What Exactly Are You Wishing For??

It’s the last day of April.  One thirty-day month down, three to go.  A third of this year out the window and gone.  It’s always been my least favourite third of every year, and now my most favourite begins.  Too bad this summer I have no big plans except to look forward to our September trip.  September for me has always been the start of the ho-hum time of year.  Fall is nice, winter sucks, but at least you have Christmas to look forward to.  Then it’s back to January, which is the suckiest month ever invented.  If I step back I can see that time really does fly by.  Even though the moments I’m living through can seem tedious, it’s always a mind boggling concept to accept the fact that here I am, years and years and years having whizzed by, wondering how the hell I got to this point so fast. 

It’s a terrible thing to be one of those people who wish their lives away.  Or so I’ve been told.  I’ve had days that I wished fervently to end, and times in my life that I just wanted to be done with.  Like my contact lens course with all the studying and the exams and the stress.  But I also wish away pockets of time even on a normal day.  How much longer must I endure this plane ride?  That’s the adult version of “are we there yet?”  OMG, will closing time never arrive?  Will this appointment with the “stupid award” winner of the year please terminate before my head explodes?  That kind of stuff.  I’d LIKE to be one of those people who savors every moment, lives each day to it’s full potential, is thankful for every waking moment.  Blah.  Those people don’t even exist, do they?   

Since I’m so very good at wishing things to be over with, it’s a sad fact that the good times go flying by too.  The trip planning which threatens to engulf my life completely at the moment seems to be plodding along at a snail’s pace.  But I have the feeling that the trip itself, (which is, after all, only eleven days total for the tour, although I’ll be gone from home for three weeks), will go by in a flash leaving me reeling and gasping for breath.  I also have the feeling (mostly because it’s been pointed out to me) that I’m annoying the hell out of people with my constant research on absolutely everything that we’re going to see.  As W. says, why the hell are you even going?  Just print the pictures off the internet and save your money.  Ha ha.  He’s just so not even funny. 

What I think all this research and preparation boils down to is the fact that I know I could compete for the title of world’s least observant person, and I’m afraid I’ll miss something.  So if I know beforehand what to look for, and come armed with notebook and camera, I’ll be okay.  The other fact of my life is that I find people and situations and what we had for breakfast infinitely more interesting than scenery.  I expect I’ll be the only person  recording the exact color of the seats on the bus while everyone else gets a snapshot of the Loch Ness monster, or some such nonsense.   I also may be harbouring some deep seated or subconcious fear of dying before the trip happens, or at the very least breaking both my legs and not being able to go.   As my sister so ominously says, “you never know”.  So if I want to wish my life away and take giant leaps into a future that may never happen, where’s the harm?  And once I come back from the trip that may never happen I’ll spend days or weeks or years reliving every moment of it until someone in exasperation gags or shoots me.  Seriously, living in the present is so freaking boring.

These are the kinds of images that made me want to visit Scotland in the first place.  Too bad I made that wish out loud and someone believed I meant it.  No no no, of course I don’t mean it’s too bad.  It’s a good thing. 

Being in a crumbly old ruin surrounded by water sounds like great fun.  This is Eilean Donan Castle, and we’re not going there.  I just like the picture. 

We will be seeing this one – the ruins of Urquhart Castle.  On the edge of the water but not surrounded by it, so way further down on the scariness scale. 

I’m really hoping to see this exact Culloden crofter’s cottage.  To me this is what Scotland is all about.  Beautiful scenery and old stuff.  Hopefully I can wax more poetic about it after I’ve actually been there.

We’re going to see this too.  Jedburgh Abbey.  It looks like a place that ghosts would be likely to frequent.  I wonder if it feels like that too.  I wish to find out. 

And that’s my wish list for the last day of April in the year two thousand and seven.  Well, almost.  I also wish to survive walking on my treadmill now, for thirty minutes, without falling down and without counting in my head every single solitary footstep or watching the seconds tick down or wondering when it will be over.  It’s thirty minutes of my LIFE godamnit, and I wish to enjoy it.  There are some wishes that don’t have a hope in hell of coming true.

Family Portraits

Hey!  Look at this!  It’s sort of a family picture.  Seriously, who needs to go to a professional studio when your mother can snap one of these.

I purposely cropped the crap out of it to get rid of as much of the messy kitchen as possible, along with the table setting from hell.  Mom and dad were visiting us the summer after we finally moved south.  Note their happy little grandson next to his snarky big sister;  daughter in her favourite blouse perhaps worn daily since the Aunt May visit;  son-in-law with a big fake just-for-the-in-laws smile. 

In this one it looks like both of us just put something rather disagreeable into our mouths and now have to decide whether to swallow or spit.  I was in the middle of my pink years.  Pink dinner plates, pink striped wall paper, pink tea towels.  Don’t worry, I got over it.

As I started to pick more mature colors my face became ever more and more shiny.  Well, those things COULD be related.  Here we are years and years later.  D. has discovered booze and is much happier.  W. and I are starting to look old as dirt.  K. has become a little more serious.  Maybe because he’s been smitten by the girl in stripes. 

And here’s what lead up to this group shot.  We were at my in-laws 50th anniversary party where my mother-in-law gets off by having a “family” photo taken, which includes her, her husband, and their three children.  That’s it. 

Perhaps it all started here.  Look at that handsome devil on the left.  Thank God I didn’t know him then.  I met him after he decided to grow some hair and stop looking so freaking happy.  Imagine being seventeen with a baby sister.  But that’s another topic altogether.  Back to the world’s favourite mom-in-law.  She has constantly arranged these pictures over the years, and did this at her daughter’s wedding too, with her daughter all dressed up in her wedding dress with no groom in sight.  On no conceivable occasion are spouses allowed to intrude when it comes to the sacred five.  It’s ludicrous.  W. agrees.  But he never argues with her. 

 

It’s not like the three spouses weren’t there.  The groom of course was close by, even though his presence was clearly beside the point.  I remember Sharon and I puzzling over what exactly we had to do to get into these pictures.  We married their damn sons after all.  Maybe if we were also adopted??  That’s W. on the right this time around.

Deb’s husband and I have, over the years,  just come to accept the fact that we will never be considered actual family as far as she’s concerned.  Their other son, on the left, is now divorced,  and is thus her favourite I imagine, posing no threat of ever trying to include his significant other in anything family related ever again.   

So all of that preamble is the reason for me, on the occasion of the anniversary, having had a sufficient amount to drink, making a big loud announcement that I’d like a family picture taken too!  Then I made a point of including Jen, who was not yet married to our son but had been a part of our family for a long time.  Big brave statement.  Went right over her head. 

I didn’t set out initially to rant on this topic, but one thing lead to another.  And since I’m on a roll…..  K. and Jen have had their daughter and second almost adopted son in their lives since the babies’ respective births.  Mom-in-law has yet to acknowledge their existence.  She sends cards and presents to Kale only.  I don’t think she means to be hurtful and would probably be genuinely surprised if anyone told her so.  She’s a strange one.  I suppose we just have to accept that she’ll never change. 

Mom asked me last visit to have a family picture taken of us for them since they don’t have one of all of us together.  She meant me and W., our kids, their spouses and our four grandchildren.  I love my mom.  I’m going to get that done for her, and send one to W.’s mom.  See if she can figure out whose family portrait it is with all those people in it. 

It’s a CHUKAR, Babe.

The day before yesterday (a time that I consider to be just now, thus the classification of this little blurb) while I was in the middle of loading the washing machine, W. started yelling frantically at the top of the stairs for me to come right away!!  So I did, leaving various articles of clothing hanging half in and half out of the machine which was still filling with the lid wide open.  This is not the first time W. has had these little freak-out episodes, and it probably won’t be the last.  I call it a warped sense of urgency, and I’m fooled by it every time.  If I were to suddenly start screaming my head off about  something, it would be to announce that a major catastrophe was imminent or had just occurred.  So I think this should be true for everyone.  But for W. it could mean that there’s an e-mail from our son saying he has changed jobs, or that there’s a mid-ice hockey game brawl going on, or that there is a bird in our garden.

He was so excited about the damned thing and I was so out of breath from tearing up the stairs that I didn’t tell him once again to (for the love of God) calm down and quit trying to give me heart failure.  So I stared dutifully in stunned silence at a pheasant-like creature hanging around in the corner of our backyard doing nothing at all interesting while W. explained why this was all incredibly exciting.  Then while he was still talking I was able to pop back downstairs and finish loading the laundry, pop back upstairs and get the camera, slip into my shoes and pop out the back door into the yard and approach the newest wonder of the world.  I snapped thirty picutres trying to get close enough using the zoom to have at least a couple I’d be able to work with later.  And what a surprise – a couple actually turned out okay.

    W. was too stressed to watch me, thinking the bird would take flight at any moment and be lost to us forever so he went inside and looked up this cute little guy in his bird book.  It’s a Chukar.  It’s not native to this area, but was introduced here by someone who decided to raise them, I guess sort of in captivity, so they’re sort of domesticated.  See how well I pay attention?  There was much more, but since I don’t really care I missed most of it. 

 Most of my shots were like this one – hazy and blurred, because he kept moving around and (due to my INTENSE excitement! hahaha) I couldn’t keep the camera still.  It’s not a great camera and I’m sure as hell no wildlife photographer by any stretch of the imagination.  And he was a very rude little chukar, always with his back turned while pretending to ignore me, so I never did get a good one of his face.  You know, in case I need to recognize him another time or something.  I do believe he’s used to people stumbling about close to him.  He was wary, but certainly not afraid of me.

Geez.  We need to rake up all those dead leaves.  And paint the fence.  This was as close as I got before I spooked him completely, right after W. said maybe he’s injured, I can’t believe he hasn’t flown away.  And that’s when he flew away, over the fence and onto the roof of the house behind our yard.  I took one last picture of him up there, but he’s just a speck in the distance.  We don’t know what attracted him, or if he’ll ever be back, or where he might be now.  W. wanted to know if he’d been there all afternoon.  Like I spend my day staring at the back yard.  Now I do check it out a bit more often though, I must admit.  Just in case.  With camera at the ready.

The True Measure of Intelligence

Am I old enough and smart enough yet to get me some of those cute little bunny slippers?  I guess if I have to ask, maybe I’m not.  Sigh.

Pamper Yourself

Every single time I go shopping I pamper myself with some relatively useless indulgent thing or other.  It doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated, it just has to make me feel good.  And that’s why I picked up a copy of “2001 Ways to Pamper Yourself ” by Lorraine Bodger.   Like I need help thinking up things to do for myself.  Early on in the book she suggests “If you see something you need, buy it.  Don’t wait for another, better time.  There’s no time like the present.”  Amen to that.  I think that’s called instant gratification, and I practice that like some people practice religion. 

Out of the 2001 suggestions I was able to find a few things I’ve never done and would like to try.  Some of them I’ve lumped together.  All of these I think are quite do-able.  It would mean getting off my ass for longer than five minutes at a time, but in the long run I think they might be very worthwhile. 

1.  Take a watercolor painting class.  Take a course on interior decorating.  (Two things I have always dreamed of doing.  Why haven’t I done them yet?  I don’t know.)

2.  Plan the trip of your dreams.  Decide where, when, and how to get there.  Read about your destination and get travel brochures.  Start a savings account especially for the trip.  (Surprisingly enough, and thanks to my travel bug sister, this is in the works as we speak.  It deserves, and will get, it’s very own blog one of these days.)

3.  Get a tarot reading.  (Another thing I’ve always wanted to do.  A fortune teller of any kind would work as well.  Too bad I’m scared to death to hear anything negative.  There might be some good stuff!!  I need to bite the bullet and just go for it.)

4.  Find a bra that fits you perfectly and buy three.  (Hell, if I could find a bra that fits perfectly I’d buy a dozen.)

5.  Spend an afternoon roaming around with your camera, taking interesting shots of people (not your family) and places (not your home.)  (This GREATLY appeals to me, except for the part where strangers freak out and chase me waving their fists in the air.  Of course I don’t know that this would actually happen, but imagining it is enough to keep me and my camera safely indoors.)

6.  Get rid of all your houseplants.  (I have almost accomplished this one already, having only one big old bedraggled houseplant left.  It is shaking in terror in the corner at this very moment.  Sometimes it calls out in a weak voice for water and I take pity on it.  I don’t know how long my benevolence will last.)

7.  Make a list of the twenty five best things that have ever happened to you.  (This sounds like a really positive uplifting endeavor.  I think I’ll save it for a day when I’m feeling especially cheery about stuff.  Otherwise, it could turn seriously bad in a hurry.)

8.  Try a Bellini:  one part peach puree or peach nectar stirred lightly into three parts dry sparkling wine or  champagne. (Yum.  This kind of pampering sounds completely delicious.) 

9.  Forgive yourself for whatever terrible mistakes you think you’ve made.  Get on with your life.  (I am getting on with my life, despite the fact that some mistakes continue to seem to me to be completely unforgivable.  Should pampering be such hard work? But I will work on it, I promise.) 

10.  When you’re on a long driving trip, stop at every little roadside attraction and buy silly souvenirs. ( I would LOVE to do this.  LOVE LOVE LOVE it.  I’ll just have to find a travel companion with the same mind-set or go it alone.  And somehow find the time necessary to do it right.) 

11.  Try an exotic fruit:  mango, papaya, casaba, or Persian melon, starfruit, Asian pear, pomegranate.  (My daughter already does this.  I greatly admire and long for her sense of adventure.) 

12.  Fix a fancy Sunday brunch and wash it down with mimosas – champagne and orange juice served icy cold.  (In fact, why not skip the brunch part and just concentrate on the mimosas?  That would work too.) 

13.  Write out a master packing list of everything you need for a trip.  Consult it every time you travel.  (On second thought, this really does sound like way too much work to be considered doing yourself any favours in the long run.  I’ll just stick to my tried and true method of shoving everything I own into my suitcase and praying I can get it zipped up.)

14.  Have a deck built.  Have a porch built.  Have a patio laid.  (Been considering all of these for as long as we’ve lived in this house.  Very likely to remain a dream that doesn’t come true.  Oh well.  The dreaming part was nice.)

15.  Skip rocks on a glassy lake.  (I seriously want to learn how to do this!!  My rocks just go PLONK.  It’s SO not cool.  Everything I throw goes plonk, come to think of it.)

16.  Write your own children’s book and illustrate it with your own drawings or photos.  (Another life long ambition never realized.  Because it involves hard work.  I have to tip the balance so that the FUN part weighs more.  Then I’ll do it.)

17.  Wear long, loungy dresses at home for a feeling of elegance and ease.  (I don’t think she means flannel night gowns in this case, although that definitely appeals to me as well.) 

18.  Paint a mural on your wall.  (I actually had real plans to do this a few years ago!  Then I hung up a bunch of pictures and got over it.  I think that plan needs revisiting.)

So there you have it, 18 suggestions out of two thousand that might work for me.  The really sad part about this whole thing is the ridiculously long list of pampering things I already do for myself.  I could have been a consultant to the author!  I could have written the damned thing myself!!  I could have called it “A Whole Whack of Stuff I Do for Little Miss Pampered to Death That You Should Try, Because Being Spoiled Rotten Has Become a Lifestyle To Be Envied So Buy This Book and Make Me Rich Enough To Do Even More Stuff For Myself.”  Or perhaps something a little more concise, but you get the idea.  I’ve even tried to shorten my list by doubling up on a few, and it’s still QUITE long.

1. Take the time to build a roaring fire in your fireplace. Make twice as much popcorn as you can eat.  Have a marathon movie session.  Rent three or four you’ve always wanted to see and watch them all.  (There – I put those three together, because I’ve done them all, all at once.  Doesn’t everybody do this?  They should.)

2.  Buy two pairs of shoes instead of one. (I don’t think this one should be confined to shoes.  I like to buy just about everything in twos.  If it’s worth buying one, why not two?  You really can’t argue with that kind of logic.  So don’t even try to convince me otherwise.)

3.  Make a fresh pot of coffee whenever you want it.  Get a coffee machine that starts automatically so the coffee will be ready when you stagger into the kitchen in the morning.  Grind your own coffee beans for sensational coffee.  (I am the Pampered Goddess of Coffee.  No coffee or method of brewing it is too rich for me.)

4.  Buy yourself a great fountain pen.  (I guess I have to let it be known that I have a pen fetish.  I must have three pens in my lab jacket pocket at all times.  If one goes missing, I’ve been known to panic.  I have at least three in my purse.  I even have pens in my bathroom.  Searching for a pen would probably make me physically ill.   That’s why I purchase pens on a regular basis, whether I actually need them or not, to avoid that scary possibility.  I am pen pampered.  I admit it freely.)  

5.  Treat yourself to a couple of giant-size bath towels.  (Well, duh.  No one should have to exist without giant towels.)

6.  Toss out your mix and don’t-match college flatware and buy a complete set that you adore. (I recently did that.  It has made me ridiculously happy.  Such a simple thing.  Who knew?)

7.  Play the lottery game:  What would you do if you won the lottery?  Indulge your fantasies.  (It’s a relatively cheap way to have a lot of fun.  Buy a ticket and make decisions about how you’d spend your money.  And when it happens, you’ll be prepared.  Sweet.)

8.  Have a paperback book-buying spree at a used book store.  Browse in one of the smaller bookstores;  an independent general bookstore, specialty bookstore, used bookstore, rare bookstore.  (If I ever go missing and you want to find me, try looking in bookstores.  I’ve been lost in them for long stretches of time more than once.)  

9.  Feel free to be crabby.  Go barefoot.  Have your hair streaked by a professional. (I don’t know why I lumped all of these together, except that I do every one of them on a regular basis.)

10.  Lie in bed and listen to the rain on the roof. (The ultimate indulgence.  It’s just such an incredibly feel good kind of thing to do.)

11.  Read a whole book of cartoons of your favourite cartoonist and laugh until your stomach hurts.  (Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert,  and Herman all come to mind.  It’s funny how the more you read, the funnier they become.  And when you’re halfway through the book and find something that makes you split a gut and you share it with somebody and that person looks at you like you’re insane,  you can’t imagine what’s up his or her ass to make them have such a shitty sense of humor. Really, this has happened to me more than once.) 

12.  Buy a toaster oven. (I did.  I don’t know how I lived without one for so long.  It is a truly magic little appliance and I love it a lot.) 

13.  Treat yourself to a whole book of crossword puzzles.  Do a great big jigsaw puzzle.  Stretch your mind with word puzzles, crosswords, crostics, and cryptics. (Contrary to W.’s opinion, these are NOT a complete waste of time and energy.  What does he know.  His brain will atrophy and mine will still be capable of solving mind boggling riddles.  There is NOTHING weird about Sudoku.  If I want to do one in bed before I go to sleep, please just deal with it.)

14.  Wallow in romance novels for a month.  (I joined a romance novel bookclub once, and wallowed for a lot longer than a month.  It IS possible to reach your romance novel limit eventually, but it’s lots of fun reading until you get to that point.)

15.  Stock up on extra batteries, so you’ll have them when you need them.  (Yep.  Got a drawer full.  Even have batteries that we don’t need for anything.  You just never know.)

16.  Invest in a super duper new toothbrush. (I don’t consider dental health an indulgence, but this was in the book.  And I love my super duper toothbrush.  So there you go.)

17.  Take out the old family photo album and tell stories about the pictures for hours on end.  Write your autobiography. (And here it is.  Such as it is.  For however long it goes on until we all die of boredom one by one.)

18.  If you don’t want to go to the party (or any other event) don’t go.  (I don’t.  And I won’t.  And nobody can make me if I really and truly DO NOT WANT TO BE THERE.  So give it up already.)

19.  Enjoy a leisurely browse in a hardware store, pet shop, kitchen emporium, gourmet market. (I guess I’m just a natural born browser.  Yes, even in hardware stores.  You never know what interesting things are just sitting there waiting for you to discover them.  And you might decide you have to have them!!  Joy!!)

20.  Hang a birdhouse outside your kitchen window and enjoy the visitors. (It’s in a tree in the backyard, along with a bird feeder.  Close enough.  I don’t want the cat to die from excitement.)

21.  Do something creative that gives you satisfaction.  Draw, write, make music, embroider, cook, take photographs, invent computer games, make toys, build a playhouse.  (I don’t agree with people who say they aren’t creative.  Everyone is born creative, and then some anal art or English teacher scares it out of you.  Everything you create is a thing of beauty, if only to you or someone you love.  Don’t ever let anyone try to tell you otherwise.)

22.  Take an early morning, barefoot walk on grass that’s still dewy.  Walk barefoot in the rain.  Squish your toes in the mud puddles. (These are activities that no one in their right mind should ever outgrow.  Seriously.  Pray for rain right now, and get out there and do it.)

23.  Invite your grandchildren or neices and nephews to visit for a few days.  Indulge them shamelessly. (I wish I had the energy to do this WAY more often.  There’s nothing like it.) 

24.  Give yourself permission to feel bad.  Give yourself permission to feel good.  (Fail/Succeed:  Change/Be who you are.)  (For anyone who hasn’t noticed, I give myself permission to do whatever I damn well please.  Somebody needs to do it.  It might as well be me.)

25.  Put on your rubber boots and grab your umbrella for a solo walk in the rain.  Lose yourself in the sounds and smells.  Ponder life.  (Another indulgence that needs to be done a lot more often.  Maybe some of us are born loving rainy days.  Sunshine in comparrison is highly over-rated.)

26.  Treat yourself to a well made pepper mill and a supply of whole peppercorns. (Did this one too, although I don’t even like pepper all that much.  Pampering doesn’t have to make sense.)

27.  Renew your passport the easy way, by mail. (No stupid standing in line for me.  No worrying about original documents going missing.  I trusted Canada Post and lived to tell about it.)

28.  Replace all those ugly drawer pulls and door knobs you’ve always hated. (I replaced hideous brass crap with painted blue.  Now I can die happy.)

29.  Honor your nourishing, enriching friendships.  Firmly disengage from destructive ones.  (These are both hard to do for different reasons, but worth the effort.  If I don’t do things for me, who will?)   

30.  Hang a key holder near the door you use most, so you’ll stop misplacing your keys. (A simple thing.  It’s easy.  And it works.  Why is this even on the list?  Is this a list for morons or what?)

31.  Soothe and massage your tired feet with a hydrotherapeutic foot spa.  (My daughter gave me one of these and it’s wonderful.  The best part is that you have to sit down for a long period of time to use it.  Bliss.)

32.  Use travel downtime on planes, trains, buses for reading something you’ve been looking forward to.  Ask for a window seat on the plane so you can watch the view.  Ask for an aisle seat on the plane so you can get up without having to ask someone to move. (Been there, done that.  I do whatever works for me at that particular moment in time.  Being unpredictable is serious fun.)

33.  Turn off all the lights except the Christmas tree lights.  Sit on the sofa and enjoy the magic.  (It was kind of funny to read this one, because I never thought that anyone else would find this magical.  There are different degrees of magic, and you should take whatever amount you can get, whenever you can get it.)

This little book also contained a whole lot of suggestions for pampering yourself that I consider to be too stupid to attempt:

1.  Anything involving water – like floating down a river on an inner tube, or swimming out as far as you can and looking back at the shore to see how small your problems are.  (For me, this activity would create way more problems than it would solve.)  Take a water rafting trip and shoot the rapids.  (It would be quicker just to shoot myself.) Learn to waterski.   Drive a speedboat. (All insane.)

2.  Declare a 24 hour ban on complaining. (You’ve got to be joking.  There ARE some things in this world that are impossible.  That’s one of them.)

3.  Sit on your lover’s lap and let him rock you like a baby. (This made me laugh until my stomach hurt, although I don’t think it was one of the suggested activities meant to invoke such a reaction.  Because really, broken legs and flattened rocking chairs are no laughing matter.) 

4.  Fly down a frosty hill on a snow saucer.  (I don’t think so.  I still have a few brain cells left.)

5.  Wake up your taste buds with salsa picante, pickled jalapenos, hot barbecue, sczechuan food, a dab of wasabi or hot pepper flakes on your pizza. (If that’s what it takes, I’ll just let my taste buds sleep, thanks anyway.)

6.  Book a ride in a glider plane.  (HAHA!!  Another joke.  Terror does not equal pampering.  Not in my book, anyway.) 

And FINALLY we come to the things that sound wonderful and I don’t have to do them because just imagining them is good enough:

1.  Rake leaves on a crisp fall morning when the sky is cobalt blue and there’s a faint smell of wood smoke in the air. 

2.  Crunch through the silent woods after a fresh fall of snow.

3.  Rent an appartment or house in a foreign country for a month and get the real flavour of living there.

4.  Sit in a patch of sunlight in a glade in the woods.  Lean your back against a sturdy tree trunk and let your mind wander.

5.  Walk away from grumpy, snide, mean, unpleasant, sarcastic, condescending, nasty, hostile, malicious people. (I want a button for work that says I do that.  Then I want to do that.)

6.  Go on a mountain hike.  Take a book and a lunch, find a flat rock next to a waterfall, and spend the day.

7.  Sit on a porch, deck, balcony or park bench and enjoy l’heure bleu – that magical time between dusk and dark when the indigo sky is flecked with just a few bright stars.

8.  Relax in a hammock or lawn chair on a summer evening and watch the fireflies.

9.  Sit down in a field of daffodils, a rolling sea of brilliant yellow and rich green. 

10.  Lie in a field of summer grass and be so quiet that insects and butterflies forget you’re there.  Inhale the dry, green scent.  Think about nothing.

11.  Stop and listen to pealing bells, a sidewalk quartet, a street musician, a splashing fountain, people speaking a foreign language, music from an open window.

12.  Lie under a leafy tree and observe the sun and sky through the canopy.  Spend a summer afternoon under a shady tree with friends and a pitcher of chilled homemade sangria. 

13.  Sit by a pond on a summer night and listen to the frogs.

14.  Sit on the fire escape and enjoy the city night.

Wow.  This has turned into the longest blog on earth.  Do I get some kind of prize for that?  I haven’t gotten into all two thousand things, but I’ve certainly come close.  So of course there’s no real reason now for anyone else to buy this book.  But do consider making up your own list of ways to treat yourself like royalty.  We all deserve to be well taken care of and loved.  And who can you depend on to do that if not yourself? 

Dryden Rememberall

Some days I wonder if I should be trying harder to drag myself out of the past – like every time I add to this blog, and every time I get together with my parents, or my siblings or even my kids!  There’s so much ‘remember when’.   What if one day in the future all we have to say to eachother is something bizarre like – remember that day when we remembered that time when we recalled that other time when we remenisced about such and such happening…… Well, I guess that’s a stretch.  I AM still living my life after all.  I’m involved in the lives of my children and their spouses and my grandchildren to what I hope is a healthy degree, without interfering with how they live their lives.  Then some days I worry that maybe they think I don’t care what they’re doing.  I’m very rarely the one who picks up the phone and calls them.  I’ve become very self indulgent if you want to know the truth.  Although I prefer to call it being responsible for my own happiness.  That sounds better.  And you know what?  If I don’t get all this past stuff written down now, there’s a very good chance that one day I just won’t remember any of it.  Mom has a picture of dad when he was Reeve of Aaran Township with his six council members.  It was in one of the many scrapbooks that she was dismantling and distributing to various unsuspecting souls.  We had one hell of a time coming up with all their names.  You think you couldn’t possibly forget people and their names, but if you wait long enough it’s not only possible, it’s unavoidable.  Maybe our brains shrivel as they age and compact information so that it becomes unretreivable.   So I’m thinking I’d better get as much of it out of my head as possible while I still can.  Then when I’m old and senile I can read it to myself and marvel at how smart I once was.

And with that wordy meandering intro out of the way, here’s a group photo of some people whose names I am able to recall!  WOOHOO!! 

In this old and grainy rendition of the year of the smock top, that’s me and W. on the far left.  In front of and beside us, my brother Ron with Arlo Guthrie hair, his wife Jo, and their bald baby, Andrew Paul (Andy).  That’s my mom in pink in the middle.  On the far right is our cousin Elaine and her husband Rene, who for some reason or other in this photo resembles Andre the Giant.  I don’t know why the people on the right look so much larger than the people on the left.  In reality they weren’t – Elaine is shorter than me, although taller than Jo.  Everybody who isn’t under age ten is taller than Jo. (hahaha)  Ahem.  Anyway.  It must have to do with the magic of 1970’s photography.  The three kids are Elaine’s neice and nephews, Cheryl, Darren and Robbie (Murray and Carol’s kids.)  The person taking the photo was Aunt Marguerite, Murray and Elaine’s mom.  So, confusing as mud to people who don’t know us, but I expect those people have all stopped reading long before now anyway.   Or at the very least have skipped quickly and glazey-eyed through this bit.

W. and I were living in Dryden and my brother and his family and mom and dad had come up to visit us and our Dryden relatives.  The picture is taken in Aunt Marguerite’s back yard.  I feel compelled here to mention Aunt M.’s horrible dog Koko simply because he was the freakiest dog on earth and I was absolutely terrified of him.  He was big and sandy- colored and growled and barked and snapped at everything that moved.  I will never understand how they put up with him.  If you rang their doorbell he made such a snarling howling ruckus about it you felt like your death was imminent.  When you ate at their table he was allowed to lie under it, and took great pleasure in growling and snapping at your feet if you moved them a fraction of an inch.  Meals of terror.  And he wasn’t even obedient.  Once he was running around in an off-leash area and my aunt was calling him to come.  He completely ignored her until she waved the leash at him and said “Come on Koko!  Want to go for a walk?” and that finally made him come bounding towards her because he loved to go for walks.  Dangerous AND stupid.  What  a combination. 

Dryden is the second place we lived together after W. got a job there, and after he had boarded with Aunt Marguerite on weekdays for a few months, going back and forth between Dryden and Kenora until we found a basement appartment to rent.   

Here we are posing with our Dodge Duster,  and then in front of our landlady’s house.  I sincerely dislike winter and all my life have wished to live somewhere without snow.  Maybe with global warming I’ll get my wish without having to move anywhere.  Yet another reason to be careful what you wish for.

Three of W.’s left toes, and also a good depiction of my decorating skills circa 1972  in the completely wood panelled basement of the house seen above.

This is how we spent a lot of our time without a t.v.  NO T.V!!  I know, it makes me shudder too.  The lamps were a wedding gift.  We left the plastic on the shades for a really long time.  The coffee table was given to us by W.’s mom, purposely very cheap, because she knew W. would just put his feet on it. 

We also spent exciting evenings taking self portraits by setting up W. ’s camera with the timer.  Too bad the fish mobile is hiding the old lady giving us the finger on the poster entitled “Express Thyself”.  Children of the sixties thought that kind of thing was hilariously cool.  The equivalent of today’s lava lamps maybe.  I don’t know.  Like I said, I live mostly in the past and try to ignore the present as much as possible.

Since W. and I have always lived long distances from our respective families, visits back and forth are rare and special occasions.  Dad always jokes that I’m his favourite daughter because I’ve always lived the farthest away. Maybe that’s why I don’t see my kids and their families as often as I could do,  if I tried harder.  I want to be special.  HAHA!!  Indifferent and delusional!  Another rather dangerous combination.   

This is going to make for great reading in a few years, supposing I get to it before I completely lose my mind.  But I’m not wishing for that!  That would be silly and too much like tempting fate.  I’m predicting it will be just like “The Notebook” where the heroine has no idea that the book is about her and delights in her own story. 

And I think that’s more than enough crap to digest for one day.  Next time I’ll elaborate on my self indulgence problem.  I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait. 

Post # 156

I haven’t done a ‘just now’ blog for a very long time.  That’s the kind where I sit down and just start blathering away about random stuff, just like there’s somebody out there sort of paying half-assed attention, like, you know, you dropped by for coffee and I start talking and can’t shut up.  That sort of thing.  And at some point I would say something like – ’so how are you doing – what’s up with you?’  and in this particular scenario you don’t actually exist and can’t answer,  but that’s okay because in this particular scenario I don’t even care, it’s just a lead-in to talking about me.   And I know we have ALL talked to that kind of person before.  People whose eyes glaze over while you’re talking because they’re thinking about what they’re going to say next.  Well I can’t see you, so go ahead and do that.  I’m oblivious.

Normally on a day like today the conversation would vere off to the hot topic of yesterday’s events.  A gunman gone mad, 30 students shot and killed, how badly it all was handled – as if there’s a proper way to handle something horrendous like that.  It’s not that I’m an unfeeling bitch, but I’m far removed from it all and I don’t want to dwell on it.  If I do, it will make me weep.  I don’t want to weep today.  There’s enough weeping going on in the world right now.

Instead I want to touch on completely trivial shit going on in my sheltered little life.  I went to my optometrist yesterday and paid him $70.00 for a routine eye exam.  Does that not seem a tad exhorbitant to you?  But it’s the going rate.  And he’s a young dad and a nice guy who doesn’t talk down to me (well he knows I’m an optician and we worked together once, so he better not – haha) and he does a very thorough exam with very expensive equipment, so I guess it’s all good.  I left with my reading add bumped up a notch.  Sigh.  That’s what they do to old ladies.  

My next stop was a leather/luggage shop in the mall where I wandered around aimlessly until an old guy (even older than me!  and still working!!) asked if he could help me and I got him to climb up a ladder and haul down leather back-packs for me to look at.  Laurie (one of my co-workers) is going to Italy and Greece for a month and she heard that it’s best to get a leather back-pack with thick straps because sometimes in public transit, like trains, in foreign countries,  people have their shoulder straps slashed by crazed theives and their stuff stolen.  Now for some reason or other I can imagine Italian and Greek men doing this, but I can’t seem to get my head around Scottish people being that ambitious/destructive.  Or English people being that devious/desperate.  Where do these preconceived notions come from?   Why do I think I’ll be way more safe in the United Kingdom than a bit farther south?  I don’t know.  Anyway, the leather was thick and black and made me imagine my back getting all hot and sweaty.  There wasn’t a price tag under $120.00.  Suddenly the eye exam seemed like a bargain.  So I picked up an ordinary red and black canvas one for under $20.00 with Canada written on it, and little Canadian flags sewn on the thick padded canvas straps.  I ALMOST asked how hard he thought it would be to slash through something like that with a knife, but alarming old people is never a good idea so I didn’t.  Instead I told him I also needed a big but light-weight suitcase.  The one I have now weighs a ton when it’s empty.  Once I fill it up, it gives people hernias.  He flitted around the store checking tags and eventually rolled out a nice big blue one that looks to be about the right dimensions, and that both of us could pick up by the handle without falling over.  Regular price $199.00.  Seriously, people make up these numbers don’t they?  Nobody pays that much for a stupid suitcase that will get wrecked after 2 or 3 flights.  Do they?  If they do they’re insane.  But it was marked down to $79.00 so I bought it too.  Then I had to wheel it for miles through the mall and across the parking lot to my car.  A lost woman pretending to be at the airport.  The dumbest things embarrass me. 

After that I went grocery shopping for stuff that I couldn’t fit into my trunk because it was full of suitcase.  And that’s why I decided to go home instead of shopping for a treadmill.  My frozen things would thaw and where the hell would I put one with my car already stuffed full.  It’s not a very big car. 

I’ve researced the treadmill thing to death.  For me, that statement means I’ve looked up some stuff on the internet and jotted down what I believe are a few key points.  There was a very helpful site that went over all the things you should look for, stating the minimum acceptable, all the way up to the very best.   Even with a three hundred pound jogger using it every day,  the very best should last 30 years.  I don’t weigh that much and I might not live that long, so I decided to opt for somewhere just above the minimum.  Really, it only has to last me to the 7th of September.  After that it very well COULD last another 30 years regardless of what I pay for it, especially if it doesn’t get used.  But I’m sincerely hoping I won’t neglect it.  It’s going to make me feel so incredibly good about myself that I’ll keep right on using it.  Daily.  Forever.  Or close to that.  Maybe.  So in true athletic fashion I picked up the phone and ordered one from Sears. 

The little blurb in the catalogue says it should take 2 normal people about 2 hours to assemble it.  I’m estimating an optimistic 2 days for W. and I to get it together and up and running.  I’m factoring in stupidity and temper tantrums in my estimation, something I’m pretty sure Sears left out of theirs. 

Speaking of stupidity, W. got his notice of assessment back from Revenue Canada yesterday.  He is retired and gets a pension.  He also works full time as a delivery driver for a local company here in the city.  Not enough taxes are being deducted from each of his cheques individually to make up the amount required for the combined income.  So when you pay a ridiculous amount in taxes two Aprils in a row, the government panics and sends you a notice telling you to pay them money by installments.  Because they like to get their money ASAP, not in one big lump later on.  So, okay, I admit to being brain dead when I did his tax return and I didn’t fill in the amount under ‘paid by installments’ and paid the entire amount owing.  I thought of it after I filed it, but supposed they’d figure it out and just roll that credit over to 2007.  Nope.  They sent him a cheque for the exact installment amount.  So now we’re going to put the money in the bank and then send it back to them as an installment payment for 2007.  W. suggested just returning the cheque to them, but I think that might make some tax assessor’s head explode and I don’t want to chance it.  

And that’s pretty much my day, except for a really nice meal that W. and I actually sat at the table to eat together.  I felt inspired and lit candles, causing W. to say “What the hell is this?”  Severe eye roll.  I’m going to hurt myself doing that one of these days.  It’s called dinner.  Shut up and eat.  Then I noticed the ‘best by’ date on one of the salad dressing bottles was MA 06 and we had a big discussion about whether that was May or March, as if it matters when it’s a year ago and we’re both going to die from food poisoning.  Except that he used something else, so it’s only me whose life is in jeopardy.  Shit.  I wanted to outlive him.  I need to be more careful.

I also need to stop spending money on my upcoming trip.  Except that I need a bigger memory card for my camera, and a travel umbrella,  and I’ve applied for a visa travel card with a ridiculous limit if they approve it (because an ordinary visa card just won’t cut it for me right now) and no matter what I buy the list just gets added to and never gets any shorter.  And we need kitty litter.  And my driver’s license expires next month.  And I’ve had nothing but coffee all morning and now it’s almost noon.  Crap.  This living through an entire day by blogging about it the next is an extreme time waster.  So…..what’s new with YOU?  I’ll be in the shower, but keep talking.  I’m listening.   

Random Cousins on the Veranda

This is another picture I swiped from one of mom’s albums.

That’s my brother Ron holding a cake named Allan.  The birthday boy is next to him, too small to be trusted with that particular task while perched on the porch steps.  He greatly admired “Big Ron”, so no doubt agreed to this scenario quite willingly.  That’s me behind my brother, being a girl for a very brief moment.  Beside me is our cousin Katherine, not amused.  I suppose it’s not her fault that she was a spoiled only child who had a hard time sharing all the attention, but a less scowly face would have been nice.  The two little cuties on the left are my sister Ann and cousin Audrey (Al’s big sister).  Ann’s hair was gorgeous blonde ringlets, no matter what anyone tried to do with it.  Audrey’s hair had to be curled and fussed with.  It appears that today mom just gave up on mine.  It was poker straight and whispy.  Barettes always fell out.  Sometimes with more than a little help.  They went mysteriously missing on a daily basis. 

It was an era of cute little dresses and buckled shoes, PF flyers, plaid shirts and hand knit sweater vests.  It was a time when you had to move the party outside into the sun to take a snapshot, because you couldn’t trust that there’d be enough light for it to turn out otherwise.

I remember I didn’t like Katherine much, but I longed for her braids.  Even when she whined and carried on while her mom did her hair in the morning, I thought it would be worth it for such an interesting end result. 

And speaking of end results – Al lives in a house he built into the side of a hill, so that it’s mostly underground and very energy efficient.  How incredibly cool is that?  Audrey lost her husband a few years ago to cancer.  She has two grown sons.  The second one looks a lot like his Uncle Al.   Katherine has three sons and one grandson, so it’s all conjecture concerning what kind of hairstyles she might have forced on her scowling daughters.   Katherine still writes newsy letters to my mom and dad and sends them greeting cards for every conceivable occasion.  I think that’s wonderful of her.  I like her a bit more these days. 

May in the Summer

Here’s a picture of me with my mom and dad probably taken over 15 (possibly closer to 20) years ago.  I’ve been trying to guess the exact year, but it’s making my head hurt, and nobody cares anyway.  So.  We were visiting my Aunt May during one of my summer trips to Ontario.  This was before she fell and broke her hip going down the ramp to her kitchen using her walker.  She just sort of ran off the edge one day.  After that she went from hospital to nursing home and never did get back to her little house.  On this particular day she told me I looked cute.  Isn’t that the most bizarre thing to remember?  Maybe it was the first time she ever came to that conclusion concerning my looks.  Maybe she was just trying to be polite.  I have no idea. 

I think we’re all looking pretty damn cute in this particular moment in time, even with random pillows for head shot backgrounds.  Trust me, it’s just a coincidence, and was not done on purpose.  Although with Aunt May that may or may not be true. 

Aunt May was dad’s sister, the oldest in his family.  She worked as a public school teacher, married an older man, had two daughters, and spent most of her life as a widow.  How’s that for a concise history.   The things I remember about her are vivid, if totally irrelevant to anyone but me.  She had a wonderful sense of humor, an infectious laugh,  and a no-nonsense teacher-type demeanor mixed up with a huge dose of NICE.  She was one of those people who was dearly loved by all of her students, her family and relatives and her next door neighbors.  (She lived in one of those neighborhoods where you wave to eachother every day and chat over fences about the state of the yard down the street where that poor family lives with all those noisy kids.)

I remember a lot of summertime visits to her house when we were growing up.  It was at her back door that my sister Ann (age 2) sang “open the door please” to the tune of “God Save the Queen” which made Aunt May fuss over her precociousness for hours.  Gag.  I had my first sleep-over ever at her house with my cousin Elaine when I was about six.  When she tucked us into bed I felt sick and started to cry.  She diagnosed me with a mild case of homesickness, told me I’d be fine in the morning,  and that was that.  Sympathy would have made the situation WAY worse.  I guess she knew that.  We had a big dinner there once where her daughter Shirley put blue food coloring in the mashed potatoes to make them interesting.  I was SO impressed.  Then my dad and Shirley had a contest to see who could keep eating the longest.  That got boring, and I don’t remember who won. 

Aunt May’s backyard was huge,  full of garden and flowers.  Her front porch was lined with hollyhocks.  She never minded how many we picked, or how many hollyhock dolls we made.  If you’ve never made a hollyhock doll on a hot summer afternoon, you just DO NOT know what you’re missing.

She had a basement that was too scary for kids to go down into.  The bathroom was on the main floor between the kitchen and a bedroom, so it had two doors in two different directions.   She drove an old blue pontiac in pristine condition.  There were photo albums and scrapbooks everywhere in her house, upstairs and down.  The place was absolutely packed with art work and treasures.  I don’t think she ever threw anything out.  After she passed away it took her daughters a year or two to go through everything in her house before they could put it up for sale.  She used to urge me every time I saw her after we moved from the north to write my memoirs about our experiences up there.  I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hear about all that.  I’m sure if she read todays blog she’d say I’m wasting my time on trivial things.  But I don’t think I am.

Funny how one little picture, which doesn’t even have her in it,  has caused such a flood of good Aunt May memories.       

Moo