In which I keel over dead from embarrassment

I’ve written before about how sometimes I wonder whether too many people in the office read my blog. As of now, I wonder no longer.

There’s a really nice guy who used to work in tech support in my office. He’s quiet, but kind, and I always enjoyed chatting with him. I knew he’d moved on to another job, and the way things often go in an organization as large as this one, I had no idea where. He slipped off my radar screen, as they say.

Out of the blue, I got an e-mail from him recently. He said,

Hi Danielle
In the fall I was using an old copy of a Ottawa Citizen for
protecting the bricks of my outside window ‘cos I was painting it, and your mug was staring at me ‘cos they did a story about your blog. I am like, that looks like Danielle at work!
So, I have been reading it and it is wonderful.
I especially like the 101 things…
As for #26, this will get better over time, trust me!
Take care and hope to run into you soon!

Now, I wrote that 101 things about me way back in the summer of 2005, when I had tens of readers each week. I’ve often thought about going back and updating it, partly because some of the stuff is out of date but mostly because there is one line in particular that I really always felt didn’t need to be in there. I kept it there all this time out of some sense of moral obligation to editorial integrity, but I have increasingly come to believe that there is a “too much information” threshold that simply should not be crossed.

As I read this very sweet e-mail, I thought to myself, “He couldn’t possibly be talking about that one, could he? Please tell me #26 isn’t that one.” There are surely more than 100,000 words on this blog, and only half a dozen or so that I would truly be uncomfortable discussing over coffee with my most intimate confidantes, let alone with a casual acquaintance.

Cringing, I clicked on my own link and scrolled down. And winced. And blushed. And wished for a giant hole to open up and swallow me and my damn computer whole. Read it while it lasts, because this weekend, number 26 gets plutoed off my list.

Do you think maybe it’s too late to move to a pseudonym?

Imagine they held a winter festival, and forgot to invite winter

Warning: Those of you reading from the Prairies might want to breeze past this one. Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?

Been a long time since I blogged about the weather. Did you know that as a Canadian citizen, we’re constitutionally obligated to discuss the weather at least 37 per cent of the time? And with a winter like this, especially with the undewhelming performance of the Senators (hockey being the other topic we are constitutionally obligated to discuss), there’s nothing else worthy of conversation.

What the heck is up with this weather, anyway? It’s mid-January, and we’re still waiting for winter to arrive. We’ve had two, maybe three snowfalls, plus a few dustings. The temperatures have been in the range of ten or more degrees (Centigrade, bien sûr) above the norm almost every day. Quite frankly, as a cautionary tale on global warming, it’s scaring the hell out of me.

Every February, Ottawa has a winter festival called Winterlude. Central to Winterlude is the Rideau Canal, a 7.8 km skateway recently certifed by the Guiness people as the world’s longest. Also popular are the ice scupltures and the snow playground.

Who would have imagined that Winterlude, nestled deep in the cold heart of February, would be in jeopardy due to unfreezing temperatures? In the Citizen today, they had a little graphic stating that we need at least 10 days of temperatures below -15C for the Canal to freeze. There are only 22 days until the start of Winterlude, and the long-term forecast doesn’t show a single day that will get that cold.

To my great surprise, I’m finding that I’m actually missing the winter weather. I miss the way the snow insulates sound, so that when you go for a walk on a snowy winter evening, the world is peacefully silent except for the crunch and squeak of snow under your boots. I miss the ruddy hue on the boys’ chubby cheeks. I miss that biting, shocking blast of cold that snatches the air out of your lungs when you first step outside.

Who knew it was possible to have a year without a winter? And who knew I’d be disappointed? It’s just not right, I tell you. There are some things we can count on, and a cold Canadian winter should be one of them. It’s just not right.

On changing child care providers

And you thought I’d gotten over the angst-ridden navel-gazing that has predominated the past month or so. Ha, I mock your naivité. In my world, there is ALWAYS something else over which to fret.

I think I might be in the market for a new child care provider.

Our decision to consider changing (could I possible hedge any more?) isn’t precipitated on anything cataclysmic, which almost makes it harder. The boys love their current care provider so much they call her ‘auntie’. They’ve been with her since Tristan was 16 months old, and way back then Tristan was the only child in her care. But lately, it seems like every month there are new kids there. She has two of her own, both school-age, plus my two (although Tristan is in school half time), plus two more preschool boys, plus one or two toddlers, and a handful of other kids under six on a rotating basis. A lot of them are part-time or kids of shift workers, so they’re not all there all the time, but the house always seems full to capacity. She has a helper, but still – that’s a crazy amount of kids. There’s one new kid in particular who is rambunctious and rough, and the boys complain about him regularly. This week, he broke one of Tristan’s new Christmas toys, and the boys have said he likes to run into them and knock them down. Not an ideal situation.

Last August, the caregiver took a two week vacation and we had to find substitute care. Both Tristan and Simon still talk longingly about when they went to Tanya’s house, and how much they liked her. Unfortunately, she only had openings for the summer, and is too far from us to consider for regular care. However, I find this above everything else very telling. It was a week and a half over five months ago, and they still ask about her.

But – and, isn’t there always a ‘but’? – my fear of change is banging a gong of alarm at the idea of finding a new caregiver. What if a new caregiver isn’t as flexible, or as loving, or as patient? What if we make a really bad choice and she’s an axe murderer, or she lets them watch Barney?

But then, cries the barely-repressed optimist, maybe Mary Poppins is just around the corner, waiting with cuddles and crafts and nutritious meals for two loveable boys to complete her otherwise perfect life. Hey, it could happen!

Most of my friends have struggled with daycare, going through several providers and even being stuck without anyone and having to miss work to cover off, which makes me even more leery to risk our current stable, if not ideal, arrangement. It’s the old “devil you know versus the devil you don’t” connundrum.

And it’s hard to find the perfect daycare provider when you are forced into it because you change neighbourhoods, or your caregiver closes up shop, or something like that. But to willfully bring on the experience of not only searching for the right caregiver, but then making the transition and then learning to live with the peccadilloes of another person taking care of your most precious possession… ugh. I must be crazy to even think about it.

But I can no longer ignore the whispers of concern from my gut. Over the last several months, I’ve struggled to decide whether the idea of change was worse than the idea of stasis, and the accumulated weight of many small concerns has finally tipped the scales far enough that I’m tentatively looking for a new care provider. I’ve put up ads on two popular free online services, and had a few responses already. At least I have the luxury of being able to take my time and find what is hopefully a perfect fit.

Hey, at the very least I can milk the hell out of this for some good blog fodder, right?

International delurking week

Hey you! Yes, you! The one who sashays over here, checks out what’s new, and leaves without a peep. I’m talking to YOU!

I see you visiting, you know. I wonder who you are, and why you visit, and whether you like what you are reading. I wonder why you come often, but never say hello.

Well, this week is International Delurking Week, and you are morally obligated to leave a comment. It doesn’t have to be a pithy comment, or a witty comment, or a verbose comment. Just say hello, for goodness sake. I don’t ask much (okay, so that’s a lie, I shamelessly ask for stuff all the time), but today I’m asking, nay impelling you, to give up a little comment in return.


(Props to Paper Napkin for the idea, and the funky graphic. Go say hello to Sheryl and pick up a graphic of your own!)

Now go forth and comment on all your favourite blogs. Share the bloggy love!

A perfect storm of self improvement

It’s a killer combination. The January resolution thing, the weight loss thing, the really freaky weather that makes it seem like I should be spring-cleaning instead of putting away the Christmas decorations… it’s a perfect storm of self-improvement, and it’s charging me up and making me want to change the world, or at least to better myself – and, heaven help them, my family.

As if all that weren’t enough, last week, Beloved and I watched Super Size Me for the first time. Yikes! Although I’d read and heard a lot about it, seeing it – and we were glued to the screen for the whole thing – went a long way toward curing us of our fast food addiction.

The same week, I was making my daily trek through Chapters. I like to see what’s new and hot and intriguing and add the titles to my library wish list, but on this particular day the book You On A Diet : The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management leapt out and practically threw itself into my bag. Since it was discounted by 40% with my membership, I bought it on impulse and have been inching my way through it in spare moments. (It’s the first non-infertility health book I’ve ever bought, which is an interesting peek into my state of mind, IMHO.) I found out later that Oprah recommended it, which is ordinarily enough to make me walk quickly in the other direction, but so far it’s been at least interesting, if not as compelling as watching the guy’s liver fail on Super Size Me. If you’re interested, I’ll post a longer review of it when I’m done.

So yesterday I came home the grocery store with a cart full of enthusiasm and – remember this complaint from last month? – no less than FIVE DAYS worth of meals. And not just crap, either – actual healthy meals. And healthy snacks, too. Go, me!!

Beloved unpacked the groceries into the cupboard while I cleaned up the poop in the back yard. (Sidebar: this weather is freaking me out. It’s mid-January and I just picked up half a season of poop from the back yard, which I often do during the January thaw – except I am usually shovelling it off a crust of deeper ice and snow. I have never, in the seven years we’ve owned Katie, picked up poop off grass in January.)

“What’s with all this healthy crap?” he queried from the deck as I shovelled shit into a Glad bag.

“There’s a new regime in town, baby!” I told him.

“Overthrow the regime!!” he responded in mock disgust before returning to the kitchen to put away the rice cakes, veggies, and whole-wheat pasta.

You know what the best part is? I lost a pound. Just one pound, but a pound nonetheless.

My colleague, the commenter otherwise known as Trixie, made my day by likening that single pound to a pound of butter. I like to think I melted it directly off my tucus.

Stand back. There’s no stopping me now.

I’m hardly surprised

As seen at Mimilou and Angry Pregnant Lawyer:

The True Neurotic
You scored 65 anxiety, 87 awkwardness, and 70 neuroticism!
Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You’re plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard–even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn’t help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors–probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

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You scored higher than 99% on anxiety

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You scored higher than 99% on awkwardness

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You scored higher than 99% on neuroticism

Link: The Neurotic Test

Pluto is the word of the year

I’m such a word nerd. Last week we had the banished words of 2007, and I am now pleased to share with you the American Dialect Society’s word of the year: pluto.

“To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet,” according to the press release. I can’t say I’ve heard it used before, but I think it makes a lovely substitute for the démodé “to vote someone off the island.”

Other finalists in the contest, which drew tens of internet voters, included climate canary, a species which acts as an indicator for global warming; murse a man’s purse, and to julie: “to organize an event. Also as a noun. From Julie McCoy, the character of cruise director on the television show The Love Boat.”

While all that was rather interesting, what I found most fascinating was the addendum to the press release, which shows the word of the year and justification, going back to 1990. It gives me vertigo to look back and see what is now commonplace or even quaint terminology and how revolutionary it was just a couple of years ago, not just in technology but in popular culture as well:

1995 Word of the Year: (tie) World Wide Web on the Internet, and newt, to make aggressive changes as a newcomer. Most Likely to Succeed: World Wide Web and its variants the Web, WWW, W3. Most Useful: E.Q. (for Emotional Quotient), the ability to manage one’s emotions. Most Original: postal or go postal, to act irrationally, often violently, from stress at work. Most Outrageous: starter marriage, a first marriage not expected to be the last.

1994 Word of the Year: (tie) cyber, pertaining to computers and electronic communication, and morph, to change form. Most Promising: Infobahn, the Internet. Most Trendy: dress down day or casual day, a workday when employees are allowed to dress casually. Most Euphemistic: challenged indicating an undesirable or unappealing condition.

1993 Word of the Year: information superhighway, network linking computers, television, telephone, and other electronic means of communication. Most Likely to Succeed: quotative like with a form of the verb be to indicate speech or thought. Most Useful: thing premodified by a noun, e.g. “a Chicago thing.” Most Imaginative: McJob, a generic, unstimulating, low-paying job. Most Amazing: cybersex, sexual stimulation by computer. Most Unnecessary: mosaic culture to describe a multicultural society.

1992 Word of the Year: Not! expression of disagreement. Most Likely to Succeed: snail mail, s-mail, mail that is physically delivered, as opposed to e-mail. Most Useful: grunge, a style of clothing. Most Original: Franken-, genetically altered. Most Amazing: Munchhausen’s syndrome by proxy, illness fabricated to evoke sympathy for the caregiver. Most unnecessary: gender feminism, belief that sex roles are social, not biological. Most Outrageous: ethnic cleansing, purging of ethnic minorities.

1991 Word of the Year: mother of all —, greatest, most impressive. Most Likely to Succeed: rollerblade, skate with rollers in a single row. Most Successful: in your face, aggressive, confrontational, flamboyant. Most Original: molecular pharming/pharming, genetically modifying farm animals to produce human proteins for pharmaceutical use.

1990 Word of the Year: bushlips, insincere political rhetoric. Most Likely to Succeed: (tie) notebook PC, a portable personal computer weighting 4-8 pounds, and rightsizing, adjusting the size of a staff by laying off employees. Most Useful: (tie) technostupidity, loss of ability through dependence on machines, and potty parity, equalization of toilet facilities for the sexes. Most Amazing: bungee jumping, jumping from a high platform with elastic cables on the feet. Most Outrageous: politically correct, PC, adhering to principles of left-wing social concern.

The iPod knows all!

Can’t remember where I saw this originally, but I know Phantom Scribbler and Scrivenings have done it. I’ve had it bookmarked since before I got my iPod, but just stumbled across it when cleaning up some old files. And since we’re on vacation this week, it’s a perfect time to drag out an old meme everybody on the interwebs except me has done!

Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

How does the world see you?
Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears
(no, really!!)

Will I have a happy life?
Gift Shop – The Tragically Hip
(hey, as my mother always said – if love me, buy me things!)

What do my friends really think of me?
Poets – The Tragically Hip
(I swear, I am NOT making this shit up!)

Do people secretly lust after me?
You are the Sunshine of my Life – Stevie Wonder
(we walked down the aisle to this song – maybe this signifies the end of lust??)

How can I make myself happy?
I don’t like Mondays – The Boomtown Rats
(Given. So I should avoid Mondays?)

What should I do with my life?
Hello City – Barenaked Ladies
(That’s a bit more cryptic, isn’t it? This song is about Halifax. I am NOT moving to Halifax, no offense to the Haligonians in the audience. Nor, for that matter, do I plan to spend any more time than necessary as a bare naked lady.)

Will I ever have children?
Twist my Arm – The Tragically Hip
(The Hip answers are all the cleverest ones, aren’t they? Maybe it’s a sign. I’ve always had a musical crush on Gord Downie.)

What is some good advice for me?
Fly from Heaven – Toad the Wet Sprocket
(Um – I think I’ll just leave that one alone.)

How will I be remembered?
Hot Child in the City – Nick Guilder
(okay, I may be remembered for any one of a thousand things, but all modesty aside, “hot” will never be one of them. And I’m fine with that.)

What is my signature dancing song?
She Loves me like a Rock – Paul Simon
(hey, it’s got a good beat at least…)

What do I think my current theme song is?
Pretty in Pink – The Psychedelic Furs
(okay, that was weird enough to make the hair on the back of my arms stand up)

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Home for a Rest – Spirit of the West
(appropriate after a weekend visiting my brother’s family)

What song will play at my funeral?
It’s a Kind of Magic – Queen
(should have been “who wants to live forever” if we’re doing Queen.)

What type of men/women do you like?
Men: Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of – U2
Women: Somebody Told Me – The Killers

What is my day going to be like?
The one I Love – R.E.M.
(well, I’m spending the day with the ones I loves)

That was fun! Let me know if you haven’t done it and you decide to play along!

Tristan lends a hand

I had spent the whole day doing laundry and sorting clothes into careful piles on my bed.

I was in the kitchen finishing dinner when the boys came home. Tristan disappeared upstairs shortly after he got home, and hollered down for his brother after a few minutes.

“Simon, Simon, guess what! Our favourite jammies are clean. I just put yours on your bed!”

I stopped stirring the potatoes. I couldn’t have heard that right. Did my four year old just say he was putting away the laundry?

“Tristan,” I called in as neutral a voice as I could manage, “What are you doing?”

“Putting away my clothes,” he called back, the pride evident in his voice.

“You put away the piles that I had on my bed?” I asked, still unable to believe what I was hearing.

“Only my own clothes, and Simon’s jammies. I left yours and most of Simon’s on the bed.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks…” I said, incredulous and bemused and annoyed all at the same time.

Yes, my four year old took it upon himself to put his own clothes back into his drawers. When I went up later to retrieve them, he had even correctly sorted the pants, shirts, jammies and underwear into the correct drawers. I couldn’t help but smile as I pulled them back out of the drawers. They had been carefully sorted on my bed for a reason… I was about to put them into a suitcase, as we were leaving the next day to visit my brother.

Think it will ever happen again? Nope, me neither.

The Greatest Canadian Inventions

I’m in love with CBC TV lately. Last night, I got completely sucked in by an unexpectedly delightful TV special called The Greatest Canadian Invention. It used a combination of archival clips and commentaters to count down the 50 greatest Canadian inventions, as ranked by the Canadian public.

It was full of cultural references and asides spanning the Wiggles to the Kids in the Hall to CSI, and a good dose of quintessentially Canadian humour. Astronaut Chris Hadfield, for instance, in describing the iconic Canadarm, explained that it was so sensitive that it could “take a pencil and stick it up your nose.” He also mentioned that there wasn’t a lot of forethought put into inscribing the Canada wordmark into the insulation around the arm, but when NASA saw that logo in every camera shot beamed back to millions of viewers on Earth, they were quick to put an American flag on the back of the space shuttle to compensate.

The commentaters, a collection of B-list Canadian personalities ranging from Margaret Atwood and Will Ferguson to Mitsou to Mike Holmes and Debbie Travis (I can just hear my American readers saying, “Who??”) and the archival clips of everything from Pierre Trudeau paddling a canoe to the old WonderBra commercials from the 1970s (remember that song? “Wonderful wonderful… WonderBra”?) transformed this into a clever, witty, culturally-laden and ultimately fascinating look at the history of Canadian inventions.

And about those inventions… who knew? I couldn’t find an easy-to-copy list on cbc.ca, so I lifted this one from Wikipedia (I’ve put my “I had no idea” revelations in bold):

Alkaline battery
Ardox Spiral Nail
Automatic Lubricating Cup
Basketball
Birch-Bark Canoe
BlackBerry
Bloody Caesar
Canadarm
Caulking gun
Cobalt-60 “Bomb” Cancer Treatment
CPR-Mannequin: “Actar 911”
Crash-Position Indicator-CPI
Electric Oven
Electric Wheelchair
Electron Microscope
Electronic Music Synthesizer
Explosives Vapour Detector
Five Pin Bowling
Fog horn
Goalie mask
Green Garbage Bag
G-Suit
Instant Mashed Potatoes
Instant Replay
Insulin
Java programming language
Key Frame Animation
Lacrosse
Light Bulb
Marine Screw Propeller
Marquis Wheat
Pablum
Pacemaker
Paint roller
Plexiglas
Poutine
Radio Voice Transmission
Retractable Beer Carton Handle
Robertson screw
Self-Propelled Combine Harvester
Separable Baggage Check
Ski-Doo
Snowblower
Standard Time
Telephone
UV Degradable Plastics
Walkie-Talkie
Weevac 6
Wonderbra
Zipper

These are in alphabetical order, rather than the order in which they were ultimately ranked. The top three, though were insulin, the lightbulb (invented by Canadians, and then the patent was sold to Thomas Edison for $5000) and the telephone.

I love the fact that the retractable beer case handle and poutine made the list! Kudos to CBC for putting together such an enjoyable and ultimately educational show. I hadn’t meant to watch any more than a few minutes, but from the start I was hooked for the full two hours. Bravo!