Lifestyle choices

STFU and Other Thoughts about Children’s Christmas Concerts


Dee’s school Christmas concert was last night. She was in a tizzy earlier this week because she missed school Monday and Tuesday with the flu and there was rehearsal every day.

“I’m missing rehearsal,” she wailed at one point. “And the count-down calendar!”

I don’t remember if this was before or after her delirious paranoid ramblings about the Christmas tree which apparently was behaving in a sinister manner or perhaps it was while she was lying on the couch moaning about how hungry she was but that she wasn’t going to eat again until she was sure that she wouldn’t vomit it back up. Fun times.

“I’m glad I’m not a woman,” Rob remarked. “I am pretty sure I couldn’t do all that maternal stuff.”

And by “maternal stuff”, he meant – holding a child’s head while she puked and being able to be comforting as opposed to not puking on the child himself.

“It would suck to be the mom,” he told me.

It does sometimes and that is a fact.

But Dee was recovered enough on Wednesday for me to take her a bit late and she was positively bouncy on Thursday because the whole day was literally taken up with performing – for the other kids and with two parent shows.

Having been a middle school teacher, I can assure you that nothing of any academic consequence goes on the week before school lets out for the holiday. Nothing. It is containment only. But since I don’t buy into the notion that children go to school to supply the workplace with simple, obedient drones, I am fine with this. Rounding out a child is what schools should be about and there is nothing like a week’s worth of excitement over practicing for and performing in productions to help smooth edges.

The Christmas concerts in Canadian schools are heavy on Christianity. There is no attempt to whitewash the actual origins of the holiday to mollify those who don’t practice or don’t care or don’t believe. Christmas began with the birth of Jesus (not really – but let’s pretend anyway) and gosh darn-it, the little guy is going to be represented. Because of this, we were treated by the grade oners to the story of the Nativity with a stage full of angels, shepherds, three wise men, Joseph, Mary and a baby doll in a manger.

The gym was packed. And noisy. I can’t recall a performance there where the parents have ever been quite this rude. In fact, most of the people who hemmed Rob and I in chatted at normal conversational tones on and off for most of the 50 minutes it took for the lower grades to perform.

The prize winners though sat on Rob’s right and just ahead in the next row.

A family of five. Mom, Dad, toddler, pre-schooler and a pre-teen American gangsta wanna-be. Mom and Lil’ G were hands down the most obnoxious audience members I can ever recall, and I taught 13 years olds for years so that is definitely saying something.

They had snacks. It was just 6:15 and presumably most people eat their supper before these evening school events, but Mom and Lil’ G may have had some metabolic disorder that didn’t allow them to go more than an hour without soda. Lil’ G pulled on a bottle of Pepsi like a newborn on the tit every ten minutes without fail.

Lil’ G was the end product of the brilliance of commercial television conditioning if ever I have seen the species. Ball cap with New York City stitched on it and a hubcap sized gold medallion hanging off a chain around his neck. Pants that bagged prisoner bitch style, he had the cocked at the elbow arm pump movements down and he shouted out to his friends as they passed with the appropriate finger wiggles. He couldn’t shut up and he couldn’t stay seated. The latter was a good thing because it meant he would leave the gym periodically and his absence actually quieted his mother down too.

Mom kept the two chairs on either side of her open despite the standing room only crowd. I couldn’t tell if this was on purpose or if the fact that she overhung her own seat by a bit discouraged possible seatmates from attempting to claim a spot near her. It was telling that her husband chose to sit in the row behind her and Lil’ G with the toddler, who was better behaved than his older siblings.

Rob usually brings the camera to record Dee’s concerts. We haven’t played it back yet, but I think we will have captured Lil’G’s rambling commentary more than Dee’s class singing. More than once I wanted to lean over and whisper to his mother,

“Can you please tell your kid to shut the fuck up?” But I didn’t because she looked the type to haul off and smack me down, and since she was bigger than I am, I decided to endure.

Later, Rob commented on the crowd in general.

“I look around at these things and wonder if we have Dee in the right school,” he said.

“Did you see the guy in the wife-beater?” I asked.

“Yeah, where did he come from?”

He came late. I saw him, his wife and baby slip in during the grade three performance and was amazed that he’d gone out on a cold December night so scantily clad. There weren’t any coat racks in the hall, so I knew he had to have come from his home or vehicle with just the t-shirt on. A no-sleeved undershirt. And I don’t think the tats were keeping him any warmer than his boot camp issue haircut.

“These people are all so …”

“Working class?” I supplied.

“No, they are farther down the food chain than that,” Rob said.

True. Dee’s school is primarily a neighborhood one and the ‘hood is a poor one. Kids like Dee are bused in from the country and from the town’s suburban south side and they are out-numbered.

“If we end up staying here, we are going to have to rethink her schooling.”

I have been writing a bit over at the education blog about environment and it’s effect on school performance, and it reminded me that Dee can’t be left for too long around the off-spring of people who Rob and I wouldn’t choose to personally associate with. For the most part young children tend to be most influenced by their home environment and parents but at some point peers rule, and I don’t want these kids ruling my kid. Sure, they are cute now but that won’t last judging from the crowd last evening.

I don’t want a daughter like the mother of Lil’ G or a grandson like him.

My parents allowed my youngest sister to be ruined by her associations as a middle and high school student. Back in the day, Special Education rooms were often dumping grounds for the those kids who were lowest on the socio-economic ladder and poor BabySis, who is borderline MD, was exposed to a value system that basically ruined her as a person. I don’t think that this could happen to Dee, but childhood companions are important early influences.

On the upside, Dee performed with her usual serious diligence. She takes every aspect of school seriously, even the fun parts. After we got home, she sat at the table, drinking hot cocoa and reading her Junie B Jones book. Her nose is nearly always in a book these days since she graduated to chapter books. Reading is still a bit slow for her but she reminds me of me when I finally could read. I read all the time.

Not that she is always serious. A writer friend sent us one of those giant cans of flavored popcorn yesterday. When Dee got home from school, I told her the UPS man had left a package for the family and it was on the dining room table. I’d opened it already and the can was sitting on the table. The box it came in was on the floor.

Dee raced into the other room while I waited on the couch.

“Oh wow,” she exclaimed. “It’s a box!”

She still prefers the box. A good sign.

Mommy Blogging


I’ve been reading about the call to keyboard for authentic writing in the momosphere for the first week of August. It seems there are camps forming with two distinct themes. The one is that being courted by businesses with a variety of giveaway goodies for the purpose of honest assessment and word of blog publicity is a good thing for women who blog. The other side is decrying the takeover of real dialogue and community in favor of poorly written and arguably deceptive posts.

My eyes hurt from all the rolling.

Most of the commercial mom blogs I read, or have skimmed, are businesses. And there is nothing wrong with a blogger taking advantage of the commerciality of their work. The net is the last frontier as far as low cost start-ups go and more power to you if you can convince someone to pay you for doing something you enjoy.

But here is the problem I have. These women, as far as I can tell, aren’t getting paid. They are taking stuff. Maybe they sell it later on eBay to recoup expenses for their time and maybe not, but since when did “stuff” constitute a living? And when a blogger is willing (and plenty seem to be) to be compensated in goods what happens to the writers/bloggers who would rather have cash? I mean, not every mommy blogger has a daddy paycheck earner to take care of the pesky expenses, and last I heard, the people who hold your mortgage aren’t keen on barter.

Here’s the other thing that doesn’t compute for me. How are we a community, or cyber friends even, when you are writing to convince me to buy things. That’s almost as annoying as the friend who takes up Pampered Chef or Mary Kay or sex toy parties because now our friendship is threatened by an unspoken coersion that involves me feeling obligated to buy and you needing me to buy in order to maintain the flow of freebies and advertising. And now I am not a “dear reader” or a friend but rather a customer.

The bloggers at Momdot want moms to blog authentically for the first week of August. To just shut down the PR (it’s unclear to me if this includes all the ads in the sidebars which make pages load so slowly) and get back to basics. Which begs the question of what a mom is to do if she began blogging simply to milk the cash cow but that is a call for others to decide.

Some are not really down with this. They are proud of the businesses they have built and rightfully so. If you are blogging for profit and are good at it and your “friends” are totally cool with funding you, the fact that it is a quasi-ponzi scheme shouldn’t be an issue.

More and more I am uncomfortable in the momosphere – which, by the way, this space here is not part of – I have always been clear on the fact that I began blogging for me and it continues to be “all about me” which is probably too boring for most. And I am totally rethinking my connections with mom grogging because I am not allowed to be utterly me and write about women’s issues, wants, dreams, dilemmas, only some of which are mom-oriented. At my age, why should I care what companies think I need or should want? They are only interested in my money and will shill and wheedle and flatter their souls away to sell it to me. Their power? Lies in my willingness to buy and in someone else’s willingness to sell themselves cheaply enough to promote it to me.

I just don’t understand taking crap as payment – and if I have to dust, store, or pick it up and move it from one place to another – it’s crap. It’s like the white traders in the early days of North America buying land and goods from Native Americans with glass beads and cutlery. I don’t remember who wrote this, maybe it was Konrath, but the sincerest form of flattery for a writer, and I think blogging counts as writing, is a paycheck, and if you aren’t doing your bit to promote the idea of money as currency for writers then you are not a writer and you are hurting real writers with your posing. You are kind of like scabs who cross picket lines, under-cutting the common good for selfish gain. 

“But I am feeding my family!”

Really? With movie passes and WiiFit?

We (and when I say “we”, I mean “you”) will always be ghetto-ized as Mommybloggers so long as the majority of us are mesmerized by the sprinkles tossed our way like bootie shaped confetti decorating a table cloth at a baby shower. We will not be taken seriously as a group or a force. And the sad thing is – we (and by “we” I mean “all women”) would be a force if our more prominent members weren’t so content to be stereotypes.

White Trash Neighbors


Since setting the Mounties upon Guitar Hero and his wife, the white trash renters to our north have not been an issue. For the most part we so seldom saw them that Rob didn’t realize she worked at his plant and their recent newborn addition was a surprise to us.

But with the new spawn came unexpected emergence from their four-walls and a roof cocoon and they took to sitting on the front porch with their toddler for smoke breaks. The owners of the house are militant about smoking indoors and apparently Mama Hero, having done her duty with two children under the age of two, is now able to indulge in what appears to be quite the addiction.

I think smoking is the ultimate dummy tax from a financial perspective as well as a health stance, but the thing about smoking that really bugs me is that I don’t want to and yet I do by virtue of living around smokers who don’t want smoke in their own homes but think nothing of blowing it into mine.

Our front windows are open all the time during the summer to aid the circulation and keep the house cool. Like most people here, we don’t have central air. It really is an unnecessary expense. The neighbors’ second hand smoke snakes in and fills the lower level of the house and so windows must be closed. Not a big deal? Well, some people are more philosophical about this than I am, but it’s not just a smelly annoyance for me. It aggravates allergies and kicks up my asthma and both have long ranging consequences in terms of reduced ability to exercise and increased need of medication.

I have done nothing but endure smoking neighbors. Creepy Neighbor smoked and I was forced to keep windows closed pretty much all the time in the warm weather. He was a chain smoker. I seldom saw him without a cigarette in hand. The house before that I had to contend with Will smoking. Yeah, irony, but my afflictions worsened considerably with the stress of caring for him and the single working mom gig. Will, to his credit, quit. He promised me he would and he did. His illness however was already in play and he had lapses that he blamed on the hypnotist he saw,

“I think that guy did something to my brain,” he would say.

The apartments I lived in always had at least one smoker who had to sit upwind when puffing but ironically, I had less trouble with smokers when I was in university than I had at any point in my life despite the fact that this was pre-anti smoking era, smokers were a lot more considerate and it seemed, to me, that fewer people smoked.

The Hero family moved this past weekend. Loaded up Clampett style and are gone. The last time the house vacated it was empty most of the summer. Let’s hope for a similarly ghost-like situation. Rentals out here seem to be sitting empty longer now that housing prices have fallen a tad and the upgrader projects are stalled. We’ll breathe easier for a while.