He'd suddenly gone all grumpy. We were installing the chrome cup pulls in the kitchen and by 'we,' I mean him - 'cause he was hogging all the tools. He had two drills, two screwdrivers and was hoarding all the bolts. I had a cardboard template of the new cup pull and a pencil. I took off the old pull, lined up the template to conceal the old holes, drew my little circles and then David went to town. Or he was going to go to town before he realized that he had to use three different drill bits and he'd already fucked up one hole.
He was also probably sucking up my nearly apoplectic mood on account of the fact that when we went downstairs to find the right sized drill bits, we'd discovered that the spring rain of the last few days had left about 3 inches of water in our basement - which should have been sucked away by the sump pump, but said sump pump had apparently committed hari kari. We found this out because our neighbours who own the other half of our semi-detached home - witnessed its demise as it ripped itself out of the wall on their half of the basement. Bright side? The cats hadn't been in the basement to cover themselves in mud since we moved the kitty litter upstairs before the weekend, and our neighbour's dad knows enough about sump pumps to install a new one. Nevertheless, I had that wild look in my eye and David put the bottle of scotch in front of me as soon as we got upstairs.
David began prepping once more to drill the new holes for the cup pulls, so I decided to put on the chrome knobs on the upper cabinets. It became immediately clear that the template we had used originally to drill the holes for the upper knobs was... inaccurate. Two knobs up and my OCD nearly gave me a stroke. Almost every hole on the upper cabinets was mismatched. Off just enough to make me wince and bang my head on the island.
"FUCK IT!!!" I sang out. "We will not worry about this now. No knobs tonight!"
David looked a titch frustrated with me. He was going to try to use job-finishing logic, I just knew it. I headed him off at the pass. "NO! No knobs! Because if we put these knobs up, then we'll have to adjust all the cupboard doors and that will take forever, and if I come downstairs to an entire wall of uneven knobs I WILL FREAKING LOSE IT! So NO KNOBS!!!"
He was well on his way to grumpy after that. It just got worse when he started installing the cup pulls. I didn't understand why he looked like he was going to throw each of those drills and screwdrivers through the wall, until (after I hemmed the closet curtains in our bedroom during my cooling off period) I finished the last four cup pulls myself.
Because our kitchen drawers are a mish-mash of new drawer fronts on old uneven drawers - they are a little finicky. The old cup pulls were not the same size, nor the same mounting centre dimensions as the new ones. We had to hide the old holes, which meant that we had to drill the new holes slightly higher and slightly closer together. The cup pulls themselves had to have one size hole for the attaching channel, but the bolts had to have another smaller sized hole drilled, and where the old drawer front was coverd by a new drawer front, the bolts themselves had to be ever-so-slightly countersunk.
Old Pull
Old Pull's holes
New Pull with smaller mounting centres
New Pull's Template
Drill Bit to fit bolt size
Large Hole, Small Hole
Change to bigger drill bit to fit cup pull channel,
but don't use too much pressure or...
oh for FUCK'S SAKE!!!
Large hole, larger hole
After much cursing - the finished product
Only six tries it took me to get the first cup pull done. I am recuperating with scotch. I now understand my husband.
Where does your 68 year old mother like to shop? My Mom's a pretty typical grandmotherly/motherly type. She bakes cookies,
knits sweaters, sends cheques for Rissa's RESP. Rissa has a cute pet name for her. She calls her Mor
Mor,which means 'mother's mother,' in Danish. My Mom has a grey pixie
cut and shops at Sears.
"Ooooh," says my Mom. "I went on a shopping excursion!!!" (Since she has beeen retired, Mom has allowed herself to shop. After decades of frugality and with the house finally paid off, her paltry Canada Pension Plan has given her new-found spending freedom. She goes to shoe outlets and housewares
stores. She putters on the main streets of summer getaway towns, she'll
take a gander at an art gallery and stop and get a plain black coffee
at a cafe.)
"Really?" I ask expectantly. "To where?"
"To Wicked Wanda's."
Wicked Wanda's is a sex shop in Ottawa. She'd been thinking about going for a while. Probably for an entire
moth. She'd recently learned of its existence and had decided that it
was a 'mustn't be missed' shopping destination. My Mom is my hero.
"Annnnnnnd....?" I queried.
"It was veeeery interesting. Everything is very shiny now."
"I'm sure it is." The last time my Mom had gone to a sex shop was probably three decades ago. She and my Dad had gone together and he'd turned on a vibrator that rested on one of the glass shelves and couldn't get it turned off.
"Anything, uh... catch your attention?"
"Well there were lots of very colourful things, to be sure," she said. "And the staff was very helpful. There was a lovely young girl who was very informative."
"Did you come out with anything?"
"I did! Have you ever heard of Kegel Balls?"
My eyebrows raise. "I have."
"Well, in the 70s they would have been Ben Wa Balls, but now they are Kegel Balls." She gives her tradmark guffaw of laughter. "I now have Kegel Balls!"
"Annnnnd....?"
"They certainly make you feel interesting down there."
"That they do."
p.s. After my failed trampoline excursion, a friend gave me the exact same brand of Kegel Balls for my birthday. "Look what Narda got me Mom !" "Oooooh! They're just like mine!!!"
I know... I know... I just ranted about this. However.... What I saw over the past weekend warranted an update.
So... picture something similar to this, but with 6-10 year old girls wearing special-ordered versions of this inflatable costume and dancing to....
BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY
I'll give you a moment and let that sink in folks...
There were probably 12-15 little girls in this dance number. Which means that their dance teacher, AND all of their parents signed off on these costumes AND the theme of the routine. Almost 24 hours later, and I'm still gobsmacked. In bad taste on so many levels. Thank God the judges gave it the lowest mark of the morning - if they hadn't, I would have had to stand up and incite a riot.
In Dance of the Sugar Plum Sluts, I voiced my concern about 15 year old girls wearing fishnet seamed stockings as part of their costume. Imagine if you will, 10 year old girls wearing fishnet seamed stockings... shaking their asses for the audience... to the applause of their parents, 'cause that's what happened yesterday morning.
I recently was in a show where I wore seamed fishnet stockings. TO BE SEXY ONSTAGE. I had several men tell me that they were giving me a standing ovation, while still sitting. Men and women alike become aroused by the appearance of seamed stockings. You know why? Because seamed stockings basically draw the eye right up to a gal's ass - which, when you want someone to be salivating at the sight of your ass and imagining what it would be like to become intimate with it, is great, but when the wearer of the seamed stocking doesn't even have pubic hair yet - should cause horror.
I'm not saying that all these dancers should be going the Shirley Temple route - not that their parents would know Shirley Temple if they fell over her, but a little less Tits & Ass would be awesome. I was thrilled when one of the judges gave a special award to a number and specifically mentioned 'age-appropriate' choreography. More than a handful of routines over the weekend had choreography that was not age-appropriate. There was a group of competitive 16 year olds dancing to Fever who were so freaking hot they had me wanting to have sex with them. All these kids are under 18. Can we please agree that no audience member should want to have sex with any of them?
This morning, Rissa experiences our friend Leslie's homemade jam for the first time. She has two pieces of toast - each sporting Leslie's gourmet jam. Strawberry balsamic on one, peach bourbon vanilla bean on the other.
She sits for a moment in front of her plate of toast. "I am about to have a jam moment Mummy."
"Excellent. You won't be disappointed."
She takes a bite, and then another, and another...
"This... this..." Rissa's eyes are wide with pleasure. "I have never experienced anything like this in my life. This is the best jam ever. This jam gave me an epiphany - you know what it was? To eat more jam. It was a jampiphany!! You know when the end of the world will be? When we run out of these jams. I am now a jam connoisseur! Eating these jams has opened a whole new world of opportunities! Jamportunities!!! What am I going to do when the jam runs out?!?"
She hyperventilates for a moment.
"What if you make the jam Rissa?"
"...Maybe... But I think maybe I would prefer to receive the jam, rather than make it myself."
"What if you became one of those judges at the county fair and only judged the jam?"
She gasps with excitement. "That would be THE BEST JOB EVER!!"
Toms and Kittens, Strays and Collared, the Curious and the Curiouser... Step right up!!! We welcome you to the Best, the Brightest the most BREATHTAKING of playgrounds! A veritable
CAT CARNIVAL!
Mainzer Cat Circus circa 1950s
Never in your cat lives have you experienced such Magic, such Mayhem, such MAGNIFICENCE!!! Stare for hours at the mouse-sized holes in the floors! Hide in the floor joists! Taunt your furry sibling through the unhemmed wall of curtains in the bedroom! Balance precariously on the standing drywall. We have it all and it can be yours!! Demand food whenever you want - there are no bedroom doors to dampen your yowls. All this, PLUS an unfinished basement that's as close to being outside as you can get!
Channelling Fred Astaire - Steve and Lola sing ...
Heaven
I'm in heaven
And my heart beats
So that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find
The happiness I seek
When we're out together
Playing hide and seek... at 3:00 a.m... In the bedrooom closet curtains That you just hung So that you didn't have to see all the crap, But now you have to put up over Top of the curtain rod because The rustling is so loud when we play That you threaten to decapitate us..
Adding bedroom doors has now become a priority.
Minuit, not quite back to her old self, still prefers to enjoy the Hannibal Lector basement for the most part. Pleased to say though, that last night she came up on her own steam to interact with humanity. It's only taken three weeks.
It didn't really come as a surprise that it's dirty. The basement, I mean. Seeing as its floor is comprised of dirt and gravel. And seeing as the foundation leaks a titch, it should also have come as no suprise that the dirt part of the basement has a tendency towards muddy after a good spring rain storm.
If there were only humans living in our home, it wouldn't be an issue. You know why? Because all three humans residing here are not going to cavort around in the dirty, gravelly, wet basement. Our feline housemates, on the other hand, live for that shit.
Paw prints. Frickin' cat paw prints, all over everything! Seems as if Steve and Lola have discovered the creek that runs through the stone foundation when it rains heavily. (Not Minuit, because she's still mostly just lying on the heated blanket
that David put down 'cause he was worried that she might die while lying
on the cold tarp we have down there because she still refuses to come
upstairs.) Where the creek hits the dirt sides and floor, Steve and Lola had their own Grauman's Chinese Theatre moment and imprinted their way into immortality. Then, with those same wet paws, they danced their way up the basement stairs, all over the new sofa bed, across the living room floor, through the foyer - circling back through the living room, then again through the foyer to eventually end up in the kitchen where they planted themselves on the off-white (now beigey-brown, kinda looked they've wiped their asses on them) stools in the kitchen. I'm so glad that I had washed the slipcovers of the stools two days prior.
It's like they deliberately explore the dirtiest, dustiest, cob-webbiest corners of our cellar and then share their journey with us, usually on the cleanest, close-to-white thing they can find. We basically have dirty dogs - without the unconditional affection and obedience. So we either a) have to find a way to miraculously coat our entire basement in concrete or a near facsimile thereof to eliminate the dirt, or b) we have to move the kitty litter upstairs, so that they won't get dirty in the first place. Option a) will probably run us into the tens of thousands of dollars. Option b) it is!! We just have to find a place where we can carve out some room for three litter boxes. Although if Minuit does kick the bucket, we would be down to two...
I'm going to lose my under-the-stairs closet - I just know it. I'd been so jazzed about having a place for the vacuum and recycling to live... and the shopping bags and shoe racks and extra folding chairs... and cleaning supplies. I just wish that cat shit didn't smell so much like, well, cat shit. If it smelled like lavendar and ylang-ylang it could just go in the 1/2 bath, but with 3 cats doing their business daily? I don't particular relish the idea of sharing that particular olfactory experience in a somewhat public space. I could say that I'd keep the litter pristine so the stink would be manageable - but I'd totally be lying. Cleaning the litter is not at the top of my daily chores list. I hate that job and I hate how the cloud of kitty litter dust coats my very soul after I've done it.
Wait!! WAIT! We build a false floor for under the stairs! The cats go in underneath the false floor and on top of that could still be used for storing other stuff!!! We'll rig up an elaborate trolley system with remote control to get the litter boxes out of the closet for cleaning ease... With a motion-sensor light so that they don't have to crap in the dark... and automagic odor neutralizers! David's a genius at problem solving those kinds of things. Maybe he can somehow Tardis the under-the-stair cupboard and find us that extra space! 'Cause I'm telling you right now that if the muddy footprints aren't dealt with - my tenuous hold on sanity may well leave me. I can't guarantee the cats' safety if that happens.
It's spring. Honest-to-God, grass-greening-up spring. Warmer air, buds on the trees and... cats. The cats are outside once more. Lazing on sidewalks in sunbeams, trotting up to you when you "puss-puss-pussssss...", rolling around on their backs, begging for a tummy rub.
There I am, walking back from the bank - I'd already had my cat fix twice on the way there. Stooping to pet a tabby and some sort of Maine Coon mix. I am a pretty happy kitten myself as I walk home. Whisting off-tune, I spy the same Maine Coon cat on the other side of the street. Maybe I can get a double dose of kitty love.
"Hey sweetie..." He saunters over to me and "prrrrrrrrowls" his enjoyment as I scritch him behind his ears. Poor beast is matted beyond belief. He has a couple of shaved spots where his owner has attempted to rid him of the worst of them. He rolls on his back and I rub his tummy (just the way Steve likes it).
When a cat bites you? Really bites you? They really give no warning. One minute I'm rubbing his tummy the next I have two massive teeth marks in the heel of my hand. Maybe he didn't break the skin... It was probably just... Nope, there's actually torn skin... and blood. I'm bleeding.
Oh crap! Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap! David is going to kill me if I have to get rabies shots again. Shit. Oh shit. The cat doesn't have a tag. He's wandering the neighbourhood - I have no idea where he lives. The cat is winding around my legs and 'prrrrrowling' at me. I absent-mindedly reach down to scratch him... maybe if I don't rub his tummy... will I NEVER learn? I take a breath. I look at him. He's not rabid. He doesn't look rabid. Plus, somebody shaved him, he must belong to someone and if he belongs to someone, they probably got him his shots. Right?
I'm formulating my excuses as I walk home. I sneak in the house - maybe David's not downstairs. I go over to the sink and rinse out the punctures. Still bleeding a bit.
"Ummmm, Rissa?"
"Yes?"
"Could you go upstairs?" I lower my voice. "Up in the white cabinet in one of the cubbies is some hydrogen peroxide..."
"WHAT DID YOU DO!?!"
"Shhhhhhh.... nothing. Nothing's wrong. I just need some..."
"Daddy! Mummy's injured herself again!"
David comes into the room. "What did you do?"
"Nothing!" I hide my hand behind me.
He raised his eyebrows and gives me the look.
I roll my eyes and present my hand. "I'm sure he wasn't rabid. He was shaved in spots - that means he has someone who shaves him!"
David takes a breath to berate me and then closes his mouth. He knows there's no point. He knows that I will never give up touching stray cats. It will never happen.
"Rinse with the peroxide."
"Yes David."
"If you start foaming at the mouth, I'm putting you down myself."
Certain things become apparent only AFTER you have moved into your new home. It comes down to this: Love is blind. When you fall in love with your new place, its character, its quaintness, its nooks and crannies - you have blinders on. With these 'in love' blinders, you can see no faults. It is only upon taking possession of the house that we realize the living room walls are covered in painted, lifting wallpaper - noticeable now, because the walls are empty. No to worry! Quick faux fesco finish and those walls become a 'feature'!
Every single floor in the new house is uneven. I swear to you that, other than the threshhold to the master ensuite, I didn't notice any floor issues the 4 times we were in the house before we took possession. None. And yet... and yet after we own the house, it quickly becomes apparent that we need to buy shims in bulk. "Quick, hand me a shim!"
David and I begin to argue about the relative nature of 'level.'
"Do you want it level to the walls? To the ceiling? To the floor?"
"What I want is to look at a piece of furniture against a wall and not think I'm in a Dali painting!!"
We planned a nice long 2 week overlap between the closing of the new place and the sale of our old place for our very small renovations. We would take March Break and turn it into a family project. WE HAD LOTS OF TIME. (Sorry, I need to stifle hysterical laughter for a moment.)
We didn't have that much to do in the new house before we moved in. We were being conservative in our renovations. We were tackling them ourselves. (With some very generous help from friends and family, and tradespeople to do the tricky bits.) We were taking a 1 bedroom with ensuite and 2nd floor loft family room and turning it into a 2 bedroom with a common bathroom...
... and we thought we'd shift where the master closet is to utilize all the space under the eaves... and we might have decided to move a cellar egress door to create a traditional door to the basement so that the cats would be able to navigate down the non-conforming-to-code stairs... and we were putting up an entire wall of upper cabinets in the kitchen... and we were laying floor... and intended to eliminate the separate 2nd floor laundry to open up a wall so that the common bathroom could have more space... and we needed to bump out a closet on the main floor to house an upright freezer, washer/dryer and treadmill... and we were going to create a wall of repurposed antique windows, which we would then frost/etch/cover with stained glass so that Rissa would have some privacy... and we were going to add custom cut angeled doors to the sloped ceilinged bedrooms, because there weren't any. No problem.
Strangely enough, in that 2 week overlap before we moved in, not one of those jobs was actually completed in full. Go figure.
The bathroom is 'mostly' done. The fixtures are in! And we can shower - so WHOO-HOO for that! We need to finish the drywall, tape and mud and put on the beadboard wainscotting and chair rail and then paint - but at least we can shower! In keeping with no floors in this house being level, the floor of the old laundry room and the floor where the new shower/tub combo resides, has about 4 inches of level disparity. Step between those different floor levels and you're in for a wild ride. It's not quite the beginning of the Leviathan, but if you've had a nightcap (or 6 - you know, to cope with living in a home during renovations), it's close. I'm just going to pretend that we're living on a houseboat. That's why nothing's level. We've even added a waterproof light fixture over the shower so that we can really immerse ourselves in our 'marine' bathroom.
The new closet in the bedroom has clothing rods, but nothing to hide them from view. The flooring in the living room and foyer is done, but not the 1/2 bath. The upper kitchen cupboards are up, but still need a coat of paint... and handles. The closet on the main floor needs to be taped, mudded - and something to cover it. The wall of windows, the privacy doors and the door to the basement? I'm thinking that will happen in the summer.
And yet, with every box that we unpack - the floor space increases. Smaller jobs are getting done. We mostly got the office area settled on Monday night, and last night David made a microwave shelf to get the appliance off the counter. We hung the curtain rod in front of the main floor closet - I have no fucking idea where the curtain rings are, but they'll turn up as soon as I buy new ones.
I'm looking out our kitchen window, towards the back yard and there's some sort of gnarly tree (which I hope will be a flowering apple) and a little group of bushes with our bench and some haphazard flower pots beside it. This morning, there are two blue jays poking around in the mostly-revealed spring grass. I couldn't see this view from our other kitchen window - it was always too high to get a good look at the backyard. I had to get on my tippy-toes to enjoy the green. And now, here I am, typing with a view. It's going to be okay.
So there I was... watching the baby sluts dance... It was not, as might be inferred, the END OF DAYS - nope, that wasn't it. Dance competition season had begun. The last time I endured this was 5 years ago, when Rissa did a couple of group numbers at the age of 9.
I thought we were safe, this time around, I really did. I told David, who came late to the party, that this year the dancers were mostly wearing clothes and weren't too slutty.
Hubris. That's what it was.
No sooner had we sat down in the theatre (waiting for Rissa's group to dance), when pint-sized hip-hoppers clad in next to no clothing, all began shaking their little asses to the delight of their parents. At least, I'm hoping it was their parents who, when these delightful little divas started doing the ass popping move, hooted hollered and cat called. I hope to God that it wasn't some random pedophiles off the street who thought they'd found their own personal Heaven. (Media Alert: ANYBODY can walk into a dance competition.) The booty-poppers were in the mini class - which means that they were 5 - or younger. David and I shared looks of horror. These wee little bits of spandex and sequins danced with this subtext:
"Hey, look at us grind our little asses! See us shake our non-existent boobs! We are A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!! Doesn't it just make you want to..."
"I swear to you," I said. "This is the first that I've seen of it at the competition."
"My eyes!" David said. "I need to bleach my eyes!!"
Then the Irish Step Dancers came out. They were 15. Their costume: barely there, sparkly mid-torso shirts missing an arm, leatherette booty shorts and, wait for it... fishnet stockings with a seam up the back. 'Cause you know... that's what Irish dancing is all about. Sex. The fishnet stockings are there, I guess, because they were fishing. Fishing for... sailors. The girls were fabulous dancers - very precise, synchronized beautifully... and all I could think was "WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE STRIPPERS?" David turned his head so violently to avoid looking at them (and going straight to hell), that he almost broke his neck.
Dance schools have dress codes. Really fricking serious dress codes. You have to 'bunnify', you have to be covered, no jewelery, you can't look sloppy. At least not until it's competition season and then apparently you're allowed to look like a $25 hooker who gives blow jobs in the drive-thru of an all-night Tim Hortons.
It can't just be us, can it? Please God, tell me that David and I aren't the only parents who don't want our daughter graphically sexualized! Rissa's 13, and if I discovered her doing the choreography that some of these 7 year olds were doing? I'd be bringing up the dance studio on child pornography charges. Over the weekend, I watched young girls performing to these songs:
I'm a Good Girl - A jazz solo by a sassy little 13 year old who basically did a burlesque number. Don't get me wrong - I love a good burlesque number - LOVE them - hell, I'd love to do one myself. What I don't love? Is watching a 13 year old offer her boobs up to the audience as something akin to the dessert section at all-you-can-eat buffet.
Put Your Grafitti On Me danced to by a group of 10 year olds in sequined bras and panties,
splaying their fingers all over their bodies - basically indicating
where they'd like their full-body bukkake.
The topper? Flaunt - danced to by a trio of 13 year olds who did a lot of gesturing to their own tatas and hoohas before they finished the number off by grinding their asses. The lyrics of this song are:
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?
Baby, come a little closer
Come and get to know me
And what I got?
Baby, won’t you come and see me?
Won’t you come and be with me?
See what I got
‘Cause what I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
It’s what you need
It’s what you need, so Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?
"NO!NO, I DON'T!!! You're 13! WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS?? Put on some fucking clothes!"
I'm not a prude. Read my posts about sex, you'll see. I love sex. I read tonnes of erotica, I enjoy off-colour smut. Have done, since I was a young adult. My daughter is 13. I am not comfortable with her being thought of as a sex object. I don't want her to become accustomed to receiving applause for popping her booty. I don't want her to think that being clad in next to nothing in public doesn't have consequences. Yes, in a perfect world, we should all be able to run around naked and nothing would happen. Yes, the human body is just skin with hills and valleys defining our primary and secondary sexual organs. It shouldn't cause such riot. But it does. We can pretend that the world has changed, but it hasn't. For millennia men have been schooled to believe that women's clothing and behaviour can warrant a Get Out of Jail Free card... Yes, it's 2014, and yes, it's still happening.
So how about this? Let's just encourage our children to... dance. In clothing that allows them to move without sharing their asses with the world; to music that empowers rather than subjugates. Can we please be vigilant parents, protecting our precious progeny - allowing them the time to grow up? 'Cause here's the hard truth folks: Your little girl, who used to skip around the dance studio in innocent abandon, pretending to be a butterfly? That little girl, when she dances all 'grown up', is going to have random strangers in a crowded theatre wanting to fuck her. And if you're cool with that? You need to re-examine what it means to be a parent.
I'd been holding back the hypervintilation for most of the morning. I'd stepped over and around things - did the Stanley meeting Livingstone in my bedroom as I finally located a pair of tights, pried open the vanity drawer that didn't have its handle, because it STILL needs another coat of paint before the handle can go on and I can't seem to find the time to paint...
Visual chaos makes me mental. The day we moved in I ended up lying on the floor, topless and sobbing. 10 days later the house is still rife with visual chaos. We haven't moved in 8 years. In the last house, I managed to have things behind doors and curtains, hidden in drawers. I had perfected the art of squirrelling things away. In this house (half the size of our other), we have too much crap to squirrel and no place to squirrel it.
David is dropping me at work. I get into the car, take one look at the top of the driveway beside our house and muffle a sob.
"What? What is it?" David's hand on my knee - he's so concerned.
"We're the White Trash."
"What?"
"WE ARE THE WHITE TRASH!!We have old chairs on our lawn and things up against the fence and knocked over things and bags of garbage and random pieces of cardboard..."
"Heather, we just moved in."
"I know that!! Don't you think I know that?!? But your average person driving down this street doesn't know that. 'Look there's an old ratty armchair, just sitting there by the back door. How can they let that happen?' The only thing we're missing is a CAR UP ON BLOCKS!!!"
By this time I am hyperventilating. I've closed my eyes to avoid the mess, but even with my eyes closed I know that it's there, so with my eyes still glued shut, I turn my head to face the side of the house.
David doesn't say anything.
I work a bit later than usual, and then have to run a couple of errands. By the time I get home and walk up the driveway, there is nothing there. Nothing. Not a chair, not a bag of garbage, not a random old bannister... nothing knocked over or piled haphazardly.
I stick my head around the back of the house. David has cleaned off the deck area, leaving only our bistro set and BBQ. All the stuff that still needs to eventually go into the still-to-be-built shed, is stacked neatly against our fence, out of sight from the street. My heart nearly bursts with joy.
We have an indoor/outdoor basement in our new home. Built in the mid-to-late 1800s, the cellar sports a gravel and dirt floor, parts of which are in various states of damp depending on how quickly the snow is melting.
The cats are... ecstatic. As indoor cats, their new proximity to 'outdoors' has them doing their own version of Parkour through the basement. We hear them bouncing around and letting out heroic "You can't catch me!" yowls through the kitchen's pine floor boards. Our diminutive, and usually dainty, Lola frequently comes upstairs looking like a victim of Shelob.
"Dude! Are you aiming for the cobwebs?!"
"Prrrrrrrowl?" she says, before licking her paw and nearly choking on what's she's stepped in.
Litter boxes are in the basement. Amidst the gravel and dirt. We've put a tarp down, but they still manage to come up, paws and fur covered in various forms of detritus. Our house will have cat paw prints and cobwebs forever.
My friend Margo came up with the brilliant and cunning plan. The cat door to the basement can have little brushes on the sides and top so that when the cats come through, they are automagically cleaned. BEST PLAN EVER!
Except that we have two different sizes of cats. We have normal to small sized cats and we have Minuit, whose circumference is a tad more rotund. I just know that Steve and Lola would find a way to avoid the brushy parts.
"Beaded curtains!" yells David. He's been wanting beaded curtains for the longest time. He says it to see the whites of my eyes. "We add beaded curtains to the cat door so that they are cleaned WHILE entering or exiting!"
I had to agree that it might work. "Or... or.... you have those things... those cleany-skinny things..."
Everyone is now looking at me like I'm mad. Damn my post-partum aphasia - 13 years on and I still can't find words. "You know - they have wires in them? They can be chenille...?"
"PIPE CLEANERS!"
"YES! Wait! Wait! We get the metallic ones! Drill holes in the frame of the cat door and then insert them. THEN we can change their colour according to seasons or special events..."
"Like black and orange for Halloween!" Margo chimes in. We're so sympatico.
We shall patent this. This is how we will make our millions.
In the middle of moving day. I was at the new house, already unpacking. David was back at the old house to help lead the movers in a second rendition of Should it stay or should it go.
"Hello?"
"...Hi..."
He had a tone. "What's wrong?!?"
"Well, Minuit seems to be..."
"What? Seems to be what?"
"Well, I think that she somehow injured herself. She's, uh, moving a little odd."
"Like how odd? How injured?"
"Like she is having trouble moving her back end. I think I need to take her to the vet."
"What are you NOT telling me? How much trouble is she having?!?"
"..."
"David..."
"She's kind of... dragging her back end..."
"VET! Take her to the vet!!"
Of course this would happen on moving day. Of course this would happen to Minuit. This is the absolute best time for this.
Later...
"The vet's not sure. Could be a blood clot or it could be a slipped or pinched disc. Nothing's broken, nothing showed up on the x-rays - except for a slightly enlarged heart." (Minuit is the fattest of our cats.)
"So what are we doing?"
"We're going to wait and see. They said to keep her contained in a small space and see how it goes. We've got an appointment for tomorrow."
So we spend the rest of the night - in between toing and froing from the old house (we don't technically close the deal on the old house for a few days) - checking in on Minuit, now sequestered on the floor of the 1/2 bath in the old house. She's not eating food. She's not drinking. Every time the humans share a glance, we have that resigned, lost another cat, look.
Next day, Rissa and I have her in with the vet. We're prepped emotionally. David's already said his goodbyes. The odds of us being able to give full time care to a paralyzed cat are slim to none. I work, David works, Rissa's in school. There is no way that a cat in a rolly-wheel device is going to be able to navigate a litter box.
The vet checks her out. "She's looking better than she did yesterday."
I think: Really?!? This is better?!? Paralyzed from the waist down is better, how?!? But I say, "Oh?"
"She's reacting to pain in her feet, (squeeze - MEOW! squeeze - MEOW!) Brighter eyed. She's definitely improved."
"She has?" A sliver of hope opens within my chest.
"Definitely. I think you should keep an eye on her over the weekend and then check in on Monday with us."
I scritch Minuit's ears. "You hear that beast? You have a reprieve." I decide to use scare tactics. "But I'm telling you babe, you gotta start moving your back end soon or it's 'coitans' for you, 'coitans', I tell you."
We're in the waiting room. I'm prepping to pay. The cat cage is open on the floor, Rissa's hand is inside, scratching under Minuit's chin. I'm wincing at the counter, as today's total of vet fees gets tallied.
"MUMMY!"
I turn around. Minuit is now out of the cage by at least 2 feet. She looks at me - gives me a pointed, "Don't give up on me" look, and stumps the two feet back into her cage and settles down once more.
"See?" I said to the vet. "Nothing like a good threat of euthanasia to get a cat motivated to heal."
WARNING: there is too much information in this post.
We moved a week ago. Downsizing by half means we have spectacular box stackage in the new house. Boxes, as far as the eye can see. Boxes, piled 4 - 6 feet high. The master bedroom, at present nearly impenetrable, because there is an entire room of craft/sewing supplies waiting to be stacked in the back of the soon-to-be designed closet under the eaves.
For the past week, I've been searching for the box into which I deposited the contents of my bedside table. I have a stack of books + my e-reader in that box. That e-reader has become my Holy Grail. I've got the latest Kim Harrison book on it - fantasy escapism is in that e-reader - plus a crapload of erotica. And right now - I am in great need of fantasy escapism. The visual chaos surrounding me is making me batshit crazy. My wild-eyed panic usually hits at the end of the day - when I'd like to decompress with a good, or at the very least, satisfying book.
As I was madly searching for the missing box last night - I had a horrifying realization. Other contents of my bedside table are in that box. Other adult contents of my bedside table. My Hitachi Magic Wand is in that box!!! I've lost my royal sceptre! Plus other things are now missing... other 'help you have good sex' things. Things that made me tell Rissa years ago, "Do NOT go into my bedside table." "Why?" "There are sex things there." "EEEEEEEEEEEWWWW Mummy." "Yes, and if you root around in there all you'll be able to think of is Daddy and me having sex with them." "MUMMY!" "Told you."
There are 15 years of marriage props in that box. The best of the best is in that box. Over 15 years of marriage you try and discard a lot of stuff. Like say, the honey dust, which although it tastes good, having the dedicated time to dust or be dusted by your partner is almost non-existent and then when the dust gets even slightly wet - you just end up sticky. And even though you're supposed to lick it off - come on - who has the time or the energy to do a full-body lick. And then the sheets are all sticky... And that means that you have to do even more laundry after your adult play date...
But there are other things in that box. Tried and true things - just the right size, just the right fit, the right amount of... shall we say... glide... Things that were purchased at the Sex Shop equivalent of a Whole Foods store. Pricey, organic things.
Which means that now I need to go shopping. And you know what's going to happen, right? I'll re-source my bedside table contents and then of course the box will show up and I'll have two of everything. I'm having a flashback to Double Mint commercials. Double your pleasure, double your fun. Even just the thought of that scenario is going to keep me smiling all day.
A buck, a doe and a fawn stand in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck. Our family took possession of the new house on March 4th. By the next day, we had broken it. 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, after spending 12 hours demolishing things, I stood at the entrance to the common bathroom and started to hyperventilate. Hours before, there had been working fixtures in the room: a shower, a bath, a sink, a toilet... walls. At 8:00 p.m.? NOTHING. We'd had the house for 18 hours.
"I... I... I have to leave now," I said to David. (He and our friend Jamie had now moved on to ripping up the old floors.)
"I... I..." A wave of nausea hit. "I can't... I... I need to go..."
I staggered back to our old house (we had two weeks of overlap before our house deal closed), dropped my dusty paint clothes and ran a bath - in my working bathroom. I threw in multiple couple of cups of Epsom Salts and immersed myself in the cast iron tub. I was in desperate need of a Calgon moment.
So we're just a wee bit behind where we thought we'd be. Not a problem. The door to the basement hasn't happened. At present there is an egress door - which means we can totally pretend there's a twister and run down to the basement with our pets. Right now, we're leaving that door open and can see into our 150 year old cellar - how many people really get the chance to see gravel and dirt and lopsided jack posts? That's Canadian history right there folks! And really? The living room from which you access the basement is pretty much a fortress of boxes, so seeing the basement isn't really even an option yet. It's like a surprise part of the house."Wait, don't look yet, not yet... and now... open your eyes!"
I can walk between unfinished studs from our bedroom to the now plumbed bathroom - we had a killer plumber who did the job in half the time expected and left us with ALL our fixtures working! I got to have my hair shampooed and conditioned in the kitchen sink - scalp massage courtesy of David - as the caulking for the shower sets. I don't know where.my... (insert random nouns here) are, but that just means it's like a scavenger hunt - every day. Last night I found pants!
We had Professional Tetris movers. Swear to God. They managed to get a 2 tonne, 4 foot wide wardrobe up a 30 inch set of stairs and over a knee wall without damaging walls or killing anyone. Christmas decorations are now packed into the secret eaves hidey hole which will afford us quite the adventure come December this year. And that computer program we used to figure out where all our shit was going to go? Mostly worked and after the move we only had to give away two more major pieces of furniture - which, when you are downsizing from 3000 to 1500 sq feet - is pretty freaking remarkable.
My Dad took two for the team. He came to help with construction and it was only on day 2 that he required two staples in his head from whacking it on the angled ceiling of our story and a half house. And then the silly bugger CAME BACK and continued to build. What do you give a guy who does that for you?? David's Mom painted and cleaned and packed and kept me moving when everything in me wanted to sit down and bawl like a baby. AND she stocked our freezer with enough meals to ensure that we didn't have to cook during the 10 days of renovations and we can still now defrost something and not worry about dinner. David's step-sister brought lunch, made us treats and housed us for three nights until we could find our bed linens.
That is not to say that last Sunday, when we were really IN the house for the first time, David and Rissa didn't witness my collapse on the floor of our impenetrable bedroom and my subsequent flailing as I tried to locate a paper bag into which I could breathe. But... even in my wee cottage of a new home, covered in boxes with many rooms remaining unfinished, I have this space...
Not quite a Great Room - doesn't have the sq footage to be dubbed thus. We're calling it our petit grand room. And do you see that- in the midst of my kitchen area? It's a turquoise fridge. A cheap-ass fridge-only unit that I took to the autobody shop and, in spite of looking at me like I was insane, they painted for me. I have a turquoise fridge. It's all going to be okay.
If you have to paint 20 kitchen cupboard doors with space to dry only 8 flat at a time, and each door needs to be primed with super-adherent primer that must have 2-4 hours drying time before covering the cupboards (back and front) with at least two coats of furniture paint, and if the furniture paint requires 10-12 hours drying time before re-coating, what is the minimum amount of time that it will take you paint all 20 cupboards and still have between 6-8 hours sleep? The front of the doors are already primed.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd.... GO!
My thought process at 5:45 a.m. folks. Shoot me now. 'Cause this painting of kitchen cupboard doors has to happen at the same time that actual qualified painters are painting walls and ceilings on our main floor, electricians and plumbers are electrifying and plumbing and my husband and father are making sawdust while framing bathrooms and new doors to bedrooms and the basement - one of which areas is located directly adjacent to the only room that has enough floor space to dry the cupboard doors. I thought I had it all figured out - the fronts of the doors are all primed, I just have to prime the backs and then start with the good paint. To save on floorspace, I could just mount the doors on the cabinets and paint them while they're upright - even though the painting rules advise one NOT to paint kitchen cupboards this way.
RULES! I am a rule follower! I'd be breaking the RULES!!!
But what if I did really, really thin coats of paint? All I really have to do is finish the fronts of the doors before Friday. The backs of them can wait until the freaking summer when we'll notice that they're not painted.
WAIT!! WAAAAAAAAAAIT!!!!!
We have some sawhorse/work benches in the garage!!! We could take them over and throw some spare 2 x 4s on them and then we'd have an additional flat surface to rest drying cupboard doors on!!! All 20 doors might be able to dry flat!!! IT. COULD. WORK!
In honour of our new house purchase and attending renovations, I'm sharing an earlier bit from my show How To Leave Adolescence at 30 - written and performed in 1999, shortly after we bought our very first home in Toronto.
Buy a House
Upon returning from our honeymoon,
David and I realize that for the first time in almost a year, we don’t have a
project. We flail about very briefly in
panic like a couple of large bass on a catch and release fishing show before we
come up with a new plan.
We start looking
at those Resale Homes magazines that you can get for free at the Shoppers Drug
Mart. It’s this nice little game we
have. It’s called “Let’s Pretend.” Let’s pretend we are responsible adults. Let’s pretend that we have enough money for a
down payment and can carry a mortgage.
We pore over magazines and think about where we would like to own OUR
home. Do we want a house? Do we want a condo? A LOFT.
Wouldn’t owning a loft be great?
We could be like Laura Holt on Remington Steele with that great loft
apartment with exposed brick and beautiful wooden beams. We could live in an old factory. It would be so romantic. And affordable. Because everyone knows that lofts are an
affordable alternative to owning a house.
We enter the Candy Factory lofts
showroom – filled with large windows and exposed brick and beams as far as the
eye can see. We smile at one another knowing that we’ve come home. Then we look at the price sheet. For approximately 750 square feet of living
space you have to part with approximately 400,000 dollars. Check out the
security cameras from the Candy Factory Lofts right after David and I see the
price sheet. You know that cartoon wolf whose eyes bug right out of his head
when he sees the she wolf and he makes that noise that sounds something like
AOOOOOOOOGA? That’s exactly what David and I
look like before we run screaming from the building.
We go back to looking at the Resale
Homes magazine and make a call to Betty, the agent. Two weeks later, after having seen 9 houses
in total - thereby becoming true housing connoisseurs - we buy house number 4.
Why don’t you tell them what they’ve
won Bob?
“Heather and David you have
just spent the most money of your entire life on a two bedroom fixer upper with 'potential.' This home features small
cramped rooms, sloping, gouged hardwood floors, a delightfully claustrophobic
staircase to an uneven second story and a bathroom so small that only a toddler
could find comfort in it!”
We take possession and spend the entire
month renovating. We’re not just talking
painting and wallpapering here. We’re
talking major demolition. We open
staircases replace bath fixtures, move walls. We get WAY dirtier than Bob Villa
has ever been. The kind of dirty where
you’re afraid to blow your nose at the end of the day.
We lay our own IKEA laminate flooring
in the living and dining rooms. We take
a weekend to do it. You have to pour
some glue into each groove and then whack it into place with a hammer and this
special groove shaped thingie that IKEA provides you with. First day, an hour into our operation, I
whack my ring finger. Really hard. I don’t just whack it, I rip skin off
it. Mindful of the fact that my
Mother-in-law is there helping out I manage to say “Wow, that really hurts.”
I jump up and down a little bit and get a
bandage and that’s that. It hurts, but I
am above giving into the pain and a better person for it. The next day?
Just as we are on our second to last row? I hit my middle finger, same hand. All the poise and grace that I had
demonstrated the day before leaves me as I collapse into a heap on the floor, wailing
and screaming and weeping screaming phrases like “JUST KILL ME!” David tries to help me up and I wriggle
through his arms like a toddler still screaming, "I WANT TO DIE, OH GOD, PLEASE LET ME DIE!!!!"
It takes 4 months for my fingernails to
lose their blackened ends. But you know
what? It’s worth it. I look around our house and I know that
pretty much everything, we did ourselves.
We are creating our home. And
we’re doing it from the inside out. And
every time a person comes in and says “Wow, nice floor,” I have to smile and say “Yeah, it is.”
My ass felt colder than usual when I got out of the car. When I made it inside and took off my coat - I reached around to feel the seat of my pants. The seat of my pants was gone. My entire right cheek was exposed. My shoulders slumped. My pants were giving up the ghost. Over a decade old - castoffs khakis from David that he had probably sourced from Value Village - my painting pants give a visual history of every paint project I have participated in.
The stark white trim from our 1st house in town. The 1/2 tint Standish White at the 2nd house - with Mayonnaise accents. The light Lilac from Rissa's room. The chartreuse and orange from the Cabaret set. Espresso brown from the front and back stairs to the basement. Prussian Blue in the bathroom. Stains and spackle and putty adorn these pants. They already have a red and white polka-dotted patch from when left half of the ass went. I have to keep them up with a belt - they're so baggy - but I feel like Katharine Hepburn in them, ready to tackle the world with moxy.
These pants are the perfect blend of softness and abrasion. The fabric so aged - if you look at it too hard it'll tear on its own, and yet there's oil based paint that roughens my hands every time I wipe paint-covered digits on my legs. I'm a colourful clown in these pants - paired with the striped painting t-shirts I do impromptu soft shoe numbers in between paint strokes. David looks at me in this get-up and adores me - I will not give up these pants!
Which meant that last night, after my sewing machine refused to comprehend the geometry of the required patching, I sat, pantless, in the family room, in front of old Veronica Mars episodes and I hand-sewed patches to the right ass of my pants. I'm unwilling to give up their history. In time, they may well become held together by only the applied patches, but that too will give me joy.
Yesterday, we began renovations on our new home. Today, my neck, back and achilles tendons no longer work. Eight years ago, when we started the same process on our present home, I don't remember feeling like this.
I remember holding the mini-jack hammer and cackling with joy as I exposed the brick in our kitchen. I remember swinging the mini sledge with ease. I do NOT remember having to pause every two steps as I moved a bathroom fixture out into the hall. Sure, a 70 inch whirlpool tub with the motor still attached is heavy, but I used to be able to heft with the best of them.
The majority of my time yesterday was spent applying a rough plaster finish over top of painted wallpaper. Until yesterday, we hadn't realized that the walls had been wallpapered, nor that many spots on those walls were peeling. Not a problem! We'd had a similar issue in a couple of rooms in the old house. I purchased a 20 lb container of spackle (felt my back twinge as I carried it to the car), brandished my spackling blades and went to work. It was spectacular spackling! Problem solved! I didn't realize there'd been an issue until we'd stopped for dinner at Tim Horton's and I made the mistake of turning my head.
A couple of months back, I rolled over in bed and put my neck out - this time around it wasn't as terrifying - probably because I wasn't half asleep when it happened and I could actually move my head 15 degrees in either direction. Plus, the "OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?" question was way easier to answer this time around. I had just spent 2.5 hours moving my right shoulder up and down and up and down and side to side and side to side. DING! DING! DING!!! That clarified the shit out of this pinched nerve.
My face turned white as I tried to tilt my head back to receive David's kiss in the kitchen this morning - it immediately became apparent that this body of mine needs a tune up. I'd been putting it off becasue I'd been in the midst of a show and I didn't want to deal with tension then, because I was afraid that if I had a massage, that my immune system would think that it was okay to give up and I'd get sick. I was WRONG. I should have had that massage. 'Cause now? I don't have any spare time and I kind of need to be able to move my neck and back and Achilles tendons.
Bright side? I did get to spend my first full day in the new house. And even if it is now covered in shards of drywall and the upstairs bathroom no longer exists and our bedroom only has sub-floor - it's our wee cottage of a home and it WILL be amazing!
I should have been prepared. It's not like I'm new to this. I've done shows before - I've suffered from Post-Show Depression. But this time around - there's a 6 piece set + carry-on of emotional baggage that I hadn't counted on.
As an actor - for concentrated amounts of time - your cast and crew become your family. Generally from tech week through to closing, they're the people you see the most; the ones you tease, the ones you cuddle, the ones you laugh at/with, the ones you tell to shut the hell up when they're making too much noise backstage.
Five years ago I did another show. We were a tribe. We got naked - both emotionally and physically and the fallout PSD from that show was spectacular. Weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth - fallout. Those forged friendships then, bonded some of us together on a cellular level. We were a mess. 5 years ago, right after HAIR closed, one of my best friends died. The last conversation I had with Shannon was my coping with the loss of my onstage tribe.
On Sunday night, I closed Jesus Christ Superstar. Half the cast had also been in HAIR. Same people. Same bonds. Same teasing, cuddling and laughing. I thought that I'd be too busy to fall into PSD. We're moving - take possession of the house this week - my days and nights are full. I am too busy for fallout. Thing is? This time 5 years ago, when I was coping with PSD, I could talk to Shannon. Shannon, The Queen of Commiseration. Shannon, the holder of hands and reminder to breathe. Shannon, the depository of secrets and the safe haven to get through the bad.
I dreamt all night of my tribe... Upon waking, my first thought was "I need to talk to Shannon." My second thought was, "I can't, she's dead." Hiccuping sobs, near to vomiting, as David smoothed my back and told me it would all be okay. He doesn't understand though, that the perfect emotional storm has been set into motion. Tamped-down memories from 5 years ago, compounded with new-felt anguish from the loss of this cast and crew to which was added the remembrance of Shannon's death. My stomach pitched and roiled - I didn't have my sea legs under me until half way through the day.
Stoicism is not amongst my character traits. I immediately reached out to my friends, old and new, who support and 'get' me - those who suffer along with me as we regain our footing and remember that life goes on - even without those you love within arms' reach at your side.
I parked the car. It was the first in the lot. When I opened the door, three inches of freshly fallen powdery snow were at my feet. The snow around my parking spot and all the way to the loading dock door was pristine. It was too good to pass up. I put on my hat, dropped my bag and sat my ass down in the snow. I lay back, arms and legs outspread and revelled in snow angel creation.
I had risen and was dusting myself off when the loading dock door opened. It was Riley, one of the dancers from the show. He's about 16.
"Are you okay?!?" True concern on his face. "I saw you on your back in the snow..."
A few days previously, Riley had seen me in the midst of a sugar crash in the green room. He probably thought I'd passed out. He'd come to check on me.
I let out a bark of laughter. I was still brushing snow off my jeans. "No... Nope. Just making a snow angel... But it gives me such joy to discover that chivalry is not dead. Thanks for checking up on me."
The shoes were stunning. Beautiful burgundy brogues, glowing in the flourescent lights of Value Village. I spotted them from the end of the women's jackets aisle. I'm always on the look out for a great pair of mens' shoes for David. They have to be big shoes, David has massive feet. Wide, wide, WIDE, flipper feet. He usually buys an 11.5 or even a 12 to fit his toes into them.
So when I saw these spectacular shoes on the wall, my heart leapt. They were pristine. Beatifully polished - I looked at the soles, hardly any wear to them. The tag said 14+ on them. They were at least a size 14. Such a shame - they were actually too large for David. They'd be like clown shoes on him. But they were stunning. Probably from the 50s - I wanted to photograph them and make an encaustic print of them to hang upon my wall, they were so lovely.
Then I spotted another pair of shoes - same size - equally beautiful. And another... and another. 6 in total. All beautifully polished, all size 14+.
My heart sank. These shoes, like everything else in Value Village, had belonged to someone. They had belonged to someone who cared for them, who polished them, who took pride in wearing them. These shoes had been donated in bulk. Not because they were unfashionable or worn out, but because their owner had died. A man, with size 14+ feet had died. A snappy dresser of a man who shoed himself in the 50s - was now dead. I imagined him very tall and thin - like a young Jimmy Stewart, with pleated trousers - possibly suspenders, a quick smile.
My heart sank again. Who had donated the shoes? His wife? His life partner? Had his surviving loved ones been responsible for the impeccably polished leather? Had they spent an afternoon polishing these shoes before carefully placing them inside a box? Before stuffing that box with paper and then taping it shut to go to Value Village? Had their hands trembled while holding the packing tape? Had they wept? I was near to weeping imagining it all.
I started when Rissa placed her hand on my arm.
"What's wrong?"
"These shoes belonged to someone," I said.
She looked confused. "Didn't they ALL belong to someone?"
"Yes baby, they did. But this someone is now dead."
"How do you know?"
"I just do."
She didn't ask any more questions. She held my hand and squeezed it. We stayed quiet for a few moments more before we turned away, still holding hands and walked to the jeans aisle.
We had a dumpster delivered Monday morning. We're down to the crunch before the move. What hasn't been sold or donated by the moving date ends up in the steel depths of the most dangerous dumpster in Southern Ontario.
Before the dumpster was deposited on our driveway, we had snow. And then rain. And then more snow and more rain. At this point in the winter, our driveway is the Skating Rink from Purgatory. There've been a couple of nights when it's taken me a good ten minutes to walk the 50 feet from the garage to the front of our house.
On his way to the garage, hands full of a box of used hazardous materials, David tried to skirt by the newly placed dumpster... in the dark. The dumpster is so wide that it leaves only 6-8 inches on either side of the driveway. These 6-8 inches slope up to our lawn and, what with the accumulated winter precipitation, are now sheer ice. Every step David took culminated in language that would make a dock worker blush, as his ankles repeatedly slammed against the steel of the dumpster.
Step.
"JESUS -*&$^#@ CHRIST!"
Step. "C#&$-sucking RHINO!"
Step.
"You $*#^@!$# - #&*#@^! - #$@% - #&@^&! - #%!*&ING - #&*@^!*!!!! I hope that your @#%&! - #*&^!$ and your #&@^%!# ends up with a #@&$^#%!!"
He showed me his bruised ankles upon his return.
"So what you're saying is that you injured yourself by walking with hazardous waste?"
"Yes."
"Lives up to its name, don't it?" Then I ran, because I wasn't injured.
It's Rissa's bedtime witching hour, when she winds up instead of down,
when she giggles and plays instead of succumbing to slumber.
"Psssssssst.... do you see this tiny pocket?? It's wee!"
She has this thing for pockets. Wee pockets in particular. She likes
to draw your attention to them - to share her love of pockets.
Victoria's Secret makes these thermal long underwear jammies... they have pockets. Rissa and I have a both have a pair. Me in a large - Rissa in an extra-small. Rissa's bottoms fit her in length for about 6 minutes before her legs grew again.
She began mumble-singing. Hmmmmmm-hummmming a tune that I couldn't quite hear. She was turning this way and that. Showing her back and then her front. I put my book down.
Rissa, with her tailend waggling towards me, "Bum pocket." She jumped around and pointed to her chest. "Boob pocket." Turning again, "Bum pocket." And once more, "Boob pocket." A quick jump around, "Bum Pocket!" Another full leap, "BOOB POCKET!!"
Then the inevitable crash onto the bed - snorting with laughter - laughing until she gives herself the hiccups. I love bedtime.
