Secret revealed: How to get Sarah to shut up

Door to door, the trip from my front door to my parents' cottage is four and a half hours, which is a long time for adults and a really long time for a two year old.

We bought a DVD player for the car so he can watch Mighty Machines, Finding Nemo and The Wiggles but the DVD viewing will end in a year or two and I will subject him to the Crosbie car fun. We will sing Down By the Bay (Did you ever see a frog sitting on a log? Did you ever see a cat wearing a hat?) and Old MacDonald.

When my brother and I were growing up, and the songs got old, we'd hold competitions, like I Spy with My Little Eye and Count the Road Signs - whoever saw and counted the most won. (The 1988 debate over whether real estate signs count for a point was never amicably resolved.)

But my all-time favourite way to pass the time on the drive to the cottage was my dad's challenge.

"Alright, Sarah, if you can be quiet for the next half an hour, and not say a word, I'll give you a quarter to spend," he'd say with a devilish grin and a twinkle in his eye.

I'd watch the clock tick from 4 p. m. to 4:09 to 4:12 to 4:24 to 4:31.

"I did it!" I'd scream. "I did it! You owe me a quarter! Let's do it again!"

The competitor in me would never lose a challenge and so I'd shut up for the two-hour drive and make myself a buck.

But my son, who's just 24 months old, can't play these silly games yet and so we rely on videos and toys to entertain him on long drives.

Only once, in his two years, have we taken him as a treat to get fast food.

We took him to McDonald's to get chicken nuggets and fries. He loved the nuggets, refused the fries, and ate heaping spoonfuls of our Thai takeout dinner. But he did love the toy. His kids' meal came with a plastic toy bird from the movie Kung Fu Panda.

Growing up, fast food was a treat in my house so I treasured the little plastic knickknacks that came bundled with the kids' meals.

I still have two plastic Fraggles and their little toy cars, a McDonald's Hamburglar in a blue race car and a Kermit the Frog that rides around on a rocking horse that was a promo toy for the animated TV show Muppet Babies.

As we headed west to the cottage on Highway 401, and lunchtime approached, I told my son we'd get something to eat and he'd get a treat.

"A treat! Oh!" he squealed. We stopped at a highway restaurant and I ordered him a kids' meal.

This was a key junction in our trip. I needed him to fill his tummy, get back in the car and then be fascinated with this new toy (as rinkydink as I knew it would be.) It just had to keep him amused long enough so that he'd be happy and eventually drift off to sleep for the final two hours of the trip.

I dumped out the nuggets and pulled out the fries and looked in the bag for the toy.

"Treat! Treat!" he yelled happily. But there was no toy in this kids'

meal. Instead, there was a disc tucked in a cardboard sleeve.

Since when did fast-food restaurants start giving out audiobooks?

"You can enjoy the adventure almost anywhere and anytime! Pop in your Listening Library CD while riding in the car, getting dressed, relaxing at home, or at bedtime," the package read.

"Here you go, sweetie," I said, handing him the square package.

"Where treat?" he asked. Exactly.

Have we really become so technological that we can't give children a toy car? What's next? A coupon for our children to download Mary Had a Little Lamb from iTunes?

(Did you ever see a boy, who didn't want a car toy? Down By the Bay!)
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Attack of the Bleacher Creature

At the end of Grade 6, we were all 12 years old, and dying to start Grade 7 because most of our mothers had told us that once we started Grade 7, we could wear makeup. A little makeup. Just a tad.
I remember going to the mall with my friends where we spent hours agonizing over how to spend our allowances. I remember every piece of makeup I bought that day: One emerald green eyeliner, one dark blue eyeliner, one purple eyeliner, clear mascara (maybe the silliest invention ever, but very ’80s ), concealer cream for the black bags under my eyes that my friends insisted I cover (and we wonder why girls and women are so image obsessed) and foundation to shovel on my wrinkle-free, zit-free, perfect 12-year-old skin. (The beauty industry gets you early and gets you good.)
Pretty much every girl in my class looked the same on that first day of school, everyone that is, but Laura.
Laura was a weird girl. She came into Grade 7 with a bad rep because she’d allegedly made out with boys under the bleachers. (Years later when a group of us were reminiscing, we wondered: Our school didn’t even have bleachers, did it?) But what Laura did on that first day, sealed her fate as a weirdo: She came to school with the eyeliner on her lower and upper lids. It wasn’t that she used too much or put it on in a funny way – it was the colour. Her eyes were tomato red. She looked like she had a school’s worth of pink eye. It’s how I looked at Queen’s after I pulled back-to-back all-nighters to finish sociology essays. She had outlined her eyes in lipliner that must have had a name like cherry explosion or red-hot rouge.
I thought about Laura this weekend every time I looked in the mirror. Early Saturday morning, when I wasn’t really awake and hadn’t had any coffee yet, my son and I were playing in our living room. I asked him for a kiss.
He looked at me and smiled and came charging toward me. But instead of his lips connecting with my cheek, his chin smacked my eye (actually the black bag under my right eye). I don’t want to sound like a wuss, but it hurt. A lot. Enough to make me cry.
“I sorry,” my two-year-old cried as he saw a tear roll down my cheek.
I wiped away my tear and then felt another one coming. I wiped that one away too, a pink-tinged tear …
Blood!?
My bag under my eye was bleeding? (At least I wasn’t bleeding black.)
Hours later, for the first time in my life, I had a black eye. Spots around the bottom of my eye was purple, blue – and cherry explosion red.
I was asked the same question repeatedly over the weekend: “What happened to your eye?” (I actually thought it was strange so many people asked me this because what if my black eye wasn’t from a kissing accident with my toddler?)
I’ve also had friends and even a doctor once ask me about the number of bruises I had on my body. One, I’m sort of clumsy. Two, I’ve always bruised easily. Three, when you have a busy life and a toddler, you’re often rushing around, doing things haphazardly, too quickly, too fast and accidents happen. And now I have to do insane things to entertain my son like climb dirt piles and run up slides and give horsey rides around my kitchen.
There are so many more bruises to come.
But bruises disappear.
After a few days, my black eye was gone.
But I’ll always have the memory of my son running so fast, so hard, to kiss to me, that he turned me into Laura Red Eye, the Bleacher Creature.

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The husband, the beer-can fish and the perfect sandwich

I think my husband is pretty close to perfect (sorry to gush but I'm still a newlywed so I have to savour the love). How do I love thee? Let me count the ways (but I don't have much room here so I'm going to count only to three).

1. You leave love notes in my car.

2. You've taken up running so that I have someone to accompany me on my five-kilometre loop.

3. You (happily) went to the movies to see Sex and the City with me - which, by the way, was almost two and a half hours long. And it was bad. So, so bad.

See? There's a lot to love.

But he also has some major flaws.

My No. 1 pet peeve is the kind of thing that can kill a relationship.

Ladies, I know you're with me on this one: A steak sandwich and its chopped-up, saucy sister sandwich, the Philly cheesesteak.

We like to spend our money in local, specialty restaurants, but sometimes, if we're travelling or out with family, we eat at chain restaurants and that means he's going to order The Sandwich of Doom.

This is how our conversation goes: "Ready to order?" the server asks.

"I'll have the steak sandwich," my husband will say.

"Yeah, um, could we actually have

a minute?" I'll snark. And then I berate him.

"Why are you having that? It's never good. You always say it's tough and chewy. It has no taste. It's full of gristle. The bun is like cardboard."

And then he gets it anyway. And he doesn't like it.

"I don't know why I got that. It's never good. It was tough and chewy. It had no taste. It was full of gristle. The bun was like cardboard," he'll say.

So you can understand my horror when he ordered a Philly cheesesteak from a little hole in the wall called the Lakeview Tavern and Restaurant in Erinsville, a town about 45 minutes northwest of Kingston.

From the outside, it looks dumpy. But inside? It's fantastic. There's a bar with red vinyl swivel seats. The restaurant's tables and chairs are mismatched and many chairs are brown-flowered vinyl, just like the kind my grandmother used to have in her dining room.

There are arcade games - Ms. Pac-Man, Terminator 3, and, my favourite, Big Buck Hunter III, which lets you shoot animals with a massive gun. (My son thought this was incredible, even though we didn't put any money in it.)

There are stuffed fish and deer heads on the wall. (My son thought these were incredible, too. It was like going to the petting zoo and not having to actually touch the dirty things.)

And then the piece de resistance -a fish hanging on the wall made out of Molson Export beer cans.

"Nemo!" my 23-month-old son shouted.

"Hi Nemo! Hi! Hi! Hi!" he squealed, just days after discovering the animated fish movie Finding Nemo.

And then it was time to order. I asked for a chicken wrap. My son got chicken fingers. My stepson ordered a burger and my stepdaughter ordered breakfast - eggs and bacon.

All simple roadhouse staples. "And I'll have the Philly cheesesteak," my husband said.

Once he got it, he took one bite and then shoved it at me.

"Taste this," he said.

"I know, I know, it tastes like cardboard," I said as I bit into the -

Tender strips of melt-in-your-mouth steak, sauteed onions and green pepper dripping in a sweet barbecue sauce and blanketed in mozzarella, on a warm, toasted bun.

A fish made out of beer cans and a delicious steak sandwich. What more could a girl want? A glass of Shiraz.

And Lakeview has that, too. My husband. Such a genius.


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The controlling man in my life

I need to apologize to every mother who, in my self-obsessed 20s, I condemned as being a bad parent because I thought you were letting your baby be a wild child. I know now that you don't control your toddler; he controls you.

While my 23-month-old is the apple of my eye, he's become a crab apple in the past few weeks as he learns to assert his independence.

He has two favourite sayings. If he drops something and I offer to get it, he'll reject my help: "No, I get it!"

And my baby boy who used to love being in his stroller or in a shopping cart, doesn't like to sit anymore.

"I walk!" he'll demand.

One of my favourite things to do with my son is (was) grocery shopping. He'd sit in the cart and choose green peppers for me to bag and we'd open a bag of cookies in the store and each have one.

This week, when we went shopping, I evidently brought the wrong child. Strange, how the spawn of the devil looks just like my angelic boy.

We stepped into the store and there, just a few steps in, was my worst nightmare: A bin full of pink, blue, green and purple balls.

"Balls!" my son shouted. "Balls! Balls! Balls!"

(Whoever set this display up, doesn't have children or has a vendetta against mothers.)

Before I could grab my son, he picked up two balls and then kicked them toward the broccoli. Then, he escaped under the turnstile, leaving me behind with the shopping cart.

On my way to grab him, I threw two bunches of broccoli (just 99 cents each!) into my cart and took off in my high-heeled shoes. We zipped through the pharmacy for diapers and then headed to the meat section for chicken, still playing soccer with two balls.

Then, he picked up the balls and whipped them at a frozen hamburger display and then ran away.

With five packages of cold, soggy chicken skewers under my arm, I set off to catch him, my purse still in the cart, now an aisle away.

And then he fell. Face first. The screams echoed in the store.

I picked him up and carried him back to the shopping cart, his legs like egg beaters, whirling around, kicking me in the thighs and stomach. I grabbed one ball from the frozen burgers display and chased the other, which was rolling towards the dairy section.

"I walk! I walk!" he screamed.

As soon as I put him down again, he took off. Giggling. I caught up to my son in the cereal aisle, where he threw himself on the floor and started kicking the shelf, causing boxes of bran to topple.

"Excuse me!" a woman said, exasperated as she tried to get past us. I scooped up my son again and

stuck him in the main part of the cart with the food. As I flew around the aisles, my son calmed down.

I was checking my grocery list, enjoying the peace, when a woman strutted over to my cart.

"Ma'am," she spitted. "Your son -" she paused. "Is sitting on your broccoli!" He must have sensed the hostility

because he snapped out of his happy place.

"I walk!" he screamed.

We dashed to the checkout, where my son whipped the balls at a 20-something male cashier - over and over again.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized - over and over again.

"This is the best part of my day," he said, as he rang through my flattened broccoli.

"It's fun." Fun?

And here is the rest of it.

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Essential tactics for gossip girls

My husband and I have a thing we do (OK, it's a thing I do) when I want to tell him a story about someone when we're out in public.

If we're going out for dinner, I'll prep him on the drive to the restaurant.

"Tonight," I'll say, "I'm going to tell you a story about Dan Bandanamana. But, when I do, I'm going to call him Bille Bo Bob."

"Uh huh," my husband will reply, knowing that he's going to have to sit through one of my dramas.

It's a scheme I've devised so that I can talk about someone without worrying about whether his wife/sister/coworker/brother is sitting next to me - unbeknownst to me.

I started doing this a few years ago because when we went out for dinner we could never tell stories that involved anyone because we were always surrounded by people we knew, or people who we knew knew us, even if they didn't know we knew them. Know what I mean?

The new-name scheme is a plan I think other people should adopt.

I was out for dinner the other night with my girlfriends talking about whether it's OK that we feed our toddlers wieners, chicken fingers and chocolate milk for dinner when I heard: "Blah, blah, blah, Sarah Crosbie, blah, blah, blah."

The table next to us was having a good time chatting - about me. I was sitting just one person away from them so I gave them a smile.

They were so involved in their conversation, they didn't notice my gesture. Nope, they had no idea that that girl enjoying her glass of Australian shiraz was me. Sarah Crosbie.

"Blah, blah, blah, Sarah Crosbie, blah, blah, blah," – I could make out only every third word or so. I wasn't annoyed I was being talked about. I was amused. But then, my amusement turned to worry. I know I'm due for a hair cut and, yes, I've gained five pounds over the last few months. Maybe I looked so out of sorts I didn't even look like myself?

Working at a newspaper brings a certain amount of celebrity when you live in a city the size of Kingston.

There are times I like chatting with readers - like when I'm out on a date with my hubby, having a nice time, sipping wine - (when I look good) -and there are times when I'm not so keen about chatting with readers, like when I'm at the drugstore buying diapers with bedhead and raccoon eyes from yesterday's mascara.

One time a few months ago, a lovely older man who was in his 70s or 80s met me at the cash register and wanted to chat.

"Well, fancy meeting you here so early in the morning, Sarah Crosbie!" he said with a huge smile.

"I'm getting my newspaper. Whatcha getting this time of day?"

"Oh, well, you know," I said, as I tried to hide the box of tampons behind my back.

I slowly backed away, mumbling something about having to go grab something, anything, to get me out of the humiliating situation. It was like having to talk about feminine products with my grandpa.

I also once had a Kingstonian tell me she was at a little resort, Los Corales, in Santiago de Cuba, the same week my husband and I were there - and she saw us.

Saw us doing what? I thought. Frolicking on the beach? Kissing?

Hoovering our dinner? Jumping in the pool with our clothes on? My mind raced as I tried to rewind the entire vacation in my head.

I don't have a problem with people talking about me. All I ask is that if you are going to take my advice and give me a new name so you can gab about me openly, you make it something fun like Billie Bo Bobette.

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A well-heeled girl hits a low point

I've been having a low week. A very low week. I've felt flat. And my emotions have been constantly flip-flopping. I know what I need to elevate my mood; what I need to give myself a boost.
But I can't have them. Not yet.
My bad week started on Sunday when I met up with some girlfriends to go for a run. We met at one of their houses on a quiet, countryside road off Highway 15 in the city's east end.I was feeling good. It had rained the night before and the air felt damp and cool. My asthmatic lungs felt free. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I was so happy to be running and so happy to be chatting with my girlfriends, whom I don't get to see often.
And then - thud.
I had been running (and chatting) when my left foot hit the road's soft shoulder and I went down.
My left knee smacked loose gravel and my left hand automatically went down too to try and keep the rest of my body from tumbling. I heard my friend ask if I was OK.
Scraped hand. Dirt on my legs. Is that blood on my knee? Is that a piece of rock embedded in my hand? Wait, is that a second splotch of blood on my knee? I'm bleeding? From running?
Instead of having a motor mouth, I should have just been motoring and I wouldn't have fallen.
My pride kept me from stopping. I shook it off and kept going - another 9.5 kilometres in about an hour.
It wasn't until I finished the run and I was driving home that I realized it wasn't my knee or hand that was sore. It was my ankle.
When I got home, I limped into my house. Even when I've had low self-esteem, I've always, as silly as it sounds, loved my small ankles. No cankles here. (Dad: a cankle is when your calf doesn't taper at the ankle. Your leg looks like one long log. (Calf + ankle = cankle.)
But today, my plum-sized ankle had swollen to the size of an apple.
My husband ordered me to RICE it - rest, ice, compression and elevation.
(Did he forget we have an non-stop 22-month-old? I haven't had rest in two years. And I use all of our ice for my Diet Cokes. Compression? Decompression would be good. And elevation? Yes! That one I can definitely do if I can do it with shoes.)
I will always happily put on a pair of high-heel shoes to make myself feel better. Red patent-leather heels have chameleon-like powers. They can make you feel like a sophisticated lady or a sex machine.
"You know, Sarah," my husband said, while examining my ankle, "you're going to have to wear flat shoes to work tomorrow."
Not once, in nine years, have I worn flat shoes to work. Even when I was nine months pregnant, I wore my four-inch high heels every day (that's my wedding-day, high-heeled, happy foot in the photo above). And now, because of one fall, I have to wear flat shoes to work? Every day this week I had to wear running shoes or flip-flops.
I'm only five-foot-four (and a bit) and though I'm not now, I've been overweight - almost 50 pounds heavier sometimes - so heels have played an important role in my life.
Heels make you taller. When you look taller, you look leaner. And pointy-toed shoes elongate your body. Stacy London I'm not, but I've learned the tricks to make clothing slimming.
Am I shallow and insecure because I've let my footwear dictate my mood my all week? I don't think so. Some women get their confidence from dolling themselves up with makeup; some women like to accessorize with purses; some women love jewelry. I'm head over heels for high heels.
Don't understand the power of a heel? Spend a day walking in my shoes and you'll see.
And here is the rest of it.

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A talent for handling raw meat

What mattered most in the Crosbie household when I was growing up was hard work. Just as there are no small parts, just small actors, my parents taught me that when it comes to making and saving money, there are no bad jobs, just bad attitudes.
Like every teenager, when school ended I wanted a summer job that was cool.
(For those of you who think like my dad does, I don’t mean air-conditioned. I mean sweet, fun, comfy, hip – something that would make your friends jealous.)
My very first summer job was working at a community newspaper. I made $9 an hour – which was an incredible amount of money for 1994.
When my job wasn’t available the following the year, I knew I had to go on the hunt and I also knew that it couldn’t get any better than writing stories and columns in a nice air-conditioned building. (Yes, the job was cool on two levels.)
And so hunting I went.
I handed out more than 100 resumes and I waited and waited for a call while all my friends landed what seemed like perfect summer jobs: lifeguarding, summer camp counselors, Gap salesperson. It didn’t get better than The Gap.
And then I waited.
Finally, I got the call. A fast-food place that specialized in fries wanted me to come in for an interview.
I put on a brave face for my parents but I was freaking out on the inside. Fast food wasn’t cool. Being greasy wasn’t cool. But money was money. A job was a job. Beggars can’t be choosers. I remember sitting with my mother in my kitchen going over and over and over possible interview questions.
“Why fries?” the fast-food manager asked the following morning.
“I’m sorry?” I questioned. “Why fries?” was not one of the questions my mother and I had rehearsed.
I had top grades. I had spirit. I had gusto. I had determination.
What I didn’t have was any sort of an answer for this man’s question.
“Why fries? Why choose fries over pizza or subs or donuts?” he said very seriously.
The question seemed far too philosophical for a high school kid looking to making minimum wage (which was $6.85 an hour).
I remember babbling about fries being hot and crispy. Subs and donuts aren’t hot and crispy. No sirree. They’re cold. And with pizza, well, there’s just one pizza slice, but with fries, you can eat just one, or two, or 39. And incredible new advances are being made every day in the French fry industry. Poutine is becoming popular. Some people are making nacho fries, using fries in place of nacho chips. It is a revolutionary idea to add sour cream on fries; a nice way to cool them down on a hot summer’s day, I always say.
I returned home to my parents, completely sure I ruined my one and only interview.
An hour later, the phone rang.
“You seem to have a knack for fries,” the manager said.
“You’re hired.”
I worked hard at that job. No, it wasn’t cool. Mean high school kids flicked pennies and shot spit balls at me when I was working at the cash register and I came home every night slicked with grease. And yes, it was damn hot working around the deep fryers. But I made money. Nothing could compare though to the next summer when, again, I couldn’t get a job – until a butcher shop called me in for an interview.
“You look like the kind of girl who has a talent for handling raw meat,” the manager said.
“You’re hired!”

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Meet the E-mail forward king

I’d like to bestow an honour on my father: Dad, I declare thee the E-mail Forwarding King of Canada.
Right now in my e-mail inbox I have probably a few hundred forwards he’s sent me over the past few months. I have to be honest: Most of them I don’t open because I know the e-mail is going to contain a collection of cute baby animals photographs or silly jokes. Have you heard the one about the three dads who walk into a bar on Father’s Day? No? Me neither, but I can probably get it for you. It’s undoubtedly in my father’s Forward Vault and, any day now, he’s going to unleash it on the world.
The latest one he sent me is titled: To My Wine Drinking Friends:
“Wine for Seniors,
California vintners, in the Napa Valley area, which primarily produces Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio wines, have developed a new hybrid grape that acts as an anti-diuretic. It is expected to reduce the number of trips older people have to make to the bathroom during the night. The new wine will be marketed as...”
(Ready for the punchline? I’m sorry to do this to you…)
“Pino More!”
Do you see why I don’t open many of these things? They’re incredibly lame. But my problem is, I know my father likes sending them to me. They’re an easy way for a father to communicate with his daughter. I don’t think there are very many dads out there who are going to sit their 31-year-old daughters down and say, “Honey. I can sense that you’re feeling overwhelmed with life. You have a busy toddler and a demanding job. Every mother and wife feels like she has to take on the world. Let’s talk. Want to grab a Green Tea Frappucino (no whip) and share?”
But e-mail forwards a nice way to say: “Hey. I’m your dad and I’m thinking about you. And wine. And bad punchlines. And cute animal baby animals.”
It has been a stressful month in my home. Our sewer backed up in our house. Then my son got an ear infection. Then I got a wicked bronchial virus – which I gave to my husband. Then my son came down with a gastrointestinal virus, which made him so sick, we panicked a little and took him to Hotel Dieu’s Children’s Outpatient Centre because we were sure he was becoming deyhydrated since he couldn’t keep anything in his tummy. I obviously complained a little too much to my mother, because my father abandoned his forwards and started sending me real – albeit one-line – e-mails that said things such as: “Chin up! Have a hot shower and a nap and you’ll feel better!”
Still, the respite could last only so long. Within a couple of days, I noticed my inbox was filling up again with forwards, followed by e-mails from my dad enquiring as to whether I had actually read his forwards.
There is one piece of mail I got from my father that made me smile; a true, genuine, smile:
1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.
2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don’t like you.
5. Every night, someone thinks about you before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.
8. Someone that you don’t even know exists loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.
10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.
11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget the rude remarks.
Yes, I got this in the mail from my dad – but not e-mail.
He’d actually sent me these 11 tips in an e-mail forward days ago, and then he realized I’d likely never read them. So, he printed them on two pages, taped the pages together, and mailed them to my home.
And then, of course, he e-mailed me to ask if I got his letter.
Gotta love him.
Happy Father’s Day, dads.

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A Little Man's love for Ga-ma

After I gave birth to my son, mothers of sons all told me the same thing: There's a special bond that exists between mothers and sons; a special kind of love.
What no one said, was that my 21-month-old son would be willing to kick me to curb with his size-5 Velcro runners, if it meant he got to be with grandma, or as he calls her "Ga-ma."
It all started when he was three months old. The Husband and I decided to go away for one night, but one night, when you have a baby, feels like a million nights. As a mother, you so desperately want a break, and then once you're gone for half an hour, you want your baby back.
After our 24-hour rendezvous, we returned to my parents' house the next morning to pick up our son and take him home. I expected him to smile and reach out to me. Yes, I realize he was only three months old, but I was his existence. Or, I had been until that trip away. He clung to my mother, ignoring the fact we'd come to get him. That was the night she cleverly planted the idea, I'm sure, that he could come live with her. And live happily ever after.
My parents live a couple hours away, so when we go for visits, we often stay the whole weekend. The second we get in the house, my mother whisks away her grandson. First, she shows him all the new clothes she's bought him. Then, she shows him the toys. Sometimes it's just a ball or two. Sometimes it's a dump truck, a bubble lawnmower, sandbox shovels, a Backyardigans colouring book and a play fireman's hat.
Next, my mom takes her grandson up to the kitchen to show him all the food she's made him: There are his favourite homemade bran muffins, his favourite chicken noodle soup and his favourite coo-coos (cookies). Plus, she's made him Jello. And bought him a new sippy cup for his milk. And did we see the new magnetic letters on the fridge she bought him, too? (He'll sit with her for half an hour and sing the alphabet while lining up the orange, purple and yellow letters, but here, at home, he'll use them only as hockey pucks.)
Sometimes it breaks my heart when we're all together and I need some mother-son time and I'll ask him to come hug me.
"No!" he'll bark.
"Ga-ma!"
"Sweetie," I'll say, tenderly.
"Who's the one who carried you for nine months, gave birth to you, breastfed you at 1, 3, 5, 7 in the morning? For a year? Who takes you to daycare every morning? Who gets up with you every morning at 6 a.m.? Who loves you the most?"
He'll pause and look at me and smile. Then, he'll tentatively take a step toward me and –
"Ga-ma!" he'll shriek with joy.
While I feign being distraught (OK, I actually do get upset) I love that he loves her so much, but it also breaks my heart.
Last weekend, my parents came for a quick visit on Sunday afternoon. They used to like visiting me. Now they come to see their grandson.
"Oh, hi," my mother will say, as she bolts through the door, shoving me aside, her eyes darting around the house searching for her grandson.
In the few hours my parents were here, grandson and Ga-ma picked rhubarb out of the garden together; watched MVP: Most Valuable Primate, the greatest movie ever made for a toddler; a story about a hockey-playing monkey!; ate crackers and hummus and read his new Thomas book. Then, it was time for his afternoon nap. When he woke up two hours later, Ga-ma was gone.
"Ga-ma!" my son called in his sweet sing-song voice.
"Ga-ma! Ga-ma?"
But Ga-ma was gone, back to her home, two hours away.
Lucky are you, the grandparents who live in the same city as your grandchildren.
There's a special bond that exists between mothers and sons; a special kind of love.
But the love between a Ga-ma and her boy? It's true love.

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Sex and the City and refried beans

I remember five years ago when my best friend popped by my apartment for a visit.
I’ve always been messy – (but it’s an organized mess) and I never know where anything is (I would, my husband and my mother tell me, if I’d just put things back in their proper place) - but I’d sunk to a new low.
I’d become a prisoner on my own couch. In a semicircle surrounding me were 10, 15, maybe 20 cans of opened refried beans with a fork stuck in them. Yes, I’d been eating the beans out of the cans. I’d washed the beans back with a case or two of Diet Coke. I’d eaten myself into a corner.
“Oh, Sarah,” my friend said, surprised, shocked, saddened at what my life had become.
A few weeks earlier, my live-in boyfriend had left our “love nest” and me. About half a day later he had a new girlfriend. The one-two punch gutted me. The days that followed were about survival. Wake up. Shower. Go to work. Come home from work. Cry. Eat dinner. (The only thing I could eat that didn’t make me throw up was refried beans and Diet Coke.) Cry. Go to sleep.
My friend lovingly scolded me and told me it was time to pick myself up and get outside and do something.
“Yes!” I told her.
“I’m going to go do something!”
After she left my home, I had an epiphany: I had nowhere to go and nothing to do.
I lost myself in that relationship. I did what too many girls do: I made myself all about my relationship and I’d become one-dimensional.
I did really need something to do – but what? When I wasn’t working, I’d been a girlfriend and now that I wasn’t a girlfriend, I had nothing to do when I wasn’t working.
I stood on my apartment balcony and looked out at Kingston. The sky was licorice black that night and the stars were sparkling. And in that night sky, I saw it. I saw a sign. It was a sign from the heavens.
OK, it was actually a sign from Blockbuster.
I lived just a few steps from the downtown video store on Queen Street. It was there I found something to pick myself up. It was there I found four new friends. It was there I found Sex and the City on DVD.
I didn’t get HBO so I’d only seen bits and pieces of the cable show when I was visiting my parents’ house but every time I turned it on there, one of the show’s star’s breasts were on display and I didn’t want my parents to think I was into porn, so I always quickly turned the show off.
Here, in the comfort of my own pigsty, I could watch the sordid adventures/affairs of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte without feeling guilty. In fact, I could watch the episodes over and over and over again.
Soon, my routine changed. For the better. Wake up. Shower. Go to work. Come home from work. Watch Sex and the City. Eat dinner. (I started buying my dinners at Blockbuster when I picked up the DVDs – convenient or what? – so I was now on to nacho chips and the bright orange plastic cheese nacho cheese dip and Diet Coke.) Watch Sex and the City. Go to sleep.
Truly, I credit the show for pulling me out of my slump.
These four friends did cool things: Charlotte hung out in art galleries. Miranda ran a marathon. Samantha did yoga. Carrie wrote newspaper columns – for a living.
Like millions of women, I’m dying to reunite with my girls now that Sex and the City: The Movie is in theatres.
Carrie and company always celebrated with Cosmopolitans.
I’ll have a Diet Coke and maybe some nachos.
For old times’ sake.

(This column appeared in the May 31 edition of The Ticket, inside The Kingston Whig-Standard)

And here is the rest of it.

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