crooked house

The Dunkley Motorized Pram From 1923

This is the Dunkley Pramotor -- a motorized pram sold in 1923. "We should get that. That's what I'm thinking," says Sylvie as she looks over my shoulder.

Whenever I had to lug around one of those incrediblyawkward and heavy removable car seats with one of my babies in it -- say into the grocery store -- I liked to imagine that in the future, a podlike car seat would hover in the air beside the mother, trailing her wherever she went. Recently I tossed around the idea of a kind of remote control stroller that would follow a parent, so he or she could be hands free for shopping or holding the hands of bigger toddlers or whatever. Are these ideas as crazy as this stroller looks? Via I Cannot Go to Bed -- There is Epic Shit Happening on the Internet, which I found through Lizzie Skurnick.

Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies

Arthur recreates 12 Angry Men.

Arthur recreates American Beauty.

Arthur recreates Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are more at Studio Arthur. Thanks @sue_oz!

How To Make A Dowager Countess Hat

Holly and I made a Dowager Countess hat for The Awl. You know, from Downton Abbey? Go find out how to make one for yourself. And see some more deeply unflattering photos of me. (Man, is that mirror ever dirty.)

Sylvie, the Queen Mother?

Luke and I were just watching footage of Princess Diana's car accident on youtube and looking at google images of the royal family whilst discussing the possibility that Prince William will succeed Queen Elizabeth instead of Prince Charles -- as you do when you are a Canadian, much as Americans idly discuss, I don't know, say Paris Hilton's hair extensions of an evening -- when we noticed that Sylvie bears an uncanny resemblance to the Queen Mother. We should get her to an astrologer pronto. If she is her reincarnation, maybe she could get us tickets to the upcoming royal wedding.

Polo Is a Sport and Breastfeeding Kittens

A couple of nights ago I had an extremely vivid dream that I couldn't help sharing with Luke at breakfast. "I dreamed I had another baby," I told him, expecting either delight or horror from him, or a mixture of both.

He nodded calmly.

"And the baby had a full head of red hair!" I continued. "Isn't that funny? Both you and Sylvie had hardly any hair when you were born."

He nodded.

"But the funniest part was that he was born able to talk," I said. "The first time Daddy held him, the baby announced, 'Polo is a sport.'"

"What's polo?" asked Luke.

"Uh, it's a game where people ride horses and hit balls with some kind of stick," I said.

"Then polo is not a sport!" he said. 

I refrained from telling him the rest of the dream, in which the baby turned into a kitten and I debated whether or not to breastfeed. "I don't think I'm up for breastfeeding a kitten," I said to David, trying to convince myself it was okay not to.

I was also annoyed that the ultrasound hadn't revealed the fact of my baby's kitten-ness earlier. "Although," I announced to the woman giving birth next to me in the giant gymnasium that served as a communal delivery room for hundreds if not thousands of labouring women, "My first baby was also a kitten. Then I had Luke and Sylvie before this kitten. It happens."

David and I spent hours dealing with the bureaucracy involved in getting special kitten formula, to no avail. Soon it had been so long that my baby/ kitten had gone without sustenance that I feared for his life. So I marched into the laboratory adjoining the gymnasium and started making a scene. All the technicians eyed me suspiciously, muttering to one another that humans never gave birth to kittens and that I was just trying to get attention. I was flabbergasted, hurt, and deeply worried about the kitten's well-being. That's what you get for not breastfeeding.

Sylvie Recommends: CAT!

Sylvie has a new favourite book that she can't stop babbling about. It's called Cat by Matthew Van Fleet and everyone in this house has now become deeply, intimately familiar with it. I know this book better than I know my husband. I know this book better than I know I'll need another coffee before I can face reading it again.

Actually, it's not that bad. The first fifty or so times we read it together were fun. It's got many, many good photos of cats, a rollicking rhyme, and lots of pull-tabs and flaps and so on. It's even got a squeaky toy that Sylvie can actually make squeak -- no mean feat where baby books are concerned as many of them of them contain squeaky toys or sound buttons are too difficult for little hands to manipulate.

The best thing about this book is the way Sylvie has now begun to say the word "CAT!" Of course she calls ducks, dogs, and lemurs "CAT!" too, but with the incredible diversity of cats pictured in this book, who can blame her? Perhaps she will grow up to rework the system of biological classification, irrefutably demonstrating that the first forms of life on this planet were not simple cells -- prokaryotes -- but teensy tiny, practically invisible "CATS!"

Even Luke knows this book by heart. As an added bonus, he can now spell the word "CAT!" Note Sylvie's look of intense concentration.

Baby On Board

Here is how becoming a parent changes you: before I had a baby, I thought those "Baby On Board" signs were ludicrous. "Yeah, okay," I'd say whenever I saw one. "Sure. If this car suddenly careers completely out of my control, I won't hit you. Even though I won't have any control over the car, I'll be certain not to hit you. Because, you know, you've got a baby in that car. And babies are clearly more important than other human beings. And therefore I'll be able to magically avoid hitting your car."

Shortly after Luke was born, my mother bought one of those signs for our car. And, although I felt silly about it, I let her put it in the back window. Partly out of superstition, but partly because I had begun to think that in some cases, it might actually help. Say the car behind you on the highway suddenly careers wildly out of control, yes, but say the driver of that car has a split second in which to decide to whether to swing the wheel wildly in the direction of your car, the one containing a baby in the backseat, or in the direction of some other car with no one in the backseat, or some elderly person with a terminal disease who has already lived a long and full life in the backseat, or even, say, in the direction of the cement divider in the middle of the road. Or something. Just, say. In those cases, such a sign might actually be helpful. You never know. And so you find yourself rationalizing attempts to control the uncontrollable. Because what appears uncontrollable might actually be somewhat controllable or slightly controllable or even a teensy tiny smidge controllable. This is what it means to be a parent. 

Now, having said that, I realize I haven't addressed the notion that a baby's life is clearly more important than some other, older human being's life. To a parent, that seems self-evident, at least until you start asking Sophie's Choice type questions about the baby's siblings and then don't be surprised when said parent curls up on the floor in the fetal position and starts keening pitifully. Still, I do understand that all human life is valuable. Which is why I have contemplated producing other versions of those "Baby on Board" signs such as "Senior Citizen On Board. I've Made It This Far. Please Don't Kill Me Now." Or "Middle-Aged Person On Board. I'm Not Finished Paying Off the Mortgage." Or even "Adolescent On Board. I Know You Want to Kill Me But It's Against the Law."

Is It Diner Lingo or The Name of a Sexual Position?

Photo taken from The Food Pornographer.

1. Foreign Entanglements
2. Bent Spoon
3. Shoot From the South
4. Eve With a Lid On
5. Folded Deck Chair
6. Adam and Eve On a Raft
7. Pie in the Sky
8. Maiden's Delight
9. Jellyfish
10. Bun Pup
11. Draw One in the Dark
12. Pirate's Bounty
13. Peel It Off the Wall
14. Drag It Through the Garden
15. Southern Exposure
16. Love Apples
17. Frenchman's Delight
18. Heart Attack on Rack
19. The Butler
20. Balloon Juice
21. Zeppelins in the Fog
22. Bloodhounds in the Hay
23. Rodeo
24. Put Out the Lights and Cry

One of the following links is not remotely work-or-child-safe:
1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, and 25 were all found here.
2, 5, 7, 9, 13, 16, 20, and 24 were all found here.
I happen to think the diner lingo sounds much sexier. Then again, I'm hungry. (I was trying to use this pre-baby time wisely, honest I was. I was reading Abigail Thomas's Thinking About Memoir and her reference to "Adam and Eve on a Raft" sent me off on a bit of a tangent.)

Pleasantly Passive Aggressive New Protest Methods

I just read this unintentionally hilarious article about how the French are protesting Nicolas Sarkozy's policies by reading his least favourite book, The Princesse de Cleves. (Via Maud on twitter.) At least, it's hilarious to me. As a protest method, I rank it right up there with Paddington Bear's "hard stare."

Imagine the scene: Sarkozy wanders sadly through the streets of Paris. Thousands of  haughty, well-dressed people are strolling about or waiting for buses; smoking elegant little cigarettes or drinking coffee or wine at outdoor cafes; they are entwining their fingers, their lips or their legs on park benches. At the same time they are all ostentatiously pretending to read the hated book, while looking out of the corners of their eyes and down their very long noses at their chastened president. Sarkozy begins to weep. He pulls out his cell phone and calls his aide to tell him to suspend the 50 per cent cap on income tax. Carla Bruni appears on a wrought iron balcony overhanging the cobblestone street, clears her throat in an attractive manner, and strumming her guitar, begins to croon a love song.

The world needs more non-violent, passive aggressive protest methods like these. Let's make a list, shall we?

1. Read your opponent's least favourite book.
2. When walking, chant the playground rhyme "Step on a crack, break <insert opponent's name here>'s back." Then: deliberately step on all the cracks.
3. The next time you have to go out, imagine what your opponent would wear to such an event and then: wear the opposite. Example: he would wear a tasteful and very expensive black suit, so you'd wear a cheap red dress. That kind of thing.
4. Think about sending your opponent flowers and then: don't do it.
5. The next time you have a cold, every time you sneeze, imagine the vapourized germs floating directly into your opponent's nostrils. It doesn't matter if you live on opposite sides of the planet. It's the idea of the thing.
6. Send your opponent an envelope full of your fingernail clippings.

Okay, maybe those last two are less pleasantly passive aggressive and verging more on the side of just plain weird. Add your own ideas in the  comments or email me.

My New Hobby: Crow Divination

There have been several big black crows hanging around our yard lately. As a somewhat superstitious person, whenever I see a group of them I do a quick head count and attempt to apply the old rhyme to my current circumstances. "One crow sorrow, two crows joy, three crows a girl, four crows a boy" and so on.  (Before I knew the sex of the baby, I was particularly interested in groups of three and four.) But I can never remember the entire rhyme and sometimes there are a lot of crows. So I just looked it up. There are a couple of interesting versions here. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of variation -- for instance sometimes seven is for a secret, sometimes it's for sickness. Eight's even more contradictory -- sometimes it's for a wish, sometimes it's said to mean death. And subsequent investigation only served to confuse the matter further. For example, this page entitled Crow Divination asserts the following principles:

1. Crows are of varying distinction and intelligence, therefore notice must be taken of the varying classes of crows.
2. Crows respond to events with characteristic behavioral patterns, therefore by noting the character of the response one may learn the character of the event
3. Crow behavior and response differs according to time of day.
4. The angle of direction between the observer and the crow has significance.

I'm particularly fond of the first principle. Since some crows, like people, are clearly better than others this gives you a potential out when you are confronted with the ominous, such as the lone crow ("one crow sorrow"). Take a very close look -- does this particular crow look kind of dumb? If so, you can totally discount its prediction.

The Crow Divination page goes on to divide the day into a number of "watches" and provides explanations for the meanings of the calls of crows, depending on the direction from which they emanate. So, for example, if between 6 and 9 am you hear a crow's caw from the "Zenith" direction (whatever that is), a demon will appear. But if you hear that same caw from that same direction between 9 am and 12 noon, you can expect a fulfillment of your wishes.

This is all too complicated and, it seems to me, rather random. So I've decided to begin my own list of meanings. Here's a start:

One crow staring at your feet in surprise, as if you are wearing two different socks: You are wearing two different socks.

One crow approaching from the northeast: Remember to renew your newspaper subscription.

One dimwitted crow looking bashfully in your direction and smiling moonily: You are particularly attractive today. If you do not have a romantic partner, expect to meet someone of mediocre quality who will express an interest in your physique. If you do have a romantic partner, he or she may perform a small household chore, like washing the dishes, unasked tonight.

Two crows tugging at a plastic bag: You are conflicted about recycling. On the one hand, it’s good for the planet. On the other, it’s sometimes a dirty and time-consuming task. (Can also be interpreted to mean rebirth, literally or figuratively, or afterbirth, or as a suggestion to use up leftovers for dinner.)

Any number of crows rearing back their heads with looks of mild disgust when you attempt to converse with them: It’s probably nothing but you might need a breath mint.

Any number of crows rearing back their heads with looks of utter disgust when you attempt to converse with them: You are a bad person.

Note: it can be difficult to distinguish between expressions of mild and utter disgust on the face of a crow. Actually, it can be difficult to distinguish between any expressions on the face of a crow or, indeed, even identify an expression. This can complicate matters. And one must never forget to take into account the class of the crow – does a distinguished crow of great intelligence looking at you with mild disgust outweigh a dim-witted crow looking at you with great fondness? You see how tricky this can get.