Family Day

7:00 am -- Peja comes in and wakes me up. I tell her to pick out her school duds and leave me the hell alone. Actually, I say it much more kindly, in that I only grunt.

7:30 am -- Peja is standing in front of me in a pink skirt, blue tights, and a purple shirt. And she's telling me the time.

7:45 am -- I'm cooking something. Something is toasting. Sienna is packing a lunch for Peja.

8:05 am -- I'm eating something. At our low japanese table that just couldn't hurt my knees any more.

9:10 am -- I'm on a school bus. With 70 children. It's so fucking loud I can't believe it. We are going to an apple orchard. Most of them have never been on a school bus before (nearly everyone walks / gets driven to Peja's school), and they are wringing every ounce of fun and volume out of the experience. I am dying and not sure I'm awake yet. Right behind me, another dad starts up a rousing chorus of "The Wheels on the Bus". Welcome to hell.

9:30 -- "Charlie" (not "Mr. Apple", as the kids were so hoping he'd be called), tells us the proper way to pick an apple, and answers questions so planted that I swore I was watching my high school improv team*. "What kinds of apples do you grow here?" And so on.

9:40 -- I am picking apples.

10:00 -- It was 9 degrees when we walked to school. I swear it's 35 in the orchard. Not a breath of wind. I might pass out.

10:20 -- We are looking for the queen bee. She's got a green dot, apparently. The kids are saying she is hurt. I have no idea.

10:45 -- I am being tempted in the gift shop by $2.50 mini apple pies.

11:05 -- I return to the bus to find my pile of extra clothes has been pillaged. Peja's pink *name brand* jacket is missing. Poor little *name retracted* is wearing it. I honestly believe she has no idea how it got on her. I ask for it back. She takes it off, believing I am stealing her jacket. I point out the label that says "PEJA" on the tag, mostly so people around don't think I'm stealing this coat. She will always remember me as the man that stole her coat.

11:20 -- After a slightly more relaxed bus ride (it helps that I was more awake, and no one started "99 bottles of beer" -- thank-you John), we are back at the school, and I ask Peja if she wants to come home for lunch. She wants to stay at school, and lays claim to one of the two $2.50 mini apple pies I bought for me and Sienna. Peja has refused every bit of apple pie I have ever offered her until this moment. I sigh and promise to share.

11:25 am -- Return home, where Sienna is mid-visit with our mid-wife. We talk about leaving the cord attached. We joke about our labour plans. We joke about real estate prices in the area. It is a good meeting, in which we are left with many decisions to decide at some imaginary future time.

1:30 pm -- Meet with our doula. We tell labour stories. We talk about leaving the cord attached. We joke about our labour plans. I joke about basketball. We discuss bake sales. It is a good meeting, in which we are left with many decisions to decide at some imaginary future time.

3:25 pm -- We meet Peja at school and sit on shady benches and chat with parents for an hour while Peja plays with her friends in the big-kids' yard.

5:45 pm -- We take Peja to her first ever swimming lesson. All the little people line up and the 5 or 6 instructors read our their names and take them off to their respective areas. Peja gets the hippy-looking guy. I am jazzed.

6:55 pm -- I give Peja a bath, wash her hair, brush her teeth/hair, read her a heavily edited chapter of "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator", and say goodnight.

10:15 pm -- I am happy.

* my highschool improv team used to force the pit band to yell out suggestions they had prepared in advance. My bandmates would purposefully yell out the wrong plant at the wrong time, "Alright, we need a profession" -- "Birthday Cake!", and then they'd ask for a kind of food.