On Friday night, I dreamed about having intense, passionately evangelistic conversations with various people about how they should watch the show Portlandia, because it is the funniest show on TV right now and they’re seriously missing out if they’re not watching it every week. The following night, I dreamed I was at a party and someone brought up the show Portlandia and I said to them, “Wow, that is SO WEIRD, I was just dreaming last night about telling everyone I know about that show!” I … don’t know what’s wrong with my fevered brain. Not only am I proselytizing about a show I HAVE NEVER EVEN WATCHED (seriously — not even a single episode) but the next night I really go for broke and incorporate a weirdly meta throwback to the previous night’s inexplicable topic, just to keep the world’s most boring narrative flowing in the right direction.

It’s possible that Ellie will come home from school one day and tells us in an awed tone of voice that she learned that there are some families out there that — for the sake of keeping this as lighthearted as possible, because I truly don’t see what the big deal is and have already expended a lot of energy this week feeling angsty about all the angst, and also because I have a terrible cold and can’t come up with a better metaphor here — don’t have orange cats. If that ever happens, our current plan for handling that is as follows:

• Affirm for her that this is true
• Explain the various reasons that we’re aware of why some families might choose this (the tumbleweeds of fur; the near-constant expense of owning a pet; the fact that while you’re getting your daughter breakfast, they sometimes hop up onto the counter and EAT YOUR YOGURT)
• Reaffirm our position as an orange cat family
• Explain the various reasons why we’ve made that choice (orangeness, snuggliness, niceness for petting, tendency to sit in the comfy chair in your office while you’re working and keep you company)
• Remind her that we expect her to treat everyone kindly, regardless of their status vis a vis ownership of orange cats

In my family growing up, we didn’t wear slippers but we did talk about everything. And we argued about things that were important to each of us individually. We still do, and I love that. I feel like that is one of our most basic jobs as parents, having these sorts of conversations, and I really hope that at the end of the day we’re confident enough in our values that they won’t be devalued in any way by someone else’s opposing beliefs. Or choices. Or whatever. I was just going to leave it at that, but before I conclude here, I feel I should tell you — in the interest of full disclosure — that my whole metaphor fell apart as I was typing this, because Max (our fat orange cat, who still outweighs Ellie by half a pound even after her first birthday) got into a fight with our other cat, Norton, and the two of them knocked a giant pile of books off an end table and scared me almost all the way to death, waking up the napping baby in the process. As soon as I hit the Publish button here, I am going to open a Word document and draft a letter to our provincial representative asking him to amend the curriculum to specify that anyone who owns an orange cat is an idiot.

Speaking of things we didn’t have in my house growing up, we Andersons are not Slipper People. The Butlers (Mike’s family) ARE Slipper People, and some of them are also Australian, which means I have spent the last almost-nine years of marriage staring at my husband’s feet and wondering why he insists on wearing something so ugly as his beloved sheepskin slippers, which he has had a pair of for the entire time I have known him, replaced every few years whenever someone made the trek back to Oz to visit the fam. I replaced his sheepskin slippers this year at Christmas with something a little more aesthetically pleasing, and somehow it came to pass that Mike convinced me I needed to buy my own pair and just try them. I ordered a clearance pair from Old Navy, and it is like the clouds opened and the sun shone down and all around me was beauty and light and also coziness like I had never felt before. I immediately ordered another pair, and then eventually made the mistake of washing both of them, at which point the lining got all weird and now they are terrible. Old Navy doesn’t have any of these ones left, and I looked yesterday at Walmart and their selection was not very inspiring, and now I am bereft of slipper and quite heartbroken about it. I managed to live 30 years without owning or wearing a single pair of slippers, and now after a week I am wondering how I can be expected to go on.

1) She graduated from culinary school not that long ago, and has worked for the past several years in the swanky kitchen of a very fancy establishment, the name of which I am not free to mention due to their policy of keeping these sorts of things on the down-low. She once made a pizza for a celebrity. Now, I know what you’re thinking: how do I know just how excited to feel as I’m reading this anecdote, when you can’t give me any of the relevant details? I will tell you this: he was MORE famous than James Spader and LESS famous than Johnny Depp. I will also tell you this: since very few of us are in the business of making celebrity-eaten pizzas, I think we should all strive to summon a rather LARGE amount of enthusiasm for this anecdote and for my baby sister. Can you even imagine? A celebrity asked her to make him a pizza, which she did, and then he ate it. Okay, again, I get that this is not a very good story. Trust me when I say it is a much bigger deal if you know who the celebrity is.

2) If you ask her to dog-sit for you, she will do a bang up job, but in exchange for the favour she will send you regular text messages that say things like: “Your dog seems to be trying to escape the back yard via a tunnel she’s digging under the fence. I assume I should let her go ahead with that?” and “Your dog seemed hungry so I made her a sandwich. I assume that’s okay?”

3) When I was in my last year of university (so Lesley would have been in grade 11 and our older brother Darren — who may not spring immediately to mind, due to the fact that he is too busy with science to be clamouring for personalized blog posts — would have been working on his doctorate, if I have my timeline correct here) our parents took us all to Hawaii over Christmas. It was so, so great, with the exception of the fact that the three of us had to share the back seat of a car for the first time in at least a decade. Darren and I always invoked the You’re The Smallest So You Have To Sit In The Middle Protocol, the constraints of which Lesley accepted with grudging respect for the rules governing fair use of car back seats, although some minor grousing usually occurred whenever one of us breathed too loudly or allowed our knees to wander too far into her territory. At one point while we were out exploring the island paradise, Darren — possibly suffering the ill effects of vacation-induced relaxation — apparently got too comfortable and spread his limbs too far, at which point Lesley launched into an irritated, accusatory tirade complete with emphatic gestures and index-finger illustrations on the upholstery, the gist of which I am transcribing here for your enjoyment: “Do you see this? This is MY allotment of space in the car. That over there is YOUR allotment of space. Your KNEE is on my SIDE. YOU ARE INFRINGING UPON MY ALLOTMENT OF SPACE.” (My mother, from the front seat: “OH MY GOSH. Our children are such EGGHEADS.”)

I have another mug that is more thematically consistent with the way I was feeling on Thursday, when I obviously selected the wrong mug for the job. It has a sad-looking Eeyore on it (perhaps that was redundant, since I suppose Eeyore rarely if ever looks gleeful, but I think being able to fully picture his morose expression is key to your understanding of the awesomeness of this particular mug) and over his head it says, “Good morning. If it is a good morning. Which I doubt.” I save this mug for mornings that require the mood boost that only commiseration with a sad donkey can bring.  

But today’s morning did not require a donkey intervention, because Ellie woke up after the sun came up, which I find has a rather drastic effect on my attitude toward crawling out of bed. (As I’ve said before, it’s never a GOOD attitude, but some days are better than others.) It doesn’t matter so much what TIME it is, as long as it is light out, which makes winter feel difficult and endless, because she could sleep in to a truly impressive hour and it would still be dark outside when she got up. Those days I feel like I am doing pretty well to just be conscious through those first precious moments of the day, where Ellie is chirping cheerfully at me, and I’m blearily rubbing my eyes and trying to bring the world into focus. Frankly, it would be difficult to understate the enthusiasm with which I greet the spring every year, which is why I’m assuming the weather forecasts predicting a winter storm today are just an elaborate practical joke. I keep peering out the window suspiciously, wondering when it’s going to start. The weather report said something about a low-pressure system from Mexico. Thanks for SHARING, Mexico. I’m not going to have to dig out Ellie’s snowsuit, am I? And my winter boots? And my SCARF? Maybe let’s just not think of that.

I believe I have mentioned before that Ellie is pretty fond of our cats. The feelings are reciprocated in somewhat varying amounts (Norton, our tuxedo, does not seem to want to have much to do with her in general, but Max, our fat orange cat, would probably have been the girl in high school who dated all the bad boys because he seems to think that even negative attention is still attention and is therefore a thing that he wants desperately, and he is quite happy to allow her to yank on his ears or grab clumps of his fur) but their lack of enthusiasm does not seem to deter her. Our living room is in that “great room” format that is open to the upstairs, and when you pause at the top of the stairs while carrying her, she will look down into the living room, see one or both of the cats, and shriek with excitement, as though she has never seen them before. She then gives you a surprised look, as if to say, “CATS! In the living room! TWO of them! WILD ANIMALS IN OUR HOUSE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!” Yesterday on Sesame Street, there was an animated segment that showed black cats in silhouette, and she pointed to the TV and said “Kitty!” and I emailed Mike to tell him our daughter was a genius, because she could tell that those were cats even though they weren’t particularly cat-like, at least not in a way she would have seen before. Later on, we were at a Starbucks with my friend Andrea and her daughter, and Ellie started petting the fur trim of Andrea’s coat and saying “Kitty!” so I guess we should probably hold off on calling Mensa just yet.

Anyway, the dentist. I was 10 minutes early, and then they were running 10 minutes late, so at one point I emailed Mike to say that the hardest part of any dentist appointment is sitting in the waiting room, trying not to panic. Once I was actually in the chair, I changed my mind: the worst part is THE WHOLE THING. Each part is equally terrible. My hygienist asked me several times if the new techniques she was using were better or worse than last time, and I basically lose all ability to carry on a conversation as soon as I walk though the doors, so I just mumbled “I don’t know” several times, because I couldn’t figure out a way of explaining to her that the extent of my misery at any given appointment means that things could get a lot better and STILL wouldn’t even register on any scale I could use to objectively evaluate my appointment. While she was updating my chart she asked me how my fillings went last time, and I said, “They went okay, but I came down with strep throat afterward” and she said, “Oh no! You were probably a carrier. Good thing you didn’t infect the dental team!” and then my head exploded, because I just … I can’t even. THEY gave ME strep throat, and I didn’t even want to be there in the first place, and was paying good money for the privilege! At any rate, they tend to treat me like some sort of frightened woodland creature (the receptionist called me “my dear” SIX TIMES while I was checking out) and every time I’m there I wonder if I’m on some sort of watch list for clients with the potential to go completely postal.

For the second week in a row Ellie elected not to nap at daycare, so she fell asleep on my chest after I fed her when she got home, and we had a nice little cuddle, which is pretty rare, since she spends most of the day very busy with searching the house for anything breakable/dangerous/messy/inconvenient and then yanking on it/throwing it on the floor/feeding it to the dog/putting it in her mouth. During the cuddle I realized I am starting to maybe understand how people eventually get a hankering for a fresh baby, when their current baby is moving on to toddlerhood and their baby-ness is practically all used up. I was talking about this with a friend of mine this morning and we think it’s remarkable how your brain tricks you — you moon around thinking, “Oh, remember when she was so little, and she used to have naps on my chest several times a day, why doesn’t she ever want to snuggle anymore?” when really at the time you were thinking, “OH MY GOSH WHY WON’T THIS CHILD EVER SLEEP IN HER CRIB?” I guess that is why there are so many families out there with more than one kid — if we really remembered what it was like to have a brand new infant at home, our species would probably have become extinct quite a while ago.

I am typing this quickly because it sounds like naptime is coming to an end prematurely. It is 24 degrees here, so I left Ellie’s bedroom window open to see if she could sleep through neighbourhood sounds, and it seems as though that experiment is a failure, although it is possible she just wants to get up so she can resume chasing the cats while shrieking “KITTY!” at the top of her lungs. This is an activity the cats are unenthusiastic about, as you can imagine. Thankfully, Ellie is enthusiastic enough about it to more than make up for their disinterest.

I was suffused with ennui last week, as one tends to get toward the end of winter, and I was also suffused with annoyance, as one tends to get when no one else in the world ever does anything that makes any SENSE, and I came to the same conclusion I come to every time I am in one of those moods: telling someone who is upset about something to “relax” or “calm down” is pretty much the most obnoxious thing you can say in that situation. Saying either of these things is wilfully assuming the risk of that person responding with a swift kick to the posterior region while yelling “NO YOU JUST RELAX!” Obviously it is preferable to exist in a state of constant relaxation, and the non-relaxed person would do that if he or she COULD. Some people are just suffering from Seasonal Ennui and find themselves feeling a little feistier than usual.

Related to my ennui as well as to societal encouragement to “just relax” is the “everyone just needs to do what is right for him/herself and/or his/her family” sentiment that seems to permeate everything these days, and its repercussions on general quality of life. On the one hand, it is GOOD that we have this freedom, and that everyone is defending everyone else’s right to exercise these freedoms, and it makes for a much more interesting world if we have differences of opinion and we implement those differences of opinion in non-destructive ways. On the other hand, I feel like we have gone too far overboard with this in a way that makes it no longer necessary to have any personal accountability to the community at large, where the onus isn’t on an individual to be considerate of the other people with whom they interact, but rather on the person on the receiving end to be tolerant and non-judgmental. Obviously I’m not talking here about minor things (like whether your kid watches TV, which actually IS a personal decision that doesn’t affect anyone else) or major things (like bigotry or violent crime , which are so obviously wrong there should be no debate about them), but more the sorts of things that run in the middle, the things people tend to justify by saying “It’s my right to do (whatever)” or “Freedom of speech means I can say (whatever) and you can’t get mad or hurt” or “I’m entitled to my opinion about (whatever) even though it’s firmly based on science or ideology that has long since been widely discredited”. Some things actually ARE offensive and it is not just okay, but right and good to be offended by them … and so it is unfortunate that you can’t work up a good snit about them without being told to just relax.

Every time someone says something mean on the internet because they seem to think that doesn’t count, or any time someone runs a red light in spite of the fact they may kill someone else with their shortsightedness and/or self-centredness, I get all worked up. It’s not productive, but I can’t stop it. I want people to JUST BE NICE without any intervention by anyone else, but this has not magically transpired through the power of me wishing for it. (If I could just conjure up something with the power of my mind, there would be cheesecake in my house right now. And my house would be in Hawaii.) There doesn’t seem to be a good solution to this problem, either, because holding people to what seem to be impossibly high standards but what should really be the minimum expectations for community participation is exhausting, but the idea of lowering my expectations is depressing. Hence the ennui.

The fog of grumpiness (I initially wrote “fog of crabbiness” which made me think “Fog of Crab” would be a great name for a band or a coastal seafood restaurant) seems to be lifting, though, because it is, as I mentioned above, 24 degrees here, which is record-breaking warmth for this time of year. I feel this way every year when spring hits, but it truly is remarkable how much a little bit of sunshine can do to improve my general outlook on life. Vitamin D is pouring down from the sky, the windows are open, and there are little bitty green things here and there. Perhaps most importantly, the baby has been wearing shorts! I defy you to find something cuter than a baby in shorts. Ennui is powerless in the face of BABY SHORTS.

Anyway, enough about that. I took Ellie to the doctor on Friday morning, because she is a very wee sort of baby and our doctor wants to keep an eye on her to ensure she is not suffering any ill effects from her wee-ness. Which she isn’t, of course, and he is pleased enough with her recent pudgening that I think we’ve been released from the every-two-month monitoring, which is nice. Our doctor is one of the supervisors of a teaching clinic, so we often see a resident in addition to our doc (it’s just like it is on TV, where the resident meets with you and then presents his recommendation to the supervising doctor, who will agree or disagree depending on the accuracy of the diagnosis, which is good because sometimes you may be on the verge of being sent home with strep throat because the resident didn’t want to run a 5-minute test) and we have seen the same resident for the past couple of visits. I really like him — he’s friendly and knowledgeable and has a great bedside manner — and he seems to really like Ellie. (I think he had a very bad experience with his first baby well visit. At our last appointment, he kept remarking about how social and friendly she was, and I overheard the supervising doctor say to him in the hallway, “Way better than LAST TIME, huh?”) Anyway, he is very taken with our wee little baby, and has said no fewer than three times at each of our appointments that she is VERY CUTE. Can you believe it? Doctor diagnosed cuteness! I know every mom wants to think their baby is the height of adorability, but this time it is actually BACKED UP BY SCIENCE.

We headed to Starbucks after the appointment, where we encountered a small handful of people who are very likely concerned for my sanity.  I went in to get a tea, and discovered Ellie had a bit of a Code Brown Situation, so we high-tailed it into the bathroom to Take Care of Things. While we were in there I was doing what I do all day long, maintaining a constant stream of chit-chat in Ellie’s direction (after Starbucks we’ll go home and you can have some lunch and take a nap, maybe some Elmo after your nap is over, I think we still have the Sesame Street featuring Paul Rudd on the DVR, Mommy thinks he is really handsome and charming, I think maybe I’ll get an iced tea this morning, I drank so many iced teas from Starbucks while I was pregnant with you, okay I think we’re finally done here, seriously what did I feed you this morning, etc.) and opened the door upon finishing up to discover there was a line of at least 4 people standing there with twinkling eyes, laughing at me. I do not care for their amusement! They will all feel very silly the day she is diagnosed with advanced language skills.