For sale, cheap: One 3 year-old boy, not housebroken. Special this week only: 25% off due to argumentative defects. Does not come when called. Talks back. Does not eat. Refuses to blow nose, preferring instead to snort snot into the back of his throat at least fifteen times per minute. Smells like crotch. Whines incessantly. Ability to vomit at will.

Also this week: 75% off one worn out, ineffective, unwashed, self-loathing, androgynous half-woman, half-rottweiler blend. Comes with door-slamming prowess, relentless abdominal pooch and complimentary nightmares.

+++++++

PLEASE BE NOTIFIED the fire sale of aformentioned small boy and growling she-dog has been retracted due to temporary relief as provided by: 1) one medicinal ‘It-Was-Staring-At-Me-Longingly-When-I-Opened-The-Fridge- Seeking-Carrot-Sticks’ Sleeman’s Honey Lager; 2) two hours of comfortably toddler-numbing SellMySoul-o-vision; and 3) one hour-long “family adventure” on sheets of near-rink ice in a torrential freezing rain downpour.

Duly noted: therapeutic alcohol WORKS.

It replays in my head over and over again like those America’s Funniest Home Video montages when they rewind the guy getting kicked in the nuts OOF! and let’s see it again OOF! and let’s see it again OOF!

Except in this case it was a kid projectile vomiting, wailing, vomiting, wailing, the room in suspended animation as everyone stood there, stunned for the world’s longest split second, gaping at the digestive carnage.

Barf splattered on the table, on the floor. The daycare workers leap into action, grabbing a garbage can, donning rubber gloves, insisting that it’s because he’d been crying about wanting his mother, and not flu, or parasite, or bubonic plague. But as I leave I turn back to see him bent over the bucket, poor thing, just barely tall enough to get his head over the lip of the black plastic, and I wonder just how much half-digested food a stomach can hold and think yep, that’s it. ‘Bile’ is my least favourite word.

Meanwhile Evan is collapsed in a heap on a lego mat crying mama, mama, I don’t wanna. Hands full, the kind souls at daycare (we call it 'playschool', a more palatable word) were unable to peel him off me as per usual. I’m tired this morning, hell warmed-over, dismayed at some new distinctly Three-ish behaviour.

I SMACK you on the head! he’d said as I lifted him from the carseat, testing this new bratty-brat-persona. Bossy and insensible and dropping to his knees like James Brown, writhing and kicking on the floor over broken cracker or the wrong underpants or unwelcome hummus.

Thank the fracking stars today is playschool day I hissed under my breath as we'd rolled into the parking lot, tapped and selfish and just plain done. Relishing the ability to leave him there and drive away, go home with just the one baby, simple, easily placated.

Carrying him under one arm like a sack of potatoes, we enter the room just in time to witness the spewing. I deposit him in the opposite corner, snap at him to let go, to stand up, to be anything but the worst possible combination of Raggedy Andy and Mad Cow.

His cries fade as I walk up the stairs. Unfortunately the retching does not.

Walking away feeling the most intense cocktail of appreciation, guilt, relief, revulsion. Thinking how can anyone stay at home with a toddler without a couple of days a week to decompress? at the same time as I can't believe I'm walking away. Just tired, so tired. Working late at night, and just writing to let off steam, not seeing enough of Justin, feeling like a terrible wife. Only hurculean self-control keeps me from writhing and kicking on the floor over broken hormones or the wrong number of pounds or unwelcome saddlebags.

Lusting for playschool days, for sanity. Knowing he loves it there, really and truly. When it’s time to go home he has to be peeled away in just the same fashion, hands full of crafts and artwork and new songs and stories.

As I pull away, Ben snoring in the backseat, Liam finds me as he always does, forever perfect, forever unblemished by stink and tantrum. Don’t be stupid, says the voice. Ben will drive you nuts sometimes, and Liam would have too. How would you have coped? You would have been a snapping, snarling mama. Maybe even still, just with two.

I cried all the way home.

+++++

When there are mamas out there who went home from the hospital empty-handed, I feel obnoxious to vent about what’s ordinary. The rage at losing Liam is distracted by the blessing of Ben. Standing next to those women I am grief-lite. I am a twit, unhinged by barf and daycare.

I’m sorry about that.

They’re staring at me, judging, disapproving, clucking. He’s flailing in the middle of the road, gone limp in a pile of toddler rage. It was funny at first, how it always is: he stops drops and rolls, and it’s my own laughing that makes me unable to wrestle his squirming, indignant noodliness.

But today, waiting a g-d fricking hour for the Chester Basin Annual Santa Claus Parade (and then leaving, with not a single g-d fricking elf in sight), laughing turned to frustration which turned to dismay which turned to forcible confinement which turned to near-child-abuse which turned to an all-out ban on Christmas for the next ten years.

I’m a wreck. I’m still shaking. I need two padded rooms: one for me, and one for him. I’m not taking him anywhere by car ever again. I lack the brute strength required to buckle an enraged rhinoceros into a carseat.

You’re supposed to stay calm, be button-free. Instead: squealing out of the bloody legion parking lot, both of us bawling, one of us covered in vomit, the other behind the wheel screaming the world’s most heartfelt F********************CK!!!!

“Oh, my little junior is so active too,” you say, chortling. I smile, faking affinity, thinking Bullshit. Take my kid and call me in a week. You’re standing on the side of the road and he holds your hand, twiddling the ribbon on his balloon. I see you forty-five minutes and forty-five tantrums later – yours is in his stroller, watching the road, nibbling a cracker.

When does it get better? Does the advent of talking help? How does anyone have more than one child? The thought of it makes me break out in nervous hives. Maybe we're feeding him too well. Maybe a little nutritional lethargy would be just the thing.

Why does everyone else seem to have it together? Why don't people realize that it only makes me feel worse to gawk at us like the spectacle I already know we are? Why doesn’t bribery work? Why do everyone else’s kids seem so complacent?

<Complacent: is that the right word? Thesaurus says: satisfied self-satisfied smug unworried content contented self-righteous. No word has ever been more right.>

He scissors his legs in fury, dislocates both shoulders for easier transmission to the ground. Then the gun goes off and he lunges directly for a) speeding traffic; c) the edge, any edge; c) imminent danger. I make a feeble effort at restraint, shrinking with embarrassment, shame, ineptitude. See paragraph one. Repeat.

+++++++

Upon re-reading: am tempted to delete. I know what you're thinking: You're supposed to stay calm, be button-free. You let him get so upset that he threw up! And you're not helping matters by being upset yourself. You shouldn't be driving when you're feeling out of control like that. You shouldn't curse like that in front of him, let alone be screaming it when he's already freaking out.

Yes: it gives me as much indigestion to live it as it gives you to read it. But quiet meltdowns, private ones, are more toxic than public ones. If you don't acknowledge the stuff you're ashamed of, it eats you, makes you loathe yourself. So here you have it.

It’s an idyllic scene: after supper, the whole family cuddles in front of the fire to play a game of scrabble, go fish, monopoly. We jog, knit, canoe at sunset, go on wildlife jaunts and canvass the neighbourhood for the local animal shelter. The Family Unit prospers, without a stitch of ADD in sight.

But here’s what I’d rather not fess up: I am addicted to America’s Next Top Model. So is Justin (shhh: don't tell anyone). There. It’s done. Our illicit love affair with trash teevee is officially de-closeted. And yes, we do feel dirty afterwards.

I don’t need seventy channels. I just need TLC for What Not to Wear, Showcase for cursing and naughtiness, Spike TV for surprise reruns of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller on those dreary nights when you need to decompress and expect there to be Nothing On.

We don’t buy ice cream. If we did, we’d eat it. Same as cable—once you get used to it not being there, you accept its absence and dive into a good book instead.

Or so I’m told.

Calling Eastlink to order our phone-net-cable bundle for the new house, Justin and I were both struck (as happens every two years or so) with a righteous optimism: a desire to cancel it, cold turkey. We can depend on the fabulousness of Rogers Video Direct for entertainment, and own a few choice DVDs for our tank engine-entranced boy. We’ll own the television—it won’t own us.

I was bolstered by this article, the testament of a man who unplugged his family from the mechanical boob. Best thing we ever did, he says. It’s worth a read. You can’t help but be inspired.

After all, a cable hookup provides 10% quality and 90% surfing and complaining. TV Sucks. <two hours later> TV Still Sucks. Sucks sucks sucks.

And another evening of our lives is vapourized by the big black box. Spent willing it to give us something to chew on when we could have been poring over the Giller Prize nominees or mastering the art of french cooking or doing yoga and feeling at one with the universe.

Or maybe not.

I hesitate for all kinds of habitual reasons. Have you ever cancelled cable? Love it? Failed at it? Wouldn’t dare? Tell me about it. I really want to know: is it worth it?

The winter driving. The ice storms. The power outages. The selling of the firstborn to pay the oil bill. I’ll relish it all compared to the advancing autumn’s doom:

The Damn Cat will want to come indoors soon.

We’ve had upwards of six months of fuzz-free paradise. She finds shade under the deck, skulks through our chin-deep, shaggy lawn and kills the dumbest and slowest moles in the entire province. A grand deal by any standard. But it’s getting cold at night. Before long, we’re going to be de-turding the box and de-fluffing the.. frigging everything. She’s going to whine and scratch and get underfoot and climb in to the cupboards and make crashes and bangs at night (in which case, she will be punted like a football into Hurricane Juan itself).

We used to let her sleep on our bed. Under the sheets. Stranger still: we used to like it, bed-borne litter clingons and all.

Justin:  What smells?
Kate:  Don't worry, it's just the cat's ass.
Justin:  Oh. Okay. <tousles cat's ass affectionately>

We were one of those annoying cat-baby couples. I remember once being concerned about the state of her butt-dreadlocks. The time she caught on fire from walking too close to a candle, I suffered from guilt-induced ulcers for a solid two weeks (this Damn Cat is so furry, she hardly noticed).

Those were very different days. Her demotion is marked by the food we give her now: Wal-Mart brand <shudder>. It’s called ‘Special Kitty’, and consists of 55% rusted paperclips, 10% broken elastic bands, 25% recycled newspaper globules, 5% cornmeal and 5% brown food dye, ground up and spat out in indistinguishable crunchits. A far cry from the organic, free range chicken-cranberry-garlic heart-shaped gourmet she used to get.

It’s not her fault. With all the baby hububb, she could have been much more of a handful than she was. She simply disappeared, accepted the benign neglect we suddenly gave her. It’s not that we don’t want to deal with her anymore. We just don’t want to deal with a cat anymore.

The other day on outdoors play-watch, Justin and I stood over the Damn Cat who lolled belly-up on the gravel, soaking up the sun. She’s almost the same colour as the pavement, he said, hopefully.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. We’re despicable. We laugh at it because most of the time, we don’t mean it. Can you?

The morning’s first unfortunate caller gets it smack in the ear without warning when a benign enough question – how are you? – is answered honestly, for a change:

HORRIBLE! I’m getting my tubes tied because I SUCK.

I’m not cut out for this. When he cries I want to cover my ears, get in a car and drive away. I want to be alone in a dark room for a month. He makes himself puke now for the rewards of escalation – company, activity, the boredom antidote of bleary-eyed parental bickering. And then he fights and flails and I lose it. I can't stay calm. I'm all buttons. I resent him for it, making me World’s Worst Mother.

I don’t want to be selfless anymore. I want my old tits back. I don't want to be needed by anyone. I want to sleep. I’m at the end of my rope, and he’s pushing me beyond it.

I wasn’t going to post this. But there’s nothing more indulgent and untruthful than constant fair weather.

I’m completely demoralized. I feel like every other mother is better at this than I am. Especially those with more than one, who must be made of tougher stock altogether.

He runs along the beach, shovel in one hand, bucket in the other, yelling NOOO! Nooo! No! No! at the waves, high on uncut self-determination. It would usually make me smile. Not today.

It’s been a dreary few days around here. Not much energy to reflect on the ripest peak and glory of summer. This must be the longest unbroken stretch of miserable posts, ever.. capped by what’s to follow. I’ll brighten up after this: I promise. Time to reflect on what’s lucky and sweet.

It all kicked off on my birthday, when we found and then lost the house of our dreams. I haven’t posted about the whole debacle here... I couldn’t bear to. We’re truly heartbroken. It had a Lunenburg foundry kitchen wood oven, and a field of wildflowers, and original wide plank floors, and the requisite clawfoot tub… more than we ever dared hope to find. We fell head over heels. The seller verbally accepted our offer, then changed her mind, decided to sell to someone else. And that was that.

Since then it’s been a pretty melancholy summer, topped off by rivers of baby puke and radioactive snot. I’ll spare you any further details except to say we’ve finally turned a corner: he’s back and smiling again.

And likewise. Just give me a week of normal sleep.

But where are you, home? I want to enlist someone else to go through this on our behalf, to find the love of our lives, our home.. while we relax outside ourselves, drifting high above the mind-bending mess with fruity, slushy drinks and a comforting detachment.

Where are you? I’ve been dreaming of you a long, long time. Feeling one-half justified, optimistic, sensible, to want to love you; and one-half emotional, romantic, impossible to please, to think of you as anything other than a roof and walls.

I wish finding you didn’t matter to me as much as it does. We’re not wealthy. If we were, this process wouldn’t be so dreadfully impossible.

Where are you? Do you even exist? I’m starting to doubt it.

Almost nightly, Justin explodes out of a deep sleep to frantic ‘I’ve crushed/lost/dropped the child’ delusions.

He turns the light on, turns the bed upside down, bashes around the room like a trapped moth.

Whereizze? Whassat? No! Whereizze? Stop! No!

It’s okay, I say. He’s in his crib, he’s safe.

What? He says, unconvinced. What?

The cogs turn and he comes to, realizes he's fallen for it again. Crib? Safe. Oh. Then back into bed. Sorry. Inside of thirty seconds, he is snoring. I spend the next hour tossing and turning, cursing his inherited ability to fall asleep like.. a baby.

We take turns. I used to do it, back in the breastfeeding days. I’d wake, panic-stricken, convinced I’d forgotten him, suffocated him, rolled over onto him. I’d reach for the nearest body and try desperately to pull it towards me, thinking I was saving the baby from tumbling onto the floor. But it wasn’t the baby: it was Justin. Oh. Sorry.

We take turns. Ridiculing each others’ anxiety, diffusing it like a boggart. Someone has to do it.

Laundry. Jiggling. Feeding. Wiping. Standing at the counter with lunch in one hand and baby in the other, whistling The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Each day fills me up, makes me feel busy. It’s because I don’t stop. But there’s not much nutrition there, not much substance. Not much to invigorate body or mind. The evening finds me overwhelmed and bloated, brain filled up to the brim and yet completely empty.

Justin asks me how the day was, and I don’t know what to say. I could tell him about how I’ve decided that President’s Choice laundry detergent is just as good as Tide. But then I’d have to hear myself say that out loud. And that would just be depressing, wouldn’t it?

I don’t mind being a stay-at-home mom, but then the word ‘housewife’ comes into mind and makes me feel pinched and lonely. Like I should start clipping coupons. Or spend an afternoon rearranging the bookshelf. Again.

On another note, I’ve finally agreed we should sell the kayaks. Another door closing, at least for now - a door that led to our old west coast life. So many memories.

Paddling a white sand beach on Thormanby Island at midnight while hundreds of fish darted underneath us, lit up like fireworks by the phosphorescents.

Or that time a sea otter, a rare thing to see, floated leisurely past me on his back, gorging on a pile of mussels perched on his belly.

All the times we had to fight our way out of some rough channel, working against tide, wind and swell, while the bows of our boats crashed down with every wave. The beer at the end of those paddles always felt so cold, so deserved.

There's nothing worse than going to bed freaked out, and waking up crying.

Spent most of yesterday contemplating the possibility of pre-partum depression - is there such a thing? If not, I think I've just invented it.

The wonderful surprise baby shower on the weekend, and then finishing work on Wednesday both hit me in a way I didn't expect. Aside from the financial impact of now being on maternity leave, I'm now facing the transition from career and lovely, cosy relationship with Justin to impending motherhood and bleary-eyed zombiedom.

It's actually happening.

I already feel somewhat trapped, having only days left until we enter this new world of diapers and spit-up and cheerios crunching underfoot for the next several years.

What if our child just drives me nuts? What if he's just a hyper little brat, and more importantly, what is it that I'll do wrong that will create the monster? What if junior grows up to operate a tilt-a-whirl and breathe with his mouth open? Will I have enough patience and love in me to be as happily consumed as every other parent seems to be? Will we ever go kayaking again?

People usually respond with one of two things: 1) "that's just your hormones talking" or 2) "it's different when it's your own baby". I hope both are true.

In the meantime, I am filling my days to the brim with christmasing and chocolate cookie baking and vacuuming and engagements and festooning ... and on and on. I figure if I just keep moving, I won't have time to stop and ponder what's about to happen.

I've got our excellent recording of the Messiah on repeat, loudly enough for the baby to practically feel the timpani vibrating through the floor. It seems to calm the nonstop thinking.