tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83011289921210512522024-03-13T03:55:16.097-07:00Worn Ragged: Dispatches from the TundraUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger307125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-43544018924592030112018-07-15T23:28:00.001-07:002018-07-15T23:28:08.332-07:00Overheard on Ward 74Old Buster: "I need some batteries for my hearing aids."<div>
Mom: "What's that, dear?"</div>
<div>
OB: "Batteries for my hearing aids."</div>
<div>
Mom: "I can't hear you. I think the batteries on my hearing aids are weak."</div>
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OB: "You have batteries for the hearing aids?"</div>
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Mom: "Are you wearing your hearing aids?"</div>
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OB: "I need batteries for my hearing aids!!"</div>
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Mom: "Yes, I have them."</div>
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OB: "Well then give them to me!"</div>
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Mom: "But then I won't be able to hear you."</div>
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OB: "Not yours, I want mine!"</div>
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Mom: "Well, I don't have yours."</div>
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OB: "Bring me some tomorrow when you visit."</div>
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Mom: "What are we talking about now?"</div>
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OB: "I WANT HEARING AIDS FOR MY BATTERIES!!!!"</div>
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Mom: "You're acting a little peculiar, dear."</div>
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OB: "Well at least . . . is this Regina?"</div>
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Mom: "I BEG YOUR PARDON."</div>
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<br /></div>
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I imagine this all went on a little longer, but at this point I admit that I went down to the hospital cafeteria to see if they have any of those excellent cans of gin and tonic. </div>
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(They don't.)</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-22635762830254424242018-05-03T20:52:00.002-07:002018-05-03T21:03:06.266-07:00Ward 82I've spent the last week or so as a near-constant visitor to a hospital urology ward. So many poor old busters with leaky plumbing, you just can't imagine. I've Seen Things that I ought not properly to have seen, given that I am not myself a urologist or an aficionado of high-def photography when the subject is the insides of urethras. In some primitive cultures I do believe that I would have had to have married people based on what I now know first-hand about them. There are no braver and better people on this good earth than the nurses who calmly accept that they have converted 17 years of education into a daily opportunity to be peed on by strangers who just can't help it.<br />
<br />
Actually, maybe there are.<br />
<br />
I admit it: I've laughed and giggled, snickered and rolled my eyes heavenwards a good portion of the last 7 days. I mean, what's not hilarious about a whole floor of old men running around in their underpants trying to aim accurately at plastic bottles and using paint-chip cards to judge whether their pee is more like watermelon or pink lemonade or cranberry or tomato soup or beets?<br />
<br />
But that's not the point. The guy in the bed across the hall from my patient was a British sailor who as a child was tasked with watching for Germans from the village church tower and to this day has nightmares about Hitler and balloons. One of the roommates spent the last 55 years farming on this stubborn tundra; you should see the callouses on his hands. (No wonder he can't quite manage that bottle.) Buddy down the hall is a transplant from Atlantic Canada, where he learned how to make steamed birch snowshoes from his grandfather and then used them to fish and log, hunt and trap to support his 3 orphaned sisters. Sure, he's not a big fan of doing up his hospital gown but I guess I got time for that.<br />
<br />
I can always look away, right?<br />
<br />
NO NO NO I CAN'T DON'T LOOK AUGH MY EYES MY POOR EYES.<br />
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I tried. I really tried. It was horrible. They are noble and children of the universe and everything but it was HORRIBLE DO YOU HEAR ME.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-51025432833022048692018-01-10T16:48:00.003-08:002018-01-10T16:48:50.658-08:00The Cardigan of BecomingA person actually said out loud today "Your mother is right." That person was talking about me. I am a mother. Someone depends on me for advice, for food, transportation, affection, common-sense hygiene protocols, the purchasing of anti-bacterial soaps when appropriate.<br />
<br />
That this has been so for nearly 15 years now didn't really lessen my (temporary) astonishment.<br />
<br />
It still catches me by surprise, this re-re-re-re-discovery that I'm not the person I remember myself being. I have now, for example, a wide-ranging collection of cardigans. Some are zippered argyle, some have little pearlescent appliques, but what unites them all is their boxy cardigan-ness. I used to be a creature found almost without exception in sweatshirts two sizes too big for me, cut for men. I moped around Paris dressed like a refugee for an entire year and cut a similar figure in other world capitals on two continents. No one could accuse me of dressing for the approval of the masses.<br />
<br />
Which makes the trim little cardigans making their pleas for social acceptability that much the stranger. They have little pockets, some of them, for kleenex or hair ties or quarters. There is a Lego Theoden in one, given to me by a certain small person when I was heading off for a new client meeting (which went so well that I've carried it around with me most places ever since).<br />
<br />
The sweatshirts and shapeless jackets were disguises that hid my youth and beauty with ruthless efficiency from every male gaze that might possibly be headed my way. There are complicated reasons for that. The cardigans, though, are a costume. They say, in a relaxed and competent way, "Lookie here, mommy is in the room. Of course I have a tissue and a Lifesaver. Let me dry your tears, affirm your hopes and dreams, and make you a healthy though delicious snack with precisely the right amount of kale in it."<br />
<br />
I wear my cardigans like Theoden wields Herugrim. If employed at just the right time with just the right amount of flash and guile, they distract from the fact--the cold, hard, fact--that I am no one's idea of a Good Mommy. I am flighty and undependable, selfish, moody, incompetent, ruthless, dreamy, distracted, bored, worn out, uninterested, rude, and filled with ennui. I am a terrible cook. The laundry room is basically the set for The Upside Down. There are two desiccated mangoes on the dining room table that have been there since August. A professional writer and editor, it took me 11 tries to figure out how to spell "desiccated." But I am full of love, full of hope, full of good intentions--and nothing says all that like a super-soft Italian cardigan with shiny buttons and roomy pockets. Here, child, put your dreams in my pocket and I will tell you a story about how they all come true.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-81558981528323138322017-12-09T14:23:00.001-08:002017-12-09T14:23:26.391-08:00SpoilerToday, a male person wrote an article about why hiring women is not just the right thing to do but actually makes business sense for his company. We are all clapping and cheering for him.<br />
<br />
I am pleased he wrote this article and he seems like a very excellent person. I think we would be friends and allies. The company involved is really progressive and I honour them for their promoting of women to positions of authority and influence, and for the women there helping one another up.<br />
<br />
But.<br />
<br />
Women have been saying this, writing this, shouting this, singing this, painting this, protesting this problem for as long as I have been alive, which is now a rather long time.<br />
<br />
That a woman selling products to women might like to see a woman or two on her agency team isn't a "spoiler" to the half of us who are ourselves women. To the half of us who watched, for years, as male after male was groomed for leadership and woman after woman was .... well, was not.<br />
<br />
I have had to address the ghostly lady presence time and time and time and time again and again and again. Practically every client. Every presentation. Every prospectus. Four countries. Every "Our Team" gallery of mostly white guys. "Hey, you need a woman there," I would say, and one or two would be dragged up for the occasion. After a "hey, you're right."<br />
<br />
Spoiler: OF COURSE I'M RIGHT, YOU KNUCKLEHEAD.<br />
<br />
<applause><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-65524649508561108922017-12-04T18:48:00.000-08:002017-12-04T18:48:31.506-08:00Close Your Eyes and Think of Western DemocraciesToday I went up to the university to listen to David Frum. That I did this on purpose and with some excitement tells you a lot about where we are politically at this time here on planet Earth. I've kind of changed my mind maybe a little bit about DF because he is saying all kinds of mean things on TV about Trump, which are some of my favourite things that conservatives can be saying on TV these days.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, Mr Frum has four ideas about what we can be doing to save Western democracies from creeping decay and maybe fascism. I only remember one, really, because it was this: Women need to bear more children. After that my brain kind of went ferfucksakeferfucksakeferfucksake over and over and over again.<br />
<br />
And, I believe, what he was *really* saying is that more WHITE women need to be having more babies. White women need to have more babies so that we don't keep letting all these immigrants in. And he didn't, for the record, say "child-rearing." It was "child-bearing."<br />
<br />
So, this is what I heard him whispering underneath all the things he was saying more loudly and humorously and sagely:<br />
<br />
The ultra-rich (men) who run the world are angsty because there are hordes of brown people coming into the countries into which their own ancestors only recently arrived, and these brown people are working with unhinged lefties to agitate unrealistically about the right to healthcare and affordable education and jobs that pay a living wage. Rich white men don't like to share, and old rich white men are naturally more conservative, so they get a little fascisty and fuck up democracy so that they get to keep what they already have.. In order to calm their poor nerves, stem immigration, and provide an army of able-bodied white people to work in factories and schools and hospitals and brokerages, it is up to white women to produce more babies.<br />
<br />
Now, look: I'm no genius. I'm also maybe a little menopausal (no more white babies for me!), my mind wanders, I'm naturally suspicious, my dog eats loads of illegal butter while I'm not looking and it's really getting on my nerves because the neighbours are all judging me for letting the puppy get so fat so quickly but it is not my fault that he is athletic and addicted to animal fats. Maybe DF didn't mean to give me this impression. He was speaking quickly. But what I *thought* I heard was this:<br />
<br />
Ladies, abandon the Resistance. Tune out Elizabeth Warren. People are really all just "primates in pants" (not pantsuits). The way to stabilize society is not to march on Washington. It's to close your eyes and think of Western Democracies.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-87290518918369696632017-12-03T19:08:00.001-08:002017-12-03T19:08:29.699-08:00Do Not ResuscitateToday our childhood babysitter came by the parental condo to write up a new will and some personal directives for the aged relatives.<br />
<br />
If that ain't the realest shit that ever got real, whatever takes that title has my respect.<br />
<br />
The last time I saw E, she was 14 and seemed like the most glamorous creature on earth. She was already <i>a published author </i>(in that she had written a personalized story for me when I was ill). She played pretty good baseball. She helped me learn to ride a bike. She was the owner of Ol' Slobbersides, the first dog I ever loved, and would actually pick up his soaking wet tennis ball in her bare hands and throw it down the park for him to fetch, my first experience of the Power of Real Love. She would let us stay up playing hairdresser until the moment the Buick headlights came up the driveway and then supervise nightgowned pelting down the hall and into the white bunkbeds with matching purple quilts. We would listen to her assuring our parents that everything had been really quiet and boring and mentioning nothing--nothing--about the popcorn battle or the human pyramid or the go-go party. Chanel No 5 and the rustle of the silk lining of our mother's Persian Lamb shorty coat, a whiff of cigarette smoke, the sound of the door opening and closing and then opening and closing again as dad returned from walking E home five houses up the street. That sense of complete security that accompanied the return of mother and father to the bungalow, the reassurance that the glamorous pair who had left us behind had returned and would by morning be just themselves again.<br />
<br />
45 years later, I see E's freckly long-legged girlhood--and mine--now transformed by sensible cardigans, good shoes and fashion-forward spectacles. Her prisoner-of-war father finally succumbed to the shrapnel in his brain, while my deafened-by-artillery father nods and smiles in his leather chair, pretending to hear the legal options being proffered him. Now unable to do more than fondly pat her stilettos, my mother wears a velour track suit and asks the same question about Do Not Resuscitate directives multiple times in a row. We explain in detail about who gets to say Enough should she or dad be on life support. We talk about who gets my share of the estate if I die before my parents, who gets my childless sister's share if she should die first, and we all shudder with the memory of a much-too-close brush with death three years ago.<br />
<br />
I find myself longing for just one shot of Bols Apricot Brandy, in one of the cut-crystal glasses that used to live in the china cabinet beside the picture window.<br />
<br />
How strange it is that this pretty middle-aged lawyer with good skin should preside as surely over the ending of it all as she did over it all beginning.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-60180183031073288312017-10-28T19:55:00.000-07:002017-10-28T19:55:03.362-07:00BAND CAMPI was going to write about band camp and how I am going there in one more day and how I will stay there for three days and how there will be dozens upon dozens of teenagers there with me with their fanfoozlers and how it will be Halloween and how I am supposed to be fun and yet also be in charge despite lumpy waistline and somehow also sneak my laptop there because I work and have a deadline but I didn't tell anyone on my team that I would be in the foothills listening to sad tuba noises and how the camp is basically in the headwaters of the Aryan Nation in this province and how I forgot to tell anyone about what I can or cannot eat and how as a result I will have to pack alternate sources of nutrition that involve no nuts even though as a vegetarian nuts make up roughly 40% of my protein intake and how to top it all off I will be The Anemic Mom at band camp but I am overwhelmed with despair and foreboding and am just going to put on a snail mucin mask (ha they think they are smart by writing snail mucin instead of snail mucus but I am not fooled) and hope hope hope I have an allergic reaction that lands me in the hospital where my roommate will be a remarkably personable middle-aged woman with a thriving international company who is GASP looking for a smart person to handle her communications at a very lucrative wage and is willing to throw in an S-class Mercedes to sweeten the deal and she is also very good at getting the hospital kitchen to make food and not gross goo and I will be lying there quietly picking my sad snail scabs but eating real chocolate pudding and looking up Christmas holidays in Tahiti which I can now afford and how. <div>
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ALSO: THIS IS SOMEONE'S LIFE.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-69233103409668168812016-08-23T13:11:00.001-07:002016-08-23T13:11:20.698-07:00A Glory?<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"><b><i>If a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her (1 Corinthians 1:15)</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">Thank you, crazy St Paul, for this little gem. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">Question: what if a woman have "<b>a</b></span><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"> long hair"? Still a glory? What if it's on her chin? What if,</span><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"> like an iceberg, 11/12s of this hair is below the surface and must be coaxed from a woman's face with pointy pieces of iron, gentle, gentle, just a little non-trembly tugging, a slow and nauseating unraveling of wiry glory? Does one cry Hosana when this one hair finally emerges and is pluck't or is cursing more appropriate because the hair is no longer covered (by face skin) and, if you didn't know it before you've now heard it here, Paul also insisted that women cover their head hairs up for also oddly unexplained reasons. Is face hair the same as head hair? We are nearing the epistemological nexus of the definition and lived experience of "glory" here and we are missing key information</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">The Bible is forever leaving out the important bits. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">Looks like St Paul here might have known a thing or two about chin hairs himself. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">I assume he is leaving out the details because too much glory is bad for girls. He's a little sweet on us, you know that, right? It's why he is so stern with us. Because he really, really likes us and perhaps even steals a look at us from time to time when he thinks we're not paying any attention. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">That's it for today's Adventures in Exegesis. I'm going to explore the eschatology of toenails one of these days soon so do be sure to never check back. </span></div>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-39694943402401554992016-04-04T20:33:00.000-07:002016-04-04T20:33:11.016-07:00WigglyWhat kind of mother locks herself in the bathroom with the tub running and the fan on so she can eat the last Klondike bar without her child hearing the wrapper crinkling until it is too late?<br />
<br />
Go ahead, heap your contumely upon me. I've done worse.<br />
<br />
I used to eat spiders. All the kids on our crescent did it at least some of the time. I think there was some sort of mom cult thing going on where they decided in their pointy-bra'd way that if we were busy catching and eating spiders we wouldn't be pestering them for food or attention, so they whispered to us in our dreams that we should really be spending more time eating spiders and less time begging for story-time. That they would love us more than they did our siblings--and since at least half of us were Catholic, there were a lot of siblings to be competed with--if we came home late in the afternoon full of spiders, tuckered out and ready for bed. That spider protein would make us better looking than the other kids, smarter than the other kids, and stronger than any kids in the history of the neighborhood. Spider silk would make our hair fine but so so strong and it might even help parachute us safely to the ground when we flung ourselves from trees. Spider eyes would help us win Kick the Can, even at night. The hemocyanin in spider blood, with its strange blue tint, might fool a prince into thinking we were in fact blue-blooded in that all-important royal way and we would be swept off to live in a castle forever. This was the part I imagine my mother enjoyed the most: helping me fantasize about going to live somewhere else, to leave my smelly runners in someone else's country, to spit toothpaste inexpertly in someone else's sink, to play my never-fucking-ending arpeggios on someone else's fucking piano.<br />
<br />
The little grey spider that lives in the upper northwest corner of our shower waves her elegant little legs at me as I sit here on the bath mat licking mint and chocolate from my horrible stubby fingers. She has seen me do this before. I'm going to eat her next and dream of turrets. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-9695125185117118652016-03-08T20:33:00.003-08:002016-03-08T20:33:58.216-08:00Maybe this timeI've thought I was back before. Quite a few times over the past few months/maybe a year, it's occurred to me "Ah, now is the time when I've put this all behind me." "This all" = cancer, cancer, dementia, dementia, overdose, dementia, emotional breakdown....none of it mine (yet). One of those dementias is my dog's, for the love of GOD.<br />
<br />
It occurs to me that this is what the second half of life is all about: learning to live without. Without certain beloved people, without certainty, without routine. I went back to work--and failed miserably. I went back to writing--and wound up staring out the window for hours at a time, contemplating (with a depth of contemplation I'd previously never experienced) the ass end of a plastic goose on an overstated plinth in the neighbor's back yard. I went back to yoga--and remained in the fetal position in the dark until they turned on all the studio lights and made "we are closing this building" noises.<br />
<br />
But something happened the other day that made me think that there's a new chapter writing itself. It went like this:<br />
<br />
Russian mammogram technician: Maybe you have *face* of first wife, but you have breasts of second wife."<br />
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RIGHT?<br />
<br />
I'm back, aren't I?<br />
!!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-60475501735033357992015-10-05T19:03:00.001-07:002015-10-05T19:03:10.263-07:00Just BreatheThings I thought about whilst lying in the humid semi-dark of the yoga studio, attempting to clear my mind of thought:<br />
<ul>
<li>Wouldn't it be weird to see an owl with no eyes, just a giant glassy mirror at the back of its skull in which you could see the stars?</li>
<li>What colour are Janice Parker's eyes? Brown? Blue? </li>
<li>Whoever's feet those are about 12 inches from my face really needs to give 'em a scrub.</li>
<li> Remember that time the elk stood behind the station wagon and there was no driving for like an hour?</li>
<li>Have I been breathing? Am I remembering to breathe?</li>
<li>Justin Trudeau: right- or left-handed? </li>
<li>The day I got my ears pierced when I was twelve: Christ that hurt. I think my mom was laughing. Was she laughing? OF COURSE SHE WAS LAUGHING.</li>
<li>I like gin.</li>
<li>Wonder what Greta's doing. Bet she's breathing and clearing her mind.</li>
<li>I am the worst at clearing my mind. </li>
<li>Cocktail peanuts or the ones with the skins?</li>
<li>What's tape made out of? </li>
<li>Now is not the time to think about chin whiskers.</li>
<li>Turtles are weird. But not as weird as wombats.</li>
<li>Wombats would have made Anglo Saxons happy because another w word.</li>
<li>Wyrd bith full aread. WOMBAT.</li>
<li>onetwothreefourfive. six seven. </li>
<li>At least when my hair was longer I could put it in a bun and not be lying on this wretched elastic knot thing. </li>
<li>I bet my head is too lumpy to rock the bald thing.</li>
<li>You know, that Chris Pine kid isn't so bad as Captain Kirk. </li>
<li>But spiders could crawl in my ear and maybe I would be so relaxed that I wouldn't notice and then they would have babies and my brain would be overrun with spiders. How many legs would that be if, say, each of the three spiders that crawled into my ear had something like 42 babies each? </li>
<li>You should breathe. </li>
<li>Janice Parker: blue or brown? </li>
<li>They probably have way more babies than 42. </li>
<li>I never liked Charlotte's Web but it is sure better than the Afghanistan trilogy of terror that made Kid cry every school night for three months. </li>
<li>The Taliban is the worst. </li>
<li>I never saw Palmyra.</li>
<li>Oh no! Not the Oakridge Boys' "Elvira!" Kill me.</li>
<li>BREATHE.</li>
</ul>
This is me relaxing. <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-1887338210364504482015-06-02T22:17:00.000-07:002015-06-02T22:17:31.995-07:00On Deafness (the Blue Period)Tuesday morning, prominent local eye clinic. Bleach-blonde receptionists and bureaucrats with tasteful pieces of flair, eyelash extensions and dramatic eyebrows click-clack through the hallways. I've been sitting in a waiting room for over an hour with my aged relative, who is not only a little sight challenged at the moment, but also a little bit (a lot) deaf. For some reason, this clinic plays nature films on smallish ceiling-mounted TVs, the volume turned down low, in a kind of blissful refutation of the challenges faces by at least 80% of the clientele.<br />
<br />
Ask me anything about flying squirrels. <br />
<br />
Click-clack, goes the buxom blonde in the close-fitting black suit. Click-clack across the waiting room floor. And then back.<br />
<br />
Zoom! Flying squirrels!<br />
<br />
Click-clack.<br />
<br />
Scuttle, go the Galapagos lizards.<br />
<br />
Whomp, go the birds that cannot land.<br />
<br />
Click-clack. There goes the blonde again.<br />
<br />
Click-clack, again, but this time from the beaks of beautifully odd birds with blue feet.<br />
<br />
You see where this is going, don't you? You do.<br />
<br />
I didn't.<br />
<br />
Which is why, as the robust blond in the close-fitting black suit click-clacked past me and my father, I found myself shouting to the lovely deaf man: BOOBIES! THEY'RE BOOBIES!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-58494230030212464122014-10-08T14:16:00.000-07:002014-10-08T14:17:37.445-07:00The first step is the hardestI'm at the mall. I've been pacing back and forth in front of one particular store, a store I swore I would never willingly enter on my own. I swore I would never do this thing.<br />
<br />
But it's clear that I no longer have a choice.<br />
<br />
My friends tell me that the first step is the hardest, that I'll thank myself when it's over, and that they know how hard it is and will be there for me if I need to talk about them. <br />
<br />
I am going into Talbots.<br />
<br />
<br />
(Post-script: And inside Talbots? My childhood piano teacher, now
something like 110 years old, buying the exact same sensibly-hemmed
dress that I'm buying, but in a more daring colour.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-36846252367484581392014-09-25T14:06:00.004-07:002014-09-25T14:06:52.429-07:00You're that babyToday as I was checking out at a local bookstore, I noticed the unusual name of the young woman helping me out. "There was a baby with that name at my wedding," I ventured, basically knowing already what was about to happen.<br />
<br />
And sure enough, I asked after her last name and discovered her to be, in fact, the 22-year-old daughter of friends with whom we'd lost touch, but with whom we were quite close for a time. The last time I'd seen her, she was peeking out of a sling on her mother's hip as our friends and family toasted our marriage. <br />
<br />
"You're that baby!"<br />
<br />
At first she was delighted--but then the tiniest, sweetest little crinkle did its best to furrow her alabaster brow at me, whom she'd last seen in a long dress with flowers in my hair and the Whole Thing ahead of me.<br />
<br />
"Am I THAT old??" she marvelled.<br />
<br />
Oh yes, my sweet, yes you are. And it's a swift road to where you're headed, believe me. We were both babies, once.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-23314446152504276032014-09-24T20:36:00.003-07:002014-09-24T20:36:27.332-07:00Fine and Dry in the Lesser AntillesOne of the things I like best about Al Jazeera is the international weather forecast. Tonight, for example, despite beheadings in the Maghreb, ebola in Liberia, Tomahawk missiles in Iraq, and the sweaty spectre of global warning, I hear this: it is fine and dry in the Lesser Antilles. <br />
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<br />
And that means the Lesser Antillean macaw is safe.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Beautiful plumage. Good to know that it's not wet and miserable.<br /><br />
<br />
This guy, a solendon, is also, at least tonight, secure. <br />
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Solendons are venomous and nocturnal--basically, they're poisonous shrews--and apparently are very similar to species that lived near the end of the age of the dinosaurs. They look super scary to me and will probably appear very soon in a nightmare near me, but they are warm and dry for now. Endangered as a species, but individually warm and dry.<br />
<br />
Look at those teeth.<br />
<br />
The neotropical otters of Trinidad are similarly well set up. <br />
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I don't know about you, but that otter's fur is weirdly soothing to me. No conditioner or anti-frizz products and just look at that do. It's perfect. Some of us are made perfectly. </div>
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Speaking of Trinidad, they seem like really nice people; today they're celebrating 38 years as a republic. San Fernando Mayor Kazim Hosein speaks of them as "<a href="http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Mayor-calls-for-togetherness-277018201.html">one large family</a>."If you call this number, 1 868 358 9261, you can pick up some <a href="http://classifieds.guardian.co.tt/classified/calypso-lp-records---listing-10239.aspx">Calypso records</a> for $10. Here's the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd-7P_LCOVM">first calypso song</a> ever recorded, by Lovey's String Band (1912). Nice little pick-me-up as we try not to contemplate what's happening in eastern Ukraine. Personally, I imagine Lovey's players as all being neotropical otters with excellent hair. </div>
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If you are experiencing despair in any of its forms as a result of being an informed citizen of the world, take a moment and remember that, for the moment, some of us are doing fairly well. In Trinidad, for example, the million or so people, 450 bird species, 108
types of mammals, 55 reptiles, 25 amphibians and 620 types of
butterflies are all warm and dry. God bless them. <br />
<br />And, at the risk of sounding maudlin, or monotheistic, or overly dramatic, I hope he or she or it or they blesses all of us. We could use it. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-48357131428613012142014-09-12T09:24:00.000-07:002014-09-12T09:24:04.305-07:00The Witch of OakridgeYesterday before driving Kid to school, I got up and obeyed Mr Nenshi, as we all do, and went out back with the broom to save the trees from their crushing burden of summer snow. Here's the thing about that: unless your trees are bonsai, there's an excellent chance that you're going to be standing under them while trying to remove snow from their branches. Within 5 minutes I was drenched in snow, had been bonked on the head with many small, mean-spirited and never-to-grow-old apples, and had been soundly cursed by a pair of squirrels for no good reason. I was cold all day and I was mean all day.<br />
<br />
Turns out I was also something else all day.<br />
<br />
This morning in the shower, I discovered three downy feathers and bits of bird nest in my hair. <br />
<br />
Clearly, I had been wearing them for an entire day AND NO ONE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT IT. <br />
<br />
The feathers were smallish and maybe white enough to blend into my hair, but the twigs and string? All I can conclude is that everyone thought it was something I did on purpose and they were too frightened to mention it.<br />
<br />
I think I might be the neighborhood witch. <br />
<br />
I bet the children tell tales about how I have chicken legs, how I have a stuffed badger on my mantlepiece that I talk to at night, that they should never come here for Halloween because I might slip them a poison apple. My whiskery chin is much commented upon. Bullies probably push terrified smaller kids onto my lawn. It's why the neighbors don't wave, why I've not been invited to a book club, why the mailman mysteriously does not deliver mail on Wednesdays. <br />
<br />
There are upsides and there are downsides to this situation.<br />
<br />
Downside: I will never find a babysitter.<br />
Upside: I won't need one as I will be at home, cackling over insalubrious soup.<br />
Downside: When I actually am old, no kid will be my Snow Angel.<br />
Upside: No one will report me to the city for not shoveling my walk.<br />
Upside: Loud next-door neighbors might be diverted from loudness by feverishly making <a href="http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.ca/2011/03/witch-cake-recipe-you-wont-like.html">witch cake</a>.<br />
Downside: They would feed it to Elvis and he needs no help in the upset stomach department. <br />
Upside: I never have to read <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Tuesdays-Morrie-Young-Greatest-Lesson/dp/076790592X/ref=zg_bs_934986_41">"Tuesdays with Morrie."</a> <br />
Downside: There isn't one. <br />
Biggest Upside of Them All: Witches are <i>supposed</i> to have chin whiskers. <br />
<br />
Today, the Witch of Oakridge is off to purchase bulk quantities of fillet of fenny snake and maybe a little hemlock or venomous toad. It won't be worse than what I usually cook for dinner. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-41790912604894561252014-09-06T11:57:00.001-07:002014-09-08T09:50:20.052-07:00Dentures My experience of having elderly parents has been mostly very excellent. They are too slow to catch one when one is running fast from the scene of That Was My Grandmother's Teapot. Their days of rising at dawn are long gone, making it possible for one to watch Hanna-Barbera cartoons for many Saturday-morning hours while consuming an entire box of Cap'n Crunch and holding one's younger siblings in a variety of acrobatic headlocks, also for hours. Their hearing is imperfect, making at least vaguely possible such largely implausible situations as "Well, even 'puck face' isn't a nice thing to call your sister." Later in all of our lives, they have forgotten what a lot of trouble one has been, how expensive, how annoying, how disrespectful, and recall only things like that time when you brought them a lovely lasagne three Februarys ago.<br />
<br />
This week, however, my elderly father--obsessed by the goal of having a house more or less completely emptied before he dies--issued an ultimatum. Either the three of us girls get down into that basement and decide which vinyl records we wanted to keep or they were all going to the garbage dump. <br />
<br />
My mind went back to my Lakeview Village adolescence. Watching FM Moving Pictures Sunday night on public access TV, running out the next afternoon to buy records at Sam the Record Man, records that would confirm my identity as "alternative." I was as alternative as a well-brought-up pudgy rich kid with good grades, bad hair, baggy burlap clothing and a vast array of sensible shoes could be. I needed that music desperately, for reasons that had about as much to do with the actual music as it had to do with what I believed myself to be, despite all visible clues to the contrary. Joy Division, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Jesus and Mary Chain, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, Yazoo, Bowie, Roxy Music. My life was elsewhere. In a very cool place that was not our Tudor-inflected basement with its sauna and red shag rug. It was probably in London, it was definitely dressed in black, and if its footwear was sensible, it was sensible because no way I was going to trip and fall while dancing my ass off at Club for Heroes, Billy's, or some random night clubs on battleships moored on the Thames.<br />
<br />
This is going to be fabulous, I tell my own family. We can take some of those iconic covers and decorate that one tricky wall with them. I envision myself playing the no-doubt scratchy LPs to my son, letting him get a taste of what "real music" is and helping him see his boring old mother in a new way. I imagine my husband remembering our shared-but-separate youth and recalibrating his decades-old idea of who he married. Maybe we would all go internet shopping for some tasteful punk-inflected jackets. Some pointy-toed boots. MAYBE KID WOULD WANT SOME EYELINER. We are all about to become super interesting to one another. <br />
<br />
A portly middle-aged work-at-home mother with silver hair and a trick knee, I bounce with uncharacteristic energy into my parents' basement to greet my super-interesting younger self. <br />
<br />
And find this. <br />
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<br />
This.<br />
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This.<br />
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<br />
<br />
AND THIS.<br />
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I am writing this under the light of a single naked bulb, crouched on the unfinished cement floor near the water softener. Clearly, it is here, in the actually pretty empty confines of my folks' basement that I must remain to the end of my days. Go ahead, bury me in this, I am already dead of shame.<br />
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<br />
And tell Bryan Ferry that I always loved him, despite the "my dentures hurt" face he couldn't stop making.<br />
<br />
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I guess it happens to all of us. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-2882421610082662912014-09-02T10:20:00.003-07:002014-09-02T10:20:37.972-07:00Day 1It's the first day of school! It's the first day of school!<br />
<br />
LET THE BELLS RING! <br />
<br />
I can change back into my pajamas, eat a bag of chips for breakfast, watch the Season 3 finale of Once Upon a Time, play music with inappropriate lyrics, paint my toenails in the kitchen, go out for coffee, go shoe shopping, chat online with certain favorite people in Minnesota and Germany and across the park, I can finally sit down in front of my long-neglected manuscript, and I generally celebrate my freedom.<br />
<br />
Mostly, though, I will be sitting quietly on the couch, missing my boy, hoping he solves his girl trouble, smiling at the thought of his inevitable lunchtime chocolate-milk mustache and what that says about his relative maturity, and waiting to hear the first tales about Grade 6 with his favorite teacher. It's Day 1 of the last year of real childhood. <br />
<br />
Let the bell ring. Soon.<br />
<br />
(PS: I will get over it. We'll talk tomorrow.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-56596188367831096572014-08-11T14:21:00.002-07:002014-08-11T21:44:13.609-07:00No ideaToday I had a long chat with a lovely elderly gentleman at my local Co-op. Older gentlemen like me a lot. I think it's because my silver hair makes them feel safe, like--despite being a <b>spectacularly</b> well-preserved 51--I might have some insight into where they are, some inkling of that place I'm headed, and might also know a thing or two about produce. As a result, I often have friendly discussions with the old guys at the grocery store while I'm helping them buy ripe cantaloupe, avoid mushy bananas, or find the kind of yogurt that. . . you know. <br />
<br />
But from now on I'll be shopping for groceries in a head-to-toe disguise because REAL-LIFE STORY: Today I learned, while comparing groceries with the gentleman being me in the Fast Check line (we both had dairy products and cereal!) that, unlike me, Lanny's wife, the much-missed Ann-Marie, preferred her tampons to have a deodorant in them, on account of her impaired mobility toward the end of her life. (I didn't ask what the correlation was.) (Rare burst of sagacity on my part.) Sometimes they made her itch, but the ones she liked best didn't. He wasn't sure what she would make of these new "pearl" tampons. He was on the verge, I swear, of asking me to give him a product review, just for old times' sake, when the checkout clerk, a child of about 12 (are there not labour laws in place to protect all these children who suddenly seem to be working in responsible positions all over this city??), saved me by grabbing the little pink box, thus completing my order. But no matter how acrobatically she scanned those little pearls of great worth, the machine would not beep.<br />
Other things started to happen.<br />
<br />
Cashier: WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH THE TAMPAX PEARL SUPERS COST THIS WEEK? <br />
<br />
Lanny: I used to be able to buy Ann-Marie a box of a dozen of those scented tampons for about $2.50, I think. Seems like a lot when you get right down to it.<br />
<br />
(I think Ann-Marie has been in the Great Beyond for quite some time.)<br />
<br />
Me: I will just go check and I'll be right back.<br />
<br />
(Confession: I was thinking about fleeing. I am crazy good at seeing where situations like this are heading.) <br />
<br />
Cashier: NO I WILL ASK PHIL ON THE PA SYSTEM JUST A SECOND AND WHY ARE YOU TURNING SO RED JUST BECAUSE I HAVE SAID PRICE CHECK TAMPAX PEARL SUPERS FOR CASHIER 3 TO ALL OF THE PEOPLE?<br />
<br />
Phil returns. The price is $5.95.<br />
<br />
Lanny: $5.95? Are you KIDDING me? I wouldn't spend more than $3 on a box of tampons for Ann-Marie!! And that's with that added perfume. Yours don't even have perfume.<br />
<br />
Cashier two rows over: EXCUSE ME, SIR, BUT DID YOU SAY $5.95 FOR THE PEARL SUPERS? I THINK THEY'RE ON SALE THIS WEEK. YOU SHOULD CHECK AGAIN.<br />
<br />
Lanny: Oh, they're not for me. My dear wife, Ann-Marie, passed away a few years ago. They're for this young lady. <pats my shoulder.> <br />
<br />
AGAIN THE PA SYSTEM ASKS SOMEONE TO DOUBLE-CHECK TAMPAX PEARLS SUPER BOX OF 16 FOR CASHIER 3. <br />
<br />
People are starting to crane their necks around the chocolate bar torture stations to check out who exactly is having all the trouble with--no: who is HAGGLING ABOUT--the price of tampons over at Cashier 3. I try to hide behind Lanny, who stops me flat in my tracks with a beefy smack on the back that nearly knocks me out of my shoes.<br />
<br />
Lanny: That's okay, honey, they'll get this all straightened out for you in no time. I bet you just want to go home and lie down.<br />
<br />
LANNY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-17882172685980069642014-06-19T10:01:00.000-07:002014-06-19T10:01:27.878-07:00A SignSo I'm thinking maybe it's time for a change of attitude. Today when the grocery cashier and I were talking about the possibility of a change in weather for the weekend, I THOUGHT I was going to cross my fingers dramatically, give her one of those half grimace/half hopeful smile things that sometimes creep across my face (frightening children and small animals). What I DID, purely from muscle memory, was give her the finger.<br />
<br />
I am running out of grocery stores that I can enter without assuming some sort of disguise. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-2262138644705783602014-05-14T21:03:00.004-07:002014-05-14T21:22:09.543-07:00Travel does broaden the mind so<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Note: I chose "extra large" for the image size.<br />
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Think of me May 22.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-66612713164675327932014-05-14T12:42:00.001-07:002014-05-14T21:18:06.391-07:00I think I see the problemNot feeling quite yourself? I might know something to cut out of your diet that will make you feel a lot lighter about life in general.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3YIwpTK6KlE/U3PG9d1XgkI/AAAAAAAAAfU/QfAvOS3QuHg/s1600/IMG_1574.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3YIwpTK6KlE/U3PG9d1XgkI/AAAAAAAAAfU/QfAvOS3QuHg/s1600/IMG_1574.jpg" height="320" width="275" /></a></div>
Just an idea.<br />
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UPDATE MAY 14: http://www.faltersmeats.com/product/bung-bologna/ <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-4921181281995645342014-05-13T23:59:00.001-07:002014-05-13T23:59:10.512-07:00 Quick note'Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself'--Gibran<br />
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Dear Life's longing for itself:<br />
Please ask your son to pick up his freaking Lego.<br />
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All the best,<br />
LUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-68726769596088802014-05-05T14:50:00.000-07:002014-05-05T14:50:03.032-07:00What are you afraid of? Jann Arden tweeted today "NEVER tell people what you're afraid of."<br />
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Well, I certainly couldn't tweet it because 140 characters even times 400 wouldn't take care of everything that I'm afraid of. <br />
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<b>Brooke Shields:</b> I have recurring nightmares in which she's chewing on my shoulder. CHEWING, not nibbling. And I can feel her eyelashes.<br />
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<b>Fork in the neck:</b> Just what happened to that frog in Grade 7 in the sadistic science teacher's insane classroom of horrors. I have to sit with my back to the wall wherever I go and airplanes are a constant upset. The fact that its spleen juice shot into my eye upon puncture, necessitating a trip to the emergency eye wash station on the very first day I ever in my life wore mascara? I think that was karma announcing itself. What if it is not yet done with me??<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Bug under pillow:</b> All pillows, everywhere, even hospitals. Even when stoned on morphine because of a broken kneecap, I squirmed up and around, upsetting the bedpan, to make sure that there were no bugs under the pillow. In Alberta. In the winter.<br />
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<b>Pee dye:</b> When you get to be of a certain age, continence is no longer a guarantee. I don't think I'm there yet, but it's coming. I would never EVER on purpose pee in anyone's pool, but what if a little happened and I was trailed by tell-tale green dye, letting everyone know I might be the sort of person who might just pee in someone else's pool. The smell of chlorine now fills me with a sense of criminality sort of like crossing borders with nothing to declare does. <br />
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<b>Banana shortage: </b>WHAT WOULD I DO.<br />
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<b>Snake in midnight toilet:</b> Obviously. <br />
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<b>My dog knows when I'm lying:</b> And is judging me. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PkevjUxRfoo/U2gEEypr4YI/AAAAAAAAAfE/4572WdbCDvo/s1600/DSC02158.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PkevjUxRfoo/U2gEEypr4YI/AAAAAAAAAfE/4572WdbCDvo/s1600/DSC02158.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Tell me another one, sugar."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That this look of aloof disdain has nothing to do with his essential houndiness and everything to do with being disappointed in me. That he writes things down and one day everyone will know that I often do not walk him as often or for as long as I should. <br />
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<b>The chair will collapse: </b>In the restaurant and everyone will laff and I will have guacamole in my hair. Only Mexican restaurants affect me in this way. <br />
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<b>My fingernails are just waiting to shatter, right up to the elbow:</b> I believe this requires no further comment. <br />
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<b>I will run someone over without realizing it</b> <b>and then everyone will think that not only am I a killer, but I am a heartless killer:</b> So let me just try to clear that up right now. If I run you over, I'm really sorry about that and I really truly didn't do it on purpose. It's probably just that Leonard Cohen came on the radio and I had to make an emergency swiping gesture or put my fingers in my ears. <br />
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There you have it. And that's just what I could come up with in the last 5 minutes. We should totally grab a drink and talk more about me (or, I guess, you) one of these days. But not in a Mexican restaurant. Gracias. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8301128992121051252.post-21674927237270117412014-05-03T23:28:00.000-07:002014-05-03T23:29:25.435-07:00Spring in my step? Okay, so since last September:<br />
Some people I know have died.<br />
Some people I didn't know before were born.<br />
We have had 8 straight months of snow.<br />
The Ice Queen herself grew so fucking sick of this weather that she buggered off to Spain.<br />
I learned about the existence of something called a Snorlax and dipped a sad toe into the world of Pokemon tournaments.<br />
I fell in love with <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/mrloganrhoades/man-goes-to-magic-the-gathering-tournament-poses-next-to-but">this man</a>.<br />
I perpetrated four baking disasters on perfectly nice people who deserved better.<br />
I didn't finish my novel but read a lot about how to finish my novel.<br />
I established a wiry chin hair preserve.<br />
I started doing hot yoga in an attempt to calm the hell down, but haven't been for a week because I found myself chanting "shut the fuck up shut the fuck up" for 90 minutes as a tattooed child shared his "teachings" on the meaning of life with me as I strained not to buckle at both knees in something called the happy baby pose, which involves pointing your bum at the ceiling while clutching your ankles. At my age this is known as the farting granny pose. <br />
I tried not to get cancer because everyone else has it and who will be the one to go down to the tuck shop for chips?<br />
I watched my baby sisters grow old.<br />
I avoided the gaze of a judgmental squirrel who thinks I need to cut down on the chips and rootbeer.<br />
<br />
I wonder what you've been doing. <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0