Our neighbour, who lived behind us, is moving to Toronto.
I was very sad to hear this. . .I liked her. She was fun, neighbourly, and had two little shih tzus who provided me with lots of entertainment while I would hang laundry.
Last week, when she was packing things up and getting things ready, I noticed two ginormous plants on her back deck.
And I happened to wonder aloud, in front of Stephen, whether or not she was taking these plants with her.
Stephen responded that whether or not she was, didn't matter, because they wouldn't be inhabiting casa de van every-pidwysocky-clarke.
According to Stephen, one more plant in this house and we'll qualify for a licence to sell plants.
So, yesterday, in the middle of Stephen getting ready for Quaker meeting, and me supposed to be getting ready for Quaker meeting but marking instead, I see our neighbour walk in front of our kitchen window.
So did Frankie.
Which meant I had to intercept him before he intercepted her at the front door, grabbing him the way a football player would grab at a football before it hit the ground.
Frankie in his crate, barking away thinking that was going to make a difference, and Tikka playing her, "I'm pretty, I'm good, and therefore I am better than Frankie" role, I run to the front door.
Because our neighbour, knowing how much I loved plants, and wanting these two very large, very heavy plants to have a good home, offered them to me.
Stephen could hear her, but he was indisposed, so he couldn't come downstairs fast enough to say NO before I said YES!
And once he did manange to get himself suitably arranged, meaning he came downstairs with his pjs on and hair standing on end, but with a clean shaven face, it was too late.
I was dancing with joy because she had given me the plants.
She was dancing with joy because her plants had a good home.
And there was no way Stephen was going to rain on the parade of two dancing women.
Because he's smarter than that.
These were heavy plants in heavy pots.
And I was perfectly willing to help carry them in.
Except that the minute my help was required, my cleansing diet started cleansing, leaving me to sit dans la salle de bain, listening to Stephen and our neighbour try to get these plants in the house, while perusing the latest Canadian Living magazine.
So now, our living room is a veritable cornucopia of greenery, including an 8 foot tall plant I couldn't identify if I had to, and another plant that looks sort of like a palm tree but isn't.
We don't even have to get a Christmas tree now. We can just put lights on the 8 foot plant and call it a day.
Goblet is fascinated with these new plants.
She's fascinated with anything new that comes into the house.
She keeps hauling out the tinfoil pie plates that rest underneath the plants to prevent water from getting on the laminate floor.
Because I have been known to be a tad bit over zealous when it comes to watering plants.
A character flaw that makes Stephen crazy, leaving him no choice but to run around after me while I water plants, with tea towels in hand ready to clean up any potential leakage.
You'd have to see it to believe it.
I can't believe its November already.
Turning back the clocks.
My sister-in-law's birthday.
My mother's birthday, which happens to fall on Rememberance Day.
Giving my sarcoptic hounds their next dose of Revolution.
Yeah November. Bug free dogs.
Emily spent this evening at the kitchen table, working away on her latest school project.
Em is incredibly creative.
I don't know where she gets it, because it isn't from me.
Two year olds can draw better stick figures than me.
This particular school project?
Pan pipes.
Think Zamphir.
As soon as she told me what she wanted to do, panic set it.
Pan pipes are made of bamboo.
Not the little plant thingies everyone has. . . the green things with the leaves, but honest to goodness bamboo.
The kind koala's eat.
There are many things we're able to get in Fredericton: potatoes, corn, dog food, samosas, souvlakis, an education, liquor. . . .
But bamboo?
Saturday afternoon, prepared for the absolute worst, because school projects always bring out the absolute worst, Stephen, Emily and I got into the car and headed to the local nursery.
The one that didn't go out of business.
I asked the woman who was working the greenhouse if they had bamboo.
She assumed I meant the plant.
Oh no, she said, we're out of that.
And then, as if led by the goddess who protects parents from psychosis caused by school projects, I found myself saying,
"Not the bamboo with the leaves and things. Real bamboo."
Her face lit up.
My heart started to beat faster.
She walks over to a little used part of the room, where I'd never have thought to look, and there, leaning against the wall was a 10 foot bamboo pole.
Problem #1 solved. Apparently, you can get bamboo in Fredericton.
The came problem #2.
Cost.
Because school projects usually means spending money I don't have.
And 10 feet of anything usually isn't cheap.
Along side the goddess who protects parents from psychosis caused by school projects, was the goddess of things that appear expensive but are not.
$2.99.
Two for two.
I couldn't believe it.
I still can't.
Getting the pole in the car was something else.
We had to open the trunk and push it through until the end was nestled against the windshield.
Honestly, one more millimeter of bamboo, and we wouldn't of been able to close the trunk of our little Ford Focus station wagon.
That's how close it was.
Stephen drove us back to Fredericton, where we dropped Em off at the mall, and then me at the nursing home, with this bamboo pole separating us the entire drive similar to the way Catholic nuns used to (and maybe still do) separate hormonal teenager boys and girls on the dance floor with a ruler in an effort to prevent the crotch grabbing gyrations that automatically ensued when "Lady in Red" started to play during high school dances.
Now, the third problem was taking the ten foot bamboo pole and turning it into 12 peices of bamboo into little bamboo steps.
Emily, the brave little soul that she is, managed to get the bamboo pole into the basement, and armed with a saw I didn't even know we had, she made a valiant effort to cut this pole into the required peices.
She's even marked off on the pole where it needed to be cut.
Bamboo is strong.
So is Em.
But the bamboo trumped Em's determination to do it "all by herself" and we knew that reinforcements were going to be necessary.
Our neighbour.
Peter.
Apparently, it takes a neighbourhood to manufacture a homemade pan pipe for a high school World Music class.
Emily wanted to have everything done and over with by the end of the weekend, but with Halloween and other duties, she wasn't able to get over to ask Peter if he would saw the pole until this evening.
So, just before supper, my shy, quiet, reserved but determined Emily, with Stephen in tow, walked across the street to ask Peter if he would saw her bamboo pole.
And he did.
She returned with 12 perfectly sized peices of bamboo from which to fashion her pan pipe.
So far, she has voiced her frustrations at least three times, has a bamboo splinter underneath her finger nail that she refuses to allow me to remove, and she is up to her eyeballs in hemp string, wood glue, gold play-doh (don't ask) and cross stitch thread.
She is threading hemp string and cross stitch thread through the dozen pipes in effort to ensure functionality and artisitic appreciation.
Sweat glistens on her brow as she pushed back a strand of hair that's in her eyes.
Reilley, her 16 year old cat, wants to play with the string, frolic in the remnants, wanting all the attention she is giving this pan pipe, to be diverted to him.
All for a pan pipe that she can't play because we don't live in a high enough altitude.
Watching Em brings back a flood of school project memories.
Memories doesn't necessarily mean fond.
It just means memories.
The school project I remember the most wasn't even mine.
It was my little brother's.
He had to make newspaper.
All the sections.
Pas de problem.
Until my mother found out that ALL the sections meant ALL the sections.
Including an obituary.
More specifically, my brother's obituary.
My mother was never afraid of speaking her mind.
But she did so sparingly.
Only when really necessary.
Like the time, when she was 50, she blew a gasket at a grocery store employee who assumed she was over 65 and therefore deserved the senior's discount.
Or the time I was driving her car, we were cut off, and she gave the person who cut us off the finger.
My mother has finger nails that are considered lethal weapons in some countries. If she points one of those things at you, you better move it.
Fast.
I used to watch in fascination as she would file them into sharp points, and then lacquer them up for improved strength.
And if she pointed on at you, and raised her left eyebrow, you may as well just shut up, sit down and take whatever shit bomb was coming your way.
Cause it was coming.
Anyway, to say she was enraged when she heard that her 12 year old son had to write his own obituary was like saying when volcanos blow, they make a little mess.
I don't think I have ever seen her so angry.
Well, maybe one other time, but that story must wait until January.
She got on the phone to the school, Geary Elementary School, to be exact, and she got a hold of the principal.
I'm willing to bet that to this day, he wishes he had never taken that call.
And then, when she had reduced him to a blathering mass of tears, she turned on my brother's teacher.
She needed a year long sabbatical and six months therapy after my mother finished with her.
I can't remember if Jer wrote that obituary.
I'll have to ask him.
But you can bet that his teacher never asked anyone to write their own obituary ever again.
And if Em's teacher doesn't appreciate the effort she's put into making these pan pipes.
Plus the writing of the essay.
In addition to creating a powerpoint, I may have to channel the spirit of Janet.
Either that or release her from the nursing home long enough to deal with Em's World Music teacher.
Title Lyric: School Days by Chuck Berry
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