Silence

Well, Spilly has gone to visit her grandparents for a couple of days. It's very quiet around here--no belting out rocker tunes, no "you be me and I'll be you" games, no Constant Communicating.

It wasn't so quiet before she left. She wanted to pack her own suitcase, so I let her (I added a few little things later). Lots of clinking sounds and lugging of items. I ignored them.

Then she came to me, quite worried. "Mommy, I found something that isn't fair."

"What is it?"

"Well, I have antlers for me and Grandma, but I can't find the antlers for Grandpa."

"Oh," I said. "Let's take a look."

We searched high and low, and finally found Grandpa's antlers (the ones with the jingly bells) at the bottom of the tickle trunk. They went into the suitcase immediately, and I had my first glimpse of what else was in there.

1. Most of the bookcase, including picture frames and ceramics

2. A wiggles DVD

3. Monty

4. Ribbon

5. Purple socks with hearts on them

6. A princess outfit

7. Antlers

I made a point of telling Grandma about the search for the antlers, wanting to make sure that she and Grandpa would recognize that it was important to Spills that they be actually put on the head.

Grandma said, "I think we'll wear them for dinner tonight."

So, while my Hubby and I went to see Oscar-nominated movies, I took pleasure in imagining Grandma, Grandpa and Spills sitting down to their salmon dinner in their special headgear.

Spills will be back on Monday night.

Sweet, Sweet Music....

Today I got to chaperone a middle school dance. If you offered me the choice between being repeatedly clubbed in the head or chaperoning a middle school dance, I would be hard-pressed to choose (but the clubbing might have a slight edge). At least my tour of duty was only an hour long; but by the end of it, my head was pounding, and my eyes were sore from squinting through near-total darkness in the school gym (there were some laser-y kinds of things dancing around the ceiling, but they didn't provide much illumination to those of us below).

Spilly enjoyed some music today too. She attends a little music class on Fridays with her friend Robbie. Today was extra-special, apparently. She told her Daddy afterward, "There's a new boy in our class!"

"Oh?" said her Daddy. "What's his name?"

"Mr. Fantastic!"

Daddy was slightly taken aback. "What's his real name?" he asked.

Spilly glared at him. "Mister. Fan. Tas. Tic."

"Did you see Mr. Fantastic?" I asked Daddy later.

"I actually did, for a minute."

"And did he look fantastic?"

"Well--kind of," said Daddy, after thinking about it.

Sounds like Robbie, Spilly's current main squeeze, is going to have a run for his money.

Valentine's Day

I was greeted this morning by my student saying to me, "H V D, Mrs. C."

To which, of course, I said, "H V D, B."

It has been a day of high spirits and adolescent hormones firing. We had a party this afternoon that was really, mostly, a language lesson (we have been studying Bridge to Terabithia, and wrapped up the unit today by watching the movie, while making a Venn diagram comparing similarities and differences between the movie and the book--oh, and while eating a whole lot of junky food and giggling over the Valentines we had received).

Later on, after school had ended, Mommy and Daddy and Spilly put on their best duds and headed to the fancy Italian restaurant. There we met the best waiters ever, who plied Spilly with never-ending maraschino cherries and heart-shaped pasta, and paid her the kinds of compliments to which she feels she should become accustomed.

She held forth on the subject of love, giving it her own unique twist. Tenderly she said, "Mommy, I love you more than this whole building."

"I love you more than this whole building too," I said, feeling all sentimental.

Then the mood turned.

With unexpected menace, she muttered, "Not for long."

Not sure what to expect in the near future. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

For now.

The Fabulous New Word

Well, Spilly learned the word "nincompoop" today. She thinks it's great. As I write this, she is singing, "I'm just wild about nincompoop, and nincompoop's wild about me."

Don't know who the nincompoop is, but he should really run, run as fast as he can.

Tomorrow night, speaking of people being "wild" about each other, we are all going out for a romantic dinner for three, at the new Italian restaurant near us. We were there once before, when they first opened. Tomorrow, they are having a special Valentine's Day menu, and the helpful person on the phone is planning to arrange a special kid's menu for Spilly. We shall see what it is, but I bet it will be nice. Just hope she doesn't call the waiter a nincompoop.

Where's My Family??

So more crummy weather in our neck of the woods. Snow blowing in off the lake, coupled with the snow we were supposed to get anyway. And something out of Ohio that they're talking about hitting us now. Oh, and something bad is supposed to move in on Thursday night.

Today's weather warnings started, of course, once I'd made it to school. They were forecasting a really unpleasant drive home, with whiteouts and visibility less than a kilometre. So, in my wimpy way, I started trying to call my hubby from my classroom phone during recess. He's such a very good driver, and I'm such a very bad driver. My cowardly reasoning was, my little car could sit in the school parking lot overnight, and my family could come to get me.

But there was no answer at home. Very bad news indeed.

So I had to drive home, and it was as rotten as forecast. It was made even more rotten by the jerk in the huge Mac truck behind me, who didn't feel I was going nearly fast enough, and wanted to give me a big kiss in through the back window.

I got home shaking. Hubby was shovelling the driveway.

"I thought maybe you'd call for a ride," he said, quite surprised I'd made it home.

"I TRIED!"

"Oh!" He frowned. "Well...I guess we were out skating for awhile."

It took a second for this to register.

"On our rink?"

He nodded.

"Is it ice now?"

"Oh, yeah!" He proceeded to emote at length about our magnum opus, the backyard rink to end all rinks, that slopes sharply down toward the back fence, like the mother of all luge runs.

"How was Spilly on the ice?"

"Much better!" He described stumping around in his boots, holding on to a cackling Spills who had coined her variety of skating as "bottom ballet."

And I realized that the bad news was also good news. It was almost (almost) worth a rotten drive home if it meant that our little family had taken its first collective steps toward a wonderful new active hobby together. The rink has arrived!!

Let me Count the Ways....

I said to Spilly today, "I love you a little bit, you know."

"Just a little bit?" she said.

"Well, I love you a lot bit."

She thought for awhile. "Do you love me...thirty-seven pounds?"

I got down on her level so we could see eye to eye. "I love you THIRTY-SEVEN POUNDS."

"Good." She smiled, perfectly satisfied.

How to While Away a Drowsy Sunday

So. Last night we made plans to meet with friends of ours at 10:30 this morning, some 45 minutes away. Before that time, we were going to quickly pick up for Spilly a pair of skates, a helmet, and a push-along-the-ice thing to help her with balance. We thought we might also get Daddy a pair of skates, as he also doesn't know how. Then we and our friends would head to an ice rink near their home for the Family Skate at eleven o'clock.

We were at the doors of Canadian Tire just as they opened at nine o'clock. Off we trotted to the Sports department, filled with purpose. And the skate shelves were nearly bare. No skates, no helmets, no pushy things. But a lot of spring stuff, in the middle of February.

So off we raced to another Canadian tire. There we found a helmet, and skates for Spilly and Daddy. Oh, and skate guards. By now it was too late to make it to our friends' place by 10:30. Plus there were some wicked squalls coming in off the lake, and the winds were up to nearly 100 km/hr.

So we called the friends. They suggested we all reschedule for the following week. We agreed, then determined we would find our own Family Skate in our town.

Then we sat in the car and thought, where else can we look for a push-on-the-ice thing? We headed to a couple more sports stores, while Hubby, behind the wheel, squinting through the white-outs, began saying gritted-teeth things like, "This is starting not to be fun."

There were no pushy-ice things anywhere. So we went home, in time for hubby to go out and be an icicle in the backyard with the hose, on our "rink" that is one in name only because it is a kind of spongey crust at the moment (just so you know, I did offer to go out, more than once, but he nobly refused, and I cheerfully accepted his refusal).

While he was out there, I got the bright idea of calling sports stores. And I ended up speaking with a lovely young man who may or may not have been entranced by my currently husky voice (thank you, influenza), because he began actively searching online himself. And he found me a push-ice thing in the next town to ours.

Well!

I shouted the good news to my half-frozen hubby, who said weakly, "Oh, great."

So after a hearty lunch and some warm white tea, we all piled yet again in the car and headed to the next town over. I don't know how you describe white-outs that are getting more intense than the previous white-outs, but that's what we faced the whole way. We got there in one piece, and in we went to the Canadian Tire, where they were holding our ice-pusher at the Hockey Desk.

Home we went in high spirits to research whether there would be Family Skates anywhere. Turned out the only one left was already going on, and would end in just over an hour and a half.

Not a problem! Hubby opened the ice-push box, to find that the "easy assembly" was going to be slightly less easy than advertised. Particularly with Spilly wandering away with pieces that she kept turning into other things. "This is my telescope!"

Half an hour later, though, it was assembled, and we were throwing skates, helmets, etc., into a carry bag. More slithering in white outs.

We got to the arena, and the girl behind the desk said, "Did you know it's ending in half an hour?"

"Yes," we said. "We know."

She waved us in.

And what followed can best be described with a good old-fashioned Charlie Brown "Aauugh." No sooner had we gotten on the ice than a power mother shot up to us (with excellent balance, I might add), bellowing, "They're not going to let you have that on the ice."

Yes, the ice-pushy thing. Not allowed on the ice.

Several other moms were quite interested in it, though. "Where did you get that?"

"Canadian Tire," we said grimly.

"Oh, really? I've never seen it there."

"No, it's not at every location."

So the two of us--me with my minimal skating skills, and hubby with his nonexistent skating skills--tried to hold Spilly up between us while she undulated back and forth, her feet flying up backward and forward. Children half her size whizzed past us in all directions.

After about five minutes, she sat down on the ice. "My feet hurt."

"Oh, no!" I said breezily. "We just got here! Let's just do a little more!"

So for the next twenty minutes or so, we laboriously inched back and forth along the boards, while Spilly moaned about how horrible it all was, and my back began to seriously consider snapping just above my waist.

When the whistle blew to signal the end of Family Skate, I felt we had had more than enough for our first experience.

All the way home in the car, though, Spilly kept up a running monologue: "I love skating! When are we going skating again? Can we go tomorrow? Daddy, will they let us take the holder on the ice tomorrow? Daddy, can we go skating on our rink tonight....?"

Hubby was silent, very silent.