“To you from failing hands we throw the torch”

There was an assembly at my kid’s school, yesterday morning.  To mark Remembrance Day, the students laid wreaths, real-live soldiers spoke to them, two minutes of silence were observed.

 

Remembrance Day has always kicked me in the gut.  Anything to do with the military, really.  Watching families send their dads, moms, husbands, wives, sons, daughters off to foreign lands, knowing, accepting that they may not come back.   Young people with stern haircuts, steeled jaws getting onto transport planes, staring off into the distance at things I can’t see.  Flag draped coffins coming back.  And even farther back, hearing stories from old men, who sat in muddy foxholes and froze and watched their friends get blown apart.  Realizing that soon, there won’t be any of those old men to tell the stories.

 

I knew, going into the assembly, that I’d cry.  I didn’t want to.

 

Things I thought about, in an effort not to cry:

1.  I don’t begrudge the Royal Canadian Legion one cent of the money I have dropped into donation boxes for the poppies we have taken.  I really don’t.  But good gravy, we’ve been through a half dozen of the little plastic buggers

(image from here)

in the last week.  Surely we can come up with a design that can remain affixed to a lapel for more than 60 seconds?

2.  Those teenaged Cadets sure look innocent.  Too bad my husband was one when he was a kid.  And that I know what goes on at Cadet Camp.

3.  I totally forgot that every year, the Legion ran an essay contest.  And every year, I won.  Right up to the national level.  And at each level, there was a cash prize.  And that cash prize was where I got a good portion of my high school drinking money.  I’ve since drunk with the folks at the Legion, so I’m pretty sure they would have been cool with it.

 

But none of these thoughts worked.

 

Tears rolled.

 

It’s always “In Flanders Fields” that gets me.  (For the background of the poem, please visit this site.)

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

 

It’s that last stanza: “To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high.”  It makes me think of the conflict dragging on in Afghanistan, of the roll of names that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to end, the god damned futility of it all.

 

(photo is “In Flanders Fields” by xollob58)

 

 

If you have ever served in the military, if you have a family member who has left you behind to serve in the military, and if you’ve ever lost someone who served in the military -

 

Thank you.  Thank you so much.

 

What to Buy the Anal-Retentive Paranoid SAHM on Your List, This Holiday Season

My husband has a history of buying me some pretty damn perfect presents.

 

He is by no means perfect, or the perfect husband.  But he does seem to have a nearly supernatural ability to hone in on a less than obvious nook of my personality, and buy the gift that fills that cranny, so to speak.

 

For example, he knows I can be a little…specific about food.

 

In that it can’t touch.  Ever.

 

He can go to a Chinese buffet, and just start stacking.  The thought of rice touching my ginger beef makes me gag.  Even within a food, I can get picky.  The mustard needs to be on the meat side of a sandwich, never the cheese side.  (I know.  I know.)

 

And so, a couple of Christmases ago, he gave me this:

 

 

Perfect.

 

He also knows that I spend an entirely inordinate amount of time obsessed with the disasters that could potentially befall our household.

 

One Christmas, I found a carbon monoxide detector in my stocking.

 

(image from here)

 

And I slept like a mother-truckin’ baby after that.

 

A fire extinguisher and new smoke alarms followed.  They were muchly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

As of tonight, I’ve come up with a gift that combines both of these bits of freakishness.

 

Because as I was slicing into my pork chop, examining the piece closely, to make sure that the proportion of fat to meat fell within the acceptable range, I got a little too close.  And in a one in a million shot,  a piece of hot, salty, oily pork chop flew DIRECTLY into my eyeball.

 

A three-year old and a six-year-old might make lovely dinner companions.  They might even make worthy conversational participants.  But they make really shitty optometrists.

 

Neither one of them could see the offending piece of pork, nor could they help me dig it out.  And having never nested meat inside their own eyeballs, they were completely unable to empathize, and thus lost interest nearly immediately.

 

And while I sat there, feeling a ginormous eye booger begin somewhere in my lower eyelid, I mentally added a new item to the very top of my Christmas list:

 

(image from here)

 

 

(And to answer your question, no, I do not give a tiny rat’s ass what an eye-wash station will do to the resale value of my house, thank you very much.  Because clearly, rational is waaaay back there in the rear-view mirror.)

Terms That Are Instantly Negated When Applied to Oneself: A List

Honest

 

 

 

 

Classy

 

 

 

 

“One Hot Mama”

 

 

 

 

Waif

 

 

 

 

Hip

 

 

 

MILF

 

 

 

Others?

You’re a Wiener! And You Won a Contest!

Last week, I announced a giveaway.  Fifty nice people left comments, in the hopes they would win a DVD Box Set of “Fawlty Towers”.

Initially, I thought I’d use a random number generator to pick a name.  But that lacked warmth.  So I went with the most honest person I could find, who wasn’t taking a nap at that moment:

He may look smug, but I knew he could be trusted.

We put all 50 names onto pieces of paper:

And then, we inserted all the strips into a forlorn pumpkin, still redolent with the scent of the previous night’s chocolate lucre:

The boy carefully swished them:

And then, triumphantly drew a winner:

The winner is:

Veronica, I’ll be mailing the set to you as soon as I receive it.

Thank you all so much for entering!

 

Aaaaand, if you’re not Veronica and therefore didn’t win, you can still enter the Fawlty Towers Look-a-Like Contest.

“Who’s gonna run this town tonight.”

Once upon a time we lived in a small town.

Not my town.  My husband’s town.  It was an OK sort of place, not without its quirks.  Like the way nearly all the town’s businesses were shut on Mondays.  Or the way they printed obituaries on the front page of the newspaper.  Or the large horse ankle bone by the highway:

(which, really, deserves its own post, another time).

Suffice it to say, there were adjustments to be made.

 

 

The first year we lived there together, I came home one day, a week before Halloween, to find a note inside my door.  I scanned it, picked my jaw up off the floor, then waited for Owen to get home.

“What kind of Nazi regime are we living under!?!”  is how I greeted him at the door.

He looks at the note, casually puts it aside.  “Oh yeah, that’s just how we do it here.”

 

 What is in this little missive that shocks me so very much?

“This note is to inform you that you will be visited by 12 trick or treaters, sometime between 3:30 and 5:00 pm on October 30.  Please have your treats ready at that time.  Thanks for your cooperation.  Signed, The Town’s School.”

That’s right.  The school RAN Halloween.  They organized the kids into groups, Grade 6 and under.  They decided exactly which houses those groups would visit (approximately 20 houses per group).  And if Halloween had the audacity to fall on a non-school day? 

 

 They just moved it.

  

“But…but…how can they just…TAKE OVER?”  Halloween, as I understood it, was all about chaos.  How had no one protested this?  What about kids older than Grade 6, younger than school age that wanted to Trick or Treat?  Didn’t anyone have a problem being told which houses they were “allowed” to hit?

“Well, yeah.  It just sort of works.”  He tried to reassure me.  I was sure this system was just set up for failure.  Never mind that they’d been doing it this way for years, clearly, my outsider’s perspective would show them the grievous error of their ways.

 

So I waited, that Friday afternoon.  At exactly 4:00, 12 little kids came to my door.  Every one of them excited and happy to be there.  I had exactly enough candy, because I knew beforehand how many kids to expect.   The town’s little kids joined in, welcomed by the school to be part of the organized fun.  And the kids who were above Grade 6?  Were too damn old to Trick or Treat anyway.  So they didn’t.  And even with all those uber-polite little kids saying thank you, and showing off their costumes, the whole shebang took less than 15 minutes.  At which time I was free to enjoy my Halloween weekend in whatever non-kid way I chose.

 

Now that we live in the city, I will spend my Saturday night freezing my arse off, repeatedly opening my door to kids who will traipse through my neighborhood starting at I-haven’t-even-finished-supper-yet until man-I-wish-this-was-over-I’m-going-to-turn-off-the-lights-and-pretend-we’re-not-here.   I may run out of candy, because there’s no way of knowing how many kids there will be.  Kids who are way too old to be trick or treating will get candy from me, because I don’t want them to throw things at my house.  And even if I wanted to do something grown up on a Saturday night, I’ll be too tired by the time it’s all over.

 

 

Oh, those small-town rubes and their quaint customs…

“Well, might I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The hanging gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically… “

I was leafing through the detritus that is my Twitter stream, when someone mentioned that John Cleese

(image from here)

is 70.  That’s getting up there.  That’s grandpa territory.  And really, does he strike you as the grandpa type?

I liked Monty Python well enough, but what I really dug Cleese in was Fawlty Towers.

The CBC ran a Fawlty Towers marathon one Saturday afternoon when I was a kid.  And I was hooked.  I laughed until I cried.  I still do, when I can chase down an episode.  John Cleese’s Basil character was a horrible guy, and yet, you loved him, whether you liked it or not.  And when they changed the letters on the sign in front of the hotel from “Fawlty Towers”  to read “Farty Towels”?  That was it, they had me for life.

So here’s the uncanny thing:  I read the tweet about John Cleese, then I check my email.  There, in my inbox, is a guy who wants to give you stuff.

John Cleese’s 70th birthday is also the 30th anniversary of the show, so BBC America is releasing  Fawlty Towers Remastered.  They’ve got a facebook page where they’re holding a Look-A-Like Contest.  And the really exciting part for you, dear readers?

I get to give away one of those box sets!!!

To enter, leave a comment on this post, sometime between now and midnight MST Saturday, October 31, 2009.  I’ll use one of them there fancy internet random number generators to pick one of your names.  If you win, I will send you your prize.  And you will think well of me.

(Please note:  the DVDs are Region 1 – Canada, US & US Territories.)

 

Want to see who won?  Go here.

The Halloween Reverse-Compliment Sandwich

So as I mentioned yesterday, we went costume shopping.  This is not a common occurence for us.  We’re usually pretty DIY when it comes to this sort of thing.  My mother-in-law sews.  Well.  And she’s made most of the kid’s costumes in the past.

Baby girl says she wants to be a princess,

et voila, she has a perfect replica of Sleeping Beauty’s gown.

And when one of the kid’s picked out something Grandma couldn’t sew,

in stepped Dad, with tubing and metal and a freaking battery pack.

 

But this year, it just didn’t come together.  So we bought costumes.  The girl will be a flower, the boy will be a ninja.  Done and done.

 

As we were shopping, though, some things occurred to me.  One good, two not so good.  And so, I will deliver them as employers are taught to deliver evaluations to employees.  Only theirs goes compliment – complaint – compliment, and mine, well, doesn’t.

 

1.  If you are going to sell costumes in a northern climate, adjustments need to be made.  Because while the sizing might work in, say, Florida, where weather will never be a factor in trick-or-treating, here in Western Canada?  You don’t pick out a costume without visualizing a snowsuit under it.  Not that it’s guaranteed to be snowing on Halloween, but it is a very real (and somewhat terrifying) possibility.  Henceforth, I’d like to see this sort of thing on the package:

 

“Size:  7

Unless you’re from Canada and expect this to fit over skidoo pants, then it’s a: 4″

 

There, that shouldn’t be any trouble, right?

 

2.  Kudos to you, costume manufacturers!  The last time I looked for costumes, I was downright disheartened to see that as a girl of ample proportions, I was barred from getting my Once-A-Year-Skank on.  French maid costumes, slutty witches, morally questionable kittens were all the dominion of skinny chicks.  But now, if I want to follow the Yellow Brick Road AND show a whole lotta upper thigh,

 

 

I can do that.  Right up to a 4X, if I so desire.  So pass the ribs, momma’s got some trick or treatin’ (wink) to do.

 

3.  I understand that kids today are maturing at a faster rate.  I really do get that.  But this:

 

 

 does NOT need to be available in a size 4.  Ever.  Stop it.

 (Full disclosure:  It might not freak me out so much, but I’m pretty sure I saw that exact same get up on a stripper.  In a….documentary. )

 

So there you have my take on the costume shopping experience.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way back to the site with the Dorothy get-up.  Because Halloween can last all year-round.  (As long as they’re offering free shipping.)

“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!”

I’m not real good with the scary stuff. 

 

You’ll never find bloody skeletons or the like gracing the front of my house in late October.  I never really liked telling ghost stories around campfires.  To this day, I’ve never watched a horror movie.

 

My son couldn’t be any more similar, temperament and personality wise, if he’d been cloned from me.  We’re both bookish, sarcastic, rather prickly.  Turns out, though, we’re not a 100% match.  Because he likes his gore.

 

We went to a Halloween superstore this weekend, to find costumes.  And greeting us at the front door was a massive display of  decorations, both static and moving.  And the boy, who I thought was just like me, the boy who jumps at any unexpected sound, the boy who I thought was scared of everything, could have spent all damn day, pushing buttons that made displays like this:

 pop up and scream.  He was delighted.  Enthralled, really.  He bounced from section to section, holding up severed limbs, laughing at serial killer clown masks. “Mom!  You have GOT to come see this!  The zombie’s head does a 360, then he PUKES at you!  Can we get it?”

 

And as I was trying to process exactly who in the hell my son had suddenly become, I noticed people giggling at me.  More specifically, at my leg.

 

Where my little girl, who is normally without fear, was clinging, covering her own eyes, too terrified to even tell me she was scared.

 

Would this shape her, make her into “me” as she got older?  What was it that scared me so badly, that I could never enjoy Halloween, and all things creepy, the way my son seems to?

 

If I had to blame something, I’d blame it on the potluck.

 

The annual Halloween potluck.  I grew up in an area so sparsely populated that the nearest “neighbor” was over 2 miles away.  So to hit even 4 or 5 houses would have taken an hour, at least.  The community, instead, threw a Halloween Party in the community hall.  We’d dress up, have a potluck supper, then at the end, we’d line up, and the adults would  come to us to give out candy, instead of the other way around.  (Although we’d always be secretly jealous of the “town kids” who got way more candy, we tried to act like our system made us superior.  They never bought it, though.)

 

I couldn’t tell you what I dressed up as the year I was 5.  I couldn’t tell you anything about the games we played, or the candy I got, or who the hell handed out sunflower seeds (which are a COMPLETE cop-out, by the way).  But what I can tell you is what happened at the end of the party.

 

The crowd starts to part, people move to the sides of the hall, and in walk two men.  One of them is there merely as a guide, making sure his friend doesn’t bump into anyone.  The friend he’s guiding – is decapitated.  Huge black boots on his feet, big, swirling black cape, and blood, all over the hole where his head should be.

 

I ran.  Maybe I screamed.  I don’t know.  But I remember willing my suddenly jellied-legs to get the flying fuck out of there.  The sides of the hall were lined with built-in benches, and I remember jumping up on to one, but then wanting to scramble right up the wall, as if it were possible or would help.  And right beside me was my friend Anita.

 

The thing was, we both knew that the headless  guy was Anita’s dad.  We knew those boots.  And it was what the adults who were trying to peel us off the walls were telling us.  But I really didn’t give a tiny rat’s ass, right then, and was trying to claw my way up a wall, thanks very much.  Just when we thought it was safe to maybe come down, they did another  pass through the hall, since their “act” had obviously been so riotously popular.  I lost it.  The only thing I remember after that was being forcibly carried out to the car, covering my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see “it” again.

 

It didn’t matter how logical I was, even as a 5 year old.  Didn’t matter that the blood was so obviously fake, and that everyone else around me (except Anita) seemed to get the joke.  I was full of panic, and I always would be at anything remotely macabre.

 

 So, baby girl, I really, really hope our visit to the store isn’t the thing that wrecks Halloween for you.  Because the kids who like it, seem to really like it a lot.  But if it is wrecked for you?  You’ll always have me for company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Image from here.)

Hot New Trends! Fall 2009 Edition!

1. Wheelchairs!

 

Those old-school pieces of fabulousness are everywhere right now, and waiting to roll their rubber-wheeled way into our hearts!  From the unabashedly geeky Kevin McHale on “Glee“

 

(image from here)

to the King of Cringe, Larry David on “ Curb Your Enthusiasm“

 

(image from here)

(who on tonight’s episode, dated not one, but two wheelchair drivin’ chicks, and in lieu of learning their real names, dubbed them Wendy Wheelchair and Denise Handicapped), wheelchairs will NOT be ignored!

 

2.  The Head Nod!

 

Thanks to that fab new pandemic, H1N1 (see: Hot New Trends, Winter 2008 Edition), shaking hands is now all but verboten.  The two cheek kiss, a marker of a bygone era.  So what nicety stands between our civility and reverting to living in trees, flinging our own feces?  The Head Nod! 

(image from here)

It’s the gesture that says, “Hey!  You, there!  I acknowledge your presence, and I think you’re super, but I don’t want to actually touch you, because you sort of look like a carrier!”

 

3.  Apps!

 

How did we live without apps?  They’ve embedded themselves into our lives so seamlessly, we’ve all forgotten what the non-word “apps” is short for, and we don’t even care! 

(image from here)

And they’re not just for your iPhone, anymore!  Google, Twitter & Facebook have ‘em, your printer has apps, your car’s dashboard probably has some apps. 

 (I looked in my purse, to see if there were any apps there.  Sadly, the search turned up a piece of fruit leather, ca. 2002, and a Biore nose strip.  {If I may go tangential, do they even make those things anymore?}  But no apps.  Maybe next year.)

 

4.  Exclamation Points!

 

(image from here)

Because there is NO faster way to make someone feel like you are immediate best friends than the use of an exclamation point!

For example, let’s say you read this in an email:

“I really love what you wore to the party.”  And you’re like, “Is that bitch being sarcastic!  That no-fashion-sense piece of trash dares to call me out…”

But if you read this:

“I really love what you wore to the party!”  You’re all “Oh!  Sometimes I forget how much I love Grandma!”

Plus?  There’s no quicker way to make a person buy into your excitement!  (It worked on you, didn’t it?)

 

5.  Mom Jeans!

 

They were due for a comeback!  Because more than enough time has gone by since the crew from West Beverly

(image from here)

beamed into our living rooms every Thursday night, in all their high-waisted glory, for this style to make a COMEBACK!!!

 

(OK, you caught me.  I wanted this one to sneak through.  Because I really, really need this trend to come around.  You see, it’s winter here.  Early.  And I got so sick of bending over, in jeans with waist-lines designed for Teens Who Make Poor Fashion Choices, and feeling the cool, cool air caressing my lower torso/upper ass, that I succumbed.  And bought a pair of Mom Jeans.  Their waist?  Sits at my waist.  And I LOVE them.  I’m never going back.  So follow me or not.  Whatever.  At least elementary school children will no longer be scarred by the sight of me, in a short jacket, bending over to zip up winter boots.  So I think I’ve made the world a slightly better place, don’t you?)

Absent

If anyone was taking roll call on the internet these days, that’s what they’d have to mark me down as.  “Absent”.  It wouldn’t tell the whole story, but it’s the closest they could come.

 

If you read this blog, you know I keep it fairly light.  Kind of amusing, but not really personal.  But at the same time, this blog is me.  And I feel like I’ve been lying.  Not that I’ve been bullshitting you, more like there’s stuff I’m not telling.  I don’t use my blog to air dirty laundry, but I feel like I’ve hit a wall, and I need to get around it, let you see behind it, if I’m going to keep letting you see my life.

 

I’m depressed.

 

Actually, make that Depressed, capital “D”.

 

This is nothing new.  I’ve always been that way.  As a kid, I didn’t have a name for it, I just gradually figured out that I didn’t react to stuff the way the other kids did.  And as a teenager, I wrote it off to teen angst bullshit.  But as I left the teens, started being a Grown Up, I realized it was more.  And once I finally had this big, stable presence in my life (i.e. Owen), I let myself admit it, that there was something wrong in my brain, that I needed help.

 

I was 23 the first time I saw a professional, 24 when I first went on medication.  And it helped.  Nearly immediately.  Depression is hereditary, and it runs in my family.  (It doesn’t just run, it actually kind of gallops, pushing down everything in its path.)  Some periods have been harder than others.  I’ve been hospitalized twice – once in my early 20’s, and once while I was pregnant with my son.  I’ve been on medications for the greater part of the last 10 years, going off when I felt stronger, getting back on when I had to.  For the record, I don’t love being on the medication.  I get dull.  There are side effects.  I don’t want to be on them.  But I may have to, soon.

 

It’s been getting harder, lately.  Harder to get anything done, with zero motivation.  Harder to interact with people – every time I see someone I know, I’m left wondering if they can tell, am I scaring them off?  Harder to function, because my body starts to react, with colds that won’t go away, sciatica, and the occasional chest-tightening anxiety attack.

 

So what does this mean, on a go-forward basis?  Well, if you know me in real life, don’t be alarmed.  I may cry at inappropriate times (like, say, in the middle of a school council meeting.  I don’t think anyone saw, but still, awkward).  I might not be able to make conversation on a consistent basis.  There’s a good chance that I may let you down, in some way.  But I probably won’t.  Realistically, from the outside, it’ll pretty much be business as usual. 

 

And if I know you cyber-ly?  There’s a good chance I may not post for a good while.  (Or I may post every day.)   (Probably the former, rather than the latter, but you never know.) 

 

I’m going to be OK.  That I know.

 

Because there are two small people, and one big one, who need me to be OK.  And so I will be.

 

Until then….