After work today I went out for a coffee with my long-lost half-step-brother. He’s my mother’s second husband’s step-son from his first wife’s first marriage, which was annulled on the grounds of bigamy. (Still confused? See the illustration of my generation of the family tree vine.)
My half-step-brother’s name was Jeff back then, but he goes by David now. We last saw each other at a very drunken funeral about 17 years ago, and before that I hadn’t seen him since I was about 14 years old. So it was kind of interesting getting together and catching up on the last few decades over a coffee.
Jeff/David has taken on the role of family historian, at least for that wing of the family. Our family has more than the average number of wings. You could say we’re a bit wingy.
He’s acquired the domain name, the photographs, even his grandfather’s diaries and the first draft of his mother’s science fantasy novel. Most importantly, he’s acquired the urge to re-connect with family before it’s too late. This comes, I guess, from watching his mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, and seeing her memories evaporate into thin air.
They put her into a home recently, and now David/Jeff is trying to gather up the elusive fragments of forgettable family facts and write them all down. Before it’s too late.
In terms of his own life, the most interesting thing he told me is that he found a baby fox near his cottage a couple of years ago. He didn’t try to tame it or turn it into a pet, but the fox followed him around, took food from his hand, and sat on his couch. The cottage is on an island, only several acres in size. Eventually the fox swam off the island, presumably in search of a female fox with whom to start a family.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.
I went to a public meeting at City Hall about the drug problem last night. It was put on by the Police Services Board.
For the first hour police outlined the nature of Ottawa’s drug problem from their perspective. Like most things, the problem shifts depending on the angle from which you view it, and this was the police angle.
The police clearly saw this as public education, and it was. But I’m not sure if they really get that their understanding of the problem is only one understanding of the problem, and that there are other equally valid perspectives.
I would have liked to have seen the public education component of the evening represented more fully – a nurse-activist, for example, would have added more dimensionality, and a drug addict could have provided an illuminating contribution to public education.
After the first hour, we moved along to questions and answers. Again, the police fielded most of the questions. Again, the same limitations prevailed.
For example, the list of things the public can do to help included things like “Report sex trade workers to the police,” with the explanation that the police will ‘help’ them. I’m sure the sex trade workers have an entirely different experience and perception of how that works.
These kinds of meetings always seem to attract at least a couple of vigilantes and wingnuts. Last night was no exception.
There was a guy whose ‘question’ was something like this: “The police better get off their butts and do something before we take things into our own hands and start kicking some butt ourselves.” And then he went on for awhile quoting George W. Bush about terrorism and drugs. Pretty tough talk for a little man in a matching yellow shorts set.
There was also a woman named Melissa who lives on York Street who said she found a man who had been murdered in her back yard a few weeks ago, and all of her friends have been mugged at knifepoint. I’m not saying she’s lying, but I’ve lived in this city pretty much all my life, and I don’t recall me or any of my friends ever being mugged.
Of course no public meeting about the scourge of drugs would be complete without a morally outraged granny with her Zip-loc bag of discarded needles and crack pipes, her voice shaking with rage as she shouts about how appalled she is. This tactic might have been effective the first few times – and it still attracts the cameras because a picture of a bag of needles is more interesting than a picture of someone talking – but honestly, the Grandma Drama Queen routine is starting to seem kind of stale and contrived.
I was pleased to see the mayor show up for the second half of the meeting. I was even feeling a bit favourably disposed towards him for making the effort. I wanted him to say something useful that I could quote without poking fun of him.
“C’mon Larry,” I urged under my breath when I saw him take the microphone, “Gimme something to work with here.”
But you know what he said?
“This is not just a fight, this is a war….Sometimes we’re going to have some friendly fire but we WILL win this war.”
“Jesus, Larry,” I sighed to myself, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? A lousy Bush imitation? What am I supposed to do with that?”
Meanwhile, Vern White, the police chief, did move up a notch in my book. He said that drugs were a complex problem and he even mentioned housing, homelessness, mental illness and other concurrent problems. He clearly stated that enforcement on its own was not enough.
Overall I found the meeting depressing because I felt like I was surrounded by people who despise addicts and want them to either just miraculously quit being addicts or else just die.
But then a woman from the Somerset West Health Centre stood up and said that unless we address the root causes of addiction we will never solve this problem. She said all four pillars of an integrated approach were essential: prevention, enforcement, harm reduction and treatment. She said as far as treatment goes, we can’t just call for a youth treatment centre (which is what the mayor and others want) because we have lots of older addicts in this community.
This was so much more measured and humane and pragmatic than much of what I had been hearing all evening, and I felt better after she spoke.
It’ll be interesting to see where Ottawa goes with the problem of drugs. I don’t think it can be solved until we get serious about addressing its root causes like poverty, alienation, untreated mental illness, despair, abuse, and lack of opportunities for some segments of the population. From what I can see, we’re nowhere close to that. We’re still talking about addictions primarily in terms of how inconvenient it is for non-addicts.
Milan, from the local blog a sibilant intake of breath, is conducting an odds-guessing experiment and he needs more guessers.
Last night, by the way, I kept waking up and thinking “What does sibilant mean?” I’ve been visiting Milan’s blog for a couple of weeks now, but for some reason it never occurred to me to wonder about this until the middle of last night. Around 2:00 in the morning I decided it meant a hissing sound. But then I tried to make a hissing sound while inhaling and couldn’t do it, so I figured I must be mistaken.
I woke up again at 3:30 and pondered it some more, and almost got up and googled it, but Duncan had me pinned firmly to the mattress, so I didn’t. (Subsequent googling at a more respectable hour determined I was on the right track with the hissing thing.)
When I was a little kid I believed we lived inside the earth, along with the sun and the sky and so on. Gravity kept us from falling all the way through the sky to China. I was disabused of this notion (quite mercilessly, as I recall) when I put my hand up in class one day and asked how rockets penetrate the earth’s crust.
I believed that every time I heard a song on the radio, the musician or band was actually at the radio station at that moment, playing that song.
I believed that people with full-time jobs worked 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I couldn’t figure out how they managed to keep going without any sleep.
I believed that returning books to the library late was illegal; that’s why you got fined. I was so frightened the first time I brought a library book back late. I was eight. The book was a day late. The fine was a nickel. I was so relieved when the librarian took my nickel and smiled and that was the end of it: I wasn’t in trouble. She didn’t call the police or my mom.
I believed that adults were always right. Always. Without exception. Every single adult was always right, by virtue of the fact that they were adults. This caused me some confusion when adults disagreed, which in turn led to me having to establish a hierarchy of adults in case of conflict. My mom was at the top.
Those are some of the things I believed when I was a little kid. What did you believe when you were a little kid?
I survived the first week of the new regime and I believe I’ve turned the corner. I feel better: my cold is gone and some of my muscles don’t hurt anymore.
I learned this week that it takes human beings 21 to 28 days to establish a new habit, but it only takes cats four days. Duncan was wide awake and ready to kick the day into action at 5:00 this morning. No amount of reasoning, cuddling, or rolling away from him could convince him that Saturday is different. He just kept licking my face and pawing my eyeballs and talking until I got up.
I didn’t really mind – it’s a gorgeous day and we’re expecting 26 sunny degrees. It’s kind of weird how we went straight from parkas into shorts, isn’t it?
First thing I did (after feeding the cat, of course) was go to the corner store for half-and-half. Last night I made myself a nice cup of coffee so I could try to stay awake till the sun went down. Unfortunately I had to throw it out because the cream was bad. Is it just me or does everybody’s cream go bad before the expiry date? How come milk’s expiry date is only a week or two in the future, but cream’s is an overly optimistic month or two? This time my cream went bad 16 days early, but sometimes it’s as much as a month. I’m conscientious about refrigerating it too – it never sits out on the counter.
About this whole business of waking up at 5:00 a.m. in order to walk for an hour and twenty minutes to get to the gym so I can work out for an hour before work: what I want to know is why didn’t you guys try to stop me??
I’m exhausted. I’m in pain. Did you know there are muscles in your armpits? Well there are. And when they hurt, they hurt a lot. My shoulders hurt, my chest hurts, my legs, my neck, my triceps, my biceps, everything hurts. I can’t even blow my nose without wincing from the muscle pain.
I’m hanging in there though. I feel alternately virtuous and ridiculous.
So far I’ve managed to get up all three days at 5:00 and stumble downtown through the dark streets with only bunnies and raccoons for company. I’ve gone to Body Pump class twice, and done a weights circuit, and attended a weight machine orientation session. The trainer who conducted the orientation session kept poking and squeezing me.
“How come your muscles are already firm?” she asked.
“Rigor mortis,” I replied.
I think they’re taught to find things to compliment people about in the early days when you join, even if they have to make it up. Legislation gives you a 10-day cooling off period in which you can change your mind and quit without penalty, so I suspect the compliments will taper off in about a week. So far the staff have told me I’m firm, they like my shirt, and blue looks good on me.
By the way, it’s true what they say about everybody’s ass looks good in Lululemon pants. In BodyPump there’s this routine where you bend over and stick your ass out and squeeze your butt cheeks, over and over and over again, and the Lululemon asses look better than the non-Lululemon asses.
My dishes and laundry are piling up and the house is messy. It’s not that I ever spent much time doing housework, but now I’m not spending any time on it. I’m exhausted when I get home, and I’m going to bed at 10:00 instead of 11:00.
My son was over last night for dinner, wine and another income tax session. It was a lot of fun doing taxes with him, but I didn’t get to bed until 10:30.
Duncan had a bad dream during the night too. We were all cuddled up and cozy and asleep when he suddenly hit the eject button. He flew straight up in the air and took off. I’ve got two sets of scratches: this one’s on my lower arm, and is from his hind foot. The other one’s on my shoulder and is from his front foot.
We both woke up freaking out. He didn’t come back to bed for awhile after that, and I lay there wondering what cats think when they wake up from dreams. Do they think whatever they dreamed about really happened? Or do they understand it wasn’t real? Poor Duncan. I hope he understands it was only a dream.
Next thing I knew it was 5:00 and the alarm was beeping. I almost caved in and went back to sleep. But I didn’t. I’m a trooper. I refuse to crash and burn in the first week.
Darren McEwen, of the Apply Liberally blog, has created a YouTube video summarizing the recent events involving his blog, the Mayor’s son, the Mayor, the CBC reporter, and the recording device that reportedly stymied the high tech mayor.
The mayor seems a little tightly wrapped these days, eh?
Bob from Flacklife lists some of the lowlights of Larry O’Brien’s career as mayor today, finishing up with the Mayor’s temper tantrum yesterday.
It seems the Mayor’s grown son, Michael, was poking around in the blogosphere and didn’t like some of the things he read about his daddy. He left some allegedly insulting comments on Apply-Liberally’s blog.
Later, during an interview, a CBC reporter asked the mayor about those comments, and the mayor blew up, said some things, and then attempted to erase the reporter’s tape.
Apparently Michael doesn’t like people criticizing his father and Larry doesn’t like people criticizing his son, which could be seen as noble if it weren’t so naive.
One might think that Larry should have understood when he took the job that he was removing himself and his family from a life of relative obscurity.
One might also think that a reasonably intelligent man in his 20s should be able to understand that every citizen of this city has the right and the responsibility to question whether the mayor is doing a good job.
The whole family should know by now that when any one of them steps into the limelight by doing something stupid, especially in the mayor’s defence, the rest of us are not going to politely avert our eyes to spare them the embarrassment they’re causing one another.
I once went seven years – 1995 to 2002 – without a single illness. Not a cold, not a flu, nothing.
But that was then and this is now. Now I’ve got a head cold and the epicenter feels like it is centred in my left eye. Have you ever had that? It’s a first for me.
I keep going and looking in the mirror to see if I look as bad as I feel, and I don’t. Thank God. I expect the eye to look all bloodshot and rheumy, but it doesn’t. It just looks surprised.
I joined the gym today and this is my plan: Get up at 5:00 every weekday morning, leave the house at 5:30, walk downtown to the gym, change, work out for an hour, shower, and be at the office by 8:15.
I know. It’s crazy.
It takes 21 days for most people to adopt and entrench a new habit, but 27 days for me because of some quirk of personality that the Fly Lady identified. I have enough willpower to adhere to this workout schedule for a week. That leaves me with a deficit of 20 days. Not only that, but I’m going away for five days at the beginning of May, so even if I adhere to the schedule until then, it’s not long enough to entrench the habit. (This doesn’t mean I can’t do it; just that it won’t be easy.)
I know at least half of you are thinking I should just go to the gym two or three mornings a week instead of five. I thought of that. But wouldn’t it be even harder to entrench the habit of waking up at 5:00 a.m. every other day?
Anyway, I start tomorrow. Wish me luck. I hope I don’t just shut the alarm clock off at 5:00 and wimp out because of the cold in my eye. Speaking of which, I just had a bath with eucalyptus oil in it and it smelled really good but maybe you’re not supposed to put essential oils in your bath water…my skin is burning. (Don’t mind me. I have a tendency to turn into a bit of a hypochondriac when I’m sick.)
Aside from that, the highlight of my day was that Spring sprung and opened up my favourite walking route to work. For almost five months, I’ve had to take the pragmatic route rather than the scenic one, because the sidewalks on the scenic route don’t get plowed.
But today enough snow had melted that I was able to walk through the Experimental Farm and the Aboretum and then up the O-Train path. It made me very happy to be able to walk this route again and pretend I was in the country.
Here are some of the signs of spring I saw along the way:
The Canada Geese have started coming home!
There’s a new lake on the Farm.
The Canada Geese like the new lake on the Farm:
I used to think earthworms came out of the ground because they loved the rain so much. But no. They do it so they won’t drown when the earth is saturated. Poor refugee worms.
This is the Dalhousie Community Centre garden on Somerset Street. I could tell this morning that Ida had been in there cleaning it up, and now there are shoots!
The forecast for the rest of the week is phenomenal. The highs are climbing steadily throughout the week till Friday, when it will be twenty degrees.
Happy Spring to all of us – we definitely earned it this year!
You won’t believe how close to done this sweater was before I completely screwed it up. Seriously. I was sewing on the last button. I was about 8 seconds from finishing the sweater.
Earlier today I was telling someone about this baby sweater and I mentioned that I wasn’t entirely happy with my colour choices. The original Snake Charmer sweater, which was designed and knit by the Yarn Harlot, is in my favourite shade of blue. But blue wasn’t available when I bought the yarn and I thought a fresh vibrant spring green would be perfect.
Sometimes colours look better in the store than they do in real life. Once I started knitting it I realized it wasn’t so much a fresh spring green as it was an intense and unnatural lime green.
“But that’s okay,” I said to myself, “The snakes will subdue it.”
You know you’re in trouble when you say things like that to yourself.
When it came time to knit the snakes, I realized they had to be in fairly intense colours themselves if they were going to stand a chance against that lime green background. And, in case you didn’t know, every other colour in the spectrum clashes with lime green.
The snakes may have subdued the sweater a little bit, but I still wasn’t entirely happy with it. I was going to post it on here and ask you guys what you thought about the riotous explosion of colours. I wanted your honest opinions about whether it was too tacky. But that was before the disaster struck.
First I needed a model.
Papa Bear tried it on, but the sweater was too small for Papa Bear.
So one of the Boudoir Dolls tried it on, but it was too big for her.
I looked around for another volunteer somewhere between Papa Bear’s and Boudoir’s size. Aha!
And then I remembered that I hadn’t yet sewn on the buttons. Just three little buttons. I sewed the first one on, using strands of the original lime green yarn. Lovely. I sewed the second one on. Perfect. I sewed the third one on. The yarn was a little bunchy looking. I decided, in the interests of perfectionism, to remove the button and sew it on better.
That’s when I cut the yarn. Only it wasn’t the button yarn. It was the sweater yarn. It left a gaping hole in the sweater which is destined to travel and unravel until the sweater is just a pile of yarn and snakes.
My knitting guru is on vacation. I won’t see her for a week and I don’t trust myself not to touch the sweater for that long. I know I’ll start messing with it and making it worse. Besides, it’s for Cynthia’s baby and she’s due any day now. (The rest of you new parents can breathe a sigh of relief that this one’s not for you.)
This is weird, but now that I’ve ruined it, I’ve decided I love the sweater and the colours. Does anyone know how I can salvage it?
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