Jumperpie

Heard over our baby monitor this evening just after bedtime:

*squeak* *squeak* *squeak* *squeak*

One little monkey jumping on the bed!

Indeed, indeed.

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Plus: I've been on a bit of a teen lit bender lately. Curious?
Go check out what I've been reading and what I thought.

Slice of Fame

So if you're in the GTA and have nothing better to do at 7:30 or 10:30, go watch the intro to this show.

Today, the opening will feature words from Life of 'Pie.
(And I'm in the credits!)

Undressing

After my wedding, ten years ago now, I went home, tired but happy after a fun evening with friends, asked Misterpie to unbutton my many-buttoned dress, and stepped out of it. I hung it from the curtain rod beside our closet. I looked at it, hanging there. And I wondered. Now what? What do I do with it?

Well, some people preserve their dress, in some kind of special wrapping. To what end, I am not certain. I am not one to spend a lot of effort memorializing an event, to be honest. I planned to do a scrapbook of the day but, well, the book and photos and wedding invite samples and everything else still sit in a box from the liquor store, a Bacardi box to be exact, that I piled them in when we moved to New York a couple of years later. So it might be said that I don't stand on ceremony, and don't really see my dress, as much as I might have liked it, as some precious relic for enshrining.

Some people save their dress for their daughter, should she ever be married. But really, wouldn't my daughter, if I had one, if she chose to get married, wouldn't she want to choose her own dress? Couldn't she have really different taste than me? Wouldn't she be offended, as I was, if her mother suggested that the dress she chose wasn't the right one? Wouldn't she roll her eyes at the idea that my taste was so perfectly perfect that hers must, just must be the same? I would, if I were her. So no, I didn't really see the point in that.

Still, I liked my dress. It seemed like a special thing. I chose it carefully, wore it to a special moment. So it didn't seem quite right to just give it away to Goodwill or throw it in the costume box, either. What to do?

As it turns out, the answer is the same as my quandry about what to do with the 18" length of hair I once cut off: give it away to benefit kids with cancer. Sounds peculiar, huh? But I was so thrilled to discover this just last week, and I wanted to share it with you all. Maybe some of you have the same dilemma about gown disposition as I have had. And maybe some of you know someone getting married who could use some cost-cutting help but don't want to sacrifice a nice dress for it. And I have an answer for both in the form of The Brides Project.

A few years ago, when Helen Sweet was getting married, she was, as I think many of us are, given pause by the enormous cost of all things bridal. After her wedding, she contemplated giving her dress to the one-day event, Brides Battling Breast Cancer. But she thought that maybe it could be something bigger, something more ongoing, something that she could start with her history of helping with charities and her memories of losing a friend to cancer at just 9 years old. And so began the collecting of dresses.

The Brides Project began with just three dresses, including her own, grew by way of donated dresses from various brides, and eventually caught the attention of others in the industry. Today, 90% of the dresses are new and unused, most from high-end designers, some worth thousands of dollars. They are donated by partners in the bridal industry. As well, there are the dresses donated by brides, most of which are similarly stunning, expensive dresses. Sweet has added on services, offering shoes, veils of her own design and manufacture, jewelry, tiaras, handbags, wraps and capes, and more. The dresses pay for the rent (sometimes), and anything above that is donated to three cancer charities. The veils are what support Sweet and cover whatever the dresses don't. On top of this, Sweet offers referrals to some services, DJs, florists, and so on, that she knows, and many of them donate some of their fees to the same charities. Because Sweet aims for truly one-stop shopping, she also officiates weddings, making her part of the entire process.

Going to shop at the Project is a very different experience from a bridal store, it must be said. To keep rent low, Sweet's home and operation are based in a former rooming house which has an old charm in its wooden doors and stained glass windows, but none of the grandeur and airy whiteness of a bridal shop, to be sure. Though Sweet offers wonderful dresses at outrageously cheap prices ($50-750), this experience is not for the Princess Bride who hopes to be fawned over and to stand atop a pedestal gazing at her reflection while an attendant measures, hems, and exclaims. Rather, Sweet leaves her brides with some guidelines about being careful with the dresses, and lets them try on what they will (just how I like to be handled when shopping!). Her dresses are arranged sensibly in three rooms, each with a narrow range of sizes in it. The rooms house a lovely collection, but there are two more rooms on the main floor with new arrivals, and hundreds more dresses in the basement level, making her stock more than impressive and giving any bride a good chance of finding something. It is also worth mentioning that the highly allergic might want to check her stock on the website, as do customers from across North America, for Sweet lives up to her name, fostering and rescuing a number of cats, who live in the back half of the house, though the rooms of dresses are closed to them. (For a cat lover like myself though, it is kind of nice to be greeted by Charlie, who rolled over for a belly rub, since my visit was not during business hours!) To be honest, I wish this had been around when I married. How lovely, to get your dress more cheaply, to avoid the madness of bridal salons and their scary hovering salespeople and bridezillas (okay, this is what I imagine, I don't really know), and to be helping good causes, all at once.

Because of my own bias about the gaudiness of some dresses, I simply had to ask Sweet one question: What about dresses that were simply not saleable? What became of those? Turns out, some are used for their fabric, beads, and buttons to go into new dresses. And some are given to a class that teaches teenagers how to sew, taking the dresses apart and rebuilding them. Everything gets used. I love Sweet's dedication to this, although she is finding it tough lately to keep the business afloat. It seems the industry as a whole is in a slowdown these days, for the fleet of brides lining up to be married on the "lucky" date 07/07/07 all bought their dresses last year. Know anyone who needs a dress and is a bit put off by all the fuss? Sweet would love to help them find a dress and anything else they might need to complete their day.

As for my dress, now I have a reason to go up to the in-laws and try to find it.

To Misterpie, With Love

Misterpie -

Once, long ago, nearly fifteen years ago now, you wrote me a letter. You wrote me a lot of letters that first year when, you at school in London, I at school in Peterborough, we were together but once a month. But this letter, this single sentence in a letter from fifteen years ago, I remember. You said, though I don't remember your exact wording, that you weren't sure what love was, but that it was harder to see me leave every time I had to go and that you missed me more and more, and that if that was what love meant, you guessed you should be telling me that you loved me. That was the first use of the word between us, and I remember it so clearly, and with a little laugh every time I do so, because it was so very you.

It was so very you to say exactly what you meant, though not by your choice of fine and fancy words, but rather a slightly odd and less-than-fluent run of words that could be taken wrongly if I wanted to look for it, though it is in fact a careful and sincere way of trying to say what you really mean. It is so you to worry that you might be taken wrong or that a girl in the business of reading some of the best known writers every day for school might not be impressed by your turn of phrase. It is so you to be not slick or suave, but incredibly sweet and precisely honest.

You worry sometimes, I know, about this lack of ease and facility for expressing yourself, especially when occasions come around that beg for just that type of linguistic showboating - anniversaries, birthdays, valentine's and mother's days. Just last week, my mother's day card's note started with an admission that you are not suave and wordy. I realized that there is something you may not understand about me, so let me today let you in on a little secret.

I can appreciate, even savour lovingly the beautiful phrases of pearl-polished perfection offered up by some writers. I roll them around in my mouth and speak them inside my head and take delight in the melody and rhythm created by them. Yes, I love language. Yet... Did you never notice that I was not impressed, was maybe even a little unfairly scornful of the weedy English-department boys, toting their underlined copies of Baudelaire and Byron? Someone who would write me poetry, I would find pretentious, suspect, and a source of discomfort. What would I say if I hated it? No, I am not looking to be a muse for some high-flown love song. I am not looking to have you be that person. After all, I don't believe that love looks to change.

Have I never told you my theory on love, in all these years? Well, then, let me tell you about what I believe, and what I don't believe.

I don't believe that we should search for someone perfect.
I don't believe that we should seek to create perfection in someone we think might be close enough that we could get them there.
I don't believe in perfection, in fact, and if I did, I don't believe it would lead to or sustain love, anyhow.
I don't believe that love is blind to the faults of the beloved, or even that it should be.

I believe, rather, that we find someone we like. Someone we get, and that gets us. Someone whose company we love, someone with whom we mesh well, accompanying in some places, contrasting in others, creating harmony from a combining of notes, not simply matching each other in one-note melody. I believe that people are not perfect, and that people are not a project. I believe that you need to take the time to see someone clearly, to get to know them as they really are, including all their faults. I believe that ignoring so-called flaws or planning to change them can only lead to disillusion. I believe that to love someone truly is to acknowledge their many, very human faults and love them anyhow, for those faults are part of them.

So would I change things in you, make you better able to whisper words of love or write me a tender note worthy of rereading until it is worn and grubby with handling? No. These small failings are not important at any depth to me and, after all, perhaps they are part of what makes you who you are. Perhaps it is part of what makes you a humble man, a man honest and aware of who you are. A man with little pretention. A good man, a solid man. No, you aren't fancy or flashy. But I prefer steak to a sculpted tower of nouvelle cuisine, a book to a high-tech gadget. I like your warm, reliable, centered self. After some fifteen years together, after ten years of being married to you, though I am rarely accused of being succinct, there is perhaps one fact above all others that I could share with you to make this point: Had I to go back to 1992, I would choose to phone you up and go see that crappy first-date movie all over again. If it were once again May 23rd, 1997, I would once again put my hand in yours and say before all our dearest frineds and family, "Yes."

So I know you won't be writing me a love letter to commemorate this, our first decade together. And that's okay. That's you. My Misterpie.



Happy anniversary, my love.

Decade Dance

Ten years ago this week, I was a bride.

It seems strange to me, the notion of myself as a bride. I was not a child who fantasized about weddings and the accoutrements of being a bride. I did not dress up in flouncy white dresses and veils, did not own bride dolls swathed on poufy white satin, did not walk my Barbie and Ken up imaginary aisles lined in flowing tulle or carry hairbrushes as bouquets as I practised the measured steps a bride is taught to take on her way to the alter where she will be joined with her husband-to-be. Bride is a word loaded and fraught with image and connotation, and none of it ever seemed to apply to me.

Indeed, the word fiancee even took some getting used to, and was never used comfortably by me. Hearing it fall from Misterpie's lips always took me aback a bit. But never so much as hearing him introduce me as his wife.

Ten years in, the term wife still seems foreign. It's not that marriage seems a strange state to me - in fact, I always figured I'd be married at about 25. That always seemed a good age to me, an age at which I might be ready to make such a decision. I did, in the end, marry at 24.5 exactly, to the day, and yes, I was ready to make that decision, as I had suspected.

I was quite ready for marriage. I didn't seem a big stretch from where we were, having lived together for a year and a half and having bought a house the year prior. Marriage is and was a comfortable state for Misterpie and I. We are a good pair. We both try to bend when the matter at hand is not important, to figure out who will take the lead, to do small favours for each other. In most things, we mesh well or find a way to work out something in the middle. We have had a good run in this decade-old marriage of ours.

But the wedding? While I was fully at ease about marriage, the whole wedding thing rather scared me. There was so much to organize, so much to think about, so many specialty professionals involved. I was totally in over my head, even thinking about it. As it was, we kept it small and simple. A friday evening, no dinner but a buffet of nibblies, a wine table, and some punches, coffee served with cakes later on - that way we could mingle and chat with our closest friends and relatives. The cakes were not wedding cakes, but a two chocolate mousse cakes, one white, one dark, covered in chocolate curls and with a few flowers resting on the top. A historical house, small, lovely, and intimate, and an easy way to keep the cap on the guest list (the count of 55 included the wedding party and minister). A photographer, a string quartet for the ceremony and jazz CDs as background music for the evening of mingling. A simple little wedding card from a micropress in Toronto served as invitation, with the inserts printed on japanese paper on my parents' computer. A basket of tulips for the signing table, a pot of daffodils on the music table, a couple of calla lilies for each of my two bridesmaids, and a stem of orchids for myself. The decisions on setting and evening were easy enough. It was all about being small, simple, intimate. About sharing a nice evening with friends we loved.

We (well, I) had agonized a bit over the place and officiant and the meanings of them. I had thought that Misterpie, raised in a church-going family would want a church wedding, but felt that it would be strange for me, as I had not gone to church myself. I worried that it might seem flip to have a church wedding, as if I just wanted it for the architecture, when it was meaningful to other people. As it turned out, Misterpie didn't have an attachment to the notion of a church setting, and the historic house was perfect. Who would perform the ceremony, though, given this divide on religion? Again, it would have seemed strange and meaningless to me to have either an unknown minister or a justice of the peace perform the vows. As it happens, though, our officiant was perhaps the easiest decision of all. In high school, I had spent as much time at my close friend Alberta's house as at my own, and her father was a minister. It was the perfect thing for me - someone who meant something for who they were, who was a part of my life, who may not have been a religious leader to me, but was one of the father figures in my life. A most personal touch.

But of course, planning the party is not the only thing involved. There is, of course, the whole bride thing to put together, too. This is perhaps the thing that scared me the most. The thing is, I'm not flouncy, fluffy, lacy, or sparkly. I'm just not. But bridal shops? They are all of those things. I could only imagine some crazy big-haired, frost-and-tipped woman with bad caked-on lipstick trying to shoehorn me into something more ornate than the gaudiest of gaudy wedding cakes. The alternative at that point was the slipdress, a la Carolyn Bessette, something I was not into either. So I worried and fretted and thought about trying to find someone who would make me something, until one day, I walked into a small vintage store on a visit to Peterborough, and I saw it. My dress was hanging there, and I bought it. And then I went around the corner and bought earrings to go with it at a small silver store I loved. And now all I had to find were shoes. The sense of relief was that of a weight lifted. Now I just had to find someone to alter it a bit here and there, taking in the shoulders, replacing the old metal zipper with some self-covered buttons, easing the weight of some fabric lengths on the back by replacing the facing with a lighter fabric. It was just right, I thought. Simple, ivory rather than white, not a bead or bow in sight.

And it was all ready. I had bought a pot of ivy to twine in my braided crown of hair, booked a hair appointment, learned how to apply mascara, and shipped everything to the historic house that afternoon. All that remained was to get the hair done, eat something, and get to the house in time to get dressed. And I did. The hairdressers told me they had never seen a bride so calm. What was to be nervous about, I wondered? I was sure about this, after all, or I wouldn't be doing it.

At the house, there was not quite enough light in my dressing room to fiddle around with unfamiliar eye makeup, so I perched on the edge of the sink in the bathroom, chatting unwillingly with guests who had arrived a bit too early and decided to visit the loo. I jumped into my dress and had my bridesmaids button up the few thousand tiny buttons marching up my back. I let the photographer take a quick shot in the dressing room, though the light was too poor for it to turn out well, given that he did not have time to set up properly with the wedding about to begin. Then I slipped into my shoes, picked up my flowers, and raced up the stairs to enter the room where the dearest of my friends and family were waiting. Where Misterpie stood in front of an ornate fireplace, beside a table of tulips cut that morning from our own garden, beside his best friend and my own best friend's father, waiting for me.

And as soft music began, I walked.

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It's wedding week, here at Life of 'Pie!
Coming are an ode to Misterpie and some musing on the fate of wedding dresses.

But on the flip side...

there are some funny moments to this Being Three business, too, as she figures some things out.

Like last night, after dinner.

My ice cream is too cold. Can I have a ginger cookie to warm myself up?

Or this morning, watching Dora:

Benny (TV character): This rock is really, really heavy. Will you help me move it?
kittenpie, to Pumpkinpie: Are you going to help him move it?
Pumpkinpie (with tone implying what a silly question that was): No! I'm not in the TV with him!

True, that. Smart kid.

Reporting Live From the Other Side of Three

I took Pumpkinpie to the dentist the day before she turned three. The dentist was very impressed with us, with our daily brushing, with our occasional flossing, with Pumpkinpie's quiet and patient allowing her to clean and count and floss and polish all her teeth, with her rinsing and spitting, and calmly playing along.

Good thing I took her when I did. Because guess what? Terrible twos? HA!!! I laugh at two. Two was easy. Now I admit, in saying that, that I had an easy time with two. Even though she did have her occasional weeks of making me insane, she was overall pretty sweet and compliant and polite. But three is another planet altogether. And it needs a name. Something analogous to terrible twos, but for three. Something snappy and catchy, maybe rhyming or alliterative.

The past few weeks of cranky interactions may provide some fodder...

Threatening Threes? Certainly, I've had to use and carry out threats more often than ever before. Taking away things used for hitting, removing hockey watching with dad, carrying her forcibly upstairs to bed. She almost lost a precious playdate this weekend, something I would have hated to cancel, but I never make a threat I won't back up, so I'm picking my words carefully these days, even as my head is exploding.

Tiring Threes? Not really alliterative, exactly, but certainly apt. I'm wiped out. It's freaking relentless, the pushing and challenging, all of a sudden. She seems to have overnight developed more will, a modicum of attitude, and some shiny new catchphrases. Garnished with a need to do the opposite of what she's been asked, or to do what she's been asked not to. Greeaaat. Perhaps Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 is apt, if awkward.

The Twelfth Trimester? She's clingier than she's ever been all of a sudden. My sturdy, independent little girl needs help with everything, everything is a cause for major meltdown, most questions and requests issues forth from a puddle on the floor, deep down a well of tears. I'm trying to teach her to, if she can't head off the tears by asking calmly in the first place, take a few deep breaths to help her get a freaking grip already before she asks. I flat out refuse to honor requests phrased as fits.

Me-Me-Me Threes. She's more demanding than she's ever been, repeating and prodding and pulling if her requests are not filled posthaste, unhappy with any delay, and pleading for us to play with her instead of preparing dinner, insisting on everything in sight, and retreating on her ability to share. She used to be a delight in her selfless offering of anything to anyone. Sigh.

And it goes on. Refusals, bursting into tears, and slipping off her chair at mealtimes now punctuate our erstwhile lovely relationship. And now that I'm in the middle of it, I'm starting to hear people say, with a sage nod, "Yeah, three is harder than two." So why doesn't anyone tell you about this beforehand? Why all the focus on terrible twos? Do they think if they trick you into thinking it's only three short years, you won't despair so much? Seriously, what the hell? I feel the same as when I started to get my first pimples at age 17 - I thought I got through unscathed! Damn! I forget sometimes, in the rosy haze of my optimism, that nothing is ever over!

So really, help a girl out here. Let's at least work up a good new label for three that reflects this fresh crop of challenges, of pushing and testing and demanding. Lay them on me, ladies. (and you too, Tony!) Then I can replace "toddler terrorism" with something spicier.

I'm now considering changing the tagline to one of the suggestions I received, but rejected at the time as too negative: In it, but not into it.

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And, may I add an apology here for being a bad, dropout blogger these past couple of weeks. Fact is, I'm too tired and out of it to read, let alone write, these days. I don't have the energy or the brain power. I have read little, blogged less, and accomplished exactly nothing on my glass work. Parts of the house have been cleaned for the benefit of visitors, some of the laundry has been done so we at least have clean undies, a few pieces of furniture have been moved so our front porch looks less trailer-trashy, but that's about it. I'm drained and sick and have been spending way too much time fulfilling obligations and sitting in waiting rooms getting checkups for myself and Pumpkinpie. (Though on the plus side, this year the bloodletter listened to me, got out the butterfly needle, and accomplished a rare feat of single-poke accuracy! Yay!) Hopefully I'll be back on my game in a week-ish, but until then, please forgive me my sporadic posting and visiting. I'll be back around to give you some kitten loving soon, I promise.

Celebrity Skin

So there's a, well, not really a meme, but a nifty little gadget-y thing going around wherein you plug in your picture, and some sort of face recognition software comes up with your celebrity look-alikes. Here, see, Bub&Pie got a nice selection of people she can officially say she looks like now. Someone else I know got about 7, most of them flattering, though one or two not.

So, game for a meme and sorta curious, I uploaded a photo, since I had just made Misterpie take one after discovering I only had one measly photo of myself alone in the past many years, and it sucked.

Now, I'm one of those people who is constantly approached on the street by people asking if I have a sister. (Yes, I do, and no, she's not whoever you are thinking of because you'd never pick us out as sisters unless you knew what to look for.) So apparently I look like lots of people out there. Random people, though. But people don't ever mistake me for someone famous. They have a hard time choosing the actress who would play me in the movie of (our school, our library, my life, whatever). So here was my chance to find out who I looked like. Somebody famous.

Or not. Apparently, there were no matches! Seriously. I can't even take this to mean that I am highly, uniquely, interestingly different because, what with all those people stopping me on the street, apparently I look like lots of people, just no one you would know. I'm not sure how to take this.

My relationship with my face thus far has been sort of a matter of enh, whatever. I'm not bad-looking, not great-looking. A little too victorian, a little too china-doll sweet to be fashionable. But okay, good enough for me to pass as on the pretty side, but certainly nothing special. Not really memorable, I would estimate. I do my best with what I've got, you know? I think most of us are that way.

Not that my best is great. I am not skilled in the arts of hair and makeup by any stretch, but most days, I think I pull off looking acceptable before I leave the house, with the help of a couple dots of concealer if I need any (that week of the month where there is nothing to do but heave a sigh and try to cover the spots, for example), some chapstick, and a brush and hairclip. It's not a great look, I sure am not setting the world on fire, but it gets me out the door.

I would have to guess that, by symptomatic evidence alone, I am reasonably accepting or comfortable with how I look, because I don't fuss. Once I leave the door, it is only on a rare day that I even look in a mirror again before the bedtime facewash. Occasionally, I catch sight of myself in a bathroom mirror and just make sure my hair is not too wild (a lost cause at any rate) and make note that I really should get in the habit some day of putting on lip gloss after my coffee. Not that I ever remember to do that. I'm busy, you know?

I guess this says to me that despite making a point of having cute shoes and trying to dress decently and paying attention to getting my hair cut and brushing it, despite putting on eye cream and having a plastic surgeon cut a strange discoloured spot out of my nose a few years back, I don't really put a lot of emphasis on looking perfect. If I cared a lot, if it was more of a priority, I would make the time, right? I would straighten my unruly mop, put some mascara on to darken and show up my lashes, put on that lip gloss? I suppose it means I think what I'm working is good enough to get me by.

Still, much as it seems to me that my caring what I look like is sort of spotty and limited, I'm not thrilled to see that I don't look like anyone. It sure would have been nice to look like someone known for their loveliness. So I'm a little envious of B&P and her lovely look-alike ladies. Lucky wench.

What about you? Do you look like anyone? How much do you care about your outward self?

Meet Misterpie

This week Niloc tagged Misterpie for a meme, but Misterpie is not playing along. So, as per the "also acceptable" clause in Niloc's rules, I'm answering for him. Just so's you know.

What was your first car and what about it made it so great? (Do I bother asking what their dream car is?)

It wasn't Misterpie's first car that he loved. That car was transportation, pure and simple, bought as the cheapest new car he could drive off a lot for commuting to his new job that started three days later. It was a navy Tempo. Yawn.

His second car was the one he bought for wanting it. That was the jeep YJ. A fun car, a stripped-down car, not one of those living-room-on-wheels SUVs, it always felt like we were going on an adventure, every time we so much as hopped up into it. I wasn't sure I was keen on it before the test drive, but by the time we got back to the dealership, I was sold. He wasn't as thrilled as you might expect by that turn of events because, unbeknownst to me, he planned on using my reluctance as his bargaining position. oops.

Dream car? Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari, whatever type that is.

What is the most played song on your iTunes / WMP or whatever you are listening to music on your computer with? And… Name five bands that made a big impression on you but never made it big on the charts.

Misterpie is not one to know about cool small-venue bands. He doesn't do iPods. He listens to the radio on the way to work, flicking between several stations. He's a guy who likes classic rock like Q plays (which I make him change when I'm in the car) or whatever is on something like Mix or Jack, pretty much, as well as the classical station at quieter times. He's a good sport, though, and lets me introduce him to bands or drag him to concerts that are not his style every once in a blue moon.

Do you know what end of the hammer to hold? What was your last project around the house?

Misterpie is major-league handy. He and my dad framed in a new door for me for a birthday present one year. (Don't ask.) He's changed locks, done plumbing, built decks and fences aplenty, plastered, tiled, painted, done electrical work, cut down trees... His last project was probably fixing the bathroom leak and repairing the fallen-in ceiling that resulted, and helping paint the walls.

What is your best method for avoiding chick flicks?

His best method has been to introduce me to dick flicks. Not that I was ever much of a chick flick girl anyhow, so he didn't have much of a fight on his hands.

Who’s more of the techno geek in your house? This can apply to tools, toys, gadgets, geeking at home on the computer or anything else that might apply.

Totally Misterpie. He's taken apart countless computers over the years, even for friends and family. He was a computer science major, and a computer consultant for a decade. Recently, when I killed my second laptop, he saved the day by disconnecting its integral keyboard so we could plug in an external and carry on. Yay, Misterpie!

What are three things that are a part of your life that you would never see your own dad doing?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree here. I decided I needed to seek input on this one, and it took a while for him to come up with:
-teaching little kids
-doing the grocery shopping and cooking
-wasting time watching TV
(though he did also mention marrying a left-leaning girl...)

What’s the last “Dude! I just got a _______ from _______” thing that you really didn’t need but bought anyways?

I'm betting on some sort of tool that CanTire had on sale. He concurs that's probably about right.
What is the wildest / craziest / dangerous etc… thing you have gotten away with? This can (or should) involve the Cops. Common guys, this is your chance to really brag!

Misterpie is not a wild and crazy guy, really, but I do recall some stories about jumping off a railroad bridge some 50 or 70 feet in the air into a river on canoe trips. Makes my cautious self shudder a bit.

It’s not a dude meme if it doesn’t include something regarding the opposite sex. When was the last time you experienced a true head turner? Where you couldn’t help but take that second glance at someone. Remember to be creative in your response. It will get you in less trouble.

Dude. Come on. I'm his wife here, okay? Sheesh. Obviously that would be me... Ha.
(My position on this has been that I know he'll look, but it's just rude to make me aware of it, so don't let's go getting him into trouble. Ask him another time, alright?)

Simple Gifts

It seems my girl is with Bobby McFerrin in believing that "simple pleasures are the best." And with the Shakers in revering simple gifts.

A week ago, on her birthday, we sat at breakfast and I told her that she would have a little party at daycare, and that we would have presents for her to open at home that night. Her response?

"I don't need any presents. I've already got a balloon for myself."
(Indeed, a purple one given to her by the dentist the day before.)

Cue gooey melting mama. I love this answer! But I figure I'd better hold onto it and get all braggy now, because I have no doubt I will need to remember a time when she was sweet and ungrasping when the gimme gimmes start in a couple of years...

Mary's Book Binge

So Mary P., a favourite of mine, had spread the word about a book reading um, I don't know if I should call it a challenge or a meme? The idea is to list every book we read in April and post it at the start of May. And here are the sad results. Now you know. I read slowly. I read mostly teens and kids stuff for work. I read crap for adult fiction. The inclusion of a couple more interesting non-fiction titles this month is pure happenstance, because they were burning a hole in my library book bin. It's sad, but true. And now I can't escape it... Here's my list (links are to reviews on my kidlit site where applicable):

When She Hollers, by Cynthia Voigt - teen novel, one of those awful issue-driven ones, about a girl being sexually abused by her stepfather, but well done, I thought.
Saffy's Angel, by Hilary McKay - kids novel. Enh.
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert - adult non-fiction! I don't read much of this, and it takes me forever, but this sounded interesting, and was.
Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett - adult non-fiction about a friendship, by the author of one of my favourite books, Bel Canto. I am also, as I keep saying, a sucker for a friendship story, and this one is fun, lovely, loving, and unusual.
Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, by Courtney Love - snippets of diaries, photos, lyrics, and more crammed into page after page. It goes in rough - very rough- chronological order, and comes without much in the way of notes or explanation. It's really more like she just dumped out a shoebox of stuff on the bed and started pasting. Revealing, intimate, and yet opaque. I loved reading her writings about Frances Bean. It makes her so human, so much another mom.
Mable Riley: A Reliable Account of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance, by Marthe Jocelyn - children's novel, featuring a funny and spirited victorian heroine much in the vein of Anne or Jo. (Kept thinking how much Bub&Pie would love this... being a fan of victoriana and all, and also Mable's journal entries are a lot about boys and marks! hee hee)