A conundrum wrapped in an enigma

One of us has gone mad.  It's either the Dell laptop or me.

I have used the Google calendar since Google offered it, and the calendar on Outlook before that, and always considered myself pretty clever for having discovered the efficiency of electronic calendars and reminders.

Before them, I used a PDA, and before that, a Daytimer.  Was there a time before that?  I don't know but I do know that I always used to be able to keep my appointments in order.

Of course, if the one who's gone mad is me, that last statement may not be true at all, and maybe I was always late or absent.  Or early.

Not too long ago, I went to an event only to find that I was there a week too soon, and I hate to appear eager; last night, I would have been alone at a dinner-with-friends if I'd slavishly followed the reminder Google sent me about a dinner that, it turns out, is tonight.  Dell or me?

I learned to touch-type in school, against my wishes and inclination, but once I was into key-boarding, I was glad of it and could just open the sluices and write paragraphs at a time in the knowledge that my fingers would do what my eyes needn't do.  Now my fingers do some quirky things, which I think is appropriate for fingers of that age, but my Dell laptop actually stops producing in straight lines and goes back to some earlier place in my narrative and inserts new stuff in stuff I thought I was finished with.  Me or Dell?

Actually, it doesn't matter.  It's just one more thing to be cranky about.

The Spindillyrushinghams in Wonderland

The building we live in has a common room.   It used to be called the "party" room, but somebody thought "party" room implied something about our building community that wasn't fitting.

Saturday, we used the common room for a birthday party for Emma.  Some of its highlights:

• Sarah and Bruce and Julia, immediate family of the birthday girl, put together an amazing Alice in Wonderland-themed event.  At the door, the 16 girls ate a cookie with Eat Me written in icing, entered the room through a tunnel designed as the Rabbit Hole, were met by the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and Alice herself, and painted their own tea cups and saucers, decorated their tea-party hats with birds, stars, flowers, butterflies, ribbon and other glam bits; they played croquet with flamingo mallets and hedgehog balls, pinned the grin on the Cheshire Cat, sat at a tea table with their Drink Me concoctions in their own tea cups and ate chocolate cupcakes decorated with portraits of the Cheshire Cat done in various candy media.  It was fun, amazing, chaotic and quite wonderful.

Some of the behind the scenes mayhem:

• With Robyn, our almost 2 year-old, running around while we set up the room, we made a kajillion giant fold, tear, fluff flowers out of whole sheets of coloured tissue paper, six per flower.  Robyn helped.  Oh, how she helped!
• One by one, as we discovered we needed them, we carried dishes of various sizes and purposes, drinks of various provenance for the mums and dads, tablecloths of various sizes, from our apartment to the common room, which luckily is exactly 8 adult steps, but unluckily requires opening 3 doors.  
• Morgan and I stuck 48 toothpicks into 48 mozzarella sticks, almost burned 48 vegetable samosas, and forgot to put the mini meatballs in the oven in time to serve them with the other items.  Robyn taste-tested everything.
• Bruce took studio-quality portraits of the girls in their teaparty hats, then we printed them to be inserted in frames with Alice on the side; we didn't have enough paper or ink to finish them all.  
• 8 out of 16 children hated at least one item on the menu; some actually plunked their frowns on all items, including the hand-decorated cupcakes.  
• Birthday girl got a little excited and refused out of hand to let anyone else play croquet until she'd cried herself through the four wickets, which Bruce had fashioned as beautiful big-as-a-kid playing cards.  No one except the adults paid any attention.
• Birthday gifts and loot bags sprung up all over the room.  Robyn showed she hadn't quite mastered the "birthday girl" thing.
• Bottles of beer and glasses of wine began to show up in the common room kitchen about the same time the noise reached its zenith.

And once the guests had left:

• Dave and Emily led everybody in getting our family dinner ready; we'd bought a wonderful prepared turkey; we buttered, sugared and baked squash and Em made an amazing potato and chive dish.
• Everybody over the age of 9 worked to deconstruct the Wonderland in the common room; Dave ran the vacuum for about half an hour; Robyn (and probably a few others) struggled to keep her eyes open while Julia sat with her to watch Thomas the Tank Engine.
• We ate the 7000 calorie chocolate cake Dave had made yesterday, we shooed all the family out, and now I'm sitting at the laptop, squeezed in between pots and pans we couldn't get in the dishwasher, drinking hot chocolate, gathering energy to put the stacking chairs back beside the "office", wondering where all the dish towels went, looking with puzzlement at baskets that used to play an important role in the house, played an equally important role in the tea party and now sit forlorn and empty waiting for my memory to kick in so that they can resume their useful and necessary place in our daily not-Wonderland life.
• And I think I forgot to mention that I fell asleep at 8:30 watching Turner Classic Movies, got my regular 4 hours of sleep in while on the couch, added two when Dave nudged me off to bed, and now imagine I'll be around to see the sunrise.

A great day, and we have the family's energy, Sarah's creativity and Bruce's handiwork and Emily's savviness with the kids to thank.  And don't think I'm going to forget it.  

All Bets are Off

Sometimes when I'm in the bus or the shower, I think about what I'd like to write the next time I post something.  Everything I'd planned on writing about has changed.

• the gloves, which I was going to describe in all their velvety goodness, and which I had tragically lost even before the first snowfall, were actually at the bottom of my eco-friendly shopping bag
• the person who battered me with her Christmas gifts on the bus, smiled sweetly, told me all about her shopping experience and offered me something candylike from a tin
• the photos I took of the front yard in the snow turned out to be depressing, not beautiful, cluttered as they were by park-building machinery
• the perfect set-up of lunch at my favourite bar the other day:  sparkling silver, snowy napkin, simmering soup, olive foccacia bread and white wine, didn't last because I slammed into the table while swooping to catch my e-reader before it landed on the lovely tiled floor

So I guess I won't write today.

Well laid plans gang aft aglay....

Today I gave myself a day of doing nothing.  What happens on a day of doing nothing is that you give your mind permission to wander and then spend the day fending off random thoughts about things you never normally let come near your grey matter.

I found myself in the bathtub, coffee, breakfast and book at my side, but with no glasses, so I spent the soak time wondering if I could write a post about how I had lemon poppyseed cookies for breakfast, and what that might say about how I had made a deal with God that I could take a long bath on Sunday mornings if I didn't really enjoy it.

That led me to realize, as I was not enjoying that hot water and citrussy-smelling bath foam, that in my zeal to multitask, I had actually cleaned and rolled up the bathmat before I got out of the water.  How to multitask your way to a broken neck, Lorna.

More doing nothing, including choosing a DVD to watch, really getting into it and then having to yank it out of the machine because the sound was entirely gone, replaced by a noise like chickens running over tinfoil.  I had to scramble to find something to do nothing about but I like to think I was successful, even though I dozed a bit.

Doing nothing was, predictably, satisfying until it tipped the scales to boring.  That's when dark chocolate with orange bits, wine and my e-reader came into play, and I spent the rest of the afternoon convincing myself that as little could be accomplished by that as I had intended in the first place.

Success left me flushed.  Or maybe that was the wine.

Short Story Long

Yesterday, I took a short trip to Brockville.  It isn't very far, and I was taking the highway route, instead of the friendlier, slower, saner backroads route we usually take.

The weather report called for cold, flurries and possible snow squalls, but as I left town, it was quite sunny.  In fact, I had to stop and take off my coat as the sun warmed the inside of the car.

Some combination of weather factors meant that there were white fluffy clouds, dark grey ones, sweeping grey portions of falling rain and some absolutely knockout dark-bluish clouds with fierce gold linings.  I sat back, listened to Tori Amos and prepared to enjoy my ride.

It was very nice, even though the same "Alert" light that has been on the dash for weeks now, with the knowledge of our car guy, was every bit as bright as those gold-lined clouds.  I made a few stops, tried on boots I couldn't afford, resisted the impulse to buy Dave very manly pyjamas he'd seldom wear, gave in to a few other impulses and arrived in Brockville well in advance of the time I expected to be there.  I don't use cruise control, but maybe I should look into it.

Having used some of the driving time to convince myself that I could find adequate food in places that aren't swish restaurants, I sought out a Boston Pizza.  Actually, I ran across a Boston Pizza---no seeking necessary.  After being ignored by three waitstaff and the manager, I decided to look elsewhere.  It was kind of funny: as I strode determinedly to the door, someone called out, "Don't go!"  It wasn't any of the four aforementioned people, not even someone from the kitchen. Some unknown, unseen but definitely loud couple were in mid-argument, and one of them was following me out the door.

My reason to be in Brockville was to hear Jeremy Diaz of Jer's Vision speak to a group of kids and parents about bullying in schools.  He does it very well, just enough humour, just enough pathos.  And he speaks from experience.  So that part of my evening went well, although I was a bit hungry.

Heading home, I had to get a big burly person to help me open the flap to the gas cap---I knew where it was, where the grip to pull the cable was, and I'd tried prying and banging, but I couldn't get that flap open.  Thanked bbp after just one try on his behalf, and filled my gas tank only to find that the car wouldn't start.  Took several deep breaths, tried again, splutter, flutter, go! and we were off to get me some dinner at Tim Hortons.  Found a parking place, parked and started into Tim's and noticed I was in a Permit Access space, and got back in the car to move it.  Not a splutter or a flutter, just silence.

What to do?  I of course ordered a double-double and a coconut cream doughnut and called Dave.  No, I didn't call Dave because my phone was in the car.  When I came back with the phone, my table had been cleared.  No biggie, I just ordered a bagel and a coffee and started looking for my CAA card.  Panic did not reign, but a general feeling of uneasiness was creeping into my life.

I went back to the car after wiping off the extra butter from my face and tentatively turned the key.  Lovely.  We were in business and I just knew I'd be fine if I didn't have to make any stops.  That was when I realized I'd left my coat in Timmy's---pulled up the emergency, left the car running and discovered my coat at the table right next to my e-reader.

I should have just got a room in Brockville.  Every oncoming headlight was like the beam of a giant spotlight, every truck on the road had a manic driver who hated grey-haired women drivers and passed on the right leaning on his horn, there were about 40 signs showing images of deer colliding with cars and I couldn't find a singer on my playlist who wasn't suffering from acute but musical depression.

I would have broken out my emergency Hershey dark chocolate with mint kisses except I couldn't open the bag with one hand.  Actually once I got home safely, I found I couldn't open that damn bag until I used scissors.

Today is so much better.

Procrastination...possibly a thing of beauty

Here it is Monday morning, and very soon, someone very tall is going to be at my door, ready to fix the crack in our ceiling.  Having a crack in your ceiling when you're on the ground floor of a 13-storey building is not exactly comforting, but I can get used to it.  What I don't think I can get used to is having my bedroom swathed in plastic.

I usually would put something like this in my calendar, prompt Google to remind me it's coming up, so that I would have envisioned what we might need from the bedroom, like clothes and earrings and books, and done something domestic about it.

"Prepping bedroom for tall guy" did not appear in my calendar, and now I'm going to have to wing it.

I hope I remember to pull out my workout gear, she said with something evil in mind.

How is life?

Today, Chris's birthday, and the apartment was a hive of activity.  No, it wasn't.  It was like a small apartment with ten people in it, balancing drinks, helping with the cooking, eating, cleaning up, tripping over kids, wrapping presents, giving and getting presents and trying to invent excuses why just one more piece of ice cream cake would be of benefit to all.  "And would it come with coffee?"

It wasn't chaos, it was just a family being a family, and it was lovely.

That all ended two hours ago, the first dishwasher load is done, all the bits and pieces are back in their places, and Dave has gone to sleep with the TV on.  I don't know why I find that so endearing, but I do.

I am over the anxiety that always comes over me when I have to cook for other people; I've mildly praised myself for having made roast beef, gravy, yorkshire pudding, some green and orange vegetables and been left only with potatoes; and I've moved on from wine to blood orange frizzante which is as delicious as it sounds, and am hoping to stay awake long enough to watch the episode of Castle that I recorded the other night.

Life is good.

number 346 in my interminable list of lists

Some new things I tried today:

• sleeping in (oh, all right, I know that's not really new, but it is lovely)
• adding crunchy pickles to my ham sandwich
• washing out plastic bags (I've resisted for years, but every once in a while, I get the urge to be good)
• drinking Coors light in a fairly grungy tavern
• watching a gypsy-rock band performing better and better until at song number 12, I was almost sorry to see them finish their gig
• mentally thanking the CBC for showcasing the amazing and energetic Slim Cessna's Auto Club, so that Dave and I got to see them live in the grungy bar with the Coors light, standing on chairs
• eating Jos Louis cakes at midnight on the street walking home (the first four words don't count as new things)

Catch-ups by the number

1. I can't believe how cavalier I've been about blogging lately.  A lot of it has to do with family and a lot with having had my laptop off to Dell for service, and had it come back almost unrecognizable.  Not their fault, by the way.  I think I was recognizing something that was never meant to be before I had it serviced.  My interactions with Facebook and Google + have been not so good either.  Not surprisingly my interactions with Dave have improved 63%.
2. Last weekend I was in Montreal with my daughter Emily to see The Civil Wars, about whom I can't say enough wonderful stuff.  Their opening act was a fantastic, energizing, innovative group called Milo Greene whose website just doesn't give them justice.  It was an amazing evening in so many ways.
3. Hallowe'en just slipped past me, which is the way I like it, but we did get some pretty cute photos, which I'll throw in at the bottom, so as not to break up my numbering system.
4. Except for 2 days, I've been pain-free and close to my previous level of agility and flexibility.  As I might have predicted, the two exceptional days seemed worse than anything since January, just because I'd been "normal", which surprisingly, I just spelled as "nirmak", thus nullifying my claim.
5. Dave and I fell in love with the new Hyundai Volester and spent an hour or so crawling all over it, discreetly (we hoped) drooling.  I was so taken with it that I didn't even shiver when Dave chose the orange one as his favourite.  Not shivering didn't earn me any points though.  Dave still thinks it's not a great idea to buy a new car, and of  course, part of its charm for me is that it's a new car.
6. Chris, our son, is coming home for his birthday next week.  We saw him briefly in September when I couldn't let my joy override my impulse to beg him to stop smoking again.  This time, I'm going to be a mind-my-own-business mum when I can pull it off.  
7. I fell for the all-media marketing of the Genie Bra two weeks ago.  There is something so comforting about their offer of "If you buy three bras, we'll send you six".  It wasn't so comforting to find that when I'd ordered two sets, which I saw as six bras, they sent me twelve.  No one needs twelve of any item of clothing, as far as I know, but I'd had to pay duty on all of them, and didn't hold out much hope of being able to recoup any of that, so I now have four white, four black and four beige of a very comfortable piece of underwear which seems to keeps its promise of washability.  Too much info?
8. I'v decided to make a major inroad in my fight against vanity, vanity, all is vanity by printing a "this is what 69 looks like" photo.  That will be followed by the changing of my name and address.

 

with a totally different objective, here is a link to the Halloween photos of some of my kids and grandkids.  The masks Julia and Bruce are wearing were made by them.