Not in Toronto, Day 2

I had to be the tooth fairy last night! Me!

Andrew's way more enthusiastic about this whole tooth business. I think he tried to yank out Rachel's tooth every single night last week. I'm more of an it'll-fall-out-when-it's-ready kind of person, myself. I think Rachel is, too.

We had a movie night last night; we watched Frozen and had leftover pizza from earlier in the week. Rachel took one bite of pizza and started screaming.

"Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" she screamed.

"What?" I asked.

"My toof jus' feh outta my mouf!" she mumbled.

"Go take care of it," I instructed, noticing blood/saliva starting to dribble down her chin.

"Pause duh mofie," she said.

I remember the tooth-loosing stage but I don't think I ever lost a tooth while I was eating. That's got to be an odd sensation. I wonder if that's why people have nightmares about their teeth falling out.

Anyway, Rachel lovingly placed her tooth in an empty kleenex box a fairy house on her dresser and fell asleep dreaming of payment. I came so close to forgetting but remembered right before going to bed and fished four quarters out of our change jar (that we've been toting around since we got married (Andrew's actually been toting it around even longer since it's technically his laundry money from college)).

I swapped the tooth for the quarters, thinking about what an odd exchange it is. Why do we do it? How did it start?

I suppose there was once a child who hoarded everything and a parent who was willing to part with a coin or two in order to toss the tooth without creating a fight. That's my theory on the whole tooth fairy business.

This morning Miriam raced into my bedroom.

"Rachel got four cents!" she said in an excited whisper.

"She did?" I gasped, feigning surprise.

"Wanna see?" Miriam said, racing back to the girls' room. "They're nickels!" she beamed when she came back.

"Those are quarters," I said. "So all together she got one whole dollar!"

"Rachie!" Miriam squealed, turning on her heel and running off to find her sister. "You got one dollar!!! Isn't that funny because there's four of these...? I don't know how this works!"

Money can be confusing.

The night Andrew left he was fretting about Canadian currency.

"I just realized I'm going to a foreign country!" he panicked.

"My home and native land," I responded.

"I have to take a bus to the metro and the metro to the hotel and I have to pay in exact change. How am I going to find $3 in Canadian money?! ATMS only give out higher bills. I'll have to find a bank or break a bill in a store. That means I'll have to talk to someone. I don't want to have to talk to anyone at the airport. What am I going to do?"

"You need $3?" I asked. "I've got that."

I got out my jar of money that I've been lugging around since...well...a long time. Considering it's full of Canadian coins it's safe to say I've been lugging it around since high school—maybe even middle school. I dug around, pulled out our stash of Egyptian pounds and Jordanian dinars, and finally got down to the coins at the bottom.

"Here," I said presenting two coins to Andrew.



"That's it? This is three dollars?" he asked.

"Yup. The gold one is called a Loonie and the other is a Toonie."

"Toonie and Loonie," he repeated. "Why isn't it called a One-ie?"

"The Loonie came first," I explained. "It has a loon on it. The Toonie was named after the Loonie—it's like a mix of 'two' and 'Loonie.' Come on. Catch up."

A better word for 'mix' would have been portmanteau.

We showed the coins to Rachel and she ogled over them, remarking how strange they were.

"This one's not even round!" she said about the Loonie. "And this one is like two coins in one!" she said about the Toonie.

I don't have many Canadian bills but she'd be in shock over those, too. They're so pretty and colourful.

Funnily enough, last night I rode the exercise bike while I watched How I Met Your Mother—and the episode I was on is called Dual Citizenship, about Robin (the token Canadian) trying to get American citizenship to avoid being deported. She ends up going back to Canada and realizing she doesn't fit in there anymore (she's become too Americanized) but that she also doesn't fit in in the States (because she's too Canadian) but comes to terms with it in the end.

She says something like, "Don't you get it? I'm not a woman with no country. I'm a woman with two countries!" and decides to become a dual citizen.

I relate to her feelings about citizenship quite well.

Before Andrew left I asked him if he wanted anymore Canadian money to carry, just in case.

"No, I'm good," he said. "It's not like I'll be going shopping or anything."

"Oh, you'll be going shopping," I assured him.

"What for?" he asked, clueless.

"You're going to Canada," I hinted. "What do you think you'll be getting?"

"Oh," he said, clueing in. "Probably some ketchup chips and stuff."

"Yeah," I said, nodding my head.

He's lived abroad before. He knows that no one could visit us in Egypt without bringing a jar of peanut butter to satiate our  never-ending craving for the stuff. He should understand. And he does, I think. It just takes him a minute for him to remember.

He sent me an email yesterday saying he also is bringing back some Maple Leaf Cream Cookies.

I love that man. He knows that the way to a transplanted Canadian girl's heart is through her stomach.

Oh, and, by the way, he also presented at the conference yesterday and said that went well but we all know the real reason he went was to bring me back unobtainable treats.