Catching up day 3

May 21, 2018

My grandparents were the first people I knew to own a microwave oven. Theirs was brown*, had a tiny window that was covered with some sort of screen, making it very difficult to see what was inside. I remember watching the first time she demonstrated this miraculous machine for us, heating up my grandfather’s lunch…

May 22, 2018

…while he took a break from the store**. We stood beside her, and I think we gasped when the plate of leftovers came out steaming after just a minute or so. How far we have come – the idea of reheating something on the stove or in the oven*** seems so ridiculous now. A waste of…

May 23, 2018

…time and energy. When we got our first microwave, I know we tried to use it to make cakes and other things, but the microwave oven is not created for baking. In my humble opinion, the only things a microwave oven should be used for are 1) melting things, 2) reheating things, 3) making popcorn…,

May 24, 2018

…4) timing things that are in the oven, and 5) providing a digital clock in the kitchen.

*Were they around in the 70s? Because I feel like my Grandmother had her brown microwave in the 1970s.

**My grandparents bought a hardware store when my grandfather couldn’t stand to work the farm any longer, and built…

May 25, 2018

…an apartment above it. My grandmother made lunch, and they would take turns minding the store while the other had lunch upstairs. I would love to see that apartment once more.

***I gave my daughter a toaster/convection oven at Christmas which she tells me has rendered her microwave almost irrelevant, except for the digital clock.

Catching up, day 2

May 16, 2018

Jonesing for gadgets and wanting to become a minimalist do not exactly go hand in hand. So, though I’ve managed to get rid of a lot of  assorted “things” over the past few years, I still have a drawer in my kitchen filled with things I likely never should have bought in the first place.

May 17, 2018

For example, my sous vide machine. It attaches to the side of  a large pot filled with water, keeps the water at a very specific temperature, and cooks food “low and slow”, guaranteed to turn me into a gourmet  chef over night.  I couldn’t wait for it to arrive, and have used it exactly once.

May 18, 2018

I cooked pork tenderloin that day, a cut of meat that you really can’t ruin – there is no way that I have discovered (yet) to cook pork tenderloin that results in a tough meal. So even though I made a very good dinner that day, I can’t really attribute the win to my sous vide.

May 19, 2019

Most recently, I picked up an instant pot, and even though it is huge, even though it takes up a lot of valuable real estate in my kitchen, even though I know it is just a dolled-up pressure cooker (and I already had an old-timey one of those), I can honestly report ZERO BUYER'S REMORSE.

MAY 20, 2019

I use this sucker every week. Sometime I use it twice a week. Hell, I’ve been known to use it three times a week. I make big batches and store them individually in the freezer. My son, who does most of the cooking through the week, seems to love it as much as I do.

Caching up - Day 1

May 10, 2018

I am a little bit hooked on appliances. Not the big kind, the little kind that take up room in your cupboards and drawers. The kind you must have and then use only once or twice. It started with an immersion blender that I saw on TV. I think it was $100, and came with…

May 11, 2018
…an assortment of blades. It could turn skim milk into whipped cream, transform boiled potatoes into the creamiest of mash, and render a pig into sausage in five minutes. I had to have it but was newly married and frankly poor. So I set aside $1 per day in a jar, and 100 days later…

May 12, 2018

…sent away for my blender. That’s the extent of my memory of it. It disappeared over the intervening years. I know I used it to froth skim milk (why would anyone want skim milk whipped cream when full-fat whipped cream is a thing already?) But owning it was not as fun as anticipating owning it. 

May 13, 2018

Several years ago I bought my mother a tagine. I loved the idea of it, and thought she would too. I borrowed it once to make goat (superb, if I do say so myself), but when I went to give it back, she suggested I keep it, since she didn’t think she would use it.

May 14, 2018

So now I have a tagine. I use it once or twice a year and it takes up a lot of room in my kitchen. I’ve used it to make goat again, and beef, and I intend to use it to cook venison, but my friends who hunt never seem to come home with much.

May 15, 2018

It is a beautiful thing, and I wish I could display it, but I’m not about to leave it on the stove, taking up an element for the sake of letting it be seen, so it is hidden away, taking up space, until someone brings me some venison. Or until I get some more goat.

Almonds

I used to love almonds, and if we are just talking about how almonds taste, then I guess I still do. After all, almonds are delicious. But for the past few years, I've no longer been able to eat them. They don't agree with me. Almonds have betrayed me. They now trigger diffuse esophageal spasms.

Diffuse esophageal spasms are painful contractions of the esophagus. During an attack it is impossible to swallow, and it often results in some regurgitation of food. It's fun. It's impossible to talk, because you often have a mouthful of food that can't go anywhere until you spit it out. It hurts. Sometimes it hurts a little bit, sometimes it hella hurts. Sometimes it lasts a couple minutes, sometimes it lasts 20-30 minutes.

Other foods cause it, but almonds are the only thing I know for certain will always trigger an attack.

So I avoid them.

What the heck is that thing on my deck?

My dogs are not hunters. Once in a while, however, they manage to murder something and once they do they don't have a clue what to do with it. So they bring it to Mom. Last week, the thing they managed to murder and then gift me with was a star-nosed mole.

For the non-North Americans in the crowd, these varmints are just crazy-enough looking that you would be forgiven for thinking they must come from Australia. But they don't.

It comes as no surprise that we have moles. They work hard to dig up our lawn every year, so we've had plenty of evidence. But you don't get to see one of these bad-boys up close and personal every day, so of course I gave it a good once-over before laying it to rest.

And then, of course, I looked up a bit of information on them. Because you don't grow something like that on the end of your face for no reason. And I'd tell you all about the amazing powers of their amazing snouts, but I've run out of time.

Bwahahaha.

Theatre

When I left the board of directors of the theatre, I was feeling burned out and pulled in too many directions. I vowed that I would take at least a year off before doing anything else theatre-related. I realized, with great clarity, that theatre isn't my thing. It was my daughter's thing (now it isn't even her thing). So when I got the call about directing the February production of I Ought to be in Pictures, of course I said no. Absolutely not. Won't happen. Anyone but me.

The read-through is tonight. At my house. This is the LAST show I'm helping with.

New Year's resolution: Learn to say no.

I'm so over Christmas

There have been years when I fussed and worried and went into debt over gift-giving, but those days are over. Now I ask Paul what he wants (a PS4), and he asks what I want (a pair of Blundstones), and we'll likely go out and buy our own gifts and hand them over to be wrapped and then we we feel just as satisfied on Christmas morning as when we used to worry and stress over picking out just the right thing. 

I tell my kids not to get me anything - and I mean it. They will, though. Neither one of them has extra cash and I would REALLY be happy as can be if we just sat around, drinking martinis and playing Jenga all day.

It's not just the gift-giving though. It's the whole WAR ON CHRISTMAS bullshit that comes out this time every year. There is no war on Christmas. No one has ever scowled at me for saying Merry Christmas. I've worked with Muslim and Jewish women and none of them have ever been offended by the greeting. It's a made-up thing by a group of people who call everyone else a snowflake, then work overtime to be offended by everything they hear.

Merry Fucking Christmas, everyone.

Appalling performance

Looking back, I'm appalled by my lackluster performance with this 365 blog thing. Now that I have some time, I intend to go back, make a list of every day that I missed, and catch up in the new year. I know it will be very lonely.

I expect there will be lots of anti-Trump posts, and I'll likely swear a lot (since there will be no one to shock with my potty-mouth). I also plan to go back and comment on all your posts that I didn't get to.

I'll get there - I'm just going to be the last one across the finish line.

Lessons Learned

I have finished my 4 month contract. YAY! What did I learn from 4 months back at work?

1) I don't want to work full-time anymore.
2) I can't work full-time and get anything else done.
3) I don't want to work full-time anymore

As of next week, I'll go back to work at the same place, but only 2 days per week. I think I can handle that.

Wondering what happened.

Until I was in grade five my best friend was the girl who lived across the road. She was a year older, and she was the adopted youngest child in a home with three older brothers. She was abused. I know that now, although I didn’t recognize it then. She got older; we drifted apart. She started hanging with the wrong crowd. She became scary. When she was in her late teens she ran away from home and we never saw her again. Her mother got a phone call a year later saying, “don't worry, I’m fine. I’m not coming home.” I understand why she would run off. I hope she found happiness and got her life together. But I wonder if truth isn’t much darker than that. She was chalked up as another troubled runaway, but my secret fear is that something happened to her at the hands of her family, and no one bothered to look for her.

The Blair Squirrel Project

Two weeks ago a squirrel appeared on the railing of the porch at my new job. It stood there, clutching its tiny hands over its chest, chattering and letting out a pained squirrel scream every minute or so. Was it hurt? Was it a mother squirrel whose baby squirrel was missing? Was it the soul of a condemned human spirit forever doomed to travel the world in the body of a black squirrel, unable to communicate with the humans around him? On Friday, the same squirrel appeared on a branch outside my 2nd-storey office window. It stared into my office, screaming at me. When I went to the window it scampered up the branch, then turned to watch me, as if I was supposed to follow. I think I’m living the opening of a horror movie. If I should happen to disappear, please tell the police about the screaming squirrel.

Parenting is hard. Everything you do is wrong. It's a nightmare.

Before my first baby was born, I had read as much as I could find about breastfeeding – so I when he failed to latch immediately, I assumed I must have inverted nipples. He was latching and nursing like a pro within 24 hours – so yeah… nipples were fine. I doubted my abilities to parent with every new challenge that came up – so I read every book on the subject. When I was exhausted, I thought maybe I should let them cry it out. Nope. That can’t be right. Maybe we should have a family bed. Better, but still not exactly right. I flipped between parenting theories so often it’s a miracle my kids aren’t completely screwed up. Maybe they are. My kids are grown. We are still figuring things out. My advice to new mothers would be to trust your gut. Don’t read anything. And for the love of God, don’t google anything.

FTSM. Seriously.

What the actual fuck, United States. What is happening to you? I like to think of this bizarre, nightmare phase that you are going through as the “great unmasking”. Maybe it’s just a prolonged blip, and at the end of it the universe will self-correct and the monsters will have revealed themselves, stupidly showing exactly who they are for all the world to see. Maybe these despicable (mostly) men will end up in jail because, during this window, a grotesque, privileged, orange-tinted, toilet-paper trailing, pussy-grabbing, gas-lighting schoolyard bully let them think they safely could. Maybe they will all be purged in November. That’s what I hope, but the real horror is that maybe they won’t. Between Russian interference, gerrymandering and voter suppression, maybe they won’t. Fuck.

Falling

I’m lying in bed, listening to a podcast and the podcaster mentions her favourite book. I don’t remember the title, but it is the story of someone tightrope walking between the twin towers. Instantly, the vertigo is back. I watch Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20, and I listen to endless true-crime podcasts. I might be a ghoul. I can keep most of the horrors that man commits upon man (more often, that man commits upon woman) at arm’s length. But the idea of someone falling from a great height, or being pushed, affects me viscerally, it makes my head spin. Once I start thinking about it, I can’t stop. Can’t. I see people jump from the WTC. I imagine Eric Clapton’s little boy. I imagine myself standing on the balcony of a 40th floor apartment. There is nothing more horrifying than that long and terrible fall.

Green Fields of Fance

I used to have a job that recognized November 11 (Remembrance Day) as a statutory holiday. I always went to the cenotaph, but one year I couldn’t. I was driving that day, and just before 11:00, this song was on the radio. There are many wonderful verions, but this is the one that made me catch my breath that day.

Sweet Caroline

I don’t care how much of a Neil Diamond fan you insist you aren’t, we all know that no matter where you are – in the car, writing an exam, at a funeral -  as soon as he hits the chorus with Sweet Caroline, you can’t stop yourself from singing Bah, Bah, Bah in response. Don’t fell bad. I do it too.

Hot Child in the City

Later, I thought Nick Gilder was the Next. Big. Thing. I believed this was musical gold, bought the album, and learned the words to every song.

So young to be loose and on her own.
Young boys, they all want to take her home.

One YouTube commenters calls it “one of the most sleazy and perverted songs ever. Not wrong.

Seasons in the Sun

What nine year old wouldn’t crush on Terry Jacks? I mean he had big hair, fringed jackets and was part of the Poppy Family. This time we did find the record, and I played it over and over, until even the penny on the arm of my turntable couldn’t prevent it from skipping. Funny thing – I still love this song.

Snowbird

I remember, as a very little kid, going from store to store, looking for a single of this song. It was the first mainstream song I wanted, and it was sold out everywhere. Maybe we found it eventually, I don’t really remember. I probably went back to the albums of children’s songs that we had until my next desire hit…

Another Suitcase in Another Hall

My daughter thinks she discovered musical theatre all by herself, but she wasn’t paying attention. I played some – like the soundtrack to Evita constantly when she was small. Her brother was listening. I knew I was playing Les Mis too much when I caught him, aged 3, walking through the house singing, “I smell women, smell ‘em in the air”.