Santa, the North Pole

HOH OHO

Dear Sir --

In the past you have ignored my repeated requests for a holiday timed encapsulated brain tumour. Yes, I understand times are tough and you are not as young a creative as you used to be. Maybe a tumour is too much to ask for.

Therefore, I have decided to change my request to something more easily installed. I imagine it will also be more successful and certainly more greatly appreciated by my near and dear.

I have been a good girl this year. I would like a nice prezzy. I would like a title/tag line.

Something like "Margaret Beach, Inter-supra-solar-system Super Consumer of No-Frillsian Feline Comestibles" -- but better. Something that is so impressive sounding that it confounds the reader/listener but also charms them. Nay, hypnotizes them. Something that says "she is fabbo, and if you are too ignorant to comprehend why, then you should just give up and worship her and buy her gifts"

I see this as a win-win game plan. You get off easy in the manufacturing department. All you really need is pencil, paper and a few elves chained to their desks churning out notions until they spin the golden line. It can happen. I have faith. I believe. Easy wrapping and merely have to program the thing in following my name every time I write it. Really I'm doing most of the work here.

So gimmee.

Yours with sincere respect,

Megs

Merry Christmas

I hate Christmas. There. I wrote it out loud.

And 'fess up, if you have breast tissue, and/or if your uterus has been occupied for any nine month period resulting in some form of off spring, if you have one or more parents, any random loved ones or possibly a cat or several to which you are firmly attached, you hate Christmas too.

This is the time of year that you cease to exist as a person and become a mindless slave to a completely unattainable dream.

You may as well ask for clear skin for life or peace in the middle east. It can't and won't happen.

What will happen is that in some zombie like state you will run about so much and so frantically that you will become envious of the proverbial headless chicken. At least it has complete collapse to look forward to. And its already dead. You have years (and years and years and there is a &%$@ing Christmas in every one of them) and years to go.

No its not the cost of the gift that's important. And its not really the thought that counts either. Its the presence and presentation of the presents. There must be bows and tissue and cookies and cake. A lot of wine goes a very short way so make sure you have a lot more. Don't give the toddler toys in complex packaging and don't give your brother books or everything comes to a screeching halt while tiny bits of Playmoblie are assembled (and some bits lost) by slightly tipsy adults and your brother reads the the dust jacket, then the forward and says "just a second" while he goes on to the first through twenty third chapters. The gifts pile up about him, the turkey and the hostess burns, the teens set fire to the salad servers, the toddler cries and the dog pees on the tree and the remaining four presents (all for you) that were forgotten there.

Oh shoot me now. I deserve the rest. Aim that taser high, kneecap me whatever it takes. I've been asking Santa for a brain tumor for years but I am stiffed every season and left panting at the cash desk and crying over the gravy.

All I want is peace and good will, time to enjoy those forty thousand cookies I baked and nice comfy couch from Ikea, not that hateful battered looking thing my husband is sentimentally attached to. Resplendent upon the over-stuffed Sweedish-ness, I long to lounge with my little dog secure in the knowledge that some one else has done even a small fraction of the behind-the-scenes slight of hand.

I'd cancel it all if I could. Replace it all with a Bless the Hermits' Day in which one takes a vow of silence and cannot be held accountable for any duty time home or away, at the table, or in the kitchen, at the in-laws or with the near and dear.

All I want for Christmas (outside of that cure all brain tumor, of course) is time off for good behaviour.

New Age Radical

I did It.

No, not that. Of course I've done that and I have a house full of kids and a magic bottomless laundry hamper to show for it. And because of that when some one says "movement" or "sit in" my mind goes directly down the hall to the bathroom. I don't think of taking such issues to the street.

But this time, I found a whole new direction and I stood up and marched for the cause -- straight down to the boardwalk with the other women. Men were invited, of course, but none were brave enough to take part. We gathered ourselves and our spirits and right there on the beach in full view of any person passing by (and several dogs, of course) we did it.

Without reserve, we knit.

It was Worldwide Knit In Public Day!

Surely you have it marked boldly on your calendar. No? Never heard of it? Seriously.....?

Well, me neither, but as soon as I caught wind of it all I knew I had to take part. I had never been much of a radical. I had never before answered a "call", unless you count giving dirty looks to people that idle their cars needlessly outside the school. But when the Naked Sheep informed me now was the time to come out of the granny woollen closet and declare myself a secure stitcher, there was no question. I was unashamed and unabashed of this nearly lost skill, poo-pooed by modernity as a occupation of brittle blue haired types with pickles up their bums, luddites in high waisted underpants creating coarse mufflers and pointy mittens in hard milled acrylic. How many acryls had to be shorn to feed their ugly habits? I knit. Of course I knit! In cotton and wool and silk and hemp. I kept my babies and tea pots warm and cosy. I secured my future mother-in-law's approval and support with a pair of argyle gloves for my husband back in the day.

And for this day I took up not just two needles but four and knit a sock in the round in a circle of like minded knitters: independent, proud and forthright. Women who spoke their minds and who had a plan. As a paddle boarder slowly crossed the lake beyond us some one in the group was inspired. "Lets knit him a sail!" she cried.

This was not a cottage pass time were were participating in, this was a classic art renewed and redefined. This was no country bee, it was a heady be-in of wild and wooly urbanites who knew who they were and the difference between murino and alpaca and didn't care a darn (in fact they all knew how to darn!) if they were seen to know it. Right there. In public.

Fo a brief and shining moment, I was one of them.

Then my 15 year old joined me for lunch from her near by work place and kept calling me "Mummy". After that my husband totally blew my cover when he showed up with our four year old in tow and told me it was time to go because we had to get groceries.

I was busted right down to domestic dabbler. It was plain I not the able fibre artist I longed to be.

But next year..... I'll be ready. I've marked my calendar. World Wide Knit in Public Day 2010, here I come. I have just enough time to knit myself a mustache as a disguise.

Lets Go To The "EX"!

Ah! The "EX". The CNE. The Canadian National Exhibition. I love it.

The question is: why?

Its not nostalgia. Or the mid-way thrills. The shows, the Tiny Tom doughnuts, the barkers or the piglets in the petting zoo, though the appeal of those snotty sweeties is difficult to deny.

Its the same thing every year, renewed and refreshed in some way. We hug the llama, pet the yak, cuddle the piggies then on to the rides. Merry-go-round and round and round and round. The flying bees the swirling swings. The pirate ship that rocks and the submarine that loops not only above water but above ground. I like the ferris wheel. My little ones always like the Bouncy Whatever -- castle, tiger, train, slide, amoeba, peace conference. Fill it with air and chain a bored carney to each end and you've got yourself a hit with the under seven set. Were it not against the rules you could leave your kid in one all day.

I always play The Birthday Game once. I won once. Some hard packed teddy with a lecherous glare. I am sure I could fool the guy who guesses your age. No one believes I have a university aged child. Second year, actually. With my kindergartener in tow I am confident the guessers guestimate would fall far short of my real age of 46, and much closer to my mental age of seven and a half. Eleven on a good day. But I never play. I just don't have much use for a metre high Sponge Bob or some furry chapeau so garish it would be rejected by Cat in The Hat's flamboyant cousin.

When the heart is willing but the feet need a rest, the classic art of crowd watching is recommended. Ponder these ageless questions: why do people buy those enormous faux flowers painted in eye stinging colours and where are they going to put them in their homes? How is it that prim older white ladies wear matching white structured hair and white structured trousers and never have a spot on them? Is it because they have worn polyester so long it has been assimilated into their physiology? Why do men always wear sweat stained ball caps that appear to shrink their skulls? Who issues that uniform to the oversized-plus-plus female smokers so they all look alike? You know, the stretch pants, lop sided t-shirt, cigarette permanently stained with virulent purple lipstick and hair slicked and stretched back so tight into a cheerie-o sized bun or a limp skimpy pony tail that it distorts the facial features. Why do they all dress the same?

Rejuvinated and probably perplexed now, one must clear one's mind with a visit the fire station, the cows and better living centre. How else can you see a genuine Sham-Wow or Slap Chop in action? How else would you know your meagre existence could be improved with the minor addition of an everlasting nail file?

Visit the adult mid-way and observe the idiots spinning themselves free of several IQ points. See them wobble off the Zipper or the Fire Ball or the or the Grey Matter Jelly Maker and spew up everything since lunch a week last Tuesday, then amble on for another go at self destruction through unbalanced terror. S'fun. To watch.

We end the night generally ten to twelve hours after opening, knackered to the core. By the bitter end I am jogging from ferrris wheel to merry-go-round with a child affixed to my back and the hazy gaze of a long distance runner while my husband feeds me energy bites (ok, wine gums) without breaking my stride. Its painful, but it feel good. It feels traditional. It will be three days before I can walk without wincing, just as long before I can straighten up again. But even as I leave, I look forward to next year.

I love the EX. I just don't know why.

Dog Tale

When I was small my mother got a St Bernard. One of those huge furry beasts with big jowels and droopy eyes. In fact, she eventually got two. What was she thinking? Did she believe those little barrel shaped flasks that St Bernards are so often pictured with were bred in somehow, complete with a self replenishing supply of brandy? What she got was dopy, relentlessly drooling male and a hyperactive, faeces-eating female totally impossible to train.

You may imagine how this informed my opinion of dogs.

Now, back episodes of Lassie and The Littlest Hobo did assure me that dogs could be good and clever. They might rescue babies from burning buildings or perform tricks like "shake-a-paw" or "settle-middle-east-conflict". But I kept my reservations. I refused to join in my children's chorus of "I Wanna Dog". I knew who would be walking it in the bad weather. I knew who would be on poop patrol and brushing its canines and coat: it would be the same person who cleaned the cat box and cleared up the kitty puke.

Yours truly.

Then something happened -- in the midst of Christmas madness, DIY kitchen renos, visiting relations wedged into my little house along with the usual cast of six, a record snow fall and enough stress that I felt faint and inadvertently summoned the full emergency squad (police fire and ambulance) when I made an innocent little inquiry about symptoms of a low level CO2 leak -- puppy thoughts invaded my brain.

I had been hoping for an operable brain tumour. Nothing too serious. No loss of speech or motor control. Just something that needed immediate attention that would keep me alone in hospital at least until New Years. No visitors, no worries, no cooking for 9 every night. Surely I'd get a swanky set of jammies out of the ordeal. Win-win and something flannel with satin piping in a cup cake print.

When that didn't working out, I got a puppy instead. Completely logical, right?

I vowed not to become one of Those People. You know, Those People who work their lives around their dog's whims and bowel movements, who wipe their noses on their tiny little dogss murmuring "hoozawuvvywoggie?" before stowing them away between their listless bosoms. And my dog would not be one of Those Dogs -- quaking bug-eyed things who piddle at the slightest provocation (usually on you), before returning to "mommy's" dark, protective cleavage.

I have gone dangerously close the edge. I once attended the dog cafe at the organic farmer's market, in which dogs lounged with their people, enjoying a home baked snack and a fair trade latte. Heady with the thrill I got deeper into the whole scene and hit the road to a hip outdoor festival-come-love-in, a be-canine-in -- Woofstock -- a festival of all things dog in downtown Toronto.

They closed whole blocks to accommodate the crowds and their dogs. Or vice versa. There were product stalls and demonstrations, water bowls everywhere, herds of horse sized Great Danes and fashion shows of denim clad chiauaus. A parkette fountain bubbled over with water loving dogs. There were savory samples for dogs in all sizes from Teeny to Bruiser (nothing for the people). Competitions for dogs who could fetch farther higher and faster. Dogs of all kinds and people who loved them.

Yes, there were Those People and Those Dogs, but mostly dogs who didn't know they were dogs, and people that were happy to help them maintain their illusions. Happy dogs, grinning dogs, social dogs, happily sniffing each other's bums and wagging their whole selves in unbridled joy.

My little dog and I had a grand time. Stoned on puppy love I collected arm loads of samples until I could carry no more. Stellerphant and I staggered home, high on the scent of panting dogs and kibble breath and crashed on the kitchen floor, too wiped to recount the wondrous tale.

"Its just like they say," observed my husband "If you can remember Woofstock, you weren't really there."

I Don't Understand

Outhouses.

In this age of composting toilets my dear friend remains inexplicably attached to the "adventure" of her cottage outhouse. Not so attached that she was morally prevented from having a composting toilet installed in the quaintly designed, tin roofed, pine panelled, professionally constructed outhouse that is some 4o yards -- excuse me, metres -- from the nearest cottage door. Not a significant distance unless you suffer some urgent and impending sense that you must empty your colon immediately if not sooner lest you should soil your jammies, the floor, the dog, the walls and your unsuspecting and blissfully snoring partner. Then it may as well be on the moon. Even under normal circumstances, when nature makes a gentle but insistent midnight call and you are faced with putting on shoes and long pants and the long sleeves and probably socks and one of those fetching little net veils over the stained ball cap provided and perhaps a little of the heavy duty bug spray because its been raining for three days and the out house is out in the woods with the biting insects, its still more of a hike than most persons would want.

My friend describes her cottage as a "heritage" property. She is keen to preserve it in its original form . But even the well cared for historical hovels and castles of England have some modern conveniences. No one expects the devoted dwellers of these estates to toddle down the garden path to pee. They're not crossing their legs and limiting fluids after 7, becoming cranky and constipated and dehydrated so as to avoid the dreaded midnight run.

Even if you don't want to spoil the line of your heritage property by all means make an addition or a very closely aligned separate building in a hidden spot, no more than a hop, skip and a fart from the back door. I would even suggest a board walk. Consider a screened in breezeway.

I have a composting toilet IN my cottage. It can be done. Our Spun Sugar Delicate former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson has one in her cottage. And if her dainty digestive system can empty its white rose scented discard into an indoor composting toidy, well then we can all follow her lead, and smugly lower our smarty pants nearer to our dear ones, privately ensconced and enthroned upon our environment and olfactory friendly loos. And we may feel royally pleased with ourselves.

All with grace and dignity and without feeding the mosquitos.

Attempting to attempt

For a while there it was the trend for young couples to become "pre-engaged". It involved a generally one way gift presentation, he to she, almost always in the form of a ring. Said ring would have a modest diamond mounted on it, and if the she were lucky enough to be pre-pre-wed to a man with money in the family, or if the admirer of the ring had an electron microscope, then it was probably quite a charming piece of jewellery. More often, though, any precious stone fixed to a pre-engagement ring was too modest, in the sense of being shy, to be seen. It hid just beyond the normal focal limits of the healthy human eye to protect itself from the glare of harsh judgement.

"What do you mean pre-engaged? Like you are planning to plan to get married? What is that? Let me see the rock. Oh. there's nothing to see, really. So that's what that is: nothing".

I only tell you people I am Attempting a Novel. It is My Attempted Novel. Sometimes, when I am driving one of my kids to work or school or picking grubs or washing my little dog, I have moments of brilliance. And I've learned the hard way they are not still there when your hands are otherwise unoccupied. So I also have a stack of receipts, lunch napkins (sadly no cocktail napkins) FYI's from the school and mutilated envelopes from bills, all now stained with coffee and suds shaken off a dog, upon which I have scribbled my genius.

And then -- when Jo is watching TV, the laundry is hung, the sky is clear, two teens are on the trampoline, one is on the phone, hunny husband is doing the Vulcan mind Meld with the main computer -- I tip toe to my corner, remember Virginia Wolfe and settle into A corner of My Own, because I don't have a whole room.

I redo yesterday's work, then 65 words, 115 if I am really lucky then

"WaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Someone just bounced over the net and into the neighbours shrubs, or the dog filled one shoe with pee and chewed its mate to bits, or hunny wants to know if he should cook a roast yak for supper because its almost six o'clock (he had to pass the chilli bubbling on the stove to ask me this) or finally, as I predicted so many times, the phone has become fused to my 15 year old's ear and she needs to have it surgically removed.

Thus endeth the brilliance, the attempt at My Attempt.

Right now I am just a bit blocked. I need a literary laxative. Maybe a chocolate popsicle and a cuddle with my dog.

Except she has shoe breath.

Yuck.

Water dog disclaimer

I think when you get a dog from the pound that they should come with a 'water dog' disclaimer.  They always warn you if the puppy will grown into a 200 lb monster, or if it is likely to chase things...but they never warn you that your new pet might have an affinity for water.  

Big deal, right?  Wrong.  This is a HUGE deal.  

My first dog, the great dane, is not a swimmer.  She's too fastidious to even get her feet wet.  She's always clean, dry and ready to hop in the car or up on the couch for a cuddle.  The hound however, is the water kind of dog.  He is driven by his need to get wet and dirty.  If there is a puddle, he is in it.  Rolling gleefully in two inches of oily street water is his idea of a great afternoon.  He finds water in places there isn't any water.  I live in a desert for heaven's sake!  Still, he comes home dripping wet and muddy the likes of which I've never seen before.

He nearly killed himself twice yesterday by careening into a river at full flood for a quick dip.  Both incidents found me, laying on my belly on a crumbling bank, reaching wildly for any hand hold on a wriggling, drowning dog.  After what seemed like hours, and in both cases was probably about 15 seconds, I managed to haul poor George-Michael up to safety only to have him shake , roll and head back in for more.  He's exhausting.

Shoot me now.
I have reached the point in my writing life that I am trolling for dirty clothes in my kids' rooms so I don't have to sit and write the next bit in my Attempted Novel.

Oh look! Gym socks in the bottom of a back pack in the back of a closet! At least I think they're socks. Lets try to un-ball them and turn them right side out to see.... drats! They're just shattering.

Gardening -- the beautiful Back Yard. I do it because I want it done, not because I have any particular love for it. There are a lot of things I would rather be doing. I could grow fat on wish sandwiches on white bread and leave my small misshaped lot to the pestilence of the season. I could take comfort in the fact my neighbours to either side are essentially useless in the out door beautification department, to the point that my doing nothing would look way better than their doing nothing plus old rusty cars and broken toys combo. But my OCD won't allow it. I want the garden just like the garden in the magazines I read in the check out line.

Yes, those gardens are all south of Maryland, in the U.S., owned by wealthy people, measured in acreage not square centimetres and hardy to some soft and lofty zone I cannot even imagine. But that's not the point.

Slowly I turn, in my unflattering yellow shorts before the season of shaved legs begins, and trudge into my not-garden to work my obstinate magic on it.

For weeks I dig, turn, yank and fill four large trash bins with clumps of crabgrass, Rasputin runner weeds and clover enough to drive a herd of cattle giddy with delight. I pick grubs by the dozens with my bare hands and collect them all wriggling, white and vile in an empty Zoodles can. Jo, my four year old, wants to keep them as pets. I say "no" but assure her they will go to a Better Place than under my once and future lawn. Then, when she is properly distracted digging a giant hole for a single grass seed, I pour salt on the grubs and watch them burn and writhe, hopefully in horrible pain.

"I toss them out on the road for the racoons" says one gardener. He is a far more generous soul than I. Nor will I leave them to the skunks that reside under the play house. I have seen the destruction they cause. And though I placed a cheerful, kindly lettered sign at skunk eye level "Please Replace Your Divots" they refuse to take heed. Illiterate poop heads.

We put that almighty grass seed in the hole Jo dug. We could also drop a full grown man and an old John Deere in there as well. Like all dogs and children, she loves to dig. Then we cover it over, chant a rapid growth incantation, and she goes in to wash her hands and watch a congratulatory hour of TV. I wish I could join her.

But while she is absorbed by Martha the Talking dog (as opposed to Martha the Eldest Sister) I fill in the hole, smooth and tamp the soil, and mix in the rest of the bag of grass seed, so much lighter now that that one Jo chose is gone and buried.

I have compressed the process for the blog purposes. The whole ordeal took several sessions of two to six hours and many glasses of wine and days of therapeutic whimpering to complete.

And in the end, this is what I learned:

1) generally grass will grow where you don't want it, won't grow where you do want it, unless you go out of your way to impress and intimidate it.

2) no matter how much grass seed they eat, the birds will not get too fat to fly

3) 4 year olds will cry when you fill in the beautiful holes they create

4) squirrels collect peach pits, bury peach pits but do not eat peach pits, and peach pits, together with the stickers off fruit, cockroaches, rats and Twinkies will survive a nuclear holocaust. As the doomsday clock ticks ever nearer to some despot pressing the Big Button I am collecting all the peach pits I found in the lawn and constructing a bomb shelter out of them.

5) blood meal may deter the squirrels from taking out their little back hoes and digging up all the tulips you so carefully planted in perfect rows, but it also drives the dog mad and makes the whole back yard smell like a horror house butcher's shop.

BUT -- more than a month later my grass is growing in, my garden furniture is comfy and clean, I have a decoy weenie strategically placed next to my chiminea in case the neighbours call the fire brigade on me for having a back yard fire, the flowers are thriving and the vegetables are yet to be discovered by the insects. Environment Canada tells me all danger of frost has passed. Clap your hands if you believe in Environment Canada!

(thunderous applause)

And I have a lovely back garden, almost like the ones in the magazines. Now if I could just keep people from lounging around it and messing it up.

OMG it's still there.

You know how you sometimes tuck something away in a closet and find it years later, delighted at this long-forgotten treasure? That's how I felt just now when I logged in to begin contributing to this blog. My profile triggered a visit to my old travel blog, Pole to Pole with Me. I'd almost forgotten about it, since the blog had lapsed since 2007, and, well, I just expected that it would go "poof!" into the ether of internet synapses like all of the events in my life, trivial or not, that I can no longer remember. But, Lordy! It's there! And it brought back such wonderful memories.

Now you may come to realize through this blog that I am an inconsistent diarist (is that a word? Journalist is not right... you know what I mean). Travel gives a wonderful excuse to record extraordinary experiences. Everyday life is just...everyday. But I pledge to take the minutae of my life and type it out for all to see.

This should be fun.

Contact Information

I had to move home.  At 27, this isn't easy.  I have found a new place, all of my own, but for a few weeks I have been staying at my parents house. It's my turn to empty the dishwasher.

With moving comes all sorts of new information....new address, change in insurance, new phone numbers...all of which I have trouble remembering.

In all the confusion, I posted my new phone number on my Facebook profile so that I wouldn't have to look it up every half hour for one of my friends.  Nobody called.  I mean nobody.  I have friends, and yet none of them wanted to talk to me during this trying time in my life?  

After about a week I started to receive strange e-mails all going something like this,

"Katie!  Ha Ha Ha!   You're so funny!"

"Oh friend.  If you needed a place you stay, you should have asked!"

"Hey, we can hang out later, if you want.  I mean, If you're free....we could keep it professional."

Finally, after ten days of this,  one friend finally tracked me down at my parents house and explained that I had posted the wrong phone number.  All my friends, some of my family and even one potential employer had been leaving messages for me at Merritt's own, 'Happy endings massage parlour,' above the Husky station at the truck stop.  No kidding.  I couldn't make this kind of stuff up if I tried.

why why why

Why do I still get pimples when I am 46? How unjust is that?