you know, i realize that this sounds sadistic, but i derive a sharp, if guilty, pleasure from hiding chocolates on children. especially children who can be difficult. heh heh.
telling this particular kid that he couldn't have Any of his chocolates if he didn't find All of them was especially fun.
naturally i reneged, but his split-second look of panic was priceless.
who says stepmothers aren't really evil?
mean, mean bunny.
heh.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
our back yard looks like a timotei commercial
...the blossoms waft gently to the ground in each gentle breeze, the long grasses (which should probably be mowed) sway...
now all we need is a long haired blond lady in a dress running in slow motion with a few butterflies.
(or was she riding a white horse? hm. i forget. hard to say. i think i may be confusing the timotei commercial with a liona boyd album cover, now. i can't remember.)
now all we need is a long haired blond lady in a dress running in slow motion with a few butterflies.
(or was she riding a white horse? hm. i forget. hard to say. i think i may be confusing the timotei commercial with a liona boyd album cover, now. i can't remember.)
Monday, March 07, 2005
hawaiian bug
ok ok ok.
d, because of your comments on my last entry, i'm going to come clean on hawaii. it's going to sound like i'm complaining, though, which really isn't true. for the record, i had a pleasant time. the wind howled, which happens relatively rarely in southern bc, and which i love, so that was exhilarating, and when it wasn't howling, it was wafting, heavy with the smell goodness-knows-which colourful blooms that grew everywhere in extravagant abundance. visually, if there was a garden of eden, it would have looked like hawaii: tropical fruit trees growing casually about, as if this is what they always did, gorgeous and brilliantly hued flowers climbing and trailing all over the place, lush green grasses, towering palms replete with abundant clusters of coconuts, white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, black lava rock, jagged but green mountainous ridges like landscape wainscotting on the grandest scale, or like giant green curtains, reaching halfway up the sky and working with the cloud patterns to make the sun's light always appear in rays, rather than the more standard blanket of light found elsewhere in the world.
there were absurdly adorable tiny lizards all over the place, plus this mink-like animal, and there was a strange type of cardinal that looked like it had just emerged from the london punk scene 30 years ago, with its fluorescent red mohawk. we ate at a place called Luigi's, where dinner is cooked, individual order by order from scratch, by Luigi himself. it took us three hours to have supper. (i had a steamed broccoli salad with lemon and garlic, and a pasta dish with walnuts and capers and the like. it was very good.)
the temperature never swings too far on either side of a reasonable and comforting 25 degrees, all year around, and the water, always shockingly cool upon first exploration, never ceases to reveal itself as perfect after a moment's acclimatisation. i could have stayed in all day. there are few menaces in the water -- really only sharks (not in my area), jelly fish (cyclical according to the moon), sea urchins (only near rocks) and this weird little fish with a long nose that tends to break off in your skin if it accidentally bonks into you (didn't see any). i got stung by a jelly once, but it wasn't for the first time in my life, and who cares, so i kept swimming after a quick damage check. for the first week i had a weird rash on my neck, from the new bacteria in the water and all that, i imagine, but, really, what *doesn't* give me a weird rash? and just as there is little danger in the water, there is nothing to pester a person on land, either -- just centipedes, the odd scorpion, mosquitos, and bees. that's it. no poisonous spiders or snakes. being the united states, the infrastructure was reasonably good -- the buses regular, the water safe for drinking, that sort of thing. i mean, if you're going to go somewhere warm, but don't want to get sick or infected or bitten, hawaii's the place to go. a tropical paradise for the phobic.
and, of course, the fresh pineapple is out of this world.
this is all the good stuff. and it *is* good stuff. i liked it. i did. it was nice.
but, it's also still america, and oahu, where we were, has a huge military presence. there were "support our troops" stickers on everyone's car, and there was little in the way of vegetarian food outside of the healthfood store. the urban areas were full of chain stores in strip malls (why on earth would anyone come to hawaii just to go to The Gap?), everyone drives everywhere, and i couldn't for the life of me find an area of town with funky shopping, or a market where locals sold their crafts or anything more interesting than starbucks, jamba juice, ABC stores, and cheap bathing suit shops. i found this bland and disappointing. in fact, both locals and hotel concierges alike seemed mystified by my request for directions to an artsy area, or place where i could buy locally made stuff, or an old part of town, or something other than ugly, new, american, urban sprawl. i found no local colour, little social complexity, and no romance. not a single grass skirt, no visible history. the few native hawaiians i interacted with said "aloha" and "mahalo", it seemed, because hawaii's "aloha spirit" is its main marketing trick aimed at mainland tourists deciding whether to go to mexico or not.
also, because its economy is tourist driven, and everything has to be shipped in, prices are very very high, and in US currency (obviously). i was on a shoestring and couldn't afford to rent equipment or take lessons in surfing, or kite surfing (which looks really fun) at USD$295 a pop. as for snorkelling, i was discouraged by two people who told me that it didn't compare to florida (where i've gone) and is crowded and expensive, so i didn't bother.
the other thing that shaped my trip is that i was there by the graces of two of J's students, who paid for my flight. the boys were all there to paraglide, and so when i wasn't hanging around waiting to see where and if they would fly, i was making due with my own company. this is fine, and i knew it would be like this. it just means that J and i weren't exactly at large in hawaii, painting the island red. he and i arrived first, four days before the others, and initially, J was jetlagged from Australia and wanted to lie around, not having had a homebase for a month. somewhat frustratingly, and in opposition, all i had had for the last month *was* a home base and i was positively *dying* to get out and about. anyway, i managed to prod him out of the house a little bit and we and spent one day walking up the beach in one direction, and one day walking up the beach in the other direction, and one day hiking a ridge, and then the other pilots arrived and from then on they were in the air whenever possible. i don't drive, but i did take the bus on a few adventures while the boys were flying around -- one to waikiki, and one to a buddhist temple.
waikiki had two nice things about it: one was the most enormous banyan tree i've ever seen in the shockingly misnamed "International Market" -- it was so big it was mesmerising -- and the other was the sheraton hotel. it was beautiful and i would happily live there if everyone but the waitstaff would disappear. locals tried to dissuade me from loving the banyan tree, saying it was full of thousands of rats, but this made me love it even more. it was like a rat hotel! if i were a rat, i'd want to live there for sure! but anyway, waikiki wasn't really my thing. it's a tropical concrete disneyland and i found myself endlessly grateful that i wasn't staying there. it consists only of resorts and tourist traps squeezed together in each other's shadow. the only things to do in waikiki are sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers on a dismally overcrowded beach, getting burnt, or spend ridiculous amounts of money on greasy food, or cheap plastic crap "designed" in hawaii and made elsewhere.
i didn't really explore honolulu, of which waikiki is an area on the outskirts, and it may have had redeeming qualities in the way of a museum and gallery, or two. over all i found the city too hot and tiring, though, and not much fun without a buddy (where were you when i needed you, d?) so i didn't return.
before i left waikiki that day, though, i had really good kimchee-fried-rice near the rat hotel for lunch, and that's when i met Interesting Person #1. i sat eating at a table next to another table inhabited by a mousy, twitchy middle-aged woman and her burnt, tall, fat, red-faced grouchy looking blond husband waiting for their meal to be ready. they had new zealand or australian accents. the woman suddenly got up, clutching her backpack to her chest like a snuggly, and darted into the other seat at my table. she regarded me with sharp, bright, mouse-like eyes and said, breathy and quick, "Are you from B.C.?" i smiled, in what i hoped was a surprised and delighted manner, and said i was. she said, "I thought so. I just had to check or it would have bothered me." then she darted back to her table where she busied herself looking anywhere but at me.
i hounded her a bit, trying to make her happy that she had approached me, and trying to figure out where she could have recognised me from, but to no avail. all i got was that they were on a 6 hour layover from BC on the way to australia, and that they normally live in penticton and never go to victoria, where i live. her husband took off his huge leather jacket and handed it to her to put in her already teeming backpack. i said, still trying to put her at ease, "I hope he's not making you carry that! ha ha!" to which she replied in a startled but doleful tone "Oh! Yes. It seems to be my lot. My lot." And then she trotted off, dwarfed by her gear.
next, on my way home from waikiki, waiting for the bus, i met Interesting Person #2. he was a wino, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, at least half native hawaiian, and a former english teacher. he was greasy and smelly and reading a new-looking copy of something by henry miller. he seemed very concerned that i read henry miller, to which i replied that i already had, and he was visibly relieved. when he found out about my theatre degree, he launched into an animated discussion on the merits of teaching Jacobean drama to 8th graders over paltry shakespeare. he was learned and interesting, even if he did confuse King Lear with Othello and smell like rancid oil.
the buddhist temple, on the other hand, was a completely different experience than waikiki. it rests in the rainy, moist Valley of Temples on the island's windward side. it is an exact replica of a temple in japan and was finished in 1968 (i think) to commemorate the landing of the first japanese immigrants on hawaii one hundred years earlier. there was an enormous bell -- over 6 feet tall and five inches thick -- that one could ring by pulling a horizontal log on a rope outwards, then releasing it. the deliciously rich tone rang for minutes, cleansing the ringer's soul of temptations, or so the story goes.
there was also a small network of ponds filled with enormous koi. i was surprised to learn that koi can live up to one hundred years. to encourage their longevity, i bought a little bag of fishfood from the lone staff member on the site (a notably contrary and ignorant young white woman), and tossed some of it's contents onto a dazed group of fish crowding motionlessly on top of each other in the water by the side of the bridge. the food made them wake up and they thrashed around gulping for it. then the birds came. not to be bothered by the fish, and possessing a (i thought) peculiar taste for fish food, the birds would catch the food i threw in mid-air, or even briefly land on the fish to quickly nab the pellets before they sank or were gobbled.
i soon forgot the fish altogether and busied myself with the birds as they landed on my hand and arm, hanging out, just waiting until i provided more food.
there was also, of course, a large buddha inside the temple. it is the largest wooden buddha carved in the last 900 years, or so the temple literature claimed, and was covered in a lovely gold leaf that had begun to wear off in places. the eyes were carved so that they looked like they were watching you and you felt that that mischievous, yet serene, smile was actually for you.
after the temple i went to the nearest strip mall to forage for lunch and met Interesting Person #3. he was an asian local and had some interesting views on god and the military and george bush, but i forget every one of them. he and i found each other because the ceiling was dripping brown creepy water by my table at the little food place, and his was the only other, so i imposed myself on his company.
on one raining day, too, i was lucky enough to convince the boys (with the car) that we should go to the north shore. this is where pipeline is -- the famous beach, and the famous surfer competition named after it (or is it vice versa?). we missed the competition by a few days, but there were still surfers there doing their thing. they are insane. that water is insane. the waves are monumental and they arrive onshore at such an angle as to pretty well guarantee you a broken neck or death by drowning if you don't know what you're doing. i didn't even put my toe in. near pipeline is a little town called haleiwa. it is what people consider "old hawaii" and it was by far my favourite spot.
haleiwa is small and quaint, and the road leading up to it is full of ramshackle houses with laundry hanging off the line and chickens in the yard. seeing this i heaved a sigh of contentment. the town itself is a little cluster of low sitting wooden houses containing small galleries and craft shops, little bakeries, restaurants and funky one-room museums dedicated to things like surfing. it had personality. i liked it. we spent the afternoon there, and then on the way home, we stopped by a pineapple stand and bought arm loads of pineapple from a very large and very smiley soft-spoken, shy-seeming young hawaiian man.
and that's about all that's noteworthy about my trip. over-all, hawaii felt like a pretty and warm place to go swimming. it didn't strike me to my core the way northern canada did, or various spots in europe did. i encountered none of the magic you hear about, but then, i only stayed on oahu. it's possible that i'm really no better off than all those unfortunate souls who stay in waikiki. if i went to maui or the big island, perhaps i would have had a different trip altogether.
and i would love to put this theory to the test next year. no matter what, it's always nice to go somewhere warm and sunny after the gloomy westcoast winter. it lifts the spirits, stupid tourist traps or no.
so, d, does that satisfy your curiosity?
d, because of your comments on my last entry, i'm going to come clean on hawaii. it's going to sound like i'm complaining, though, which really isn't true. for the record, i had a pleasant time. the wind howled, which happens relatively rarely in southern bc, and which i love, so that was exhilarating, and when it wasn't howling, it was wafting, heavy with the smell goodness-knows-which colourful blooms that grew everywhere in extravagant abundance. visually, if there was a garden of eden, it would have looked like hawaii: tropical fruit trees growing casually about, as if this is what they always did, gorgeous and brilliantly hued flowers climbing and trailing all over the place, lush green grasses, towering palms replete with abundant clusters of coconuts, white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, black lava rock, jagged but green mountainous ridges like landscape wainscotting on the grandest scale, or like giant green curtains, reaching halfway up the sky and working with the cloud patterns to make the sun's light always appear in rays, rather than the more standard blanket of light found elsewhere in the world.
there were absurdly adorable tiny lizards all over the place, plus this mink-like animal, and there was a strange type of cardinal that looked like it had just emerged from the london punk scene 30 years ago, with its fluorescent red mohawk. we ate at a place called Luigi's, where dinner is cooked, individual order by order from scratch, by Luigi himself. it took us three hours to have supper. (i had a steamed broccoli salad with lemon and garlic, and a pasta dish with walnuts and capers and the like. it was very good.)
the temperature never swings too far on either side of a reasonable and comforting 25 degrees, all year around, and the water, always shockingly cool upon first exploration, never ceases to reveal itself as perfect after a moment's acclimatisation. i could have stayed in all day. there are few menaces in the water -- really only sharks (not in my area), jelly fish (cyclical according to the moon), sea urchins (only near rocks) and this weird little fish with a long nose that tends to break off in your skin if it accidentally bonks into you (didn't see any). i got stung by a jelly once, but it wasn't for the first time in my life, and who cares, so i kept swimming after a quick damage check. for the first week i had a weird rash on my neck, from the new bacteria in the water and all that, i imagine, but, really, what *doesn't* give me a weird rash? and just as there is little danger in the water, there is nothing to pester a person on land, either -- just centipedes, the odd scorpion, mosquitos, and bees. that's it. no poisonous spiders or snakes. being the united states, the infrastructure was reasonably good -- the buses regular, the water safe for drinking, that sort of thing. i mean, if you're going to go somewhere warm, but don't want to get sick or infected or bitten, hawaii's the place to go. a tropical paradise for the phobic.
and, of course, the fresh pineapple is out of this world.
this is all the good stuff. and it *is* good stuff. i liked it. i did. it was nice.
but, it's also still america, and oahu, where we were, has a huge military presence. there were "support our troops" stickers on everyone's car, and there was little in the way of vegetarian food outside of the healthfood store. the urban areas were full of chain stores in strip malls (why on earth would anyone come to hawaii just to go to The Gap?), everyone drives everywhere, and i couldn't for the life of me find an area of town with funky shopping, or a market where locals sold their crafts or anything more interesting than starbucks, jamba juice, ABC stores, and cheap bathing suit shops. i found this bland and disappointing. in fact, both locals and hotel concierges alike seemed mystified by my request for directions to an artsy area, or place where i could buy locally made stuff, or an old part of town, or something other than ugly, new, american, urban sprawl. i found no local colour, little social complexity, and no romance. not a single grass skirt, no visible history. the few native hawaiians i interacted with said "aloha" and "mahalo", it seemed, because hawaii's "aloha spirit" is its main marketing trick aimed at mainland tourists deciding whether to go to mexico or not.
also, because its economy is tourist driven, and everything has to be shipped in, prices are very very high, and in US currency (obviously). i was on a shoestring and couldn't afford to rent equipment or take lessons in surfing, or kite surfing (which looks really fun) at USD$295 a pop. as for snorkelling, i was discouraged by two people who told me that it didn't compare to florida (where i've gone) and is crowded and expensive, so i didn't bother.
the other thing that shaped my trip is that i was there by the graces of two of J's students, who paid for my flight. the boys were all there to paraglide, and so when i wasn't hanging around waiting to see where and if they would fly, i was making due with my own company. this is fine, and i knew it would be like this. it just means that J and i weren't exactly at large in hawaii, painting the island red. he and i arrived first, four days before the others, and initially, J was jetlagged from Australia and wanted to lie around, not having had a homebase for a month. somewhat frustratingly, and in opposition, all i had had for the last month *was* a home base and i was positively *dying* to get out and about. anyway, i managed to prod him out of the house a little bit and we and spent one day walking up the beach in one direction, and one day walking up the beach in the other direction, and one day hiking a ridge, and then the other pilots arrived and from then on they were in the air whenever possible. i don't drive, but i did take the bus on a few adventures while the boys were flying around -- one to waikiki, and one to a buddhist temple.
waikiki had two nice things about it: one was the most enormous banyan tree i've ever seen in the shockingly misnamed "International Market" -- it was so big it was mesmerising -- and the other was the sheraton hotel. it was beautiful and i would happily live there if everyone but the waitstaff would disappear. locals tried to dissuade me from loving the banyan tree, saying it was full of thousands of rats, but this made me love it even more. it was like a rat hotel! if i were a rat, i'd want to live there for sure! but anyway, waikiki wasn't really my thing. it's a tropical concrete disneyland and i found myself endlessly grateful that i wasn't staying there. it consists only of resorts and tourist traps squeezed together in each other's shadow. the only things to do in waikiki are sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers on a dismally overcrowded beach, getting burnt, or spend ridiculous amounts of money on greasy food, or cheap plastic crap "designed" in hawaii and made elsewhere.
i didn't really explore honolulu, of which waikiki is an area on the outskirts, and it may have had redeeming qualities in the way of a museum and gallery, or two. over all i found the city too hot and tiring, though, and not much fun without a buddy (where were you when i needed you, d?) so i didn't return.
before i left waikiki that day, though, i had really good kimchee-fried-rice near the rat hotel for lunch, and that's when i met Interesting Person #1. i sat eating at a table next to another table inhabited by a mousy, twitchy middle-aged woman and her burnt, tall, fat, red-faced grouchy looking blond husband waiting for their meal to be ready. they had new zealand or australian accents. the woman suddenly got up, clutching her backpack to her chest like a snuggly, and darted into the other seat at my table. she regarded me with sharp, bright, mouse-like eyes and said, breathy and quick, "Are you from B.C.?" i smiled, in what i hoped was a surprised and delighted manner, and said i was. she said, "I thought so. I just had to check or it would have bothered me." then she darted back to her table where she busied herself looking anywhere but at me.
i hounded her a bit, trying to make her happy that she had approached me, and trying to figure out where she could have recognised me from, but to no avail. all i got was that they were on a 6 hour layover from BC on the way to australia, and that they normally live in penticton and never go to victoria, where i live. her husband took off his huge leather jacket and handed it to her to put in her already teeming backpack. i said, still trying to put her at ease, "I hope he's not making you carry that! ha ha!" to which she replied in a startled but doleful tone "Oh! Yes. It seems to be my lot. My lot." And then she trotted off, dwarfed by her gear.
next, on my way home from waikiki, waiting for the bus, i met Interesting Person #2. he was a wino, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, at least half native hawaiian, and a former english teacher. he was greasy and smelly and reading a new-looking copy of something by henry miller. he seemed very concerned that i read henry miller, to which i replied that i already had, and he was visibly relieved. when he found out about my theatre degree, he launched into an animated discussion on the merits of teaching Jacobean drama to 8th graders over paltry shakespeare. he was learned and interesting, even if he did confuse King Lear with Othello and smell like rancid oil.
the buddhist temple, on the other hand, was a completely different experience than waikiki. it rests in the rainy, moist Valley of Temples on the island's windward side. it is an exact replica of a temple in japan and was finished in 1968 (i think) to commemorate the landing of the first japanese immigrants on hawaii one hundred years earlier. there was an enormous bell -- over 6 feet tall and five inches thick -- that one could ring by pulling a horizontal log on a rope outwards, then releasing it. the deliciously rich tone rang for minutes, cleansing the ringer's soul of temptations, or so the story goes.
there was also a small network of ponds filled with enormous koi. i was surprised to learn that koi can live up to one hundred years. to encourage their longevity, i bought a little bag of fishfood from the lone staff member on the site (a notably contrary and ignorant young white woman), and tossed some of it's contents onto a dazed group of fish crowding motionlessly on top of each other in the water by the side of the bridge. the food made them wake up and they thrashed around gulping for it. then the birds came. not to be bothered by the fish, and possessing a (i thought) peculiar taste for fish food, the birds would catch the food i threw in mid-air, or even briefly land on the fish to quickly nab the pellets before they sank or were gobbled.
i soon forgot the fish altogether and busied myself with the birds as they landed on my hand and arm, hanging out, just waiting until i provided more food.
there was also, of course, a large buddha inside the temple. it is the largest wooden buddha carved in the last 900 years, or so the temple literature claimed, and was covered in a lovely gold leaf that had begun to wear off in places. the eyes were carved so that they looked like they were watching you and you felt that that mischievous, yet serene, smile was actually for you.
after the temple i went to the nearest strip mall to forage for lunch and met Interesting Person #3. he was an asian local and had some interesting views on god and the military and george bush, but i forget every one of them. he and i found each other because the ceiling was dripping brown creepy water by my table at the little food place, and his was the only other, so i imposed myself on his company.
on one raining day, too, i was lucky enough to convince the boys (with the car) that we should go to the north shore. this is where pipeline is -- the famous beach, and the famous surfer competition named after it (or is it vice versa?). we missed the competition by a few days, but there were still surfers there doing their thing. they are insane. that water is insane. the waves are monumental and they arrive onshore at such an angle as to pretty well guarantee you a broken neck or death by drowning if you don't know what you're doing. i didn't even put my toe in. near pipeline is a little town called haleiwa. it is what people consider "old hawaii" and it was by far my favourite spot.
haleiwa is small and quaint, and the road leading up to it is full of ramshackle houses with laundry hanging off the line and chickens in the yard. seeing this i heaved a sigh of contentment. the town itself is a little cluster of low sitting wooden houses containing small galleries and craft shops, little bakeries, restaurants and funky one-room museums dedicated to things like surfing. it had personality. i liked it. we spent the afternoon there, and then on the way home, we stopped by a pineapple stand and bought arm loads of pineapple from a very large and very smiley soft-spoken, shy-seeming young hawaiian man.
and that's about all that's noteworthy about my trip. over-all, hawaii felt like a pretty and warm place to go swimming. it didn't strike me to my core the way northern canada did, or various spots in europe did. i encountered none of the magic you hear about, but then, i only stayed on oahu. it's possible that i'm really no better off than all those unfortunate souls who stay in waikiki. if i went to maui or the big island, perhaps i would have had a different trip altogether.
and i would love to put this theory to the test next year. no matter what, it's always nice to go somewhere warm and sunny after the gloomy westcoast winter. it lifts the spirits, stupid tourist traps or no.
so, d, does that satisfy your curiosity?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
flatfoot floozie on the fly fly
every once in a while i pause and thank my forgetful and somewhat scattered nature for encouraging humility in me, and a sense of humour. this morning, for what was certainly not the first time, and most likely will not be the last, either, i found myself woken up by the garbage truck, and the subsequent bleary-eyed, half-dressed dash after it, holding a big, stinky, drippy bag of trash. this experience, and the solitary giggles enjoyed shortly afterwards upon private reflection, are surely lost on those of us who are mindful/diligent/organised/rhythmical enough to find a way to remember garbage dates -- or, at least, to write them down and then remember to look at them.
i figure that organisation is a small price to pay for ongoing subjective hilarity.
(yes, that's it: it's not that i'm allergic to mundane details, it's that i've sacrificed my attention to worldly matters at the alter of The Absurd, and her twin, The Goofy.)
it's now 7:45am on my last day in hawaii. i'm alone, after my mad garbage truck chasing jump-start to the day, packing and doing laundry before we leave for home. the boys have gone off to try to squeeze in one more flight before we leave, and
i found a lizard in the dish cupboard. it was outrageously cute and i took a ridiculous number of pictures of it (with the flash on, poor thing). it is very lovely here, but i have to say, that it hasn't tugged at my heartstrings at all. i would come back, if it was easy and made sense. it's quite agreeable and very pleasant and pretty, but is somehow lost on me. i don't know why.
anyway, time to get packing....
i figure that organisation is a small price to pay for ongoing subjective hilarity.
(yes, that's it: it's not that i'm allergic to mundane details, it's that i've sacrificed my attention to worldly matters at the alter of The Absurd, and her twin, The Goofy.)
it's now 7:45am on my last day in hawaii. i'm alone, after my mad garbage truck chasing jump-start to the day, packing and doing laundry before we leave for home. the boys have gone off to try to squeeze in one more flight before we leave, and
i found a lizard in the dish cupboard. it was outrageously cute and i took a ridiculous number of pictures of it (with the flash on, poor thing). it is very lovely here, but i have to say, that it hasn't tugged at my heartstrings at all. i would come back, if it was easy and made sense. it's quite agreeable and very pleasant and pretty, but is somehow lost on me. i don't know why.
anyway, time to get packing....
Saturday, February 26, 2005
snot loaf
along with insects, weird things floating in the water, and chatty crazy people, i seem to attract food industry horror stories. i'm not sure if i perceive these horrors more often than other people because i'm a hyper-vigilant person, or if the restaurant gods are actually mischievous, but there it is: gross things happen when i try to eat out.
and it's funny because i've worked in the food industry. i'm very supportive of wait-staff. i never make a fuss or behave in a rude or obnoxious manner in restaurants, and i always tip at *least* 15%, so i can't imagine that it's restaurant karma. although... hm. i suppose it could be germ karma, since i am rather, um, shall we say, 'aware' of the ways in which potentially harmful microbes can be transfered....hm.
anyway, aside from the very ordinary assortment of discovered hairs, bugs, and incorrectly filled orders, the best story i have happened at subway. i ran in quickly on my busy, errand-filled lunch hour to grab a sandwich. i ordered. the woman nodded, and grabbed a pair of those plastic sanitary gloves that all subway workers wear to assure cleanliness. she put the gloves on, and stuck her left index finger deeply into her left nostril.
she stopped, suddenly aware of what she had done, her finger still buried up to the first knuckle, but safely protected from her own boogers by the plastic glove. she stared at me. i stared at her. the rest of the world came to a standstill, except for maybe one lone cricket sounding in the distance. time passed.
she stood transfixed, like an animal caught in the headlights of my awareness. it was like she suddenly realised that air is a two-way medium and that if she could see me, i could see her, and the cogs began to slowly grind to life as she tried to decide what to do.
should she apologise profusely, remove the finger, wash her hands, change gloves and just keep on apologising and offering me free stuff?
should she apologise, distract me with a few brain fart jokes and try to get me on her side as a fellow harried person who sometimes just did the craziest things, as she washed up and changed gloves, offering me free stuff?
or, should she pretend that nothing happened and carry on as normal?
evidently she chose the latter, because, keeping perfect, startled, eye-contact with me, she slowly removed her finger, and then slowly reached over to the bread i had requested and wrapped her fingers around it, preparing to cut it for my sandwich.
at this point i jumped about four inches in the air and squeaked something about having changed my mind as i bolted for the door. as i was leaving the manager rushed out from the back, grabbed the snot loaf and waved it in the air as she shouted, "i'll make it for you! i'll make it for you!"
not to be thus reassured i was already out the door and halfway down the street.
and, you know, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg of restaurant stories that i have. most people are incredulous when they hear claims that before we die we eat two pounds each of stranger-drool, insects, hair, and rat turds, but i totally believe it.
and it's funny because i've worked in the food industry. i'm very supportive of wait-staff. i never make a fuss or behave in a rude or obnoxious manner in restaurants, and i always tip at *least* 15%, so i can't imagine that it's restaurant karma. although... hm. i suppose it could be germ karma, since i am rather, um, shall we say, 'aware' of the ways in which potentially harmful microbes can be transfered....hm.
anyway, aside from the very ordinary assortment of discovered hairs, bugs, and incorrectly filled orders, the best story i have happened at subway. i ran in quickly on my busy, errand-filled lunch hour to grab a sandwich. i ordered. the woman nodded, and grabbed a pair of those plastic sanitary gloves that all subway workers wear to assure cleanliness. she put the gloves on, and stuck her left index finger deeply into her left nostril.
she stopped, suddenly aware of what she had done, her finger still buried up to the first knuckle, but safely protected from her own boogers by the plastic glove. she stared at me. i stared at her. the rest of the world came to a standstill, except for maybe one lone cricket sounding in the distance. time passed.
she stood transfixed, like an animal caught in the headlights of my awareness. it was like she suddenly realised that air is a two-way medium and that if she could see me, i could see her, and the cogs began to slowly grind to life as she tried to decide what to do.
should she apologise profusely, remove the finger, wash her hands, change gloves and just keep on apologising and offering me free stuff?
should she apologise, distract me with a few brain fart jokes and try to get me on her side as a fellow harried person who sometimes just did the craziest things, as she washed up and changed gloves, offering me free stuff?
or, should she pretend that nothing happened and carry on as normal?
evidently she chose the latter, because, keeping perfect, startled, eye-contact with me, she slowly removed her finger, and then slowly reached over to the bread i had requested and wrapped her fingers around it, preparing to cut it for my sandwich.
at this point i jumped about four inches in the air and squeaked something about having changed my mind as i bolted for the door. as i was leaving the manager rushed out from the back, grabbed the snot loaf and waved it in the air as she shouted, "i'll make it for you! i'll make it for you!"
not to be thus reassured i was already out the door and halfway down the street.
and, you know, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg of restaurant stories that i have. most people are incredulous when they hear claims that before we die we eat two pounds each of stranger-drool, insects, hair, and rat turds, but i totally believe it.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
what's she building down there?
something weird happened to me a week ago. i became obsessed with the basement.
it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.
i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.
and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.
and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.
at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.
i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.
i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.
this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.
and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!
it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.
i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.
and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.
and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.
at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.
i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.
i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.
this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.
and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!
Monday, February 07, 2005
the leprafurger
this is a story that step-bug wrote for school. they were asked to draw an imaginary creature and then to write something that described the drawing and what the creature is like. j chose to draw a leprafurger, and what follows is his description:
The Leprafurger
The Leprafurger preferably eats pickled staplers through the blue stars on his feet. He is a singular species, and can be found prosperous in Southern Arabia. When in hibernation, the Leprafurger unconsciously eats nuns through a straw. All the black lines and dots on the Leprafurger are used to scare away the farmer that is constantly trying to baptise him. Lemon is his favourite word, though he hates limes. There is no animal that doesn’t fear him, and he lives in a tree. The only thing the Leprafurger is afraid of is mustard. He uses his giant brown thumbs to hear. He is in constant solitude when not being chased by the farmer and his holy water. He uses that time to tell his only friend, Fred the worm, that he feels the inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and that when he changes color for no reason, he says it’s because he must obey the inscrutable exhortations of his soul. Since he uses his thumbs as ears, he uses his ears as thumbs. The symbols on his body, as in the hourglasses and oddly drawn ‘4’s’, are graffiti as a result of sucking nuns through a straw. He has an average life span of 300 years.
The Leprafurger
The Leprafurger preferably eats pickled staplers through the blue stars on his feet. He is a singular species, and can be found prosperous in Southern Arabia. When in hibernation, the Leprafurger unconsciously eats nuns through a straw. All the black lines and dots on the Leprafurger are used to scare away the farmer that is constantly trying to baptise him. Lemon is his favourite word, though he hates limes. There is no animal that doesn’t fear him, and he lives in a tree. The only thing the Leprafurger is afraid of is mustard. He uses his giant brown thumbs to hear. He is in constant solitude when not being chased by the farmer and his holy water. He uses that time to tell his only friend, Fred the worm, that he feels the inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and that when he changes color for no reason, he says it’s because he must obey the inscrutable exhortations of his soul. Since he uses his thumbs as ears, he uses his ears as thumbs. The symbols on his body, as in the hourglasses and oddly drawn ‘4’s’, are graffiti as a result of sucking nuns through a straw. He has an average life span of 300 years.
will you be my briny valentine?
i've fallen in love.
with sauerkraut.
there isn't much else to say, really. sauerkraut, you are perfect. salty, tangy, full of friendly bacteria because you are un-pasteurized, happily peppered with little caraway nubbins.... who needs hot dogs? i eat you by the bowl-full.
* * *
i first came across this crispy, juicy, unpasturized sauerkraut at the annual victoria health show last weekend, and, after just one sample, bought a whole bottle (and then ate all the other samples). i mean, how could i not? it was like eating crunchy, shredded dill pickles, which, as any of you who know me will confirm, i can eat by the jar-full (pickles i'm talking about here. and olives).
other highlights of the show included this rogue band of vegan seventh-day-adventist senior citizens bent on curing the world's problem with heart disease by touting the benefits of a plant based diet; alarming looking 'probes' filled with tumbled semi-precious stones and attached to very large generators; a woman who would hold coat hangers in front of her, as dowsing rods, then move them dramatically apart from each other to show the expansion of your energy field if you put your hand on your head to "centre" yourself; and john gray himself, touting his latest 'men are from mars' book.
as soon as i noticed john gray i vowed to give that guy a piece of my mind, but as i paused to organize my fit i think i was distracted by the electric amethyst 'probes' and forgot all about him until after i had left. oh well.
with sauerkraut.
there isn't much else to say, really. sauerkraut, you are perfect. salty, tangy, full of friendly bacteria because you are un-pasteurized, happily peppered with little caraway nubbins.... who needs hot dogs? i eat you by the bowl-full.
* * *
i first came across this crispy, juicy, unpasturized sauerkraut at the annual victoria health show last weekend, and, after just one sample, bought a whole bottle (and then ate all the other samples). i mean, how could i not? it was like eating crunchy, shredded dill pickles, which, as any of you who know me will confirm, i can eat by the jar-full (pickles i'm talking about here. and olives).
other highlights of the show included this rogue band of vegan seventh-day-adventist senior citizens bent on curing the world's problem with heart disease by touting the benefits of a plant based diet; alarming looking 'probes' filled with tumbled semi-precious stones and attached to very large generators; a woman who would hold coat hangers in front of her, as dowsing rods, then move them dramatically apart from each other to show the expansion of your energy field if you put your hand on your head to "centre" yourself; and john gray himself, touting his latest 'men are from mars' book.
as soon as i noticed john gray i vowed to give that guy a piece of my mind, but as i paused to organize my fit i think i was distracted by the electric amethyst 'probes' and forgot all about him until after i had left. oh well.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
true bear stories i heard the other weekend
1: up in bella coola mum and john had a boarder in their house who was from malawi, africa. he had won a scholarship, and had decided to use it studying forestry on the north-west coast of canada, of all places.
so, as he was traipsing around in the woods one day, the man from afirca jumped through some bushes down into a small dell that was totally clear - except for the grizzly bear in it.
the bear, only a few steps away from him, stood up menacingly, and then lunged forward, pinning him to the ground.
man and bear regarded each other, face to grizzled, rank, fetid face.
then the bear gave the man's terrified expression one giant lick and promptly ran away.
the next day, the man was back on the plane for malawi -- you know, where you only have to worry about lions?
2: after visiting several times, the same african man fell in love with, and married, a nuxalk woman in bella coola.
after the wedding, he drove to the large, open dump to get rid of the garbage from the ceremony and subsequent dinner.
the dump is often a destination for the few tourist busses that come to the area because it's typically full of bears, and this day was no exception.
most of the bears seemed to be foraging at a distance, so the man from africa climbed into the back of his pick-up and busied himself throwing bags over the side, until a bear jumped up onto the flatbed itself. the man paused, blinked, then passed it a bag.
3: in bella coola there's a youth program that aims at (re)acquainting local kids with indigenous first nations spirituality and wilderness survival skills. part of the program entails enduring a "solo", where each kid is sent off alone, or nearly alone, into the bush for a day or two with a potato and two matches.
so, this visiting german girl found her way into the program and was on her solo with two other kids. that night they decided to sleep by the side of the river. they were out in the open, tentless, in sleeping bags, probably smelling like the dinner they had just eaten, dozing soundly, when the girl was woken up by what she assumed were the snorts and snufflings of the camp dog.
she was lying on her stomach, but when she opened her eyes she saw that the creature in question was really a bear who probably thought she looked, and smelled, like a sack of garbage in her sleeping bag in the dark.
he sniffled and snuffed, huffed and nosed at her, for what felt like an eternity. finally the suspense was too much for the poor girl and she thought to the bear, "If you're going to bite me, just bit me now and get it over with!." so, right at that instant, it did.
she screamed, of course, and the poor bear had never heard a bag of garbage scream before, so it ran away terrified. the girl, on the other hand, was taken into the clinic and given all the necessary shots and medications for a bear bite to the bum, after which she elected to rejoin her solo comrads and finish the program. brave girl!
so, as he was traipsing around in the woods one day, the man from afirca jumped through some bushes down into a small dell that was totally clear - except for the grizzly bear in it.
the bear, only a few steps away from him, stood up menacingly, and then lunged forward, pinning him to the ground.
man and bear regarded each other, face to grizzled, rank, fetid face.
then the bear gave the man's terrified expression one giant lick and promptly ran away.
the next day, the man was back on the plane for malawi -- you know, where you only have to worry about lions?
2: after visiting several times, the same african man fell in love with, and married, a nuxalk woman in bella coola.
after the wedding, he drove to the large, open dump to get rid of the garbage from the ceremony and subsequent dinner.
the dump is often a destination for the few tourist busses that come to the area because it's typically full of bears, and this day was no exception.
most of the bears seemed to be foraging at a distance, so the man from africa climbed into the back of his pick-up and busied himself throwing bags over the side, until a bear jumped up onto the flatbed itself. the man paused, blinked, then passed it a bag.
3: in bella coola there's a youth program that aims at (re)acquainting local kids with indigenous first nations spirituality and wilderness survival skills. part of the program entails enduring a "solo", where each kid is sent off alone, or nearly alone, into the bush for a day or two with a potato and two matches.
so, this visiting german girl found her way into the program and was on her solo with two other kids. that night they decided to sleep by the side of the river. they were out in the open, tentless, in sleeping bags, probably smelling like the dinner they had just eaten, dozing soundly, when the girl was woken up by what she assumed were the snorts and snufflings of the camp dog.
she was lying on her stomach, but when she opened her eyes she saw that the creature in question was really a bear who probably thought she looked, and smelled, like a sack of garbage in her sleeping bag in the dark.
he sniffled and snuffed, huffed and nosed at her, for what felt like an eternity. finally the suspense was too much for the poor girl and she thought to the bear, "If you're going to bite me, just bit me now and get it over with!." so, right at that instant, it did.
she screamed, of course, and the poor bear had never heard a bag of garbage scream before, so it ran away terrified. the girl, on the other hand, was taken into the clinic and given all the necessary shots and medications for a bear bite to the bum, after which she elected to rejoin her solo comrads and finish the program. brave girl!
Sunday, January 23, 2005
trogdor!
i've ridden my bike more in the last week than in the last decade (read: twice) but don't have a helmet, so i've been using a paragliding helmet of J's. it's bright red and covers my entire head like a motorcycle helmet, but with no face visor. it looks really smart. it also covers my ears completely so that, when i ride, i can't hear anything at all and have to constantly look behind me to see what traffic's doing, which makes me wobble because i'm out of practice on the bike. so there i am, a cherry coloured balloon-headed crazy wobbling precariously down the road and falling off whenever i stop, face scrunched in the rain.
i don't know whether i look more like mr. mackey from south park, an alien from mars attacks, or strong bad.
in any case, i'm going for victoria's Hottest Girl in the Over 30 category.
the reason i've been riding around at all is that J is away in australia for a month (month!!) and i, the non-driver, am here alone with his 11 year old who takes tennis on mondays and wednesdays in the meantime. so we ride bikes to class. the kid knows how to ride with no hands. he also knows how to stop without falling off, and how to successfully avoid riding into bushes. i suspect that i'm more of a liability than he is on these rides but he seems to want the company, so there i go.
J has been gone for a week. the following is a highlights only account of my crash course in single parenting. if you're new to this blog, J is the papa, and j is the young'un.
Monday: J leaves in the afternoon. it's pouring rain. j comes home and amid a flurry of trying to figure out how to put more air in my long-unused bike's tires, we make it to tennis. at home afterwards, while watching his antics at the dinner table, i feel the familiar tingle and lightheadedness of impending should-i-pass-out-or-just-crap-my-pants panic. i excuse myself and meander into the basement with faux lightheartedness and have a full-blown freak out. did i really agree to this? because i don't remember agreeing. i call my mother to ask about her experience single parenting and send emails.
Tuesday: to avoid getting off the Anna Bus in Crazy Ville again i keep myself super busy. it hasn't stopped raining. i plant nearly 50 bulbs in the garden. very very very late bulbs that will probably come up in july if at all. but this gives me the chance to see what sort of turf we've gotten with our new house. i was happy to find it rich, dark and wormy. i map out where the vegetable garden will be in summer, and notice, among other things, half a dozen wine bottle corks, a startling amount of robust parsley, two worms humping, and hundreds of shoots from already naturalized bulbs under the fruit trees. hurrah! tulips and daffodils!
later that evening, while i'm on the phone, a message is left by one of j's teachers saying that he failed to come to detention (!) after school. it turns out that he's been lying about having his work done (reason for detention). i require him to call her back to apologize and make an alternate detention date with her, plus take his distracting technology privileges away for two days.
Wednesday: we go back to tennis. on the way i nearly wipe out, experiencing first hand what "locked breaks" means. it's still pouring rain.
Thursday: at lunch around 30 birds decide to come and bathe in the new lake in our yard created by five days of rain. they are soooo cute, and j and i have fun using his monocular and my new guide to victoria birds (thanks clare!) to identify them. we saw mostly starlings, robins, sparrows and crows, but also a varied thrush and a... something i forget. half an hour after j leaves to go back to school i get a call from his main teacher, with him in the room, saying that he's been a nuisance for the past few weeks, almost never has his work done, and is almost always late, and basically failing math.
oh great.
i wander down the road to the video store to collect my thoughts and take back movies.
when j comes back from his make-up detention, we talk and arrive together at a fairly stringent set of temporary rules for the next two weeks to see what he can make of himself. we watch the movie willow.
Friday: is a PD day. we stay in our pajamas until the evening when i go to get more videos and he goes to buy ice cream (sorry J!). we watch legally blond. there have been mudslides and flooding on the mainland because of all the rain.
Saturday: j's best friend comes over with his cousin who's a girl and who manages to rid j of several toys by offering to kiss him for them (!). together, the three of them make a racket unlike anything i've ever heard, and when i go into the basement where they were playing, i find it covered in tiny broken bits of styrofoam. everywhere. seriously.
i didn't know we even had styrofoam.
j does well tidying up after them all, though, and wants the other two to sleep over. the idea of this makes my eyes cross. thankfully it's logistically impossible that night and i'm off the hook. we order a pizza instead.
Sunday: today j surprised me with breakfast in bed complete with sliced apple, orange juice and a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. it was very nice, and quite a shock since even his dad has never done this (*wink* to J), so i don't know where he got the idea from. i'm pretty sure it was a bribe to go by bus to the distant video store, though, in order to find a specific xbox game. we'll see if the bribe works. i'm still a little freaked out by the whole situation, but distraction has been working reasonably well to counter act this feeling, and i'm beginning to enjoy sleeping in the middle of the bed surrounded by books.
tomorrow i'll have to don my giant, red, full-coverage helmet again for tennis class, so the more affluent neighbourhoods of victoria, where we are ever surprised to be living, will ring with the sounds of a 32 year old singing "Trogdor the Burninator!" once more.
i don't know whether i look more like mr. mackey from south park, an alien from mars attacks, or strong bad.
in any case, i'm going for victoria's Hottest Girl in the Over 30 category.
the reason i've been riding around at all is that J is away in australia for a month (month!!) and i, the non-driver, am here alone with his 11 year old who takes tennis on mondays and wednesdays in the meantime. so we ride bikes to class. the kid knows how to ride with no hands. he also knows how to stop without falling off, and how to successfully avoid riding into bushes. i suspect that i'm more of a liability than he is on these rides but he seems to want the company, so there i go.
J has been gone for a week. the following is a highlights only account of my crash course in single parenting. if you're new to this blog, J is the papa, and j is the young'un.
Monday: J leaves in the afternoon. it's pouring rain. j comes home and amid a flurry of trying to figure out how to put more air in my long-unused bike's tires, we make it to tennis. at home afterwards, while watching his antics at the dinner table, i feel the familiar tingle and lightheadedness of impending should-i-pass-out-or-just-crap-my-pants panic. i excuse myself and meander into the basement with faux lightheartedness and have a full-blown freak out. did i really agree to this? because i don't remember agreeing. i call my mother to ask about her experience single parenting and send emails.
Tuesday: to avoid getting off the Anna Bus in Crazy Ville again i keep myself super busy. it hasn't stopped raining. i plant nearly 50 bulbs in the garden. very very very late bulbs that will probably come up in july if at all. but this gives me the chance to see what sort of turf we've gotten with our new house. i was happy to find it rich, dark and wormy. i map out where the vegetable garden will be in summer, and notice, among other things, half a dozen wine bottle corks, a startling amount of robust parsley, two worms humping, and hundreds of shoots from already naturalized bulbs under the fruit trees. hurrah! tulips and daffodils!
later that evening, while i'm on the phone, a message is left by one of j's teachers saying that he failed to come to detention (!) after school. it turns out that he's been lying about having his work done (reason for detention). i require him to call her back to apologize and make an alternate detention date with her, plus take his distracting technology privileges away for two days.
Wednesday: we go back to tennis. on the way i nearly wipe out, experiencing first hand what "locked breaks" means. it's still pouring rain.
Thursday: at lunch around 30 birds decide to come and bathe in the new lake in our yard created by five days of rain. they are soooo cute, and j and i have fun using his monocular and my new guide to victoria birds (thanks clare!) to identify them. we saw mostly starlings, robins, sparrows and crows, but also a varied thrush and a... something i forget. half an hour after j leaves to go back to school i get a call from his main teacher, with him in the room, saying that he's been a nuisance for the past few weeks, almost never has his work done, and is almost always late, and basically failing math.
oh great.
i wander down the road to the video store to collect my thoughts and take back movies.
when j comes back from his make-up detention, we talk and arrive together at a fairly stringent set of temporary rules for the next two weeks to see what he can make of himself. we watch the movie willow.
Friday: is a PD day. we stay in our pajamas until the evening when i go to get more videos and he goes to buy ice cream (sorry J!). we watch legally blond. there have been mudslides and flooding on the mainland because of all the rain.
Saturday: j's best friend comes over with his cousin who's a girl and who manages to rid j of several toys by offering to kiss him for them (!). together, the three of them make a racket unlike anything i've ever heard, and when i go into the basement where they were playing, i find it covered in tiny broken bits of styrofoam. everywhere. seriously.
i didn't know we even had styrofoam.
j does well tidying up after them all, though, and wants the other two to sleep over. the idea of this makes my eyes cross. thankfully it's logistically impossible that night and i'm off the hook. we order a pizza instead.
Sunday: today j surprised me with breakfast in bed complete with sliced apple, orange juice and a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. it was very nice, and quite a shock since even his dad has never done this (*wink* to J), so i don't know where he got the idea from. i'm pretty sure it was a bribe to go by bus to the distant video store, though, in order to find a specific xbox game. we'll see if the bribe works. i'm still a little freaked out by the whole situation, but distraction has been working reasonably well to counter act this feeling, and i'm beginning to enjoy sleeping in the middle of the bed surrounded by books.
tomorrow i'll have to don my giant, red, full-coverage helmet again for tennis class, so the more affluent neighbourhoods of victoria, where we are ever surprised to be living, will ring with the sounds of a 32 year old singing "Trogdor the Burninator!" once more.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
book wrom
don't give up just because it looks weird -- believe or not, you can read it:
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid!
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
i came across this while surfing (see dagkasher.blogspot.com ) and instantly felt a spark of excitement -- always having been one of those folks who can't spell her way out of a paper bag despite being reasonably well-read. mark twain's (or was it andrew jackson's?) musing that, "it's a damn poor mind that can only think of one
way to spell a word" was my credo -- and now the discovery that i don't even have to bother trying as long as the first and last letters are correct!? too good to be true!
but then i thought to myself... doesn't the above only work because we have the correct version of the word imprinted within grey matter somewhere acting as a context through which to view the erroneous?
hm.
so close.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid!
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
i came across this while surfing (see dagkasher.blogspot.com ) and instantly felt a spark of excitement -- always having been one of those folks who can't spell her way out of a paper bag despite being reasonably well-read. mark twain's (or was it andrew jackson's?) musing that, "it's a damn poor mind that can only think of one
way to spell a word" was my credo -- and now the discovery that i don't even have to bother trying as long as the first and last letters are correct!? too good to be true!
but then i thought to myself... doesn't the above only work because we have the correct version of the word imprinted within grey matter somewhere acting as a context through which to view the erroneous?
hm.
so close.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
ice worms
the streets are clear and there's a fine drizzle in the air here in victoria, but in vancouver, i see, there are five centimetres of snow on the ground. these weather images remind me of one night, a few years ago, when i was living in vancouver myself. i was working late in an office building and had seen, to my joy and excitement, the snow begin to fall in the afternoon. my excitement grew as i saw that the snow was STICKING.
i'm an east-coaster, a grace baby (to all you haligonians) and i've never gotten over being excited by the first snowfall of winter. i don't even snowboard.
anyway, nothing could have prepared me for the chaos that was awaiting my eager glee. i stepped outside from my building's lobby that evening, stopped, and stared.
the air was full of the acrid smoke of burning rubber as car after car spun its treadless tires in an attempt to leave the spot where it had been parked for the day. the cars that were lucky enough to be on the road all fishtailed wildly, and sometimes spun in complete, slow circles, the people inside clamouring and scrambling like unwilling captives for escape. everywhere were shouts and cries of alarm, panic, and near homicidal rage, people and cars shooting in all directions like they do when giant lizards stomp through urban areas in sci-fi movies.
i watched one wild-eyed woman drive white-knuckled at a breathtaking two kilometres an hour with a man tailgating two inches behind her, leaning on his horn while hanging out the window hurling every obscenity towards her with aneurysm-inducing ferocity. i don't think she noticed. she was staring at some point in the distance with the intensity of a person who believes that it is their gaze alone keeping the horizon in its place.
i saw another well-intentioned gal attempt to direct traffic at an intersection whose lights were down. there she stood, defying death in her office clothes, performing what looked like an interpretive dance commentary on corporate frustration. none of the drivers approaching her had any idea of how to follow her erratic and contradictory gestures, let alone any control over their cars, so they just tried not to kill her as they meandered helplessly through the intersection.
no traffic lights were functioning. pedestrians began adopting a herd-like mentality, waiting at curbs until sufficient numbers had arrived, and then charging across the road en masse, figuring that if they all rushed at the same time, the car-wolves would only be able to pick off a few of the people-deer, and most of them would make it.
on my walk home i saw busses sliding broadside down hills the size of a ballet dancer's boob, i saw groups of burly young men give up their entire evening helping cars up one particular hill, rushing out to push as soon as each car began its inevitable slide backwards near the crest. i've never seen anything like it. there couldn't have been more than five inches of wet snow on the ground.
i'm an east-coaster, a grace baby (to all you haligonians) and i've never gotten over being excited by the first snowfall of winter. i don't even snowboard.
anyway, nothing could have prepared me for the chaos that was awaiting my eager glee. i stepped outside from my building's lobby that evening, stopped, and stared.
the air was full of the acrid smoke of burning rubber as car after car spun its treadless tires in an attempt to leave the spot where it had been parked for the day. the cars that were lucky enough to be on the road all fishtailed wildly, and sometimes spun in complete, slow circles, the people inside clamouring and scrambling like unwilling captives for escape. everywhere were shouts and cries of alarm, panic, and near homicidal rage, people and cars shooting in all directions like they do when giant lizards stomp through urban areas in sci-fi movies.
i watched one wild-eyed woman drive white-knuckled at a breathtaking two kilometres an hour with a man tailgating two inches behind her, leaning on his horn while hanging out the window hurling every obscenity towards her with aneurysm-inducing ferocity. i don't think she noticed. she was staring at some point in the distance with the intensity of a person who believes that it is their gaze alone keeping the horizon in its place.
i saw another well-intentioned gal attempt to direct traffic at an intersection whose lights were down. there she stood, defying death in her office clothes, performing what looked like an interpretive dance commentary on corporate frustration. none of the drivers approaching her had any idea of how to follow her erratic and contradictory gestures, let alone any control over their cars, so they just tried not to kill her as they meandered helplessly through the intersection.
no traffic lights were functioning. pedestrians began adopting a herd-like mentality, waiting at curbs until sufficient numbers had arrived, and then charging across the road en masse, figuring that if they all rushed at the same time, the car-wolves would only be able to pick off a few of the people-deer, and most of them would make it.
on my walk home i saw busses sliding broadside down hills the size of a ballet dancer's boob, i saw groups of burly young men give up their entire evening helping cars up one particular hill, rushing out to push as soon as each car began its inevitable slide backwards near the crest. i've never seen anything like it. there couldn't have been more than five inches of wet snow on the ground.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
burgled bug
let me just say that this magical universe seems to have its twisted little heart set on stopping me from giving gifts this christmas.
this past weekend J and i decided to take advantage of our visit to vancouver and do some Big City christmas shopping. at the end of the day we emerged from our final stop to find the window in his car smashed and all of our presents, groceries, back packs (including our clothes, toiletries, etc.) gone.
so, in the sort of cavalier moment that shock often inspires in me, i ran into the adjacent alley way to crawl around in the rainy darkness amongst the used needles, condoms, and broken glass behind the dumpsters and under cars. i even, probably very foolishly, woke up a sleeping street person to ask if he knew where my cash box was -- the one i use at all my fairs, and that contained all of my sales records for the year. he didn't.
this messy half-an-hour did yield our clothing and savoury groceries (no sweet ones, interestingly) and my prized cash-box (emptied of cash, of course), but no presents. when i mentioned this to a friend later that evening she said that i must feel so violated, but honestly i don't. i just feel poor, because i can't afford to replace all the gifts.
but the plot thickens! right after being burgled (a word i adore, by the way), j had to go back over to victoria. i went about my business for the next few days in vancouver and even re-purchased some of the less expensive items that had been stolen, and then set out for victoria myself.
i unloaded my many boxes left over from the craft fair i had done onto my dolly, along with all of the new, precious presents, and headed for the ferry terminal when a sudden, invisible bump up-ended the whole cart and the gifts went flying all over the rainy street. a wonderfully helpful, but, it turns out, freakishly iron-fisted old man came running over to help me and happily busied himself with mangling each of my soggy gifts in his crushing paws before cramming them quickly into the box i held. he was very cheerfully and benevolently destructive, though, and heart-breakingly kind to come and help at all, but i give up: everyone gets oranges and fingerknitting in their stocking this year, and that's all.
this past weekend J and i decided to take advantage of our visit to vancouver and do some Big City christmas shopping. at the end of the day we emerged from our final stop to find the window in his car smashed and all of our presents, groceries, back packs (including our clothes, toiletries, etc.) gone.
so, in the sort of cavalier moment that shock often inspires in me, i ran into the adjacent alley way to crawl around in the rainy darkness amongst the used needles, condoms, and broken glass behind the dumpsters and under cars. i even, probably very foolishly, woke up a sleeping street person to ask if he knew where my cash box was -- the one i use at all my fairs, and that contained all of my sales records for the year. he didn't.
this messy half-an-hour did yield our clothing and savoury groceries (no sweet ones, interestingly) and my prized cash-box (emptied of cash, of course), but no presents. when i mentioned this to a friend later that evening she said that i must feel so violated, but honestly i don't. i just feel poor, because i can't afford to replace all the gifts.
but the plot thickens! right after being burgled (a word i adore, by the way), j had to go back over to victoria. i went about my business for the next few days in vancouver and even re-purchased some of the less expensive items that had been stolen, and then set out for victoria myself.
i unloaded my many boxes left over from the craft fair i had done onto my dolly, along with all of the new, precious presents, and headed for the ferry terminal when a sudden, invisible bump up-ended the whole cart and the gifts went flying all over the rainy street. a wonderfully helpful, but, it turns out, freakishly iron-fisted old man came running over to help me and happily busied himself with mangling each of my soggy gifts in his crushing paws before cramming them quickly into the box i held. he was very cheerfully and benevolently destructive, though, and heart-breakingly kind to come and help at all, but i give up: everyone gets oranges and fingerknitting in their stocking this year, and that's all.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
stink bugs
the other day i got an email from our landlords, whose backyard abuts ours, asking us to park our van completely in front of our house, because they find the sight of the three feet of van visible to them through our two backyards obtrusive.
now, our van may be a 1979 dodge, but it's rust-free, and has an even (if bright) yellow coat of new paint, and jaunty blue advertising for J's company. it isn't pretty like, say, a jaguar's pretty, but it's in good repair, and, what's more, it's none of anyone else's business. the street allows for public parking, no permits required. in fact, all the streets in our neighbourhood are the same, meaning that we could, legally, park in front of our landlord's house Every Day of the Year if we felt like it.
we could even park in front of their house, remove the van's tires, prop it up on blocks, and spray-paint: THIS IS OBTRUSIVE on the side of the van in fluorescent paint, legally.
but we will restrain ourselves.
what i want to know is how far landlords' rights extend over their tenants. i mean, my landlady, who is scarcely older than i am, has terrible taste -- in decorating and in shoes (and who knows what else?), so, can i write her an email about it? can i tell her that the colours she has used in her house, that seem verily to jump out at me from across our lawns in the evening through her un-curtained windows, speak to me of an ignorant-suburbanite-recently-come-into -money-trying-to-rise-above-herself-by-following-advice-in-boring- home-decorating-magazines-found-in-grocery-stores, and therefore offend me?
can i tell our other next-door neighbour that his fiance's fake tits don't conform to my values and ask him if he would please turn her around in my presence so i don't have to look at them?
it sounds absurd, of course, but i feel like our landlords are basically asking the same thing of us. the main difference is that we're poor, and they aren't. if we were driving a canary yellow lexus SUV, i doubt they would care where we parked it, and it freaks me out because it makes me feel like they value affluence in others. like maybe even right along with things like honesty, reliability, kindness and generosity -- you know, attributes of good character?
but affluence has nothing to do with character. affluence is not a value.
it gives me the creeps.
i don't know. maybe i'm wrong and that isn't what they're doing. i'd love to be wrong. maybe our landlady was menaced by nightmares involving yellow vans as a child, who knows.
now, our van may be a 1979 dodge, but it's rust-free, and has an even (if bright) yellow coat of new paint, and jaunty blue advertising for J's company. it isn't pretty like, say, a jaguar's pretty, but it's in good repair, and, what's more, it's none of anyone else's business. the street allows for public parking, no permits required. in fact, all the streets in our neighbourhood are the same, meaning that we could, legally, park in front of our landlord's house Every Day of the Year if we felt like it.
we could even park in front of their house, remove the van's tires, prop it up on blocks, and spray-paint: THIS IS OBTRUSIVE on the side of the van in fluorescent paint, legally.
but we will restrain ourselves.
what i want to know is how far landlords' rights extend over their tenants. i mean, my landlady, who is scarcely older than i am, has terrible taste -- in decorating and in shoes (and who knows what else?), so, can i write her an email about it? can i tell her that the colours she has used in her house, that seem verily to jump out at me from across our lawns in the evening through her un-curtained windows, speak to me of an ignorant-suburbanite-recently-come-into -money-trying-to-rise-above-herself-by-following-advice-in-boring- home-decorating-magazines-found-in-grocery-stores, and therefore offend me?
can i tell our other next-door neighbour that his fiance's fake tits don't conform to my values and ask him if he would please turn her around in my presence so i don't have to look at them?
it sounds absurd, of course, but i feel like our landlords are basically asking the same thing of us. the main difference is that we're poor, and they aren't. if we were driving a canary yellow lexus SUV, i doubt they would care where we parked it, and it freaks me out because it makes me feel like they value affluence in others. like maybe even right along with things like honesty, reliability, kindness and generosity -- you know, attributes of good character?
but affluence has nothing to do with character. affluence is not a value.
it gives me the creeps.
i don't know. maybe i'm wrong and that isn't what they're doing. i'd love to be wrong. maybe our landlady was menaced by nightmares involving yellow vans as a child, who knows.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
mrs. tittlemouse
we just moved into a new house. it's a post war bungalow and it's turning me into a susie-homemaker. i'm on the verge of buying a cake platter and a candy dish.
all i've done since moving in are cook and clean and smile fondly. this morning i made christmas nuts'n'bolts -- and what says '50's housewife' more than savoury recipes involving packaged dry cereal? i think the ghosts of Housewives Past are gently nudging me along with their dustpans. when the step-bug arrived home for lunch today, i had a cheese and (soy) luncheon meat sandwich ready on the table for him along with a bowl of tomato soup from the can.
this morning i also bought a christmas tree, but passed on the opportunity to have it delivered. there was, though, i admit, a moment where i indulged in the fantasy of shopping in heels and a hat -- gloves and pocket book in one hand, pointing at the things i want with the other so that the scurrying grocery boy behind me could grab them and put them in my delivery box.
to redeem myself in my own mind i lugged the tree home by myself, on foot, in a rain storm.
but we're all very interested to see how long this possession of mine will carry on. so far, all the cooking and fussing are a pleasure and don't feel contrived in the least, leading one to wonder if, at last, i've finally found my calling.
mind you, the glass doorknobs, marbled linoleum floor and arborite counters really do make it all easy. easy to hum and scrub, easy to bake and pinch, easy to greet your sweetheart at the door in nothing but an apron and a wink.
all i've done since moving in are cook and clean and smile fondly. this morning i made christmas nuts'n'bolts -- and what says '50's housewife' more than savoury recipes involving packaged dry cereal? i think the ghosts of Housewives Past are gently nudging me along with their dustpans. when the step-bug arrived home for lunch today, i had a cheese and (soy) luncheon meat sandwich ready on the table for him along with a bowl of tomato soup from the can.
this morning i also bought a christmas tree, but passed on the opportunity to have it delivered. there was, though, i admit, a moment where i indulged in the fantasy of shopping in heels and a hat -- gloves and pocket book in one hand, pointing at the things i want with the other so that the scurrying grocery boy behind me could grab them and put them in my delivery box.
to redeem myself in my own mind i lugged the tree home by myself, on foot, in a rain storm.
but we're all very interested to see how long this possession of mine will carry on. so far, all the cooking and fussing are a pleasure and don't feel contrived in the least, leading one to wonder if, at last, i've finally found my calling.
mind you, the glass doorknobs, marbled linoleum floor and arborite counters really do make it all easy. easy to hum and scrub, easy to bake and pinch, easy to greet your sweetheart at the door in nothing but an apron and a wink.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
attack of the giant insects
i live with a giant.
he was excited about the bathroom mirror when we moved into this house because he could finally see himself without stooping down like usual. and it's true, it must have been hung by a giant like him, because i can only see from the bridge of my nose up (and about two feet of air above my head).
because i didn't see the bottom of my face in such a long time, i finally found out exactly how many pretty black hairs grow out of my chin when left unmolested. it was awesome. (even more awesome was making the discovery in a restaurant bathroom and realising how long i had been walking around like that.)
life for a giant isn't all just fun and games playing tricks on midgets with mirrors, though. J clocks himself on the head with surprising frequency. it's not that he has particularly poor depth perception, or anything, it's just that things often come within one tiny, painful centimetre of being high enough for him, and the rest of us seem to fit in the world so easily that he ambles along hopefully, too, bonking himself in the noggin. poor monkey.
i may not be tall and slim, and i may have a beard, but at least i can't remember the last time i hit my head.
he was excited about the bathroom mirror when we moved into this house because he could finally see himself without stooping down like usual. and it's true, it must have been hung by a giant like him, because i can only see from the bridge of my nose up (and about two feet of air above my head).
because i didn't see the bottom of my face in such a long time, i finally found out exactly how many pretty black hairs grow out of my chin when left unmolested. it was awesome. (even more awesome was making the discovery in a restaurant bathroom and realising how long i had been walking around like that.)
life for a giant isn't all just fun and games playing tricks on midgets with mirrors, though. J clocks himself on the head with surprising frequency. it's not that he has particularly poor depth perception, or anything, it's just that things often come within one tiny, painful centimetre of being high enough for him, and the rest of us seem to fit in the world so easily that he ambles along hopefully, too, bonking himself in the noggin. poor monkey.
i may not be tall and slim, and i may have a beard, but at least i can't remember the last time i hit my head.
Monday, November 15, 2004
my thorax
yesterday a friend told me about a great sale, and, needing casual (but unstained, untorn, wax-free) pants, i trundled along to check it out.
now, i've been in the Bitter Barn with regards to pants for a long time. since puberty, in fact, when i grew a PERFECTLY NORMAL woman bum, acquired a waist, and suddenly discovered that mainstream, accessible clothing was no longer designed to fit me.
what is *with* that?
what is up with designing clothes that don't really fit anyone properly?
i've always liked wearing my pants low. i find it comfy and more flattering since i'm quite high waisted, so you'd think that the frenzy over 'brazilian cut' pants in the last few years would work for me, but it doesn't. it only works for tiny, narrow-but-curvy bums. on everyone else, these pants produce female love handles and an unflattering, square bum. i would know -- i worked in an open-air public market all summer and got to avert my eyes from dozens of teenagers a day, parading around with their baby fat bulging out from underneath this regrettable trend.
well, i won't have it any more. it's beneath my dignity and i've decided that low rise pants have become tiresome and old hat. i've gone the other way. at a vintage store i found and bought this pair of 70's sailor pants which are so crazy high-waisted that compared to some one in low-risers, i look like i have this humungous thorax -- you know, like an ant?
anyway, thorax or not, the sailor pants are workin' for me, and i maintain that if we all try, we can rise above (ha ha) the brazilian cut pants phase and relegate female love handles to where they belong in the dustbin of fashion history.
now, i've been in the Bitter Barn with regards to pants for a long time. since puberty, in fact, when i grew a PERFECTLY NORMAL woman bum, acquired a waist, and suddenly discovered that mainstream, accessible clothing was no longer designed to fit me.
what is *with* that?
what is up with designing clothes that don't really fit anyone properly?
i've always liked wearing my pants low. i find it comfy and more flattering since i'm quite high waisted, so you'd think that the frenzy over 'brazilian cut' pants in the last few years would work for me, but it doesn't. it only works for tiny, narrow-but-curvy bums. on everyone else, these pants produce female love handles and an unflattering, square bum. i would know -- i worked in an open-air public market all summer and got to avert my eyes from dozens of teenagers a day, parading around with their baby fat bulging out from underneath this regrettable trend.
well, i won't have it any more. it's beneath my dignity and i've decided that low rise pants have become tiresome and old hat. i've gone the other way. at a vintage store i found and bought this pair of 70's sailor pants which are so crazy high-waisted that compared to some one in low-risers, i look like i have this humungous thorax -- you know, like an ant?
anyway, thorax or not, the sailor pants are workin' for me, and i maintain that if we all try, we can rise above (ha ha) the brazilian cut pants phase and relegate female love handles to where they belong in the dustbin of fashion history.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
hey, that can is leaking worms!
i found this particular posting to be too whiny and rambling after the fact, so i've removed it.
cheers to all of you who actually slogged through it,
"The Whiny Rambler"
cheers to all of you who actually slogged through it,
"The Whiny Rambler"
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
chicken humping
i had always believed that if a kid was old enough to ask a question, he or she was old enough to hear the answer. now i'm not so sure, what with tv and internet being as they are.
lately our little house has been full of complex issues touched on by some really good questions on the part of the resident ten-year-old. questions like, "if a man looks at porn, does it mean he doesn't love his wife any more?" or, "why would a kid's parents stop talking to him just because he's gay?" or, "is there *really* a phone number in the book you can dial to get a woman to come to your house and massage your wiener?", and "why do people think porn's bad?"
why indeed.
i mean, where do i start? religious conservatism? feminism? police statistics? and how do i broach the subject without giving the impression that nakedness, or sex, are fundamentally dangerous?
we chatted, and, in an effort to keep the conversation within the realm of what he's already aware of, i mentioned that some people's relationship towards sex is unhealthy, for whatever reason. (oopsies.) so he wanted to know what i meant, so i reminded him that some people find children, for example, attractive, and that that, as he knows, it totally inappropriate.
he nodded. (whew!)
then asked, "what else?"
(oh no.)
how do i avoid telling him that there are people in the world who like to hump chickens, without sounding like i'm glossing over something tantalizingly mysterious, dark, dirty, forbidden and perilous? i mean, he has the rest of his life to be a grown up and to avoid, or celebrate, (i suppose) chicken humping. in the meantime, i just don't think he has to know about it.
the problem is, i don't know how to be to make him not wonder how far things go. he craves absolute limits and boundaries. he wants to understand everything -- plus, i think in this case, he wants to have more fodder for pervy schoolyard information swaps with the other kids. i'm really not sure how to handle it.
so, again, if the kids are the ones asking, can you really give them too much information?
lately our little house has been full of complex issues touched on by some really good questions on the part of the resident ten-year-old. questions like, "if a man looks at porn, does it mean he doesn't love his wife any more?" or, "why would a kid's parents stop talking to him just because he's gay?" or, "is there *really* a phone number in the book you can dial to get a woman to come to your house and massage your wiener?", and "why do people think porn's bad?"
why indeed.
i mean, where do i start? religious conservatism? feminism? police statistics? and how do i broach the subject without giving the impression that nakedness, or sex, are fundamentally dangerous?
we chatted, and, in an effort to keep the conversation within the realm of what he's already aware of, i mentioned that some people's relationship towards sex is unhealthy, for whatever reason. (oopsies.) so he wanted to know what i meant, so i reminded him that some people find children, for example, attractive, and that that, as he knows, it totally inappropriate.
he nodded. (whew!)
then asked, "what else?"
(oh no.)
how do i avoid telling him that there are people in the world who like to hump chickens, without sounding like i'm glossing over something tantalizingly mysterious, dark, dirty, forbidden and perilous? i mean, he has the rest of his life to be a grown up and to avoid, or celebrate, (i suppose) chicken humping. in the meantime, i just don't think he has to know about it.
the problem is, i don't know how to be to make him not wonder how far things go. he craves absolute limits and boundaries. he wants to understand everything -- plus, i think in this case, he wants to have more fodder for pervy schoolyard information swaps with the other kids. i'm really not sure how to handle it.
so, again, if the kids are the ones asking, can you really give them too much information?
Saturday, October 02, 2004
fall
miraculously, it has been raining here. it hasn't rained in months so it's really great. all the rain, and the shortening days, have been putting me in a fall mood. the leaves don't turn pretty colours out here like they do on the other side of the country, but it's still nice. i always used to love the hints of fall in the air out east. and then, of course, the actual fall, as well. so colourful and fragrant and zippy. time for fresh starts! time to buy shiny, new, unchewed pencils, and pristine erasers! time to wear wool and corduroy again! whether the leaves underfoot are crunchy or slippery, the air is full of rotten, earthy, mustiness and hints of woodsmoke, and my hair must be free! free to poke me in the eye and get swamped in my chap-sticky lips.
personally, i think i look much better in lots of clothes. this whole 'showing skin' thing doesn't really work for me. i'm so pale and hairy and bumpy in weird places -- like my armpits. who's the pinhead who thought up armpit pimples? anyway, it's always exciting to have an excuse to wear more clothes, i say. i have a pretty green sweater, for instance, that i got last year, calling me from the shelf these days. hopefully it's not moth-eaten.
(i never had a problem with moths before i moved out west. ever. i had no idea what people were talking about. and then i came to BC and found my beautiful wool scarves literally crawling with moth larvae. gross! my roommate had to come and help me dispose of them, because all i could do was jump up and down and squeak. ew.)
the other nice thing about it having been cold and rainy lately is that it meant i didn't have to work (yay!)
i realize that i don't like working very much. i had always wanted to think that if i won the lottery, or married rich, or something, i'd keep working, because it seems more honourable, but really, i have to admit that i wouldn't. i despise having to do anything. (note: i don't despise doing things. i despise doing them when i don't feel like it) i'd much rather just follow my nose and wander around meeting people and seeing things and starting projects and having lunch. and the odd nap. what does this mean? does this mean i lack principles?.
it's time to go for a walk amongst my tree-friends. where's that green sweater?
personally, i think i look much better in lots of clothes. this whole 'showing skin' thing doesn't really work for me. i'm so pale and hairy and bumpy in weird places -- like my armpits. who's the pinhead who thought up armpit pimples? anyway, it's always exciting to have an excuse to wear more clothes, i say. i have a pretty green sweater, for instance, that i got last year, calling me from the shelf these days. hopefully it's not moth-eaten.
(i never had a problem with moths before i moved out west. ever. i had no idea what people were talking about. and then i came to BC and found my beautiful wool scarves literally crawling with moth larvae. gross! my roommate had to come and help me dispose of them, because all i could do was jump up and down and squeak. ew.)
the other nice thing about it having been cold and rainy lately is that it meant i didn't have to work (yay!)
i realize that i don't like working very much. i had always wanted to think that if i won the lottery, or married rich, or something, i'd keep working, because it seems more honourable, but really, i have to admit that i wouldn't. i despise having to do anything. (note: i don't despise doing things. i despise doing them when i don't feel like it) i'd much rather just follow my nose and wander around meeting people and seeing things and starting projects and having lunch. and the odd nap. what does this mean? does this mean i lack principles?.
it's time to go for a walk amongst my tree-friends. where's that green sweater?
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