In which I whine a bit

This morning I'm having my coffee with a stilted look of calm.  Later this morning, I'm having my biannual mammogram, and although I know it only hurts for a while, I'm feeling unusually apprehensive.

This only has to do with temporary discomfort, not concern about results, and at my age, I've been through it about 20 times, but this is a strange year for me, and while I'm usually stoic and unbothered about the body, I just can't work up any enthusiasm for this procedure today. 

Multiply my lack of enthusiasm by my horrible guilt for feeling this way when I am so lucky in my good health and you'll see why I need another cup of coffee, and why double cream is definitely going to be part of it.

She hates it when I do that

Every once in a while, I decide that I'm going to write a post about a photo that I've accessed randomly.  This is today's:

Sarah is going to kill me.  She's a beautiful woman who hates having her photo taken, and was showing us her disdain for posing.  Among the others we took that day:

I can do this because she's too busy to read the blog these days, but because I love her so much I can also do this:

And I'll learn to live with the consequences.

Post defined

This is a post about not really having time to write this post.  No, I think it's a post about why it matters to me, at all, about writing a post.  No, it's probably going to be a post about the things I would be doing if I weren't writing this post, all of them necessary, mundane and not worthy of notice.  It should be a post about how nicely my life is working out lately, in spite of the barriers I keep putting in my own way.

Maybe I won't write a post today.  I think I'll have another cup of coffee and get back to that fascinating book of essays on the people of Firefly.

Of love and loss (family version)

My dad, in Sicily, before he was my dad.  I know that because my dad always, except for 3 especially scary days in 1950 when he didn't see the light of day, had a moustache.

His was black and full and served to make all my girlfriends fall in love with him (in chaste ways) and all my boyfriends admit that they'd come to the wrong house by mistake. 

It stayed black and full through six kids, almost 50 years of marriage, a career in the army, a second and third career when being "Papa" was the big thing in his life, chemotherapy and a stroke.

This makes him sound so less than he was:  funny, engaging, loving, faith-driven, brave, humble, honest, hard-working and did I say funny?  the only thing worse than my dad's horrendous but irresistible puns was his inability to do anything manly with a hammer.  We loved him to death.  And I know I speak for all of us Spindillyrushinghams when I say we miss him and continue to love him for the wonderful, generous, ice-cream-buying, shoe-tying, hugs-if-crying darling that he was to us all.

Of love and loss (stationery version)

I have always been a Sharpie fan.  From the time every band had them so they could write on your forearm or on the record label, I have thought Sharpies were wonderful little tools of communication.

If you were to come into an art supplies store, or a stationery shop, with me, you'd see how I gravitate to the Sharpie corner---I crave the ones in the 10-to-a-package format, the coloured ones, the glitter ones, the baby ones and I seldom leave without at least one new Sharpie.

So how can it be that I, who have an office space 24 inches wide, 12 inches deep and 2 1/2 ft tall, who have organized the bejeezus out of that meagre "desk", can never find a Sharpie when I need one?  I have a little black tray, the perfect size for all manner of pens, letter openers, highlighters, pretty rocks and strangely, a red rubber clown nose.  But can I find a permanent or a washable Sharpie, a black or a fluorescent Sharpie, or a Sharpie of any kind when I need one?

Actually, I'm not sure that anyone ever needs a Sharpie, but there are many times when one would be the perfect answer to a note-writing, list-making, rule-giving dilemma.

So, friends and family, it's Sharpie Amnesty Weekend.  You know where to put them.

We're hoping for an architect in the family

Guess what this is?

It's a sign for the bar in the fort that Julia built on Sunday morning after the sleepover.

Julia has a way of seeing things that is quite different from mere mortals, and she uses the things we see to make the atmosphere she wants.

At first, the fort was predictable:  afghans and chairs, and a space in the back for reading.  Then she chose to design a forested beach, running alongside the fort:

The discovery of a wine bottle given me by friends who know my affinity for cats led to the decision to have a bar.  and a bar of course, suggested a restaurant, with outside tables:

This accounts for the above admonition to respect sobriety.  I'm pretty sure it has no connection to Julia's experiences at our house.

There were no admonitions to avoid gluttony though, and here we see Julia at the Fort Restaurant and Bar.  Dave made the blueberry pancake breakfast.

That girl has an imagination, and more determination than we know what to do with

Lorna learns a lesson. Again.

I am not normally a creature of habit.

I am not normally a creature of habit.

I just wanted to make that clear.  Having said it however, I must admit to an ingrained foible or two.

When Morgan and Emily got married, they gave us the lush terry robes provided by their honeymoon retreat, and I, who had never tried a terry robe before, although I was familiar with flannel, cotton, silk and polyester, fell deeply in love.  I have worn that robe at least once a day every day when I was at home, since I got it.  And that is not  a habit, it is a practicality.

Since moving to our condo, I have developed another practicality or routine, not habit, for showering.  I put on my terry robe, and my old fit-flops, I go into the bathroom, open the shower door, turn on the water, shut the door and while I'm waiting for hot water, I drop my gown on the floor, back up towards the shower and step backwards out of my shoes and into the showerstall.  After I have my shower, I open the door, set out into my shoes and robe and voilà! I'm  on top of the world.

One day last week, I went into the shower routine, and found that the hot water was a while in coming.  We live on the ground floor, our hot water lives on the roof in a huge tub 13 stories away (green living), so I wasn't surprised.  Aha!  I said to myself, I can make good use of this time.  I got my coconut-scented body scrub and applied it to all the appropriate body parts.  Still no hot water, but lots of scrubby stuff all over me.  Eventually, I had no choice but to have a cold shower.  Having had little or no experience with this phenomenon, I emerged hot under the collar, but freezing pretty much everywhere else.  I was composed enough to get into my robe and fit-flops, composed enough to call the Super, but definitely uncomposed when he reminded me that, just as he'd said in the memo,  there'd be no hot water for 36 hours starting that morning.

Dave, my companion and helpmeet, got the memo.  And not that it matters in the least, but Dave showered at 6 a.m., just before the 7 a.m. shut-off.  I wouldn't want him to think that had anything to do with the flaked tuna and slightly-underdone eggs on rye-toast I served for dinner.

That would smack of revenge.

I'm getting out my sparkly sneakers

I haven't talked very much about the volunteer work that I've been doing the last little while, and I think maybe I should at least mention it, since I'm going to ask you to think about doing something.

I'm a regional director with a Canadian national organization called PFLAG Canada, and the reason I wanted to mention it is to remind you that there will be all kinds of Pride events going on across Canada and the U.S. all this month and over the summer.

If you have the opportunity, please support these events, particularly the Pride Parades.  Having been in a few, I have to tell you that the interplay, the response, with the spectators touches everyone who marches.  And you'll be amazed at the diversity of this community within your broad community.

Be an ally.  And watch for me in Eastern Ontario.

 

Things to do with toddlers

• play tickling games
• let them wear your shoes
• be the first to give them an ice cream cone, then just sit back and marvel
• hide their special bear (once only)
• leave their special bear in a doll stroller in a store you forgot you went to (practice aplogizing)
• pretend you're going to cut them off when they run straight at you, then zig, then zag
• swoop them up when they've miscalculated the distance between the curb and their nose
• let them write over the side of your car with a pointy rock
• tell them they're the smartest, prettiest, darlingest kid when their cousins are nowhere nearby
• let them kick you repeatedly in the chest while you are simultaneously changing their diaper and murmuring, "Gently, gently"
• buy them special treats that come in packs whose labels fall off and make up games to guess if they're the Strawberry Toddlerbits or the Cheesy ones
• listen over and over to The Noisy Kitty book which has only one meow sound
• make them special dinners which they hate, then give them peanut butter toast
• remember to wipe off the diaper cream left on your chin when you played "Cream for you, cream for me"
• try not to be jealous when they learn how to say "Dave"
• tell them that pullalong turtle is so the best toy ever, so you get value for your $7.99
• encourage their love of books; you can always buy another one if it turns out that the whole last chapter of a mystery is missing
• find a special place on the neck where only you kiss them
• be prepared to love them just as ferociously when they get to be 6, 8 or 15.

Somewhere it reigns

How does it happen that I am awake and intent on writing at 12:10 in the morning?  Doesn't the rest of my body know that my brain and at least 8 of my fingers are in total rebellion against sleep?  In a perfect world, if the majority of your functioning parts wanted to sleep, the brain would  say perkily and good-naturedly "OK then, I'll just zone out." 

I know it's possible.  It's a reality for some people.  Like Dave, for example.  He says something like, "I'm going to bed now...", he takes off his clothes, arranges his pillows and actually just sleeps after 15 or so breaths.  

I know it's impossible for me.  How many nights of my life have I closed my eyes, squirmed around a bit and known, without the slightest uncertainty, that The Brain is going to be re-running something that happened today or previewing a coming attraction?  The white noise machine, which also has 13 other nature-driven sounds, will burble away, but after an hour, my mind will still be rambling, imaginary rashes will attack my wrists, I'll start to crave frozen yoghurt or I'll zombie-like turn on Law & Order.

The really sad part of this is that creativity obviously can sleep through the most fevered pounding at the keyboard.  Fatuousness crawls out from its hiding place, spelling gets really, realy hard and nothing can convince me that I won't have an amusing post if I just keep writing.

I actually have pink lemonade flavoured frozen yoghurt, Law & Order is on TV somewhere and the battle for good and evil can wait for another day to be chronicled. 

Sanity rains.

6? candles

On my children's birthdays, I always have a few nostalgic moments remembering the actual day when they were born (or in Chris's case, adopted)---who was around, how did I feel, what scared me, what brought me joy.  On my own birthday, I always think of my mother, and what it must have been like for her.

I was born in England, in wartime; my mother was in her early twenties, living with her family, my father somewhere in Europe cowboying around on a motorcycle as a dispatch rider.  Mum always told me that she sat under a tree in the yard waiting for me and that she was too inexperienced and purposely unaware of the reality to be scared.  It never occurred to me to talk to my aunts or uncles about that day---for one thing they were always telling me stories about how I ate all their egg and butter rations, so I was careful to let them know I was grateful.  And I still am.

I do wish my mother had talked more about that time, but I do understand.  I told my kids funny stories about my first days with them, but I had good care, and there were no bombs around.  My big regret, and I really didn't feel it until my children starting having children, is to have lost the closeness I must have had with my grandmother, who was running a house, caring for and worrying about her own children and minding me while my mother went back to work.

Our lives don't run textbook-style for so many reasons, and I wouldn't change much of mine, but I do wish I'd recognized, years later, when we were back in Canada, and Nanny and Papa came to visit, that I was seeing seomeone who'd cared for me every day for the first 3 and a half years of my life.

Nanny and Papa

4 generations starting with Mum

 

 

As I said, birthdays bring out the nostalgia in me. 

Lorna and Willie, on the road again

I just spent almost a week away from home, attending a conference and visiting with my brother Sean and my sister Kathy.  I made some good friends at the conference, saw more rain than I liked and rediscovered my joy in the road.  All things reasonable for a granny of a certain age and dignity.

What I did that was apparently outré for said granny, was grab a hunk of hair that kept blowing in my eyes while I was driving, and run a braid down the side of my face.  It did the job of keeping my hair out of my eyes and I soon forgot about it as I cranked up the volume of the cool people I had singing on my memory stick. 

As is my wont when on a summer road trip, I went into Timmy's to get iced coffee. It was nice in there, but there was a long line-up and I  started to feel antsy. I decided to hang in, but soon I could sense the huffiness of someone tsking-tsking behind me, who finally said to her mother, "Isn't that lady too old for braids?"

The mother was mortified, and while I felt sympathetic, I immediately decided to investigate how many other ways I can braid my hair and whether or not it is illegal to share, inadvertently, a cup of iced coffee  by way of drizzling it over the head of the sharee.