Halloween

As the air turns colder, the leaves start changing colours and plant life starts to wilt and shrivel away, I know that Halloween is just around the corner.

When I was pregnant and found out that my due date was the first week of November I kept wishing that I would have a Halloween baby. A perfect excuse to go all out every single year. It didn't look promising considering that first babies have a tendency to go overdue. Then, when my blood pressure was acting up and more difficult to control, my OB decided that an induction would be prudent. She gave me the option of November 2nd or October 30th. Both were relatively interesting dates as the November one is the day before my mother's birthday and October 30th was close to Halloween. I decided that close to Halloween was better than after Halloween and opted for the 30th.

I was pleasantly surprised when my induction did not work and I ended up with a c-section and delivered Corwin at 7:05am on Halloween! Wowee! I got my Halloween baby!

As a kid, who wouldn't love Halloween! Dress up like anything you want and then go knocking on doors begging for candy. I still remember the first time I ever went trick or treating. I was in the first grade - my cousin/brother Jack came over to take me out trick or treating. My mother dressed me in one of her dresses, complete with a hat, jewels and I vaguely remember gloves and high heels. Having never done it before I felt a little lost and overwhelmed at what I was supposed to do. The idea is a bit strange - go to strangers' homes and knock on the door and wait for candy. My mother had bought me a little plastic pumpkin to hold my loot and clutched in hand, we were on our way.

I went to a few houses and knocked on the door. I didn't say much, a bit on the shy side and not really knowing what to do. They just said the proverbial "Hello! What do we have here?" and "Oh aren't you sweet?" gave me my candy and sent me on my way. Then there was one house that made me want to turn back home and cry. I knocked on the door and a man answered.

"Hi," I said.
"Hello. What are you supposed to be?"
"A little lady."
"I see. Do you want some candy?"
"Yes please?"
"What do you say?"
I was dumb founded. Didn't I just say please? Maybe he didn't hear me. I said please again.
"Nope, that's not it."
"Happy Halloween?"
"Nope."
"How are you?"
"Nope." The man was looking both amused and disturbed. I was beginning to think I should run away.
"Thank you?" I was really grasping at straws.
"Nope."
"Pretty please?"
"Nope."
This was getting annoying... how long was he going to play this stupid game with me? Finally he must have given up with my ignorance and said, "You're supposed to say TRICK OR TREAT!" Gave me my candy and shut the door.

I was mortified! Of course! I'd seen that on TV before. I didn't know I was really supposed to say it though. What if they said, trick? What would I have done then? I was also the product of immigrant parents who never even bothered to lie to me about Santa Claus (whole other story!) so how would I know what the custom of trick or treating was? I took Jack's hand and said, "I'm ready to go home now."

Thankfully, that man did not squash my halloween spirit. I went trick or treating with some friends the next year and I screamed TRICK OR TREAT! as loud as the other kids did and all was well again. I soon graduated from my little plastic pumpkin to a plastic bag and then to the mother of all halloween bags - the pillow case. I loved coming home and emptying my loot out on my bedroom floor and then sorting and examining my spoils into neat little piles.

Now that I'm an adult, I look forward to carving pumpkins, making my halloween treat bags, decorating the house (although I wish I had more storage space to get even more decorations) and if I could get away with it, I'd still go out with my pillow case and go trick or treating. Now that I have a Halloween baby, I'll be able to have even more fun and he'll have costume parties every year! Hooray! I can't wait until Corwin is old enough to go trick or treating. Can't beat a birthday where you get lots of free candy!

Things that go beep in the night

After an uneventful Thanksgiving, I trudged upstairs to try and get to bed earlier than usual. It was close to 11pm by the time I had finished brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed. I snuggled into our bed with my novel, laying down quietly next to Corwin who was fast asleep nested in between some pillows. Being a relatively cold night, Pirx (our siberian husky) had also decided to join us on our bed and was already in a twitchy paw sleep. I had only started to read my book when Corwin started stirring and then started crying. Ahh, midnight feed.... I sat up and held him close and started nursing. Not 5 minutes into nursing there was suddenly a "beep!" from the hall outside our bedroom. Smoke detector battery.

Pirx's ears perked up and he lay on the bed with his head up looking alarmed. Corwin had pulled off my breast and was also alert to this new and unfamiliar noise. I encouraged Corwin to continue nursing and tried to settle Pirx down again.

"Beep!"

Pirx was up and out of bed quickly and Corwin had pulled off again, confused at the noise. Pirx was already displaying his panicky tendency when we have power outages and he hears a similar beeping sound (I believe from the batteries hooked up to our desktop computers). He skulked to our bathroom and finding no place "safe" he looked at me as I tried to get Corwin to nurse.

"Beep!"

And with that last beep Corwin clamped down with all six of his teeth on my breast. "OWWWWW!" I yelled as I yanked my mangled nipple out of his mouth. Corwin looked at me absolutely freaked out and horrified and opened his mouth wide and started wailing, big tears forming and rolling out of his eyes. Damnit!! By this time, Pirx had run into our main bath and I heard some strange and unfamiliar noises coming from there. I tried to soothe Corwin, but then

"Beep!"

"Bloody hell," I said and plunked a screaming and crying Corwin into his crib. I peeked into the main bath as I headed down the stairs to find a replacement battery. Pirx had managed to get himself into the tub (an absolute first since he was a pup and had a bath in there) and was cowering behind the shower curtain. I chuckled to myself at my brave dog as I went to the basement to find a 9V battery.

Through continuous wailing from Corwin, I was grateful to find a new battery in the basement and got prepared to eliminate the beeping. Pirx had run out of the bathroom at some point and as I got back to the top of the stairs, he was standing in our bedroom doorway trembling in absolute terror.

"Pirx, everything is fine," is apparently translated into dog speak as "Go hide - the world is exploding" as he quickly ran back into the bathroom and I observed what the odd sounds were before, as he awkwardly climbed into the bathtub again.

Corwin of course was still screaming like someone was trying to rip off his limbs. I called out to him but since he couldn't see me he kept shrieking. As I tried to reattach the smoke detector, stupid flecks of sprayed on builder's popcorn ceiling rained down into my eye. I must have been quite a sight, dressed in only my nursing bra and pajama bottoms, standing on a stool in the middle of the hall cursing and trying to soothe a screaming child and convince my dog that it's not the end of the world.

Finally it was attached and the screaming had not let up. Pirx was still hiding and but thankfully it was no longer beeping. I decided that the moment needed some documentation so I grabbed my camera and produced the following photos from my late evening.

I returned to Corwin after the photo session and picked him up and tried to go back to soothing and nursing. After he'd take a few sucks, he'd pull off and cry at me again, reiterating his disgruntled position and the horrible treatment he had to endure. It was close to midnight by the time he quieted down and I decided that reading was not in the cards and turned out the light.

Meryl!!!

It all started with a friendship from being college roommates. Meryl Streep and Marianne McKenna (architect for the Royal Conservatory of Music, close to the ROM) both went to Yale for their Masters and were roommates. Long time friends, Meryl was planning on coming to support Marianne and see her latest work. One thing led to another and a very special event was planned.

Around 6pm last night, my BFF and I arrived at the ROM and stood in line waiting to be let in to see Meryl Streep interviewed by Johanna Schneller, a columnist from the Globe and Mail. We chatted about various things outside, among them what our favourite Meryl movie was. During that conversation I commented about her outstanding and heart wrenching performance in Sophie's Choice and that I would not care to see that movie again, especially now being a mother.

At 6:30 they finally started to let us in. We found some seats and waited anxiously for Meryl. I noticed one of the special event managers that I knew from planning weddings. I went over and spoke to him briefly to catch up. He told me that Meryl had been very specific about the details of this event. She wanted it to be intimate and very special so she requested it be at the ROM and the room that she wanted could only hold 700 people.

The director of the ROM came out with a few words and also congratulated us all for being able to get tickets to this event. Apparently it sold out very quickly without any actual advertising. Then he introduced some guy from Infiniti, one of the night's sponsors and he spoke for a while. Then the President and CEO of the Bay and Hudson's Bay Company (another sponsor) spoke for a while and then the director for the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the ROM spoke for a while. I sat twiddling my thumbs and tweaking my camera, not paying attention to any of it. Where was Meryl?

Finally, the director of the ROM reappeared and made his introductions to Johanna and Meryl. The crowd rose and clapped and cheered. As Meryl sat down she chuckled and said that she felt like she was on a blind date with 700 people watching her. Love her... sigh... Johanna began.... and wouldn't shut up. I commented that perhaps she'd allow Meryl to get some words in since she was who we paid to see. Johanna was by far one of the worst interviewers I've ever seen. Her voice was grating, there was no flow and instead of drawing out more information and engaging Meryl in conversation she'd say, "Let's look at a clip." She also had an annoying laugh and could not edit herself. She spoke far too much. Ugh.... The way they had set up the stage also made it difficult for Meryl to see the clip, so she had to turn and strain to see what Johanna was showing the rest of us.

Meryl however was great. She doesn't take herself too seriously and she loves what she does. She's got a great sense of humour and is very sarcastic. If you've ever seen her acceptance speeches at awards, that is the same person that we saw last night. She just seems like a real person - not some high and mighty celebrity. She talked about being younger and insecure about how she looks. How she contemplated getting her nose done so it would be slightly smaller and a little bit higher. She said she slept on her face, pushing her nose up for a year, hoping that it would stay that way. She thought she was too fat. She had all the same insecurities that most women have but she also acknowledged that it was because she wasn't labeled as a beauty that she received some of the opportunities that she did. She also said she's attracted to women who are in one way or another "ugly" and wants to portray them.

Johanna asked her about her costars and whether she knew when they were intimidated working with her. Meryl hung her head down, and said "Oh yes... I know." Then she said that at the first rehearsal she will inevitably forget her lines or flub something "Please pass me that grass" instead of glass and the stars that put her up on the pedestal then realize that she too makes mistakes and suddenly everyone is back on the same playing field again.

At this point, Johanna said the reason why other stars put her up on the pedestal is because of performances like this - cue the clip. Sophie's Choice.... the "scene". There I was, absolutely horrified that they were actually showing this clip. I couldn't watch it - I felt ill, nauseous, like I needed to get some air. Thankfully that clip is in German, and as I glanced up from time to time to see where it was and how much longer I'd have to endure, the tears started flowing and I buried my head down. I didn't understand the language, and yet I understood every word that Meryl was saying just by how she said it and my heart ached. I was sobbing and shaking. I was having an ugly cry at Meryl's interview. The sound of her daughter screaming for her as she's taken away by the Nazi was agonizing and unbearable. My BFF reached her arm around me and started rubbing my back trying to make me feel better. I needed the clip to be over. As I had predicted in the line as we were waiting, the scene was much more heart wrenching now that I was mother. I felt devastated for her. I hated Johanna more.

Meryl turns from the screen, obviously moved by the scene herself and she speaks with a quiver in her voice. Johanna asks, "How did you prepare for a scene like this?" Meryl said she read the script once the first time she was given it, and then she didn't read it again until the scene was being shot. This particular one, she read 20 minutes before shooting and it was done in one take. When Meryl was on Oprah, they played this same clip and she seemed noticeably uncomfortable as she did last night. She admitted to Oprah that she had not watched that scene back until that very moment (I read this on IMDB). Way to make your interviewee uncomfortable there Johanna! I had also read somewhere that Meryl was a relatively new mother having had her first born child only a few years earlier so that scene was particularly difficult for her.

She was also asked about the numerous male leads she had the opportunity of playing against. Which one was her best kisser? Sam Neill (her costar from Cry in the Dark) she said quickly..."Because he's here tonight!!" she laughed. I also loved that she said in the Australian accent "It's the dingo ate your baby movie for those of you who haven't seen it." And apparently, there are fans who still say this to her.

Another thing I learned about Meryl is that her ah ha! moment came when she was 15 and in high school. They had done the Music Man and during the curtain call, the audience gave her a standing ovation and she really liked it.

As an aside.... and I find this particularly endearing and funny - in doing some additional research about her filmography and her biography I learned that her husband's name is Don......... GUMMER!!! Ha!!! I feel closer to her already! Thanks Meryl for a wonderful night! And thanks to my mom and my little Gummer who were able to figure bedtime out with me there and allowed me to have a night out!

Halloween a Whoring?

PB and I had a conversation last year? Or maybe two years ago now after I showed him some photos that a contemporary put on Facebook from Halloween. Female, attractive and single and with what I'm assuming is her group of single friends. All of them were wearing tarty outfits - sexy maid, sexy kitten, sexy mouse, sexy devil... you get the picture. In Poland, Halloween is the day of the dead. It's the day that families goes to the cemeteries, cleans up the graves of their deceased loved ones, and leave candles and some flowers. It's not about dressing up in costumes and trick or treating. So we started talking about Halloween and in particular the costumes that women choose to wear.

Now, in my trampier days, I also gravitated towards the "sexier" costumes. In fact, my last year in high school, I wore a scandalous black cat costume - skin tight black velvet body suit with long tail attached, cut high in the thighs, black pantyhose, black high heels and a head band with cat ears. I was the talk of many people as I paraded through the halls of my school. I knew they were talking about me, but having grown up as one of the geekiest kids in school and then becoming relatively attractive, I knew it would garner attention and I liked it. Total tart.

Halloween has become a day where young women can wear a totally trashy outfit, look completely sleazy and it's considered normal. Wear it on a different day, and she's just asking for labels and trouble. Are women in such desperate need of attention from the opposite sex that we feel the need to portray ourselves as sex objects one day out of the year?

This phenomenon was even found in the movie Mean Girls. The main character, in voice over, as the movie pans over a high school Halloween party says, "In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it." The main character dresses as a zombie bride and one of the "slut girls" asks her why she's wearing something so scary. Simple, because it's Halloween.

So, when did this change happen? Was it just part of evolution? When I was going to high school, midway through, they changed my school to an Academy which meant uniforms. There were expectations as to how short the skirts could be - mine was far above what was considered acceptable, but because teachers adored me, I got away with it. Short skirt? Check. High heels? Check. Double standards from the teachers? Check. Bad reputation (undeservedly I might add)? Check. My "skirt" was even graffitied about in the girls' washroom - labeled as a belt. Very nice. Then after I left, every time I'd drive by the school, I'd notice the skirts were getting shorter and shorter and even I was aghast! In retrospect, I know why I had such a short skirt. I got attention and I liked it. Good or bad, it was better than not being noticed as I had been for so long before. So, is it poor self esteem that drives girls to wear slutty outfits for Halloween?

So, our hypothesis is: women who are dressed in non slutty costumes are much more confident and have higher self esteem than those who are wearing slutty outfits. Hrm.... makes you wonder doesn't it? Over compensation at it's very best.

Two heads better than one

I love that despite PB being almost half way across the world we still have very interesting and meaningful conversations.

On my web board, there was a discussion about extending the time infants and toddlers should be in a car seat rear facing. Right now, the law (at least in Ontario) is the child must be at least 20lbs. and 1 year old to be forward facing. Corwin has already reached the weight limit and by the end of the month he'll be a year old and we'll be turning the seat around, or at least this is what I thought before I read my board thread.

The danger about forward facing at a young age is that a child's head is still quite large and heavy compared to the body and with a frontal impact, the only restraint the child has is for his/her body by the straps. The head can snap forward and can sever the spinal cord and cause what is known as an internal decapitation. However, by keeping the child in a rear facing car seat, in a frontal collision, the head is supported by the back of the seat therefore cradling it and protecting it from snapping forward or back. Sounds like keeping them rear facing for much longer would be better right?

That's where PB steps in and says, but wouldn't the opposite hold true? Meaning, if the child was rear facing, but we were rear ended, his/her head would now snap forward as in the case of a forward facing frontal collision. Huh... I never would have thought of it that way.

I do however believe that frontal collisions probably occur at a much higher speed than rear ending.... at least this is what I think safety boards and Pediatric associations would like us to believe since they all think that rear facing for longer is safer. So, if that's the case then for safety purposes maybe we won't be changing the seat to forward facing at the end of the month, although Corwin's legs are getting more and more uncomfortable.

This conversation was interesting in other aspects though because it really illustrates the difference in how we (PB and I) think and analyze different situations. With his engineering background and a much more thorough knowledge of physics, his analysis about the rear facing vs. front facing was very automatic for him whereas for me, I was very much in the "wow... I never thought about it that way" frame of mind.

The thread also mentioned someone who had seen a documentary about building airplanes and how rear facing was actually safer. I mentioned this to PB who said, "Well obviously. Planes don't travel like cars and there is nothing significant to cause a rear end collision. It's virtually almost always a frontal impact of some sort." (Or at least something to that extent). Again, another "wow... I never thought...." from me.

So there I was now feeling kind of dumb, for not thinking of these seemingly simplistic analyses. PB then mentioned that I shouldn't feel dumb, it's just because we think about things very differently based on the knowledge we have. He went on to say that there are many things he doesn't look at from any other angle because it simply doesn't occur to him - like colour coordination of things or anything related to social interaction.

So, I'll never be Einstein and he'll never be Van Gogh but together we do complement each other quite well. PB is very SMRT.... :-)

Oh, and as an aside, coprolites were called bezoars but they were incorrectly identified. A bezoar is a mass found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, usually the stomach. So, Harry didn't shove a fossilized piece of dung down Ron's throat afterall.... but still, a mass that is trapped in a gastrointestinal system? That's still pretty nasty.

Learn something new everyday

I have never been of scientific mind. I only took science up until Grade 10 and PB is constantly agonizing over my lack of knowledge in basic physics and chemistry and has threatened some home schooling for me. Ack!! Ask me anything to do with art history, cooking or other creative activities and I'd be able to go on and on but science and math? Forget about it!

From time to time though, I do ask PB some sort of science question and he is always eager to share his knowledge or make something up based on his working knowledge that is plausible that I'll believe anyway. Sometimes as he launches into a lesson, I find myself quickly bored, but since there is inevitably some sort of test at the end to confirm I've learned something, I do try and pay attention.

The other night, before PB left for work again, we were watching an episode of Futurama. During the episode, there was a moment when some of the characters were walking through a museum and on display were a series of coprolites. I had never heard of a coprolite so I inquired PB about them. The DVD was immediately paused and PB stared at me. "You've never heard of a coprolite before?"

"No," I replied. He then went on to tell me that coprolites are fossilized piles of shit. Lovely!! He continued on to say that they are very important to the scientific world because they reveal a great deal about animals in prehistoric times and even humans and their diets. Uh huh.... trying to imagine being a paleontologist and being excited over some fossilized shit made me giggle. Yup... that's how mature I am.

I did some more research about coprolites. Apparently, they are also called bezoar stones. Hrm... I recall coming across that word recently, and yes, now I remember where. It was in one of the Harry Potter stories - where a bezoar is used as an antidote for poison. I have to wonder now, are they one of the same thing? Does that mean that Harry rammed a piece of fossilized shit into Ron's mouth to save him from a horrible poison? Blech!!!

Further investigation will be required, although not tonight. It's been a long day and I think Corwin may be teething again as he's been sleeping worse than usual, even for him. I'm off to bed soon!