The Small-Town Latte Mission

My tongue is stinging. I look down at my latte with trepidation. I need the caffeine but my

tongue hurts. It hurts.

I’m staying at my friend Eldora’s farmhouse. It’s outside the small town where our
new house awaits. Sir Dick and I take possession in a couple of weeks so we’re on a
visitation.

The day begins with several layers of scalded tongue cells, courtesy a local “coffee
shop”.

Never trust them with your coffee.

One of the voices in my head says, “You can’t take your eye off them, not even for a
second”…this person emerges when I forget to check an expiry date, or when something
doesn’t make it into the grocery bags, or, say, when a styling assistant blow-dries my
hair and poofs the top of my head, making me look like a Real Housewife. It especially
goes into gear on culinary expeditions in small towns. I should know. I am an actor.
I have toured most small towns in this country. Trucker coffee is well known to me.
Always head to the Greek place.

My tongue hurts.

Here’s what happened:

“El, can you go in and get me a latte?”

…Guppins fast asleep in the backseat.

“No problem.”

I decide to complicate things. I roll down my window:

“Ask them to keep it a little dry...”

(Blank stare)

“It means less milk more foam.”

The second it’s out of my mouth, I regret it.

“Okay.” She gives me a look. It was subtle, but I got it. I’m a spoiled brat. (That’s the
other voice in my head.)

A colleague once told me that when acting, I should remember the two little gnomes
perched on each shoulder. One constantly whispers, “You’re shit — you really suck.”
The other one is saying, “You’re gonna fuckin’ die.”

Harsh, I know. Kinda blows the angel/devil thing out of the water, but I like it. Ramps up
the whole acting intention stuff. Anyway…

Back to Eldora and the small-town latte mission. Eldora, a former hippie, a real
knockout, a music-playing goddess, former whatever whatever of Sir Dick, was raised by
German farmers nearby and has lived here her whole life (but for some time in Toronto
educating herself to be a piano tuner, among other things). She had two kids, starting
at age eighteen. So did her daughter, and then her daughter’s son, and her daughter’s
daughter, which is why she was a great-grandmother at my age. I look at this legacy of
accidental regeneration and I worry. Is this what happens in a small town? If you don’t
keep your eye on things? Is the Guppins going to be a grandmother by the time she’s
twenty?

Eldora has done everything, every job; she is the hardest-working person I have ever
met. Her man Boogie is an antiques guy, but he doesn’t believe in selling anything and
it makes Ursula mentally insane. Still, they’ve done well. They own several properties,
and both work behind the scenes at the massive theatre company I was recently turned
down by. Eldora has few faults. But she makes weak coffee. (Sorry, El.) I like really
strong espresso, and needed a hit before visiting the new house.

She returned with the latte (seemed to take a long time), passed it through the car
window, said “Okay, meet you there,” walked off to her car, I took a sip.

I spat — I spewed —a scream caught in my throat. What was I THINKING? Never let
your guard down when it comes to coffee in a small town — NEVER LET IT DOWN! If
there is one thing I hate, it’s scalding my tongue on an over-steamed, flat, burning-hot
latte. And I know why this is done, yes I do. I know this because I once worked, eons
ago, with an espresso machine. When you don’t know what you are doing, you think
steaming milk longer will make it foam more. It doesn’t. It just burns the milk. It makes it
foam less. So my whole thing about “make it dry” likely

A) embarrassed my friend Eldora;

B) stressed out the — I can barely say it — “barista”;

C) who knew I was from Toronto and deliberately wanted to burn the shit out of my
mouth because he or she hates outsiders.

Okay, maybe C is a little bit conspiracy-minded.

The “latte” was an overly large Styrofoam container of scorched milk consisting of zero
foam and vaguely tasting of car tire. Or ash tray.

I decide to hold my tongue about it. I have to; it is practically bleeding out of my face.

“Spoiled brat!” says the voice.

I take the ice pack from the travel cooler I keep for the Guppins’s food and swab my
tongue with it. Which produces a cloud of steam and smoke that leaks out the car
windows. I’ve been branded by stupid small-town stupid coffee.

“How’s your latte?”

(It burned the shit out of my tongue. I hate it here.)

“Pretty good — a bit on the hot side.”

At this, Eldora, no dummy, gives me her best farm girl:

“Well, he was probably trying to make a lot of foam because he spent a lot of time
steaming it for you.”

For you.

Love that.

We get to the new house. It’s all different. It looks smaller. It is now clear to me that
vampires occupy it. Vines block the windows. There is no light. And one of the vampires
has decided to return after ten minutes because, she tells our agent, she has a bad
back.

She perches on the sofa in the middle of the house and chatters away. Loudly.

I avoid her. Isn’t this illegal? This wouldn’t be allowed in Toronto!

Finally I have to go into the room of Vampire Perch to measure it.

“What part of Toronto are you from?”

The west...section.

“I lived near High Park!” she screeches.

I can see, clearly, it was a brief runaway trip with a boyfriend to a methamphetamine-
type setting in Brantford, or some year at community college that didn’t pan out.

From the city. Ha. Her mother works at the local health food store. I learn this, along
with a myriad of details pertaining to her sex life, while attempting to focus on MY NEW
HOUSE.

“I know what it’s like moving from the big city. It’s a big change. Oh, by the way, we are
leaving the piano action. It’s our gift to you!”

INAPPROPRIATE! Get this woman out of here!! I can feel her life force seeping into my
pores. Oh God, please can you just not exist? Worse yet — I adore the piano action. It
hangs in the front hall, a unique piece of reclaimed art. Even Eldora was impressed by it
during the first house viewing:

“Well, wouldn’t you know, I threw one of those on the fire last week!” (Eldora)

“Oh God, I love it (I say at the time). I’ve never seen anything like that in TORONTO.”

“Don’t worry I’ve got another one in the back barn.”

Seriously. She has two piano actions. And two barns.

So, knowing Eldora has one for me in stock, I say to the little vampire with Big Sticky-
Outy Evil Elfin Ears:

“That is so [weirdly] generous of you — why don’t you want to keep it?”

(Now I’m thinking it’s haunted. The piano action is haunted and she wants to leave it in
the haunted house we just bought.)

“We-elll…” says Vampire Elf, “our new place has a lot of windows [liar], it’s practically
all windows [liar], and you see how much [godforsaken] art we have. I could give you
my email — not sure if you’re ready for phone numbers yet [never] but we live only five
minutes away [fuck] and I know what it’s like....”

Turns out she’s a big fan of Sir Dick. From one of his TV shows where he plays a father-
figure type. Undoubtedly this explains everything.

It also turns out, we are yet to discover, the house is haunted.

Buyer’s remorse.

New life, here we come.

-Drama Mama

Surprise!

Here is a list of some shit I wasn’t expecting that happened to me after W was
born.

•I don’t care as much about my dog, who was my “baby” pre-W.

•People at work tell me I am “nicer now.”

•I get a headache if I don’t have coffee within 20 minutes of being awake.

•I get drunk faster — like, two glasses is all it takes.

•I feel terribly, horribly guilty for sleeping in ’til 1:30 in the afternoon today,
mainly because I am not sick and there are dishes in the sink!

•I lose patience with my physiotherapist for talking slowly and making me
sign the same three forms every time I come in.

•I have a physiotherapist.

•I spend hours on the Internet googling things like, “Should babies brush
their teeth?” “easy slow cooker meals,” and “easy one-pot meals.”

•I am head-over-heels, can’t-live-without-it, in capital “L” Love with
soothers. There are soothers in all my pockets and purses. I was always a
person who would look at soother kids with disdain and think, “My kid will
never…” Well, he does.

•I have given up my passion for ultimate frisbee and organized recreational
sport in general.

•I can no longer watch Intervention because I can’t see baby pictures of
addicts and hear the voice-over of their parents saying how he/she was
such a happy baby…too sad and scary.

•I can’t watch “super nanny”-type shows because listening to other
people’s children scream and disobey is not entertainment, it is torture.

•The only channel I watch now is Food Network.

•My nipples point downwards.

-Tightrope Mama

[image source: marthastewart.com]

Bitchy Lions, Episode 2: Nobody Puts Mommy in a Corner

I try to limit myself to wearing jeans to the office once a week. I try to give the
impression that I find annual fiscal budgets really interesting. I try to pretend that I do
not strongly covet the entire wardrobe of this woman on my floor who wears things like
a simple black dress with a big, hot-pink necklace and makes weird Aladdin pants look
good. I try to sit up straight and limit my bathroom stall naps to once a day. I try. That is
the point: I am trying.

So, when my sweet co-worker with kids got pneumonia and had to miss some (a lot) of
work, I tried extra hard. I tried on her behalf too. I tried to remind people that she was
working from home (she was) and that just when she was feeling better her child got
a double ear infection (he did). I even came to work with food poisoning and barfed in
between two presentations. I did this because working moms have to try to be (if not
just BE) better than they were pre-baby, and we certainly have to be better than our
childless contemporaries. Obviously a company would prefer a childless worker (no
baggage, no sick kids, no mid-day daycare calls), but look! Look over here, look at me
multi-tasking! LOOK!

Because I try, I felt I had to attend a Women who Lead Networking BS seminar. (Oh,
and because the president asked me in a cab if I was going. “Oh, yes, sounds fun!” I
say.) My work hired (PAID MONEY for) some woman to say things like, “When I had
my third baby, I treated myself to a whole month off!” (audience laughs — silly woman,
taking time off with her children!) and, “In between my booming career, my kids, my
husband, my marathon running and my speaking engagements, I am also learning
woodworking…in my spare time” (audience laughs — silly woman, girls can’t do
carpentry, but so cute that she is trying!). “For the love of God!” I felt like screaming as I
stood there with my warm Chardonnay. Are you kidding me?

This is the problem. Women like that are a huge part of the problem. I know the seminar
wasn’t called “Tired Mothers who Lead”; it was called “Women who Lead,” so she didn’t
have to cater to me specifically. But not only was she insulting the women there who
were moms, but also setting a pretty high bar for the women who might be considering
motherhood. And worst of all, she was telling the non-moms and never-gonna-be-moms
that we moms SHOULD be doing everything, with no stress, and just fucking loving it!

This woman had a huge opportunity to talk candidly to other women, not spout out “I am
superwoman, be like me!“ My employers also had an opportunity to address the very
real world of working women and the challenges we face with honesty, but they didn’t.
I’m not surprised.

To be fair, I did leave early (because it went ’til 5:30 and that is crazy talk to me). And
I sighed all the way home. What kind of a message are women sending each other
when we decide that superwoman is the model we should strive to be? Why do we
consistently reward women if, and only if, they can do pretty much everything (including
woodworking, apparently) and stay thin? Why is 9 to 5 not enough, even though that is
what we are paid for? Why do I feel like I need to preface every conversation with, “Oh,
this cold isn’t contagious. I have had it since August; it is from my son’s daycare”? Why
do I get nervous about calling in sick? Why do I have to try so hard?

I know why. Because when my co-worker with pneumonia finally came back to work,
the queen Bitchy Lion swooped past our desks and said, “Oh, hi. How are you feeling?”
My friend: “I’m good. My chest does still hurt a bit, but all my X-rays looked good!” Me:
nodding supportively. Bitchy Lion makes a pinched face: “Well, stay in your corner,”
followed by an awkward laugh.

Stay in your corner. That is what a real-life woman who leads said. Out loud. She
thought it was a joke, I think.

-Tightrope Mama

Guilt

I am a half-Irish (lapsed) Catholic who also happens to be an only child. So to
say that I have a lot of experience with guilt would be an understatement.

Without a doubt, some of the worst guilt of my day strikes me during the period
of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. I know all moms work, but I happen to have a
traditional 9-to-5, out-of-the-house, coffee-breaks-at-10-and-2 kind of job. Which
means I wake up at approximately 6:20 every day. I am out of the house by 7:35
(7:45 means NO daycare parking to be had) and at my desk by 8:30. I leave my
desk by 4:30 and am on Lakeshore Boulevard by 4:45 (4:55 means an extra 20
minutes in gridlock), and at the daycare by 5:20, and home by 5:40. We eat as
a family, most days — yes, I will accept a pat on the back for that — and then
bed and bath are completed by 7:00. Phew. It is a tight schedule, but it works.
If “works” means we all survive and sometimes manage to enjoy ourselves. (Side
note: The slow cooker has saved my life.)

So, guilt. Today as I walked to the photocopy room, I suddenly wished W was
there. I wished we were holding hands. I wished I could see him, just for a
second. It wasn’t a fleeting moment; it was a real, palpable wish.

Across from my office there is a grocery store where I buy something — lunch,
milk, lottery tickets — three days out of five. While I am in the store I spend most
of my time talking to babies. For real. There are so many moms in the grocery
store in the middle of the day, it is unreal. Most of the babies are little and in their
car seats (wistful sigh for the days when I could grocery shop with W strapped
into a seat), and I am okay with those babies. I recognize that the mommies
are on mat leave. But sometimes the babies (okay, they are children) look like
W. They are his age. They are precious and precocious and running down the
aisles. They are adorable and funny and I almost burst into tears some days
wishing W was there. Wishing that I could be in the store at 11:00 a.m. on a
Wednesday with my sweet, precocious boy.

Then I realize I am staring and I move along to the pre-packaged salads.

As you have read, W loves daycare. He is happy and fine, but am I? Am I okay
with things? Should I feel guilty for even thinking about MY happiness? Probably.
I miss my little guy so much sometimes at work that my heart aches. Sometimes
I secretly wish that my husband and son would just magically appear at my desk
after a meeting. Is this normal? I don’t know anymore.

I have a co-worker, whom I love, who has two boys. She says the silver lining of
work is eating lunch and peeing whenever you want. She is right. But it is sad.
That is our silver lining, which is…I don’t know what it is. On weekends, I eat
whenever I can, and W comes to pee with me, and I am actually pretty okay with
it.

I don’t know what the future holds jobwise, but as the words “Toddler Room”
and “Preschool” start getting tossed around, I realize I am making spreadsheets
and PowerPoints instead of Play-Doh figures and bubbles in swim class.
And today it is weighing on me. Maybe it won’t next week, but today I would
have traded it all for W to magically appear beside the photocopier, but even
during the WORST barf-fuelled, hellish moments I have NEVER wished for the
photocopier to magically appear.

-Tightrope Mama

[image source: University of the Arts London]

Cheating

Last week I kissed a man who is not my husband on the mouth. He was gay, and drunk, and he actually did the kissing, and I told my husband, and he laughed, but I still feel a teensy bit guilty. Not because I wanted to be kissed, but because I did get a bit of a thrill out of it. Not that the thrill was due to attraction, because it wasn’t. This guy was clearly not even in the same ballpark as me, let alone on the same team. (I don’t know what that means.) I think the thrill was a result of being married too long and being stuck home most nights with a child and not getting to do the crazy sexy things I did in my youth. This is the closest I’ve got to dancing in the foam pit at Senor Frog’s or making out on a pool table in a long time. And it’s not even close. And it’s all because of Cookie.

I’ve had this urge for a while now. Not specifically to kiss a strange man on the mouth; just to get irresponsibly drunk and make bad choices. In this case, I was merely a tad tipsy and I let someone else make a choice that was rather out of character. But in all the scenarios in which I imagine myself indulging this urge, my husband is there, so in my mind I’m not cheating. Which is great, right? That I fantasize about doing naughty things (although not those naughty things, but that’s another story) with the person I’m supposed to do things in general with. Still, no matter how much I rationalize it, I can’t shake this urge. Once again, it’s all because of Cookie.

Before Cookie, I wasn’t a party girl (although I did enjoy a good, or even a bad, party) or a bar fly (although my favourite seat anywhere is a barstool) or a slut (full stop). But I enjoyed my relative freedom, and enjoyed it well into my thirties, so to have had it so abruptly taken from me is still a bit of a shock. While I was pregnant, but before I knew it or even suspected that it was possible, my husband and I drank our way across Britain, from whisky tastings in Scotland to pub-hopping pints in Yorkshire to a champagne- and Pimm’s-soaked wedding in Ascot. Spirit of the West’s “Home for a Rest” comes to mind. Cue the immense guilt a month later, when I finally figured out why the bike ride to work was taking five minutes longer than it should. Not to mention the nagging concern, despite my doctor’s repeated assurances. (“We really only worry about binge drinkers” — well, it was a good vacation, so define binge again?)

I think I’m still looking forward to the next party, and over two years later I haven’t got to it yet. And I want to, I so want to! But any time I’m out, I just know that if I have more than a couple of drinks, the following morning will be intolerable. If you’ve seen that show Up All Night, with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett, you can imagine the scenario. In the first episode, they go out, decide to stay out way too late just like they used to, and sure enough they are woken up a mere two hours later by a screaming child. They’re fully dressed, hung over, and faced with a nasty diaper that they can barely change between the two of them without hurling. I know that scene; I’ve lived it. Once was enough.

So my fantasy goes something like this: Cookie stays for an entire weekend with someone. Don’t care who; sometimes you just have to let the details slide in fantasies, just as in sitcoms. Hubby and I go out Friday night with our best friends. First stop is pre-dinner cocktails, then dinner accompanied by buckets of wine, then a bar for drinks made with Malibu rum or blue curacao or something equally ridiculous and ill-advised. Then we do something stupid, like go to an after-hours club or make out with the wrong spouse or take a cab to a casino a hundred miles away. On Saturday we sleep it off. On Sunday we go out for a very greasy breakfast, then clean the house, then pick up Cookie, and then life returns to normal.

Some people would call that a weekend. I used to, occasionally. (Except for the bit about making out with the wrong person, I swear.) But now that I’m a parent, I call it cheating. On Cookie. Because it just feels like one of those fantasies where you’re hooking up with Daniel Craig, but in order to convince yourself that it’s even possible you’ve got to theoretically get rid of your partner, so he suddenly turns into an irredeemable asshole or you kill him off or something like that. And even though it’s a fantasy, it still feels a bit like cheating. As does the thought of abandoning my child with a family member so I can go off on a lost weekend — cheating on parenthood.

So for now I stick to my two-drink max and the occasional bizarre incident. And someday, someday, when Cookie can take care of herself, I’ll get to Ibiza. Man, will I look out of place by then.

-East End Mama

Morning Moment

One of my fellow bloggers wrote a beautiful piece about “the moment” she felt okay.
She remembers light streaming through a hospital window, her son on her chest, and
just finally finding some peace. I have been thinking a lot about that since I read her
thoughts. Mostly I have been racking my brain trying to pinpoint the exact moment in my
own life when I felt what she described so eloquently, and I can’t seem to do it.

My hospital experience, like hers, was not exactly what you would call blissful. Nursing
(as you have read) was an utter shit show. Those who know me know that I don’t exactly
embody stillness, so maybe that is why I can’t recall much of anything from my hospital
stay besides blood and milk (gross, but true).

So, instead of comparing my experience to her lovely story, I am looking to the present
for my moments. Since reading her piece I have been noticing the moments in my
day-to-day that make me happiest and calmest. Shockingly, I think my best moment
of the day occurs around 6:45 a.m. I have never been a morning person, but there is
something about waking up to the quiet babbling of your little guy that makes everything
a little better. About 90 percent of mornings he wakes up SUPER happy and ready
to greet the day with the wide-eyed wonder that only a child can muster. I do a quick
stretch and head to his door. I always open it slowly, and am never greeted the same
way twice. Since I have been trying to pay attention (i.e., slow the fuck down), here is a
list of a few cute new words that have greeted me in the last few days:
• “Bottle” came on the morning when evidently milk was on his mind.
• “Soo-sur” (aka soother) came with vehement pointing the day he threw all
   THREE soothers onto the floor in the night.
• “Uh-owh” has come quite a few times, but I am not sure why

I then say “Good morning,” and he throws his arms around my neck. We have a quick
snuggle and read a book or play with some annoying sing-song toy that at any other
point in the day I want to send to Value Village. For some reason, in the morning, when
everything is new and I haven’t seen a vile diaper or had to throw out piles of floor food,
I feel like I can handle just about anything. My boy has soft morning hair and still needs
me for simple things, and I am trying to slow down and enjoy that.

I don’t always feel calm or serene, and W isn’t always smiling or clinging to my neck, but
first thing in the morning, before the day creeps in, he is my boy and I am his mom and
we are starting our days together. Thank you for helping me notice that, my dear, sweet
friend.

-Tightrope Mama