Generation Exhausted

A day for getting things done

It being the last day of July, we finally had some July weather - sunshine, high temps and a mild breeze. Warm enough to swim, but not so hot that you couldn't cut the grass.

Which is exactly what we did. Cut the grass, tended the pond, did some weeding, then wandered on down to WilsonWorld for a BBQ and Trivial Pursuit.

Getting the children to work in the yard is a lot like herding cats. They kept getting away on me. I rounded them up and set them to their tasks. A scant ten minutes later, the little one had vanished down to the neighbour's. Got her back, then found one hiding out in her room. Later, during a short "break", one went out the front door to see who was walking past the house - 30 minutes later I realized she'd never returned. Found her down at the neighbours, and hauled her back home again.

Escape artists, the lot of them.

Trivial Pursuit was as action packed as it always is. We tried the Boomer edition this time, but abandoned it after two or three questions - give us a game we can play! Back to the 20 anniversary edition, which contains questions we're more likely to know the answer to. Although I was horrified to learn that the world headquarters for Windsor Salt is located in...Quebec? That's so very, very wrong, don't you think?

Prior to the kickoff, or roll-off, or whatever it's called when you start a game of Triv, we indulged in a little Six-Degrees-Of-Kevin-Bacon. I believe we successfully linked both Freedy Kreuger and then Heather Locklear to Kevin Bacon (seperately of course) but struggled with John Candy. We got there eventually, but it may have taken eight links.

Anyone want to try to get from John Candy to Kevin Bacon in less than eight?

The problem with having wandered down that path is that I found it difficult to wander back. Therefore, during the Triv game, every time a celebrity's name was mentioned, I found myself mentally tracking them back to Kevin. It was distracting, to be sure.

All in all, a good, productive day that ended on a relaxing note. Which is exactly what Saturdays should be.

Friday fatigue

For some reason, even though it's cool outside, my basement office feels like it's about a zillion degrees Farenheit. Which leaves me feeling sluggish, and ill-equipped to form coherent thoughts.

The new dryer has arrived, and we survived our day of wait-for-the-delivery-guy suspense. Delivery was slated for "Friday, between noon and 6." Yesterday, they called and said they'd narrowed it down to "between 1 and 5."

The truck pulled up in front of the house at exactly four minutes before 5 p.m. I just can't shake the feeling that these guys spent their afternoon around the corner at Tim Horton's, drinking coffee and arranging tomorrow's tee time, then at 4:45 looked at their watches and said, "Ooops, time to deliver!"

And I can now catch up on the three days worth of laundry that I've missed.

Yay me.

Change of plans

I had hoped to be telling you this evening that Middle Daughter was only two softball games away from going to the Canadian Little League Championships next week. I had hoped to be working furiously, to be prepared for an impromptu few days away from the office, when hubby and I would board a plane at the last minute and wing our way westward to watch our baby play. I had hoped to be clicking over to Travelocity every 30 minutes, and joining the lament of a dozen other parents, all crying "You want how much for a flight to Vancouver?" I was looking forward to going to tomorrow's game, and then Saturday's, and then running home and packing a bag for Monday's Championship.

I won't be doing any of that. The girls fought the good fight to the very end, but alas - they accepted their third place District medals with pride this evening. They put every ounce of heart and soul into the game. It was a nail-biter - first the other team was winning, then it was tied, then our girls pulled ahead - then the other team pulled ahead in the top of the last inning and stayed there.

In the long run, it's probably a good thing - no one will have to drop everything and rush West on 24 hours notice. And have you seen what it costs to fly in this country? Air Canada has apparently never heard of the last minute deal -flights were in the neighbourhood of $1200 and up - ONE WAY. We were going to have to beg, borrow and steal in order to get there to watch her anyway.

In fact, I was going to send out a plea: Help us go West - Buy A Book.

I don't have to do that now, but hey - if you still haven't bought the book, now's your chance!

After all, I do have a new dryer to pay for.

All in all, I'm awfully proud of my girl - she's really found her niche with this baseball thing, and there's always next year!

A sad story

Thank you Kim, for pointing out that I had not blogged today. It always warms my heart to know that there are readers waiting with bated breath for more of my Tales.

I'd ask readers to all bow their heads in a moment of silence, for a very important part of our household was lost at approximately 1 p.m. yesterday.

With a grinding noise that was not at all like the grinding noise it had been making for the last six months, and a final turn of the drum, the dryer ate its last sock, coughed up its last wad of lint...and died.

This is the part where anyone with children at home gasps in shock and horror and exclaims, "You poor thing!"

My first response was, typically, not sadness, but outraged indignation. "That thing is only 12 years old! Appliances that require a line of credit and two strong deliverymen should last more than a dozen years. It. Cannot. Die."

At which point the darling hubby sat me down and talked sense to me. He pointed out that the dryer, although barely a teenager, had been doing the laundry for a family of four, then five. Two loads a day minimum, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, for TWELVE years. That's...hang on....

8736 loads of laundry. Plus an extra few months - make it almost 10,000. Ten thousand loads of laundry. Plus, it's been repaired three times.

Yep, I'd be about ready to call it quits too, if I'd done that many loads of laundry. Wait a minute - I'm the laundress, so I guess I have done that many loads of laundry.

Oh goodie, can I quit now?

No? Ok. But I do get a new dryer out of the deal, whoohoo for me. Arriving the end of the week, so I've told the kids that under no circumstances are they to get too many clothes dirty between now and then.

So far, that idea's not working either.

A journey of a thousand miles

Cassie blogged the other day about the nifty pedometer they gave her at her place of employment. She mentioned how she was surprised to discover that she takes many more steps in a day than she thought.

I'm not surprised. And I don't want a pedometer, thankyouverymuch.

I'm sure a pedometer would tell me what I already suspect - I walk many more steps in a day than you'd expect from someone who has a 15-step commute. Trips upstairs to the coffee pot probably account for at least a mile a day.

Then there are the trips to the front door, to see if the mail carrier has been here. That's gotta be another half mile.

And with all those trips to the coffee pot, you can bet I log another mile visiting the...ahem...facilities.

You might think that spending time on the phone would be a stationary activity. It's not. I have a cordless phone, and I walk when I talk - upstairs, downstairs, all around the town. And I spend a lot of time on the phone, so that's a lot of walking.

I walk to my car 47 times a day to drive my children places.

And walking around the house looking for my car keys. And looking for the cordless phone.

Yeah, I walk enough. I don't need a pedometer to tell me so.

It's all in the family

Right now at a picnic shelter down by Caney Creek
You'll find potato salad, hot dogs and baked beans
The whole Wilson family's lined up fillin' their paper plates
They've drove or flown in here from fifteen different states
Well Stanley Wilson says that sixty years ago he knew
That Miss Emma Tucker was the one
Now five generations get together every June
All because two people fell in love

That's a bit of a Brad Paisley song that came out a few years ago. During the summer of 2001, they played it endlessly, (yes, I keep the car radio tuned to a country station, so shoot me) and every time I heard it, I got a little choked up and thought of our annual family reunion. And now, every time we have our family reunion, I think about that song.

Our family - my family - gets together every summer, near the date of my great-grandmother's birthday. It's not an old tradition, not exactly. In the spring of 1997, my nearly 95-year-old great grandmother died, and a decision was made to get the whole family together that summer - and in summers future, if possible.

Every family needs its centre - something to gather 'round and honor, in some way - some kind of glue that ensures that the strands of the family web remain connected. Having had thirteen children, thirty-five grandchildren, fifty-nine great grandchildren and sixteen great great grandchildren before she died, my great grandmother was that centre. And when she was gone - the last of her generation - we knew that we had to come up with a way to stay connected.

So now, every year, we have the family picnic. Not "everyone" comes, every year, but most do try, and I love them for it. It's an important reminder that "no man is an island" - we are a part of something that goes beyond our own parents and children, and stretches to cousins and second cousins, and aunts and uncles. A living, breathing family tree, if you will.

We are all different from one another - we've done different things with our lives, live in different places, have different ideas. But we share things too. And I'm very grateful to be given the opportunity to share my family, and all its quirks and foibles, with my children.

That line of descendants is even larger now, seven years later. There are great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren for whom Gram will never be anything but a name in a book, or a photo. This annual tradition will be their reminder that they're a part of something bigger than themselves, that they are connected to something that started long before they were born, and that will continue as they grow up and have children of their own.

And it's all because two people fell in love.

Something in the air

Spent part of the weekend at a local conference, which also included a very nice banquet dinner. A good time was had by all.

But why, in the name of all that is holy, do these places - conference centres, hotels, etc - find it necessary to set the air conditioning at 40 below? Is it just because they can?

The outside temperatures were much more bearable than in previous years, where you tended to see several hundred people wrapped in blankets in the meeting rooms, then saw them later outside in sleeveless shirts. It was almost as cool outside as it was inside, so at least, having put the jacket on, there was no need to take the jacket off again.

But seriously. It's July. Women should be able to wear those darling strappy dresses and short skirts, and not feel compelled to huddle around the candle centrepiece in the hopes of warming up a bit. I thought ahead, and wore a long-sleeve summer weight sweater and just about froze my tail off anyway.

Hubby had a room for us to relax in, and change for dinner. They were university dorm rooms, which tend to be decorated in early concrete block and start out as very cold and austere places. With the air conditioning, it might as well have been the Arctic. I went to lie (lay?) down for an hour before dinner, and worried that I'd slip in to a hibernating state and not wake up.

This is Canada. It's naturally cold here, much of the time. You'd think, in the few brief months of warm weather we have, that we wouldn't be so inclined to keep our indoors so cold that frost forms on the windows.

It just doesn't make sense.

What about me?

On a mailing list I belong to, there's a thread right now about the whole "once a mom, always a mom" kind of thing. I can certainly relate - my mother has a tendency, sometimes, to admonish me as though I were a three year old.

"Lock your doors before you go to bed."

or

"Don't stay up too late."

or

"Be sure to buckle up."

I don't mind. It's nice to know, in this big, mean world, that there is someone who cares. And she's my mom, after all, and that's what moms do.

However...

That's nothing compared to the way moms - and others - start "caring" when you have children of your own. I remember, some time ago, when my best friend first had her first baby. I wasn't a mother yet, but that didn't stop me from "caring."

"Be careful of the top step," I told her once. "You don't want to drop the baby."

"My mother does that," she said. "'Be careful you don't trip, you might drop the baby.' The implication being, of course, that it's perfectly fine for me to fall flat on my face, just as long as the precious cargo escapes unscathed."

I've thought of that moment many times since then. And she's right - somewhere along the line, people's concern for us becomes a thin smokescreen for concern about our bundles of joy. Every time I mention that I'm heading off to the mall, or any other crowded place, my mother will say, "Keep hold of those girls, we wouldn't want anyone to steal them."

As though I were going to leave them on a bench and hang a sign 'round their necks that says, "Please take me home, my mother is inept."

Or at this time of year, as we head off to the pool, "Make sure the girls have sunscreen on." Perfectly acceptable for me to burn to a crisp though.

In fact, I once suggested taking the girls to Disney World - without the hubby. My mother was aghast. "You can't take them there all by yourself! You might LOSE them"

So yeah, once a mom, always a mom, but once a grandmother, you've got it down to a science. And there's truth in it all, to a degree. For we would lay down on a bed of nails, walk barefoot over hot coals, and face fiery dragons for the sake of our children. So, what's a little sunburn, or a broken nose, if it means the children escape unharmed?

The miracle worker

Those of you noticing a drop in gasoline prices the last few days can thank me. Miraculous though it may sound, all I need to do is fill my nearly empty gas tank all the way to the top, and within hours - hours, mind you! - prices drop nearly a nickel a litre.

You're welcome.

Remembering the words

In earlier comments, Kim alluded to some campfire singing during last week's trip. You see, my father-in-law, who joined our little caravan for a few nights, plays the harmonica. Children and adults alike are always slightly astonished at this, as, without fanfare, the notes suddenly emerge from his direction, and you realize that yes, that's a harmonica, and yes, he knows how to play it.

So quietly at first, and then with more confidence, we sang along with Waltzing Matilda and My Bonnie, and some other familiar tunes. And then we started making requests. He tried, valiantly, to work out the notes to Clementine, and then Oh Susannah, and Land of the Silver Birch. Did a pretty good job, too.

And then things got out of hand.

All of a sudden, we were naming songs that we'd once all sung along to, songs we'd blasted from the radio while cruising around town, songs we'd heard in bars and pubs. Not content to wait for the harmonica, or its reluctant owner, we forged ahead, singing what we could remember, relying on each other to fill in the lyrical gaps.

Keith and I made it mostly through One Tin Soldier, though I'm sure I butchered the tune. I love that song though. I also contributed Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog, which I used to sing to the older daughter when she was a baby. That, and Mercedes Benz are the only things I really know all the words too. (I sound just as off-key as Janis when I sing it, too) Hubby had our attention with his haunting bass singing City of New Orleans, and we all came in on the chorus. We tried American Pie, but our enthusiasm was dampened when a child said, "Isn't that by Madonna?" And we never did quite pull together Rocky Raccoon.

As we grasped for words and notes to the songs we remembered as teenagers, I was struck again by the irony - you see, hubby and his crowd were one of those groups that disregarded the music of their own time, and reached back further to the songs of their older siblings, songs that were popular when they were infants. They listened to the Beatles, and Peter, Paul and Mary, and the Grateful Dead while the rest of us were feathering our hair and bopping to the Bangles. I remember, way back then, thinking them odd for it, but being oddly impressed by it as well. Whatever their reasons may have been, it takes guts to be different.

And here we all were - twenty, yes, twenty years later, with our children gathered around us, singing songs that were thirty years old and more. It was a way of sharing with them a piece of our teen years, without, you know, actually telling them anything about our teen years. (because they're a little too young for that yet too)

The kids weren't completely certain what to make of all this - they were impressed and unsettled at the same time. Here were their parents acting...well, not like usual. (unless you count the admonishments to stay away from the fire, stop waving that stick around, no we're not making smores tonight) The words were like a foreign language to them, a far cry from the Top 40 stations they listen to in the car. But given the opportunity, they gladly showed off with such classics as Down By The Bay and Little Rabbit Froo Froo.

Eventually, the teen declared us all more than a bit weird, and went to bed, and the little ones were tucked in, and the haunting notes of the wordless harmonica filled the night once more.