Never think you've got it figured out. . . .

October 15, 2011

I really should be marking the advanced qualitative interviews.

The activity I have been engaging in each and every spare minute of the day I can find, to the point where I am marking in the car and into the wee hours of the night.

At least for me.

11.30 pm.

If I don't have the completed for Tuesday, I'm concerned my class will turn feral and that'll be it for me.

It could happen.









Stephen and I turned last night into date night.

Unplanned date nights are the best.

I call him from Starbucks, where I am, as usual waiting for Em, and suggest that he and I just escape for a few hours.

Do things we want to do.

So we did.

Our first stop was for sustenance.

Because Stephen doesn't date well on an empty stomach.

Keeping it simple and affordable, we sat in a booth at Swiss Chalet and enjoyed chicken quesadillas with Caesar salads.

Diet Pepsi for me, although I much prefer Diet Coke.

Rickard's Red for Stephen.

It was a date night after all.

After dinner we headed to Costco, as a couple of weeks ago we came across some lovely curtain panels.

Lined curtain panels.

For 29.99 each.

Of course this is where not having credit cards is a major pain in the ass, because we couldn't afford them when we first saw them.

Meaning when we went back last evening, they were all. sold. out.

Fine.

It didn't prevent me from getting the other things we needed.

Twenty boxes of Scotties tissues for $19.99.

Three large containers of Lysol wipes for my cleaning loving husband.

We had lots, but one container found its way to Meredyth's (imagine) and one is in my office because Emily decided that spraying hair spray all over her hair and my computer and desk was a good idea.

Resulting on one weird feeling keyboard, let me tell you.

Wiping my desk down made me realize how badly I need to take a day, or ten, and clean my office.

We even managed to purchase some Christmas presents.

A tease to my children who read this and knowing that they're experience squirming torture wondering what I bought and for whom just makes spending the money all the more worthwhile.









But I still didn't have curtains.

Actually, we haven't had curtains since June.

And with a front to back living room with two giant picture windows flanking each end, curtain become a necessity.

Especially when the sun starts setting at 6.30 and you want to watch an hour of Big Bang Theory on Peachtree TV from 8.00-9.00.

But feel as if you're being watched because everyone can see into your living room.

So date night wasn't ending until I got my curtains.

We went to Kent.

A building supply store that provides all sorts of home miscellany.

Stephen loves Kent and is not allowed in there without supervision.

Of course, because it's us, I found the perfect panels.

Gold with cranberry floral overlay.

Perfectly matching our new-to-us-1944 furniture.

And our new, chocolate brown painted walls.

We needed four.

Kent had two.

But there were four panels at the Northside Kent.

I really didn't want to drive over to the northside on a Friday night where there is still only one bridge open in Fredericton.

But there was no other panels that we both liked, or were affordable, so after wasting 30 minutes arguing at the curtain section in Kent we decided to drive to the northside.

I was right about the bridge by the way.

I don't know what was happening on the northside last night, but everyone and their dogs and cats were driving across the Westmoreland Street Bridge.

We grabbed those panels.

I wasn't taking any chances.

And now, I have lovely curtains covering the back picture window so watching tv won't be so much of a public event.

Next pay: four more panels for the front window.

Stephen wants the same as we purchased last evening.

I want different ones.

Who do you think will prevail??????









Yesterday I was afforded the opportunity to serve as guest lecturer in Emily's grade 12 sociology class.

And Em was happy I was there. In fact, it was her idea.

I talked with them, because there was lots of time for them to talk to me.

I insisted upon it.

We talked about how, using sociology, we can use films to understand social issues and experiences.

Not a difficult topic for me to talk about at all.

What was really weird, though, was yesterday would have been my 23 wedding anniversary had I remained with my ex husband.

Stephen asked me if I thought my ex remembered that we had gotten married on October 14, 1988.

I replied that I didn't think so.

One, he doesn't remember his own children's birthdays.

Two, he's been married three times.  I am just one in a long line of unfortunate women who thought marrying him was a good idea.

Although it had it benefits.

He has a wonderful, fabulous family.

His mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, have all continued to welcome and embrace me into their close knit, caring family.

That and the kids made the marriage tolerable.

But after a while it was just too much.

We married WAY to young, for all the wrong reasons, and my leaving, while incredibly difficult in that I hurt the family that cared for me so deeply, was also necessary.

I was thinking yesterday that if you had of told me on the day I was married to him via the Justice of the Peace in downtown Fredericton that 23 years later, I'd be a tenured professor of criminology with a PhD in sociology, standing in front of my third child's sociology class talking about films, I'd have probably told you to stop taking those wild and wacky drugs because they were playing games with your remaining brain cells.

Which proves that you really never know what life has in store for you.




Title Lyric: Life Lessons by Lynard Skynard

I did it MY way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

October 12, 2011

HAPPY 22ND BIRTHDAY MEREDYTH

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meredyth continues to be one of the strongest women I know.

Determined.

Knows her mind, and as we all know, not afraid to speak up when she feels called to.

Which is frequent.

Coming into her own.

Figuring out who she is, what she wants, who she wants to be in her future.

Everyone lives their life following multiple paths, filling multiple roles, and living through the conflicts that result from attempting to negotiate the tensions that occur within the complexities of our everyday lives.

Mer is no different.

What is different is that she is learning to negotiate those conflicts with greater ease, greater understanding, greater dignity and aplomb.

Willing to talk and explore, examine how she came to where she is and how to move forward.

My Meredyth is growing up.

Beautiful, talented, gifted, she will move forward.

Simply because she is Meredyth. 

She will continue to do things her way.

I expect nothing less.

Happy Birthday baby! You continue to make my life better each and every day!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox




Title Lyric: My Way by Frank Sinatra

Do you like sweet potatoes?

October 11, 2011

Our Thanksgiving was as plentiful and bountiful as always.

Roasted to perfection turkey, pumpernickel bread stuffing with walnuts and raisins, Dad's sweet potatoes with cream cheese and maple syrup, lite cream cheese in deference to my lifestyle change, brown sugar carrots for Em because she can no longer consume my parsnips in a tarragon cream sauce, beets for Mer because she loves them and as she says, "they turn my poop purple", my homemade olive oil drizzled potatoes baked in the oven for Em because she can't eat cream cheese potatoes and my mother loves any potato resembling a French fry that she can dip in her ramekin of ketchup, our homemade Ukrainian dill pickles, pumpkin pie that was not homemade but was very, very tasty, homemade cranberry sauce. . .

. . .that Stephen wanted to make using 5 pounds of cranberries.

Luckily I walked in just at the nick of time, and informed him that all one needed to make cranberry sauce for 8 people was two cups of cranberries.

Imagine what I would have done with cranberry sauce comprising 5 pounds of cranberries, which, when including the sugar and water would have been around 8 pounds of cranberry sauce.

Imagine.

But that was the only disaster I was able to narrowly avert.

My father transported his potatoes in a glass 9 x 13 pan complete with it's own pain-in-the-ass-lid to get off.

Plastic lid.

As I was putting his sweet potatoes in the oven, covered with tinfoil, he came into the kitchen and stated that the lid was heat resistant up to 400 degrees so I should put it back on and then put the potatoes in the oven.

My innards nudged me to overrule him, as I am the grande dame of dawne's house, but I was tired, having just taken him and my mother to Costco, the kids were hungry and whining, and all I wanted to do was make my tarragon cream sauce, heat these potatoes and get everyone to the table to eat.

I did as he said.

And then went to the bathroom.

Only to shoot off the toilet as soon as the stench of melting plastic reached my nostrils.

Which was about the same time as it reached my Dad's nostrils.

Now, I have an oven with it's bottom dotted in red plastic.

Melted, hardened red plastic and me with not one f***ing clue about how to get it off without a chisel.

And just as an aside, if I had covered the landscape of my father's oven with dots of melted, hardened red plastic, I would have NEVER heard the end of it.

I would have been reminded of my transgression during every family dinner, every high day and holiday until the end of time.

My dad said he was sorry.

And that he guessed the lid wasn't heat proof to 400 degrees.









Prior  to dinner, I had made arrangements with my father for him to meet me, Stephen and Mum at my house for 2.30, at which time we would all pile into my car and go to Costco.

My father wanted to see inside Costco, peruse its aisles to assess whether or not it would be in his best interest to purchase his own membership.

Or just make arrangements with me everytime he wanted something from there.

Given what he determined would be of any use for him, that may work out to about once a year.

About as many times as I could manage shopping with my father.

Our hour and half meander through the aisles resulted in me and Stephen purchasing a family pack of Premium Plus crackers for the kids, as well as a bag of multigrain chiabatta buns shaped like triangles.

Dad bought himself 3 liters of honey, 30 hearing aids and two bottles of cranberry juice for Mum.

Mum just sat in her wheelchair, watching all that was going around her, and commenting on how little my father's shopping habits have evolved since her moving into the nursing home.









Thanksgiving Monday.

Like Easter Monday and Boxing Day, Thanksgiving Monday is one of the three days in a year where I am almost completely responsibility free.

Where the day greets me not with, "these-are-all-the-things-that-you-have-to-do-before-you-can-rest-your-head-on-the-pillow" but with a "hey! The-day-is-yours-do-what-you-want!"

Three days out of 365 I experience this joy.

Livin' on the edge.

That's me.

Instead of being lurched awake by some contemporary popular music at 5.30 in the morning, I was pawed awake by a bladder challenged Tikka at 8.00 am.

Constituting sleeping in for me.

Instead of eating breakfast at the computer in a rush while Frankie stares at me and whines, I was able to eat breakfast leisurely while Frankie stared and whined at me.

Instead of running around trying to get ready for work while dragging the sleep addled Emily into the waking world, I was able to sit at the computer, mark papers and listen to Em complain about Mer wanting her to take her shift.

Em took the shift.

But Em woke up on her own steam and I was able to do all the emotion management from my desk.

This was turning into a regular holiday.

Three whole times a year.









But a whole day off was just not in the cards for me.

Almost, but not quite.

9.00 pm.

I had just finished watching two episodes of Big Bang Theory, had taken my melatonin and was happily contemplating going to bed when the phone rang.

My father.

NEVER a good sign.

EVER.

Sure enough, I was right.

My mother had fallen at the nursing home while attempting to negotiate the bathroom with her medicated-riddled systems.

Watching her do this in the past lead me to conclude that there would come a time when she was going to fall.

And she did.

A goose egg on her forehead and at the back of her head.

My father, of course, wanted me to go and make sure she was okay.

Of course he did.

Why should he drive into Fredericton to make sure his wife was okay.

I go to the hospital, because this is where I was told she was going to be.

Waiting and waiting, I call the nursing home only to find out that she wasn't coming to the hospital, as the nursing home doctor determined she didn't need to.

So I rush down to the nursing home to find my mother in her bed, ice pack behind her head, ice pack on her forehead, trying not to sleep because she is worried she had a concussion.

I'm worried too.

And if anything had happened to my mother over night, there was going to be a doctor in this city who should be worried about how long she'd be keeping her licence.

Luckily, no such incident occurred.

And my mother appears to be fine.

My father and I on the other hand. . . .

Let's just say I am not a happy camper with him right now.

Not coming into see my mother and a plastic splattered oven.

How much am I supposed to take?



Title Lyric:  Sweet Potatoes by SIA

My golden slippers are laid away. . . .

October 8, 2011


And the shits and giggles associated with multiple cat ownership and the introduction of two new cats into our happy family home continues.

Apparently, because I was at Starbucks marking advanced qualitative interviews and didn't actually witness the events myself, there were ructions.

Initially, things started out amenable enough.

Jasper started by frolicking in our room, capturing Goblet's attention.

Meaning she was sitting on her Throne, aka the Goblet box, on top of our dresser her eyes wide, pupils dilated, watching him attentively, waiting for him to make his move.

And he did.

Jumping on her, he wanted to play, and she was willing to do so, so long as there was nothing untoward happening.

And then the untoward happened.

Of course.

Kittens don't have the brain capacity to know when to stop.

Nor do some adults I know, but that's another story.

Jasper misread Goblet's acquiescence for an invitation.

To burrow under her and attempt to suckle.

Suckle Goblet.

Who was probably unaware that she even had the physical capabilities to do so.

And stunned that Jasper did.

The resulting kerfuffle was a stunned, overwrought and feeling-completely-violated Goblet who disappeared into Emily's room, seeking sanctuary from a cruel kitten who had the audacity to inform her of her biological capabilities.

Jasper just went downstairs looking for other amusement and entertainment, unaware of the shit storm he'd just created by just being his special self.

And I missed the whole thing.

Damn you marking! Damn you!









In spite of all the work Stephen and I have to do this weekend, we decided to take a time out yesterday afternoon and just enjoy the day.

A lovely, unusually warm October day. . .around 23 degrees, breezy, the kind of day that just screams come outside because the weather isn't going to be like this much longer.

Probably not even into Monday.

So we showered, and off we went.

Arriving downtown on a Saturday afternoon, we were able to browse through stores we usually only encounter on Sundays when they are closed.

Going inside these stores was very enjoyable.

And of course, reminded us that we were in no position to be able to afford any of the goodies proffered.

Looking was just as much fun.

And a lot more affordable.









Not that we didn't purchase anything.

Just not things we didn't need.

For example, Stephen has been on a quest for size 13 slippers for months.

Size 13 slippers are, indeed, hard to come by in Fredericton.

Almost impossible.

Our luck changed, however, when we encountered a shoe store downtown, went inside, and lo and behold, didn't they have a pair of Foamtread slippers. . .

. . . .the slip on kind, not the ones you actually have to take the time to put your feet into, in a size 13.

For only $56.00.

But at this point, more would have been paid if only to cease the whinging and whining about not having slippers.

The little things.

Really. . . it's the little things that made the world go round.

I just hope that this pair of slippers doesn't succumb the same fate as the other two pairs of slippers he's had in the last two and a half years.

Hopefully, now that he has outgrown his puppy faze, all slippers will be safe.










We also purchased a wrap around your head light thingy for Stephen to wear when he takes the dogs out after dark.

Which will be happening more frequently, as the sun sets completely by 7.30.

We get home from work at 6.00 pm and by the time supper is over its 7.00 pm.

Making for a short walk in daylight.

Clearly something had to be done.

Hence the Stephen light that wraps around his head.

Hopefully the little woodland creatures who may inhabit the farm space under the cover of night will be as frightened of the night light as they are of the sun.




Title Lyric: Golden Slippers (no artist)