A Family Divided, but not really
Fun things to do on skype while the brown half of the family is at home on Vancouver Island and the blonde half lives it up in Gay Paris
1. Catch up on everything that's happened since the last time we Skyped. Which was yesterday. Today's news was this: Mona List - thumbs up, Notre Dame - thumbs down, Croque Madame - thumbs down, riding the Metro - thumbs up.
2. Play duelling cooking shows while preparing a time- and place-appropriate meal. For breakfast on the west coast of Canada: blueberry soy smoothies. For early dinner in Montmartre: cured meats, Coquelicot baguette and Roquefort. I watched as Tobias unwrapped his moldy meat ( ha! ) and he and Rara sat entranced as I poured bananas, soy milk, blueberries and flax oil into the blender.
3. Do rude things with your genitals, causing your older sister to scream in protest and try to turn off the video feed, succeeding only in turning off the video that displays Paris to Victoria, not the one that displays Victoria to Paris.
4. Taunt your sister and call her idiot. This is one of Deetman's favourite things to do. In return, Rara likes to confound him with things he can't understand, like why it's early evening in Paris and morning in Victoria.
5. Clean out the fridge. I don't know how we ended up with three mayonnaises.
6. Negotiate piano lessons for the fall and talk about how we're spending too much money. Suggest to spouse that it's real bad PR to deny your child piano lessons because you spent all your money on wine and train fares in Europe.
7. Ignore each other for several minutes at a time while between one and four members of the family wander away to do other things.
8. Hold the laptop up to the bathroom mirror, thus using sophisticated computer networking technology to do the job of a piece of reflective glass.
9. Have a little dance party while each half-family group watches Flight of the Conchords' Foux Da Fa Fa simultaneously. Foux da fa fa roughly transaltes to "It's funny because it's true."
Two things that are difficult to do on Skype
1. Go check out the wine bar on the lower floor of your hotel.
2. Clean out the chicken coop.
And so, eventually, we hung up. Then, immediately, Rara called us again. Then she said "Okay I'm really hanging up now. Bye!"
Then she called again and then said the same thing. Then she hung up.
Then she did it twice more.
Then we were finally finished.
Movie night with Deetman
Day 11 of 22 days of temporary single parenthood
One day, a year ago, during a weak moment, I consented to allow Tobias to move all of our bedroom furniture into the basement and begin work on renovating our real bedroom. His conservative guess was that we would be downstairs for a couple of months. The first night, I realized a great advantage of sleeping in the basement: it was nice and cool on summer nights while the upstairs was stifling. I felt a little guilty leaving the children upstairs to sweat, but it was only for a couple of months. After that, I naively believed, we would all be together again, sweating through the hot nights upstairs.
In February, as a I lay, teeth chattering, feet blue, in my marital bed, which was situated on a storey that can only be described as The Basement, I wondered aloud how the renovations on our bedroom were progressing. The response from my spouse was unmemorable and unsatisfactory and continues to be until this day.
Six months ago, during another weak moment, I told my son that soon Mommy and Daddy would move their bedroom back upstairs, we would buy a couch and a dvd player, and we would have a movie night every Friday, replete with pizza and pop. He was beside himself at the prospect. Pizza, pop, and a video are his holy trinity. I thought it would be a cosy and cosily predictable way to spend a lot of Friday nights, especially given that Tobias tends to go out after work on Fridays, which would make choosing a DVD much easier. And I honestly believed that the completion of the renovations and the inauguration of the new tradition were imminent.
It is July 25, 2009. I am toying with ideas for renovating my basement bedroom to make it a nicer place to sleep while the upstairs renovations "continue" on my "real" bedroom.
In the meantime, the Deetman hounds me regularly about the promised pizza, pop and video nights. For a 3 1/2 - year old, the child has an uncanny memory. Several times recently, PPV night has looked like a go, only to be cancelled at the last minute because of some scheduling mishap, or the presence of extraneous family members. Last night, however, we had our chance. Tobias was somewhere in Europe doing something and Rara was at her friend's cabin for the night.
I went down to the village alone to get the necessaries, including some zinfandel for Mommy, who doesn't really... thrive on kid-friendly movies. Actually, the trip to the village was great because I had just been to the salon an had my hair coloured for the first time ever - slowly but surely I am becoming a thirty-something middle-class woman.
Anyway, I looked so good ( got an awesome cut too ), and felt it was a shame that my only audience for the evening was going to be someone whose only awareness of my appearance is whether or not my top looks like it might provide him easy access to my boobs. Oh wait. That describes so many people. The one I'm talking about is oblivious and is three.
I needed some external approval aside from the "Looking good!" that was yelled from an 80s-model Pontiac as I rode home, helmetless, from the salon. I got it in the lovely, lovely cashier at the grocery store -- "Your HAIR!" -- and the man-old-enough-to-be-my-father whose inane comment about apples was I think maybe a pickup line.
Thus bolstered, I crossed the street to the video store and got Ratatouille, which I saw in the theatres with Rara and remembered liking, and an Arrested Development DVD for later. When I went to pay, the girl told me that I could get a third one for free. I sighed, collected the two I'd already chosen, and headed to the foreign section. This happens to me nearly every time I go to a video store. I don't rent DVDs often enough to know what the deals are,so I bring up the wrong number of agonizingly chosen videos, only to be told that I ought to have picked more.
After much gnashing of teeth I grabbed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which I'm relatively certain I haven't seen.
At home, I popped the frozen pizza into the oven, poured a glass of wine, and cuddled up on the one chair in my mom's suite not currently covered in clothes ( she is purging ) with Deetman. We watched Ratatouille, which is even better than I remembered. I didn't even need the wine! But I probably would have missed it, given the amount of screen time red wine gets in that film.
During the intense parts, Deetman would look over at me, and if I looked sufficiently scared, he would put his tiny hand over my eyes. Only his hand is too small to cover both my abnormally large eyes, and so I could still see a bit out of the left-hand third of my left eye. It was adorable. I told him he's going to be a good Daddy when he grows up. Not that I'm setting out his life path for him or anything...though his sister has vowed to never give birth...and I do love babies..
He missed the ending of the film because he fell asleep in my arms. That was sweet, and rare. The whole evening was something that could not have happened with the other half of the family present. Just as my fun messing-around-on-the-computer evening with Rara on Thursday would never have come to pass unless Deetman had been sleeping, and last weekend's camping would have been completely different if Tobias was there and the week before's date at the Tapas Bar would have been destroyed by the presence of the children. I guess what I'm saying is, it's good to spend less time together as a family.
Gratuitous photos of Deetman's train trip. He went yesterday with his sister and my mom up to Duncan. Just for kicks.
