Month: September 2005

Fellow Ottawan Andrea at QuietFish tagged me on this. She was talking about how we all have those little somethings in our houses that we love – things that give you a little ping of joy when you look at them.

Although we have a really lame little mantle in our living room (oh, how I drool over the Home Depot Wish Book) it does provide a good central shelf where my most sentimental treasures can be admired but not swallowed, squashed or otherwise boyhandled. There’s a paper frame with a photo of the boys with Thomas the Tank Engine, a chunky frame with a cut-out of our wedding invitation, a photo of my parents, a few other odds and ends, and these:

The figure of the mother with two children was from my wonderful Mom this past Christmas. A three-hanky gift if there ever was one. I love it! The giraffe and elephant are also Christmas gifts from my mother, I think from separate years. (She has a knack for finding the best gifts.) And the photo makes me smile partly because it’s an adorable picture of a barely-walking Tristan admiring his own shadow as it falls on a dandylion, and partly because it’s housed in a frame from my dear friend Nancy – a woman who shares my addiction to treats from Pier One Imports.

I can sit and admire this little collection endlessly. It’s a tangible little happy place. Thanks, Andrea, for making me think of this.

What do you have in your house that reminds you to be blissful?

Back in January, three seemingly separate events occured that have altered my life. First, I went back to work after a year of maternity leave with Simon. Second, I started blog. And third, a new free daily tabloid called Metro was launched in Ottawa, where I discovered the ridiculously addictive Soduko puzzle.

What do all these things have in common? Well mostly they make unreasonable demands of my time and my brainpower, both of which are in exceedingly short supply. And yet, all three are strangely fulfilling.

You know about work, you know about blog – but do you know about Soduko? They are devilishly simple – but evil.
Each row or column of the whole puzzle has the numbers one through nine only once, and each smaller grid of nine squares also has the numbers one through nine only once. Using the givens (the preprinted numbers), simply fill in the rest of the puzzle. I copied this one from Wikipedia, which has a boring and longwinded history of the Soduko that does not do justice to how evil or addictive it is.

Although they’ve been around for years, Soduko puzzles are just now beginning their bid for world domination. Brits have gone gaga for them since they’ve been appearing in the daily papers, starting right about the same time I got hooked from the Metro. If you Google “Soduko” you can get all sorts of places to play online, most of which are forbidden by the productivity filter on my computer. Bah!

Being a wordy kind of girl I always liked the idea of crossword puzzles, but I continue to be not very good at them. Soduko are both more satisfying and more addictive. Apparently there are much more complex ones that have more than one solution, but I’m happy to be clever enough to solve the regular ones in five or ten minutes – the average length of my attention span most days anyway.

Have you tried them? Betcha can’t stop at one! Now excuse me while I go sharpen my pencil and get to Soduko – er, I mean, work.

It’s 9:55 am on a Sunday, and Tristan and I are standing on the wet tile deck of the local public pool. Excited children in bathing suits hop from foot to foot beside tired-looking parents in sweats and jeans. More than one parent looks like they wish Tim Hortons had a cantina window at the community centre.

I am probably more nervous than Tristan. It’s our first day of swimming lessons, the first time I will hand him over to an instructor and walk away. I have friends who have not made this transition gracefully, whose children have melted down in a panic over being left poolside with a stranger, whose children refused to so much as get into the water, let alone blow bubbles and float and kick with abandon.

Tristan is actually holding on to my leg, something I don’t remember him ever doing before. He is not overly shy, but the energy level in the large, noisy room is in the red zone and a little overwhelming even to me.

It’s 10:05 and we are still standing on the pool deck. I begin to suspect we have been overlooked in the chaos of day one. I find someone who looks like they might be in charge (and also looks to be about thirteen years old, but he’s the most responsible-looking person within reach) and he consults a clipboard and informs us Tristan is supposed to be in the water already. He gestures into the pool toward a large fellow talking animatedly to two preschoolers who cling to the side of the pool and regard him with cautious eyes.

I walk Tristan over to the edge of the pool and make introductions. I reach for Tristan, to help him get into the water, and instead he drops to his bum on the edge of the pool and in one fluid bounce is in the water, assuming the same position as his preschool classmates.

“Okay, Tristan, see you later. I’ll be right over there, okay – see, over there, in those chairs…” I call reassuringly (to whom?), but he is already focused on The Teacher with rapt attention.

I walk away beaming as another mother and son approach with considerably more trepidation. At first, the little guy absolutely refuses to get in the water, but by the end of the lesson, the teacher has coaxed him to sit on the side and dangle his feet while his mother hovers anxiously. Several times, the little guy makes a break for the change rooms and is brought crying back to the pool’s edge. Catty though it may be, I’m always glad when it isn’t me for a change.

I sit alertly in the blue molded plastic chairs on the deck, surprised at the number of parents reading the paper, chatting, staring off into space and otherwise not focusing their entire life force on the preschoolers in the pool. Granted, there are lessons of all levels going on today, and I’m sure by the time he’s ready to test for his red cross lifesaver’s certificate I’ll be a little bit more relaxed, but today I am tensely coiled, waiting to jump into the pool to rescue my baby should the need arise, or at least to intervene should my son’s nascent stubborn streak appear.

I look on with mildly surprised pride as Tristan floats, kicks and blows bubbles compliantly. I beam when I see the teacher mouth the words “Great job!” and high-five my grinning son after a particularly successful float. I am amazed that he patiently waits his turn clinging to the side of the pool as the teacher works with the other kids, and am simply astonished that in an entire 30 minute lesson he never tries to escape, never resists instruction, never shows any inclination to disruption or dissention. This is my strong-willed and single-minded Tristan?

At the end of the lesson, he flings his soaking self into my outstretched arms. “You did GREAT!” I enthuse, and he nods with self-conscious pride. His compliance with authority gets rubbed away with the chorinated water I towel out of his hair, and by the time he is dry his my-way-or-the-highway attitude has reasserted itself.

But we’ve taken our first step down the long road of learning, and of letting go. I see countless hours of sitting in uncomfortable molded plastic chairs in my future, watching swimming lessons or Christmas pagents or hockey games. I feel at this moment the blissful intersection of the years of waiting and hoping to be a parent, the long dark hours of mothering a newborn and the untold wonders ahead of us.

Who would have guessed it? My boy is growing up.

In the Ottawa airport, there is an escalator that brings arriving passengers down to the main floor. I had a hard time not vaulting over the side or shoving other passengers out of my way as I rode down the escalator and caught sight of my menfolk waiting for me. Possibly, it was one of the best moments of the trip.

Not that it was a bad trip. I’d never been to Vancouver before, and it is a truly gorgeous city. There was a fire burning in a peat bog the entire time I was there, so even though the weather was good, the smoke over the city was so thick and hazy you couldn’t see the mountains.

I now know the definition of western hospitality. The last night I was there, I was invited for a family dinner by a man who works in the same organization as me, but with whom I had only spoken once or twice by e-mail. He and his wife and their adorable kids hosted me and his boss for the best Indian food I have ever had. Everyone I met in British Columbia showed that kind of friendliness and welcome. I brushed elbows (literally, in a crowded van and helijet) with some pretty important people from my organization, and they were all incredibly nice to me, and not just in a “tolerate the flakey peon from Ottawa and she’ll go away soon” kind of way.

And another night I got to have dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends and his family. The first night I was in Vancouver, I spent playing Cariboo and watching Thomas the Tank Engine videos with his five year old daughter and three year old son while my friend made dinner for us. It doesn’t get any better than that!

My only complaint is that other than the two lovely home-cooked meals, it was a crazy-busy week. I would have loved to take a touristy kind of look around Vancouver, but I didn’t even have time to wander the shops near my hotel for a guilt-induced present for the boys. Luckily, I had six minutes to comb the airport gift shop before my flight, and when I saw the Air Canada dinky car sets with planes and buses and baggage trucks, I knew I was in luck. I also grabbed a “sounds and lights” chubby jet for backup.

Last night when I kissed Tristan good night, he was still holding the die-cast jet he hadn’t let go of all evening. “Mummy,” he said, “This is my most favourite airplane ever since I began to be a little boy.”

Traveling is great, but home is better.

Am on my last little bit of free time this trip, so of course I am blogging. Unfortunately for me, I am on a 40 kbs dial-up connection and I think Seminole signals across the mountains would get the message across more quickly than this. This may in fact be my shortest blog ever. But probably not.

Had the ultra cool experience of taking the Helijet over to Victoria (click on the link, you can see the Sikorsky helicopter I flew on) this morning, and back again tonight. My cousin is a helicopter pilot, but this was my first time in one. A lifetime of traditional flying makes you completely unprepared for the alarming drop out of the sky that is landing in a helicopter. Well worth the price of admission! Will have to pester my cousin for more free rides in the future!

Since it has taken me three eons to write this much, I am done. Not sure whether my brain or the modem is more sluggish, but between the two of them I am writing at the speed of a very tired turtle. Past the half way point of the trip now, and just trying hard not to think too much about my babies back home…

I’ve been up for about 20 hours now. If I start to drool, don’t mind me.

Have you ever been in a hotel room that didn’t have a sewing kit? I must’ve been in 50 hotels in my life, and I’m sure each one of them had a sewing kit. I actually found myself in a hotel room, looking at the fallen cuff of my dress pants and in need of an honest-to-god sewing kit. I was almost delirious with joy – except there was no sewing kit. For a posted rate of $500 a night (thank god for corporate rates!) you’d think they had an on-site tailor who lives in your closet, fercrissakes.

Other than that, the digs are way too nice for a peon such as myself. My electric toothbrush made a very satisfying thunk as I layed it on the granite bathroom counter. Or maybe it was marble. It was cool, and smooth, and yes, I did lay my cheek against it for just a moment. And no, I’m not fessing up as to which cheek. Okay, it was the left one.

I am not made out for business travel. I got completely flustered at the security check in the airport when I had to remove my laptop from my carefully packed messenger bag. Yes, I was that woman with the bag spilling kleenex and lipstick and receipts and pens. And yes, I was also that woman whose very bones seem to make the hand-held metal detector beep in indignation. And, most pathetically, I was that woman, who had to produce a second credit card when the first one didn’t have enough room on it to cover a security deposit at the fancy-ass hotel check-in. Sheesh, who would have expected they’d try to clear a $450 deposit for a two night stay at $110 a night. That’s a hell of a lot of minibar service!

Maybe it’s a good thing I couldn’t find a sewing kit. I didn’t have to dip into the kids’ college account for a saftey pin and some sticky tape.

Saw this over at the Canadian Expatriates’ Blog. They’ve always got some great CanCon over there.

If you suspect that someone is falsely trying to pass themselves off as a Canadian, make the following statement – and then carefully note their reaction:

“Last night, I cashed my pogey and went to buy a mickey of C.C. at the beer parlour, but my skidoo got stuck in the muskeg on my way back to the duplex. I was trying to deke out a deer, you see. Damn chinook, melted everything. And then a Mountie snuck up behind me in a ghost car and gave me an impaired. I was S.O.L., sitting there dressed only in my Stanfields and a toque at the time. And the Mountie, he’s all chippy and everything, calling me a shit disturber and what not. What could I say, except, ‘Chimo!'”

If the person you are talking to nods sympathetically, they’re one of us. If, however, they stare at you with a blank incomprehension, they are not a real Canadian. Have them reported to the authorities at once.

The passage cited above contains no fewer than 19 different Canadianisms. Can you spot them?

Pogey: Employment insurance. Money provided by the government for not working.

Mickey: A small bottle of booze (13 oz) (A Texas mickey, on the other hand, is a ridiculously big bottle of booze, which, despite the name, is still a Canadianism through and through.)

C.C.: Canadian Club, a brand of rye. Not to be confused with “hockey stick,” another kind of Canadian Club.

Beer Parlour: Like an ice cream parlour, but for Canadians.

Skidoo: Self-propelled decapitation unit for teenagers.

Muskeg: Boggy swampland.

Duplex: A single building divided in half with two sets of inhabitants, each trying to pretend the other doesn’t exist while at the same time managing to drive each other crazy; metaphor for Canada’s French and English.

Deke: Used as a verb, it means “to fool an opponent through skillful misdirection.” As a noun, it is used most often in exclamatory constructions, such as: “Whadda deke!” Meaning, “My, what an impressive display of physical dexterity employing misdirection and guile.”

Chinook: An unseasonably warm wind that comes over the Rockies and onto the plains, melting snow banks in Calgary but just missing Edmonton, much to the pleasure of Calgarians.

Mountie: Canadian icon, strong of jaw, red of coat, pure of heart. Always get their man! (See also Pepper spray, uses of.)

Snuck: To have sneaked; to move, past tense, in a sneaky manner; non-restrictive extended semi-gerundial form of “did sneak.” (We think.)

Ghost Car: An unmarked police car, easily identifiable by its inconspicuousness.

Impaired: A charge of drunk driving. Used both as a noun and as an adjective (the alternative adjectival from of “impaired” being “pissed to the gills”).

S.O.L.: Shit outta luck; in an unfortunate predicament.

Stanfields: Mens underwear, especially Grandpa-style, white cotton ones with a big elastic waistband and a large superfluous flap in the front. And back!

Toque: Canada’s official National Head Apparel, with about the same suave sex appeal as a pair of Stanfields.

Chippy: Behaviour that is inappropriately aggressive; constantly looking for a reason to find offense; from “chip on one’s shoulder.” (See Western Canada)

Shit Disturber: (See Quebec) a troublemaker or provocateur. According to Katherine Barber, editor in Chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, “shit disturber” is a distinctly Canadian term. (Just remember that Western Canada is chippy and Quebec is a shit disturber, and you will do fine.)

Chimo!: The last sound heard before a Canadian falls over. Passes out!

Eh!

Also fun was this little name game, found everywhere on the Internet this week: discover the hidden meaning of your name at http://www.bostonuk.com/names/default.asp

You have enormous vitality and originality making you a dynamic individual with great charm and sex appeal. You believe in putting one hundred per cent into all your activities of which there are many. You have potential to achieve great success in business or public affairs where your friendship and consideration of others wins you many allies. Your innate strength and determined effort is able to overcome any obstacles. Freedom is important to you.

Thought this was kinda cool because it tells me I’ll have great success in public affairs – happens to be the department I work in, so that’s a good sign!

I also laughed at the Welsh meaning of Tristan (noisy one) and the Hebrew meaning of Simon (listener). They’re a matched set!

Categories: Canadianisms

Disclaimer: I’m feeling a tad rant-ish this morning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve been wondering about this lately. What responsibility do we have as average citizens to police other citizens’ minor transgressions? When are we allowed to be the morality police?

There’s a guy who rides the same bus as me every morning, and every single morning he gets up and leaves the free commuter newspaper he’s been reading on the seat. I know that this particular newspaper encourages “sharing” to widen its circulation, but to me this isn’t sharing so much as littering. Every morning I get off the bus behind him, and want to reach over and grab the newspaper and hand it to him and say something coy like, “Excuse me, sir, I think you dropped this.” But I don’t.

I did, however, pull up beside someone on the highway and holler a piece of my mind at them (cruising at speeds around 120 km/h) when they dumped a bag and tray of McDonald’s trash out the window of their moving car in front of me one day this summer.

And then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum. My father has been stalked (I can’t think of another word for it) and confronted after using the handicapped parking spot at the store. He has a legitmate pass on his windshield, but even when my dad showed this guy the pass, he just harrumphed and walked away. And that’s nothing compared to the outright cruelty Y-vonne describes in telling the story of her sister-in-law, who has terminal cancer in the bones of her legs, returning to her car legitimately parked in a disabled spot to find a note on her windshield stating that if she’d get off her ass and exercise and lose a few pounds and she’d be able to walk.

Shameful, isn’t it?

Just before Christmas, Tristan was battling a virus and I took Simon out of the house to let him lie on the couch in peace. We were half way to the mall when Beloved called me in a panic, saying Tristan was having what turned out to be a febrile seizure and wasn’t breathing properly. I turned the car around, and called 911. When I got off the phone, I drove like a maniac, passing people on curves and making left turns on red lights. One car full of young men who I had passed pulled up behind me at a stoplight and started to come out of their car, yelling angrily at me. I stuck my head out the window and said I was racing home to bring my baby son to the hospital, which shut them up in a hurry. Now, when I see someone driving erratically I think of that night, and just do my best to get out of the way, because you just never know what’s going on inside somebody else’s life.

And back on the other side of the fence, Beloved wanted to call the police last night on the teenager next door and his friends. We came home from a walk around the block with the boys around 7 pm and they were perched at the garage end of the driveway smoking dope. Now personally, I’m pretty laissez-faire on that one, but I do admit that 15-year-olds smoking out in the open where my kids can stumble upon them is a bit of a stretch. Is it really our business? Although not terribly impressed, I was of the opinion that no harm was done, but Beloved was angry.

I can’t find a line in the sand here, where on one side it’s okay to interfere with what someone else is doing and on the other side you should mind your own business. What do you think? Do we generally err on the side of being busy-bodies, or are we mostly live-and-let-live? And should we be more of one than the other?