October 22, 2o1o
Today was a blissfully normal day.
At least so far. It's only 7.15 pm, so there is still plenty of time for a crisis or two.
Pennington's was on my list of things to do today, so after we finished at the Community Kitchen, we went to return the two sweaters I bought for my mother last week.
As predicted, they didn't fit. . .too big.
I took them to her Sunday evening. She was already in her pjs, sweater on, blanket wrapped around her, evening cleansing completed, meaning her teeth were in their cup, her face was washed, and she was just waiting for her meds.
When I came into her room, she was watching Antiques Roadshow, which meant that, as usual, I was late.
But because I came bearing gifts she was willing to excuse my tardiness.
Buying things for Mum is a crap shoot, and a professional shopper I am not.
And trying things on is always a challenge.
First, I have to extremely careful to ensure I don't do any damage to her hair.
Every two weeks she visits the salon in the nursing home and get her hair done. She then is particularly careful to make certain that in the next two weeks she keeps her hair as pristine as possible.
Then I have to adjust everything to ensure the proper "fall", meaning it does what it's supposed to do.
Rather than just tell me, say openly, verbalize her discontent, speak her mind, my mother prefers to use "charades" as her preferred method of communication when she is not pleased with something.
In this instance, she wiggled her hand to prove to me that this lovely navy blue cardigan was too big.
The cuff of the sleeve went halfway down her hand.
She looks at me in the way she has always looked at me in such situations.
But this time, just to make sure I was able to capture the meaning of the wiggling hand, she upgrades from charades to show and tell by stating,
"Too big."
I'm not convinced the sweater was too big for the woman who routinely wears two sweaters and a blanket while the heat blasts away at full capacity.
In the middle of October.
By January she may need the cardigan with a little room to fit over the five sweaters she wraps around herself.
But what do I know?
My mother has always taken great pride in her appearance.
(I know. WHAT happened to me??????)
She never went anywhere, not even to the grocery store, without making sure she was fully make-uped, everything matched and she had matching shoes.
Even in shorts and a t-shirt, my mother had to look good.
And this included her hair.
On a daily basis, my kids see me with wet hair, notice the long lines of shampoo and conditioner bottles, sitting on the edge of the bath tub like soldiers preparing for battle.
Because I have long hair, each day is an adventure in what catastrophic coiffure I have created to take out into the public.
I never had these experiences growing up.
In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I've witnessed my mother sporting a head of wet hair.
How come, you ask?
Were we so wealthy that we had our own private hairdresser?
Not bloodly likely.
But. . . .
When I was growing up, every Thursday evening, my mother would make her weekly trek into the salon at the Oromocto Mall and have her hair done by Edith.
Edith the hair ripper, I called her.
She once did my hair and attacked my scalp with her hair brush with such ferocity that she actually forced by head back and if it wasn't for my unusually quick reflexes, my head would have probably smashed into the mirror.
After settling herself at Edith's station, rubber cape wrapped around her shoulders making her look like a smarmy superhero, my mother would look at Edith and simply state,
"The usual, please Edith."
For those of you unfamiliar with Janet-isms, this translates to a wash, set, blowdry, style and hairspray.
Especially hairspray.
Because her turned out tresses had to maintain form until her next visit, my mother made sure her head was lacquered, varnished and enameled within an inch of its life.
Further, not content with just Edith's veneer, she made sure that she applied coat after coat of her own each day until she was able to get back to Edith's chair.
Every morning, or, early afternoon, depending on what shift she worked (my mother was a nurse), you would find my mother in front of the bathroom mirror, ozone depleting, gargantuan size can of hairspray clutched in her hand, while she maneuvered it over her hair with such dizzying intensity that if you happened to walk in on her, all you could see was the shadow of her head through the cloudy fog of hairspray.
Women like my mother all over the world are responsible for the shrinking ozone layer.
My mother always tried to cram as much as possible into any trip into Oromocto.
How come?
Because she absolutely HATED to drive.
She didn't get her driver's licence until she was 40.
I was 16, my brother was 15.
The only reason she did this was because she finally had to accept that she was either going to learn to drive, or take out shares in the local taxi company.
My dad's work required a lot of travel, so there were times when he was away for long periods of time.
We lived in a rural area, so there were no buses, except school buses, and it would take a couple of hours to walk into Oromocto.
So my mother, who did not want to have to cab it back and forth from the hospital everyday, broke down and got her driver's licence.
And on her way back from successfully obtaining her first driver's licence, she was stopped by the police during a routine traffic stop.
This didn't help her already well formed and solid as a rock hatred for driving.
She was a very nervous driver.
Before even igniting the ignition, she had a well established, never-deviated-from-no-matter-what-the-circumstances pre-trip routine.
In the car, seatbelt securely fastened, mirrors adjusted, purse settled beside her in case she needed a tissue, or mint while driving.
She always had a roll, or several depending on how long we were driving, of Ganongs peppermints in pink, green and white.
Key in the ignition, she would not turn the car on until the final step was completed.
The lighting of her King Size Benson and Hedges.
Cigarette clutched tightly between her shaking fingers, window opened a crack, ashtray open, Mum would only then turn the key secured in the ignition, and begin the laborious process of getting the car out of the driveway.
She'd chainsmoke the entire drive.
No matter how long or short.
She also spoke little and she made sure the radio was never played "too loudly;" she would say, "Dawne, turn that down! It's screaming in my face!"
If we were going to the mall, she made sure she parked as far from the building as possible to ensure that she would have no trouble getting out.
Under normal circumstances, driving with her was incredibly stressful.
Imagine what would happen if we had the misfortune to be caught in a snowstorm??????
One evening, after getting her hair done, my mother and I walked out of the mall into a snowstorm.
There wasn't even a hint of a flake when we went in.
And nothing was mentioned on the radio, because if it had been, my mother would have NEVER left the house, let alone the driveway.
The mere hint of a flake was enough to ground her.
So you can only imagine the look on her face when we walked out into a full fledged snowstorm. Wind howling, snow swirling with such savagery that I'm certain she contemplated what it would be like for us to bunk down in the mall for the night.
Sheer, utter, unfettered panic filled my mother faster than a Tim Horton's employee filling a coffee cup during rush hour.
Maybe even faster than that.
I had a beginner's but there was no way she was going to let me drive. She may have been terrified and panicking, but she knew at least she would eventually get us home.
Who knows where we would have ended up if I was behind the wheel.
Most likely the ditch, but I try to be optomistic.
Being a strong woman, and knowing that there was only one course of action, and it was not spending the night in the bed section at Woolworth's, my mother accepted her fate with a panicked grace and simply did what she had to do.
Suck it up.
She squared her shoulders, set her jaw, snapped on her gloves, tightly pulled her hood over her just-coiffed hair, and marched into that storm toward the car with an attitude and stride that left no doubt about what she was thinking, but would never say outloud:
F***!
We reach the car.
In my effort to aussage the already building tension, I offered to brush the snow off the car.
She nodded her acceptance of my offer and then slid into the front seat of her two-toned green, four door Chevy Impala (later nicknamed the "bedroom on wheels" but that I'll save for another time), while I grabbed the brush from the backseat and started to clean the car of its snowy blanket.
While I was cleaning, she was preparing herself for the long, arduous trek home.
She turned the car on, cranked up the heater, turned on the lights, tightly buckled herself in -- so tightly I was worried she impede her ability to take a complete breath. I get in the car and she spoke the only words she said to be the entire drive home: "Buckle your seatbelt."
She lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the one she'd just finished, cracked the window open, and off we went.
Very, very slowly.
The car, that snowy winter's evening, was replete with a tension that was viscous and impenitrable, coming off my mother in waves.
I sat in the passenger sit, uncharacteristically quiet, fearful that if I spoke one word, diverted her fixed and concentrated gaze from the snowy scene before us, that we would surely end up in a ditch somewhere.
Cars passed us.
Some honked their horns.
While my mother stalwardly maintained her road raptness.
The drive from the Oromocto Mall to our house on the Broad Road was approximately 15-20 minutes depending on the time of day.
On that fateful night, it took us over an hour to get home.
No radio.
No talking.
I was lucky she let me breath.
The only sounds were the back and forth of the wipers and the click of the car lighter each time it popped out ready to light her next cigarette.
She white knuckled the steering wheel the entire drive. When we pulled into the driveway, I had to practically pry her fingers from the wheel.
Once safely inside the house, she sat down at the kitchen table with a soup bowl sized cup of coffee and drank it until her hands stopped shaking.
But I'll say this for my mother: she may have hated driving with a passion that could not be contested, but she drove us everywhere we needed to go, some places we wanted to go, and if needed, she'd fill her Chevy Impala with as many of my friends as we could cram in there.
And for that reason, plus that she was my mother, I gladly served as her second on our rural road adventures.
Even if it did mean years of therapy when I got older.
And a boyfriend who refused to teach me to drive because everytime a car came toward us, I would pull over to the side of the road.
Leaving him to comment to my mother one evening, "Mrs. Clarke, I love your daughter, but I am NOT going to teach her to drive."
And following in my mother's footsteps, I didn't get a licence until I was 32.
But never confuse my not having a licence with not driving.
That would be just silly on your part.
Title Lyric: Keep Driving by Meat Loaf
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
The prisoner is now escaping. . .
October 21, 2010
I was honest to goodness, no doubt, completely and utterly 100% pure concentrated pissed off today.
How come?
Was this because of the kids and their never-ending issues, concerns, or plots to ascertain how long it will take to rid me of my last, quasi-intact, hanging on my a thread so thin it's almost non-existant shred of sanity?
Or have the dogs kicked up their canine capers, their shameless shenanigans, their tiresome tomfoolery in an equally vociferous attempt to lay claim to my last round and still rolling marble?
Has Stephen tested the limits of my tenderness, taken advantage of my affection, pushed me with some bizarre, ludicrous, singulary Stephen-like activity that makes me feel crazier than a bed bug when I try to explain to him how come doing what he did was not at all logical?
Or plain assisnine?
Case in point: the afternoon I walked onto our back deck to happily slip into my Zen laundry hanging space, and saw my husband, the man I love, adore and want to strangle in equal parts, tettering precariously on a large, unsecured, uneven boulder waving an electric chainsaw over his head in an attempt to rid our very large, very old maple of tree of, in his mind, unwanted and unnecessary branches that were crowding our clothesline and impeding our power lines.
Either way, unless stopped, something was going to happen, it was going to be ugly, and it would most definitely result in an unwanted trip to the Emergency Room.
Really.
Who swings chainsaws over their heads while balancing on a rock in such a way that you are reminded of those crazy ariel riders in the circus, you know, the ones who walk across a clothesline wide wire, in bare feet, juggling flaming torches?
Stephen.
That's who.
In fairness to Stephen, I am even less adept at mechanical maneuvers.
Don't ask me for help with something as simple as hanging a clothesline.
This spring, our clothesline needed to be tightened.
We tried, we failed, we had to go to Canadian Tire and purchase replacement parts, then borrow a long ladder from our across-the-street-neighbour and attempt to restore our clothesline and my Zen space to its natural order.
Our futile attempts were witnessed by our next-door neighbour.
I think that he, and our across-the-street-neighbour feel a sense of paternalism and benevolence towards me and Stephen because while we are book smart, we are not necessarily the most savvy when it comes to around the house things.
Taking pity on us, he asks if he can help.
Actually, he may have been pleading. I think watching us actually caused him physical pain.
Climbing the ladder with a grace and expertise I can't even experience on the ground, let alone on a ladder, he manages, with minimal help from Stephen and me to get the clothesline up, tightened and ready for business in the time that it took Stephen and I to initally figure out how the hell to get the clothesline up there in the first place.
But no, Stephen was not the case of roiling rage burning inside me.
My parents perhaps? Did the nursing home call to inform me that my mother has taken wheel chair wrestling to a new level, arranging a wrestling ring in the nursing home so she could take on all those who annoy and anger her at once instead of one at a time, after she sold tickets to ensure some financial compensation for her sure-to-experience injuries?
Or, did my father's neighbour from across the road call and inform me that, once again, my father was trying to relive his youth and ignore that he was 70, and in his attempt to convince the world that he could do whatever he damn well wanted, climbed up his ladder to clean the gutters of the house, only to have the ladder fall, leaving my father suspended from the roof of the house, hands clasping the gutter in an attempt to not fall and thus land himself in the hospital?
Nope.
Had a student finally breached my seemingly impenatrable armor of patience and understanding, whinging and whining in my office, complaining about some imagined slight or unfair utterance, or more than deserved failing grade, leading me to leap from my chair, and firmly plant my foot on their butt in an effort to remove them from my only site of solitude before I really lost control and starting hurling plants at them?
Not even close.
The reason for my unfettered acrimony, my boiling rage, my ferocious fury. . . .
Me.
I am so angry at myself that if I had any tolerance for pain, I may have actually tried to hurt myself.
I haven't been feeling my finest for the last couple of days.
Annoying and unrelenting headache, tired joints, achy muscles, and in my genetically pre-determined way, I just ignored it.
But like Reilley, I refuse to be ignorned.
At one o'clock, an hour before the event I had been waiting for all week, the event that was previewed with a public lecture by Sheree Fitch, the event I cancelled an Advanced Methods class for, the two hour creative writing workshop by Sheree Fitch that was going to launch me into a long and lucrative career in creative writing, I was sitting in my office.
Was I in my customary office chair, marking papers while listening to episodes of All in the Family?
No.
I was in my blue office chair, the one the students sit in when they have meltdowns of epic proportions.
As an aside, it was interesting to see my office the way a student might see it.
Productive chaos.
Stephen arrived in my office to see me in the comfy the blue chair, my head back, eyes closed.
I usually only look like this during Sunday morning Quaker meetings.
This is a rare enough occurence in my office, however, for Stephen to be concerned.
Sitting in what has been designated as Keith's rolly chair, he wheels over to me and asks if I'm okay.
And here is where the anger starts.
No.
I was not okay.
And I had finally admitted it.
Apparently, I had a slight fever to go along with my other ailments.
Stephen said the words I didn't even want to think, let alone have said out loud.
Do you think its a good idea to go to the writing workshop?
Yes. I did think it was a good idea.
He looked at me in the way only Stephen can look at me.
And it wasn't the love-in-your-eyes-shit-in-your-pants look.
It was the you-know-what-I'm-talking-about-look-so-stop-being-obtuse look.
I knew what he was talking about.
I just didn't want to admit it.
And I knew he was right, which was even harder to admit.
So, rather than walk over to Holy Cross House to participate in the best writer's workshop to ever exist in the natural world, I went home.
Put on my flannel, zebra striped pj bottoms and red long sleeved top, crawled underneath my duvet, and promptly fell asleep until Stephen came in at almost 7.00 pm to wake me up, carrying with him a tray containing a bowl of homemade turkey broth and a few cornbread crackers.
Obviously, then, I wasn't and probably am still not feeling well.
I'm just loathe to admit it.
Rather than think I may be coming down with something, which wouldn't surprise me because my mother and every other resident of the 72 bed nursing home has been battling a cold of epic proportions, and I love to visit my mother and we're a huggy-kissy family, meaning germs travel, I am inclined to think that I am just a little run down.
Over tired.
And my body, no longer willing to enable my state of well-being denial, simply exerted its right to be heard.
It didn't have to scream relentlessly.
A gentle whisper in my ear would have sufficed.
Okay, probably not, but did it HAVE to be today?
The day of the Sheree Fitch lead creative writing workshop?
Yes.
Why?
Because.
Not to be outdone by my antics, the dogs have been up to their own madcap merry making.
Last evening, before we departed for the Sheree Fitch lecture, I took the dogs out for their after-supper outside ablutions.
I had asked Keith to do it, but he said he was putting his laundry away.
Not wanting in any way to deter him from such an honourable activity, one he did while his sisters watched, I might add, I accepted that taking out the hounds was going to have to be done by me.
Stephen would have done it, but Stephen always does it, and besides, he was still recovering from our family dinner feista, the one that required an hour of intense and meditative solitude.
Tikka and Frankie, every single time we take them out. . .
And I do mean every. single. time.
. . .behave in a manner reminiscient of prisoners locked up for 65 years in an underground cavern where they subsisted on grubs and dew particles from the air.
I don't actually know if dew particles exist underground, but I'm choosing effect over authenticity this evening.
Bedlam and pandemonium ensue.
They jostle and elbow each other out of the way in their animalistic need to scramble to the front of the front door.
They whine and paw at each other.
They snarl and leap.
They act like little shits.
A battle over who will be leashed is played out repeatedly, they hover, squeeze and shoulder their way into my private space wanting, needing, insisting on being the first one leashed.
When I bend down to leash one, the other immediately starts licking my face in adoration over the knowledge that soon the snap of the leash will reverberate in their ears.
I wear glasses.
Dog slobber and glasses do not good bedfellows make.
Especially in the chaos-infused catastrophic world of dog leashing.
Meaning, when I put the damn leash on Frankie I couldn't see a bloody thing.
Thinking if I could just get them out of the house and into the driveway, I'd be granted a moment of grace while they danced in the circles of their primitive pee and poo dance.
A moment wherein I could attempt to remove the drying dog slobber from the lenses of my glasses, thus allowing me to see what was going on.
I can't count the fingers in front of my face without my glasses on, let alone manage the visual acuity necessary when taking the hounds of hell outside.
No such moment of grace was allowed.
Because as soon as we were out of the house, but while we were still on the steps, Frankie, with a speed I still can't comprehend, was off like rocket launched by NASA.
Leaving me confused and bewildered.
And Tikka dragging me to the front lawn so she could pee before she exploded.
I couldn't even see what happened because my glasses were momentarily out of commission.
So while our fear infused Frankie was wreaking havoc in our neighbourhood, I was standing in the front yard trying to remove the dog slobber from my lenses.
No water was available and there was no way in hell I was rubbing my tongue over my lenses. . .
. . .there are just some things even I'm not willing to endure, such as a mouth full of dried dog slobber rolling over my taste buds. . .
. . .meaning I am standing there, yelling, "FRANKIE! FRANKIE!!! GET BACK HERE GOD DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!" while expertly smearing the dog slobber, instead of clearing it away.
I manage to create a small aperture in the slobber, enough to be able to glimpse with some clarity what the hell was going on.
And there was my Frankie, frolicing, cavorting, romping and revelling in his new found freedom.
While terrorizing anyone who happened to come with 100 meters of him.
Stephen had come out of the house to investigate. Tea towel in one hand, wash cloth in another, slippers falling off his feet, he bellows,
"FRANK! FRANK! GET OVER HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Frankie comes running back to the yard.
Is it because in the midst of his cavorting a little voice inside his head said, "it's probably a good idea to go back home and restore peace and order to our little cul de sac."
Nope.
It was because in the midst of his cavorting, the big voice in his butt was screaming, "FIND A PLACE TO DROP A LOAD!!!!!!!!! BIG WITHDRAWL IMMINENT!"
And being somewhat fastidious about where he makes his fecal deposits, meaning he'll only shit on the lawn, he comes back, circles and drops his butt, all the while watching me wrangle him and put him back on the leash.
Because, in my doggie induced blindness, I didn't hook the leash on his green and sturdy collar.
I hooked it onto the thin and flimsy metal doodaddy that held his "I've had my rabies shot" tag.
So as soon as I snapped it on, he KNEW something wasn't right, and he wasn't asking any questions.
He just took full advantage of the situation and let the chips, or poop in this case, fall where they may.
Tikka, meanwhile, was content to playing her look-at-me-I'm-a good-girl-who-would-never-engage-in- such-an-outrageous-and-unseemly-public spectacle.
Frankie and Tikka.
Mer and Emily.
I'm seeing some similarities.
And this scares me.
Title Lyric: The Prisoner by Tears for Fears
I was honest to goodness, no doubt, completely and utterly 100% pure concentrated pissed off today.
How come?
Was this because of the kids and their never-ending issues, concerns, or plots to ascertain how long it will take to rid me of my last, quasi-intact, hanging on my a thread so thin it's almost non-existant shred of sanity?
Or have the dogs kicked up their canine capers, their shameless shenanigans, their tiresome tomfoolery in an equally vociferous attempt to lay claim to my last round and still rolling marble?
Has Stephen tested the limits of my tenderness, taken advantage of my affection, pushed me with some bizarre, ludicrous, singulary Stephen-like activity that makes me feel crazier than a bed bug when I try to explain to him how come doing what he did was not at all logical?
Or plain assisnine?
Case in point: the afternoon I walked onto our back deck to happily slip into my Zen laundry hanging space, and saw my husband, the man I love, adore and want to strangle in equal parts, tettering precariously on a large, unsecured, uneven boulder waving an electric chainsaw over his head in an attempt to rid our very large, very old maple of tree of, in his mind, unwanted and unnecessary branches that were crowding our clothesline and impeding our power lines.
Either way, unless stopped, something was going to happen, it was going to be ugly, and it would most definitely result in an unwanted trip to the Emergency Room.
Really.
Who swings chainsaws over their heads while balancing on a rock in such a way that you are reminded of those crazy ariel riders in the circus, you know, the ones who walk across a clothesline wide wire, in bare feet, juggling flaming torches?
Stephen.
That's who.
In fairness to Stephen, I am even less adept at mechanical maneuvers.
Don't ask me for help with something as simple as hanging a clothesline.
This spring, our clothesline needed to be tightened.
We tried, we failed, we had to go to Canadian Tire and purchase replacement parts, then borrow a long ladder from our across-the-street-neighbour and attempt to restore our clothesline and my Zen space to its natural order.
Our futile attempts were witnessed by our next-door neighbour.
I think that he, and our across-the-street-neighbour feel a sense of paternalism and benevolence towards me and Stephen because while we are book smart, we are not necessarily the most savvy when it comes to around the house things.
Taking pity on us, he asks if he can help.
Actually, he may have been pleading. I think watching us actually caused him physical pain.
Climbing the ladder with a grace and expertise I can't even experience on the ground, let alone on a ladder, he manages, with minimal help from Stephen and me to get the clothesline up, tightened and ready for business in the time that it took Stephen and I to initally figure out how the hell to get the clothesline up there in the first place.
But no, Stephen was not the case of roiling rage burning inside me.
My parents perhaps? Did the nursing home call to inform me that my mother has taken wheel chair wrestling to a new level, arranging a wrestling ring in the nursing home so she could take on all those who annoy and anger her at once instead of one at a time, after she sold tickets to ensure some financial compensation for her sure-to-experience injuries?
Or, did my father's neighbour from across the road call and inform me that, once again, my father was trying to relive his youth and ignore that he was 70, and in his attempt to convince the world that he could do whatever he damn well wanted, climbed up his ladder to clean the gutters of the house, only to have the ladder fall, leaving my father suspended from the roof of the house, hands clasping the gutter in an attempt to not fall and thus land himself in the hospital?
Nope.
Had a student finally breached my seemingly impenatrable armor of patience and understanding, whinging and whining in my office, complaining about some imagined slight or unfair utterance, or more than deserved failing grade, leading me to leap from my chair, and firmly plant my foot on their butt in an effort to remove them from my only site of solitude before I really lost control and starting hurling plants at them?
Not even close.
The reason for my unfettered acrimony, my boiling rage, my ferocious fury. . . .
Me.
I am so angry at myself that if I had any tolerance for pain, I may have actually tried to hurt myself.
I haven't been feeling my finest for the last couple of days.
Annoying and unrelenting headache, tired joints, achy muscles, and in my genetically pre-determined way, I just ignored it.
But like Reilley, I refuse to be ignorned.
At one o'clock, an hour before the event I had been waiting for all week, the event that was previewed with a public lecture by Sheree Fitch, the event I cancelled an Advanced Methods class for, the two hour creative writing workshop by Sheree Fitch that was going to launch me into a long and lucrative career in creative writing, I was sitting in my office.
Was I in my customary office chair, marking papers while listening to episodes of All in the Family?
No.
I was in my blue office chair, the one the students sit in when they have meltdowns of epic proportions.
As an aside, it was interesting to see my office the way a student might see it.
Productive chaos.
Stephen arrived in my office to see me in the comfy the blue chair, my head back, eyes closed.
I usually only look like this during Sunday morning Quaker meetings.
This is a rare enough occurence in my office, however, for Stephen to be concerned.
Sitting in what has been designated as Keith's rolly chair, he wheels over to me and asks if I'm okay.
And here is where the anger starts.
No.
I was not okay.
And I had finally admitted it.
Apparently, I had a slight fever to go along with my other ailments.
Stephen said the words I didn't even want to think, let alone have said out loud.
Do you think its a good idea to go to the writing workshop?
Yes. I did think it was a good idea.
He looked at me in the way only Stephen can look at me.
And it wasn't the love-in-your-eyes-shit-in-your-pants look.
It was the you-know-what-I'm-talking-about-look-so-stop-being-obtuse look.
I knew what he was talking about.
I just didn't want to admit it.
And I knew he was right, which was even harder to admit.
So, rather than walk over to Holy Cross House to participate in the best writer's workshop to ever exist in the natural world, I went home.
Put on my flannel, zebra striped pj bottoms and red long sleeved top, crawled underneath my duvet, and promptly fell asleep until Stephen came in at almost 7.00 pm to wake me up, carrying with him a tray containing a bowl of homemade turkey broth and a few cornbread crackers.
Obviously, then, I wasn't and probably am still not feeling well.
I'm just loathe to admit it.
Rather than think I may be coming down with something, which wouldn't surprise me because my mother and every other resident of the 72 bed nursing home has been battling a cold of epic proportions, and I love to visit my mother and we're a huggy-kissy family, meaning germs travel, I am inclined to think that I am just a little run down.
Over tired.
And my body, no longer willing to enable my state of well-being denial, simply exerted its right to be heard.
It didn't have to scream relentlessly.
A gentle whisper in my ear would have sufficed.
Okay, probably not, but did it HAVE to be today?
The day of the Sheree Fitch lead creative writing workshop?
Yes.
Why?
Because.
Not to be outdone by my antics, the dogs have been up to their own madcap merry making.
Last evening, before we departed for the Sheree Fitch lecture, I took the dogs out for their after-supper outside ablutions.
I had asked Keith to do it, but he said he was putting his laundry away.
Not wanting in any way to deter him from such an honourable activity, one he did while his sisters watched, I might add, I accepted that taking out the hounds was going to have to be done by me.
Stephen would have done it, but Stephen always does it, and besides, he was still recovering from our family dinner feista, the one that required an hour of intense and meditative solitude.
Tikka and Frankie, every single time we take them out. . .
And I do mean every. single. time.
. . .behave in a manner reminiscient of prisoners locked up for 65 years in an underground cavern where they subsisted on grubs and dew particles from the air.
I don't actually know if dew particles exist underground, but I'm choosing effect over authenticity this evening.
Bedlam and pandemonium ensue.
They jostle and elbow each other out of the way in their animalistic need to scramble to the front of the front door.
They whine and paw at each other.
They snarl and leap.
They act like little shits.
A battle over who will be leashed is played out repeatedly, they hover, squeeze and shoulder their way into my private space wanting, needing, insisting on being the first one leashed.
When I bend down to leash one, the other immediately starts licking my face in adoration over the knowledge that soon the snap of the leash will reverberate in their ears.
I wear glasses.
Dog slobber and glasses do not good bedfellows make.
Especially in the chaos-infused catastrophic world of dog leashing.
Meaning, when I put the damn leash on Frankie I couldn't see a bloody thing.
Thinking if I could just get them out of the house and into the driveway, I'd be granted a moment of grace while they danced in the circles of their primitive pee and poo dance.
A moment wherein I could attempt to remove the drying dog slobber from the lenses of my glasses, thus allowing me to see what was going on.
I can't count the fingers in front of my face without my glasses on, let alone manage the visual acuity necessary when taking the hounds of hell outside.
No such moment of grace was allowed.
Because as soon as we were out of the house, but while we were still on the steps, Frankie, with a speed I still can't comprehend, was off like rocket launched by NASA.
Leaving me confused and bewildered.
And Tikka dragging me to the front lawn so she could pee before she exploded.
I couldn't even see what happened because my glasses were momentarily out of commission.
So while our fear infused Frankie was wreaking havoc in our neighbourhood, I was standing in the front yard trying to remove the dog slobber from my lenses.
No water was available and there was no way in hell I was rubbing my tongue over my lenses. . .
. . .there are just some things even I'm not willing to endure, such as a mouth full of dried dog slobber rolling over my taste buds. . .
. . .meaning I am standing there, yelling, "FRANKIE! FRANKIE!!! GET BACK HERE GOD DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!" while expertly smearing the dog slobber, instead of clearing it away.
I manage to create a small aperture in the slobber, enough to be able to glimpse with some clarity what the hell was going on.
And there was my Frankie, frolicing, cavorting, romping and revelling in his new found freedom.
While terrorizing anyone who happened to come with 100 meters of him.
Stephen had come out of the house to investigate. Tea towel in one hand, wash cloth in another, slippers falling off his feet, he bellows,
"FRANK! FRANK! GET OVER HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Frankie comes running back to the yard.
Is it because in the midst of his cavorting a little voice inside his head said, "it's probably a good idea to go back home and restore peace and order to our little cul de sac."
Nope.
It was because in the midst of his cavorting, the big voice in his butt was screaming, "FIND A PLACE TO DROP A LOAD!!!!!!!!! BIG WITHDRAWL IMMINENT!"
And being somewhat fastidious about where he makes his fecal deposits, meaning he'll only shit on the lawn, he comes back, circles and drops his butt, all the while watching me wrangle him and put him back on the leash.
Because, in my doggie induced blindness, I didn't hook the leash on his green and sturdy collar.
I hooked it onto the thin and flimsy metal doodaddy that held his "I've had my rabies shot" tag.
So as soon as I snapped it on, he KNEW something wasn't right, and he wasn't asking any questions.
He just took full advantage of the situation and let the chips, or poop in this case, fall where they may.
Tikka, meanwhile, was content to playing her look-at-me-I'm-a good-girl-who-would-never-engage-in- such-an-outrageous-and-unseemly-public spectacle.
Frankie and Tikka.
Mer and Emily.
I'm seeing some similarities.
And this scares me.
Title Lyric: The Prisoner by Tears for Fears
Thursday, October 21, 2010
We'll have lasagna. . .I'll treat you like a Queen. . .
October 20, 2010
Dinner is important to me.
And not because of the food.
Although it certainly helps.
Of late I've noticed a new and somewhat disturbing trend.
There are many evenings where dinner is a combination of the five of us, but rarely all five of us are at the table at the time.
Work, classes, spending time with friends means that I can no longer be guaranteed that all my chicks will be in the nest for dinner.
There was a time when I could tell you exactly where the kids and I were going to be at ANY time of the day, and day of the week.
Our lives were that predictable.
Lately I have had to accept that there are more times than not where I don't know where they are.
Or what they're doing.
Luckily for me, my children are very open about their activities, and they are more than willing to spill their guts.
As honest children, they have no compunction to hide their noctural undertakings from me.
And even if they thought they could, I have my ways of finding out what they've been up to.
Which does not include interrogating their friends, in a locked basement, Frankie held back from attack with a chain one centimeter shorter than it needs to be to ensure complete bodily dismemberment, Reilley on the water heater holding their eyes open with thread, while Tikka mans the maglight shining directly into their never-blinking eyes, with their hands secured behind their backs with duct tape, feet afixed to the chair legs, a bucket of cat urine precariously perched above their head, secured only with a line of dental floss, Goblet at the ready to release it at the first hint of a lie.
I have much simpler methods of divining for the truth.
Facebook.
I can see all of their high jinx, escapades, capers in a technicolor spectacle as extravagent and florid as a Picasso painting.
Even if I don't want to see their antics.
There is something about perusing your Facebook and seeing your son passed out on the floor of his sister's kitchen, nestled snugly between the fridge and the cupboards.
Or your oldest daughter wrapped around her boyfriend like bacon around a filet mignon, while she sports double lazy eye because she's tired and drunk, that makes you wonder about whether the internet really was a good idea.
This isn't to say that I didn't engage in my own alcohol-induced shenanigans.
I most certainly did.
And in spite of Herculian efforts on my part, I can't seem to rid them from my memory.
The difference between now and then, between me and them: there are no pictures, no evidence, nothing but my own memories, and only me to tell them.
Should I choose to tell them.
And THAT isn't likely.
On the other hand, my kids are going to have to live with these pictures for the rest of their lives.
With lots of people to tell stories.
And from my experience, at some point, when you least expect it, while your guard is down, and you think everything is fine. . .
Shit comes back to haunt you.
Weddings, for example.
And my kids should remember that I have the capacity to remember things that don't relate to me, very, very well.
Also, it's not wise to think that just because I tolerate the things my children do, I condone them.
Big difference between tolerance and condoning.
However, I know that telling them not do something is the fastest way for them to do it.
Especially with Mer.
As soon as she hears the words, "don't" she is off, racing to do whatever I said she shouldn't do.
And she has been that way since conception.
Not birth.
Conception.
My kids know how I feel about the things they do.
They know the difference between tolerating and condoning.
And they know what will happen if they cross the lines I've established.
Remember the scenario in the basement???
Dinner.
Tonight was one of those rare occasions when the planets and stars aligned, the karmic cosmic forces were co-operating, and all the kids, me and Stephen were present and accounted for at the dinner table.
Sitting around the table, Mer opposite me and Stephen, Emily at one end of the table, Keith at the other, Stephen and I sitting beside one another.
Dogs hovering around each side of Mer, assuming that she would be sympathetic enough to sneak food bits to them.
Reilley, in "his" chair, beside Emily, sitting, waiting for her to openly include him in the family meal.
He talks, contributes to the conversation, puts his two cents in.
And if Em isn't quick with the food, he will put his front paws on the table, for balance, and with his left paw, he will guide Em's fork to his face to ascertain whether or not the food she is eating is up to her standards.
Frustrated, I usually take something off my plate, put it in front of him, and watch him scoff it down as if he hadn't eaten a meal in his entire life.
There is NO ignoring Reilley.
Ignoring him is simply not part of his frame of reference.
And he'll make damn sure it isn't part of ours either.
He is clever, cute and ferocious rolled into one furry, six toed, eight pound package.
Dinner together is one of those things where there is no negotiation.
If you are at home, or not at work, or not in classes or out with you're friends, you ARE having dinner with me.
At the table.
None of this buffet line dinners where everyone collects their meal and disperses to the far corners of the house to eat while you watch AMC Fear Fest, or your dvds of every season of The Family Guy.
Or worse, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Until reaching the tender of age of 16, where their evil and child-labour exploitative mother forced them out the couch and into the world of part time labour, dinner was the one time of day I knew without questions we would be together, sitting around the table, not distracted by computers or televisions, homework or housework, house phones or cell phones, felines or canines. . .
Just together.
I may be waxing nostalgia here, but I have relatively fond memories of those times.
Although I'm certain it didn't feel like that at the time.
Every evening, we'd sit around the table, the four of us, together.
But don't think it was the Leave it to Beaver kind of together.
It was kids fighthing, arguing, complaining about not liking whatever I had manage to put together after a day of being in classes and researching or writing for my dissertation.
My attempt to bring order to chaos was to give each of the kids an opportunity to share what they had done during their day.
Mer believed she had to be first, because she was at the top of the birth heirarchy.
She would share with us the events of her day with a dizzying drama she must have inherited from her father.
Technically, if we were following birth order, we should assume that Pookie was next.
Not so.
But we'll get to that in a minute.
Emily would be next, and even though she was much younger than Mer she would rightfully insist on her floor time.
And Em may be quiet, but like Reilley, she has always been able to make her point, have her say, ensure she has a voice.
No matter how hard Mer tried to silence her.
Keith. Pookie. Pookie Pot Pie with Bum Dumplings. Keith Ronald Alexander Van Every the third Van Every (that's what he'd say, when he was younger, if you asked him his name.)
When it was his turn to tell me about his day, he took me literally.
Keith: "I opened my eyes when you came into my room and turned on the light. You said, "Good morning Pookie. Time to get up." I said, "Okay" and then I got out of bed and and put my slippers on. I went downstairs to the bathroom, and had a pee. I then went to the kitchen and you asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I said cereal and juice. You gave me a bowl of Shreddies and a glass of orange juice. I ate my breakfast with Mer and Emily. They didn't have Shreddies. Emily had toast and peanut butter and Mer had Rice Krispies. After I ate breakfast, I went back to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Then I went upstairs and got dressed. . . ."
You can see how this played out.
I never said anything. He just shared his little heart out.
He still does.
But unlike Mer, he selectively shares.
Mer just tells me everything.
Em tells me everything, or close to everything, without inducing paralyzing trauma.
Dinner together now is not much different than it was when they were younger.
With the exception of Stephen.
And he experiences a full-fledged family feast with equal amounts of entertainment and overwhelmingness.
The kids are a lot louder now, especially if Mer has managed to participate in under-the-deck activities prior to consumption of my gastronomical gala.
Last night was one of those nights.
Mer was giddy, silly, loud.
Keith followed suit even without engaging in under-the-deck-action.
Emily observed, as she usually does with wry amusement.
Stephen enjoyed their convivial conflabbing.
But after a while, his peace and quiet loving sensibilities rage against the rauchous cacophany and he retired upstairs for a few blissful moments.
Me, I love the chaos.
I'm used to it.
And honestly, I wouldn't want it any other way.
Title Lyric: Digsy's Dinner by Oasis
Dinner is important to me.
And not because of the food.
Although it certainly helps.
Of late I've noticed a new and somewhat disturbing trend.
There are many evenings where dinner is a combination of the five of us, but rarely all five of us are at the table at the time.
Work, classes, spending time with friends means that I can no longer be guaranteed that all my chicks will be in the nest for dinner.
There was a time when I could tell you exactly where the kids and I were going to be at ANY time of the day, and day of the week.
Our lives were that predictable.
Lately I have had to accept that there are more times than not where I don't know where they are.
Or what they're doing.
Luckily for me, my children are very open about their activities, and they are more than willing to spill their guts.
As honest children, they have no compunction to hide their noctural undertakings from me.
And even if they thought they could, I have my ways of finding out what they've been up to.
Which does not include interrogating their friends, in a locked basement, Frankie held back from attack with a chain one centimeter shorter than it needs to be to ensure complete bodily dismemberment, Reilley on the water heater holding their eyes open with thread, while Tikka mans the maglight shining directly into their never-blinking eyes, with their hands secured behind their backs with duct tape, feet afixed to the chair legs, a bucket of cat urine precariously perched above their head, secured only with a line of dental floss, Goblet at the ready to release it at the first hint of a lie.
I have much simpler methods of divining for the truth.
Facebook.
I can see all of their high jinx, escapades, capers in a technicolor spectacle as extravagent and florid as a Picasso painting.
Even if I don't want to see their antics.
There is something about perusing your Facebook and seeing your son passed out on the floor of his sister's kitchen, nestled snugly between the fridge and the cupboards.
Or your oldest daughter wrapped around her boyfriend like bacon around a filet mignon, while she sports double lazy eye because she's tired and drunk, that makes you wonder about whether the internet really was a good idea.
This isn't to say that I didn't engage in my own alcohol-induced shenanigans.
I most certainly did.
And in spite of Herculian efforts on my part, I can't seem to rid them from my memory.
The difference between now and then, between me and them: there are no pictures, no evidence, nothing but my own memories, and only me to tell them.
Should I choose to tell them.
And THAT isn't likely.
On the other hand, my kids are going to have to live with these pictures for the rest of their lives.
With lots of people to tell stories.
And from my experience, at some point, when you least expect it, while your guard is down, and you think everything is fine. . .
Shit comes back to haunt you.
Weddings, for example.
And my kids should remember that I have the capacity to remember things that don't relate to me, very, very well.
Also, it's not wise to think that just because I tolerate the things my children do, I condone them.
Big difference between tolerance and condoning.
However, I know that telling them not do something is the fastest way for them to do it.
Especially with Mer.
As soon as she hears the words, "don't" she is off, racing to do whatever I said she shouldn't do.
And she has been that way since conception.
Not birth.
Conception.
My kids know how I feel about the things they do.
They know the difference between tolerating and condoning.
And they know what will happen if they cross the lines I've established.
Remember the scenario in the basement???
Dinner.
Tonight was one of those rare occasions when the planets and stars aligned, the karmic cosmic forces were co-operating, and all the kids, me and Stephen were present and accounted for at the dinner table.
Sitting around the table, Mer opposite me and Stephen, Emily at one end of the table, Keith at the other, Stephen and I sitting beside one another.
Dogs hovering around each side of Mer, assuming that she would be sympathetic enough to sneak food bits to them.
Reilley, in "his" chair, beside Emily, sitting, waiting for her to openly include him in the family meal.
He talks, contributes to the conversation, puts his two cents in.
And if Em isn't quick with the food, he will put his front paws on the table, for balance, and with his left paw, he will guide Em's fork to his face to ascertain whether or not the food she is eating is up to her standards.
Frustrated, I usually take something off my plate, put it in front of him, and watch him scoff it down as if he hadn't eaten a meal in his entire life.
There is NO ignoring Reilley.
Ignoring him is simply not part of his frame of reference.
And he'll make damn sure it isn't part of ours either.
He is clever, cute and ferocious rolled into one furry, six toed, eight pound package.
Dinner together is one of those things where there is no negotiation.
If you are at home, or not at work, or not in classes or out with you're friends, you ARE having dinner with me.
At the table.
None of this buffet line dinners where everyone collects their meal and disperses to the far corners of the house to eat while you watch AMC Fear Fest, or your dvds of every season of The Family Guy.
Or worse, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Until reaching the tender of age of 16, where their evil and child-labour exploitative mother forced them out the couch and into the world of part time labour, dinner was the one time of day I knew without questions we would be together, sitting around the table, not distracted by computers or televisions, homework or housework, house phones or cell phones, felines or canines. . .
Just together.
I may be waxing nostalgia here, but I have relatively fond memories of those times.
Although I'm certain it didn't feel like that at the time.
Every evening, we'd sit around the table, the four of us, together.
But don't think it was the Leave it to Beaver kind of together.
It was kids fighthing, arguing, complaining about not liking whatever I had manage to put together after a day of being in classes and researching or writing for my dissertation.
My attempt to bring order to chaos was to give each of the kids an opportunity to share what they had done during their day.
Mer believed she had to be first, because she was at the top of the birth heirarchy.
She would share with us the events of her day with a dizzying drama she must have inherited from her father.
Technically, if we were following birth order, we should assume that Pookie was next.
Not so.
But we'll get to that in a minute.
Emily would be next, and even though she was much younger than Mer she would rightfully insist on her floor time.
And Em may be quiet, but like Reilley, she has always been able to make her point, have her say, ensure she has a voice.
No matter how hard Mer tried to silence her.
Keith. Pookie. Pookie Pot Pie with Bum Dumplings. Keith Ronald Alexander Van Every the third Van Every (that's what he'd say, when he was younger, if you asked him his name.)
When it was his turn to tell me about his day, he took me literally.
Keith: "I opened my eyes when you came into my room and turned on the light. You said, "Good morning Pookie. Time to get up." I said, "Okay" and then I got out of bed and and put my slippers on. I went downstairs to the bathroom, and had a pee. I then went to the kitchen and you asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I said cereal and juice. You gave me a bowl of Shreddies and a glass of orange juice. I ate my breakfast with Mer and Emily. They didn't have Shreddies. Emily had toast and peanut butter and Mer had Rice Krispies. After I ate breakfast, I went back to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Then I went upstairs and got dressed. . . ."
You can see how this played out.
I never said anything. He just shared his little heart out.
He still does.
But unlike Mer, he selectively shares.
Mer just tells me everything.
Em tells me everything, or close to everything, without inducing paralyzing trauma.
Dinner together now is not much different than it was when they were younger.
With the exception of Stephen.
And he experiences a full-fledged family feast with equal amounts of entertainment and overwhelmingness.
The kids are a lot louder now, especially if Mer has managed to participate in under-the-deck activities prior to consumption of my gastronomical gala.
Last night was one of those nights.
Mer was giddy, silly, loud.
Keith followed suit even without engaging in under-the-deck-action.
Emily observed, as she usually does with wry amusement.
Stephen enjoyed their convivial conflabbing.
But after a while, his peace and quiet loving sensibilities rage against the rauchous cacophany and he retired upstairs for a few blissful moments.
Me, I love the chaos.
I'm used to it.
And honestly, I wouldn't want it any other way.
Title Lyric: Digsy's Dinner by Oasis
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
It makes me feel so good. . . .try to find me in the woods. . . .
October 19, 2010
Food.
I have a love-hate relationship with food.
I love to eat it, it hates to leave me.
In particular, food hates to leave my waist, hips, thighs, arms, feet, hair. . .
My entire life I've had to deal with food and weight issues.
Weighing too much has been the one constant thread running through the tapestry of my life.
The very large tapestry.
Brief periods of weighing just enough.
Very brief periods.
Name a diet, I've tried it.
Name a weight-loss remedy, I've done it: speed, not eating at all, not eating anything resembling a carb, eating just grapefruits. . .
Exercise.
I genuinely like to exercise, but, I have trouble with balance.
Meaning, if I exercise I want to exercise as much as I want as long as I want, and other things, like, oh, work for example, end up not being given equal and fair treatment.
As a faculty member, I am granted access to a nicely appointed gym for $5.00 a month.
Naturally, I should jump through hoops of fire for such an opportunity.
I have.
It's called the PhD.
I did go the gym at my university.
I wanted to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to trim down my Reubenesque figure into something a little less Reuben and a little more Kate Moss.
To the gym I'd go, carrying my gym bag full of toiletries, towels, hair dryers, shampoo, conditioner, happy with the knowledge that I was doing something good to me and good for me. . .
On the treadmill I'd be, mind blissfully blank, endorphins chugging along nicely, daydreaming about walking along the English moors, or through a small village in Ireland on my way to the pub for a pub lunch and a Guinness. . .
I don't even like Guinness, but I'm all for authenticity. . .
And, without warning, I'd be plucked from dreamy musings by some muscle bound, athletic, sporting youth, high energy protein drink in one hand, journal article or assignment clutched in the other.
Wondering if he could "ask me something."
I envy women who work out and manage to look like their not working out. Perfectly highlighted hair smoothed back into a nice, tight ponytail, that bounces jauntily along to the latest dance beat pouring into their ears through almost invisible ear buds attached to an ipod touch, while they breathe normally and dab at the almost imperceptible glistenings of moisture on their foreheads with plush towels, modelling the latest, expensive name brand athletic wear, and designer footwear.
Me, I sweat like a overwight farm worker who smokes four packs a day, my hair sprouting a frizzy cloud around my face because it refuses to stay in the ponytail elastic, while wearing my 10 year old track pants with the paint stains and the 7 year old t-shirt with the bottom threads unravelling, wiping myself off with paper towel, trying to keep up with the 80s dance beat on my Walkman in my 15 year old sneakers.
And you want to talk to me about an assignment????!!!!!
No more gym for me.
Not even at $5.00 a month.
I love to take Frankie and Tikka for walks.
However, again, I am not good at balancing. I can't seem to figure out how to take them for a walk and work and do all the other things I have to do in a brief, 24 hour period.
Unless I want a starlight walk at 5.00 am, or a moonlit walk at midnight.
I prefer my walks when there is some light. I'm too clumsy to enjoy walking in the dark. I can fall during the light of day.
Why set myself up for failure by walking after midnight.
And the dogs would more than likely end up in some sort of entanglment with a woodland creature twice their size.
At least Frankie would.
Tikka would probably shake her head and say f*** that.
Two years ago, right around this time of year, I woke early on a Saturday morning and thought it would be lovely to sneak out of the house, just me and the dogs, for a meander down the Thatch Road.
By this time, I had managed to procure an ipod shuffle, as Keith had upgraded to an ipod that is not a shuffle and not a touch and I can't remember what the hell it is.
Ear buds precariously perched in my ears, (because along with all of my other physical faux pas, I don't have ears that gently or willingly embrace ear buds), I am singing my heart out, loudly, because its 7.08 in the morning and there isn't a soul to hear me, in spite of the cars lined up in parking lot and down by the riverside.
The dogs are too busy jumping in and out of the Saint John river to listen to my wailing rendition of Don't Cha by the Pussycat Dolls.
"Don't cha think your girlfriend is hot like me. . .don't cha think your girlfriend is a freak like me. . ." keening through the morning stillness like an Irish banshee with an ingrown toenail.
Happy with my crazy caroling, I march along, arms moving, feet pounding, warming up so my scarf is loosened and my mitts are stowed safely in my coat pocket.
And then, out of no where I feel this thing whiz by me with enough speed to create a smidgen of a breeze.
Synapes began firing as a result of the exercise and fresh air and within a blink of an eye, I knew who all those people were, whose cars were parked in the Thatch Road parking lot.
I had briefly wondered how come there were so many cars in the parking lot, and no one but me walking along the road.
But I like it that way.
No worries about having to apologize to dogless walkers for Frankie's volatile and outrageous behaviours, trying to convince them that he really doesn't want to go for their jugular, even if his body language indicates that would be his action of choice.
It was hunting season.
As I have no interest in the senseless slaughter of moose, deer, ducks, I never pay attention to whether or not hunting season has, yet again, been foisted upon us.
I have to believe these hunters weren't shooting at me because of my singing, although that may be a plausible theory.
No one should sing the Pussycat Dolls unless they are in a dark, noisy club buzzing on margaritas.
Especially Don't Cha.
They weren't shooting at the dogs, because as big as they are, they are no wear near the size of a moose.
It could be that in my haste to leave the house alone, without another bi-pedal being accompanying me, that I neglected to consider the time of year, and therefore didn't think of putting on Stephen's Day-Glo mesh orange vest thingy with the X across the back in electric neon yellow tape.
So, theoretically, these hunters, who had been up before the crack of dawn (as an aside, you have NO idea how much the phrase, "crack of dawn" has been maligned and misused in my presence) and therefore saw 7.08 in the morning as closer to lunch time than breakfast, making it appropriate to imbibe in some alcoholic libations, which may have stymied their ability to ascertain whether or not the figure moving along in the bushes was actually a moose trying to mate, or me singing.
A moose with a bad voice and ear buds, no horns and walking on two legs, but a moose nonetheless.
Never have the dogs heard me beckon for them in such a harsh tone as we hightailed it out of there before these hunters could decide if I should be taken out for my singing or because I was a moose making mating calls.
Back in my bed, snuggling up against Stephen, still somewhat rattled about my misadventure, dogs sleeping soundly on the floor beside me, I wondered how I was going to tell Stephen I was almost shot because drunk hunters mistook me for a moose singing the Pussycat Dolls.
Food. . right. Got a little off track there for a minute.
I'm reading a book given to me by Stephen's mother.
As a birthday present.
Subtle.
It's about food.
And weight loss.
Her two favorite topics of choice when she is around me.
She has been known to sneak weight loss magazines and books into my luggage after I've packed for the drive back to New Brunswick.
Or send me recipe books compiled by Weight Watchers.
I think she's trying to tell me something.
So, the book suggests considering your relationship with food.
I have considered my relationship with food.
In fact, if thinking alone could guarantee weight loss, I'd be thin by now!
I will say this: if Stephen keeps making the most delicious cabbage soup I've ever had, complete with two different kinds of beans, kidney and baked, I may have bigger worries than weight.
And much, much smellier. . . .
Title Lyric: I Just Want to Go Hunting by Ted Nugent
Food.
I have a love-hate relationship with food.
I love to eat it, it hates to leave me.
In particular, food hates to leave my waist, hips, thighs, arms, feet, hair. . .
My entire life I've had to deal with food and weight issues.
Weighing too much has been the one constant thread running through the tapestry of my life.
The very large tapestry.
Brief periods of weighing just enough.
Very brief periods.
Name a diet, I've tried it.
Name a weight-loss remedy, I've done it: speed, not eating at all, not eating anything resembling a carb, eating just grapefruits. . .
Exercise.
I genuinely like to exercise, but, I have trouble with balance.
Meaning, if I exercise I want to exercise as much as I want as long as I want, and other things, like, oh, work for example, end up not being given equal and fair treatment.
As a faculty member, I am granted access to a nicely appointed gym for $5.00 a month.
Naturally, I should jump through hoops of fire for such an opportunity.
I have.
It's called the PhD.
I did go the gym at my university.
I wanted to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to trim down my Reubenesque figure into something a little less Reuben and a little more Kate Moss.
To the gym I'd go, carrying my gym bag full of toiletries, towels, hair dryers, shampoo, conditioner, happy with the knowledge that I was doing something good to me and good for me. . .
On the treadmill I'd be, mind blissfully blank, endorphins chugging along nicely, daydreaming about walking along the English moors, or through a small village in Ireland on my way to the pub for a pub lunch and a Guinness. . .
I don't even like Guinness, but I'm all for authenticity. . .
And, without warning, I'd be plucked from dreamy musings by some muscle bound, athletic, sporting youth, high energy protein drink in one hand, journal article or assignment clutched in the other.
Wondering if he could "ask me something."
I envy women who work out and manage to look like their not working out. Perfectly highlighted hair smoothed back into a nice, tight ponytail, that bounces jauntily along to the latest dance beat pouring into their ears through almost invisible ear buds attached to an ipod touch, while they breathe normally and dab at the almost imperceptible glistenings of moisture on their foreheads with plush towels, modelling the latest, expensive name brand athletic wear, and designer footwear.
Me, I sweat like a overwight farm worker who smokes four packs a day, my hair sprouting a frizzy cloud around my face because it refuses to stay in the ponytail elastic, while wearing my 10 year old track pants with the paint stains and the 7 year old t-shirt with the bottom threads unravelling, wiping myself off with paper towel, trying to keep up with the 80s dance beat on my Walkman in my 15 year old sneakers.
And you want to talk to me about an assignment????!!!!!
No more gym for me.
Not even at $5.00 a month.
I love to take Frankie and Tikka for walks.
However, again, I am not good at balancing. I can't seem to figure out how to take them for a walk and work and do all the other things I have to do in a brief, 24 hour period.
Unless I want a starlight walk at 5.00 am, or a moonlit walk at midnight.
I prefer my walks when there is some light. I'm too clumsy to enjoy walking in the dark. I can fall during the light of day.
Why set myself up for failure by walking after midnight.
And the dogs would more than likely end up in some sort of entanglment with a woodland creature twice their size.
At least Frankie would.
Tikka would probably shake her head and say f*** that.
Two years ago, right around this time of year, I woke early on a Saturday morning and thought it would be lovely to sneak out of the house, just me and the dogs, for a meander down the Thatch Road.
By this time, I had managed to procure an ipod shuffle, as Keith had upgraded to an ipod that is not a shuffle and not a touch and I can't remember what the hell it is.
Ear buds precariously perched in my ears, (because along with all of my other physical faux pas, I don't have ears that gently or willingly embrace ear buds), I am singing my heart out, loudly, because its 7.08 in the morning and there isn't a soul to hear me, in spite of the cars lined up in parking lot and down by the riverside.
The dogs are too busy jumping in and out of the Saint John river to listen to my wailing rendition of Don't Cha by the Pussycat Dolls.
"Don't cha think your girlfriend is hot like me. . .don't cha think your girlfriend is a freak like me. . ." keening through the morning stillness like an Irish banshee with an ingrown toenail.
Happy with my crazy caroling, I march along, arms moving, feet pounding, warming up so my scarf is loosened and my mitts are stowed safely in my coat pocket.
And then, out of no where I feel this thing whiz by me with enough speed to create a smidgen of a breeze.
Synapes began firing as a result of the exercise and fresh air and within a blink of an eye, I knew who all those people were, whose cars were parked in the Thatch Road parking lot.
I had briefly wondered how come there were so many cars in the parking lot, and no one but me walking along the road.
But I like it that way.
No worries about having to apologize to dogless walkers for Frankie's volatile and outrageous behaviours, trying to convince them that he really doesn't want to go for their jugular, even if his body language indicates that would be his action of choice.
It was hunting season.
As I have no interest in the senseless slaughter of moose, deer, ducks, I never pay attention to whether or not hunting season has, yet again, been foisted upon us.
I have to believe these hunters weren't shooting at me because of my singing, although that may be a plausible theory.
No one should sing the Pussycat Dolls unless they are in a dark, noisy club buzzing on margaritas.
Especially Don't Cha.
They weren't shooting at the dogs, because as big as they are, they are no wear near the size of a moose.
It could be that in my haste to leave the house alone, without another bi-pedal being accompanying me, that I neglected to consider the time of year, and therefore didn't think of putting on Stephen's Day-Glo mesh orange vest thingy with the X across the back in electric neon yellow tape.
So, theoretically, these hunters, who had been up before the crack of dawn (as an aside, you have NO idea how much the phrase, "crack of dawn" has been maligned and misused in my presence) and therefore saw 7.08 in the morning as closer to lunch time than breakfast, making it appropriate to imbibe in some alcoholic libations, which may have stymied their ability to ascertain whether or not the figure moving along in the bushes was actually a moose trying to mate, or me singing.
A moose with a bad voice and ear buds, no horns and walking on two legs, but a moose nonetheless.
Never have the dogs heard me beckon for them in such a harsh tone as we hightailed it out of there before these hunters could decide if I should be taken out for my singing or because I was a moose making mating calls.
Back in my bed, snuggling up against Stephen, still somewhat rattled about my misadventure, dogs sleeping soundly on the floor beside me, I wondered how I was going to tell Stephen I was almost shot because drunk hunters mistook me for a moose singing the Pussycat Dolls.
Food. . right. Got a little off track there for a minute.
I'm reading a book given to me by Stephen's mother.
As a birthday present.
Subtle.
It's about food.
And weight loss.
Her two favorite topics of choice when she is around me.
She has been known to sneak weight loss magazines and books into my luggage after I've packed for the drive back to New Brunswick.
Or send me recipe books compiled by Weight Watchers.
I think she's trying to tell me something.
So, the book suggests considering your relationship with food.
I have considered my relationship with food.
In fact, if thinking alone could guarantee weight loss, I'd be thin by now!
I will say this: if Stephen keeps making the most delicious cabbage soup I've ever had, complete with two different kinds of beans, kidney and baked, I may have bigger worries than weight.
And much, much smellier. . . .
Title Lyric: I Just Want to Go Hunting by Ted Nugent
Monday, October 18, 2010
Cause she's still preoccupied with 19, 19, 1985. . .
October 18, 2010
$1000.00.
That's how much our mangy mutts have cost us this month.
So far.
Don't be looking for Christmas presents.
Or cards or cookies or wreaths for that matter.
We'll set the dogs in front of the back window, throw some lights and garland around them, and sit around them Christmas morning, oohhhing and ahhhing, while we unwrap the cats, and other assorted household items I wrap in lieu of actual, store bought gifts.
On the upside, they're no longer contagious.
Meaning Annette-the-greatest-dog-trainer-in-the-world (http://www.barkbusters.ca/) can now return to us.
Because we really need her.
Frank's hair trigger, instantaneous, volatile and unpredictable response to *any* noise within a 50 kilometer radius has lessened my lifespan by at least 5 years per outburst.
It keeps happening in spite of my vigilance in watching for "the signs" that he is poised for an attack on the front window. My futile attempts to intercept him before he runs to the window, barking at the visibly blanched blue jay who chanced landing on our lawn, or the startled squirrel who happens to be in our tree, or the nosy neighbour who drives slowly past our house, the peacefully passing pedestarians out for a leisurely stroll . . . .
At the rate he's going, I'll be lucky if I make to the end of this week.
Imagine you're in the kitchen, working at the table, computer keys clicking at a dizzying pace because you're "in the zone," when you're abruptly yanked from your reverie by the maniacal, bellowing clamour of two hounds barking, yelping, snarling, growling, a jarring racket that will jangle the nerves of even the most stalwart, undaunted, unwavering individual.
And you can only imagine what it does to Stephen.
Two bottles of wine and a bucket size snifter of brandy, accompanied by a club pack of Prozac, and a case of Melatonin is usually enough to calm his shattered nerves and restore him to a somewhat sustainable peace.
Until the next time.
When the two of them start their hellish cacophony, I leap into action.
Grabbing the water bottle, finger readied at the trigger, I bodily relocate them (but no hands!) "bahing" at them, and gently remarking that there is nothing here for them to see, to move along, to hustle their pappies and move their shtaneh (a poor, Anglosized translation of "pants" in Ukranian).
I man the front window like a goalie at a World Cup game. Not even the hair of either canine makes it past me, arms stretched out, feet planted firmly apart, scrabbling back and forth in front of the window, bahing, firing the water bottle spray with expert precision . . ..
Either the NHL or a European World Cup team is going to call me, when some one films my impressive barricading skills and puts it on youtube.
Something has to happen, or I'm gonna have to start exploiting the dog's labour skills in order to afford them.
And once that happens, it's a short step to Reilley becoming a feline pimp Daddy managing Goblet's street corner carnal activities.
Apparently, it's 80s week on Facebook.
Gnarly Dude!
Lots of statuses are encouraging me to upload a picture of myself from the 80s so everyone can see how much I've changed.
Or not.
If you're in the "not" catgeory, reality make-over tv shows would love to get their hands on you.
What I can't figure out is how come anyone would want to remember the 80s at all, let alone what you looked like.
I graduated from Oromocto High School in 1985.
Meaning the 80s for me was not some bygone era imagined in the nostalgic, cerebral meanderings of my 16 year old daughter.
They were real.
Very real.
Some things about the 80s were great: John Hughes' films for example.
The falling of the Berlin Wall.
The Cosby Show, Friday the 13th: The Series, and Fame.
Swatches.
Rubik Cubes, Trivial Pursuit.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Police Academy, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The end of M*A*S*H (I was just never a fan!) and Dynasty (which never should have started, really.).
80s music is remembered for its simultaneous creativity, hideousness and incomprehensibility.
Duran Duran, Culture Club, Michael Jackson, Thompson Twins, Men at Work, Men Without Hats, Cyndi Lauper, Loverboy, Rick Springfield, John Cougar, Pat Benetar, Madonna, Wham! . . . .
I still have no idea what The Reflex is about, but when I hear it I am transported to sock hops and high school dances where I pretended like I could dance.
Instead of the unco-ordinated and in all liklihood obscene gesticulations I engaged in on the dance floor.
You can imagine my Archie Bunker-inspired father's opinions about Cyndi Lauper and Culture Club. . .
Other things about the 80s were not so good.
Namely, fashion.
Legwarmers, neon everything: from shoelaces to underwear to sweatshirts with half the shoulder missing. . . shoulder pads, Madonna-esque fingerless gloves, one rhinestone glove, and other Michael Jackson inspired haute coutere catastrophes, gawd-help-us stirrup pants, metallic prom dresses with sleeves so puffy you had to turn sideways to get into the door, oversized shirts and sweaters with big gaudy belts bearing enough metal trim to prevent air travel for 100 years, parachute pants, jelly shoes and sandals, mesh shirts, sunglasses, Miami Vice look, . . .
Big, big earrings. The bigger the better.
Some where so heavy, they stretched your earlobes to your boobs.
Who needs ear stretchers? Just get your hands on some 50 pound 80s earrings, for .10 cents a peice at a thrift shop.
Glasses so big you wondered if the bridge of your nose would collapse from the weight.
The 80s are also renowned for some of the absolute worst hairstyles ever created.
Side ponytails, headbands, scrunchies. . .
Big bar hair, achieved with mousse, hair gel and hair spray enough to not only put a hole in our ozone layer, but the ozone layers of any other planet in our solar system.
But the worst. . .the peice de resistance of all 80s hair styles. . .
The Mullet.
(Head down, face filled with embarrasement and shame)
I had one.
1981.
Business in the front.
Party in the back.
Parted down the middle with my s-shaped cowlick for all to ponder.
And if the mullet wasn't bad enough, to add insult to injury and salt to the open wound that was my hairstyle, I had another folicle faux pas:
A rat tail.
One September, during the annual FREX, I had my rat tail adorned with so many roach clips its a wonder my neck wasn't permanently pulled back, forcing me to spend the rest of my life looking only at the sky.
Any of my friends won a roach clip, found a roach clip, or procured a roach clip, it was afixed to my rat tail.
And, because I was incredibly niave (how else could you possibly explain a mullet and rat tail!) I had no idea what roach clips were used for.
But I paraded around the exhibition grounds with at least 25 roach clips securely clipped to my rat tail, like a walking advertisement for any and all drug dealers to entice me with their marijuana marvels.
I shudder just thinking about it.
The picture of me with the mullet adorning my head is in my parent's basement.
A constant reminder, a metaphor, of all that was wrong with the 80s.
Thankfully, the rat tail was hidden.
Because there is only so much humilitation to be crammed into one school photo.
In conclusion, the 80s were a fashion disaster.
A decade where fashion designers and couture wannabes experienced, collectively, an acid flashback so severe, with such daunting reprecussions that young people in the western world adorned themselves with blindingly inappropriate colors, forgot how to speak English as a result of music that made no sense, while boasting hair styles that made Ray Charles shake his head in bewilderment.
And if you happened to live so far off the fashion grid that clothes shopping took place in the nearest strip mall that housed such Holy Grails of Haute Couture as Reitmans, Woolworth's or Bi-Way, and you have the fashion appreciation of a color blind two year old, you were, in one succinct word,
Screwed.
So, am I rushing to my parent's house to procure a picture of me in the 80s so I can then whiz to work to have someone with far more computer savvy than I possess scan said picture, to my office, turn on my computer and upload this dashing daguerreotype to Facebook so everyone can see how much I have (not) changed?
Not.
Bloody.
Likely.
I'd rather dig lint out of my bellybutton.
Title Lyric: 1985 by Bowling for Soup
$1000.00.
That's how much our mangy mutts have cost us this month.
So far.
Don't be looking for Christmas presents.
Or cards or cookies or wreaths for that matter.
We'll set the dogs in front of the back window, throw some lights and garland around them, and sit around them Christmas morning, oohhhing and ahhhing, while we unwrap the cats, and other assorted household items I wrap in lieu of actual, store bought gifts.
On the upside, they're no longer contagious.
Meaning Annette-the-greatest-dog-trainer-in-the-world (http://www.barkbusters.ca/) can now return to us.
Because we really need her.
Frank's hair trigger, instantaneous, volatile and unpredictable response to *any* noise within a 50 kilometer radius has lessened my lifespan by at least 5 years per outburst.
It keeps happening in spite of my vigilance in watching for "the signs" that he is poised for an attack on the front window. My futile attempts to intercept him before he runs to the window, barking at the visibly blanched blue jay who chanced landing on our lawn, or the startled squirrel who happens to be in our tree, or the nosy neighbour who drives slowly past our house, the peacefully passing pedestarians out for a leisurely stroll . . . .
At the rate he's going, I'll be lucky if I make to the end of this week.
Imagine you're in the kitchen, working at the table, computer keys clicking at a dizzying pace because you're "in the zone," when you're abruptly yanked from your reverie by the maniacal, bellowing clamour of two hounds barking, yelping, snarling, growling, a jarring racket that will jangle the nerves of even the most stalwart, undaunted, unwavering individual.
And you can only imagine what it does to Stephen.
Two bottles of wine and a bucket size snifter of brandy, accompanied by a club pack of Prozac, and a case of Melatonin is usually enough to calm his shattered nerves and restore him to a somewhat sustainable peace.
Until the next time.
When the two of them start their hellish cacophony, I leap into action.
Grabbing the water bottle, finger readied at the trigger, I bodily relocate them (but no hands!) "bahing" at them, and gently remarking that there is nothing here for them to see, to move along, to hustle their pappies and move their shtaneh (a poor, Anglosized translation of "pants" in Ukranian).
I man the front window like a goalie at a World Cup game. Not even the hair of either canine makes it past me, arms stretched out, feet planted firmly apart, scrabbling back and forth in front of the window, bahing, firing the water bottle spray with expert precision . . ..
Either the NHL or a European World Cup team is going to call me, when some one films my impressive barricading skills and puts it on youtube.
Something has to happen, or I'm gonna have to start exploiting the dog's labour skills in order to afford them.
And once that happens, it's a short step to Reilley becoming a feline pimp Daddy managing Goblet's street corner carnal activities.
Apparently, it's 80s week on Facebook.
Gnarly Dude!
Lots of statuses are encouraging me to upload a picture of myself from the 80s so everyone can see how much I've changed.
Or not.
If you're in the "not" catgeory, reality make-over tv shows would love to get their hands on you.
What I can't figure out is how come anyone would want to remember the 80s at all, let alone what you looked like.
I graduated from Oromocto High School in 1985.
Meaning the 80s for me was not some bygone era imagined in the nostalgic, cerebral meanderings of my 16 year old daughter.
They were real.
Very real.
Some things about the 80s were great: John Hughes' films for example.
The falling of the Berlin Wall.
The Cosby Show, Friday the 13th: The Series, and Fame.
Swatches.
Rubik Cubes, Trivial Pursuit.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Police Academy, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The end of M*A*S*H (I was just never a fan!) and Dynasty (which never should have started, really.).
80s music is remembered for its simultaneous creativity, hideousness and incomprehensibility.
Duran Duran, Culture Club, Michael Jackson, Thompson Twins, Men at Work, Men Without Hats, Cyndi Lauper, Loverboy, Rick Springfield, John Cougar, Pat Benetar, Madonna, Wham! . . . .
I still have no idea what The Reflex is about, but when I hear it I am transported to sock hops and high school dances where I pretended like I could dance.
Instead of the unco-ordinated and in all liklihood obscene gesticulations I engaged in on the dance floor.
You can imagine my Archie Bunker-inspired father's opinions about Cyndi Lauper and Culture Club. . .
Other things about the 80s were not so good.
Namely, fashion.
Legwarmers, neon everything: from shoelaces to underwear to sweatshirts with half the shoulder missing. . . shoulder pads, Madonna-esque fingerless gloves, one rhinestone glove, and other Michael Jackson inspired haute coutere catastrophes, gawd-help-us stirrup pants, metallic prom dresses with sleeves so puffy you had to turn sideways to get into the door, oversized shirts and sweaters with big gaudy belts bearing enough metal trim to prevent air travel for 100 years, parachute pants, jelly shoes and sandals, mesh shirts, sunglasses, Miami Vice look, . . .
Big, big earrings. The bigger the better.
Some where so heavy, they stretched your earlobes to your boobs.
Who needs ear stretchers? Just get your hands on some 50 pound 80s earrings, for .10 cents a peice at a thrift shop.
Glasses so big you wondered if the bridge of your nose would collapse from the weight.
The 80s are also renowned for some of the absolute worst hairstyles ever created.
Side ponytails, headbands, scrunchies. . .
Big bar hair, achieved with mousse, hair gel and hair spray enough to not only put a hole in our ozone layer, but the ozone layers of any other planet in our solar system.
But the worst. . .the peice de resistance of all 80s hair styles. . .
The Mullet.
(Head down, face filled with embarrasement and shame)
I had one.
1981.
Business in the front.
Party in the back.
Parted down the middle with my s-shaped cowlick for all to ponder.
And if the mullet wasn't bad enough, to add insult to injury and salt to the open wound that was my hairstyle, I had another folicle faux pas:
A rat tail.
One September, during the annual FREX, I had my rat tail adorned with so many roach clips its a wonder my neck wasn't permanently pulled back, forcing me to spend the rest of my life looking only at the sky.
Any of my friends won a roach clip, found a roach clip, or procured a roach clip, it was afixed to my rat tail.
And, because I was incredibly niave (how else could you possibly explain a mullet and rat tail!) I had no idea what roach clips were used for.
But I paraded around the exhibition grounds with at least 25 roach clips securely clipped to my rat tail, like a walking advertisement for any and all drug dealers to entice me with their marijuana marvels.
I shudder just thinking about it.
The picture of me with the mullet adorning my head is in my parent's basement.
A constant reminder, a metaphor, of all that was wrong with the 80s.
Thankfully, the rat tail was hidden.
Because there is only so much humilitation to be crammed into one school photo.
In conclusion, the 80s were a fashion disaster.
A decade where fashion designers and couture wannabes experienced, collectively, an acid flashback so severe, with such daunting reprecussions that young people in the western world adorned themselves with blindingly inappropriate colors, forgot how to speak English as a result of music that made no sense, while boasting hair styles that made Ray Charles shake his head in bewilderment.
And if you happened to live so far off the fashion grid that clothes shopping took place in the nearest strip mall that housed such Holy Grails of Haute Couture as Reitmans, Woolworth's or Bi-Way, and you have the fashion appreciation of a color blind two year old, you were, in one succinct word,
Screwed.
So, am I rushing to my parent's house to procure a picture of me in the 80s so I can then whiz to work to have someone with far more computer savvy than I possess scan said picture, to my office, turn on my computer and upload this dashing daguerreotype to Facebook so everyone can see how much I have (not) changed?
Not.
Bloody.
Likely.
I'd rather dig lint out of my bellybutton.
Title Lyric: 1985 by Bowling for Soup
Maybe she just got lost, so I hung my bra from the mailbox. . .the boob fairy never came for me. . .
October 17, 2010
Saturday evening, during my usual visit to the nursing home, after an enjoyable supper of potato salad and hotdogs, Mum and I retired to her room for our weekly catch-up conflab.
Since she got sick several years ago, my mother has developed a low tolerance for the cold.
Hence, when we returned to her room, I was hit by a wall of heat so intense I felt my eyebrows singe.
My mother was already wrapped in two sweaters, heat as high as it could go, when she asked me if I would mind getting her a warm blanket to wrap herself in because she was freezing.
Masking the astonishment on my face, I swaddle her in a blanket, and then begin stripping down so I could tolerate the warmth of her room.
As soon as she goes to the bathroom, I leap from her bed, open the window and let the cool night air dance over my bare neck and arms, taking as many lungfuls as I can before she comes out of the bathroom.
In the past, if not paying attention for her return, I am jolted into attentiveness when I hear,
"Dawne! Do you have that window open??!! It's FREEZING in here!"
Reluctantly, I close the window. I've tried in the past to leave it open just a hair, but she always knows.
Always.
When she used to come to my house for dinner, she'd come into the hot-because-Dawne-has-been-cooking-in-it-all-day-kitchen, wearing 3 sweaters and a winter coat, and sit beside the heater, which I always remembered to turn on before she arrived, with dogs lying on her feet, and she would still complain that every time she came to my house she froze.
"Its a wonder those kids aren't sick with pneumonia," she'd say, "cause its so bloody cold in here all the time! Feel my hands! They're like cakes of ice!"
"Cakes of ice" was a perennial favourite of my mother. . .still is.
So, last evening while we were conflabbing, I asked her if she thought she had enough sweaters for the winter.
She thought about it for a minute, and asked if she had any money left on her Pennington's giftcard.
Which is not what I asked her, you'll note.
I said that indeed, she did, and that I would be more than happy to get her a couple of sweaters.
Off to Penningtons I went this afternoon after Quaker meeting.
Sometimes I can convince her to come with me, but most of the time I fly solo on these vestment missions.
And if something is the wrong size, or the wrong color, or the wrong style, then I have to go back.
I have been known to make four trips trying to get things sorted out.
I may have gotten it all right this trip, two sweaters: a traditional navy blue cardigan, and a dusty rose fleece with a zipper in the front.
Only time will tell.
As in tonight when I take them to her, along with her box of granola bars.
It's Sunday. . Antiques Roadshow, All Creatures Great and Small, new sweaters and granola bars.
Does it get any better than that?
The last time I was able to get Mum to come shopping with me was the first really nice, warm spring day after a long, cold winter.
Sunshine always makes her happy.
There is nothing challenging about taking Mum out, except that mucho patience is required.
Ergo my father doesn't take her.
Patient he is not.
When they shop together, it gets very, very ugly.
So for the sake of family harmony, I take her almost all places she needs to go.
Plus I can get her wheelchair in the car without taking it apart.
She needed several things for the spring/summer: t-shirts, capris, and two new bras.
We wander around the store picking out piles of things for her to try on.
And remember, she wears a hearing aid in one ear and can't hear from the other, so, she tends to be loud when she talks to you.
Especially if we're out in public because she's convinced with all the noise outside of the confines of the nursing home, I won't hear her.
So there can be loudness.
She tried on a variety of shirts and pants and capris until she settled on what she wanted.
We were at the portion our shopping programming I had put off as long as I could.
The bras.
Managing to buy bras for me is something I avoid at all costs. I hate it. My boobs are too small for my ample body, so cup size and around me size are always at odds with one another.
And at 43 I am way beyond stuffing my bra with kleenex to make the cup size and around me size fit.
Besides, I don't want boobs that come around corners before the rest of me.
If I can't bra myself up, how can I possibly manage to locate appropriate bras for my mother????
She has the same problem: around size and cup size don't work together.
Plus, there isn't much in contemporary bras she is going to like.
Leopard print wire bras for maximum boob support and outage, electric pink peek-a-boo-bras, lime green padded bras to ensure false advertising, bras with hearts on them, or kissy lips, bras with straps so thin they're practically non-existant and don't have the capacity to hold up tissue, let alone an ample pair of breasts, baby blue lacy bras that cover nothing and show everything, bras with shiny doodads at the front, bras with stripes, flowers, kittens, puppies, black strapless bras with polka dots . . .
Janet was having none of that.
Beige or white, solid straps, no lace, no padding, no designs. . .
A bra whose sole purpose is to hold your boobs up.
And not for entertainment.
I am just so thankful we didn't have to buy underwear. I can only imagine how I would explain hi-cut, low-cut, no cut, boy cut, and thongs to my mother.
As it was, she had considered getting pjs, but was disgusted by the offerings.
How come the companies who make these pajamas think a 70 year old woman wants to wear pjs with lambs cavorting all over them? Or bowls of fruit? Or Betty Boop? Or sailing motifs?
This from the woman who wore 70s prints and stripes and colors that would render you blind upon first sight.
What about me says, "I want to wear night ware that has sayings on it like, "Bad Girls Everywhere" or "Come Here and Kiss Me" or "Team Edward!??"
She thought they were referring to Prince Edward.
I tried to explain but she just didn't care.
Whatever happened to simple flowered pajama tops and bottoms? she yells at me.
There must be a top and a bottom.
No nighties for my mother.
"They bunch up around my waist, " she say, "and I feel like I'm sleeping in the nude!"
No cute little pink spaghetti strap tops with barely there bottoms, either.
"If I wanted to sleep naked, why would I go through all the trouble of buying pajamas?"
No tank tops either.
T-shirt like tops with matching bottoms and no ifs, ands or buts about it.
We didn't purchase pajamas, let me tell you that.
The very patient salesperson listens attentively while I share with her the list of dos and don't that must be be met in selecting bras for my mother.
She then scours the store, the back rooms, corners, underneath counters, inside ceiling tiles, and comes up with three bras she thinks (hopes, along with me) that my mother will both like and buy.
Helping Mum try in t-shirts and capris was fine. I help her put her pjs on all the time, and I didn't see much difference between that and helping her try on clothes.
Bras, however, were an entirely different story.
I didn't even know where to begin.
Or how.
I get the straps over her shoulders.
So far so good.
The hard part was next.
And you know what the hard part was. . .so I am NOT going into detail.
Chafing at my attempt to be delicate, my mother takes the situation into her own hands, and yells.
Very loudly.
"Oh for God's sake Dawne! Just stuff them in! I have to pee! And I'm FREEZING"
Well.
I did as she said.
While listening to the titters and tee hees from the sales staff, the store, and everyone within a hundred kilometer radius of my mother and me.
We selected two bras, put them in the pile, paid for everything and then I took her to lunch.
Just when you think you know someone. . . .
Title Lyric: The Boob Fairy by Deirdre Flint
Saturday evening, during my usual visit to the nursing home, after an enjoyable supper of potato salad and hotdogs, Mum and I retired to her room for our weekly catch-up conflab.
Since she got sick several years ago, my mother has developed a low tolerance for the cold.
Hence, when we returned to her room, I was hit by a wall of heat so intense I felt my eyebrows singe.
My mother was already wrapped in two sweaters, heat as high as it could go, when she asked me if I would mind getting her a warm blanket to wrap herself in because she was freezing.
Masking the astonishment on my face, I swaddle her in a blanket, and then begin stripping down so I could tolerate the warmth of her room.
As soon as she goes to the bathroom, I leap from her bed, open the window and let the cool night air dance over my bare neck and arms, taking as many lungfuls as I can before she comes out of the bathroom.
In the past, if not paying attention for her return, I am jolted into attentiveness when I hear,
"Dawne! Do you have that window open??!! It's FREEZING in here!"
Reluctantly, I close the window. I've tried in the past to leave it open just a hair, but she always knows.
Always.
When she used to come to my house for dinner, she'd come into the hot-because-Dawne-has-been-cooking-in-it-all-day-kitchen, wearing 3 sweaters and a winter coat, and sit beside the heater, which I always remembered to turn on before she arrived, with dogs lying on her feet, and she would still complain that every time she came to my house she froze.
"Its a wonder those kids aren't sick with pneumonia," she'd say, "cause its so bloody cold in here all the time! Feel my hands! They're like cakes of ice!"
"Cakes of ice" was a perennial favourite of my mother. . .still is.
So, last evening while we were conflabbing, I asked her if she thought she had enough sweaters for the winter.
She thought about it for a minute, and asked if she had any money left on her Pennington's giftcard.
Which is not what I asked her, you'll note.
I said that indeed, she did, and that I would be more than happy to get her a couple of sweaters.
Off to Penningtons I went this afternoon after Quaker meeting.
Sometimes I can convince her to come with me, but most of the time I fly solo on these vestment missions.
And if something is the wrong size, or the wrong color, or the wrong style, then I have to go back.
I have been known to make four trips trying to get things sorted out.
I may have gotten it all right this trip, two sweaters: a traditional navy blue cardigan, and a dusty rose fleece with a zipper in the front.
Only time will tell.
As in tonight when I take them to her, along with her box of granola bars.
It's Sunday. . Antiques Roadshow, All Creatures Great and Small, new sweaters and granola bars.
Does it get any better than that?
The last time I was able to get Mum to come shopping with me was the first really nice, warm spring day after a long, cold winter.
Sunshine always makes her happy.
There is nothing challenging about taking Mum out, except that mucho patience is required.
Ergo my father doesn't take her.
Patient he is not.
When they shop together, it gets very, very ugly.
So for the sake of family harmony, I take her almost all places she needs to go.
Plus I can get her wheelchair in the car without taking it apart.
She needed several things for the spring/summer: t-shirts, capris, and two new bras.
We wander around the store picking out piles of things for her to try on.
And remember, she wears a hearing aid in one ear and can't hear from the other, so, she tends to be loud when she talks to you.
Especially if we're out in public because she's convinced with all the noise outside of the confines of the nursing home, I won't hear her.
So there can be loudness.
She tried on a variety of shirts and pants and capris until she settled on what she wanted.
We were at the portion our shopping programming I had put off as long as I could.
The bras.
Managing to buy bras for me is something I avoid at all costs. I hate it. My boobs are too small for my ample body, so cup size and around me size are always at odds with one another.
And at 43 I am way beyond stuffing my bra with kleenex to make the cup size and around me size fit.
Besides, I don't want boobs that come around corners before the rest of me.
If I can't bra myself up, how can I possibly manage to locate appropriate bras for my mother????
She has the same problem: around size and cup size don't work together.
Plus, there isn't much in contemporary bras she is going to like.
Leopard print wire bras for maximum boob support and outage, electric pink peek-a-boo-bras, lime green padded bras to ensure false advertising, bras with hearts on them, or kissy lips, bras with straps so thin they're practically non-existant and don't have the capacity to hold up tissue, let alone an ample pair of breasts, baby blue lacy bras that cover nothing and show everything, bras with shiny doodads at the front, bras with stripes, flowers, kittens, puppies, black strapless bras with polka dots . . .
Janet was having none of that.
Beige or white, solid straps, no lace, no padding, no designs. . .
A bra whose sole purpose is to hold your boobs up.
And not for entertainment.
I am just so thankful we didn't have to buy underwear. I can only imagine how I would explain hi-cut, low-cut, no cut, boy cut, and thongs to my mother.
As it was, she had considered getting pjs, but was disgusted by the offerings.
How come the companies who make these pajamas think a 70 year old woman wants to wear pjs with lambs cavorting all over them? Or bowls of fruit? Or Betty Boop? Or sailing motifs?
This from the woman who wore 70s prints and stripes and colors that would render you blind upon first sight.
What about me says, "I want to wear night ware that has sayings on it like, "Bad Girls Everywhere" or "Come Here and Kiss Me" or "Team Edward!??"
She thought they were referring to Prince Edward.
I tried to explain but she just didn't care.
Whatever happened to simple flowered pajama tops and bottoms? she yells at me.
There must be a top and a bottom.
No nighties for my mother.
"They bunch up around my waist, " she say, "and I feel like I'm sleeping in the nude!"
No cute little pink spaghetti strap tops with barely there bottoms, either.
"If I wanted to sleep naked, why would I go through all the trouble of buying pajamas?"
No tank tops either.
T-shirt like tops with matching bottoms and no ifs, ands or buts about it.
We didn't purchase pajamas, let me tell you that.
The very patient salesperson listens attentively while I share with her the list of dos and don't that must be be met in selecting bras for my mother.
She then scours the store, the back rooms, corners, underneath counters, inside ceiling tiles, and comes up with three bras she thinks (hopes, along with me) that my mother will both like and buy.
Helping Mum try in t-shirts and capris was fine. I help her put her pjs on all the time, and I didn't see much difference between that and helping her try on clothes.
Bras, however, were an entirely different story.
I didn't even know where to begin.
Or how.
I get the straps over her shoulders.
So far so good.
The hard part was next.
And you know what the hard part was. . .so I am NOT going into detail.
Chafing at my attempt to be delicate, my mother takes the situation into her own hands, and yells.
Very loudly.
"Oh for God's sake Dawne! Just stuff them in! I have to pee! And I'm FREEZING"
Well.
I did as she said.
While listening to the titters and tee hees from the sales staff, the store, and everyone within a hundred kilometer radius of my mother and me.
We selected two bras, put them in the pile, paid for everything and then I took her to lunch.
Just when you think you know someone. . . .
Title Lyric: The Boob Fairy by Deirdre Flint
Sunday, October 17, 2010
I packed my antihistamines and tupperware drums. . . .
October 16, 2010
Today was a completely useless day.
I didn't get up, I mean really up, until 3.00.
In the afternoon, that is.
How come?
Excema.
I have excema, and it always gets bad when the seasons change.
Especially the change from fall to winter.
The itching has been known to make me crazier than usual.
Consequently, I have prescription antihistamines.
And I had to take them last night.
Anyone whose ever taken Benadryl knows the power of over-the-counter antihistamines.
Prescription antihistamines. . . .ummmmmmm. . . .
Hence, I wasn't able to achieve full consciousness until around 3.00 pm.
Luckily, I've only had to antihistamines for excema.
Never for allergies.
However, I did, only once, experience hives.
I was still living in Southern Ontario, in a townhouse complex a 10 minute walk from my in-laws.
My ex and I were in the midst of what would be our last separation before I moved back to New Brunswick.
The ultimate separation as it were.
The hives. . .right. . .
To this day, I have no idea how I came to get hives.
I just know that one evening, around 10 pm, once the Meredyth and Keith were in bed, I started scratching.
And it wasn't just one spot, it was all over.
Peering into the bathroom mirror, I noticed these red bumps all over me.
And to say they were itchy is an understatement.
I filled the bathroom sink and slathered myself with calomine lotion.
All that did was make me look like I had fallen into a vat of pink chalk dust.
All night.
Scratching.
Not sleeping.
Finally, at 6 am, I gave in and called my in-laws who picked the three of us up and took us to St. Joe's hospital.
Luckily, it was the one and only time an Emergency Room anywhere in the Western world didn't have a waiting room jam packed with sick people squeezed together tigther than sardines in a can.
I was in and out in 20 minutes.
The doctor gave me a shot of some really potent antihistamine.
Home by 7.30 am, I fed the kids a second breakfast, having fed them before we left, and then we sat down to watch a movie.
Because when you have really small children, there is no time that isn't a good time to show a movie.
Especially when mummy is hyped on an injection of antihistamines.
Before I knew it, I was completely, sound asleep.
Not because I wanted to be, but because even my will to remain awake wasn't strong enough to overpower the antihistamines following freely throughout my body. Antihistamines that had taken control over my sleep center forcing my brain to send out messages screaming, "SHE MUST SLEEP!"
But my conscience was screaming equally as loud, "SHE CAN'T. WHO'LL LOOK AFTER THE KIDS????!!!!!"
My brain responded, "NOT MY PROBLEM!!!!!! THE MEDS HAVE ORDERED SLEEP!!!"
And we know who won that battle.
Let the games begin.
Meredyth, as any precocious child would, took complete and full advantage of her mother's unwillingly unconscious state.
Not willing to be completely silenced, my conscience would occasionally overpower my brain long enough to force me awake to survey the uncontrolled chaos that was taking place around me.
I would wake up long enough to see Mer exercising her artistic creativity all over the living room walls, in my best lipstick, using my eyeshadow to shade and eyeliner to makes those finer lines.
But before I could do anything, I was out.
This was one of the periods in my life when I wore makeup.
Events like this likely precipitated my eventual eschewing of makeup all together.
Mer also made a lovely pile of flour, sugar, and assorted herbs and spices on the carpet.
Every pot, pot lid and pan I owned was scattered throughtout the living room.
VHS tape towers tettered precariously.
But the worst thing, worse than everything combined, was swimming to near consciousness only to be greeted with the saccharine sweetness of the purple dinosaur with the green spots.
That's right.
Barney.
And friends.
Perhaps Barney and his obnoxious band of perpetually perky pre-teens was the mitigating factor in not being able to achieve full consciouness. My conscience was thinking, "Screw that. Waking her to Barney is considered cruel and unusual punishment. Let her be. "
Keith, because he was Keith, napped beside me.
Both of us woke up with our faces adorned in every single form, type, kind, of makeup I owned.
Finally, around 1.00 pm, I called my former mother-in-law and asked if we could please come over.
She arrived 5 minutes later, and upon walking in the house exclaimed, "I should have taken you all to my house this morning!"
Once at her house, I crashed in the spare room until she came to get me for supper.
After supper, I went back home and it took me hours to get Mer's lipstick graffiti off the walls.
To vacuum the concoction she so artfully arranged on the carpet.
And don't even ask about how I managed to get the makeup off Pookie's face.
No child under the age of two is ever excited about that much soap and water coming into contact with their face.
Not to mention make up remover.
Sleeping until 3.00 pm because of antihistamines is so not the worst thing I've ever experienced.
And the repercussions to house, home, and my face where significantly less as well.
Unfortunately for Keith, this was not the only time Mer used his body, or parts of it, for her own entertainment.
Once she accepted that, despite her begging and pleading, I was not going to take him back to the hospital, she decided that she may as well enjoy him.
Meaning one afternoon, while I was in the kitchen making cookies, I heard a lot of "hold still" and giggling coming from upstairs.
Upon investigation, it would seem that Mer thought that it would be fun to make her brother look like a mini version of the Michelin man.
Taking the paper like covers off all of my maxi pads, she gleefully plastered her brother with them, starting from the top down.
Poor little guy had no idea what she was doing.
When he was two weeks old, we lived in a scuzzy apartment in downtown Hamilton.
I saw this building in May when we went to a conference.
It has been gentrified.
But it wasn't then.
I have lots of reminisences about that building, let me tell you.
But for now, that was where we were living.
Happily making cookies for me and mine, I noticed that Keith wasn't making any of his happy gurgling sounds.
Because Mer had placed between his toothless gums a homemade chocolate chip cookie.
The pleasure on my little Pookie's puss was a sight to behold.
The world didn't taste like milky mush. There were foods that tasted like. . . .something.
When I removed this cookie, I was greeted with the not-so-happy-sounds-of-a-pissed-off-infant.
Mer piped up, "THAT'S why I put the cookie in its mouth. To shut it up. It make too much noise and I can't hear the tv."
Sibling sensibility.
Luckily, the cookie didn't ruin Keith's appetite for milky mush permanently.
He managed to ascertain that any food filled the void, no matter what it tasted like.
He still thinks like that.
Ask my grocery bill.
Title Lyric: I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star by The Boy Least Likely To
Today was a completely useless day.
I didn't get up, I mean really up, until 3.00.
In the afternoon, that is.
How come?
Excema.
I have excema, and it always gets bad when the seasons change.
Especially the change from fall to winter.
The itching has been known to make me crazier than usual.
Consequently, I have prescription antihistamines.
And I had to take them last night.
Anyone whose ever taken Benadryl knows the power of over-the-counter antihistamines.
Prescription antihistamines. . . .ummmmmmm. . . .
Hence, I wasn't able to achieve full consciousness until around 3.00 pm.
Luckily, I've only had to antihistamines for excema.
Never for allergies.
However, I did, only once, experience hives.
I was still living in Southern Ontario, in a townhouse complex a 10 minute walk from my in-laws.
My ex and I were in the midst of what would be our last separation before I moved back to New Brunswick.
The ultimate separation as it were.
The hives. . .right. . .
To this day, I have no idea how I came to get hives.
I just know that one evening, around 10 pm, once the Meredyth and Keith were in bed, I started scratching.
And it wasn't just one spot, it was all over.
Peering into the bathroom mirror, I noticed these red bumps all over me.
And to say they were itchy is an understatement.
I filled the bathroom sink and slathered myself with calomine lotion.
All that did was make me look like I had fallen into a vat of pink chalk dust.
All night.
Scratching.
Not sleeping.
Finally, at 6 am, I gave in and called my in-laws who picked the three of us up and took us to St. Joe's hospital.
Luckily, it was the one and only time an Emergency Room anywhere in the Western world didn't have a waiting room jam packed with sick people squeezed together tigther than sardines in a can.
I was in and out in 20 minutes.
The doctor gave me a shot of some really potent antihistamine.
Home by 7.30 am, I fed the kids a second breakfast, having fed them before we left, and then we sat down to watch a movie.
Because when you have really small children, there is no time that isn't a good time to show a movie.
Especially when mummy is hyped on an injection of antihistamines.
Before I knew it, I was completely, sound asleep.
Not because I wanted to be, but because even my will to remain awake wasn't strong enough to overpower the antihistamines following freely throughout my body. Antihistamines that had taken control over my sleep center forcing my brain to send out messages screaming, "SHE MUST SLEEP!"
But my conscience was screaming equally as loud, "SHE CAN'T. WHO'LL LOOK AFTER THE KIDS????!!!!!"
My brain responded, "NOT MY PROBLEM!!!!!! THE MEDS HAVE ORDERED SLEEP!!!"
And we know who won that battle.
Let the games begin.
Meredyth, as any precocious child would, took complete and full advantage of her mother's unwillingly unconscious state.
Not willing to be completely silenced, my conscience would occasionally overpower my brain long enough to force me awake to survey the uncontrolled chaos that was taking place around me.
I would wake up long enough to see Mer exercising her artistic creativity all over the living room walls, in my best lipstick, using my eyeshadow to shade and eyeliner to makes those finer lines.
But before I could do anything, I was out.
This was one of the periods in my life when I wore makeup.
Events like this likely precipitated my eventual eschewing of makeup all together.
Mer also made a lovely pile of flour, sugar, and assorted herbs and spices on the carpet.
Every pot, pot lid and pan I owned was scattered throughtout the living room.
VHS tape towers tettered precariously.
But the worst thing, worse than everything combined, was swimming to near consciousness only to be greeted with the saccharine sweetness of the purple dinosaur with the green spots.
That's right.
Barney.
And friends.
Perhaps Barney and his obnoxious band of perpetually perky pre-teens was the mitigating factor in not being able to achieve full consciouness. My conscience was thinking, "Screw that. Waking her to Barney is considered cruel and unusual punishment. Let her be. "
Keith, because he was Keith, napped beside me.
Both of us woke up with our faces adorned in every single form, type, kind, of makeup I owned.
Finally, around 1.00 pm, I called my former mother-in-law and asked if we could please come over.
She arrived 5 minutes later, and upon walking in the house exclaimed, "I should have taken you all to my house this morning!"
Once at her house, I crashed in the spare room until she came to get me for supper.
After supper, I went back home and it took me hours to get Mer's lipstick graffiti off the walls.
To vacuum the concoction she so artfully arranged on the carpet.
And don't even ask about how I managed to get the makeup off Pookie's face.
No child under the age of two is ever excited about that much soap and water coming into contact with their face.
Not to mention make up remover.
Sleeping until 3.00 pm because of antihistamines is so not the worst thing I've ever experienced.
And the repercussions to house, home, and my face where significantly less as well.
Unfortunately for Keith, this was not the only time Mer used his body, or parts of it, for her own entertainment.
Once she accepted that, despite her begging and pleading, I was not going to take him back to the hospital, she decided that she may as well enjoy him.
Meaning one afternoon, while I was in the kitchen making cookies, I heard a lot of "hold still" and giggling coming from upstairs.
Upon investigation, it would seem that Mer thought that it would be fun to make her brother look like a mini version of the Michelin man.
Taking the paper like covers off all of my maxi pads, she gleefully plastered her brother with them, starting from the top down.
Poor little guy had no idea what she was doing.
When he was two weeks old, we lived in a scuzzy apartment in downtown Hamilton.
I saw this building in May when we went to a conference.
It has been gentrified.
But it wasn't then.
I have lots of reminisences about that building, let me tell you.
But for now, that was where we were living.
Happily making cookies for me and mine, I noticed that Keith wasn't making any of his happy gurgling sounds.
Because Mer had placed between his toothless gums a homemade chocolate chip cookie.
The pleasure on my little Pookie's puss was a sight to behold.
The world didn't taste like milky mush. There were foods that tasted like. . . .something.
When I removed this cookie, I was greeted with the not-so-happy-sounds-of-a-pissed-off-infant.
Mer piped up, "THAT'S why I put the cookie in its mouth. To shut it up. It make too much noise and I can't hear the tv."
Sibling sensibility.
Luckily, the cookie didn't ruin Keith's appetite for milky mush permanently.
He managed to ascertain that any food filled the void, no matter what it tasted like.
He still thinks like that.
Ask my grocery bill.
Title Lyric: I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star by The Boy Least Likely To
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