Lost in translation

I'm trying to remember the last time I had a really pleasant dream.  The only dreams I have these days are ones in which I'm failing to do something.  Failing to care for my children properly (they are usually much younger and I'm left them somewhere), or failing to prepare (I'm teaching without a lesson plan or have that old chestnut about trying to find the examination room for a course I've neglected to attend all year).

Then there's my real life where my dreams come true.  Not in Hollywood style. Younger daughter has summatives due.  For you non-Ontarians, those are the term end class projects and reports due at the end of the semester, in January and June.  Younger daughter being autistic with big-time memory issues, this means heavy parental involvement, mainly to understand what is required so we can help her get the task in manageable pieces.  And don't get me started on exams. I fail (there's that word again) to see how exams benefit anyone, much less someone who often can't quite remember what has happened during the day.

I dash out into the mildly muggy evening because there's yet another deadline I'm not meeting:  getting the Accent Snob out for his walk before the rain gets earnest.  It's still just spitting when I spot a lady in a beautiful tunic with a kind of paisley design down the centre.
"What a beautiful top!" I exclaim.
She shrugs helplessly. "I'm afraid I don't speak English.  Just French."
I rein the dog in, thinking, For Pete's sake, I should be able to manage this.  But the words seem to skid away like scraps of paper in a wind.  This is what younger daughter's life is every day.
"Uh, blouson?" I stammer.  She is kind enough to nod.  "C'est très belle..."
"Merci," she smiles, probably figuring I'll understand that much.

It's spitting a bit more now.  Chemise? I'm thinking.  And a "blouson" would be "beau" anyway, wouldn't it?

The Accent Snob finally accomplishes what we've set out for and my blouson/chemise is only slightly spotted with raindrops when we return.

The reason I've failed to get out earlier is that a) we're ploughing ahead with bite-sized piece of exam review while plotting how to approach the teacher diplomatically; and b)  I've been showing younger daughter some of what she missed of last night's Tonys, and re-showing the Resident Fan Boy the big opening number which was so big, so fast, and so breath-taking that it requires several re-viewings just to get all the jokes.

Hades freezes over -- and over

Oh January. You're so new, yet get old so quickly.

We're up to our armpits in younger daughter's summatives. (For non-Ontarians, they're the projects due at the end of each semester in high school, in January and June.) The hot-water heater is not working and it turns out be the breakers, so after a visit from the hot-water-tank guys this afternoon, we're due to have the electrician in tomorrow morning. We've had a bit of freezing rain, followed by unseasonably warm days which have melted the piles and piles of snow from before and after Christmas so that rivulets stream across the driveways and sidewalks which freeze over night, while the dog poop that so many people have failed to pick up is being inexorably revealed.

No end in sight until April at the earliest and not even then.

Dammit. Here's some pictures I took before it got ugly. I'm going to bed.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run...

Watership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Younger daughter, who is on the autistic spectrum, needed a novel for her independent reading project, so I googled "middle school books" and up came Watership Down which I'd never got around to reading. Perfect, I thought. It's about animals, which younger daughter adores, and there's a well-reviewed animated film which will provide badly-needed visuals for her very concrete-thinking mind.

In preparation for helping her get this read over the Christmas holidays, I downloaded an audio version from our public library, and listened to it on bus commutes. Ralph Cosgrove's narration is lively and doesn't distract the listener from the story. I particularly enjoyed his portrayal of Kehaar the gull as a straight-talking Scandinavian. Three things you need to know about this novel: it's gripping; it's dated; it's looooong.

Adams tells us in the forward that the novel came out of stories he would tell his young daughters on lengthy car rides. Apparently, it was the girls who suggested the stories were good enough to be written down. I can see why. This is the epic tale of a group of rabbits, led by the heroic and self-effacing hero Hazel, who flee their warren on the basis of the mystical warnings of Hazel's psychic brother Fiver. Their journey to establish a new rabbit colony in Watership Down in Hampshire is dangerous and full of death-defying deeds. (I trust it isn't a spoiler to say that surprisingly few rabbits die during the course of this novel.)

Dated? Well, it was published in 1972, and despite the fact that Adams was writing these stories for his daughters, all the main characters are male. We get a hint of heroism from the doe-rabbit Hyzenthlay who helps in the escape from the oppressive warren Efrafa, but she barely figures in the story and few of the other does are even given names. It is clear that Hazel and his fellow-bucks expect little from the female rabbits except for breeding purposes. Adams includes a rather quaint apologetic passage explaining that rabbits are practical and not romantic by nature -- as if the attitudes of the males in the story somehow differs from the attitudes of men of Adams' generation. (Adams' military background is very evident throughout.)

That said, it's an entertaining and clever book, but it does go on, including four or five rabbit legends which, although illuminating, break up and slow down the narrative. It's going to be tough going over Christmas. I wonder if younger daughter will ever forgive me.

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Lament from school project Hades

♪Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?♫ - Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

So, this morning, I sat in a large classroom teeming with Grade Sixes buzzing around their exhibits for the First Nations/Métis/Inuit Fair, and watched the second hand of the clock go so slowly, it was damned near going backwards.

Okay, I admit it. I'm a ba-a-a-a-d mother. I loathe field trips, sports days, student-led conferences, parent-teacher interviews. I go to them because I have to. Because I believe visible parents are a good reminder for teachers. Last night, I spent the better part of an hour concocting so-called Arctic Paradise Punch from a mixture of cranberry juice, orange juice, lemonade and ginger ale. It was from a recipe that appeared in The Vancouver Sun not long after the Northwest Territories Pavilion was one of the hits of Expo '86. Frankly, I doubt the Inuit of yore had much access to cranberries, oranges, lemons, or ginger ale, but what's good enough for the official Northwest Territories Pavilion is good enough for my daughter's Inuit exhibit, dammit.

And I woke up this morning with the mantra: "It'll be over in two hours; it'll be over in two hours..." much in the fashion I got myself through presenting seminars to ESL student teachers after I got my Master's.

It took three goddamn hours. I spent the first hour helping younger daughter pour and pass aforementioned punch. I spilled it; she kept telling me "I'm twelve years old, Mom...." The next half-hour was spent trailing judges and having younger daughter recite the two-paragraph write-up she'd memorized. (Refused to read it, because she'd memorized it, then spent agonizing seconds trying to recall the next sentence while her audience assumed she'd finished and asked questions, thus throwing her off more...). Then that half-hour watching the clock inch along. The next half-hour waiting for the judges to show up, go on and on about what a good job everyone had done, say several things about each of the dozen exhibits, then get into a debate about announcing the winners which culminated in the kids' being sent to lunch with instructions to return and find out who won...

The winners got medals, the honourable mentions didn't, and everyone who didn't get a medal is apparently pretty cracked up about it, including my daughter. Also, I think I heard them say that the honourable mention groups will be accompanying the winning groups to the Regional Fair in April. No-o-O-O-O-o-o.....