I am still here, in Regina, with the folks.  It’s been a nice visit thus far despite Avelyn’s horrendous moods.  Not wanting to be inconsistent, she’s maintained her foul flying demeanor since we touched down.  Blame it on that final blasted molar, or maybe a delayed reaction to her vaccines, or (heaven forbid) maybe this is just her genuine personality emerging, but it’s been a little tough.  I think I had some expectations about this trip home, that it would be calm and relaxing and a time for fun.  Avelyn has had other plans, however.  I’ve found myself frustrated by her grumpiness and wanting to smack a little sense in her to make her realize that being pushed in a stroller through the mall really isn’t so bad. 

Yesterday she was having a meltdown in a coffee shop and my mom restrained her while I ran to the nearest drug store to buy Tylenol.  And Smarties.  Both of which I promptly dosed her with upon my return.  That Mother of the Year award can’t be too far off.

Today was a little better.  The prairie winds let up and the sun warmed the skies so we went out for a walk in the park.

This is the park I grew up in.  Well, not actually in the park.  I was not a hobo.  But I spent a lot of time at this park.  I played on the playground, was peer-pressured into taking my first (and only) puff of a cigrarette by the waterfall, kissed my first love on the grassy knoll at midnight, ran a sweaty lap around it for gym class while my heavy thighs rubbed together and slowed me down, had a boy tell me he loved me in the gazebo, spent evenings watching the boys shoot baskets on the court, ate five cent candies on the wooden jungle gym with my girlfriends and talked about the length of our first armpit hairs, and ran through the sprinklers of my best friend’s house that backed onto the lake.

Today I was there with my daughter and we crunched leaves under our feet.  Another memory to add to my list. 

Tonight Jen and I went out for dinner then back to her place to watch some serious television (Grey’s Anatomy and The Office).  I got to snuggle sweet Baby Josephine, who is the daintiest, softest little girl.  Jen looks amazing and is already back into her prepregnancy jeans only one week post-partum.  (I kind of hate her for that.  It took me a year.)

When I came home Avelyn started to cry in her crib so I went to get her.  We cuddled on the couch for an hour and those warm sixty minutes washed away a whole day’s worth of her whining.  I am a lucky momma.

This is the story of a girl.

She had been blessed with a thick head of full, thick dirty blond hair, but cursed with a lackluster metabolism.

She had a hard time controlling her somewhat unruly locks.  They were kind of wavy, kind of straight, and all kinds of crazy.  So she cut them all off and hoped she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Celebrity look-alike or not, she grew tired of the short hair and started to grow it out.  Which was awkward.  She was eager to have long hair again but it seemed to be growing at a snail’s pace.  She sported this mushroom cut for the better part of a year while the hair grew.

(Can we just take a moment and gawk at how skinny I was?!  It was a fleeting phase, one made possible by a near-encounter with anorexia, but STILL.  If my hair hadn’t had been so hideous I could have been Canada’s Next Top Model, dontcha think?  That sound of laughter I hear?  It hurts.)

Finally her hair grew and she kept it like this for a few good years:

However, she grew bored with this cut and style.  She made a terrible, terrible mistake.

(Let’s just take pause and have a moment of silence for the tragedy that this cut and colour was.  Really.  I mean it.)

****

Realizing the err of her ways, she tried to regain her blonde hair.  This did not work and her hair literally burned off.  She had to wear a permanent side-part for a year while the charred ends grew out.

(Smiling through the pain.)

The obvious theme in this hairy saga is that the girl is never satisfied with her hair.  She gets bored of a style though nothing is really wrong with it, then realizes that, as Joni Mitchell would say, “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.

Which brings us to today.  This is what the girl is sporting as of late:

Besides her obvious need of having her roots touched up, what do you say?  Should she go for a new look or just enjoy what she’s got?

I was eight; they were 12.  They were all so pretty and cool; I was dumpy and fat.  I was placed in their cabin by mistake but had to stay there.

During the morning cabin clean-up someone unearthed a pair of underwear that was marred by a thick, dried skid mark of poop.  A willowy cabinmate kicked the tarnished panties into the middle of the room and cackled, “LOOK at THESE!”  All the girls gathered ’round the underwear and chanted, “Ew!  Ew!  Ew!” 

I chimed in along with them.

Even though they were mine.

While digging through some rubbley piles of antiquated junk I found an old book I had made when I was 12 years old. It was a school project, an autobiography. Here are some excerpts and photos, taken exactly as originally written:

The first page opens with this humble line, “This book is dedicated to the person who made my life what it is today…ME!”

“The Beginning: The beginning for Amanda Paige Olsen marked the ends of the social lives and sanity of Dave and Sherri Olsen. I entered the world on that clear August night the world remembers. I guess I could have been called a problem child before and after birth. Being two and a half weeks late was a slight change in plans and I’m sure my mom didn’t really enjoy 27 1/2 hours of labour. I changed my parents’ lives while they changed my diapers.”

“Family: I belong to an average dysfunctional family. Both of my parents work but they always find time to spend with their favourite daughter (yours truly). My dad is a computer nut and spends his days hacking away, while my mom teaches transcultural nursing at SIAST.

I have a dog named Stephen. Actually, he is my brother, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. He enjoys hurling his action figurines down the stairs while I’m having a sleepover. My dad is a talented long-distance runner who makes his daughter proud of him. He has won lots of awards. My mom always makes sure I’m feeling happy. She keeps the home fires burning. Although they may appear normal, they are very strange. All except for me, of course. But I still love ‘em.”

“The School Years:

As kindergarten approached, I became very excited, and on the first day I almost wet my pants with joy. I couldn’t believe I was in ‘big kid’ school now. W.H. Ford was my first school. After kindergarten was done I moved to a new house and started Grade One at MacNeill School. Miss Hillmer was my teacher and then Miss Kripki. Miss Kripki’s class was where I got my first detentions (heh, heh). As time marched on I had various teachers and Mrs. Pedersen was my favourite. Mr. Amundson and I had our differences but I survived. Today I am in Mr. Brown/Chatterson’s room. They seem to be ‘decent dudes’.

My school years have taken up more than half my life (what a waste).”

“Interests and Hobbies: I am a very talented person and to write about all of my interests and hobbies would take forever (but who’s bragging?). Softball is my best sport and I am always the star player. Sometimes. I love softball; it is really awesome. I play the piano and everyone agrees I am the next Beethoven (well, some people…well, one person…me!).  I enjoy school. NOT!! Well, it’s not that bad, I guess. My life isn’t that bad. I think my life is actually pretty cool. I have a good time and that’s what matters.”

“Dreams and Aspirations: As I grow up I would like to attend Luther High School and then move onto the Canadian Bible College or medical school. Being an artist interest me and maybe that’s what I’ll be when I grow up. I want to move to Hawaii and meet a “hunk”. I must go on Wheel of Fortune before I turn 40. Writing is something I enjoy and I might like to write best-sellers someday.

These are my plans for the future. I hope it works out.”

“Epilogue: This is my life. I hope you’ve realized how important my existance is to the earth.”

Oh my sweet mustard. I was such a LOSER!

My hand rested in his as we sauntered down the forest path. He was much taller than I, with sandy blonde hair and a nice smile. And he was my boyfriend, of three days. Ah, summer camp and the promise it held.

I knew he was going to kiss me today, any time now, on this walk. He had told his friends to tell my friends that that was the plan and my heart had been pounding ever since.

My first kiss. I was 13 and so ready for the magic.

We came to a clearing in the brush and stood still, along with time. I gazed up into his eyes and smiled. Then he leaned in, our lips met and it was…

disturbingly wet.

The inside of his lips felt like the skin on pudding that’s been left in the fridge for too long and his thick tongue was a ravenous salamander looping its way around my teeth and tonsils. I wanted to pull away but kept hoping perhaps the situation would improve and the magic would begin. Where were the sparks? Doused with litres of saliva, they were extinguished promptly.

After what felt like an eternity, the kiss ended. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. He smirked and said, “That was nice, hey?”

“Yeah,” I timidly agreed.

Then I dumped him the next day.

What was your first kiss like?

I despised my eighth grade teacher.  He was a power-tripping ego-maniac who kept a box of kleenex in the bottom drawer of his desk for one-on-one conversations with students during recesses that always made the children cry.

Several times a year, while we were out of the classroom, he would snoop through the desks of his students and if he found the contents to be too poorly organized he would dump them out, toss the desk on its side, and wait for the re-entrance of the children and the inevitable humilition of the dumpee(s).  One time, mid-dump, he stumbled across a hand-drawn comic strip etched by the class clown, making visual fun of the grumpy teacher.  The poor artist was banished permanently from the classroom and spent the remaining months of the school year in the principal’s office.

Part of me really wants to include the name of this terrible beast of a teacher in the hopes that the next time he googles himself (what, as if you don’t do it) he finds my long-harboured disdain.

But I’m a bigger person than that.

In theory.

MR. HOLLOWAY.  MR. HOLLOWAY.  MR. HOLLOWAY.

The skey was grey and even though it was July, the air felt grey too.  Summer was slow in its arrival in the prairies.  I sat on the shoreline as Kendra sputtered through the front crawl, the frigid lake water making me cold just looking at it.  My poor friend was in the midst of a swimming lesson, in a thick-with-algae Saskatchewan lake.  As she swam I wrapped my towel tighter around my me, thankful it was her and not I slicing through the white capped waves. 

We were spending the weekend at her grandmother’s cottage, a magical place where we were able to sit on the veranda and read mildy trashy novels from the dusty bookshelves, eat potato chips for dinner, and go diaper bobbing* in the chilly lake.  Even though we were on summer holidays, Kendra still had to take swimming lessons so I went with her, to keep her company and cheer from the rocky edge of the lake. 

The only thing I really remember from my spectating was Kendra’s swimming teacher.  She was a nice enough girl, probably in her early twenties, I can’t recall her name. 

What I do recall, however, is the song we wrote as a tribute to her bikini line.

The first time I met the teacher I couldn’t help but notice she thick tufts of curly wurlies wrapping around the crotch of her speedo and trickling down her thighs.  It was impossible to not focus on them; they were dark and mysterious.  After Kendra’s lesson we laughed long and hard about the pubes.  We were young and prepubescent, so please excuse the immaturity.

Before we knew it, we had composed a rather catchy tune about the teacher, a song that imagined what it would be like if she were ever to mow the huge patches of pubes.  We assumed she would have a nasty case of razor burn, the likes of which would be so red and bumpy that it might even look worse than the pubes themselves.

"Her name was Bumpy Rumpy, ‘cuz that is what she had!

Her name was Bumpy Rumpy, ain’t…that…sad!"

 So clever. 

Somtimes that song still gets stuck in my head, some twelve years later.  

*Diaper bobbing involves putting one’s legs through the arm holes of a life jacket and wearing the life jacket like a big, swollen diaper, then jumping in the lake on a windy day and letting the waves make your diaper sway and bob. You should try it.