Am I?

Moka House in Spring 2018

I sure hope so. 

Not in the coffee shop, necessarily - not that I'd mind.  

The Resident Fan Boy is charging off to London, Ontario tomorrow to attend yet another Anglican Synod, for the next week and a bit.

And I'm running out of day, and making lists, so I guess I am where I'm supposed to be.

It is a far, far better thing

Over the past couple of decades, what passes for Christmas television programming has bemused me.  As far as I can tell, some underpaid minion, saddled with slapping some sort of viewing schedule together, had assumed that, since Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, anything connected with Dickens is Christmassy:  Great Expectations, Bleak House or even A Tale of Two Cities.

With that in mind, I can pompously intone:  "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . . " when talking about this year's Christmas, can't I?

(Well I can.  You weren't there.  Lucky you.)

It was the worst in the sense that I knew it was going to be stressful, took steps to prepare and plan against that eventuality, and it was all exactly as stressful as I feared anyway.  

A house guest (delightful, courteous, and omnipresent).  

Extended family with temperaments diametrically opposed to the introverted temperaments in our household. 

An unusually deaf Demeter, plagued by a small and stubborn ball of wax in her so-called "good ear", and totally bamboozled by aforementioned temperaments. 

A daughter on the autistic spectrum, to whom Christmas is vital, abandoned for a few heart-wrenching minutes, by her panicky father on a holiday carousel.  (It's a long story, please don't make me repeat it.)

And the Resident Fan Boy, whose instinctive defence is shutting down his brain, whenever something emerges from left field, which happens a lot at Christmas.

It was the best of times in the sense that I didn't kill anybody.  I didn't yell at anybody -- except the Resident Fan Boy, and only a couple of times, at that.

The shopping was done on time, and the presents seemed to go over well.  There are still three Christmas cards to mail.  (For those of you not resident in Canada, we had a postal strike from mid-November to mid-December.). What food I managed to produce has been edible, even marginally festive.

So I really have nothing to grumble about.  My expectations weren't overly great, and my house is, in no way, bleak.

Besides, there has been very little Dickens on the telly - apart from A Christmas Carol.  The specialty channels are jammed with scores of Christmas-themed romantic movies, in the vein of Harlequin and Mills & Boon.  They play them year-round now.

Oh, joy.

Merry Eighth Day of Christmas, to you and yours.

Turned turtle

 "I didn't fall down."

The voice came from an unfamiliar place.  Entering Demeter's apartment for the second of my three daily visits, I could see she wasn't in her usual seat at the far end of the loveseat.  I could also see her walker near the corner of the living room, and just beyond it, two bare feet, toes facing up.  One thing I've learned, over years of teaching, parenthood, and working with differently abled people:  panic helps no one, so I shoved the instinct aside, and strode over to find my mother, flat on her back in the space behind two armchairs which back the bookshelves, with a small cushion pillowing her head.

"I didn't fall," she repeated.  "I was down on my hands and knees, and I couldn't seem to get up this time."

"Why were you on your hands and knees, Mama?"

"I don't remember."

Silently, I reasoned that she couldn't have passed out; the Lifeline monitor hanging from her pendant would have registered a fall, and I would have been notified.  I started moving the armchairs, so I could position myself behind her head and draw her to a sitting position.

It soon became apparent that that I wouldn't be able to lift her to her feet.  Demeter isn't heavy, but she was too tired to help, and thus a deadweight.

Thinking quickly, I phoned the Resident Fan Boy, and called him away from his customary Sunday lunch with younger daughter.  They had just started, so arranged for the food to be packed.

In the meantime, I braced Demeter's back against my shins, and leaning, managed to turn one of the armchairs,  a bit of a struggle against the carpet pile, but now Demeter could rest her head and arms in the seat.  

It was a muggy afternoon, and Demeter doesn't like the windows open; the traffic noises resound in her hearing aids.  Able to step away now, I turned on the fan, noticing it was plugged in a different place.  I usually plug the fan in a multisocket behind the couch, where I'm far less likely to trip over it.  It was now in a rather difficult-to-access cubby, hidden amid the bookshelves.

After her weekly shower, she had dressed and gone into the kitchen to make lemonade, because "I know we're out of Ribena".

(We're not.  She had seen me recycle the previous bottle and assumed I hadn't bought the replacement some weeks ago.  I had.)

After this exertion, she felt warm, so attempted to turn on the fan, which I had turned off before leaving after my morning call, because Demeter finds it chilling and noisy. When, for some reason, the fan didn't seem to work, she decided to replug it.  On her hands and knees.  Demeter is 94.

Then she couldn't get up, so she lay on her back, exhausted, for an hour.

I finally was able to help her to roll to her knees, by supporting and raising her buttocks, then, bracing myself against her right side,  she pulled herself to a crouch, and I guided her into the chair.  I went to retrieve one of the lemonades from the fridge.  They were uncovered, and she had left the stirring spoon in one of them.

I phoned the Resident Fan Boy, now hurrying down from Harris Green.  While still on Yates, a cyclist rolled up behind them and barked:  "Choose a side!"  As he rolled past, something in the RFB snapped.

"You're riding on the sidewalk!" he shouted.  To his consternation, the cyclist stopped, tossed his bike to one side, and strode up to the RFB.  "Now it gets real!" he snarled.  Probably more like surreal, the RFB thinks he was drunk or high.  Younger daughter was terrified, and stepped forward to protectively grab her father's arm.  The cyclist did not come within six feet.  My husband and daughter turned and walked off in the opposite direction, hoping that he was in too much of a hurry to turn and pursue them.

I was reiterating to Demeter (gently, I hope), how trying not to be a bother winds up with more worry for  everyone, especially when I'm a two-minute walk down the street, as the dynamic duo came, flushed and frazzled, through the door.

Younger daughter grasped Demeter's hand in concern, something very unusual for her.  It had been a frightening afternoon, especially for someone on the spectrum.  

The RFB helped me get Demeter safely to her accustomed place in the corner of the loveseat, before helping younger daughter set up the restaurant lunch on the dining room table, while I steamed a corn on the cob for Demeter.  

There was plenty of Ribena for everyone.

A hell of a place to find heaven

This has been one strange Christmas. Not awful, but not one we'll forget in a hurry. Details later.

In the meantime, here's one of the odder Christmas songs I've encountered. It's called "Joseph, Better You Than Me", by The Killers, released in 2008.

The vocals are provided by lead singer Brandon Flowers, with guest vocalists Elton John and Neil Tennant (of the Pet Shop Boys).

 

[Vocalist: Brandon Flowers] 

Well your eyes just haven't been the same, Joseph 

Are you bad at dealing with the fame, Joseph? 

There's a pale moonshine above you 

Do you see both sides? 

Do they shove you around? 

[Vocalists: Elton John & Brandon Flowers] 

Is the touchstone forcing you to hide, Joseph? 

Are the rumours eating you alive, Joseph? 

When the holy night is upon you 

Will you do what's right? 

The position is yours 

[Vocalist: Elton John] 

From the temple walls to the New York night 

Our decisions rest on a child 

When she took her stand, did she hold your hand? 

Will your faith stand still or run away? 

Run away 

[Vocalist: Elton John] 

When they've driven you so far 

That you think you're gonna drop 

Do you wish you were back there at the carpenter shop? 

[Vocalist: Neil Tennant] 

With the plane and the lathe 

The work never drove you mad 

You're a maker, a creator 

Not just somebody's dad 

[Vocalists: Brandon Flowers, Elton John & Neil Tennant] 

From the temple walls to the New York night 

Our decisions rest on a man 

When I take the stand, will he hold my hand? 

Will my faith stand still or run away?

And the desert, it's a hell of a place to find heaven 

Forty years lost in the wilderness, looking for God 

And you climb to the top of the mountain 

Looking down on the city where you were born 

(Oh, the years since you left gave you time to sit back and reflect)

Better you than me  

Better you than me, yeah 

Well, the holy night is upon you  

Do you see both sides, do they shove you around? 

Better you than me, Joseph

Music therapy

An impossible day. Well, clearly not impossible - I got through it.

Due to a delayed grocery delivery, I found myself at Demeter's at 2 pm trying to serve and clean up after lobster bisque without running water.  I only remembered when I went to fill the kitchen sink that there was a scheduled water turn-off for Demeter's building that afternoon.

As I was boiling pots of water to clean the dishes, and trying to wipe up sticky umbre soup drips without scalding my fingers, a waltz tune drifted into my addled brain, along with snippets of song.

I realised it was The Story of Celeste, something I hadn't heard since I was quite a little girl.  It was written and performed by Paul Tripp with an orchestra, back in the days when there were quite a few of these kids' stories with symphonic orchestras making the rounds and being recorded.  Tripp also wrote the rather better-known Tubby the Tuba, but as a little girl, I thought Celeste's waltz tune was just the most beautiful thing ever.

It's a Cinderella story, with Celeste, an orphaned tune looking for an owner, being locked up by the cruel Miss Squeak (a clarinet), who detests tinkly tunes.  Celeste, of course, finally wins the heart of Prince Cello, and becomes his tune. So she can belong to him.  And he can play her. 

Okay, perhaps it's wiser not to look too deeply into this story, but the music is lovely.

Close to tears from fatigue, I left Demeter's and ran into her neighbour, who told me what a good daughter I was, and thumped me approvingly on my injured arm.  

I didn't cry out, but staggered home to see if I could dig up the recording I remembered.  YouTube didn't fail me.  It's about fifteen minutes of your time, if you have it:

The pharmacy quadrille

It had been an unexpectedly stressful afternoon. We've gone to London Drugs, the boxy drugstore in the Harris Green neighbourhood of Victoria, more than once to pick up prescriptions for Demeter, when she has been unable, due to personal health or the weather, to trundle her walker the ten blocks. Normally, it's a reasonably easy process. We simply provide her name, phone number, and address, and they hand the drugs over.

You may have noticed that these are not normal times.

I arrived to find that the drugstore has introduced a carefully spaced line-up area outside. You enter when the required number of customers have left, and while you're in the queue, you can peruse a whiteboard listing what isn't available.

Inside, there were similar marked-out line-ups for the tills. I fell into the odd quadrille so prevalent these days, looping, backing off and retracing steps to keep the sacred six-foot distance between myself and my fellow pilgrims. The line-up for the pharmacy was also carefully spaced with blue disks with white feet outlines on them. Most people carefully stood on the markers, with the exception of a few men, usually on the younger side. One fellow, dressed inexplicably in capris and flip-flops, on an afternoon with a high of eight degrees, stood halfway between the markers, and stared sideways into space.

The holy grail was the pharmacy pick-up desk, staffed by two rather anxious young women, whose task was to take information, then desperately rifle through several racks of hanging baggies, before returning for payment -- or to tell the unfortunate customer why their order wasn't there.

I was both: Demeter had two prescriptions, one of which wasn't there. It took several minutes to establish this, while I gave apologetic glances at those six and twelve feet behind me. I think they said something encouraging, but they were too far away for me to hear.

So I got sent to another line-up for a consultation with a pharmacist, who disappeared in search of a substitute for Demeter's prescription. I spent the time being grateful that I was able to sit, before being sent back to the original line to pay for the second prescription, which contained tiny irregularly-shaped pills, which Demeter will have to cut into quarters.

Trudging back, I decided that, despite my aching limbs, I would take a route past our old house, because the cherry tree is in bloom, and I have pleasant memories of gazing out our bedroom window into clouds of pink.

As I approached, I spotted what looked like a grey vase with a shiny bronze patch on it.

Then I realized it was a cat, lapping up the late afternoon sun, stress-free.

I resolved to do the same.

Browing out

Some people have canaries in the mine-shaft; we have younger daughter's eyebrows.

The Accent Snob went to live with elder daughter. He is too elderly and too anxious to make the trip to Victoria, and besides, our apartment won't take pets.

The morning after his departure, half of younger daughter's eyebrows disappeared. We take to a brow bar regularly, precisely so she won't have to worry about tweezing. However, sometimes when she worries, she tweezes. After the last incident, I hid the tweezers. So this time, she plucked them out by hand.

And, of course, she had her farewell solo recital the next day, and her cosmetics and jewellery had been stored against our impending move, so I found myself racing through Rideau Centre to find eye shadow, mascara, cheap trinkets, and an eyebrow pencil. Spent the evening printing up internet articles about over-plucked eyebrows. I left them on her bed - because telling her would only embarrass and enrage her. I'm her mother and any suggestion is "treating her like a little kid".

The next morning, when the Resident Fan Boy took her to church prior to her concert, he noticed more of her eyebrows were missing.

I packed food for the after-recital reception (including a pumpkin pie younger daughter had baked by herself!), and improvised a small eyebrow-repair kit.

When I got there, I just had time to notice that her brows had been filled in - Groucho Marx style. It didn't look too bad --- from a distance.

Then I sat in the front pew in dread. I'd sent out a handful of emails, and an announcement had been made at church. Fifteen minutes before the start, four little old ladies had scatter themselves throughout the nave. I handed out programmes and smiled warmly - I hope. I texted elder daughter that I hoped for at least ten people, outside of immediate family and her accompanist, might show up.

My heart was sinking.

Then, people started to arrive: about ten members of the church choir, who have watched her grow up; two of her fellow voice students; the eccentric lady who greets us in the church neighbourhood; younger daughter's math and science teacher from her high school; our next-door neighbour; the church organist who set younger daughter on this path by arranging for her to sing at services.

About twenty people in all.

Younger daughter, in her element, did long introductions to each of her five songs, but not too long -- and she was funny!

And oh....how she sang. I'm her mother, but she really sang well: Ave Maria (the Schubert one she loves from Fantasia; "Memory" from Cats (her personal choice), "Se tu m'ami".

Her singing teacher particularly wanted her to sing "Nothing" from A Chorus Line, because she blew the audience away with it last year, and she also sang her other entry to last year's Musical Theatre Kiwanis competition:
I have videos of her performance, but, of course can't share them here.

At the end, there was a standing ovation. I wish I'd remembered to bring a bouquet, but perhaps the reaction was enough.

Multi-level journalling

Last October, I couldn't for the life of me remember what younger daughter had worn for Hallowe'en in 2006.

I've kept journals since I was ten - not particularly consistently, mind - and ever since 1990, in the aftermath of one of my "used years", I've done rundowns of individual years, which involves a quick précis of each month in a given year.

Recently, I got four years behind, but I'm stubborn, if nothing else, and spent the past spring and summer catching up.

Why do I do this?

Ira Progoff was the creator of the "Intensive Journal method" in 1966 and about twenty or thirty years ago, "Journal workshops" seemed to be all the rage.  I never attended one -- they're kinda expensive -- but we were going through a rather dreadful period in our lives, beginning with The Resident Fan Boy losing his mother and his job in the same week, a few months after we had taken on a mortgage.

I heard about Progoff from the Volunteer Coordinator at Victoria Hospice where I was myself a volunteer. I took any part-time job or contract I could muster, finished with my master's programme, then purchased the book, working through the exercises of dream recording, meditations, and micro/macro journalling.

Did it help?  Sort of.  It gave me a focus in the maelstrom of continually dashed hopes.  After nine months of agony, the RFB got a job with the federal government and our long inexorable path to Hades began.

But I can't blame Progoff for that.

To oversimplify the process, you don't really keep a linear sort of journal.  Your writing sessions become a sort of lens:  sometimes you write about the minutiae of the day; sometimes you skip waaaaaay back and look at a year, or sequence of years, looking for patterns.

The only Progroff practice I have really stuck with is my "yearly rundowns", which I'm not sure is even a Progoff practice, but it's based on those months of journalling his way.

Some years - the "used years" - are torture to write down.  I recently did a "decade rundown" of the years from 2001 to 2010, and was astonished at how much I'd forgotten, and how painful it was to remember some of it.  I have to wonder sometimes if I'm not simply re-injuring myself.

However,  I can't just let my life and my memories of the early lives of my children slip away into a blank, and that means the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. Lately, remembering that the  Progoff journalling  process involves several levels of journalling, I've been carting around between three to five journals:  one for daily "free writes", one for keeping track of my time, one for my genealogy scribblings, one for dreams, and, oh yes, a separate journal for the yearly rundowns.

It turns out that the "rundowns" are proving to be really handy way of figuring out when something happened.  On a prosaic note, the RFB recently wanted to know when we had the roof re-done, for the insurance records.

And younger daughter's 2006 Hallowe'en costume?  I hadn't written it in the rundown, nor had I written it in my regular journals, nor had I taken a photograph at the time or mentioned it in my correspondence.

It occurred to me, months later, that I could try asking her.  She's living on the spectrum and has severe memory issues, but not for everything.  She told me, clearly appalled that I'd forgotten, that she had been Peter Pan.

Brow beaten

The Resident Fan Boy warned me about a week before I returned home that younger daughter had tweezed her eyebrows.  We've been taking her to a brow bar regularly for the past two or three years, but she told him she saw one stray hair and then she had to even the brows out...

The RFB sent me a snap and although she looked very different, it wasn't a disaster.  When I arrived home in the late afternoon after about twelve hours since waking, younger daughter was the only person home, as the RFB and elder daughter were still at work. I didn't mention her eyebrows, but reminded her that we were taking a favourite cousin out to dinner, and that she might enjoy dressing up and putting on some make-up.

The cousin arrived, younger daughter descended in a dress for the occasion -- and with next-to-no eyebrows.  The rest of us exchanged startled looks and pointedly said nothing.

When she was away from the table, elder daughter asked what I was going to do.

"Keep quiet and try to start a conversation through texting," I sighed.  I was massively jet-lagged and my speech was slurring a little.

The next morning, I printed up an article about eyebrows, looked up some tutorials on YouTube and texted younger daughter, upstairs in her bedroom, sending her one of the links:
How do you feel about your eyebrows?

I still feel beautiful!  Simple steps from "beauty - allwomenstalk.com" (the link I'd sent) would help to give advice on how to regrow my eyebrows!  As a matter of fact, they really are embarrassingly over plucked!  

This happens to everybody when they first start plucking! It happened to me and it happened to your sister!

And I thought of elder daughter's pencil-thin brows the summer after some jerk in Grade Seven accused her of being a lesbian.  I thought of Jean Harlow.

The next time younger daughter was out of her room, I snuck in, left the article I'd printed up, and removed her tweezers for hiding.

She hasn't mentioned missing them, and slowly and fuzzily, her eyebrows are coming back.  She draws a dark thin line through them each morning.

The summer of the fire signs

I must have looked upset, because a guy wandered over from his gang of friends clustered around an illegal beach fire and offered me a joint.

It was sunset on an August evening fourteen years ago, and I was perched on the rocks below Dallas Road, weeping in the aftermath of what I came to call The Big Blowout, when my sister, the Double Leo, ripped into me over a chance remark about a slice of pizza in front of my bewildered and terrified daughters, then aged ten and six, and her three-year-old son.

It wasn't about the pizza, of course. I sat on my stony seat (literally - I hadn't accepted the kind offer of a toke), gazing out at the darkening Juan de Fuca Strait, with that ghastly feeling you have when you know the injury is serious, and you don't know how to staunch the bleeding.

I thought about the years of pussy-footing, of being cowed and intimidated, and I wearily decided that I couldn't sustain a lifetime of emotionally supporting my daughters (particularly one on the autism spectrum), my aging mother, and use up my precious empathy reserves on my high-maintenance sister.

This is by way of an explanation for the following tale of tizziness, because the scenario emerging this summer of 2016 was eerily and ominously similar to that of 2002: my sister and her family turning up unexpectedly and moving into the guest suite of my mother's condo for a few perilous days.  Back then, in the growing shadow of the Olympic Mountains, I came to the conclusion that my sister and I can't be under the same roof for more than twenty-four hours, not without a mis-step on the minefield that is my sister's psyche.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that fourteen years later I was impulsively treating myself to lunch at Il Terrazzo after beginning art lessons offered by a friend.  I ate a lovely risotto in the cool patio of my favourite restaurant in Victoria, then, lugging bags of art supplies, dropped by a stationer's to pick up birthday cards for the various fire signs in my life.  I was rather dreading a two-day visit to my mother by my sister and her family scheduled for the following week, inadvertently overlapping with my stay, and had quietly made arrangements with my art teacher friend to stay in her basement for two nights, for the reasons described above.  My friend had made it clear that she would need plenty of notice.

I came home in the mid-afternoon, worn out.  Demeter was out for most of the day for a special meeting of her book club, but her walker, which she uses for ferrying laundry downstairs, was planted in the hallway, laden with towels and sheets.  Had I not been so tired,  I might have wondered more about this, but I squeezed past, sank into a chair, and drifted in and out of a doze.

I was awake and finishing something on my laptop when Demeter returned and informed me that Double Leo Sister and her family were turning up that evening and staying for three days.  My niece had picked up some sort of bug which involved symptoms that didn't adapt well to a campsite.

I suggested my giving up the spare room, and when my mother vigorously refused, stifled my panic and offered to set up the guest suite, texting the Resident Fan Boy in Hades, who advised me to get out.  He remembers 2002 all too well.

I was scheduled to meet my friend the Choir Singer at a folk concert in Beacon Hill Park that evening.  Double-Leo Sister et famille hadn't shown up when Choir Singer picked me up and, seeing my agitation, took me for ice cream therapy before proceeding to the Cameron Band Shell.  While a Stevie-Nicks/Lindsay-Buckingham-type duo from Sooke sang standards, I retreated to the springy plantations near the public washrooms, and in desperation, called the hostess of our largely fallen-through house-sit, who had offered their guest-room at any time.

The offer was still good. Ironically, she's a Leo, too.

I returned to the bench, and vacillating between relief and trepidation, enjoyed the rest of the concert. Choir Singer friend drove me to the empty apartment.  Evidently the unexpected guests had arrived and gone out to dinner with Demeter.  My friend waited while I threw all my belongings into my suitcase and hastily scribbled a note:  I've done the math:  Four people in the guest suite - one bathroom; two people in the apartment - two bathrooms. . . .

Of course, Demeter walked in, just as I was wheeling my suitcase towards the door.  As expected, she looked disappointed and weary. Jolly-Not-Green-Giant-Brother-in-Law (another fire sign -- he's an Aries) soon followed, declaring that my evacuation was unnecessary, along with my niece (another fire sign) and nephew (an earth sign, like me, poor kid).  Double Leo Sister was downstairs in the guest suite, but we kept missing each other in the running between floors.  I pleaded that Choir Singer Friend was waiting to drive me, pointed out that I would be back in the daytime, and fled to the guest room of yet another Leo where I spent the next three nights, being very polite.

I also spent the next three days being very polite -- and making myself scarce whenever possible.

In short, I kept careful control of how much time I spent with anyone.  When you're surrounded by control freaks (and fire signs are, no matter how you feel about astrology), fences are the best defence.

Still waiting for this summer to ease up. What do you suppose my chances are?

Yet more first-world problems

From the beginning, I suspected that it was going to be a less-than-ideal and stressful summer.

I hate being right.

See, I had a four-week house-sit set up for my annual visit to Victoria, BC where I can visit Demeter daily, have plenty of elbow room, and pretend I don't live in Ottawa.

These are people for whom I've house-sat four previous times.  They have recently downsized and frankly, I was a little surprised to hear from them, as they have sworn that they have to give up their annual boat trip on the Salish Sea.  Still, I was thrilled when they suggested I house-sit, and booked my airline tickets so as to arrive early enough to get my key and marching orders, and to leave a few days after the house-sit ended, because Demeter prefers that I don't go rushing off.

One week before my departure, we had our weekly "Skype date" with Demeter, who said:  "I have bad news."

Turns out the wife of the couple had been sick for six weeks.  First I'd heard of this; first Demeter had heard of it as well -- she only picked up the news in passing at church. Apparently Ailing Wife had spent the time hoping she would improve; her doctor had no idea what the problem was, but it involved a host of unpleasant symptoms.  I'll spare you.

This put us in a bit of a bind.  I find more than a week under my mother's roof a bit suffocating (don't you ever tell her this), and to complicate things further, my cousin from California and her teenaged son were coming up for a rare-as-hen's-teeth four-day visit mid-month.  This would coincide with the Resident Fan Boy's and younger daughter's two-and-a-half weeks' stay in Victoria.  My mother has one spare room in her apartment and may sign up for the downstairs guest suite on a first-come-first-served basis, but it only provides sleeping accommodations for four people and that's only if they sleep two-a-bed.

Demeter hurried down to the guest suite and quickly signed in the required dates -- except someone had already signed up for one night.  We started discussing bed-and-breakfast (bloody expensive for more than a few nights), and a friend from church had offered us the use of her air mattress.  Ailing Wife was making noises about going away for short trips, and said their guest room was available to us at any time.  Trouble is, I hated the idea of getting under the feet of a sick Leo, especially in a downsized house.

There was nothing for it but to come out to Victoria and see what emerged.  I decided to be philosophical -- with fifteen summers of house-sits, it's a miracle that this hasn't happened more often. Besides, aside from the lack of elbow-room, the only real challenge would be five nights:  the already-booked night plus the four nights of the California cousins.

And things went well.  Ailing Wife tried a two-day boat trip, then a four-day boat trip, and found them invigorating, so they planned a five-day trip that covered the problematic nights.  We felt a bit transient, moving back and forth between Demeter's condo and the downsized house (which was charming, by the way), but we reminded ourselves that this was really a classic "first-world problem".

Speaking of first-world problems, the Californian cousins were a delight, in their dreamy, laid-back Golden-State fashion.  They drove Demeter only slightly batty by disappearing and giving no indication of when they'd be back, and puzzled us slightly by being worn out by walking, but insistent on their regimens of Tai Chi and swimming.  We took them on one of the Ghostly Walks, toured Butchart Gardens, finishing with a splendid tea, and wandered around the rocky rim of Beacon Hill Park.

The last activity took place on their final afternoon.  We returned after five pm, and discovered that somehow, they had failed to book the bus for their crossing to Vancouver -- from whence their cruise ship to Alaska was departing the very next day.  However, dreamy Californians seem to have rather more alert angels watching over them.  They managed to book a flight on one of the harbour-to-harbour water planes - I had researched those, in addition to the ferries -  and got charged only five dollars each for overweight baggage.

They even got a last-minute hotel room.

("I have bad news," said Demeter.)

It seems that Demeter, in the confusion of the all the comings and goings, had crossed out a week's worth of guest-suite reservations, but didn't discover this until an upstairs neighbour came to claim the guest-suite keys for the cousins' final night in Victoria -- fortunately there had been no one wanting the suite earlier in the week.

As the blessed cousins flew out - teenaged son thrilled by the experience of a float-plane trip; his mother less so - we set about the business of cleaning our house-sit, before scooting to an outdoor matinée performance of Twelfth Night.  We discovered on the way that we were short of money, so had to hike to a bank machine, then realized that younger daughter had left her bus pass behind.

Matinées for the Victoria Shakespeare Festival are a new idea and not particularly a good idea.  In the rush of the morning, both the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter had forgotten to apply sunscreen, and were decidedly sunburned, younger daughter for the very first time.  I was sunscreened, sun-hatted, long-sleeved, trousered -- rather heat-exhausted by the time we struggled back to the house-sit to call a taxi and transport our bags back to Demeter's condo, where she greeted us with:  "I have bad news."

The week she'd crossed off included our Saturday night as well, and the upstairs neighbour had claimed the guest suite for her own visitors, leaving the Resident Fan Boy and me with no bed for the night.

Demeter was close to tears as the RFB and I started searching for a hotel.

"How could I have been so stupid?" she repeated.  She'd phoned the friend with an air mattress, and left a message on her voice mail.

"She'll be away for the weekend," she said dispiritedly.

"Let's see if that's really the case,"  I suggested, in the brightest tone I could manage between heat exhaustion and the realization that the angels watching over our California cousins were evidently busy trailing them to Alaska.  All hotels booked solid.

At this point, the phone rang.  Air Mattress Friend was coming to our rescue.

We took her to dinner.

The air mattress was a thing of wonder, with an plug-in pump to inflate it.  It was hell to climb into and out of.

Yet another first-world problem.

Musical chairs

I have to admit that Kiwanis season is not among my favourites -- particularly the Musical Theatre section.

However, younger daughter loves singing in the Kiwanis festival and she has always loved musical theatre. One of my earliest memories of her singing was when she was about eighteen months old. I was searching for something up in the stacks at the Greater Victoria Public Library when I heard her vocalizing tunefully. The tune turned out to be "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" from Godspell.

So, a couple of weeks ago found us on the long bus-ride out to a part of Nepean near where her school used to be. I was tense, dreading the competition, dreading having to sit through yet another production of The Sound of Music the next day -- in short, not tapping into my higher self, because both are things that younger daughter adores, in a world where her autism bars her from quite a few pleasures.

I got a grip on myself and used the long journey to focus on the best outcome. I've been back to creative visualization -- call it magical thinking if you will, but I got a bit more centred by the time we got out for the fifteen-minute walk through the suburbs to the church where this shindig is held every year.

I suppose it was a good thing I felt centred, because things almost immediately began to go sideways after our arrival. Younger daughter vanished into the washroom with ten minutes to go before her section was scheduled to start. She was the first of the competitors.

Time ticked by and when I popped my head in to remind her of this, she hollered at me to get out. I only had time to register that she was applying eye make-up. Her accompanist was enlisted to approach her -- younger daughter rarely hollers at non-family-members -- and our singer emerged with thick eye-lashes drawn in around her eyes. She reminded me of Victor Garber in the aforementioned Godspell.

"This is so I will look like a little girl for the second song," she told the Resident Fan Boy.

This is her fourth time participating in the Musical Theatre section. Up until now, she has been the only competitor to not bother with a costume change -- the other girls often do quite elaborate changes with plenty of props. This year, she and her teacher worked out a very simple change. She would be in stocking feet and wearing a sweater over her dress, presumably to look more like an auditioning chorus line dancer.

I've never been a fan of A Chorus Line, but "Nothing" is one of the better songs. It is also very wordy and quick.

Younger daughter plunged into it with admirable energy -- expressing bewilderment, anger, and the final resignation and shock quite eloquently, I thought. (I am her mother.) At Kiwanis, the adjudicators sit halfway back from the stage and all spectators are expected to sit behind them, so her make-up didn't look garish at all. I wept a bit with pride and started to relax a little.

Too soon.

Younger daughter vanished into the little change-room offstage and reappeared almost immediately, still sweatered and stocking-footed. She caught herself, disappeared, and came back with her flats on. It took her a second or two to realize that she still had to remove the sweater, so she returned to the side-room and we could hear her grunting and struggling, talking to herself. When she entered, she remembered she was supposed to change her hairband.

This all seemed to take forever, as I sweated with embarrassment, but it probably didn't take much longer than two minutes, which is a good thing, as both songs must be delivered within twelve minutes.

Younger daughter's second song was "My Party Dress" from a not-terribly-well-known musical called Henry and Mudge. It's another challenging number, with more than a hint of ADD -- the song, that is, younger daughter, as you may know from previous posts, is on the autism spectrum with a recently-diagnosed anxiety disorder -- which actually makes this a rather good fit.

Once again, she performed it flawlessly and remembered to acknowledge her excellent accompanist.

There were only two other performers in this age category. Both had the same accompanist, who sauntered up to the piano in his own time.

The first girl performed two songs from musicals I've heard of, but haven't attended. She was good, had stage presence and a strong voice.

The second girl did a charming number from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the famous "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls. She did the first well, and the second competently.

Phew, I thought. We'll be home soon.

Except that the star adjudicator, the one with the lengthy CV that included the Stratford Festival, decided, as there were only three competitors, to hold a mini-workshop.

She asked younger daughter who the Chorus Line character is singing to.

Stammering and playing for time, younger daughter did what she always does when put on the spot - she tried to give the right answer. She started telling the adjudicator who Diana Morales is: "Her name's Diana, but the teacher calls her 'Morales'..."

Well, it turns out the adjudicator had an issue with all three singers, in their choice of audience, in their use of props -- very bewildering for three young women who had been coached to use props. For example, she didn't like younger daughter's using a chair because there's no chair on a stage during an audition.

Then she had all three girls sing, asking if younger daughter's accompanist were still there. (Of course she wasn't - accompanists can't hang around; they're rushing off to accompany someone else, usually in a different part of the city.) The accompanist for the other two young women said he could do it, and the adjudicator confused younger daughter further by requesting that she start with the opening monologue. There hadn't been one. The accompanist obligingly struck up in a different key than the one rehearsed, but he was playing from memory. Younger daughter managed -- and this is damned important -- she kept eye contact, as requested, with the adjudicator.

I thought of a day early last September when it took eight tries to get an ID photo because younger daughter was unable to look straight ahead, and I blessed her anxiety medication.

Afterward, we quickly repaired to the washroom to attempt to remove all that eye make-up. She hadn't brought make-up removal sheets, so I dampened toilet paper with water and tiny amounts of hand-soap.

I'm pretty sure that one of the other girls was weeping in the centre cubicle.

When we finally got home, we discovered that the written adjudication was surprisingly constructive. And the dreaded Sound of Music? Quite enjoyable, really.

Thar's gold in them thar winders

To say the last thirty hours have been stressful is an understatement.

This evening, I looked across the street and saw gold. I've been striving for better thoughts, my higher self. I fail several times a day, but that's no excuse.

The course of a lifetime runs over and over again

The most stressful days of my life always seem to be temperate and lovely. I was out with the Accent Snob just before a sushi lunch with the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter, thinking how wonderful it was that my knees didn't hurt as they did for nearly a year, and resolving to be grateful for this, knowing it's not likely to be permanent, because time isn't kind to joints in the long run.

The RFB had a doctor's appointment (which is why he was home for lunch), and as we waited at the bus stop, I got a text from younger daughter, who was meeting me for her ritual pre-music-lesson coffee shop visit. Today's difference was that she was taking the bus by herself from her school in Bells Corner in the far west of Greater Ottawa.

This was not particularly worrying because she has come all the way home at least three times (once without our knowledge), which involves a bus change downtown. The trek to the coffee shop would be one bus dropping her off nearly at the entrance. She was texting to ask me if she should get ready to leave. She was ten minutes early, so I told her she could, or she could leave when the wristwatch alarm in her packsack went off. (She refuses to wear the watch.) Either way, it would give her plenty of time to make the five-minute walk to the bus stop by 2:50.

I chatted on the bus with the RFB before we parted ways. I strolled down to the main library to return a DVD, then headed for the coffee shop. I cheerfully told the staff what was happening; they're quite familiar with younger daughter from our weekly visits. I settled with my coffee and checked in with younger daughter.

She'd missed her bus.

Well, no matter. I looked up the GPS for the next bus and gave her updates. It was only after I'd asked her if she could see the 97 yet that she informed me she was on the 118.
The 118 does not go downtown.
She said she was scared and didn't know where to get off.

I kept calm and phoned her directly. I told her to get off at the Baseline Station. I followed up with a text telling her to cross to the other side and catch a 95 or a 94. She's done this with me before a few times.

Her next text asked: "Which is the other side?"

I called her again, but my explanations didn't make any sense to her.

"Do you want me to come get you?"
"Yes!"

I abandoned my cup and dashed to Slater Street where a 95 was drawing up. It was, naturally, a sluggish one. As I exchanged messages with an increasingly distressed younger daughter, I noticed I was now down to one third of my phone battery. I phoned elder daughter, gave her a quick rundown of the predicament.

After what seemed an eternity, I leapt out of the bus at Baseline Station, scanning the long, long platform for the familiar pink hoodie. Heart sinking, I realized why she didn't understand what "the other side" was.

She hadn't got out at Baseline Station.

I phoned her again and tried to get her to tell me the number of her stop, or to describe where she was, knowing my battery was getting lower and lower.

My bladder was also getting fuller and fuller. I'd left the coffee shop too quickly.

I dashed for Centrepointe,listening to the warning beeps of my dying battery, knowing there would be pay phones. And washrooms.

As I frog-marched into the building, some old codger intoned dryly: "Left! Right! Left! Right!"
"This is not funny," I snarled as I swept by him. "This is an emergency!"
"Oh," he said.

Without access to my phone, I had no access to phone numbers. I remembered I'd written elder daughter's onto a scrap of paper which I'd slipped into my bus pass back in the days before I had my own cell phone. However, elder daughter's cell still has a Halifax area code, so the phone was demanding $5.60 and refusing to take toonies. (That's a two-dollar coin, for you non-Canadians.) I slipped in my credit card, which has worked in past emergencies, but the phone couldn't read it. Now close to tears, it suddenly occurred to me that elder daughter was home which meant I could use our landline.

She didn't pick up, of course, not until she heard my frantic voice berating her for failing to answer during a known family emergency. She has a phobia of telephone solicitors, scared of hurting their feelings, I suppose. I told her to phone her dad and her sister, and see if she could pinpoint the latter's location - which could be anywhere along the 118's route, which stretches across the southern side of the city, pretty well the whole length of Baseline Road. I gave her the number of the pay phone.

After more than five minutes - I could see people peering cautiously at me from behind pillars - I finally phoned back. Apparently the pay phone number hadn't worked, but elder daughter had cajoled younger daughter into walking to the closest corner and reading a street sign: Centrepointe Drive. If she'd got off a 118 bus at Centrepointe Drive, she was relatively close by. I barrelled out a back exit.

The sun was just disappearing. All sorts of strange thoughts whirled through my head:

Centrepointe Drive is a crescent, isn't it? Suppose she's at the other end?

I suppose this will seem funny -- at some point.

Isn't Baseline Road closer than this?

I know you're out there somewhere.

No, I would not give you false hope, on this strange and mournful day, but the mother and child reunion is only a motion away...

The setting sun blinded me as I look frantically west. I blinked, looked east -- and there she was, talking on her phone to her sister. She was very upset about having to reschedule her lesson. I held my tongue as I led her to Baseline Station. There's no point arguing with someone living on the autistic spectrum with a newly diagnosed anxiety disorder.

Half an hour later, I left younger daughter and the Resident Fan Boy at the coffee shop. I climbed up the hill towards the Parliament Buildings, noticing for the first time that my legs felt weak. All the confident strength I'd felt five hours earlier had ebbed away. By the time I'd reached my bus stop, my left thigh ached and my knee stung. I tried stretches and found I could barely lift my foot. It was as if I'd aged a decade in an afternoon.

Oh little daughter of mine…

I gotta go, but my friend here can stick around

It's been one of those days.  Frankly, it's been one of those months, and I'm becoming increasingly afeared that this is going to be one of those years.  I'm going to attempt to write about it, but heavens, not now.

When younger daughter finished her science homework completely unaided, I invited her over to watch this video which I was sure she would love.  However, in her world, finishing her homework meant it was time to watch a selected DVD and a four-minute video, even with Muppets in it, was more than she could stomach.

Feeling just a tad rejected, I gazed glumly at the computer screen while the Accent Snob cowered under my shins.  He had picked up on younger daughter's agitation and thought it was directed at him.  (We can't help but wonder if tension in one of his other homes invariably led to someone kicking the dog.)

Anyway, this has always been one of my favourite songs.  This is Jimmy Fallon, in his last moments of hosting Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, before taking over The Tonight Show this week.  He's channelling the late great Levon Helm while Dr Teeth and his pals reenact one of the famous moments from The Band's Last Waltz. 


Here's the number as it played out in the film The Last Waltz, the Band performing "The Weight" with the Staple Singers:


I'm off to bed.  If there's any mercy in the world, I won't remember my dreams.  I just hope I don't wake up as a giant cockroach.

The recital that almost wasn't

We've just had a way more exciting Sunday then we really wanted to have. You might remember (but you probably don't) that younger daughter's June voice recital was cancelled much to her disappointment and heartbreak. Well to our relief and slight embarrassment, her voice teacher decided to try to re-schedule it after hearing about how upset younger daughter was. We really, really hope that wasn't the only reason. In less than two weeks, she pulled together ten singers (a slightly smaller number than a regular recital which usually features about fifteen), a venue and an accompanist. We had one painful weekend during which younger daughter struggled to choose her songs, then scrambled to get copies of the scores to the pianist by the deadline.

On Saturday, we had a dress rehearsal where the singers ran through their songs with the accompanist. That night, younger daughter attempted to paint her nails for the first time with the nail varnish her godmother had sent her to go with the blush-pink lace dress which younger daughter had had hanging in her room for six weeks, saving it for this occasion. She was devastated when I gently suggested she try again, and managed to pick off all the varnish by morning. I sat her down at the breakfast table and talked her through the steps of applying coats. Her nails were looking lovely when I went to check my email at about 8:30. That's when I found the message from her voice teacher which had been sent an hour before.

The accompanist was in hospital. Unless she could find a replacement by 11:30, the recital being at 2 pm, we would have another cancellation on our hands. The Resident Fan Boy and I looked at each other in despair, but decided not to break the news to younger daughter until we were absolutely sure that the event she had been longing for was definitely off. Voice Teacher was singing at the 10:30 church service which the RFB and younger daughter were attending, so there didn't seem to be much hope. They headed off, and I took up a vigil by the computer, my heart sinking.

Just before 10:30, word came that younger daughter's regular accompanist was cancelling a previous commitment. I texted the RFB, and when younger daughter came home, she donned the dress and we saw her in it for the first time, before she glided out the door and strolled to the bus stop like Audrey Hepburn in her pink straw sunhat and navy flats. Her godmother has fabulous taste.

Our hero the accompanist had to sight-read 15 scores for nine vocalists. (A tenth was ably accompanied by her mother.) We heard all kinds of songs and all kinds of abilities. And younger daughter was, says her totally objective mother, in the top half of the pack. She sang with adequate volume and plenty of expression. She sang on key and listened to the piano when she wasn't singing. But you know, I'm her mother. (I think other people were impressed too, judging from the comments afterward.)

I won't violate my daughter's privacy by playing the video I (discreetly) filmed on my iPod, so I'll violate this fine young singer's privacy:
As I listened to my own daughter sing this, I thought of her great-great-grandfather who was born in Berlin when it was still in Prussia. Did he hear a young girl sing this, possibly one of his daughters?

The second song was from the movie version of Grease. I haven't seen the movie or the play, but daughter saw it in school and this was her personal choice. She can hit the high notes and does the melismata creditably:

I must confess I've never cared for this song, but I'm hopelessly devoted to my daughter. It's been playing in my head ever since -- with my daughter's voice, thank goodness.

Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

Things were going so well this morning. I got up early-ish and, while listening to holiday music offerings from Otis Redding and Bruce Springsteen on CBC Radio, glazed one of the tourtières I had prepared yesterday, popping it into the oven for the Resident Fan Boy's office holiday luncheon which used to begin at noon and now begins at 10 am. Then, sipping egg nog, I prepared breakfast for younger daughter who has been home with a frog in her throat all week so "White Christmas" is moot. I then read another chapter of Watership Down with younger daughter. As a matter of fact, I was going to call this post "Watership Countdown". Witty? No?

Then elder daughter returned home just before noon, after I finished wrapping the last of the Christmas gifts, so I thought I'd grab the opportunity to take the Accent Snob for a walk.

It was a brisk morning, a light icing sugar covering of snow from last night, and ice crystals drifting in the air. Our pooch, as we've discovered during the past few weeks since his adoption, is not an avid walker. Generally, he lifts his leg in the shrubs in front of our house, then tries to go back inside. I pulled him up firmly and set off to the corner, then across our street.

Once the Accent Snob realized I was determined to make this a proper walk, he headed straight for some bushes to make a deposit. Then attempted to turn tail and go home. I gave a quick yank and struggled to get under the shrubbery row with my flushable poop-bag. It took a few more commands and yanks to twist the bag and clip it with a clothes-peg, then as the dog plunged around the corner, I struggled to get my gloves back on, the bag in my left hand and the retractable leash in my right. Immediately, I began to feel an uncomfortable cold trickling down the back of my neck. While I'd been retrieving the dog deposit, the bushes had deposited a cup or so of snow in my hood.

At each cross-street, the Accent Snob made a dive to the left, knowing by now that this is the way home. Tempted as I was, given the chill settling between my shoulder blades, I sternly pressed on, intent on a riverside walk in the brilliant, heat-less sunshine.

We reached one of the entrances to the stretch of pathways beside the Rideau River, and the Accent Snob became entwined around one of the posts that serve to discourage through-traffic. As I tugged his leach to disentangle him, he suddenly broke into the expanse of shallow snow, collar-less and leash-free.

The awfulness of my predicament took a fraction of a second to sink in. The pathway that stretches east to west by the river was deserted, this final weekday before Christmas Eve. The Accent Snob was looking with great interest across the nearby road as he made wide galloping circles around me. Suppose he made a break for the streets? I knew from past experience that he is clueless about cars. Furthermore, his identifying tags were dangling from the collar in my hand.

I spent several increasingly desperate minutes calling him, trying to sound enticing rather than frantic and failing miserably. The Humane Society had warned us that he didn't respond to his name and that he was not a candidate for off-leash. I had fleeting and ironic thoughts about a runaway dog I had witnessed exactly one year ago. The lady in that nightmarish scenario didn't know the dog's name. I knew this dog 's name and it didn't matter. I tried sitting down on the snowy benches. He did approach me then, before scampering nimbly sideways when I reached for him. This is cute as all get-go in our living room, but in the deserted, frozen park, it was infuriating. I knew there was no malice in this dog, but vacillated between wanting to kill him and fearing for his life, particularly when he made repeated forays down the bank to the river's edge where I could hear the ice creaking under his paws. More than one dog has been swept away by the freezing currents of the local rivers.

What to do? I could try going home, and he'd probably follow me, blundering into the paths of oncoming cars. I could stay here, but how long? And what would my daughters think when I failed to return?

To the west, a figure in a parka appeared with a long-legged gangly white boxer who was tumbling about in floppy dog-boots, a common sight in this neighbourhood. The Accent Snob shot toward him. When he's leashed, the AS is rather stand-offish with other canines, but he seemed to recognize a fellow free spirit: "Look at us, we're off-leash!"

I followed rather less speedily and smiled sheepishly at the young woman. "I'm afraid I'm in big trouble," I said and explained what had happened.

"Oh," she said in concern and called her dog (who came promptly, of course). Accent Snob followed and I was finally able to nab him. My fingers were now too cold to feel the catch, so I held AS while my saviour clipped on the collar, then held his lead so I could struggle to my feet.

"I'm so glad you came by," I told the girl fervently, and feeling stiff, wet, and cold, took the Accent Snob home by the nearest short-cut.

When I posted my sad story on Facebook this afternoon, I was told kindly by one of my Facebook pals that she has a harness for her pooch who also slips out of his collar. I guess we'll be making a trip to the pet supply store.

I'd ask for a strait-jacket for myself, but I don't think they carry those.

Psychology lab

Way back in the dark ages, children, if you wanted a dog, you went down to the SPCA, picked a dog and brought him home. You fed him, played with him, left him in the house or tied up outside if you had to go out. You didn't buy him coats and booties, you didn't spend hours crate-training him, and you certainly didn't send him Christmas and birthday cards.

We put in our application with the Ottawa Humane Society just under a year ago. There's a multiple-choice form you fill out, which you are encouraged to answer keeping your "ideal dog" in mind. We soon found out that you need to think of a "less-than-ideal" dog, otherwise you won't be considered a candidate for any of their animals. Strikes against us: we live in a semi-detached without a fenced yard; we don't have a car, we lack recent canine experience (the Resident Fan Boy and I last had dogs in our adolescent years); and we made the mistake of ticking "non-shedding" (well, they said "ideal") and apparently that sort of creature rarely shows up at a shelter. We also don't jog, which seems to be the criteria for several of the more active breeds there.

After our application ran out twice, we resubmitted it last fall and broadened our parameters considerably. We saw dogs everywhere, being walked by people who apparently were far worthier of dog ownership than we. Perhaps everyone in New Edinburgh purchases their dogs through puppy mills?

Last Thursday, a co-worker, a hard-core animal-fan whose dog lives in her car while she's at work so she can walk him during breaks, encouraged the RFB to try for a ten-year-old lab cross. His profile (the pooch's, that is) indicated that he was afraid of riding in cars. We'd hoped for a younger specimen, but heck, we're car-free and this was a medium-sized dog, short-haired and not small and yappy, so we decided that, after eleven and a half months, it was now or possibly never.

Dog-crazy co-worker offered to drive us out to the Humane Society which, in the past year, has moved from its accessible quarters near Dow Lake to an isolated crescent way the hell off Hunt Club Road, a half-hour hike from any bus stops. With the Friday evening traffic, it took the better part of an hour to drive out there, even though the RFB and DCC had left work at three-thirty.

Once arrived, we went through another long vetting process. We were required to read the dog's full profile, which included a report from a recent month-long fostering. Then we had to wait for an available staff member to bring the dog out to meet us. We followed a strict protocol: a long greeting session, followed by a walk outside on the AstroTurf, then a play session in a small room. All during this process, we were giving a dizzying list of tips, including never saying goodbye and not greeting him effusively on home-comings to allay separation anxiety. Oh. Okay...

Then the staff member was required to remove the dog back to his holding room while we made the decision.

By this time, we'd been there well over an hour and our kindly ride was now late for a dinner being given in her honour for her fiftieth birthday. (We hadn't known this.)

"He's very thorough," I offered, apologetically.
"He's slow," she scoffed. "The other guides don't take this long," She purchased a large bag of dog food and assisted me in picking out a collar, lead, and (gulp) crate, probably to speed us along as much as anything. Meanwhile, our thorough (slow) staff member was typing up the forms on the word processor -- with one finger...

Finally, we bundled our canine companion into the back seat between younger daughter and me and yes, he really hated the car ride, all thirty minutes of it, whining piteously and only stopping for red lights and heavy traffic. (Sandy Hill was closed off, if you please, by police monitoring the demonstrations at the Congolese Embassy.) During the final five minutes, the dog made a dive for the very back and thrashed around a bit. We arrived, and I quickly escorted him indoors. Our ride had made her escape by the time we'd completed a lightening tour of the house.

On the first night, we discovered that Labradors chew. Our duvet will never be quite the same. By the third night, we discovered this dog is obsessive about marking the boundaries of his territory, and the Resident Fan Boy was a whiter shade of pale from fretting and lost sleep, blaming DCC for "pressuring" him into adoption. He seemed to have a particular horror of this dog-gone fella piddling and pooping in the house.

I pointed out that our new family member did not bite, kept the barking to the occasional mild woof, and, best of all, waited quietly in his crate for us to return from two (2) plays over the weekend. (We'd bought the tickets before we had any idea we were imminent dog-owners.) As for the occasional accident, hadn't his boyhood pet ever messed in the house? No, declared the RFB stoutly, but admitted that, since the said sainted pooch had joined his household when the RFB was but a pup himself, he doesn't have any real memories of actually training her. My bet is, his mother, a farm-girl from Alberta and rector's wife to boot, did all the dirty work. (She usually did.) At my childhood home, the rule was, whoever discovered deposits and/or puddles had to clean them up, the result being that stuff would sit around for days. My late mother-in-law wouldn't have been a bit surprised.

This evening, we're at the seventy-two-hour mark. The Resident Fan Boy seems to have spent most of his day swapping doggy tales at the office. Younger daughter has banned our new friend from her room because he makes off with the long dis-used items in her toy basket, but greets him joyfully on her return from school. Me? All of a sudden, I have way less time, but this seems to be forcing me to do things without dithering. And my pedometer is looking impressive.

The best moment of all was elder daughter's face when she saw the lithe black form on Skype. When she was eight, she did an oil painting for art lessons entitled "Dream of Having a Dog". We've hidden it in the basement all these years, possibly to spare our late cat's feelings.

Let's see how well the Resident Fan Boy sleeps tonight...

Nor am I out of it....

Every time I've wailed to the Resident Fan Boy about the latest house-sitting frustration over my past nine Persephone-returns-to-Demeter summers, he has calmly responded: "At least you're miserable in Victoria."

He's right, of course. This newest house-sit has been a particular challenge. The owners have clearly never had a house-sitter before and I've been given a rather daunting list of do's and don'ts, which, although guidelines are welcome, have made me feel somewhat like an interloper. (I'm not to sleep on the husband's bed. I'm only to use the computer for emails. I'm asked to knock down any wasps' nests I see.) I'm keeping in mind that these people have had an extremely stressful year, and using my own judgment on what I will do or won't do. It's not like they're paying me to do this...

However, Hades is sweltering under a prolonged heat wave. A 44 humidex last week (that means the humidity made the temperature feel like 44 degrees Celsius). A 38 humidex this week. Tornados within 60 kilometres of Ottawa last night. This past week, the temperatures in Victoria have been hovering between highs of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius. The air smells like the sea. Red-tailed hawks have been doing mating circles high above the house at sunset.

Yes, I'm stressed. It's a huge house and I'm learning how to take care of it. But I'm in Victoria. And since I'm planning to ignore the stricture about e-mails only on the computer, I hope to do a bit more blogging...

And no, I won't be knocking down any bloody wasps' nest. Sheesh...

March to a different bummer

Some time during the final months of her life, my grandmother turned to my mother in a rare moment of lucidity and said: "The nice me is all gone; all that's left is a nasty old bitch." Those words come back and haunt me regularly.

Each time I do NaBloPoMo, I haul out my journals and diaries and check entries for the month being covered. In February 2009, I looked back at past Februaries and got rather depressed at the glimpses of my former happier and clueless self. Last September, I reviewed my past Septembers and concluded that February is a limbo month and September is a transition month.

March, at least for my family, is a fertile time for crises. As the temperatures slowly rise, events seem to unfreeze and hurtle into motion, often with alarming consequences. I've spent a good chunk of the day reliving stuff from left field and stuff from right field that still landed with a good hard thunk: my sudden diagnosis with gestational diabetes during my second pregnancy; the news that we were moving to Ottawa, my father-in-law's last inexorable slide into death, my elder daughter's fall from a school stage resulting in a broken clavicle; learning that my younger daughter was being transferred from the school programme in which she had been thriving. Yep. Good times.

Not all events that happened in March were incoming missiles. The Resident Fan Boy and I became a couple in March, and turning the pages, I stumbled across faces, exchanges and scenes I'd long forgotten. Maybe I'll get a couple of posts out of them.

I've used a number of approaches in my journalling, many adapted from Ira Progoff's books on journals. Sometimes, I track a day from minute to minute, usually when I have a deadline. Each January, I do a rundown of the past year, to see what shape it's taken, and I've even done quick write-ups of personal decades, looking for patterns. However, while I think I agree with Socrates about the unexamined life not being worth living, sometimes I find myself wondering: Have I improved at all? Wasn't I a nicer person before?

Looking back at my entries for March over the past decade or so has been a wee bit distressing. I seemed naïve, of course, but certainly more sociable, in a guileless and shallow sort of way. The depth that comes with maturity has things to recommend it, and given a few hours to ponder, I might even be able to think of some of those things. Oh dear, couldn't I go back to being the unenlightened slob I was? Callow she may have been, but she may have been better company. Is my niceness doomed to drain away into bitchiness?

Poor Gran. I bet it was March...