when to walk

Nope, this is not a guideline for babies.  It is a truly beautiful book by Rebecca Gowers.  When I finished reading it I wanted to change my name to “Ramble”.  Perhaps I’ve always had a subconscious urge to do that anyway, but this lovely ramble brought it to the surface.  I took the book with me on our Christmas trip so that Jen could read it, because it’s one I think she’ll enjoy.  (So if you happen to read this Jen and haven’t yet read the book, stop and do that first.)  Not that it matters much – I just like to be bossy.  As you know.  But I also don’t like to read a review that might cloud my own unique reaction to something. 

It’s a week in the life of a quirky lady whose husband, over lunch one day,  pronounces their marriage dead and gets up and leaves.   For this partially deaf and crippled woman it’s a blow that at first threatens to break her.  So she tries not to think too hard about it.  Because it’s just not pleasant, and the things that were said to her weren’t fair, and she really didn’t have a chance to defend herself, or make sense of it, and now she doesn’t know where the rent money will come from or what might happen next.  So in true scatterbrained fashion, her mind goes off in a myriad of other directions as the days go by and she ponders her many idiosyncratic fascinations;  the meaning and origins of different words and phrases, the stories from a Victorian newspaper that published only fake news, the habits of pigeons and their foot diseases,  her very odd family and their very odd history.  And her life continues more or less as usual as she makes visits to the pub, the library, the minimart and the care home where she visits her senile grandmother.

There isn’t a lot of action (in fact there’s often absolutely nothing at all going on), there’s not much of a plot, and there’s really no character development in this story.  What there’s great bunches of instead are witty dialogue, insight, charm and humor.  The more Ramble revealed about her inner life, the more I identified with her, and could relate to her feelings, and generally just wanted to hug her.  When people talked to her she often had so many other seemingly unrelated thoughts and ideas bouncing around in her head that something mentioned would make her think of something else, and then that would lead to something else beyond that.  And of course then the conversation get’s a bit weird,  because she doesn’t always immediately answer or seem to be making the right connections if and when she does reply.  My god, haven’t we all done that? 

And when this seemingly very passive lady finally gathered the courage to stop fearing what would happen next and realized that what’s next is now, it made me want to shout YES!!  You are SO worth being good to yourself first! 

I loved this book.  And I haven’t even mentioned her gay friend or the petty theiving lady downstairs.  If you want ‘action packed’, this is NOT the book for you.  But if getting inside somebody’s head appeals to you, it’s a lovely read. 

My Chat Friends

I never had an imaginary friend as a child, although when I heard there was such a thing I thought it sounded like fun.  Turns out cyber friends are even more entertaining than any I might have dreamed up.  I’m talking about my great bunch of internet friends with whom I’ve been chatting for so long it makes me feel like I know them inside out and backwards. 

I write something there almost every day, and have done for several years.  It’s like having our own private little support group, and lots of times getting feedback about situations from people who are completely removed from them can be invaluable. 

I’ve decided to fill up some space here with things I’ve written there this crazy busy month of December;  random blurbs out of context, little excerpts from my days, stupid comments I have made – that sort of incredibly interesting thing. 

Dec. 1st.  I’m just warming up my cold little car and then I’m off to work for the day. It’s December! The shoppers now start their steady decline into complete insanity.

Dec. 2nd.  (Rant about scrabble)  If you want a dictionary to dictionary game, play the robot. The feedback is immediate. The two word dictionary and the dictionary look up are on the scrabble screen to be used as a help. So I use them. The fun in the game comes from matching wits with Rosey’s latin and Nickie’s Aussie words, and the words that pop into our heads that we’ve seen or read somewhere.  Like Marcie said, we want to play eachother and to me that’s not running to the dictionary every play to see what kind of a crazy score we can come up with at any cost and taking hours and hours to do it.  

(Later, in reply to Penny who was wondering why I didn’t mention matching wits with HER….) PENZ!!! I think you are very witty. It just SO goes without saying, that I neglected to say it.  And you play the game like my sister does, going days between moves, because she is so rarely on line; we’ve joked that we’ll have a game finished by 2009 at the very latest.

Dec. 3rd.  (In reply to a rant about Toronto weather.)I remember freezing rain being quite a normal occurrence in Ontario, but here it’s quite rare, and NO, we aren’t prepared for it or very smart about it when it happens. Right now we’re getting what looks like a lot more snow, which seems pretty ho-hum in comparison.

(Later) Rosey! I’m trying to complain about our weather, and you keep making yours sound way worse!! Cut it out! lol

I just found out what kind of bagel I am on Facebook. I think I need to get a hobby.

Dec. 4th.  Yes, the scrabulous board is annoying the hell out of me too, taking forever to load, if at all. I just keep going back and forth and in and out until it does something I like. Sometimes I’ve had to try submitting a word two or three times before it will accept it.  What a waste of time. (you know, more than the amount of time I normally waste…lol) It looks like they’re at least working on getting it up and running better.

Good news about your back Nickie! Is it possible that it’s a slipped or crushed or broken disc? No X-rays ever showed that for me, but the MRI did! And your symptoms sound so similar. And you’re right, NOBODY can learn to live with that. It’s just the most debilitating pain. Once my MRI results were done I was able to get in for surgery on a cancellation in less than a week, they removed the disc and I’ve been fine ever since. It really made me wonder why I had to put up with the misery for such a long time when it was so easily taken care of. I hope you have similar results – not that I’m wishing you a crushed disc, just a happy resolution to your problems.

Dec. 5th.  I’m going to wrap presents today. It’s a job I hate doing but feel good about when it’s finished. And then I might put the tree up, since I’m tired of tripping over it at the bottom of our stairs in a cardboard box that is falling apart….. Is it the height of laziness to just want to leave the damn thing up and decorated all year, and maybe just throw a plastic tarp over it and keep it in the laundry room????

I also have to do some shopping for BAKING stuff since (in a small burst of insanity) I offered to do some Christmas baking for our holiday on the ‘ranch’.  Every year I try to get out of that too. I have a LOT of excuses, if any one needs a few…

Maybe I’ll give you all a progress report later, if I’ve actually made any progress.

(Later) My tree made it out of the box!  The decorations might too eventually!! The wrapping is almost done!!!  My cards are sent!!!!  I need to lie down. 

Dec. 6th  Marcie, thanks for the offer of drugs.  Or are you just trying to shut me up from all my whining about nothing? lol

I will be decorating the tree today and perhaps cleaning out our store room where I have saved old printers and stereo equipment and the Hans Solo space ship and an Ewok village and other bizarre things. W. is going to get me a new box for our tree (so if he does that I guess I’ll feel obligated to use it  because the one we have has been forcefully shoved in there so many times it’s battered and broken and useless. I have my old coffee maker in there for the love of god. I don’t know why I’m such a demented pack rat.

(Later) My tree is done, and I even cleaned out our store room and found a lot of things I had forgotten I owned. Plus enough unused Christmas cards to last the rest of my life probably….. We will also not run out of spare bulbs, both indoor and outdoor, until the year 2020.

Dec. 7th.   Now that scrabulous is up and running, it is up and RUNNING!!!! Wow. How nice to have a game loaded and your word looked up and your play accepted before your coffee is finished!! lol

Well it’s back to work for me for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is just the worst time of year for anal shoppers. I wish they’d all go home and drink egg nog till they feel better.

Dec. 8th.  We had temper tantrum kids one after the other all day long today. Screaming. Wailing. Kicking and spitting and biting. One little guy took great offense to having to put his coat on, totally freaked out squirming out of it, fell over in the cart and practically killed himself. At least then he had something valid to cry about. Sigh.

I’ve played my scrabble moves and now I just want to go to bed.

Dec. 9th.  I’ve been having a three way e-mail conversation with my daughter and daugher-in-law about what each of us is contributing for Christmas. I think we’re just going to load up our truck with booze. HAHA! Well, I also have to leave room for a crock pot of stuffing…..

This year I bought myself season one of Heroes for us to watch when we get home. From beginning to end! I love dvd marathons. (Last year we watched all the Harry Potters). I love my dull and boring life.

Two weeks to Christmas!

Dec. 10th.  LOL @ penz!! Of COURSE you should wait until the 24th to do your shopping. You’ll meet a LOT of interesting people that day. All the things that didn’t sell will still be there, which means you’ll be getting things that no one else did! There will be no aimless wandering around and procrastinating because you have to buy SOMETHING, so the pressure is a great motivator. And you can rant at sales people and cashiers with no chance of negative feedback because by then they’re all comatose zombies.

For the past several years I’ve been ordering big gift baskets through Safeway for both sets of parents. My mother-in-law always sends us a picture of what we sent.  I don’t even want to try to figure out why. Anyway, you just give the phone people all the details and they take care of it. It’s the best kind of shopping EVER. And my mom freaks out at all the stuff and tries to give bits of it away to everyone who comes to visit them, which gives her immense pleasure. And we send some kind of floral center piece to whoever is hosting Christmas in Ontario and that’s our weird way of being part of it.

(Later)  Poor Marcie You’ve got a lot of stuff going on in your life…. Don’t spread yourself too thin, or everyone will have to look after YOU.

I was going to complain about my excrutiatingly boring afternoon talking to our life insurance/investment guy and then going on a couple of pick ups with W. as he drove me back home. But it’s pretty trivial stuff in comparrison.

Rosey, if you want a centre piece you have to invite me to Christmas dinner. Then you get to wonder whether I’ll send one or just SHOW UP!! So I don’t know if you want to chance it. lol

Dec. 11th.  Hi everybody. I try to get here sooner but I keep having to play games on facebook.

I’m thinking positive thoughts for you Marcie in regards to your mom! And Nickie, you just have to tell yourself that it’s really THEIR loss if they choose to act this way. No one can say you didn’t make a supreme effort to make things right.

Outdoor pictures are nice, but not if everybody is freezing. Unless that’s the look you’re going for….”our wedding, where we all got frost bite”…. 

I have a big long list of stuff I have to get done today. Even making the list is quite an accomplishment for me.  So I guess I should get on that….

(Later)This is a great place to unload, isn’t it? Even if no one answers directly you know they’re listening with some empathy.

I think I’m almost done in the Christmas booze and food departments, with all kinds of stuff to take north with us. Just the last minute fresh stuff to get now, which I’ll pick up on my way home from work probably on the 23rd.   I don’t know how you get around that one. Lettuce just won’t resemble lettuce by the 25th otherwise, especially travelling for 6 hours. And the stores are already nuts.

Dec. 12th.  (In reply to some confusion about games being played) I’ll just butt in here and explain SCRAMBLE vs. SCRABBLE or SCRABULOUS. SCRAMBLE is like a boggle game where you type in as many words as you see on a little lettered board (four across and four down I think) on a timed basis for points. Another great time waster. You have to find three-letter words and up. I think the longest one I’ve found so far is ‘joyous’ or ‘rejoice’ or something. The timed thing freaks me out, so I don’t do all that well.

There, now that everyone’s brain is sufficiently scrambled…..Good morning!  I work today and tomorrow, and then have 3 days off, 2 with Kenzie. Then I’m pretty much working up until the 23rd, thus my scrambling to get the Christmas stuff done. I think scramble will be my new word for the day.

Dec. 13th.  Our roads are CRAP! Got lots of snow yesterday, and W. broke our snow blower.

Which reminds me – a couple of weeks ago our store manager had the brilliant idea of putting a dozen snow blowers out in front of our store chained together and also chained to the sidewalk. Well, some industrious theives came along, probably in the middle of the night, cut the chain, and stole EVERY ONE OF THEM! So perhaps the idea wasn’t that brilliant after all.

We are SO dead in the optical division these days it’s kind of pathetic, but we still have to pretend to be busy so that we don’t get pulled out on the floor to run a cash register. That’s a fate worse than death these days. lol

I SUCK AT SCRAMBLE!!! Just wanted to make that clear to everyone who would like a brain dead oponent. hahaha

Dec. 14th.  This morning I’m going to straighten out some of my cupboards. How very Christmas-y is that?? There’s a bunch of stuff I need to get rid of since it’s taking up space and I never use it. Of course once it’s gone I’ll suddenly desperately need it for some reason or other. I also have to put away the boxes from the Christmas decorations, although the urge is strong to just leave them lying around in the living room and fill them up again in a couple of weeks.

Dec. 16th.  The butter tarts and shortbread are done, and it won’t take long to do the fudge, but I needed to take a break – more from my HELP than anything. She is SO hilarious. “Grandma, are you SURE you know what you’re doing??” And when I put a teaspoon of vinegar into the butter tart mixture – “OH NO! Is that poisonous??” Yep, poison butter tarts are my Christmas specialty.

We’ve watched the latest Harry Potter movie and the Bratz movie, and may go the the theatre this afternoon to see The Golden Compass. (I think the Bratz movie will be the one to cause the most nightmares!! lol)

Dec. 17th.  Sorry to have nothing upbeat to say today….
Last night on their way home my daughter and Kenzie were in a car accident. They are both okay, thankfully, but the car was totalled. They were hit going through a green light by a lady who was turning left and didn’t see them. I just don’t know how many more traumatic things a little six year old can handle. She at least had both her mom and dad on a united front helping her deal with it. And now of course comes the aftermath of getting another vehicle and everything. I’m just SO incredibly thankful that they are both physically okay. The alternative is just too horrible to contemplate, and of course I can’t stop myself from doing exactly that.

(later) All of you really are the most incredible people. Just reading this has made me feel SO much better.

It’s actually a good thing the roads were slippery last night I guess, because my daughter’s car spun around several times after she was hit – it could so easily have rolled. The driver’s side doors front and back were banged up and I guess there was a lot of crying and screaming going on when she couldn’t get the back door open to get Kenzie out. (The oppposite door worked just fine, after the initial panic.) She said about six other cars stopped and everyone was very helpful, and they had a witness who stuck around for the two hours it took for the police to arrive. The poor woman who hit them was absolutely distraught.

We talked to Kenzie tonight – she told us how brave she was. She bumped her head and her chest hurts, probably from the seat belt. They’re both going to the doctor tomorrow just to get checked out and so that they have everything documented. And her significant other soon-to-be-ex has made great strides in redeeming himself by taking care of everything with the insurance people for her, and looking for another car, and totally being there for his daughter. They get a courtesy car tomorrow.

Anyway! I guess I could go on and on, but I just have to say one more thing, and that is that you’re so right penz about kids being strong. Since she had such a crazy night they decided to keep her home from school today, and she spent the day ”looking after” mom, who had a sore neck and a killer head ache……

Dec. 18th.  A good friend of ours is insisting we take his beautiful new crew cab truck on our trip north, so we can easily fit five people in it, plus all our stuff. Well, with all our STUFF we’ll look like we’re moving out of town I’m sure. So the plans for Christmas are still on, including Kenzie’s brother (the blue haired teenager – he’s 13) who will be arriving on the 23rd. This will be a much more entertaining trip than just travelling with W. alone who bores me to tears with his never talking to me, and probably wishing I’d just shut the F. up. Imagine. Not wanting to hear what I have to say. lmao. And yes, I think D. has some nerves to get under control when she gets behind the wheel again. Things like this tend to make you a very defensive driver.

I saw the dr. again about my ear yesterday, which is better but still not right, and he is sending me for a tympanogram. I think. His writing is pretty bad.

And, it’s another work day for me, which I should be getting ready for. Only seven more shopping days people!! Please do it all by phone. lol

Dec. 19th.  LOL at little boys buying presents for eachother! But I suppose they’re all on the same wave length about it, and know what makes eachother happy. My son STILL remembers getting a rubber chicken pen in his stocking one year…..

My ‘girls’ seem to be doing fine. I always know things are okay when I DON’T get any phone calls.

And I agree, pedicures are the ultimate relaxing experience. Although making the decision on nail color can be very stressful. hahahaha

OOOOOOKAY!!!  I guess that’s enough to pass as a blog for today.  Leaving out the details of everyone else’s day to day lives was rather hard, since they lead infinitesimally more interesting ones than I do.  We chat, we play games, we’re all on Facebook.  The names I’ve mentioned are just those of the very chattiest ones – there are many more who pop in and out and keep us updated.  It’s a lovely network of people in various stages of their lives, and I feel incredibly blessed to know them.  It makes the world seem such a smaller and more intimate place. 

Beyond the Horizon

I am madly in love with this song, its lyrics, and Bob Dylan, who can’t sing now and never could.  I can’t make sense of it at all, and he sings it just SO close to off key and out of time that it is completely mesmirizing.  If you have not heard this song, you must. 

Beyond the horizon, behind the sun
At the end of the rainbow life has only begun
In the long hours of twilight ‘neath the stardust above
Beyond the horizon it is easy to love

I’m touched with desire
What don’t I do?
Through flame and through fire
I’ll build my world around you

Beyond the horizon, in the Springtime or Fall
Love waits forever, for one and for all

Beyond the horizon, across the divide
‘Round about midnight, we’ll be on the same side
Down in the valley the water runs cold
Beyond the horizon someone prayed for your soul

My wretched heart is pounding
I felt an angel’s kiss
My memories are drowning
In mortal bliss

Beyond the horizon, at the end of the game
Every step that you take, I’m walking the same

Beyond the horizon, the night winds blow
The theme of a melody from many moons ago
The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chime
Beyond the horizon I found you just in time
 
It’s dark and it’s dreary
I’ve been pleading in vain
I’m wounded, I’m weary
My repentance is plain

Beyond the horizon o’er the treacherous sea
I still can’t believe that you have set aside your love for me

Beyond the horizon, ‘neath crimson skies
In the soft light of morning I’ll follow you with my eyes
Through countries and kingdoms and temples of stone
Beyond the horizon right down to the bone

It’s the right time of the season
Somebody there always cared
There’s always a reason
Why someone’s life has been spared

Beyond the horizon, the sky is so blue
I’ve got more than a lifetime to live lovin’ you

Sigh.  Is that not just the most profound bunch of gobbledegook you’ve ever laid eyes on?  And put to music??  I can’t even tell you.  It’s just a masterpiece that sings to my soul.

Three Amigos

The fourth amigo was taking a nap. 

It’s frightening how fast they’re growing up.  Our littlest brown eyed girl was a baby just a few months back, wasn’t she?  And now she’s our Jasmine princess doing little girl stuff. 

Grandma, grandma, grandma.  For goodness sakes, get over it.  They cannot stay babies forever.  Sigh. 

December!

Didn’t we just have December – like, not that long ago?  I pulled the Christmas tree out of the store room the other day and was thinking to myself – didn’t I just DO this??  We turned our outside lights on and not one bulb was burned out from last year.  I hauled out some of the decorations, and it seriously felt like I just put them away.  I think I’m in some kind of time warp.  This will be my fifty-ninth Christmas, if you count the very first one when I was just seven months old.  Sorry, I don’t remember what I got that year.  But they’re ALL starting to run together in one big long series of clumps of Christmases and the recollections get more and more fuzzy and blurred every year.  

This is what I’ve been doing for two days.  Making a blurry Christmas tree.  It’s pretty much what it looks like to me without my glasses on,  so I thought I’d share that with you.  And, before all those memories from aeons ago slip away from me completely (and I resort to making things up), here’s something I remember about Christmases past. 

We always had hoards and hoards of people over for Christmas dinner whenever it was our turn, and it was a BIG production.  Our dining room must have been twenty feet long, (eventually it got renovated into two normal size rooms) and our dining room table maybe twelve feet long when extended to its limit with the three or four extra boards that fit into the middle.  Then we’d add the kitchen table next to it, and finally a card table on the very end.  All the table cloths we owned would be be overlapped from one end of the monster table to the other.  Then we’d go through the house rounding up every chair (or reasonable facsimile) we could find.  I remember fighting with my brother over who got to sit on the piano stool or the little bench seat that went with the sewing machine.

I loved to set the table for these grand events.  It was a big job counting all those plates and finding enough cutlery.  We had to put butter dishes and salt and pepper shakers in at least three places because passing those things around would take forever.  The best part of the table setting was making place cards for everyone and deciding on the final seating arrangement.  I loved that my sister and I were given this big responsibility, even if it was only to keep us occupied and out of mom’s hair.  I took it very seriously.  When we were done with all the decision making,  mom would do a quick run around the table and if it met with her approval she wouldn’t make any changes.  However, if we had arranged for all the stupid boy cousins to sit at the far end by themselves, she’d roll her eyes and do some quick switches.  Dad had to be at the head of the table, and mom had to be at the other end on the side of the room close to the door to the kitchen.  And grandma we usually put as far away from the kitchen as possible so she’d stay put and out of everyone’s way, making it too much fuss for her to get up and fuss.   We’d place a couple of aunts strategically close to mom so that they could easily get up to help her refill the mashed potato bowl, and then we kids wouldn’t have to.  Yes, I’m a lazy brat, and always have been.

We made the place cards using a box of previous years  greeting cards,  ripping off the fronts and folding them in half so that they’d stand up on a plate, and laboriously writing down every persons name from a long list.  For lots of the relatives we just picked any old thing.  But for a special aunt or cousin it had to be just so, and for sure they would be the ones who oooh’d and aaww’d over our best creations.  This is a custom that fell by the wayside as the huge number of relatives finally dwindled and Grandma got tired of inviting everybody and their dog for dinner.  When you’re down to a dozen people it’s just as easy to tell them to sit anywhere.  Unless there’s a kid hanging around with nothing to do and you want to put him to work for a bit. 

One of the reasons it has taken me two days to get the tree up is because I keep getting side tracked.  Every year I save our Christmas cards and the next year I’m always kind of surprised to find them all and wonder what in the world I was planning on doing with them.  And this year it dawned on me – I could make place cards!  So I made one.  Yes, ONE.  The whole process took for flaming ever. 

It’s all a little bit more Martha Stewart-ish than I remember.  It involves going through dozens of cards to find the exact right one, finding the centre of the picture, making a line across the background and then poking holes on either side of each of the parts that you want to stand up so that you can cut them out.  Then you fold the top half down and stand it up.  Then you get some invisible tape, which turns out to be not so invisible, and put a piece behind the star which flops over because you didn’t anticipate how thin that little part is between it and the tree.   

And there’s the results, complete with a bogus place setting which W. will be stunned to see on the table, considering I haven’t made anything for dinner yet.  It looks like we’re expecting Santa.  Imagine his name written in a childish crayon scrawl across that blue part on the bottom.   

How in the world did we ever get thirty of these done in an hour or two??  And there were some people who got two, because we didn’t communicate well and then couldn’t decide which one was better and just put them both on the plate.  Sometimes we’d have one person sitting in two different places.  When children are involved it’s not an exact science. 

And that’s your craft idea for this month.  Or maybe forever, if you’re expecting to find more of them here.  I think the real lesson to be learned today is “throw your Christmas cards away once you’ve read them” and that way you won’t be tempted to use the damn things for anything else, no matter how nostalgic you’re feeling on one of your days off in December when you’re supposed to be getting real work done so that Christmas doesn’t sneak up on you and bite you in the ass while you’re not paying attention to the details or have your priorities all screwed up.   (Gah.  No wonder my kids never learned anything useful.)  Next time they’re here, maybe I should teach them how to make place cards……..