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Posted by zoom! on August 3, 2009, at 11:26 am |
Yesterday we celebrated the birthdays of my niece and nephew – Mudmama’s kids – who are visiting from Nova Scotia.
My favourite line from the day came from Wild Thing, who is actually a very sweet little thing.
I forget exactly what he said, but it was while we were filling our plates at the counter. He said something uncharacteristically impolite, like “Get out of my way.”
Mudmama said “Excuse me?”
“I wasn’t really saying ‘Get out my way,'” said Wild Thing sweetly, “I was just pretending to say it.”
I’m going to use that line someday.
Here’s my favourite picture of the day. This is Sprout, eating strawberry shortcake.
And here he is showing GC his belly.
Speaking of showing GC your belly, GC relates the following story which happened a couple of days ago when he popped in to visit someone with a seven-year-old son. We’ll call that person Buck, and we’ll call the kid Bubba.
Buck showed GC his new drill. “It’s great,” he said, “Holds a charge for 18 hours!”
Then he laid the drill down on the counter. Bubba picked it up, stuck it in his belly button, and squeezed the trigger.
“EEEEEEEEEE!!!” screamed the drill.
“STOP!” screamed GC.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” laughed Bubba.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” chuckled Buck.
“Maybe you shouldn’t let him play with power tools,” said GC.
“Oh, he’ll learn his lesson one of these days,” grinned Buck, “When it catches.”
In other news, did you see the sun is shining? I haven’t much noticed the weather this summer, since I hardly ever leave my couch. If it weren’t for Facebook status updates and giant zucchinis, I probably wouldn’t even know this is the first sunny day this summer.
This week promises to be interesting. Wednesday is GC’s birthday! We’re still thinking about how exactly to celebrate it. It’s also the day Ex-Mayor-Larry’s verdict will be handed down. Unfortunately I can’t be in the courtroom for that, since I have my first appointment with the neurosurgeon that morning. Hopefully he’ll look at my MRI report and tell me he can fix my back and legs. Soon.
Thursday I’m having my second, and hopefully last, cancer surgery. After that I’ll be turned over to the oncologists for whatever further treatment is deemed advisable.
I think it’s going to be an excellent week for me, and hopefully for you too.
Posted by zoom! on August 1, 2009, at 4:05 pm |
GC and I went to Gilles and Annie’s for a BBQ last night. It was yummy. BBQ’d everything! Steak and chicken and sausages and zucchini, and stuff that wasn’t bbq’d too, like pasta salad and garden salad and delicious bread and corn on the cob and pink girly drinks and wine and strawberries. It was soooo good, and as you know there’s nothing better than good food and good conversation.
While we were there we got to see state-of-the-art TV with HD and Bluetooth and 1080 or something like that. There really IS a difference between that and a big ol’ clunky refurbished Cargo Xpress TV with rabbit ears. It was practically 3D. We only watched for a minute, just so we could see the difference for ourselves, but I have to say I was impressed. Not impressed enough to get a TV, but impressed enough that if they ever invite me over to watch something spectacular like a solar landing, I’m going.
Gilles and Annie have three well-loved and well-served cats. They all have interesting eating habits. Minnie eats her cream cheese with a hypodermic needle sticking out of her shoulder. Tommy dips his paws into his wet food bowl and then licks the food off his paws. Daisy May lies down beside her bowl and flicks kibbles out of her bowl with her paw, and eats each one before flicking the next one.
Duncan’s eating habits are pretty ordinary by comparison, although he does celebrate Tuna Fish Tuesday by sharing a tin of tuna fish with GC every Tuesday. (More accurately, GC shares a tin of tuna fish with Duncan every Tuesday. Duncan’s not as generous as GC.)
My old dog Sam had one or two food-related idiosyncrasies. I’d fill up his dish and he’d sit there and look at me until I said “Eat, eat, it’s good for you!” in an Italian accent. Then he’d lie down and eat.
GC’s dog, on the other hand, doesn’t waste any time on ceremony. He plunges head-first into his bowl and hoovers the entire contents within seconds.
What about your pets? Do they have any unusual table manners?
Posted by zoom! on July 30, 2009, at 12:07 pm |
Getting cancer – or perhaps more accurately, living with cancer – has really de-mystified the disease for me, and stripped it of its psychological power. It’s no longer the boogeyman it once was.
Even so, I can tell it’s still the boogeyman for a couple of my friends, who seem uncomfortable with the fact I have cancer. I’m deducing this from the fact that they’ve completely avoided contact with me since I got diagnosed. I know they know I’ve got cancer, and they know I know they know.
The thing is, I think I know how they feel. They don’t know what to say, so rather than risk saying the wrong thing, they say nothing. And in order to say nothing, they have to avoid me.
I think I’ve been in that position myself. I can’t remember it specifically, but I feel so tuned into how I imagine they’re feeling that I think I must have experienced it myself.
Something I’ve learned from all this is that there really aren’t that many wrong things to say or do. I can’t speak for everybody with cancer obviously, but here are my tips for people who aren’t sure how to relate to friends with cancer. (This is probably transferable to other situations, such as other diseases or a death in the family.)
Things not to do
1. Don’t avoid the person.
2. Don’t avoid the subject.
3. Don’t feel you have to think of something profoundly meaningful to say.
4. Don’t feel you have to cheer the person up.
5. Don’t minimize the disease or the treatment.
6. Don’t talk about all the people you know who have died from your friend’s newly diagnosed disease.
7. Don’t try to sell her life insurance or a pre-paid funeral.
Things to do
1. Acknowledge the cancer and the fact that it sucks. This can be as simple as “I heard you have cancer. I’m so sorry.”
2. Let her know you care. You can do this explicitly with words, or implicitly with small gifts or cards or food or offers of help.
3. Generic offers of help are okay, but concrete offers are more useful. For example “Can I drive you to your appointment on Tuesday?” is better than “If there’s ever anything I can do…”
4. The hardest part is when the diagnosis is new and overwhelming and there are still so many looming unknowns in the equation. Gifts of distraction are especially helpful at this time: movies, books, wine, humour, escapist pursuits.
5. Remember she’s still the same person she used to be. Cancer is life-altering, but it doesn’t change everything. You can still talk about all the stuff you used to talk about.
6. If you really don’t know what to say, tell her you really don’t know what to say. It’s infinitely better than saying nothing.
7. If you’ve avoided her for too long already and you don’t know how to gracefully ease your way back into her life, just jump back in wherever you are, explain you didn’t know what to say (or whatever the case may be), and go forward. She’ll be good with that.
Did I miss anything?
Posted by zoom! on July 28, 2009, at 12:54 pm |
Did you know that Best Buy expects you to negotiate with them? According to their sales manager, they do. Apparently it’s like going to a car dealership or a garage sale or an antique store. Items are overpriced with the expectation that you’ll negotiate a lower price.
I didn’t know this when I bought my MacBook there a few weeks ago.
My MacBook was discounted by 5% because it was an “open box” sale – someone had bought and returned this laptop. It was also discounted a little because the new generation of MacBooks had just come out, thereby outdating this slightly older model. There was a price sticker on the box, reflecting these two discounts, and that’s the price I paid.
At the same time, I purchased what I assumed was genuine Apple Care – an extended warranty through the manufacturer. It cost $299 for three years.
Last week I was talking to my brother Michael and he asked if I was sure I’d bought Apple Care, and not Best Buy’s extended warranty, which is the same price but not as good. I was pretty sure I had, but I was wrong. Turns out I paid $299 for Best Buy’s extended warranty.
GC and I went to Best Buy on Saturday night to convert the Best Buy extended warranty into an Apple Care warranty.
The greeter summoned the sales manager, Mark, to talk to us. I’m not going to go into the whole discussion, which took about 20 minutes and got a little heated.
Let’s just say Mark was reluctant to refund my $299, because the extended warranty was part of a ‘negotiated package.’ And let’s just say GC and I were completely blown away that this was considered a ‘negotiated package’ when we hadn’t even known Best Buy’s prices were negotiable.
“What are you saying – it’s like buying a car?” asked GC.
“All stores are like that now,” said Mark.
“In that case,” said GC, “Don’t we feel like idiots for having paid the sticker price?”
“I’m blogging this,” I said.
Finally – after disappearing into a back room to call Rosa (the Mac person who, he insisted, personally remembers every customer and the specific details of every single sale she has ever negotiated, bar none) – Mark returned and said he would refund my $299. But he thought we were making a mistake, because in his opinion Best Buy’s extended warranty is better than Apple Care.
We thanked him, and then wandered about the store checking out prices on surge protectors and the Coraline movie. A little while later Mark came looking for us again. He said he felt bad that we were left feeling like idiots for not having negotiated the price of the MacBook in the first place. Therefore, if I wanted to keep the Best Buy extended warranty, he would refund $150 to me.
I accepted his offer and I felt pretty good about it too. All’s well that ends well.
I decided to blog about it anyway, because I think it’s important that Best Buy’s customers know that Best Buy’s products are priced with the expectation that you’re going to negotiate. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s only fair if the customer knows.
Posted by zoom! on July 27, 2009, at 10:58 am |
Remember when I blogged about writing to my city councilor, Maria McRae, about the Carlington Prostitution Sweep, which resulted in two men and two women being charged with prostitution-related offenses, but only the women were publicly named? Well. Check this out. GC says I’m changing the world, one iota at a time.
 Astronaut Love Triangle Speaking of changing the world, do you know about Luthiers Without Borders? They repair stringed instruments for children in developing countries. I attended a house benefit concert yesterday in which the Astronaut Love Triangle performed, with donations accepted for Luthiers Without Borders.
 Astronaut Love Triangle If you ever get a chance to see the Astronaut Love Triangle live, go! They are one of Ottawa’s best kept cultural secrets. I don’t know quite how to categorize them. Performance art? Concept art? Kind of a music-theatre-comedy fusion troupe? It’s like really good children’s programming for contemporary grown-ups with short attention spans, featuring a fast-paced sequence of short skits and songs and active poetry, and everything is infused with humour, including the costumes and puppets and all the trippy props.
 The Triangle At any rate, this witty and charming quartet is incredibly cute, fiendishly clever and thoroughly entertaining. My favourite pieces were Side Effects, Ponzi, and Cyberstalking Blues. But I loved every single thing they did. My only criticism is that I didn’t want it to end and it ended.
The Triangle had offered to come over and do a private performance just for me and GC in my living room because of my mobility issues. But I declined their very generous offer since I actually can get around with GC’s help, and I didn’t want to clean my living room. So I went to the (semi) public performance, and they had a special chair set up just for me: a Zoom airline seat! I meant to get a picture, but I was sitting on it when I thought of it and later I forgot.
 Zoom Pillow by Aggie And look! Aggie made a Zoom cushion, just for me! Isn’t it sweet? I love it. Thanks Aggie!
Posted by zoom! on July 26, 2009, at 10:03 am |
1. The Ebay auction for the Great Big Zucchini in the Little Wee Bikini is ending today around noon. There have been four bids so far, with the current bid standing at $2.22. People! At $1.79 a pound, this zucchini is worth at least $9.12! Not to mention the original bikini by Ottawa designer Julia Ringma, which is priceless!
2. Speaking of giant zucchinis, Grace dug up this picture of herself and her giant zucchini from back in the day. My zucchini and I think Grace and her zucchini are adorable.
3. Blog Out Loud Ottawa was held on Thursday night at Raw Sugar, and it was a lot of fun. I loved listening to the stories. Some of them were hilarious, and others were sweet. If you wish you could have been there, the full list of links to the original blog posts is on the BOLO blog. Many thanks to XUP who was kind enough to share her top-notch public speaking skills with me. She did a terrific job of reading my post, The Dead Dave Wall, for me. (Her own post, Tomato Soup, delivered in a a slightly sultry, slightly southern accent, was superb.)
Okay, I have to go stake some giant tomato plants now, and then go eat a bowl of grizzled tendons or something at Dim Sum. Have yourselves an excellent Sunday, and don’t forget to bid on that zucchini before noon. You know you want it!
P.S. Happy Birthday Dad!
Posted by zoom! on July 25, 2009, at 3:36 pm |
I’ve had the most emotional day today, and it’s only 3:00 in the afternoon.
First, we went to the funeral. It was held in a lovely, humble little church. I’ve always felt some affinity with this church, even though I’m not a church-goer. It’s a downtown church that reaches out to street people, and it always has interesting or inspirational quotes in a little box out front. Right now it says “The three most important phrases in any family are “I love you,” “You are beautiful,” and “Please forgive me.”
The service was lovely. There was harp music so sweet it would have made me cry even if I wasn’t at a funeral. My friend wrote and delivered a deeply moving eulogy for his sister, focusing on good memories like their shared childhood language, and her personal qualities, such as her creativity and her spirituality, and the way she could communicate with children and the fact that she collected stray cats. I cried.
Afterwards, GC and I stopped into Irene’s for a bite to eat, and I was suddenly and unexpectedly reunited with a very, very dear friend whom I hadn’t seen for many years. We were best friends for 15 years, but our friendship ended because of depression. She moved away and severed all ties. There’s more to it than that, but I can’t really go into it, and besides, that’s what it all boils down to anyway. Depression.
The friendship may have been over, but I never stopped loving her all these years.
Anyway, GC and I were drinking coffee in Irene’s, and then John – my son’s father – came over and said “You’ll never guess who’s out back on the patio.”
So we went out there, and there she was, looking exactly like I remembered her. She stood up and we hugged each other really tight for a long time and we both cried. And then we all sat down at another table and spent an hour or two drinking beer and eating burgers and talking. It was as if ten years hadn’t gone by at all. It was as if no time had gone by.
We’re going for dim sum tomorrow, a whole gang of us. I hate dim sum, but I’m really looking forward to it.
Posted by zoom! on July 24, 2009, at 4:58 pm |
I’m thinking today about an Ottawa woman who died last weekend after a 20-year struggle with drugs. My heart goes out to her family, who never gave up hope until last weekend. I wish them peace.
Lens – the New York Times photojournalism blog – showcased Ottawa photographer Tony Fouhse’s crack user series on Wednesday. These photographs were all taken on a street corner in Ottawa’s Byward Market.
The images are haunting. I’ve looked at them many times over the past year or so. In some of them, all I can see is the addiction. But in others, I can see right through the addiction to the human being beneath it.
The blog comments are interesting too – in both positive and negative ways. Definitely worth a read.
Posted by zoom! on July 23, 2009, at 12:34 pm |
Today I have a very special treat to share with you. It comes from my garden.
Check it out. It’s a Really Big Zucchini.
 Zoom and the Really Big Zucchini
Is that amazing or what?
We didn’t visit the garden for four days and this is what happened. A three inch zucchini grew to 19 inches! At its fattest point it’s 13.5 inches in circumference! It weighs just over five pounds! GC went to the grocery store to find out how much it’s worth, and at $1.79 a pound this is a $9.12 zucchini!
I googled big zucchinis to see if ours broke any records, but the record-setter was actually 13 times bigger. It was grown by Bernard Lavery, author of How to Grow Giant Vegetables. I couldn’t find a picture of his giant zucchini, but here he is with his marrow.
 Bernard Lavery and his 109 pound marrow But still. Our zucchini is a Really Big Zucchini.
So what do you do with a giant zucchini? You drive around town with it and flash it at other drivers and pedestrians. You let GC hoist it up over his head and parade around his neighbourhood. You bask in the glow of his neighbours’ astonishment and praise. And then you take it to your favourite seamstress and ask her to make you a zucchini bikini. Which, of course, she does without even batting an eye, because that’s the kind of person she is, which is why she’s your favourite seamstress in the first place.
Then you take 43 pictures of your Really Big Zucchini in its Zucchini Bikini, none of which do it justice.
 Zucchini Bikini Then you take a picture of it with your giant cat, for scale. But they kind of cancel out each other’s giantness, don’t they?
 Giant Cat Meets Giant Zucchini Then you blog about it, making a special point of thanking your loyal readers for warning you, two months ago, to plant only one zucchini plant. That was excellent advice. That one zucchini plant is taking over the world. I predict that by late August, it’ll be giving this zucchini plant a run for its money:
 Giant Irish Zucchini Plant Last but not least, you put your giant zucchini and its little bikini on Ebay.
Posted by zoom! on July 22, 2009, at 6:01 pm |
A few months ago I blogged about the potentially bloggable new neighbours who had just moved in next door. I never did blog about them again, and now they’re in the process of moving out.
This family consists of two 23-year-old parents with five children aged 7, 4, 3, 2, and 8 months. I’ve actually grown kind of fond of them over the six months they’ve lived on the other side of the wall. Sure, it’s noisy, but most of the noise has been happy noise.
She’s pretty quiet, actually, and the kids mostly make normal kid noises: laughing, playing, rough-housing, occasionally crying. But him? He runs that household at the top of his lungs. Even when he’s in a good mood, he’s shouting and hollering. PUT YOUR SHOES ON! GO TO BED! COME EAT YOUR LUNCH! DON’T HIT YOUR BROTHER! GET DRESSED! LET’S GO TO THE PARK! GET BACK TO BED! BE QUIET!
For months I’ve been wondering why he yells everything like a drill sergeant. I know parents yell at their kids. I yelled at my kid occasionally too, but for emphasis, not for normal conversation.
Anyway, last weekend it all became crystal clear because his mother came and babysat the kids for a couple of days.
She was ten times worse than him! The moment she arrived she started hollering at those kids and she didn’t stop until fifteen minutes after she left. Not only that, but she brought a bunch of yappy little dogs with her, and she hollered at them all weekend too. And a brooding sort of man, who never said much of anything but looked like he was doing a slow simmer in the back yard all weekend.
She yelled at the kids to EAT YOUR GODDAM CHEERIOS! PUT AWAY YOUR FRIGGIN’ TOYS! WHERE’S YOUR BROTHER GONE THIS TIME? WHO SHIT? I DON’T CARE WHO STARTED IT, YOU BOTH STOP IT RIGHT FUCKIN’ NOW! WHO LOVES YOU? NANA LOVES YOU, THAT’S WHO! TAKE THAT OUT OF YOUR FRIGGIN’ MOUTH!
There was some weird stuff too, like when she argued for a very long time with the three-year-old about whose house it was. IT IS NOT YOUR HOUSE, IT’S NANA’S HOUSE! NO IT’S NOT, IT’S NANA’S HOUSE! NANA LIVES HERE, NOT YOU! IT’S NANA’S HOUSE!
Now all this has got me wondering about culture and parenting. Obviously my neighbour learned how to parent from his mother. You can tell they both love the kids, and they’re fully engaged with them, but their parenting style seems quite aggressive to me. And the kids seem to roll with it. They don’t seem traumatized by all that yelling. They come across as happy, healthy, well-adjusted little kids.
I think my kid would have been completely undone if I’d yelled at him like that all the time.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine told me about how his daughter-in-law was parenting his grandchildren. He described a parenting style very similar to my neighbour’s. He said she loved the kids but she always seemed angry at them. And he told me that the rest of her family shares that parenting style.
“It’s a French-Canadian thing,” he said, “My ex-wife was French-Canadian and she was exactly the same with our kids. Always yelling at them.”
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but my next-door neighbour and his mother are French-Canadian too.
Obviously this parenting style wouldn’t be universal among French-Canadians, but do you think it’s possible it’s more prevalent among them? And if so, how come?
How would you describe your own parenting style? (Or, if you don’t have kids, the parenting style you think you would have if you did have kids…)
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