Generation Exhausted

You learn something new everyday

Turns out, I don't know everything. (oh hush, of course I knew I didn't know everything. I just know a lot. Or rather, a little about a lot. Never mind.)

Anyway. Made the middle daughter sit and watch the CBC with me last night, a new series called The Canadian Experience. It was on Talking Canadian, and being "weird about words" the way I am, I figured it'd be good. It was.

There was one thing they said that I think was wrong. The show claimed that in border towns, the American influence on speech is not as noticeable as you'd think. I disagree with that - I'm not sure what border towns they went to, but in these parts, it's definitely noticeable.

Ask any inlander that comes to visit. They think we talk like Americans. The Americans think we talk like Canadians. We're hybrids.

It gets worse according to situations too. You should hear it when Kim and I get together. Our border town accents feed off each other, and before you know it, we're sounding really out of place. Put us in a room full of Americans, and we blend right in- an inlander would have a hard time recognizing us as Canadians at all.

Anyway, the new thing I learned, and verified through a scientific poll. (alright, I asked Linda and AGK, but they're pretty scientific gals)

Americans don't use the word eavestrough. Both Linda and AGK said, "What the heck is an eavestrough?" (Answer: the trough that runs around the eaves of a house)

Apparently, they call them gutters, and I know they're sometimes called that here too, but they'd never heard of eavestroughs. Like I said, I'm a hybrid, I guess.

The thing is, if that's a gutter, then what do you call the place where the road meets the curb? And if it's a gutter too, then doesn't the husband get confused when you say "Would you get out there and clean the %#*@-ing gutters!"?

So, I learned something new. And, for the record, the show didn't address the cart/buggy/basket thing. Perhaps it's still under investigation.

Alright, whodunnit?

These were delivered at approximately 4 p.m. today addressed to the older daughter/invalid. The card reads "For someone special" She's tickled, having never received flowers before, but swears she has no idea who might have sent them. We're tossing names out left and right, but no dice. She is, however, giggling, and I think this is the first time in her 14 years I've ever seen her blush. Her father has aged four years on the spot from someone sending roses to his baby girl, but I think it's sweet.

Anyone want to claim responsibility?

Is it me?

I love it! It's me in the infamous sleep-inducing chair. The artist's name is Kelly, and she can be read here.

I had a pretty good day. First of all, I found Kelly, who I'm pretty sure is exactly the person I've been looking for. She did the above for me in a very short period of time. I'm in awe of her ability to put pictures to my words. More on that situation as it develops.

The only rough spot to the day was the tearful phone call I received from the older daughter right after the final bell. Her knees won't bend. The ER doctor consulted with the orthopedist and they said she's pulled both hamstrings and needs to stay off her feet and out of the water for a couple of days. She's very upset, and we're both hoping this doesn't spell the end of swimming season.

So she's tucked in with the heating pad, and we'll hope for the best.

I sailed through this afternoon's interview, and will spend the rest of the week pursuing my other experts. I've also got typesetting to do, which happens on the other computer (insert obligatory "I hate Mac and I don't care if it's the 20th anniversary" statement here) I also found the colours I want to use for the Web site that needs relaunching, and my design guy says he'll have logos for me to look at soon.

In short, things are getting done. Which always leaves me with a very good feeling. And tomorrow is magazine delivery day! Once I see that it's okay, I'll relax even more.

Life is just too funny

Ok, first of all - go see Busy Mom and scroll down to the entry titled "Mars Image". Click on "keep reading". Isn't that the funniest thing you've ever seen? I've been laughing about that all day long.

Hubby is slowly getting sucked into the blogosphere. I showed him that link earlier. He laughed. I left the room, figuring he'd be going back to whatever he'd been doing.

Sometime later (an hour) he came downstairs shaking his head. "This is not good," he said.

Seems after leaving Busy Mom, he wandered over to my blog. From there, he wandered over to Kim's blog, and from there, he made his way to the other Kim's blog. And now he was disturbed, because he'd spent an hour doing nothing but reading blogs.

So be warned, all ye of the Luv Thang. He just might find his way to your blog next. Don't make me look bad, k?

There were other funny things that happened today, but I'm having a hard time at the moment remembering what they were. I'll be sure to let you know if it comes back to me. Oh, and Kim and I decided that today was A Day Off, so if you missed it, be sure not to do anything productive tomorrow.

In other news, now that the warning has ended for The Storm Of The Century That Wasn't, the news has turned to covering why the storm never arrived here.

And finally - I'm searching for Canadians under 14 who've been cyber-bullied. Can anyone help me out?

Wag the dog?

Listening to the news, you'd think it was Weather Horror of the Century. To the North, South, East and West of us, schools are closing, classes are cancelling, plows are plowing and trucks are salting. Flakes are falling and rain is freezing.

We got nothing.

Oh, an itty bit of snow maybe, but nothing serious. My brother shovelled at 4 p.m. and it doesn't need more shovelling yet.

It did climb above freezing, but the wind chill makes it minusfreakingcold, so that's no good, but really, we got nothing. Our city snow plow crews have been "standing by" since last night, and they're starting to get a wee bit bored. It's like the Storm That Wasn't.

The only explanation is that we're living in some alternate reality.

Or maybe it's all a conspiracy, to get everyone to go buy bread and milk on a Monday. I know I did. I'll bet Kim did too. Did you?

Not working for the weekend

I'm finally starting to "get" Sundays. I'm not supposed to be hanging around my desk, glued to the computer on Sundays. I do that most all the other days. Sundays are for kicking back, hanging around, generally doing nothing if you can manage it.

Had a good Sunday. Took the kids to church, went to a church ladies' lunch, then came home and sat in the recliner for a while. Dozed off while watching "Jaws" on E! True Hollywood Story. Went to the Giant Bingo with my mom. (didn't win) Came home and sat in the recliner for a while. Dozed off while watching Deep Impact.

That's the one with Tea (Tia?) Leone where the comet crashes into Earth at the end. Cheesy, yes, but not the worst. I got a little freaked out during one of the final scenes. The comet has crashed, and the tidal wave is sweeping across the U.S. There stand the WTC Towers, and as the water rushes over them, you see thousands of people running through the streets as a huge wall of water fills the background.

Could the film-makers have imagined that just a few years later, that scene would be real, only it would be a wall of dust and debris and smoke instead?

I'm having issues with the hand towel in the bathroom. Why is it that my children have learned to dress and feed themselves, can tie their shoes and brush their hair, but they cannot, will not, put the towel back on the towel rack after they've dried their hands? They toss it on the back of the toilet, drape it over the side of the sink, sometimes just drop it on the floor. How can I remedy this? And do they do this at other people's houses?

Oh, and just to share a bit of parenting wisdom. It might not occur to you to tell your children that if they decide to take an egg from the fridge in order to pretend they're its mother, like they saw on some afterschool special, then they should not wrap the egg in a clean washcloth and store it in their jewellery box and forget about it.

Thankfully, the eggs did not break. I found them, weeks later. But seriously, I had never put that on my list of things to tell my children not to do.

Off to watch a West Wing rerun. More on Monday!

To be or not?

I realized today that I have to make a decision, and soon.

Since some time before Christmas, I've had the thought in the back of my mind - I need to get my hair cut. I never got around to it. As of today, it's officially at that stage where I have to decide - am I getting it cut, or growing it long?

I think I'm getting it cut, but I'm not sure. I'm just not up to long hair anymore - I'm too old, too thin, and too lazy to deal with all that long hair entails. On the other hand, the same can be said for me and short hair.

Some people have bad hair days. I just have bad hair. I walk into the hairdresser, she makes it look good, and I spend the next 6 weeks or months trying to replicate whatever magic she worked that day. It never quite happens.

I also think it's time for some colour again. Whatever grey is lurking up there isn't visible yet, but my natural colour just seems...flat. I need shine. I need verve. I need something that will photograph well, and make me look like the next-book-author-everyone's-talking-about.

Forget the hair. I need a total makeover. Bleh.

You know, teen girls don't seem to do their hair anymore. The oldest daughter has the hair I always wanted (isn't that always the way?) Long, thick, just the right dark blond, natural curl. It's perfect. Yet day after day, she just pulls it back into a ponytail. No irons, no blow dryers, no hairspray.

I worried at first that it was just her. And that it was my fault. I thought was because I was hopeless with hair, and couldn't teach her how to do hers. But then one day, picking her up at school, I noticed something surprising. Very, very few of them do their hair.

As they came out of the school in ones and twos and threes, it was like a regiment of ponytails. They all looked alike. The same ponytail, times 327. Occasionally, just to mix things up, there'd be a girl with bangs, but mostly not.

That's hard for an 80's girl to take. Whither the teasing, the curling, the fluffing? The French braids, and the banana clips, and the obvious effort to achieve that look that is at once conformist but different?

When I remember my ninth grade classmates, I remember them by their hair. It was the year of the bob, the year of the asymetrical cut, the year of the spiral perm, the year of the nearly shaved head. Also, Sun-In. You name it, 1985 was the year for it. When media moguls ran the gamut from Cyndi Lauper to Pat Benatar to Madonna - that's a lot of different hair.

Now, not so much. And I have to make a decision about my hair.

By the way, today was a wonderful day, better than I could have expected. All's well that ends well, and all that.

Not-so-great a day

I refuse to call it a bad day, absolutely refuse. I don't have bad days. Every day that I'm given the opportunity to get out of bed and experience all that life throws at me is not a bad day.

But it weren't so great, either. I had several ohmydoG moments, when it seemed that those around me were conspiring to give me things to think about. I took what seems to be the sole opposing view to a thread on a mailing list I'm on, something I rarely do, but felt motivated to last night. So for the rest of today, I got to see people carry on with their email, either totally disregarding everything I'd said, or proceeding to rip it to shreds. I let it lie - it's not worth arguing with people whose minds are made up already. So be it.

In the same vein, I devoted far too much head space to other issues that really don't deserve it. There was another email thread, not too long ago, about family, and holding grudges, and carrying resentments. I didn't chime in then, but I sure thought about it.

Everyone's entitled to carry around whatever bag of garbage they choose to. But I can't understand why some choose to do so. What's the point? It only weighs you down, keeps you from moving ahead. Today starts today, not yesterday or ten years ago or more.

And what frosts my socks more than anything is that some people expect others to help them carry that bag. Or, at the very least, stand on the sidelines and say, "Look at you, carrying that bag of garbage, good for you." I won't do that, which tends to bother people.

And work brought some angst this morning, although it all worked out in the end. So I didn't exactly start the day all relaxed.

But today is almost over, so I'll put it out with the trash and move on. Bring on tomorrow!

Bereft of thought

Should anyone happen to come across my ability to churn out witty and lighthearted prose without effort, would you please return it immediately? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

It's every writer's worst fear - that the last good thing they wrote is, well, the last good thing they'll ever write. I have a kajillion ideas, and just today wrote three paragraphs of three new essays that got halfway down the page and just...stalled. Just ran out of steam.

And the little voice inside my head says "See? You can't wring 700 words out of that. What the hell's wrong with you, thinking you could?"

I'm thinking too much about money, that's my problem. In the space of five minutes today, I had it all figured out. I want a pool. But I can't possibly justify a pool until I replace our 11-year-old minivan. And I can't possibly do that until I lighten the debt load.

So, in spite of a couple great assignments (one of the contracts came today, whoohoo!) I'm staring into a future few months of no extra cash infusions, unless I can conjure up one of those things that takes me an hour to write, but then pays me mucho bucks.

Oh, the pressure!

CanLit 101

So I went back to yesterday's post and fixed it, I didn't see Kane and Abel on the list until I read Tori's blog. I read that. Which puts me at 20 out of the 100. The gaps in my education are showing, it seems. I haven't read any of the right books.

At my request, Kim has put together a list of CanLit 101. She said she'd be far too busy to do so for days, but lo and behold! this is how she spent her afternoon. Nice to see she's putting that degree to use. But I'm puzzled by the fact that she owns so many books she hasn't read. I can't imagine.

So let's see if I'm any more tuned into Canadian Literature, shall we? Though I think there are things missing from this list. The ones I've read are in bold. If they also have a star beside them, they're the ones Kim loaned me. Where would we be without a little help from our friends?

A Book of Secrets, M. G. Vassanji
A Discovery of Strangers, Rudy Wiebe
A Dream Like Mine, M. T. Kelly
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
A Song for Nettie Johnston, Gloria Sawai
A Jest of God, Margaret Laurence
Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje
Anne of Avonlea, L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler
As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross
Ascension, Steven Galloway--I'm presently reading this one
Away, Jane Urquhart*
The Backwoods of Canada, Catharine Parr Traill
Barometer Rising, Hugh MacLennan*
Bear, Marian Engel
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, Farley Mowat
The Boy in the Drawer, Robert Munsch
Burning Water, George Bowering
Calculating God, Robert J. Sawyer
Clara Callan, Richard B. Wright
The Cure for Death by Lightning, Gail Anderson-Dargatz
The Dark, Robert Munsch
Deep Hollow Creek, Shelia Watson
The Deptford Trilogies, Robertson Davies
The Deserter, Douglas LePan
The Devil’s Instrument, W. O. Mitchell
Digby, David Walker
The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
Elizabeth and After, Matt Cohen
Emily of New Moon, L. M. Montgomery
The Engineer of Human Souls, Josef Skvorecky
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
The Englishman’s Boy, Guy Vanderhaeghe
Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie Macdonald
Falling Angels, Barbara Gowdy
Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry
Finnie Walsh, Steven Galloway
The Fire Dwellers, Margaret Laurence
Forms of Devotion, Diane Schoemperlen
Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Headhunter, Timothy Findley
Hetty Dorval, Ethel Wilson
Island, Alistair MacLeod
Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur, Mordecai Richler
Jacob Two-Two’s First Spy Case, Mordecai Richler
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, Mordecai Richler
Jake and the Kid, W. O. Mitchell
Larry’s Party, Carol Shields
Legends of Vancouver, E. Pauline Johnson
Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro
Lives of Saints, Nino Ricci
Lost Girls, Andrew Pyper
The Love of a Good Woman, Alice Munro
Love You Forever, Robert Munsch
The Loved and the Lost, Morley Callaghan
The Lyre of Orpheus, Robertson Davies
Man Descending, Guy Vanderhaeghe
Mercy Among the Children, David Adams Richards
Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat
The New Ancestors, Dave Godfrey
Nights Below Station Street, David Adams Richards
No Great Mischief, Alistair Macleod*
The Paperbag Princess, Robert Munsch
The Piano Man’s Daughter, Timothy Findley
The Pillar, David Walker
Pilgrim, Timothy Findley
A Recipe for Bees, Gail Anderson-Dargatz
The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, Jack Hodgins
The Roaring Girl, Greg Hollingshead
Roughing it in the Bush, Susanna Moodie (oh god - I just found my copy. It was due back to the U of W library in November, 1995. My library habits are a whole 'nother blog)
Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
Running to Paradise, Kildare Dobbs
The Sacrifice, Adele Wiseman
Settlers of the Marsh, Frederick Philip Grove
Shakespeare’s Dog, Leon Rooke
Simple Recipes, Madeleine, Thien
The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence
The Stone Carvers, Jane Urquhart
The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
Street of Riches, Gabrielle Roy
The Studhorse Man, Robert Kroetsch
Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock
Tales From Generation Xhausted, Shelley Divnich Haggert (blushing - well, I wouldn't call it literature...)
The Temptations of Big Bear, Rudy Wiebe
Things That Must Not be Forgotten, Michael David Kwan
Third Magic, Welwyn Wilton Katz
Truth and Bright Water, Thomas King
Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan
Unless, Carol Shields
Wars, Timothy Findley
The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie Macdonald
Whale Music, Paul Quarrington
The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart
Wild Animals I Have Known, Ernest Thompson Seton
Who Has Seen the Wind? W.O. Mitchell

23. If you take out the Robert Munsch books, I might as well be totally illiterate.

So - how do you score on the CanLit 101?