Fais dodo.....

I just had a nap before bedtime.  It's probably the scariest thing I've done in my golden years.  Cronedom, here I come.

Never a mohawk

It seems like once a decade, I buy myself a haircut that makes me look in the mirror and say, "who are you?", and I've started this decade relatively early.

It's not a bad haircut.  It actually flatters me if you see all 5 ft of me at once.  My last hairstyle was really a nice one; it worked well with my hair, but overwhelmed my face.  It was all about the hair.  Given the choice, I think I'd still choose this one, but now I don't know who I am.

I sort of look like someone who idolized Jane Fonda in the 90s, or maybe someone who  had an incident with her lint-shaver.  Wait, actually, and seriously, I think I look like someone who might be talked into wearing   long sparkly earrings in the daytime or who has some age-inappropriate shoes in her closet, someone who wanted all her life to be a writer but only made it to storyteller.  I could have written "Tangled" if I hadn't been relatively calm and happy that year.  

I wish I'd kept a collection of photos of those change-me-please haircuts, some of which I paid for, some I did myself and at least one I cried over, but I'll bet there's a pattern there that charts me in some way, like "Oh, feeling good about yourself?  Get your hair cut by someone you've never met."  or  "Feeling sorry for being so bitchy with your daughter?  Buy a home perm."

If I were really a writer, I should be able to make a book out of that. Chick-lit.

Technology: 420, Lorna: 1

One of my blogging friends, Lyndon, posts music every day.  I like his choices usually, and when I don't, he just blinks and accepts my disparaging comments, unless they're uber-disparaging.   We have never come to blows though.

There have been several really good outcomes from reading Lyndon.  I've bought music that I didn't know about, I've had coffee and delightful schmoozing at Chapters in Toronto with him and because I often want to listen to his post while both Dave and I are at our computers, within 4 feet of each other, I've gone through numerous kinds of earphones, none of which worked for me until I got these wonders that hook over my ears, and press against the exact space where I hear music best.

For years I daydreamed about having some sort of techy implant in my head that would play music for me when I pushed my tongue against my teeth.  These new earphones have the sound I imagined that implant would give me, and I didn't have to be operated on to get there.

I know someone is going to ask me what the name of these wonders is, but I'm listening to The Civil Wars right now and can't take time to check.  Oh wait, I can put the music on pause---I love technology but I'm undertrained.  The earphones are Sony's , they have no model name printed on them and they look like this:

And when I'm listening to music I love, I look like this:

If it's Thursday, this must be banal

Lately, I catch myself not wanting to do anything.  Or to put it more positively, I want to do nothing.

I don't want to keep the house clean (I do want it to be clean); I don't want to cook ( I do seem to want to eat, but lately I'd prefer it to be elsewhere); I don't want to read (I'm discovering that for the most part all of my books are like all of my other books); I  don't want to see people (but I'd probably be distressed if no one wanted to see me); I don't want to choose music (but I can stand it if someone else does); I don't want to watch TV (that's what happens when a series with Jonathan Rhys-Myers in it is over); I don't want to write (but I seem to want to share)

I also don't want to self-video myself being whiney even though I'm sorely tempted. 

Ben....merde alors

Well, last night I dreamt in French.  That doesn't happen to me often, and even less now that I'm not working in the Public Service, so it was a memorable event.  Sort of.

It was a really banal dream; just a usual format : me trying really hard to do something that is usually easy.  Last night it was buying a slip.  Yes, apparently I wanted one of those outdated (except in Victoria's Secret catalogues) items of lingerie.

Yes, this is VS today

But this is the slip that I wanted:

downloaded from Dollhouse Bette's

and I had forgotten the word in french for "lace".  You can see how that would complicate things for me.

Taking a page from Dave's Easy French Conversations, I said in French:  I am looking for something to wear under my clothes and it has to have very fine work done by artisans at the top and bottom.  And I prefer to have the top part and the bottom part the same colour as the middle.

All I got in return was staring of the verging-on-giggling kind.

I went everywhere, including Canadian Tire for some reason, but since I couldn't call up "dentelle" from the french-speaking part of my brain and my listeners couldn't get a picture of what I wanted from what I said, I just couldn't fine one.

When I woke up this morning, I was shouting "dentelle!  dentelle!"   Dave thought I was saying "Don't tell, don't tell" as we don't usually speak in french to each other in the morning.  I decided to leave it like that.

It always happens that way

After I wrote yesterday's post, about taking my snazzy shoes to Peterborough, I ended up today having to spend the day in bed.  I was really disappointed about it---the Pride Brunch and parade had been in my calendar since the end of May.  I guess I was tempting those beings who keep us from getting too excited, too self-righteous or too shoe-proud.

When I was younger, I remember calling in to work, claiming I was sick, when I really wanted to sparkle up my apartment before my parents came.  They called to say they couldn't make it after all; I said the right things but took out my frustration by kicking the kitchen floorboard and the long fork fell off the wall thingy where it was hanging and put a long scrape along my leg.  I know I deserved it, but I hated having to hobble in to work the next day, make a connection between "being sick" and having a huge bandage on my calf, while accepting everyone's sympathy.

And that's just the oldest of the many stories I could tell about how I always got what I deserved.

Wherein I seek your advice

Tomorrow, my sparkly sneakers get another outing---this time at the Peterborough Pride Parade.  The last time I wore them to walk in a Pride Parade, they let me down, but I've been working on rehabilitating them, and they're ready.  If only I could rehabilitate my legs as easily.

I've been having trouble with my various motor skills for months now, and, after all manner of tests,  have arrived at a place where my doctor thinks I may have fibromyalgia.  He's working on eliminating other possibilities as there's no testing for fibromyalgia apparently.

Some of the things I can no longer do, but think I should still be able to:

• jaywalk while a car is in the same block as me
• retreive MegaBlox from under the couch (without a partner)
• stand up while putting on my shoes
• carry the only carriable granddaughter for longer than a few minutes
• cross my legs without the help of my increasingly unwilling hands
• get out of bed in one motion, although my bedhead is as good as always
• rise gracefully from any sort of chair, sofa or bench
• sit gracefully on any of those
• fasten my own or anyone else's bracelets
• jump for joy
• be detected as drunk just by seeing me walk (haven't used this so far, but it is tempting)
• keep from lurching into my daughters when we walk together (they claim I was never able to)
• anything from The Joy of Sex
• dance till dawn

I'm kind of angry about all that, but at the same time, I've told so many people, so often, how strong and healthy I am, that I'm going to have to hide the anger and concentrate on things that don't take strong limbs.  Any suggestions?

Easing into Dodderation

Or should it be "Easing into Dodderance"?

I'm just doddering enough not to know the answer and not-doddering enough to ask the question.

I nailed this lesson

Contrary to the adage about not teaching old dogs new tricks, I've had an experience recently in which I learned about a lot of things:

• first, and foremost, I learned that getting maniacal about housework can lead to physical injury of the grisliest kind----I had one of my fingernails torn off down past the quick.  It was shocking and painful.
• then I learned that people with arthritic hands are not the best candidates for taking up cuticle clippers in aid of torn fingernails
• I proceeded to find out that mishandled cuticles can have a strong reaction to lemon juice, while trying to apply brown sugar and lemon juice to a piece of toast---total lack of judgment
• later in the day, I was reminded how bandaids applied to fingertips invariably get both filthy and shabby in about 60 seconds
• even later, after a visit to the nearby drugstore, the lesson was brought home to me that if you buy a package of faux nails with 12 different sizes, not one will fit you

One of these things is not like the other

 And most tellingly, I learned that it wasn't a good idea to glue a faux nail to my torn skin.  Live and learn; if I can do just one of those, I ought not to complain.

Passive revenge might be sweet

I have crickets on my patio.  A check on the internet leads me to think I have crickets in the house, as well, but except for one that came in through the patio door, and therefore doesn't count as an intruder, I haven't any evidence that they're inside.

Crickets are noisy little crispy animals.  They chatter (males only apparently) incessantly.  I used to find that charming.  I am less charmed these days.  My other neighbours with the same ground-floor configuration as ours are happily unaware of, or even more happily unburdened by, crickets, which seems totally unfair and even more totally unlikely.

Every evening around 6:30, I'm going to sit outside with a glass of wine, until I hear one of my neighbours run screaming from the house, yelling, "Crickets!  There are crickets!"  I will smile understandingly and continue to turn the volume up on my MP3 player, until I hit 11. 

Not Miss Chatelaine...sorry kd lang

I am a tidy person.  I am houseproud, in a calm sort of way.  Yes, my children, I think I can work my way cautiously, and shamefacedly, to calm houseproud.  For one thing, in spite of our innate friendliness, we seldom have anyone in the house that doesn't already love us.

Sometimes, however,and let's pretend it was today, I bang smack up against the fact that I'm not really a good cleaner.  Dave is the cleaner, the meticulous details-oriented guy who doesn't just line things up under the sink, but pulls everything out, cleans the shelf, and puts things back neatly.  I would so admire that if he wasn't tempted to do it alphabetically, or by size and colour.

Where I'm sitting now, I can see shiny baseboards in the kitchen and I am content, nay ecstatic, that both the inside and the outside of my dishwasher are pristine white.  Usually, I'm a maintainer, not a full-out conscience-ridden scrubber, but the other day when Robyn was here, I thought it might be fun to have a picnic in the kitchen.  When I got down to that level, and came face-first with the baseboards, it was all I could do not to scoop Robyn up in her red bib and run screaming to the door.  And had I made it to the door, I would have had to turn myself in to the Children's Aid.

We had our dinner on my clean, eye-levelish, kitchen counter, which I keep shiny because it's so visible, and I vowed that I'd make a major change in my housekeeping habits.

That was two days ago, and in the interim, I had to see a movie, visit my fave bar, touch all the cosmetics at Shoppers Drugmart and do a whole lot of reading.

This morning, I got busy with many of the tools I have around here for Dave to use, put on some of my favourite tunes, donned my only housecleaning clothes and waded in.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it was humbling.  And it played hell with my nailpolish.

Homer and Lorna have DEEP thoughts

I always thought that when I grew up, I would be someone like Albert Schweitzer, or a fighter pilot; I dreamt that I was Tarzan, and was always saving someone from horrible things that happened in the jungle right next to Calgary, where I grew up.

I had no intention of being anything traditional, unless I could be in charge---like Head Librarian or Museum Curator.  Or maybe assistant to Madame Curie.

When I did grow up, I was pretty ordinary: teacher, government employee, wife, mother, drug store minion, telephone service representative and did I mention government employee?  But I still had within me that urge to be non-conventional.  I still dream that I'm Tarzan, or some woman in uniform who's miraculously in the right place at the right time, with the right eighteen-wheeler driving over the desert, the mountains, the ice, whatever, to deliver people who are being oppressed to other brave women in uniform.


It used to sadden me that I hadn't achieved something BIG, something unusual, something that would make other people want my autograph.  Probably some part of me still thinks that could happen.

Now what saddens me is that I didn't take even more joy than I did in the life I've had.

When do we get it right?