Dave and I are sharing a computer for the first time in about 3 years, and I find I don't quite know how to do that.
We're polite, respectful and caring people, and I know that working out how to share anything should be a cinch, but in actuality, we've both changed the amount of time we spend doing volunteer work, checking friends on Facebook and Google Plus, playing games (only one of us, but still) and googling stuff. Our expectations and our needs don't seem to fit one PC.
For example, I'm feeling somewhat at ease right now because Dave is watching the World Series and I know that he's not grinding his teeth waiting to be in this chair (which strangely enough is more ergonomically sound than the counter stool I usually use). Granted, he probably never grinds his teeth over the fact that I'm using his computer. I only fear that he might.
I haven't really slipped to my knees for this, although I considered it:
Dear Dell Almighty, please do not delay working on my sweet laptop once she arrives. Fix her good and send her back. The World Series only lasts so long.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Me, Joelle and Humpty Dumpty
 |
| I know I look sad, but we were all delighted with this beauty. |
Almost our granddaughter: Joelle is the second daughter of one of the people we're closest to.
When our daughter Emily, who's now in her early 30's, was 6 months old or so, we were lucky enough to hire a young Sri Lankan woman to come to our house, with her children, to look after Em while I went back to work. Dayani, her husband and children became family, and have stayed that way ever since, through family cataclysms and family wonders.
One of the wonders, the baby pictured with me, is the sweetest-tempered, biggest-haired baby ever, and as Dayani's family always cherished Emily, and therefore us, we cherish her and all her family.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Exhilaration!
Today, for the first time since early in January, I woke up pain-free. I don't know what I did or didn't do to arrive at this juncture, but it was exciting.
So today, for the first time since early in January, I went down to the gym in our building. I took it easy: some stretching, 10 minutes at level one on the elliptical cross-trainer, 3 reps for my toneless arms, and lots of water. All to the accompaniment of Leahy, the best celtic-rock workout musicians in the world.
Heaven!
And, I fear, Hell.
So today, for the first time since early in January, I went down to the gym in our building. I took it easy: some stretching, 10 minutes at level one on the elliptical cross-trainer, 3 reps for my toneless arms, and lots of water. All to the accompaniment of Leahy, the best celtic-rock workout musicians in the world.
Heaven!
And, I fear, Hell.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
If it hurts, it must be morning
SOME THINGS YOU MAY WANT TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE YOU GET OLD:
- are you going to go for fashionable or practical?
- does the physical outrank the emotional?
- does the emotional outrank everything you thought you knew about normal?
- what are you going to do with the bikes, in-line skates, thigh-high boots and blue eyeliner?
- does hair really matter?
- do you love dance more than you crave dignity?
- are you ready for sales assistants to call you "dear"?
- can you bear it if your fingertips get broader than the keys on your smart phone?
- if you wake up at 3 a.m., do you make coffee because it's so early or pour wine because it's so late?
- are Birkenstocks really a tool of the devil?
- what if you can't dye your eyebrows to match your new haircolour?
- is swooshy the new sexy?
Oh, the list could go on, but there's only so much pain I can handle at once...
Friday, 7 October 2011
A vagrant thought entered my head a minute ago
The first scent I ever remember wearing was Evening in Paris. It belonged to my mother, and came in a cobalt blue bottle. She kept the bottle on a shelf in the bathroom, and I couldn't resist trying it; then I couldn't resist showing her I had dabbed it behind my ears, and it became less available. I thought the name was very evocative, even though I knew nothing about how Paris smelled in the evening.
When I was 14 or so, someone gave me Chantilly, which put me off scent for a while because it was so spicy-girly. A woman who aspired to spend time with Albert Schweitzer really needed something more subtle, but it wasn't until I started working at the local drug store that I had any leads as to what might be compatible with my aspirations.
I went through every brand, every label and every strength of scent while I worked there. I sold scent by the ton. People would always look at my white jacket and assume I knew what I was talking about, and because I read all the promotional material in the same way that I read the backs of cereal boxes, I appeared to know my stuff. Although I had access to the tester for Chanel No. 5, I chose Woodhue, which I'm sure couldn't be found now. It had, surprisingly, a woodsy scent that I thought would appeal to the more manly of the men I was interested in. The only effect I can remember it having is that it made my dad sneeze.
You might think that I would have lost faith in the ability of scent to attract; I know I could never find myself in the "Which Scent is for You?" articles in Seventeen magazine. They of course tended to be girlish and subdued, which I didn't really feel was the real me.
I kept experimenting; I used scent, I read about scent, and people gifted me with it, but I can't remember anything that was important to me in my 20's; in my early 30's I was all about patchouli, which was infinitely better than the natural body odour being chosen by some of my friends, and by the time I was 33, I had fortuitously found a scent that worked really well for me.
It was an inexpensive line by Revlon called Ciara, and I wore it for years. I didn't just wear it actually, it sort of floated around me in a little cloud that my friends and family could always identify as "me". I loved it that people claimed they knew how long I had been out of the office by the intensity of my scent left behind. I used all the versions of Ciara: the soap, the bath foam, the talc, the cologne, the perfume, and no one, NO ONE, ever said anything disparaging about it or about me that I ever knew.
However, I worked in Human Resources jobs, and we were sensitive people. We realized that there were some people whose sensitivity to scent (or its chemical compounds) made them miserable, so I stopped wearing scent to work. After a particularly jarring episode at the theatre where my seat mate complained about "the poison in the air" and reached over to silence my bracelets while I was clapping, I kind of eased off the scent---the bracelets stayed.
By then, every doctor's office had signs requesting you to be scent-free, the busses had little discreet signs about respecting others nearby, and I had resorted to rubbing coconut body balm behind my ears when I went out to do something social.
Then, the other day, Google News or one of the news services had an article about Ciara Somebody---a crunk singer whose body makes you forget you hate crunk, and whoosh!!! I remembered how good I used to smell. How I would squirt Ciara into the air in front of me and walk through it, then do it again and walk backwards, and it didn't smell like Ciara, it smelled like me. And how I loved it, and how I loved that my kids could find me either by the bracelets or the scent, and that Dave took my scented handkerchief when he went on a trip and I really, really miss it.
When I was 14 or so, someone gave me Chantilly, which put me off scent for a while because it was so spicy-girly. A woman who aspired to spend time with Albert Schweitzer really needed something more subtle, but it wasn't until I started working at the local drug store that I had any leads as to what might be compatible with my aspirations.
I went through every brand, every label and every strength of scent while I worked there. I sold scent by the ton. People would always look at my white jacket and assume I knew what I was talking about, and because I read all the promotional material in the same way that I read the backs of cereal boxes, I appeared to know my stuff. Although I had access to the tester for Chanel No. 5, I chose Woodhue, which I'm sure couldn't be found now. It had, surprisingly, a woodsy scent that I thought would appeal to the more manly of the men I was interested in. The only effect I can remember it having is that it made my dad sneeze.
You might think that I would have lost faith in the ability of scent to attract; I know I could never find myself in the "Which Scent is for You?" articles in Seventeen magazine. They of course tended to be girlish and subdued, which I didn't really feel was the real me.
I kept experimenting; I used scent, I read about scent, and people gifted me with it, but I can't remember anything that was important to me in my 20's; in my early 30's I was all about patchouli, which was infinitely better than the natural body odour being chosen by some of my friends, and by the time I was 33, I had fortuitously found a scent that worked really well for me.
However, I worked in Human Resources jobs, and we were sensitive people. We realized that there were some people whose sensitivity to scent (or its chemical compounds) made them miserable, so I stopped wearing scent to work. After a particularly jarring episode at the theatre where my seat mate complained about "the poison in the air" and reached over to silence my bracelets while I was clapping, I kind of eased off the scent---the bracelets stayed.
By then, every doctor's office had signs requesting you to be scent-free, the busses had little discreet signs about respecting others nearby, and I had resorted to rubbing coconut body balm behind my ears when I went out to do something social.
Then, the other day, Google News or one of the news services had an article about Ciara Somebody---a crunk singer whose body makes you forget you hate crunk, and whoosh!!! I remembered how good I used to smell. How I would squirt Ciara into the air in front of me and walk through it, then do it again and walk backwards, and it didn't smell like Ciara, it smelled like me. And how I loved it, and how I loved that my kids could find me either by the bracelets or the scent, and that Dave took my scented handkerchief when he went on a trip and I really, really miss it.
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Tables Turned...or something close
The Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre is a really nice venue, and last Thursday night, I was there with some of my family to see a presentation of Peking Opera in which a friend of my daughter was very involved.
The room was set up with small round tables, lit by candles in glass jars, and 4 chairs to a table; we arrived in time to get two tables near the back, which we thought would be good as the stage isn't very raised, and we had a 7 year old and a 9 year old, who might be able to stand up if the sight lines were poor. This was both fortuitous and non-fortuitous. Non-fortuitous because as the crowd increased, management put in single chairs against the wall, meaning that the girls couldn't stand.
It was fortuitous, but only for me, because it meant that we could have an "event" without being observed by everybody in the place.
The Event:
The weather was hot and muggy that day and hadn't cleared by showtime. The room was crowded, which was great for the success of the event, but meant that everyone was steaming.
Luckily, the program had been printed on heavy 8 x 11 cardboard, which people were using as fans, but unluckily for me, we'd decided not to take one for each person at our tables. As I got hotter, and my hairline got damper, I decided I would use the cotton jacket I had brought with me as a towel to discreetly mop myself off.
I reached behind me to get it from the back of the chair, then noticed it was on the floor. I stood up, and in a sequence that could have come straight out of a silent movie, bent over, lost my balance and careened into the chair which gave me no support but instead folded up. I tried to catch myself but turned and landed extended and flat on the floor. laughing and winded, the folded chair securely in my arms and covering me like a shield. "Oh my God," I prayed, " just let me lie here till the show's over. I won't move." No such luck, of course.
People from our immediate area, raised me up, ungainly, unsteady and still laughing like a maniac, and helped me back to my now unfolded chair at the table where my glass of wine seemed to be bathed in neon light. Maybe that was just me. I wasn't hurt, just bruised, and the ruckus didn't last long, but I was wearing sequins, so I was probably noticeable to a few.
I felt so bad for my family, whose dignity far outshone mine, and especially for Sarah who kept sweetly urging me to sit straight in my chair. They are a stoic bunch, but they've had a fair amount of experience what with my falling out of the floaty tube on the Winding River at Canada's Wonderland one summer, and the graceless smashes into pedestrians that I've had while walking on downtown sidewalks with my daughters.
If only my kids weren't so graceful, beautiful and able to walk straight lines, I wouldn't have been so distraught. It's hard mothering your mother. I appreciate their sterling efforts and hereby forgive them for every public temper tantrum, for cursing on public transport and for screaming at each other in the car before they became so mannered.
 |
| William Lau (the Ottawa Citizen) |
The room was set up with small round tables, lit by candles in glass jars, and 4 chairs to a table; we arrived in time to get two tables near the back, which we thought would be good as the stage isn't very raised, and we had a 7 year old and a 9 year old, who might be able to stand up if the sight lines were poor. This was both fortuitous and non-fortuitous. Non-fortuitous because as the crowd increased, management put in single chairs against the wall, meaning that the girls couldn't stand.
It was fortuitous, but only for me, because it meant that we could have an "event" without being observed by everybody in the place.
The Event:
The weather was hot and muggy that day and hadn't cleared by showtime. The room was crowded, which was great for the success of the event, but meant that everyone was steaming.
Luckily, the program had been printed on heavy 8 x 11 cardboard, which people were using as fans, but unluckily for me, we'd decided not to take one for each person at our tables. As I got hotter, and my hairline got damper, I decided I would use the cotton jacket I had brought with me as a towel to discreetly mop myself off.
I reached behind me to get it from the back of the chair, then noticed it was on the floor. I stood up, and in a sequence that could have come straight out of a silent movie, bent over, lost my balance and careened into the chair which gave me no support but instead folded up. I tried to catch myself but turned and landed extended and flat on the floor. laughing and winded, the folded chair securely in my arms and covering me like a shield. "Oh my God," I prayed, " just let me lie here till the show's over. I won't move." No such luck, of course.
People from our immediate area, raised me up, ungainly, unsteady and still laughing like a maniac, and helped me back to my now unfolded chair at the table where my glass of wine seemed to be bathed in neon light. Maybe that was just me. I wasn't hurt, just bruised, and the ruckus didn't last long, but I was wearing sequins, so I was probably noticeable to a few.
I felt so bad for my family, whose dignity far outshone mine, and especially for Sarah who kept sweetly urging me to sit straight in my chair. They are a stoic bunch, but they've had a fair amount of experience what with my falling out of the floaty tube on the Winding River at Canada's Wonderland one summer, and the graceless smashes into pedestrians that I've had while walking on downtown sidewalks with my daughters.
If only my kids weren't so graceful, beautiful and able to walk straight lines, I wouldn't have been so distraught. It's hard mothering your mother. I appreciate their sterling efforts and hereby forgive them for every public temper tantrum, for cursing on public transport and for screaming at each other in the car before they became so mannered.
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