Canada Moms Blog

Someday

You know the scene in “When Harry Met Sally” where Sally is sobbing hysterically on Harry’s shoulder about her recent ex marrying on the rebound? And she throws in a non-sequitur that she’s going to be 40.

Sally: No, no, no, I drove him away. AND, I'm gonna be forty.
Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.

I had that moment of panic today. David and I were at the tennis club (sounds swanky, so isn’t) playing tennis as the kids were running round chasing tennis balls and enjoying the sun. I was overcome by a feeling akin to, “oh isn’t summer and sun so absolutely wonderful”. It lasted about one minute before I went into full on panic mode.

Making Sweet Memories

When I was a kid, my family used to pick strawberries every June. We crouched amid the rows of green leaves seeking out the partially obscured plump, red bounty.  Once our baskets were full, we would head home where my mom set to work baking a cake from scratch. After dinner, she served us slabs of still-warm cake smothered with sweet berries and slightly sweetened whipping cream. We were always allowed seconds on strawberry shortcake night. For me, it’s a food memory that signals the start of summer; the heralding of so many varieties of tender, sweet local fruit yet to come.

Shockingly, I have never taken my own kids strawberry picking. I blame the fact that we live so close to an awesome farmer’s market where we can conveniently pick up flats of just-picked berries along with other seasonal produce. However, I have started my own tradition: making jam.

Testimony by Anita Shreve: A Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Club

This month, for Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers' monthly book club, we read a novel that many of us, as mothers, found tough to read. But probably every mother should read it. And their teenagers too - especially their teenagers.

Join in as Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers discuss the book Testimony by Anita Shreve.

• DC Metro Moms Blog's Amy G. leads us off with hoping she has done enough
• Wife and Mommy from Wife and Mommy thinks of all the moments she knew her life would never be the same
• Jennifer from Connect with your Teens discusses the ramifications and repercussions of teenage drinking
• Melanie from Tales from the Crib forecasts the future
• Bonggamom from Finding Bonggamom remembers temptation
• The Fabulous Miss S from Fabulous Miss S screamed in her head "No! Don't do it!"
• Silicon Valley Diva from Blog on the Wall shudders when she thinks back to her teenage years
• Kim from Passion & Art says no one asks to be raped
• Chefdruck from Chefdruck Musings gives her own testimony
• Jessica from It's My Life thinks about when the best isn't the best after all
• Robin from Who's the Boss gives her testimony
• Gayle from Everyday I Write the Book reviews Testimony
• Christina from The Carpool Reader goes through the evolution of a marriage
• Linsey from Me Too You is glad she got caught

More posts will be put up throughout the day on our writer's personal sites, so be sure to check back to follow along.

.... and if you have a post up on YOUR personal site on this topic, please leave a comment here and we will add your link!

About the book - from the publisher Hachette Book Group:

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

Past Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Clubs have included:

• Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
• Much to Your Chagrin by Suzanne Guilette
  
• It Started with Pop-Tarts by Lori Hanson
• Who By Fire by Diana Spechler
• The White Trash Moms Handbook by Michelle Lamar
• Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues
• The Vaccine Book by Dr. Robert W. Sears
• The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

Canada Moms Hit The Road

Yeah. And it's gonna sound something like this:

(Yes, I KNOW. It's not the pur laine Canadian Tom Cochrane original. But: a) Emilia, being more devoted to the Nation Of Preschoolers than to her Canadian citizenship, prefers the Cars soundtrack version, and b) Tom Cochrane and EMI Music Canada aren't really all that sharesies with embedded video.)

(Check out the details at the Moms Road Trip website. We start in Halifax tomorrow and head east - maybe we'll be coming to a Motel 6 near you!)

Single, low-income and a mortgage holder?

It's no secret that I am a newly-single mother to four beautiful children aged 5, 8, 10 and 12. My ex-husband would tell you that we split custody evenly, but the truth of the matter is that I parent the kids about 80% of the time. You see, I am a waitress and I work evenings. It works well for my family because i can spend the days taking care of the kids and their myriad of needs. I can pick the kids up from their dad's house in the morning, while he goes to work, and then return them to him at the end of the work day. See? Win-win.

Summer Vacation, Somebody Save Me From my Kids

Jack, my eight year old son, had his final day of grade two the other day.  His younger brother was looking forward to it, I was looking forward to it, summer was going to be loads of fun full of picnics, swimming, beach days and water fights in the back yard.

Day one of summer vacation dawned bright and sunny with a beautiful summer breeze wafting through the open bedroom window.  Around 8 AM, Jack crawled into my bed, Kamden rolled in around 8:30 AM.  Bliss.  There was no need to rush through breakfast to get to school on time.  What a great start to summer!

Sadly, it went severely south from there. 

Death Of a Celebrity

“Did you hear?”

Chris had just walked in with Bee after her soccer game, and I led him straight to the TV, where all he had to do was read the headline, plastered to the bottom of the screen.

‘No,’ he said as he assessed the picture.

I watched his face for a response, wondering if it would be his usual non-chalant, this-is-just-Hollywood-gossip indifference.

‘Wow,’ he said, still fairly deadpan.

I baited – ‘I’m totally shocked. Aren’t you? Aren’t you shocked? He had a heart attack. I think this is shocking.’

He looked at me, the way only a husband who knows all of his wife’s nooks and crannies, could.

‘You love this shit, don’t you?’

I Went To Half Day Kindergarten, And All I Got Was This Stupid Ability To Overanalyze Things I Can't Control.

My boys will leave the 3rd and the 5th grade behind them next Thursday and march forward into the summer with intermediate wishes and junior high school dreams.  Which means that I have a kid in junior high school and that means I am officially old.  What's worse is that my little baby girl will be enjoying her last summer before she, too, is enrolled in public school, and what that means is that I will officially have three school-aged children.

Someone get me a walker already.

When my oldest son, the one who will be going to dances with girls next school year, was entering kindergarten, our school had a full day kinder classroom and a half day one, too. The state (of Colorado, yes I'm a dirty American) offered every child Monday thru Friday, nine to noon kindergarten and our school offered the options of a tuition-based full day. The two classrooms ran on totally different schedules; one to accommodate the necessary learning for the half-dayers and one to spread things out for the full-dayers and incorporate gym, music and art.

Being a school on a city boundary that fairly clearly delineated the haves and the have-nots, the classrooms filled much as you'd expect, with the poorer students, the ones on free or reduced lunch, the ones who didn't fully speak English and so on in the half-day room and the wealthier students, the ones who were financially secure and, for the most part, white filled the full day room. 

My son went half days. 

Have you had that baby yet?

The phone calls have started.

The emails. The twitter messages, the facebook messages, the surreptitious "So... how you doing?" inquiries where people really want to ask "have you had that baby yet!?" but don't want to look like TOTAL jerks, so they just pretend they weren't calling about the baby at all! They're just calling. Innocently and coincidentally.  Every day. 

My OB is starting to make a plan to induce... in two weeks. Just in case. This is because he's on vacation next week so he won't be able to do the planning when he normally would in the usual long procession of pregnancy appointments. But still.  He's planning it all now.  Two weeks before it would even happen.

I'm getting messages saying "4 days left!" referring to my "due date", presumably. Which I like to refer to as "that meaningless date that gives you a target range and not much else". But apparently some like to believe the due date is when you actually give birth. Who knew?

My mother is throwing out "good dates to have a baby" in emails, as if I have any control over the process.

Everyone's starting to chomp at the bit, in other words.

But me? Am I anxious, panicking, nervous, wondering?  Am I inspecting every twinge hoping I'm in labour?

My daughter can read: the end of my life as I know it.

It's over. My kid can now read.  Okay, not Tolstoy or even Nancy Drew but "I just saw your profile and you seem really nice" or, "I need to up my meds", yeah, that, THAT she's all over.

Now you'd think I'd be thrilled my little baby can read and if it were to help me to somehow make my life as a mother easier, I would say, "Yay, great" but my emails? I'm starting to think I should have let her repeat another year of pre-school.  I wear my heart on my sleeve and the filter on my mouth got lost somewhere in the birth canal, so the way I've dealt with it since my child was born, was to write and spell everything.

Now, I knew this day was coming and I'm not fully unprepared as I'd decided many months ago to learn Spanish, only that alternative doesn't seem to be working too well as no one in my circle of friends understands anything that falls in between when I say "hola" and "Adios".

Continue reading on our sister site, Los Angeles Moms Blog.