops all put together. That being said, as much as I personally approve of drunken dieting, I think that I need something more, mainstream; perhaps eat more, exercise less, errr, sorry, eat less, exercise more.

I would love to say that I have a brilliant dieting scheme all worked out but I think that I will opt for plain old fashioned starvation because, we all know how much I love exercise. So, while Mr. Lemony Lemonade downs his fifth "diet martini" and Baby Girl polishes off her nightly chocolate ice cream, I will be in some form of starvation ecstasy having just scarfed my quota of celery, water and tofu - please pray for me.

late bloomer

I have often been struck by how un-parental I can be, like how I didn't really want to be a stay-at-home mom or how I eschewed breast feeding (yucky). Even more un-parenty is how I seem to be so very thrilled at every new achievement of Baby Girl's that makes her less dependent on me to do things for her confirming what I had always suspected about my own parents; they only had children so that one day, someone else would empty the dishwasher.

When Baby Girl learned to crawl, hurray, no more having to move her around like a potted plant or having her scream endlessly about the toy that was just outside of her reach. When Baby Girl started eating solid food, I was mentally calculating how much money we would save on the reduced amount of formula. When she learned to feed herself, hallelujah, no more having to coax her to eat or making stupid plane sounds. When she learned to walk, I was thrilled that my back might finally recover from the months of hauling her around like a sack of potatoes. This was so unlike other mothers that I talked to who seemed saddened by their children's creep toward independence. They would say things like, "I miss giving Emma her bottle" or "I really loved the bonding of nursing Connor". I would of course, nod knowingly as if to say, "I so, know what you mean" when I was thinking "are you freaking kidding me?". What really happened when Baby Girl no longer needed the bottles? I threw them out without a second thought and proceeded to myself a margarita party (for one). However, if I ever let that little internal monologue out into the open, as I have done by mistake on a few occasions, I get this quizzical look that clearly conveys the fact that I have just revealed myself to be a TERRIBLE MOTHER, I might as well have casually mentioned that I was a part-time porn star or kept a switch in the family room for "discipline". That is until yesterday morning when IT HAPPENED.

I was in the closet getting dressed and Baby Girl was happily watching Miss. Spider on the bed when I peeked around the corner to check on her and she was gone. This was unusual, so I called her name and she yelled back, "I'm in the bathroom." I went out to have a look and Baby Girl had not only just gotten up and off the bed and gone to the bathroom, she had put herself on the potty and was reading Dr. Seuss. She looked up from the book and nonchalantly asked "what, Mommy?" and I said, "what are you doing?" and looking at me as if I was the village idiot, she said "I'm doing a stinky Mommy, GO AWAY".

That's when I got all verklempt, because Baby Girl had just, of her own volition realized that she needed the bathroom, gotten up off the bed, managed to get out of her clothes, had the wherewithall to know that she might be some time and grabbed some reading material and then put herself on the potty. That, people, is independence and that was when I got all "oh, my god, she's so grown up" and "where did the time go" and all sad and drippy like a complete and utter LOSER. The unfortunate truth is that I now know why Connor's mom misses the bonding of breastfeeding and Emma's mom is wistful about bottle feeding. I am clearly just a late bloomer when it comes to these things. Where it took other moms months, it has clearly taken me years to develop the wistful, sentimental thing which makes me wonder what other parental pitfalls and anxieties I have avoided out of parental immaturity but that are bound to hit me like a ton of bricks at any given time. Am I going to start getting broody and wanting another child? or even, gulp, wish that I had stuck out the breastfeeding thing? but the even more unfortunate truth is that I can't really share this story with other mother's because it's not cute enough like the bottle thing or the breastfeeding thing; I mean, could I be any grosser - I am getting weepy over poop. What's next, missing her wiping her drippy nose on me when she finally learns to use a tissue and blow like a normal human being?

martial bliss, lemony lemonade style

In the early days of the Lemony Lemonade marriage things could be tempestuous but we were younger and more immature and finding our marriage legs. Mr. Lemony Lemonade was far more volatile and I was far more provocative and I don't mean that I walked around all day in garters and a teddy. We have since mellowed, accepted certain realities about each other's personalities, matured and learned that it is unlikely that holding one's breath and threatening mayhem is not the most productive way to bend another human to your will.

More recently, we have found our stride although I will admit that our testiness levels are directly correlated to Baby Girl's mood and temperment. If she is being a diva, we get snippy and crappy to one another. If she is being a petite ange, life is a box of chocolates. But that all goes out the window when Mr. Lemony Lemonade gets humpfy and sniffy. One might think that sniffiness isn't all that bad but believe me, no one can sniff so derisively, so snootily, so witheringly as Mr. Lemony Lemonade.

Tonight, I got the sniff and I knew that I was in big trouble because Baby Girl was hundreds of miles away with her grandparents, so this mood was clearly ALL MY FAULT and I knew that it was because I am a horrible, terrible, failure as a housekeeper.

Few people would know this or guess this even if they knew us very, very well but when it comes to keeping house, I am a complete and utter slob (not so surprsing) and Mr. Lemony Lemonade is fastidious and regimented (more surprising). Most people would assume that I am the fascist to his pacist but when it comes to housekeeping, I am the slobby bobby hedonist and he's freaking Mary Poppins. Tonight, the sniff was about unpacking. I got in and sat down because I hate doing worky stuff and he promptly, as he does every day, went off to do chores which of course, drives me insane because how can I be expected to relax and decompress when he insists on running around ensuring that the house is kept in order and that a high level of hygiene is maintained so that none of us contract dysentary or the plague. I know, I know, I bloody well know that I come from a long line of malingering lazy bones, so, really, my failing as a housekeeper isn't my fault, it's my parents' fault. If only they had done a better job raising me, I would be a better person. One time, my laziness even made Mr. Lemony Lemonade threaten to leave the country - my laziness was that irksome and vexing that it required not only just leaving my immediate vicinity, it was actually worthy of international flight.

So, because I am relentless in my pursuit of not being bossed, I pulled out all the stops, I argued like I was making a case before the Supreme Court on why the death penalty shouldn't be applied so, of course, no argument was too ridiculous, too flawed, too outrageous. I got so crazy at one point that I actually suggested that Mr. Lemony Lemonade's attempts to get me to do housework was tantamount to gender discrimination akin to 250 years of male oppression of women the world over. Somehow, I managed to justify the fact that I don't touch garbage, do laundry or mop floors by suggesting that asking me to touch garbage, do laundry and mop floors was just another example of the iron boot of white male oppression. Let's face it, I reached marital rock bottom with that line of argument.

Unfortunately, I have made my bed and as we speak, Mr. Lemony Lemonade is sleeping in it like a baby. My argument was so blindingly successful that he has bought my laissez faire stance and decreed that he is going to enjoy life more and clean up less. Fan-fricking-tastic, I say, but how in God's name am I going to manage this frightful situation that is sadly, of my own making. Clearly Baby Girl is just going to have to learn to do laundry or wear disposable clothing and eat only no-cook, garbageless foods and possibly, I can just buy like 150 pairs of underwear and sleep on top of the sheets; my sisters are depending on me and as God is my witness, I will not capitulate, even if it means dysentery and the plague because that would be better than having to admit that I might, just might be wrong.