Lorna in Wonderland

Subterfuge

2012-02-08T22:40:00.002-06:00

Damn, tonight I cut my hair, still wearing the clothes I'd chosen to wear out to dinner. I just know I'm going to regret this. And I'm going to itch.

Today is my brother Pat's birthday. It's as hard to believe he's 65 as it is for me to believe that David and I have been together for 38 years. He swears retirement is not going to interrupt his cool way of life. And knowing him, I believe it.

Pat is the one in the glasses.

How to...101

2012-02-07T11:18:00.002-06:00

Here I am in the midst of something I would not only fail to recommend but would speak strongly against.

I've unbalanced my life. I hope it's temporary, and probably because I'm aware of it, it is.

Dave and I are going on holiday next week, our daughter Emily is testing for her somecolour belt at the dojo, our daughter Sarah has been away for 10 days and we haven't caught up yet, our son just started a new job, I took on a volunteer project that I'm totally capable of doing without a bead of sweat if I were in another timeframe and Dave has developed an addiction to online Solitaire.

Somewhere in there I'm hoping to get the fridge and the plants ready to be left alone for 3 weeks, find my last year's sandals, get my eyelashes tinted (well, you can't expect me to travel with eye make-up remover!), tone my upper arms and ensure my e-reader has lots of tasty content.

Oh yeah, check camera batteries, cut Dave's hair, return borrowed books, find industrial clippers for toenails, make soup for sick neighbour, see at least one of the plays at our regional theatre, catch up with my friends Evelyn, Mieke, Janine, Robert, and so on, make a ToDo list.

Hmmm, I've got seven days to do all that. Think I'll take a nice glass of lime cordial and read for an hour or so.

7 days makes 1 weak

2012-02-03T04:30:00.000-06:00

How did it get to be Friday again?

Of course, it's early, early Friday but Friday nonetheless and another week has zipped by.

Friday didn't used to be my counting-by day; that's just happened because Emily and Robyn stay over on Friday and it's probably the one constant in our lives these days. It's a warm and charming constant, something I look forward to every week, but it's a passive, rather than an active, event.

When I look back on our family life, I can see different timeframes, different counting-by days:

when I was living at home with my parents, the week started with Sunday mass, which coincidentally meant some kind of roasted meat later in the day. That just led us easily into Monday back-to-school, library day, Brownies, washing day and back to Saturday night Bonanza.
when I was a teenager, my week started with Saturday morning pouting and culminated with Friday night at the Teen Club and the stuff in between didn't seem to have any weight whatsoever.
as a young married person, and until I had children, the week started when we slept in on Sunday, had dinner with the family, work,work,work and Star Trek on Fridays. Saturday was the day for getting "the stuff" done, the washing, cleaning the car, catching up with the papers, rotating the library books and seeing a movie.
once I had kids, when they were babies, I sometimes didn't know what day of the week it was, but I knew the days of the week in German, and got to do my marketing in the village every day but Sunday; try anything else if your fridge is waist high and has no freezing compartment
kids in school, our week started on Saturday morning, when we would put our TV in the big square hall outside our bedroom so the kids could watch but still be heard if we weren't sleeping, and would end Friday night when the kids finished their hamburgers or pizza and looked forward to the no-schoolness of the weekend, Oh, and Star Trek (the ongoing series on Fridays)
ten years into our 4-person family, along comes Emily and our week revolves around whichever day we all get to sit down together for dinner
years of that
Dave and I retire, and in spite of our careful planning, our week now starts on any day whatsoever, and with the Condo Board, PFLAG Canada, our son's trucking schedule, our daughters' young-parents' schedule, our electronic pals, our sketchy naps and The Walking Dead, our week recycles itself when Dave makes Eggs Florentine.

Aqua fugit...

2012-01-30T06:19:00.002-06:00

My mum and dad were conscientious parents, who cared about our bones and skin and teeth. I swear. But I can never remember their saying, "Don't forget to drink lots of water...."

I struggle with drinking enough water every day. Really, it doesn't occur to me. I have had at least two cups of coffee every day of my life since I was twelve. Milk? I couldn't get enough of it. Orange juice was the delight of my life once I stopped drinking it from cans.

Water just isn't tasty to me. My kids, my friends, my grandchildren, my doctor---they all drink water as if it were the most natural thing imaginable. All my grandchildren have water bottles of various sizes and colours and don't leave home without them.

I too have a water bottle, although I would be hard-pressed to remember the last time I spontaneously picked it up. I have lovely glasses, some of which I bought especially to entice me to seek water at regular intervals. I have good intentions.
Is it a generational thing? A geographical one? Am I wired counteraquatically?

In Random Order, just for a change

2012-01-26T13:12:00.001-06:00

A few strange things that happened to me today, in random order:

A Rogers chocolate, wrapped in distinctive pink paper, which was on my bedside table when I went to sleep, was not there when I woke up. Was it Dave or am I sleep-eating?
My laptop is behaving like a brand-new Dell-certified XPS M1330, with no cursor wandering, no mysterious highlighting and with perfect decorum. No reason is discernible.
I found toothpaste on my bathroom mirror at a spot 2 feet over my head. No one else brushes teeth in that bathroom.
I unexpectedly found a photo of my father when he was in his 40s and suddenly felt 22 again.
I turned on a borrowed IPad and actually found the menu.
I voluntarily, and kind of dreamily, drank a glass of water when I got up
Jeans that left a nasty tummy crease yesterday are practically falling off my hips today.
I tried rolling a banana in a ground blend of sugar, chocolate and cinnamon. I didn't like it. (part two is the strange thing)

Autobiography, simplified

2012-01-25T18:27:00.002-06:00

Talking to a friend today, I was struck by her telling me that she is in Chapter 3 of her life. I couldn't resist telling her that I was still in the Prologue, but even while I was being a smart-ass, I was thinking that I could indeed break my life into several chapters.

The Unheeding: wherein I ate, drank and learned
The All-knowing: wherein I skipped through youth and adolescence
The Mistaken: wherein I hit the age of 22, panicked because I was not married yet à la Seventeen magazine, studied the prospects and chose the most needy
The Unheeding (2): wherein I did my best to live in a cocoon, exiting only to take care of my children and to buy or borrow books
The Blossoming: wherein I realized that I had some value, and determined not just to look for a better life, but to grab it, shake it silly and emerge a flashy butterfly
The Untrammelled Growing: wherein I repositioned myself, fell in love, built a fine relationship that favoured me, my partner, my children and practically anyone I came across, and relearned what joy was all about.

Actually, I'm still there. It's been a long stretch, but I think I can eke it out for a while yet.

Please don't read this blog---it's just for Dell

2012-01-23T10:05:00.001-06:00

seem to be inflicted with the probworried that b eautiful B Monday morning.

Thought I'd give my laptop one more chance, but it didn't get off to a good start. I'm w Luddite might have. ems alorried tht because the Dell guy is calling tomorrow my XPS M1330 will heal itself, leaving me and Dave looking like crabby elderly Luddites.
oard. Lnicide!ooking at the screen today makes me want to commit some sort of electro
I've never wanted to be a Luddite, and I think that excuses me right there, but I

Part of what makes this frustrating is that I learned to use the QWERTY keyboard when I was just a lass, and one of the prime requirements was that you not look at the keyb

I'm hoping that Dell finds this a compelling proof of this laptop's evil intent.

why I'm done (2)

2012-01-21T10:41:00.005-06:00

een having the same kind of trouble with her laptopatty sent me a note to tell me she's b.

Is it any wonder?

Why I'm Done

2012-01-19T20:50:00.000-06:00

I am feeling so justified! Dave decided he'd call Dell to tell them that I was having trouble with my machine, but before doing that, he took a day working at his stuff using the laptop. The cursor bounced around maniacally, large bits of text got highlighted and/or disappeared and he wasn't wearing my bracelets. Nor was he amused.

He spent hours this afternoon with a Dell guy, doing mysterious stuff, got a promise for a follow-up call from the Dg and rang off. He then sat down to write himself a note about what had happened, and WHOA! the cursor kept going walkabout, and now he's in a rare snit.

Since I started writing this, the cursor has jumped 8 times, taking bits of text and depositing them in random locations, so that I have to find, erase and retype. But I feel justified, and that's almost as satisfying as having a non-rabid keyboard.

One of the things I had to do was change the number of times I said the cursor had jumped. I started with 4.

Even though I feel justified, it's too frustrating to try to blog, and Dave isn't here for me to chase with a slipper, so I'm done.

How Robyn Rules

2012-01-14T21:54:00.000-06:00

Robyn, our youngest granddaughter will be 2 next week, and things are starting to change a bit. She's a go-ahead kid, walked early, talked early, chatters all the time and has quite a rich fantasy life. She talks and reads books to her "babies" and is quite independent.

Just how independent was demonstrated for us this morning. The night before, her sleepover night, we'd pulled out our table from in front of the window, opened up the leaves and put a tablecloth on because we had company and couldn't sit at the counter for dinner. On a whim, because we'd been talking about how she was just no longer a baby, Emily let her sit on a big chair at the table. Like a big girl.

This morning, she got in bed with me and Dave and her baby and started chatting. then she stopped chatting. Apparently her baby was hungry, and as she told us, she'd be right back. I kind of dozed until I heard a thump in the living room, and after that, I kind of ran. The thump I'd heard was a drawer falling out of the chest where we keep our napkins and tablecloths; the stuff I hadn't heard was Robyn moving the chairs, opening up the tablecloth and jumping up trying to spread it over the table.

It was so adorable, and so scary all at once.

Once home, Emily and Morgan took another step along the she's not a baby anymore road by taking the sides down off her crib, putting a guard rail up and giving her a big girl bed. They put her to bed, heard nothing but singing noises and finally, when the silence came, went in to see that she had been at her table drawing by nightlight and was now in the process of silently changing into her cat costume. But she was doing it in bed.

Clunk or clink?

2012-01-13T09:20:00.000-06:00

I have arrived at a major turning point in my life. But first the context.

For the last couple of months, I have been having a lot of trouble with my laptop. I'll be writing or viewing something, and the laptop will arbitrarily highlight a big chunk of text; sometimes, waiting for my thought processes to catch up, I find that the cursor has jumped to another place in the text and I've written something like: I have been written something like: having a lot of trouble with my laptop. It's not just annoying, it makes me do things like bonk my forehead on the counter.

I've been complaining about it to all kinds of people who are skeptical about it and to Dave who may be skeptical, but never says so, and we finally decided that he should try the keyboard to see if it happens for him. It didn't.

For some reason, I remembered a time when I first used a wireless mouse, and after all kinds of unprecedented screw-ups, took the advice of the frustrated IT guy trying to help me and removed my 30 or so bracelets. I hadn't done this before because they didn't come anywhere near the mouse, or in the present case, the keyboard. They were beneath the desk, kind of snuggled up against my waist. "Mysteries of science", I muttered grumpily while noticing the absolute perfect order in which my computer was working. But since I wasn't fond of the wireless mouse, the whole thing became a non-issue.

So my dilemma: ever since my kids were babies, I've worn upwards of 30 silver bracelets on my right arm---I like the look, I love the sound, and my kids could always find me. As I got older, arthritis pushed me to reduce the number to 10---still lovely to listen to, and perfect for teething grandchildren.

So do I give up my computer or my bracelets? Go for the essential or the beautiful?

Books in a Bunch, Knickers in a Twist

2012-01-12T15:03:00.001-06:00

I am now on the fifth book of the George R.R. Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire. This, I think, is an amazing accomplishment for someone who can't remember if Liberia is in the Caribbean or Africa, or neither, and whose children suffer being called by the names of their siblings, cousins and pets.

These books have a mammoth cast of characters, a whole entirely new hierarchical system, and a huge and diverse set of communities, not to mention the cultural quirks that go along with these. And yet, I persevere. And reasonably well.

About 10 years ago, I decided not to follow any more book series. Robertson Davies did it really well, P.D. James, Elizabeth George and Julia Spenser Churchill make compelling cases for ongoing stories about multi-layered individuals and their acquaintances. I keep up with them all, and added Charles Todd and a wonderful Canadian author, Louise Penny.

I never intended to add George R.R., just as I never intended watching A Game of Thrones on TV. Fifteen minutes into the first episode, I turned it off, repelled by what looked like gratuitous sex and violence, sometimes both at once. I felt pretty virtuous.

I can't explain how I got from there to the fifth book in the series.

Elderly wisdom

2012-01-09T08:15:00.001-06:00

Do you know how much damage you can do to a relatively clean mirror when you brush your teeth?

Try putting toothpaste on your electric toothbrush, right over the plastic cap, feeling it wriggle like a sonofabitch and smash into your teeth when you hit the "on" switch.

Then try laughing at yourself.

Just another day

2012-01-07T22:52:00.003-06:00

Today was our de-Christmasing day.

We fortified ourselves with cheesetoast and jam, OJ and in my case, coffee, as we knew it would be a slogger, then we did the usual bedmaking and dishwasher management, showered and dressed.

I had already lost my incentive by this time, but Dave was coming in the door with a red metal dolly carrying huge plastic bins filled with the stuff we had to move out of the way to find room for our Christmas glitter and shine, so although it was only hours from noon, I had a fortifying glass of wine and got to the business of identifying everything that had to be packed and re-consigned to our locker in the basement.

We had ziploc bags for the unbreakable stuff, and soon there was a bag for each of these whimsical categories:

Christmas trees of all sizes and links-to-reality
Santa Clauses of the traditional, slightly wonky and definitely scary types
stars of wood, metal, glass, sparkly unknown material, paper and tin
reindeers ( I know, weird, eh?) of various sizes, vintage and media
Mexican wood creche articles and straw we've had since 1975
snowglobes musical and not, some peopled, some animalled and some angelled
angels of the same range as the stars
sparkly and unsparkly candles
metallic ribbon and garlands of stars and snowflakes
globes, crystals and tinsel from the tree (which is about 3 ft tall and made from treelimbs of some black stuff and a kajillion tiny mirrors)

We also had a bag that was a catchall for things that don't, as hard as that is to imagine, fit in the above categories, a huge one for our wreath, and several Christmas bags full of Christmas bags.

We re-fortified ouselves with fried egg sandwiches and raw carrots and replaced all our ordinary year-round stuff; at least one of us had a nap, then we ordered Chinese and watched a Woody Allen movie.

Just another day.

Exploration, discovery and solution

2012-01-06T23:07:00.000-06:00

On New Year's Day, Dave and Robyn went for a walk.
I had thought I'd reeeeelax while they were gone, but couldn't resist going out after them. They had just decided not to go down the hill toward the creek, and can just be seen way, way down under a tree. This field is just beside us, and on the right you can see the creek that separates our building from the field. Foreground is a clubhouse used by people who bravely and otherwise use the creek for kayaking

Just before I took this photo, Dave had pulled Robyn back up to where I was, and just after, we went in search of rabbits, of which we found only tracks.

This walk was when I discovered that one of my new boots was letting snow in next to the zipper. The boots have great traction though, so I'm hoping Dave can strongarm or sweettalk Mikes Work Wearhouse into giving me another pair. Dave always tries sweettalk first, but he always seems to get what he wants when he's returning something, so I'll just stay home and try to reeelax while he's out doing that tomorrow.

Some thoughts I've tabled

2012-01-03T19:03:00.001-06:00

*This does not equal*	*This*	*But*
Timeout for toddlers (Emily, this is not about Robyn)	Grandmotherly pat on the bottom	Maybe there’s a reason for that; note to self: talk to The Kids
Senior’s bus pass	New Veloster	That’s obvious!
Cup of coffee made by Dave	Nirvana	But it’s close
Kobo Vox for Christmas	Kobo Touch for Christmas (for me)	And there’s a long story about that. It involves almost crying in Chapters
Being parents	Seeing your kids as parents	It can also involve crying in Chapters, or let’s face it, anywhere
Elderly folk involved in PDAs	Appropriate Behaviour as seen by under 40s	I don’t give a damn

1,2,3

2012-01-01T02:16:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I wrote a post, then tried to add it to Facebook. I failed. About 40 times. Several of my friends tried to post it for me and failed. I thank them all for their efforts, wipe away the tears of frustration and decide on a test to see if FB will ever accept my blogposts again. Please carry on.

Gifting my dad

2011-12-31T09:34:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was my dad's birthday, and although I think of him every day, I didn't realize, until this morning, that I hadn't given special "birthday" thought to him after all.

Growing up, we always used to despair on his birthday because it came so close to Christmas, and he was hard to buy for. He was a very family-oriented man, and didn't play golf until he'd retired, wasn't able to sail as we were living in land-bound Calgary where only the very well-to-do sailed, had no hobbies, was almost verboten from touching the family tools, and his most elegant clothes were from his Army uniform.

He loved the things we used to make in school: the toothbrush holder fashioned from a toilet paper roll, the handstitched bag for buttons, the paper chains, but as we passed 7 or so, we were impatient for real gifts to give him. Thank goodness, he did need a snow shovel, he loved getting coffee mugs, socks were always welcome and, like all of us, he was a reader, so there was some leeway, but two gifts within a week was taxing on our originality.

My dad didn't talk about his war experiences, but there were two things we knew about him that were linked to his overseas time: one, he had had every piece of mutton he ever intended to eat in his lifetime, and two, he had discovered figs when he was in Italy and would often tell us how he loved them, while munching on his fig newtons. That's why I thought I was such a genius when I saw, and bought for him, a string of dried figs. Before I wrapped them, I thought again of the pleasure in his voice when he talked about figs, and I was ecstatic.

Even though Dad was usually good at showing his appreciation, I could tell I'd fallen short of the mark. I didn't know there were any kind of figs but dried ones, and the figs in the package had already started to get kind of superdried. After I'd tasted one, as he shared the string with all of us, I could totally understand the underwhelment, even though I still had never eaten, or even seen, a fresh fig.

Many, many years later, when he was with-us-but-gone, because of a stroke, I was lucky enough to see him, as he'd been while he was young, really, really enjoying a fresh fig. And now, although I did forget that yesterday was his birthday, I felt a rush of love just thinking about this story.

Five Ha! moments

2011-12-27T03:12:00.003-06:00

10 p.m. Monday - Lorna goes to bed, thinking she'll read. Ha!
2 a.m. Tuesday - Dave comes to bed. Lorna thinks she'll go back to sleep. Ha!
3 a.m. - Lorna decides she's not falling asleep and gets up to do something useful about all the glitter ground into the floor since Christmas. Ha!
4:04 a.m. - Lorna finishes reading email, facebook and G+ entries and starts feeling peckish, which leads to consumption of a nutritious snack. Ha!
4:06 a.m. - Lorna decides, because she can, to memorialize an unmemorable moment. Ha! Ha!

Many ones (of the ways)....

2011-12-23T15:12:00.001-06:00

Who knows what's going to happen over the next few days, so I'm putting all my trivia in one place:

one of the ways it sucks to get old: this morning I cheerfully rolled wrinkle-smoother under my arms and deodorant on my face
one of the ways it's wonderful to get old: when I went into Bouclair, all the sales staff were wearing sequinned aprons, and when I asked if they sold them, no one even blinked
one of the ways it is wonderful growing old with Dave: he's making Cranberry Cream Cheese fudge, and I didn't have to ask
one of the ways it sucks to grow old with Dave: since I met him, I'm 30 lbs heavier---of course that took almost 38 years
one of the ways I've celebrated Christmas, and honoured anybody who reads here: I give a donation in your collective names to Children's Literacy.

Have a happy and safe holiday, and a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanuka, Happy Kwanza or Happy Tolerance of the Goings-on.

When is 3 not better than 1?

2011-12-22T05:40:00.002-06:00

I am all fingers this morning. I had decided to write a post using the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day, but after three shamefully ineffective attempts to cut and paste the bits I needed I decided that giving up that idea was better than throwing a cup of coffee at the wall.

I woke up this morning with a start---maybe that's why my fingers are in a state of rebellion. The "start" was caused by the realization that we haven't yet bought our turkey and if we did we'd have nowhere to put it. I'm afraid we may come to the place where we zip into Loblaw's at 10 to 6 on Saturday night to buy a fresh turkey which can languish on the patio until it's time for it to go into the oven. There are many advantages to a small condo, but turkey-management isn't one of them. We have room in the freezer for frozen spinach, raspberries, pizza, raisin bread and ice, but not for turkey; we have room in the fridge for 3 kinds of milk, OJ and various juices, a box of wine, some veggies and way too many bottles of jam, but not for turkey.

Oh well, it's better than the year we had 3 turkeys.

Dadadadada, I was born this way

2011-12-19T07:57:00.000-06:00

It's hard to imagine another December that has been as mild and snowfree as this one. Strangely, as December19th has arrived and there is just a dusting of snow on the ground, sure to be gone by noon, I find myself wondering why nostalgia for snow has suddenly hit me in my golden years.

I've spent Decembers where the snowbanks were higher than the people trying to get over them; where we couldn't get the garage door open because there was nowhere to put the snow piled in front of it; where even a down coat left you shivering for an hour after you got into the house; where you had to protect your face from the cold with a scarf that got ice-clad where you were breathing; I've had a 6 foot long stocking cap that I could pull down over my face, tuck into my neck and still have some left over to fly like a flag in the wind; I've owned every old or new-fangled feet warmer; the backs of my hands have cracked and bled starting in November and lasting until March. I can't count the number of times I've skidded into an intersection, honking my horn and simultaneously praying, or tried to remember if you drive into or against the skid on a hill.

How can I not be deliriously happy with this December weather?

Because we're not wired that way.

Really, I had the best of intentions

2011-12-15T23:18:00.001-06:00

Just this evening, I poured myself a very small orange juice, and suddenly got a picture of myself, pregnant with Emily, concerned about my and her nutrition, drinking whopping glasses of orange juice. With each swallow, I would pop in a handful of semisweet chocolate chips.

When Sarah was a cranky baby, which she seldom was, I sometimes wet her soother and dipped it in white sugar.

Chris hated drinking milk. In collusion with a doctor at the clinic I used, I let him drink Tang all the time. It was as unhealthy as it looked.

My dear children, please believe that I did these things in the absence of knowing better, not to ruin your lives. And I never do anything like that with your kids. Really.

A convoluted creative process

2011-12-15T11:12:00.001-06:00

Well, it finally happened. Dave and I have had THE talk.

I wasn't prepared. I came home from coffee with a friend, sat down to take my shoes off, and he was on me.

Dave: I just can't understand why you still wear high heels! The vanity value certainly can't outweigh the danger!
Lorna: splutter, gasp, wha?
Dave: Sweetheart, this is a really serious issue. What if you should fall off those shoes and break your hip?
Lorna (to self): I think I would have to play dead.
Dave: We'd both regret it,
Lorna (again to self): but you'd be right!
Lorna: I've worn high heels since I was 13 and I've fallen in them maybe 6 times in my life. That's 56 years of pretty good tottering.
Dave: Sweetheart, I don't think you should take this lightly. You have and can find lots of attractive shoes with flat heels. (overturns shoe and points out the difference in weight-bearing surface)
Lorna (to self) fifty-six years! 6 ankle-turns, come on!
Lorna: I only have 3 pairs of heels left, these which are about an inch and a half high, (scoffs), my shoes from Spain which are made of butter-coloured leather, and the ones I wore to Emily's wedding, which are pale blue and silver and sparkle even in the daytime!
Dave (very effectively) just looks at me.
Note to Emily: swing by the house there may be something you like
Note to Self: buy a shadowbox and display those wedding shoes somewhere.
Further Note to Self: put aside some shoe-shopping time in the spring.....

How I plan to save money for the holidays

2011-12-14T04:50:00.000-06:00

I once bought a lime green linen suit to wear to a job interview---for a job I really wanted. My wedding dress was a gorgeous rosy red. I wear orange and purple together.

So you can imagine the distress I feel when I go browsing my favourite stores and find every shade of grey dominating the racks. Even I, known for my gypsyish leanings, own a few pieces of clothing in grey, brown and even taupe, a couple of white shirts and the de rigeur black basics.

But really, even though Charlize Theron wears head to toe gold lamé for her Dior commercials, there isn't much out there where I shop that makes me want to get giddy in the change room. Not that that is a bad thing---I've made some spectacular decisions in change rooms at both extremes of fashion acceptance, but I can barely be tempted these days. What is the world coming to?

There are always consequences

2011-12-13T05:08:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I gave in to a surprising wish: I slept in.

I do sleep in from time to time, and don't think that is a big deal, but Sunday night, after a long day involving party preparation, no grandchildren visits, a kitchen disaster linked to our Christmas pot luck event in the condo, a realization that hits me annually that my singing voice really is gone, and the temporary loss of one of my sparkly party shoes, I decided that Monday was going to be the day for sleeping in as long as I felt like.

I turned over grumpily when Dave left to take the car in for some babying, and slept more or less soundly ("more", says Dave) until 1 p.m. It felt amazing and yet other-worldly when I got up and had breakfast in preparation for a babysitting gig later in the day. It felt even more amazing when I discovered that I wasn't needed as a sitter after all, and I could go back to bed. Which is what I did.

I finished re-reading one of my favourite books, I toyed with the TV remote but found nothing absolutely perfect, I started a new book on my e-reader, I dozed a bit. I decided not to get up, search out the Windex and get rid of the set of fingerprints all over the mirror. I continued to make a series of good decisions until I fell asleep around 10 p.m.

This morning I am not even a little bit riddled with guilt, but I did wake up at 4:40 a.m.

Stranded

2011-12-08T08:55:00.001-06:00

One of the things I have always liked about myself is that when I'm committed, I can be counted on. I meet deadlines, I deliver product, I keep appointments, I stick to common objectives.

At present, I am so overcommitted that you couldn't count on me for anything. I've been making appointments for 7 am or 11 pm; I've not just missed deadlines, I've ignored them entirely, and sadly, I can't even claim to have made choices about those things. I'm not liking myself.

One of my longtime and dear friends put a quote on Facebook that really made me think:

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
- William Arthur Ward

Right now, I am an aggressive pessimist/optimist/realist becalmed by the winds of discontent, indecision and apathy.

Thank God that for me and Scarlett O'Hara, tomorrow is another day.

You've been warned.....

2011-12-04T21:10:00.001-06:00

I know, I said there were no pictures of Emma's birthday party, but I was so wrong!

Check these out if you haven't already exceeded your cute quotient for the day.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108368389420479950423/EmmaS7thBirthdayParty?authkey=Gv1sRgCLWdjeKz6ur3BQ

I hope I learned my lesson

2011-12-01T22:52:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, I waxed poetic about a birthday party we'd had last weekend. I was feeling pretty smart about my role in the big family effort. Now I'm this close to beating myself up.

Can you believe that we took no photos? Not a photo of the rabbit hole, not of the dormouse-themed table, not of the girls painting teapots, not of the girls decorating their tea party hats, not of any member of the family, not of the cupcakes, not of the mountain of presents, not of the moms and dads, not of the surreptitious beer-sipping. No photo exists other than the ones Bruce took of the guests in their hats, not including the birthday girl or her sister, the Queen of Hearts in a dark brown wig.

How do you spell "lament"?

A conundrum wrapped in an enigma

2011-11-29T05:14:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-27T01:50:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-24T06:18:00.001-06:00

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....

2011-11-20T20:29:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-18T14:32:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-14T05:19:00.001-06:00

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?

2011-11-09T22:39:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-05T02:13:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-03T16:02:00.000-05:00

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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.

Heartfelt

2011-10-28T22:21:00.000-05:00

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.

Me, Joelle and Humpty Dumpty

2011-10-23T20:32:00.000-05:00

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.

Exhilaration!

2011-10-19T21:58:00.000-05:00

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.

If it hurts, it must be morning

2011-10-18T08:17:00.000-05:00

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...

A vagrant thought entered my head a minute ago

2011-10-07T15:55:00.000-05:00

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.

Tables Turned...or something close

2011-10-02T16:20:00.001-05:00

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.

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.

Fais dodo.....

2011-09-28T23:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-24T21:26:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-22T18:21:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-18T20:57:00.002-05:00

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

2011-09-17T21:46:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-16T11:44:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-13T11:53:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-08T08:44:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-07T09:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-04T10:48:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-01T20:55:00.000-05:00

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?

Anniversary, schmanniversary

2011-08-29T09:18:00.000-05:00

This morning, even before I made coffee, I realized I had missed another anniversary. Not our wedding. I missed that August 4th.

The anniversary I missed was my 7th year of blogging. I love blogging---occasionally I sit here, inspirationless, and think I'm done, but then I'm walking along the street and a blogworthy thing happens, and I'm back on track.

Blogging is like being the madame of a really pleasant place that's not a brothel. It's a place where people bring their own beverage, choose their own schedule and (I hope) leave with a smile.

Usually, on or around August 20th, I repost my starter-blog on the lost, broken, begrieved (there is so such a word) Lornainwonderlanddotnet.

Why should I break with tradition?

Starting a blog is pretty scary—if you start a blog in the ether and nobody reads it, is it there? As the non-funny person in my family, I’m always self-conscious writing about my life, worried that I’m just too sincere for myself, and in this case, that the comments will be more interesting than the musings. Still, it’s only a brave new world if you take chances. Lots of people I know are doing just that, taking chances—leaving their jobs, starting families, buying new techie toys, changing haircolours. I’ve done all those things over the course of my life—usually without realising that I was taking a chance until I was committed. Of course the haircolour one isn’t much of a commitment either way, and probably the one I’ll keep practicing till my dotage.

Speaking of dotage, a friend sent me a picture of her brand-new granddaughter with her wrinkled little new-baby feet prominently displayed. I realized that I have the perfect match for those feet, and it’s taken me 60 or so years to get them. I’d never thought of them as symbols of the circle of life before, and I’m going to try to block that image from my consciousness right now. I’d advise you to do the same. Blogging isn’t half as hard as working. I think I’ll stick with it for a while.

R-E-G-R-E-T(T), spell it for me, spell it for me

2011-08-28T16:34:00.002-05:00

Well, I walked the whole of the Pride Parade today---two PFLAG bracelets, 2 gambler-style cuff-holders in rainbow-coloured flowers, one 6-part rainbow bracelet of glass beads, white scarf with blue stars and my fly zipper completely open. Only the last was unintentional.

People I knew called out my name, wished me Happy Pride and gave me lovely, mutually-engaging hugs, but no one told me that the zipper on my blue jeans was exposing the turquoise underwear.

Maybe I look like that's my style.....

Troubles, tiny troubles

2011-08-26T08:44:00.000-05:00

I'm having a pretty nice life this week. But there have been a few disconcerting things:

I ate a crunchy apricot
I can't get out of my head a horribly racist ditty my mother taught me when I was a kid, and when a song about a "poor old Chinaman, his name was Chingchaluchalan" was just something you sang to the little guys if they were cranky
when Dave left for his Newfoundland holiday, he didn't come back even once for things he might have forgotten, and I was left, pathetically, standing by the door until about the time he got on the highway
I realized that the only potentially-dangerous shoes I have left are the towering sequinned blue wedge heels I wore to Emily's wedding
I remembered with a stunning crash that there will be no season première of The Tudors in September
none of my favourite bloggers got read and I felt only mildly guilty, but I know that Facebook is to blame
we're out of chocolate chips and I didn't even notice

What is the world coming to?

Catch me if you can

2011-08-22T19:52:00.002-05:00

Friday

5:15; wake up anxious about something---oh yeah, going away for the weekend, but everything is ready so I change clothes 3 times, and get going. I'm early but decide not to eat breakfast at home. Drive into town and walk about 4 blocks to get yummy cinnamon buns. Discover I've left my wallet in the car
7:30; decide to have breakfast somewhere else and then go for my bone density test; except for leaving my wallet behind on the car seat, it goes well; get my credit card eaten at the pay-your-parking machine
11:30; on the road, stop to grab lunch, drop half-full carton of coleslaw on my carseat and discover that although Dave never throws away a napkin, we have none in the car
4:00; miss the exit off the 401because it's on the right and I'm 3 lanes over to the left
6:15; finally arrive at hotel after perusing every street in Brampton, asking help from 4 differently-knowledged people and crying because Dave took the GPS with him on his trip

Saturday:

go swimming with Dave, Sarah and the girls, turn my silver bracelets to dingy bangles and miss the hotel breakfast
drive with Dave to the Eaton Centre, discover it's the Eglinton Centre, take the subway and just make it on time to the Eaton Centre to meet my friend Lyndon
drink frozen coconut mocha latté, brain-freeze, chat, tour the books at Chapters and take a totally shocked, slightly scared Lyndon to H & M where he assures me he has never gone before, even when I tell him it isn't just a girls' store
take my brother to dinner in a great place, order the ribs and discover that the ribs were taken from a resurrected dinosaur---they were HUGE; chat up the musician for whom nobody but us clapped
ensure that my brother gets the styrofoam boxes with the 6 left-over ribs---he ought to get through them before September

Sunday:

try to persuade Dave to get ready on time, but forget to do so an hour and a half before we leave to get Phoebe
go to Gay Day at Canada's Wonderland, sit at the booth with 10 or so charming volunteers until it starts raining, at which time we become 20 or 25 volunteers, all with wet feet
find out that the catering staff is over an hour out of sync with our needs for the dinner and learn how to staple skirts to display tables, how to holler until we get enough chairs, then cave and tell the rep from Wonderland Special Events that everyone has been wonderful. I did it with my fingers crossed and silently added, "everyone from PFLAG".
walked up to the stage to welcome the participants in French and had to be helped up by a 7-month pregnant newlywed
waited to eat just until the burgers and buns hit maximum dryness, but compensated by drinking a 1-liter glass of Coke
was absolutely bowled over by how Dave and Phoebe fit in, were helpful and got hugged by all kinds of people as we were leaving

Monday:

10:00 discovered, just as we were leaving town, that Chris, whom we haven't seen since last March, had just come home from his latest trip and zipped down to get in an hour or so with him; spent most of it unhumourously, pathetically, earnestly trying to get him to stop smoking again. Not the reunion I had in mind
5:00 got home; found Emily and Robyn waiting for us, then stood by while Robyn laughed and threw herself into Dave's arms
8:00 stopped pouting

Breathless? You bet!

School of hard noughts

2011-08-18T18:37:00.000-05:00

Today was a day of learning. I didn't intend it to be one; that's just how it played out. Here are some of the things I learned:

after you put the cream and sugar in your coffee cup it is imperative that you put coffee in the filter before you pour in the boiling water
after your second try at making a cup of coffee, it would probably be best to drink it. Leaving it in the kitchen while you do the washing is second-best. At best.
pineapple sticks, as lovely as they are, do not go well with Special K. Go figure.
after you try out several outfits, and choose one, remember to put your underwear on before you think you're ready to leave
if there's a thunderstorm warning, put the plants in the protected part of the patio; if you don't, when you go home, don't get hysterical when your fuschia appears to have gone missing; think about checking to see if it rolled down the hill to the path
don't trust yourself to not look when you go into clothing stores; don't push the limits by trying things on; do give yourself a chocolate croissant for buying nothing, even though, if you have to say so yourself, you looked pretty sassy
always believe little kids who are screaming at you when you're walking across an intersection under construction; stop for a few moments after the cement truck speeds around the corner
see if you can just let that big bag with the featherbed in it stay where Dave left it when he went to Toronto; who says feathers are light?
believe in your ability to eat no more than two toasted-coconut marshallows before dinner
if you're going away for the weekend, get real about how many pairs of earrings you need to pack; ditto for shoes

What's that thing about old b**ches and new tricks?

How Julia Lived up to her Genes

2011-08-14T20:01:00.001-05:00

Julia slept over with us last night, and it was a morning of fort-building; but an afternoon of trolling the Byward Market. We looked at everything, touched most of it and she made very careful decisions about what she was going to buy. The first thing she bought was a bracelet for Emma; it was made of wire shaped in the form of EMMA, and cost her more than a quarter of what she had to spend. I was pretty touched by that, and inclined to make her money go a little further than it might normally.

When she got home, besides her gift for Emma, she had bought:

a tiny glass cat (or a bear; none of us could really tell)
6 gladiolas for her mother
a pair of orangey dangly earrings that scrape her shoulder (well, she had to buy something to show she was thinking of her dad, however distressed he was going to be about 4 inches of gorgeous shells)
an orange ring
and some beautiful, yellow, white and orange beads which she turned into a lovely necklace at Sassy Bead.

I know how to help them grow up into lovely, caring, sparkly girls who can charm their dads on occasion.

Should I just get over myself?

2011-08-13T01:29:00.000-05:00

Ottawa is having a huge hoedown in my neighbourhood. I'm country-music tolerant bordering on enthusiastic, although I guess the Dixie Chicks don't do hoedowns in Canada, however I do take issue with the fact that the hoedown folks are parking their cars on the grass that belongs to our building, squeezing their SUVs into our fire lane and leaving beer accoutrements behind when they've finished parking.

The Bluesfest folks did none of the above, although their music has been louder since Bluesfest morphed into a 4-stage rock and roll fest.

I actually like the idea of having concerts and theatre in my neighbourhood; it's one of the reasons we chose to live so close to downtown. I could never understand the people who move into a neighbourhood where there's a fairground and complain that the fair is noisy and brings people onto their street. Come on!

But I don't think people should have their grass destroyed, or their safety endangered, or their environs littered with beer bottles. That just don't seem neighbourly.

Plant minder and general torturer

2011-08-09T19:52:00.001-05:00

It's cool today in Ottawa. Not cold, but cool, and raining, and my hibiscus is thrilled.

I have had this particular hibiscus since my mother died---she'd had a huge and beautiful one in her living room, and when I saw one at a florist that month, I had to have it.

I do have my mom's love for hibiscus, but alas, I do not have her ability to make them thrive. This one has been going through bouts of listlessness, yellow leaves and stalky growth, followed by frantic outbursts of gorgeous scarlet blossoms, which proudly hold their heads up for a day, then twist into yellowy-pink guilt-promoters waiting in the grass for me to acknowledge my failure.

Dave has been very solicitous of the hibiscus, and watched it both indoors and outdoors for signs of neglect or overwatering or drought, all of which I was able to provide. I had had visions of waiting till he'd gone to work, transplanting the whole pathetic thing into a larger pot with some rich soil, then cutting it back, but when I go on to envision his dismay, which will be followed by expressions of understanding and magnaminous support, I just can't do it.

Not only for his sake, but because understanding and support would just make my cup run over. Lately I haven't been as agile, mobile, or even as conscious as had been my habit, and he's had to be the grandchildren's best friend, the cook, the car minder, the potwasher, the outings planner and the get-up-in-the-night-to-get-me-water guy. Doesn't he get it----how that pounds all my guilt buttons?

And don't call me Shirley

2011-08-07T23:33:00.000-05:00

I've been re-re-re-reading Anne of Green Gables---it came free with my e-reader, and I started remembering how much I identified with Anne Shirley when I was a kid. I was always looking for scope for imagination, and I had galloping conversations about how I was affected by things around me. Unlike Anne Shirley, I kept them to myself. At least, that's my memory of it.

Last week, I was having lunch with some blogging friends and was telling them about the country school I was teaching in when I was 17. "Ah," they said to each other, "just like Aunt Shirley." I was surprised because my Aunt Shirley was a country school teacher too and I didn't know how they knew that. I only realized as I started to write this that they were saying Anne Shirley. I just kept babbling though, as I have been able to break through my early shyness and can keep up with any Shirley when it comes to stream-of-consciousness stuff.

These photos were taken after lunch, during some Masterlevel shopping in the Byward Market (AC was the photographer; Cuppa the co-conspirator):


Lorna and Cuppa shelter under Lorna's parasol

cuppa and lorna haggle over beads- we were in over our heads


Cuppa twirls her own parasol

All in all, we had a most glorious afternoon, and I was inspired to read Anne of Green Gables again, even though I only just now got the connection. The mind is a mysterious thing.

Regrets, I've had a few....

2011-08-07T03:53:00.001-05:00

Blogging at 4:30 a.m. Not something I would have seen as an ideal time for enhanced communication, but since I'm here, I'm going to go for it.

A while back I wrote about how I'd purged our cupboards and fridge of all things sugary and decadent. It really felt good at the time. I knew that there'd be wonderful berries and fruit on display at the two outdoor markets, as well as at my usual grocery stores, and naively, I thought that eating fruit instead of cookies, cake or ice cream would be satisfying. And it was, and is, in a way. It's just that once you get past the fruit and vegetables while shopping, you continue to run into things like profiteroles, chocolate-chip cookies, lemon tarts and croissants au chocolat.

The worst offender is of course the best provider of supermarket decadence in North America: President's Choice. Is there anything dessertish with that brand name that offends me? Well, I'm not really all that fond of the Pineapple Upside-down Cake, but I know from friends and family and midnight raids that I'm in the minority there.

When Loblaw's started marketing that brand, we still had finicky kids in the house who believed that President's Choice was not really a brand---not like Heinz, McCain, Chef-Boyardee or those American donuts that you can't get any more. They approached our PC purchases with something only slightly less than disdain. Now, some 20 years and thousands of products later, my kids, like us, can't wait to see what the President has Chosen.

There have been some lifestyle improvements like their thin burger buns but for the most part our interest has focussed on the amazing cheesecakes, ice cream, gelato and cookies, none of which are findable in our house now.

I would kill for a PC Key Lime pie this minute, then I'd celebrate my misdeed with a cup of PC Dark hot chocolate and some PC shortbread.

Then I'd be ready for breakfast, for which we don't have the PC jams and marmelades that used to bring us joy.

Oh, and by the way, Dave has lost 10 pounds, and as far as I can tell, I've lost none.

Today, it's all about Phoebe, relatively speaking

2011-08-03T16:47:00.001-05:00

This is me with my oldest granddaughter, Phoebe.

Phoebe lives in another city and we only get to see each other a couple of times a year. In one way, that's sad, but in another, it's like being given a surprise---like a well-wrapped gift. We've never seen her when we haven't been gob-smacked by how she's grown or learnt a new skill, and that is always such a delight.

Here she is with Robyn, the youngest of the granddaughters. I love the contrast.

However, for contrast, I think this is a good indication of how she's surprised us over the years. Blondes so seldom choose to go darker, but in her case, we can see why. Gorgeous any way you look at it.

Phoebe at 10, or so

She's gone back to Barrie, and we'll see her again near the end of the month, when she comes to Gay Day in Wonderland with us. And I didn't even have to ask her.

This last photo has nothing to do with Phoebe, except that she took it when we were out in our "backyard" checking out the kayak run.

Proud in Brockville

2011-07-31T21:01:00.001-05:00

Saturday was a really UP day for me. About a week ago, we got notice that Brockville, a small town about an hour away from here, was going to have their first pride walk, and so I went.

I had good company on the ride, someone I know from PFLAG Ottawa, and we made a plan to leave early so that we could get parking near the starting site, as well as find a place to have lunch. We were successful at both.

The event was planned and promoted by a high school group, but attended by a very diverse and large crowd from Brockville, Prescott, Ottawa, Cornwall, Kingston and places in between.

What was wonderful about it was the enthusiasm, the joy and the energy present all around us as we waited to head out on the walk. We'd been told that the City had restricted the walk to the sidewalk of a main street, but I think there must have been a change of plan when someone realized how many people were there for the event, so the road was blocked off, which in itself was sort of thrilling. There were lots of people watching---most clapping or showing support, some looking a little dazed or puzzled. I heard no disrespect or derogatory remarks. This is the article published locally on Sunday.

The end of the parade, when all the walkers were in, many hugging, others jumping and waving banners and flags, and the police car was leaving, with waves and bleats of the siren, was perfect. It was perfect, except that my sparkly sneakers had let me down and left abrasions on my heels .

Not only did I have to tend to them when I got home, but I had to confess to Dave that I'd made a bad shoe choice after haughtily informing him, when he reminded me to think about what I was wearing on my feet, that really I didn't need him to check up on me. I had already chosen my shoes.

I was just wrong. But, and this is important, heels heal, but sparkles are forever.

Why Dave might want to do more reading

2011-07-30T20:26:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I'm sitting in my "office", which would be my eating place if it were earlier in the day, watching Dave peel apples for his famous applesauce pancakes. He has invited the family over for brunch tomorrow and now that he is the official breakfast maker, and I have successfully designated brunch as a sub-section of breakfast, I get to just sit and watch, or conversely, sneak away somewhere to read.

I wonder how hard it would be to get dinner designated. I can always take care of lunch, especially if I'm by myself and there's lots of peanut butter, but if dinner were another breakfast subset, I could get in at least one more hour of reading.

I wouldn't stoop that low if Dave were a more vociferous reader---I hold some things sacred, after all. But he looks really good with a knife and a naked apple.

This is all about the cold dish

2011-07-28T19:57:00.000-05:00

THIS weekend is a long weekend? How did I ever get so out of touch?

Oh yeah, I'm retired. RETIRED. And yes, that is glee you feel oozing out over the ether.

This weekend is just going to be like every other day in my life, but please don't let that keep you from enjoying yours.

Outsmarted, but not Outwaited

2011-07-26T19:17:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned from time to time that in spite of owning a camera, I seldom remember to actually use it. A couple of days ago, Robyn was tearing around the house wearing a very massive and intricate hairband with mini-dolls and flowers on it---she tore it off the minute I turned the camera on and well before I aimed; then she teased me by being way too adorable, grabbing a small kaleidoscope we've left out for her to experiment with and putting it smack in the middle of her forehead, while making appreciative noises and turning the part that changes the patterns. Again, she triumphed and I have 6 or so photos of the back of her head, and one of the eyepiece on the kaleidoscope.

Today, I got Robyn to wear a ponytail, and felt so good about it that I followed her around outside until she forgot about me and I got this result:

Then, out of compassion, she let me take this one:

It's not Edward S Curtis, but I'm kind of partial to them.

How did July 25th get to be Fun Day?

2011-07-25T22:55:00.001-05:00

Well, actually, it wasn't easy.

The day started out with rain, and my first part in it started out with fighting traffic taking a friend to have some bloodwork done
the rain would have been easy to take if I hadn't worn my grey tunic---it has a fashionable longish curved hem which left about 12 inches of fine cotton hanging out the driver's door
apparently lots of people in Ottawa think that having fabric hanging out your car door warrants lots of horn-pounding and vigorous pointing; I took this badly thinking it reflected on my driving which may have been affected by my early coffeeless start
a number of factors contributed to my getting home caffeine-deprived and late; but not late enough to miss Dave's discovery of a glitch in our air conditioner resulting in my shoes floating in the plastic box we store underneath the air conditioner, cleverly hidden by a door we never open
still cravenly craving caffeine, I ignored my twelve inches of sodden fabric and helped Dave bail out our shoes, only to discover that shoes can both float and be full of water; it would have been better to discover this before I turned them over to dry out
caffeine ingested, tunic dispensed with, I started the fun part of the day by taking my niece to the Byward Market (SO COOL!), having a nap, going to the 65th birthday party of a friend I introduced to his wife 45 or so years ago, scarfing camouflage cupcakes made specifically to please an ex-military guy and flaunting my 5 foot 7 (6 feet in her 5 inch heels) granddaughter Phoebe.

No, I did not get any pictures!

Didn't the Beatles write a song about that?

2011-07-22T19:53:00.000-05:00

Imagine that you have a Wii, a DS, a Flip video recorder, a competent digital camera, a creaky but functioning smart-phone, an e-reader and a laptop. Then imagine that you have a secret longing for a Dell Inspiron Mini and a Touch Kobo that has you checking out the job opportunities at Chapters and local dress shops. You would have an accurate picture of me, except that it wouldn't show that I am also feeling kind of uber-consumer-y, and unworthy.

Now imagine that you are a straight woman in a rewarding second marriage and that you have a dream that you are a lesbian coming out to your family, which includes all your children and grandchildren at about age 4 and both your husbands looking as smashing as they did at 25 and a set of parents whose religious background means they should shun you, or at least try to have you "cured", but who don't. You would have an accurate picture of me, except that it wouldn't show how much time I spent this morning wondering whether it was the red wine or the no-snacks-after-dinner that got me there.

Don't thank me. It was just another day in the life.

Out! damned sugar!

2011-07-21T12:45:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, after some soul-searching and some first-class concern, Dave and I decided that the only way to deal with our lack of discipline around sweet foods was to have none.

I waited till Dave was out, then started stacking the cookies, puddings, boxed European desserts, candies, cookie fixings, ice cream, sundae toppings, maple syrup, sugar, jams and glazes. It made a substantial pile of stuff, expensive decadent, self-indulgent stuff.

Emily, our dear soul, was going to relieve us of our burden because a person who takes at least 3 martial arts classes a week obviously has some self-discipline. She quizzed us about this total clear-out, and after a quick discussion, Dave decided to keep maple syrup in case he makes pancakes, and I decided to keep sugar for my coffee.

This morning, after my small, small glass of OJ and my yoghurt, I had coffee and buttered toast for breakfast. Now I'm afraid that I'm going to be stuck having buttered toast for every meal, because OHMIGOD it was good. And ohmigod, I appear to be more food-oriented than I thought.

Dave and I each have a goal of losing 15 pounds, which we know we can do. I just don't know if I want to keep on keeping on after I make that goal. When I'm pleased with myself, red wine and chocolate cake seem the best way to celebrate, and I'll be back on the cycle. Unless, my secret weapon works: I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing it to support Dave.

I've done hard things before with that goal in mind, either for Dave, or for someone I care about, so maybe, just maybe, it'll work to change the focus. Check back with me in 3 months, I'm sure I'll be babbling about it in some way.

Lorna and Caravaggio

2011-07-19T21:49:00.001-05:00

I love the arts, but I'm not as comfortable with visual art as I am with other disciplines, so when I went to the National Gallery today with my friend it was to sit in the beautiful atrium, drink wine and have a ladies' lunch.

That done, and done beautifully, just as we'd anticipated, we headed off to the exhibit of Caravaggio and his peers, neither of us knowledgeable but willing to do the tour before we hit the Gift Shop.

It was a breathtaking exhibit, glowing with light, depicting sly card players and fortune tellers alongside Mary Magdalene (in her previous role as, if not prostitute, at least languorous courtesan) and St Cecilia watched by her guardian angel while a young man turned her into a martyr. I still know very little about the peers in the exhibit as there were way too many people to get to read the accompanying notes, but, strangely, I don't feel the loss. Just seeing this exhibit was magical.

Of course, being me, being her, my friend and I did hit the Gift Shop, but where years ago we would have been looking at Caravaggio-inspired scarves and jewellery, now in our granniness we spent all our time looking at toys and books for kids. And buying toys and books for kids.

It was a fine day.

Bluesfest Bows Out

2011-07-18T05:50:00.000-05:00

We have a gigantic music festival for 12 days in July; it's loud and exciting and it's like a little village just the other side of the street and a bit to the left. Except for last night.

Last night we had huge winds, hail, driving rain, whirling garbage, fallen trees, mobile but driverless bicycles and frantic music fans. It was really quite scary.

Because it was so hot yesterday, we had closed the windows and patio doors and had the A/C going, which has the effect of shutting out the music from the 4 stages, so I was surprised to hear a whining noise outside followed by rumbles, abetted by the noise of the temporary fence along the bike path coming loose from the uprights and whipping around the neighbourhood. Our plants and garden ornaments were whirling down the slight grade towards the path and people were streaming across the street, some fighting the high wind and staggering along in front of our place.

I motioned a few people up to the sheltered part of the patio and we stood in awe as branches and paper, umbrellas and unrecognizable flapping things went past us, and they told me how the walls of the main stage, where they had been, just shuddered and fell back onto the road, hanging in long enough for Cheap Trick to get somewhere safe.

Soon the sidewalks were full of scurrying people (apparently thousands had been taken into the museum) and the streets were full of cars, bikes, motorcycles and emergency vehicles, with the appropriate lights and honking and sirens.

It was all very exciting, which somehow guilted me. There were a few minor injuries, but people kept going by drenched and shaken for another hour and a half, at least.

I managed to find all our paraphenalia, including a footlong cast-iron dragonfly which could certainly have wreaked havoc, but instead lay, one wing embedded, in the grass next door.

For some reason, I had stayed in my wet clothes, unable to feel comfortable about being safe in my house, peering through the patio doors to see if anyone needed help. Except for the few who joined me right at the beginning, no one did.

This morning, it's still raining but it's the soft kind of rain, the sun is streaking weakly through the gray sky and coffee seems like a good idea.

She looked really nice though

2011-07-13T11:42:00.001-05:00

My sister Mary stayed with us for a few days, in which we walked, shopped, listened, laughed, ate outrageously, learned and did everything we wanted except take pictures.

How can that be? This is the first time in about 6 years that Mary has been here, and who knows when she'll be back but did we think about the many Kodak moments we actually had?

Neither did any of the other people who passed through our lives over that time though, so I'm plunking myself smack in the middle of those guys who should have known better too.

I think one of my favourite we-should-have-pictures moments was when Emily was putting teal blue eyeliner on Mary, and I was standing beside them with my eyes stretched out and a just-right tilt to my face even though no one was working on me. Another would have been just after Julia and Emma had had two kinds of amazing cake left over from our dinner on Saturday---they both looked as if they needed cables to keep them from zipping right through the ceiling.

We could have taken photos of Mary and me walking through Perth with about 6 bags and a 5 ft garden ornament, or Mary and me walking through the Rideau Centre with a ferociously unfriendly umbrella or Dave waiting for us with a plate of golden fries and a lemonade. It would have been wunderbar to shoot Mary and Dave both scooting towards the bathroom for a shower, then each backing off, so I could have sailed in. I didn't but that would have made an even better photo.

Nonetheless, pictures or not, we had a great couple of days and as always, I'm sitting here thinking of things we should have done, said or eaten, but didn't.

In which I take it all back

2011-07-08T07:25:00.000-05:00

When I was moaning the other day about the work being done outside our place, I was giving in to a temporary annoyance because I wanted all the dust gone from the house while my sister Mary is with us this weekend.

What I didn't say was how pleased we are that we're going to be living right next to the National Fallen Firefighters' Memorial Park. We are surrounded by greenspace and water, and the park is going to just add to the pleasure we take in our surroundings.

Having said that, here are some views:

this is a view from our patio; isn't it hard to imagine that we live downtown?

Here is our patio. It's a lovely place to have coffee or lunch or to read a book, or play with the kids.

This is the view if you stand on the patio and look left. That's the prow of the Canadian War Museum in the background.

And this, this is the construction office, at which I could, but don't, throw stones.

When the park is finished, in 2012, it will look like this. Our building will be on the right of the photo, and I imagine I will often walk over there with my coffee in the morning. The spring and summer mornings. In the interim, I am going to enjoy our other views and stop kvetching.

It's only dirt!

2011-07-05T08:36:00.001-05:00

Today it's hard to believe I am the same woman who dragassed around last week. And I wasn't doing it because I was lazy; I literally needed time to get mobile, and when I did mobilize, it hurt.

I hope I'm not jinxing myself by feeling so jubilant.

Right outside our front window, a new park is being built. It's a park to house the National Fallen Firefighters' Memorial, and I'm sure that when it's finished, it's going to be wonderful and amazing. Right now, it's a bit noisy, but that comes with city-living, and dusty, but that's been the case since we moved in because of all of the from-scratch building that's going on. More apparent than noisy though, is the puzzle we're having, tracking the progress.

First, they came in, put up fences and signs and pounded the ground from one end to the other---a space big enough for an office building---then, they brought in machines that broke up the ground, trucked off all that soil and dumped truckloads of what I can only hope was different soil in a bunch of little hills that started to grow grass. Next they moved all the soil to other places and began digging a long deep trench; meanwhile, on the other side of the property, things like rebar and concrete started multiplying while we were out, and in came a construction office in the form of an incredibly ugly trailer, now planted 20 feet from our front window. The portapotty, thankfully, is down at the other end of the property, but one suspects it's going to get moved at some point.

Oh, I know it's going to be beautiful. I've seen the maquette and watched the very moving ground-breaking ceremony. I just wish it were going to be beautiful sooner.

July 4th means...

2011-07-03T21:17:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow being Independence Day in the US, I'm wishing all my family and friends a joyous and safe day.

July 4th has always been a special day for us Spindillyrushinghams because it was Mum and Dad's anniversary. They were married somewhere in Kent, England in 1941, neither older than 20. My dad was in his Canadian Forces uniform, my mum in a dress with a white collar, and unlike me, who still remembers and goes on about every moment of our wedding, they never talked to us about the ceremony. Of course, marriages in England during the war weren't lavish but looking back, it seems strange not to know who was there. Why don't we ask those questions when our parents and grandparents are alive? It makes me sad not to know more about the circumstances.

I do know they were in love and stayed that way until my mum died, anxious to see Bill and Jesus in that order. They made a safe and loving home for us in all the 20-some places we lived and did all the parent/grandparent/sibling/friends things with grace and an enviable kind of two-of-usness that no one ever questioned.

They set us a high standard for relationships without ever mentioning it or lecturing us and I could never have told them enough how much I appreciated having such great role models.

So, America, and specifically you people whom I love in it, have a wonderful July 4th, and I'll have a warm, contemplative one. Both just right.

Hubris, and how it makes you feel prettier than some people

2011-07-02T22:30:00.001-05:00

I have spent a lot of time the last few years telling everyone who asks me about retirement how much I love it and how lucky I am to be strong and healthy so I can enjoy it.

About a week ago, I wanted to rearrange things in our living room and casually lifted a basket of LPs we have hanging around waiting to be digitized. I'm not sure of the ratio of LPs to basket, but I do know that it was heavy and as soon as I started the process, I was going to regret it.

Usually, I can either stretch back pain away, or curl up like a cat and make it go away. On top of neither of those having no effect at all, parts of myself that had nothing to do with lifting a basket started to hurt and refused to move when I sent the mental order.

I have no idea what's the matter with me, but suddenly I am not strong and healthy. I am ragged and worn. I hate it. I hate it when sitting in the car makes me sore, when getting out of the car takes longer than it took to buy it in the first place, when walking makes me feel like I'm dragging all my grandchildren and an 1812 cannon, when waking up fools me into jumping out of bed and I discover jumping is no longer an option.

I've just had my annual physical, in which my doctor told me I was in great shape for my age. "Congratulations!" he said, "you're doing well."

As soon as I get my strength back, I'm going to go back in and wrestle him to the floor until he yells "Uncle!" In the interim, I'll be the one moving around like a female version of Charles Laughton in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", except I'm slightly better looking.

In which I whine a bit

2011-06-28T06:43:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-26T11:54:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-23T09:14:00.001-05:00

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)

2011-06-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

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)

2011-06-17T10:29:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-15T16:37:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-06-12T16:49:00.001-05:00

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

2011-06-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-07T19:13:00.001-05:00

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

2011-06-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-04T12:55:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-02T04:44:00.000-05:00

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.

Victoria Day

2011-05-24T11:40:00.001-05:00

Today I was of course reminded of Queen Victoria. I always had a grudging admiration for her, but it was tinged by the hold Prince Albert seemed to have over her. Until fairly recently, I thought I was justified.

Over the last couple of years, I've read things about her that seem to negate the impression I had that she sort of gave herself up for her husband, both before and after his death.

I'm starting to look on her as the early version of myself. Not the rich and royal part, the wise looking-for-counsel-in-all-the-right-places part. And by the way, that goes for the possible Mrs Brown part of her life.

Not that I have a Colour-Sgt Brown in my life, but I wouldn't see it as anything but an enhancement. The poor woman lived more of her life a widow than a wife.

Now if I had a Disraeli, I might be tempted to restrict my availability.

It kind of snuck up on us

2011-05-23T03:29:00.002-05:00

Last night Dave and I had dinner with Sarah, Bruce, Julia and Emma. It's always a delight, but there was something special about it that has stuck with me.

After dinner, the girls brought out some of their books that they wanted to give to Robyn, who, like them, has been a book girl from the time she could see. We looked through them, and I was pleased to see the warmth the girls still had for the books, and I could imagine how much Robyn was going to enjoy them.

This one in particular made my heart do a funny little jump and twang, as I remembered all the times we'd gone through it, popping the bath bubbles, opening the storybook Poppy Cat was reading to her teddy bear, taking in our breath at the beauty of the silver stars and stroking the satiny blanket on Poppy Cat's bed.

What made it especially wonderful was glancing at Bruce and knowing he was taking the same emotional walk that I was. We looked at each other and said something unoriginal like, "Oh, they grow up so fast...", but it was a truly heart-warming moment that I'll cherish forever.

Things Lorna learned today

2011-05-19T21:30:00.002-05:00

You can't have 3 cups of coffee before 9 o'clock, just because you got up at 4:30
The man next door to me is not capable of smiling; I know this because he didn't smile when I tried to open his door with my key and mistakenly said "sorry sweetheart"
I would look smashing in my newish blue linen jacket if it didn't match the bruises under my eyes
You can't zip through downtown in your car if every city in Canada has sent teen-aged representatives on skateboards to the Tulip Festival
For some reason you can't buy tulips in Ottawa Loblaws stores during the Tulip Festival
There is however, access to all kinds of chocolatey things there
My doctor's earrings are so distracting that I almost missed his telling me I've improved since last week
When you've had steamed chicken sandwiches for dinner for 3 days in a row, it's still possible to crave another if you've got one more avocado
You can't work silently at a keyboard if you're wearing 18 silver bracelets; some of us can't do anything unless we are
It's impossible to put together a Power Point presentation if you've only got Open Office; it shouldn't take 53 minutes to figure this out
Intense creativity is not available to people fogged by a fluish cold

Nothing here about TV

2011-05-18T10:23:00.001-05:00

Or about Firefly, one of the best series ever.

Today I will tell you about how I ended up paying $32 for lunch yestserday, when I had lunch and a fine box of wine waiting at home 6 minutes away.

I do some volunteer work which is very rewarding to me in many ways. Yesterday, however, that volunteer work was my downfall.

I have been totally whacked by something which I hope is a cold or flu, to the extent that I'm not comfortable driving my car, which we're not doing much of anyway because we're trying to live green.

I would have taken my car though because I had pamphlets and posters to carry to the post office. I stuffed them in a capacious bag and headed off on foot for the post office. It's an easy walk from my place---10 minutes at the most, and one that I like to take because occasionally I can see my daughter Sarah who works in the building across the street. Since she works for a government agency, and they're underfunded, she can't always get away, but from time to time, it works. I love to see her in a place where she's not mother/wife/sister.

By the time I got to this nearby place, I was actually reeling. I felt like I was carrying 100 lbs of paper and walking with weighted boots.

I got my post office business over with and made my shaky way to the restaurant in Sarah's building, where I had decided to spend the next couple of days recovering. After all, I had my e-reader.

Shock #1: the bartender and waitstaff who know me and start pouring the Pinot Grigio as I come in the door had been replaced by people I didn't know who offered me a menu. Usually, my friend just brings me the artichoke dip and a bunch of buns right after I'm settled.

Shock # 2: All the seats at the bar were occupied (maybe it was a government payday or some holiday I'd never heard of) and I had to sit in a booth. How does a restaurant that's nearly full, end up having no bar seats and several large booths available at lunch?

Shock #3: The strange wait person expected me to order and there was no Pinot Grigio on the by-the-glass menu. I was whacked and confused. So I ordered something that was both completely unknown to me and the most expensive red on that menu. Then, because I had a lunch menu, I didn't think they were serving "starters" and I had to order a burger (red wine?). I didn't want fries and asked about the broiled vegetable side, only to find that they were served with garlic butter, which is anathema. Fading fast, I ordered a baked potato, which he told me would be extra. By now, I just wanted to sleep until my food came or I could find some hidden energy that would allow me to rise up from the booth and choke him silly. I took the baked potato, struggled to get my e-reader out of my bag and lost myself in Alice in Wonderland, the first choice on the home page.

By now I was just clear-headed enough to remember that this was the building where Sarah worked, so I called her to see if she could come down and join me for lunch. Sarah, who as I suspected was busy, is a very intuitive person, and told me that she'd walk me home or come down right away. Maybe it was the way I said Sharah.

I am really good at pretending to be other than I am, so I said I was already over my momentary weakness and was just going to have my lunch. "You call me if you need me..." says Sarah. "Ha! ha!" I say duplicitously.

Actually by the time I'd had the wine and some food, I was indeed over it, and after paying for my lunch, swept out of that place with panache.

I walked to the next bus stop and took OC Transpo the 3 stops to my corner.

I'll be at the doctor tomorrow. He's free. Everything evens out.

My Inner Critic Leaps Forward

2011-05-17T10:07:00.001-05:00

I don't necessarily watch TV because I know something is good. Sometimes I watch because I like the actors, or I read something about a show, and sometimes I watch because reading doesn't seem like an exciting option or because Dave is enjoying something I've never seen before.

So believe me when I say that my reaction to the cancellation of TV shows has nothing to do with their quality.

Years ago, Firefly got cancelled. My distress had to do with so many things: favourite actors, genuine belief in the premise, stories full of irony and humour and drama, cleverness of development, great characters, sci-finess in general. I felt the same way when Dollhouse was cancelled. How shortsighted and risk-avoiding, I thought to myself.

Now, I hear that Two and a Half Men is getting new blood!! Really.

Cancelled are V and The Event, both rousing stories if nothing else, and there was more. The Chicago Code is going, Detroit 187 is going, both built around strong characters with stories worth staying up for, worth PVRing. There are more cancellations and more shoring-ups that annoy me but the futility of caring is making me apathetic.

Is this an age thing? A marketing thing? Why does it seem like so few people support shows that stretch your imagination, that leave you with issues of conscience to grapple with, that twang the edges of conformity?

Damn, I know this is piffle and I don't have the answers, but today, I have the resentment. Apathetically.

I love a leader-by-example

2011-05-15T22:36:00.000-05:00

There I was tonight, watching the Oprah Winfrey Network to see the documentary about Chaz Bono. I can't imagine the courage it must have taken to go through the transitioning process so far, and I have nothing but admiration for someone who can live it, and document it.

I wondered when I heard the buzz about the documentary whether or not it would be the TV equivalent of a vanity press book, but either I'm an entire Pollyanna, or Chaz is indeed a brave person with an eye to raising awareness about transgendered people. He and his partner, his friends and his family seemed honest, sometimes painfully or achingly so, and sometimes burdened, which is surely to be expected, but what shone for me was his happiness, and his comfort with himself.

I have a pantheon of heroes, some more tarnished than others, as I have lived a long time. Chaz is among them.

But then, so is Cher.

Can you tell?

2011-05-14T19:14:00.001-05:00

My e-reader has needed charging twice this week. It's supposed to have a battery life of 10 days, but being in bed has given me so much time to read that I'm making excessive demands. I can only hope my Kobo won't turn on me.

Recently, I've read mysteries, biographies and a stunningly bad non-fiction work called In the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson, whose work The Devil in the White City I really enjoyed. I read Beasts anyway, hoping for redemption right till the end but a really unworthy book and its never-ending Notes and insider-thanks ended with a tribute to his late dog. Can you tell I'm resentful?

I read a charming book about a 14 year old woman meeting accidentally with a retired Sherlock Holmes, and amazing him with her powers of observation and deduction. I was encouraged to look for other work by the author Laurie R. King, and found that somewhere in the series, the leading character marries the aged sleuth. Can you tell I'm repulsed?

I read a very, very bad Jodi Picoult, for which I'm taking full responsibility---I read the little blurb about the story but bought the book anyway. Authors don't get it right every time. Can you tell I'm not the least bit ashamed for that condescending thought?

I read a good Julia Spencer-Churchill whose books about an American woman who is both a helicopter pilot who gets called up from the Reserve and an Episcopalian priest have had me enthralled for years. I found it the first day it was available on Kobo and felt like I'd won the equivalent of the Academy Award. Can you tell that I need to get out more?

I've read books I only know I read because they say "finished" in my e-library; I'm presently reading The Help, which I'm tearing through but I don't know if it's the story or the writing that's captured me. Or maybe there's something about being in the fourth week of spending every couple of days in bed.... Can you tell that in spite of my penchant for reading, I'll never be a literary critic?