She started it!!

"Don't crash while I'm doing this," I say as I unbuckle my seat belt.

"O....kay," says David - eyes now glued to the road in front of him.  His peripherals have extended to a 6 foot radius around the car.

We're on our way to the airport.  Rissa is travelling to Vancouver. BY HERSELF.  At 14.  And yes, there are kids who travel as unaccompanied minors, all over the world, at much younger ages, but those unaccompanied minors don't have legs up to their armpits and  perky boobs.  They don't get mistaken for 21.  The last time Rissa travelled by train to my parents' place she had a guy in his 30s ask where she went to school.  She gave the name of our home town.

Dude says, "I didn't know there was a university there."

Rissa say, "There isn't.  It's a public school.  I'm in Grade 8."

That's when Dude moved seats, fearing incarceration just by proximity, I'm guessing.

I would have been okay if we could go through security with her - if I could have sat next to her until she boarded the plane.  But it's the 21st century, unless you have your own boarding pass, that ain't happening in an airport.

So there I am, climbing into the backseat of the car.

"Needed to be back here, huh?" says Rissa.

"Yes."  I wrap my arm around her, trying to absorb her into my side.  If we become conjoined before we reach security, they'll have to let me in.

She snuggles into me.  We chitchat the rest of the way to Pearson.  We sing at the top of our lungs to her airport playlist.  By the time we make it to the airport, my stomach has calmed a titch.  It'll be okay.  She'll be fine.

As my foot steps into the terminal, nausea takes hold.  I'm holding Rissa's hand, fake-smiling as we wend our way to the security station.  We'd  checked-in online - so I didn't have any person behind a desk to say this to:  "She's only 14!!!  She might look like she's all grown up, but she's ONLY 14!!  Don't let any creepers try to feel her up before she's on the plane!  LOOK OUT FOR MY BABY!!!"

Instead, we walk past the shops and restaurants towards security.  We see the queue barriers and Rissa stops dead.  I'm keeping it together.  I am KEEPING IT TOGETHER.  She turns to me and gives a little smile, but then her bottom lip trembles a bit and she grabs onto me as if I'm a life preserver.  I can feel her hiccuping to hold back sobs.  I'm done for.  I start bawling like a newborn calf.

"It's okay, baby... It's okay baby...  It's okay..."  I'm smoothing her hair.  To David:  "What's the cheapest ticket we can buy!?!"

"Heather, you're not helping," says David.

"She started it!"

David pulls me away from from her.  "You okay?" he asks Rissa.

"Yeah..." she says, putting her chin up, not meeting his eye.  "I'm fine."  Then she pats me on the shoulder "Mummy, I'm fine," she says.  "See?"  She gives me a broad grin.  "I'm okay.  I'll text you when I get to the gate."

We walk her to the bottom of the security line.

"May I see your boarding pass?" the security guard asks.  He checks it over.  "Okay, you're all in order.  You can line up there."

"SHE'S ONLY 14!!!" I blurt out as she walks away from us.

She's not in yet.  There are a few people in front of her.  I'm holding David's hand so tightly, I've cut off the circulation.  Just as she's reaching the door, one of the female security guards asks to see her boarding pass again.  The uniformed officer takes the pass and checks it with the first guy.  She returns to Rissa.

"You'll be heading to gate 227.  When you get out of security, you'll turn to your left," the officer says.  Rissa nods and thanks her.  I share a moment of eye contact with the security guard and mouth THANK YOU to her across the queue line.  Then Rissa's through the door.  I can't see her.  I CAN'T SEE HER!!!  David moves me further around so that I can at least see the back of her head as she's moving by the conveyor belt.  I lose sight again.

"Where is she?!?"

"She's going through the scanner," he says.  He's half a foot taller, and can crane his head much further, than I.  "She's through.  She's putting her shoes back on.  She's got her bag now.  She's opening it.  She's putting her boarding pass into the zippered front...  There she is..."  He indicates this tall young woman, shoulders back, head up, striding towards her gate.

"You okay?" David asks.

I start to nod my head, but then shake it.   My bottom lip starts trembling.  My morning coffee threatens to travel back up my esophagus.  "I think I might throw up."

"Let's have a bite to eat," he says.  "Your blood sugar's probably low.  We can wait until she's on the plane."

"Okay," I say.  "She didn't wave after she went through security."

"No, she didn't," he says.  "She probably couldn't see that far - she didn't have her glasses on."

He's right.  She can't see that far without her glasses on.  That was why.  It wasn't because she didn't need us any more.  She just couldn't see us.  That was it. 

After the waitress takes our order, I rest my head on the table.  This is so much worse than her riding from the Downsview subway south across the city, around Union Station  to meet us at Wellesley Station when she was 12.  She was 1/2 a foot shorter then - she wasn't mistaken for a university student then.

"I need Gravol."  I'm up, out of my seat running across to the last-minute shop.  Organic Gravol is all they have.  Here I wanted something to knock me out - the anti-nauseau equivalent to Xanax - and what was at the shop?  Organic, made from dried, crushed ginger, Gravol.  "You don't have anything that will put me into a short-term coma??"  I buy them anyway.  I head back to the restaurant and down one more than the recommended dose, hoping that might do the trick.

bing

David looks down at his phone.  He holds it out to me.

I'm at the gate now parental units.

"Do you want to text her back?" he asks.

"Yes!!!"  I take the phone, but can't make my fingers work.  My organic drugs have yet to take effect, I'm still shaky.  "Tell her to fake a seizure if anyone gets close to her."

He rolls his eyes.  Texts back "yay."

bing

Boarding now.  Love you.  MWAH!

            Text us as soon as you land.

Yeppers!

"That's it," he says.  "Off she goes.  You okay now?"

"I'm fine," I say.  "But she totally started the crying.  It wasn't me, you know."

"I know."

We leave the terminal, heading towards the parking garage.  17 feet away from the terminal, I stop dead.

"You want to make sure the plane leaves the runway?"

"Yes please."

Some things have to be documented.

"You guys just don't understand!!"

"Nobody else's mother does this, you know..."

"Yes, but this needs to be documented!  I've been suffering for at least two weeks now!"  I'm sitting at the computer with the web cam.

"She's right Heather, this is weird... even for you."

"Why are you guys laughing?"

"Why?  Because not only are you taking a picture of an ingrown hair you pulled from your neck, you're taking a picture of that ingrown hair, while listening to I'm Kissing You from Romeo and Juliet."

"I'm multi-tasking!"

"But this," I say, brandishing my tweezers, "was in my neck!  THIS!  A freaking Brillo Pad hair!  Feel it!"  I run over to David, thrusting the closed tweezers at him.  "Feel this!  Just FEEL it!!"

Eyes wide, face covered with 'just humour her,' he feels the hair caught between the tweezers. He raises his eyebrows.  "That is, indeed, a Brillo Pad hair.  I can see why having it in your neck would bother you."

"I know... right?  Rissa, you should take a look at this!"

"No, I"m good thanks."

"Just feel it.  So you understand my pain."

"No, really...  I'm okay Mummy...."

"Heather, stop terrorizing her."

"I'm not terrorizing her."

"You are chasing her around with a neck hair held between tweezers."

"You guys just don't understand.  I've been waiting at least 20 minutes to even see if this was what I thought it was."

David looks at me like I'm nuts... again.

"During the movie (we'd been watching Terminator 2), I was picking at it and felt something, and I looked down and thought that it might be an ingrown hair, but couldn't be sure until I did a proper examination in brighter light, so I waited a whole other 20 minutes, with it balanced on my index finger, until I could go upstairs and grab the tweezers and make sure."

"You sat, holding a potential ingrown hair on your index finger for 20 minutes?"

Even I, at this point, realize that I'm sounding a little... odd.

"I'd been losing my mind - it was like I was growing a second head, out of my neck."

"And that's what was causing you to lose you mind, huh?"

"This time, yes."

Don't think of it as an infestation - think of it as having hundreds of new pets...

What's most difficult, is telling them all apart.  I've had to invest in a high-resolution magnifying glass in order to differentiate.  I'm thinking of sewing wee little smocks with their names on them.  Alistair, Bernice, Connal, Dee, Ernest... I'm going for asexual in style - I don't want to limit them.  Should they decide in 20 days that they don't like the names I've given them, they can let me know what they'd like to be called and I'd be cool with that.

If I were truly practical, given their numbers, I could farm them.  Raise them, kill them humanely and then create a new niche Canadian niche food market, but who am I kidding? Now that I've named them, I can't just lead them off to slaughter.  I'm just too darned attached.  Who can resist Freddi with the little red eyes and luminious coat?  And George - sweet little George with the maginificent forelegs? 

I'm feeling a kinship with Snow White - although my human-to-wildlife ratio doesn't have bluebirds, bunnies and deer.  She'd have one lousy bluebird on her finger - me, I have easily 3 dozen fruit flies perched upon mine.  I even have them lining up all colour-coded in their wee smocks.

"No Hank, you're there, next to Iggy, who's beside Jem...  That's right... Who's a good fruit fly?  Who is?"

I've been keeping the fruit bowl full, just for them, but I wanted to give them a real treat - something to show them I cared.  I've been known to stop drinking the last inch in a beer bottle, just to set it out for them, but now... sob... I realize that their appetite for hops is killing them.  Let's face it, in the summer the wine and beer flows more freely in our home, I find them hanging out around the empties - determined to grab what ends up being their... sob... last taste...   I knew I'd have to say goodbye, just not this soon...

Where can a gal get extract of bourbon?

My friend Matt made me a drink a couple of weekends back: bourbon, ginger ale, lime juice, mint, a sugar cube and ice - you know, to cool it all off and make it perfect for sipping in the backyard.  Just typing the ingredient list sets my salivary glands headlong into a sweet drool.  I made the drink at home and miraculously managed to replicate its golden goodness.  Problem is, thanks to my purgatory in peri-menopause, bourbon (and all of its  alcoholic friends) gives me crazy-ass hot flashes and my hyper-sensitive hypoglycemia turns ginger ale and sugar cubes into glycemic spiking insurgents.  Although on the plus side, I can drink something made of lime juice, mint and ice.  File that away for later.

The sugar's not a problem - I can work around the sugar - club soda, ginger root and stevia can replace the ginger ale and sugar cube.  It's the bourbon.  I want the taste of bourbon without the alcohol.  Obviously I just have to figure out a way to make extract of Bourbon!  Come on Internet - don't let me down!

"How to make extract of bourbon?"

 

I don't want to make bourbon-flavoured vanilla extract - I want to make bourbon extract.

"bourbon extract"

I don't want to buy bourbon extract, but just for the sake of comparison... HOLY CRAP!!!  4 oz of bourbon extract is $8.25?!?

Wait a sec - to get extract, one usually uses alcohol as the liquid vehicle to concentrate the flavour.  How can I concentrate the flavour of bourbon without keeping the alcohol?!?

Do a reduction!!  Okay, no problem...  This sounds good...

"how to cook alcohol out of bourbon"

Take just a moment and let your gaze fall upon #3 in that instruction list... "Quickly touch the flame to the surface of the liquid and remove your hand from the pan."  Shall we place bets to see how long it takes Heather to light herself on fire attempting that manoeuvre?

ALL I WANT IS THE TASTE OF FREAKING BOURBON!!!... 

Okay, wait - just wait!  Extract might actually work!  It offers a highly concentrated taste of whatever flavour you're jonesing for.  Which means you don't need the same amount to give the full flavour of the actual item.  So... 1 tsp of extract of bourbon for flavouring would be equivalent to... no freaking clue, because NO ONE IN CANADA USES EXTRACT OF FREAKING BOURBON!  But Canadians do use Rum extract - which if you're substituting for light rum is a 1:5 ratio - unless you're supposed to use dark rum, in which can you need two times as much rum extract to get the taste of dark rum - in which case you might as well buy the bourbon and deal with the night sweats.  I'm going to err on the less is more side and bet that 1 tsp of bourbon extract might equal 2 tbsp of actual bourbon - which is a full oz of bourbon!   And one tsp of bourbon extract would have only 16% of the alcohol found in actual bourbon - surely to God that couldn't be enough to give me hot flashes! 

Except that I'd have to special order the bourbon extract.  What can I substitute for bourbon right now??

SERIOUSLY??  We're back to vanilla extract?? 

I'm not saying it's even close to bourbon...
but it might just make do until I hit menopause.

They need a warning label for this!

Just a while back, I had a bra-piphany.  I was saved.  I learned that I could spin my bra so that I wouldn't have to do it up in the back, thereby saving me from further damage to the rotator cuff on my right arm and also saving me from having to replace my entire bra collection with front-closure brassieres.  Only took me 35 years of bra wearing to be set straight on this account.

"Bright girl, shame about the stupidity..."

This new-fangled bra spinning worked spectacularly through the late spring... "Hey look at me, not needing my husband or child to help me into my bra!!  Boo yeah!!"

Now though, it's summer, and summer is Strapless Bra season.  The modern strapless bras?  The ones that work?  Have this sticky pseudo-gel stuff (akin to what they use to keep perfume samples in magazines or on the tops of stay-up stockings), on the inside of the underband to keep your girls supported, with minimal re-adjustment of your bra.

Strapless bras have to be tighter around your ribcage than your average bra, so that they'll defy gravity's effects upon your ta-tas.  I put the cups to my back, and tighten the band snugly - this is the time do it up on the furthest hook and eye, you know, just to be safe... and then I try to spin the sucker.

"Oh, for the love of Howard Hughes... Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!!  Sweet merciful Mother of Support!"  I look down, trying to see if I'd actually torn skin from my injured torso.

"What?  What did you do??"  Rissa is now in the doorway.

"Bra burn!  Bra burn!!!"  I point to the offending band with its dangerous gel.  "They need a warning label for this!  How could they not have a warning label for this?!?"

Rissa is biting her lip to keep from laughing.  "Do you need some help?"

I'm a BIG GIRL, I can do this.  It's just a freaking bra... Reach back and... I slump.   "Yes please."

"Asking for help is very mature."

"Shut up."

EEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW!!!! He's SO old!!

Oh, those iconic 80s dance films.... Quick!  Name the winners!  For me it's three Fs, a D and a W - Fame, Flashdance and Footloose - Dirty Dancing and White Nights.   Rissa had already seen Footloose, Dirty Dancing and White Nights - I got it into my head that she needed to see the other two.  Last weekend it was Flashdance

You know how some 80s movies really stand the test of time and some don't?  I mustn't have seen Flashdance since I rented it in the early 90s - cause man, oh man it's not what I remembered it to be.  Cue Jennifer Beals taking off her welder's helmet and shaking her 80s hair about her shoulders...

Two dance/soft porn moments from that film that will remain embedded on everyone's corneas: the splash of water on Jennifer Beals' boobs as she sits in her chair and the running in place to Maniac while moving her hands all over her upper thighs - or, as is more than likely - the dance double having water splashed all over her boobs and running in place while moving her hands all over her upper thighs.  And may I just ask?  Could they not have found a better freaking wig for the dance double?  Could they not have found a dance double who resembled Jennifer Beals even the tiniest bit??  But I digress...

The hair and fashion styles make me wince, mostly because I can remember wearing some of them myself, but I can't really get into the mocking of the terrible choreography and dialogue because Rissa is freaking out.

"Oh, EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  No!  No, no, no, no....  He's so old, he's so old!!!"  Rissa hides her head in the pillow, refuses to come out.  "She's 18!  And he's... he's... SOOOOOOO OLD!!!!  (Nouri was 38 when he made Flashdance.  Jennifer Beals was 20, playing 18.)

Rissa is so wierded out, she almost has palpitations.

Then, in the after their date scene, when Jennifer Beals comes back into the living room of her warehouse loft, lifts up her leather skirt to sit across from Michael Nouri and pulls off her bra from under her off-the-shoulder sweat shirt in way more movements than it's ever taken me to do the same manoeuvre.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!"

"They've stopped now."

"What is she doing?  He's old enough to be her father!  I am disgusted in my soul. EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  Why couldn't he be all successful and 22?  Why couldn't that happen??  I hate him!!

Now me, on the other hand, I've always had a thing for Michael Nouri - ever since he played Dracula in Cliffhangers in 1979, when I was...  oh dear God,  I was 11.

"No, it's so wrong!  SOOOOOOO wrong!!!"

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" She screams upon witnessing the restaurant scene where Jennifer Beals eats lobster and then sticks her stockinged foot in Michael Nouri's lap. "EEEEEEEEEEWWW!!!   EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  Make it stop!!!"

To Rissa, an age gap of more than 1 grade level is cause for a very deep seated gross out factor.  I have no problem encouraging this tendency until she's well into her post-secondary education.

Best Nature Channel Ever!

"CHIPMUNK!!"

"Where?  Where?"

"There, by the BBQ - Lola's losing her mind"  Lola is at the screen door, nose pressed to the mesh, tail flicking, teetch chattering.

"There!  Do you see him?"

"Where?"

"There! Now he's by the post!"

"Where?"

"There! Now he's by the bike tire..."

***
 
"BUNNY!!!!"

"Where?  Where?"

"There!  Half way down.  Ears - twitching."

"Where?  Where?  I can't see it!"

I stand behind Rissa at the back door.  Move my hands to either side of her head and direct her gaze.  "It's the little one.  You have to look close."

"I need my glasses.  This right here is why I need contacts, so that I can see things right away - all the time."

***

"GROUNDHOG!!!  The groundhog is back David!"

"Where?  Where?"

"There!  By the fence.  He's there!"

"You're sure it's a groundog?   Maybe it's a gopher."

"Nope, I googled it.  Definitely a groundhog.  They're way cuter - less toothy.  I will call this groundhog Chuck."

"Chuck?"

I wait for him to get it.  Two... Three... Four...  "Like as in Woodchuck?"

"Yep.  Also known whistle-pig, or land-beaver..."

"You're making that up."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

***

"MEDIUM BUNNY!!"

"Where?  Where?"

"By the garden.  Eating part of it."

"You're okay with that?"

"I am."

***

"SQUIRREL!!"

Silence.

"SQUIRREL!!"

Continued Silence

"Guys!  Seriously.  There's this black squirrel with a completely brown tail out there!  I'm not making this shit up!"

"Where?  Where?"

***

"Happy we moved?" whispers David.

We're standing by the back door - he has his arms around me.  

I whisper back.  "Yes."

"You don't miss the other house?"

"Not really."

"The other yard?"

I look back at him with incredulity.  Raise my eyebrows.  "Dude, there's a bunny, RIGHT there."

Approximate represenation of the woodland creatures
found in our backyard.  I never remember to take pictures.