Tag: Memories

Tricks and treats

Happy Halloween boils and gouls!

(That will never not be funny to me.)

Tonight, as the rain coats all that is living (and all that is undead – MUAHAHAHA!) M and I are sitting by the fire, playing some Skyrim, and handing out candy to all the little ones skipping about our neighbourhood in their fancy dress clothes.

We were supposed to be heading out to a murder mystery party, however poor Mr. M is sick as a dog and the thought of transforming himself into the Grim Reaper without at least one clear nostril to breathe through wasn’t exactly topping his “must-do” list, 2012 edition.

Completely side note: In 2008 he went as the Headless Horseman and it was absolutely phenomenal. Unfortunately, when it came time to cut out his eyeholes, I was laughing so hard that I accidentally poked him in the face with the scissors. As such I was immediately relieved of my duties as vision granter and he tried to do it himself.

Let’s just say it wasn’t the best.

Fast forward to us dancing our faces off at an absolutely packed Media Club to the musical stylings of our friend Marco’s Celtic-punk band.

At one point I looked over at M who was just careening about and thought, “WOW. He’s really going for it.” Right then though he lunged at me, grabbed a hold of my forearm and shouted, “I CAN’T SEE!!! HELP!!!”

Of course this set off a massive laugh attack like nothing, so I had to really work hard to get myself together AND drag him to safety.

Needless to say, he spent the rest of the evening very much with head and clear vision.

And to this day, just thinking about it makes me bust a gut like crazy.

Anywho, getting back to what I was saying, yesterday as I got into bed, I too could feel an itchy-tickle in my throat, so I thought it best if I also sat this one out, much to the chagrin of my inner drama queen.

I love a good chance to get into character, and just generally act like mad chicksor.

Today at work everyone was dressed up, which was pretty heartening to behold.

We had a Robin, a Princess Di, a Justin Bieber (probably one the most amazing things I have ever seen), an Axel Rose and Slash, a snow princess, a law suit, a flapper, a patch of seaweed – honestly, my workmates really hit it out of the park.

My favourites hands down though were these two gals:

L is the train-hoppin’ hobo, and S is the scarecrow.

THESE LADIES BE CHAMPS.

As for me, I am sad to say I somewhat half-arsed my way through Halloween this year.

For the morning I dressed as a Tough Mudder (not exactly me at my most clever I can assure you) but it was pretty fun to walk around saying, “I actually dress up every other day of the year. This is my natural self!”

What ended up happening was that I had a speaking engagement with the United Way at noon, so I needed something I could easily change out of, as I did have need to Clark Kent myself into professional attire.

(Although I kind of wish I could have gone in TM regalia. Talk about a way to pump people up! )

Also, I must apologize for not having photos to share, but I promise to post one as soon as I get a copy of the snaps S took of me in costume.

In the mean time, I’m happy to rest my knackered bones (I actually did a Tough Mudder workout yesterday, and that, combined with a long day of work, and my stand up classes at night has left me feeling a little deflated) and have a glass of wine.

Meanwhile, the kitten is investigating all the treats for our little tricksters:

What are you all up to for the night?

Stay safe, stay warm, and scare yourselves absolutely silly.

BOO!

Have laughs, will travel

Sometimes, you just need to act like a nutter.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In December of 2009, M and I spent a week in Geneva and five days in London before returning home to Canada.

We had been living in the UK while I was on research leave for my MA, and we really wanted to wrap up our trip in a special way.

We figured stops in two brilliant, bustling cities (in the weeks leading up to Christmas no less) would make for an excellent send off.

Now, suffice to say that I love my husband madly (emphasis on the mad) and when I state that we have a heck of a good time travelling together, this is not hyperbole.

This is fact.

During our time in Switzerland, we bopped about the place, our eyes semi-sprung from our sockets, incredulous at how expensive everything was (I mean, twelve francs for a happy meal!? How is that even possible?), attempting to take in all the jaw-dropping beauty offered up by our environs.

M is half-Swiss so we had the immense pleasure of staying with his amazing cousin Lisette, a woman whom I love dearly – so much so that I will be hard pressed not to name my first child after her.

(If luck should have it that it be born a boy, well, he’ll have to endure. Perhaps some hard living country songstress will write a rousing tune about him and his namesake. It would be a bona fide hit; a certified chart topper.)

Lisette’s sister Bea is another of my all time favourites – she is the epitome of chic. Her doggie Tisha is also the epitome of cute, with her eyes that melt your heart, and magical powers to make handfuls of biscuits materialize out of thin air.

On our first day in Geneva, we toured much of the old town and then visited St. Pierre Cathedral. Having climbed to the bell tower, we took full advantage of an empty observation deck to partake in some high tom foolery.

Exhibit A:

Magic!

On our trip to Bern, M kept asking me to take photos so “it looked like he was running to jump aboard the train while it was still moving.”

This is the best I could do:

It’s amazing the associated press hasn’t been blowing up my phone trying to get me to come and work for them.

Perhaps one of my most favourite laugh-until-you-cry-and-then-bloody-well-laugh-some-more moments came when we were in London.

It was our second day in the city. We sprung out of bed at an early hour, despite having walking some twelve-odd hours the day before, so eager we were for adventure.

Boy was it was cold as heck.

We arrived at Kensington Gardens and immediately were besieged by hoards of hungry, and as such, aggressive water fowl. They were absolutely insatiable! I managed to capture the madness (albeit all too briefly) in the following video.

P.S.  THIS IS NOT HOW MY VOICE SOUNDS IN REAL LIFE GOOD GRIEF.

Finally, because I’m a silly, silly girl, and I’m always asking M to pose for inane photos, I requested that he pretend to tickle the giant, mummified hippopotamus that’s hanging two stories up in the Museum of Natural History:

And then pet the skeleton of some poor prehistoric beast that perished in some Jurassic tar pit and/or meteor shower:

Alas.

Just typing out these words – just looking at all of our many photos from this trip has got me feeling homesick. Yearning for our small, rubbish flat on Rotton Park Road, my running loop at the Edgbaston Reservoir, my young English students at Right Track School, the beautiful red brick at the University of Birmingham, and all the carefree nights and weekends M and I spent around the city, and different parts of the country.

So you’ll have to excuse me.

I’m off to take some photos. I’m off for a new adventure.

When I lost my mind

Three crazy things I have done in my life:

1.)  Taped down my breasts when getting ready for my first high profile job interview.

With packing tape.

This decision was made after spending a good portion of an hour scrutinizing my outfit in front of the bathroom mirror and working it into my mind that my blouse wasn’t fitting quite right.  In my nervous-to-the-point-of-madness state, I came to the conclusion that my only option was to take out the tape and strap down my chest.

For the entire two hour meeting I couldn’t quite breathe properly and I kind of “crunched” each time I shifted in my seat. (For a couple of days afterwards I became paranoid about irregular hair growth after having literally waxed my chest during the ordeal of removing the tape – luckily this worry never came to fruition.)

And would you believe it, I got the job.

2.)  Flooded my mother’s kitchen.

It was the summer of 2005. I was living in Halifax and working two jobs – on the weekend I was a barista at a coffee shop, and every night (save Sunday and Monday) I worked the front of house at a downtown bar.

I absolutely loved my places of employment and my schedule was great (other than then working a double shift every Saturday.)

However, for two weeks in August the whole thing kind of blew up in my face, when I ended up covering one of my fellow employee’s weekday shifts at the coffee shop, while still working at the bar. (Of course this just so happened to overlap with the jazz festival of which my bar was a venue – which meant that instead of working four hours a night at the bar, I was working seven or eight.)

This meant that for fourteen days I was operating on about four, maybe max five hours of sleep a night, and was tired all the live long day.

But all in all it didn’t really matter, because as I said – I bloody well loved my jobs.

Anywho, one day before heading to the bar I decided that if I wasn’t going to nap I was going to clean the hous – laundry, dishes, vacuum, windows – you named it, I was going to take care of it.

Unfortunately, my plan of filling up the kitchen sink while I ran upstairs to start the washing machine went awry as soon as I forgot all about the sink and started stripping the beds and cleaning the washroom.

By the time I remembered it was too late – rivers of water were pouring into the heating vents and making their way into the living room.

I panicked. I grabbed the (kitty hair saturated) blankets that we kept on the couches to keep the cats from scratching at the upholstery and threw them onto the floor, before racing to the basement to see if any of the water had leaked down that far. Luckily it hadn’t.

Then I called a cab because there was no way I was going to make it to work on time if I were to walk. When the taxi pulled up front, I was in such a tizzy that I jumped into the front seat without thinking.

I can’t really describe how awkward it was to ride up front with that cabby except to say that I felt as though my dad was driving me to school.

Only I had to pay him.

3.)  Drank a bottle of seven dollar wine out of a booster juice cup.

My advice kids? DON’T DO THIS.

Even if it’s your last day of undergrad, and you’re totally stoked about starting grad school, and getting married later on that same summer; even if you’ve just aced your last classes, and you think you’re an invincible evil genius; and especially if you don’t drink, like, EVER, but you think it’ll be absolutely hilarious to get smashed out of your face with two of your best friends just this once.

Seriously. Just say no.

Because you’ll drink that wine, and then run about campus like the silly twenty-two year old that you are, and you’ll meet Nardwuar the Human Serviette and tell him about how watching him do the Hip Flip with Paul Martin is one of the highlights of your life, what with being the Canadian politico nerd that you are.

(This will impress no one, least of all Nardwuar who will just think you drunk and insane.)

And then at 4 o’clock in the afternoon you’ll phone your fiancée as ask him to come pick you up and take you to Dairy Queen where you’ll order two servings of popcorn shrimp, but only eat the shrimp and not the French fries because you’re trying  to be healthy.

And if you still do this? Be sure to drink those two liters of water he gives you before you pass out at seven o’clock that evening.

It will save your life and allow you to blog about it years, and years later.

That old black magic that you weave so well

My sisters and I didn’t watch a lot of TV as children.

For many years our television set didn’t even pick up basic cable, so whatever cartoons we were watching came in the form of The Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Movie or The Three Caballeros (or whatever we owned on VHS at that specific time.)

One time we discovered our mother’s Jane Fonda’s Workout video and we absolutely killed ourselves laughing at the clothing/hair-dos as we danced around half-heartedly mimicking the exercises.

Every Friday night we were allowed to rent one film and goodness knows there was a period of time when we must have watched Mary Poppins for upwards three years straight. Steppin’ time is RIGHT, Bert.

Also, for what it’s worth – those Bugs Bunny cartoons still crack me the heck up. I am pretty much incapacitated by giggles every time I hear things like “What a way to run a railroad,” I’ve also started to re-populate my vocabulary with some of his saltier insults, and I have been using “should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque” since time immemorial (or you know, grade school.)

However, there was a time when we finally entered the 20th century, and procured a television set that was neither steam powered, nor cable intolerant, and I was introduced to all the magic and majesty that was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s children-friendly programming.

(For only two hours every Saturday, mind you.  After all there were limits on how far my parents were willing to travel into said new century.)

Still, limited hours or no, we were introduced to the brilliant likes of Under the Umbrella Tree, The Polka Dot Door, Fred Penner, and Sharon Lois and Bram – seriously folks, this stuff is the stuff of legends.

Take the opening credits to F. Penner & Co.:

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I DREAMED OF FINDING A  LOG TO CRAWL THROUGH TO REACH MY OWN PRIVATE AND AMAZING HANG-OUT GLEN!?

ALL OF THOSE DREAMS BELONGED TO ME.

Good grief.

I still remember my favourite episode – it was the one where he found a four leaf clover, and the whole episode revolved around teaching us kidlets about good luck and superstition.

Through song. SONG!

One of my most favourite shows however (and one that not a whole lot of people my age seem to remember) was called Today’s Special, which was set in a downtown Toronto department store, after closing hours.

You see, once the place shut down for the night, a mannequin named Jeff would come to life with the aid of his magic hat. (Oh, and someone had to say “hocus pocus alimagocus”.)

What? Like that’s weird or something?

If the hat ever came off of his head – POOF – he turned back into a mannequin.

(This often resulted in a huge number of shenanigans.)

The remainder of the cast was made of up Jodie, the store manager (and Jeff’s totally badass “human” mentor), Sam, the store’s security guard (a puppet, mind you), and Muffy Mouse, the resident rhyming rodent.

To say that I loved this show would be totally oversimplifying it.

I dug it so hard, that if I was actually going through the motions I would have made it all the way to China and back.

I really believed that magic – magic like what was needed to bring Jeff to life every night – was real. It was just up to me to find the right source, and figure out what role it should play in my life (beside of course making me invisible, giving me the power to fly, and helping me learn everything I could possibly learn about everything in the world in – oh, about a day and a half.)

As you could imagine, I was a pretty laid-back kid.

I’ve been thinking about this part of my life quite a bit – a childhood not only wrapped up in enchantment, but the never-ending search for magic – because in the past two weeks I have read Dandelion Wine and The Magician’s Apprentice, and at present I am currently halfway through The Magicians – and it seems as though I cannot stop reading about it.

I cannot stop reading about magic.

These are three (very different) books, but they are all compelling and heartbreaking in their own way.

Dandelion Wine had me shedding tears every morning as I rode the rickety skytrain into work – I felt as though my heart was going to burst out of my chest, so overwhelming was my nostalgia for a life I have never lived, but knew so well – almost as if the words themselves were already etched into my heart, punch drunk on the possibility of an endless summer, so many long years ago.

The Magician’s Apprentice is a fabulous read, but almost deceptive in its outward simplicity – much like a magic trick. But like said trick, it stays with you the long after it is finished, and you find yourself going over it, again and again in your mind – trying to figure it out, and understand it – trying to relive it.

I am not yet done The Magicians, but I am enjoying it very much. I am realizing that should I ever have had that chance to find my magic as a child, I may not necessarily have been in control of this power.

(I will keep you posted once I am finished.)

In the meantime, we sun-dipped mortals (or is it muggles?) are racing about this ball of blue, full speed, arms akimbo, waiting on the next adventure.

We found this feather on the Sunshine Coast. I am sure it has magical properties.

We’ll pick a card.

Any card.

Queen of spades

Kids! Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday.

To celebrate this day, I would like to share with you a memory I keep close.

(As re-imagined as my grade-two self.)

I am seven.

My mother isn’t home very much.  We live in Vancouver but she works in Ottawa from Sunday until Friday.  She’s writing a very long decision that will make sure that all Canadian women are ensured equal pay for equal work.  I think the whole thing started with a nurse who made a complaint, but I can never be sure because I’m still suspicious about why someone would need to write a decision. 

They are usually things you just “make.” 

Then I get sick.  Like really sick.  I burn so hot that when I take a bath the water feels like it comes from an iceberg.  Sometimes I imagine I am mutating.  After I shed all of my blistered skin, I’ll emerge taller, sleeker.  I’ll be a superhero, more powerful than ever.

I can’t eat very much and when I do I throw up.   

When my mother tells me that she’s taking a week off to look after me, I nearly jump off the bed with excitement.  

I spend the week wrapped in blankets and fleece, flushed and feverish, my mother sitting next to me.  I wear and wash my favourite pajamas every morning so I don’t have to wear something new.  It is a long dress and it is light blue, with a sleepy but stern looking owl printed on its front. 

It is my favourite.

In between my ice bathes and simple mouthfuls of vegetable broth, we take turns reading aloud from The Secret Garden. 

My mother doesn’t ever do voices when she reads, but her tone is soothing. 

Simple.

Perfect.

I want to run away to the North of England.  I want to skip rope amid the twists and turns of a sprawling manor estate, fall in love with gentle Yorkshire boys who can tend to the earth and talk to animals, and eat hot, crunchy biscuits smothered in butter and jam.

I want to be friends with Miss Mary, learn to plant seeds, feel fresh earth between my fingers, and chirp at cheeky robins that flit and flutter under a low-hanging sky.

But mostly I want to find a garden of my own.  I want to discover a place that has been shut up and forgotten and reawaken the magic, magnificence, mayhem and majesty that once flourished there.

A place where I will be safe and strong and smart and stupefying in my splendour.

A place where I can be free.

…

Growing up my little sister and I spent every conceivable minute playing outside.  And when we weren’t outside, we were building forts in our basement. Our overactive, bizarre and totally bonkers imaginations ensured that we were never bored and never without a storyline to pursue.

And yet, despite the number of times I played in our garden, or the front yard, or at the park, or in the school yard, or the overgrown alleyway, I never truly felt how I had hoped to feel, when reading about Mary Collins’ adventures in her secret place.

Now, as a bizarre, slightly bonkers adult, I still search for that feeling, this tangible moment of discovery and awe.

Last summer I had the chance to visit a garden where I had, for an all too brief a time, that moment.

It was a place of magic and mayhem.

(But the good mayhem, not “the Bay is being looted and my car is on fire.”)

It was a place of discovery and awe, governed by a beauty tied to a nature no one believes in anymore and the stories of the all too few that do.

Dreaming of a garden for you today (and tomorrow) momma!

Happy natal day to you.