Yes, it's all really funny till someone gets hurt

Smart ass anti-baby comedy sketches inc.

So we were talking about it this evening, in that part of the evening when we stand in the kitchen after work drinking tea and telling each other what really just friggin' sucked about the day.


What really sucked about my day (and it was a sucky day) was that my friends got turned down for adoption after YEARS of filling out stupid forms and undergoing stupid tests.


None of us could believe it.

Himself couldn't believe it.  And he doesn't even know them.

When you think of all the babies in the world that are hurtin' and starvin' and lonely and scared and your friends want to raise one, and there's some asshole somewhere says they can't.... that sucks, man.


YUP.


Me, I had spent an hour or so last night looking at footage of George Carlin and Bill Hicks on YouTube, including their 'why would you bring a child into the world' sketches (see the link under the picture), which always make me laugh because it's exactly how I feel about the whole children business.  But last night, while I was watching the video I happened to think of those same friends and how determined they were to have a child despite all the hurdles.  And I felt a little surge of happiness because finally it seemed they were on the back straight to their dream.

And then they get SHAFTED by some bureaucrat today.

This is a trip down the rabbit hole on so many levels.

On the first level, there is the macro argument.  There are millions of children in the world who need love and parenting.  There are people who want to parent.  It should be possible to match them up.

Except it seems to be nigh on impossible, such are the levels of perfection that prospective adopters must reach.  Not just in Ireland.  I have friends here in Canada jumping through  similar hoops. But at least you can be a bit eccentric and still have a chance.

In Ireland, you have to be perfect.  Heterosexual.  Married.  Conformist.  Boring.  


Normal.

But that is necessary, they say, in order for children to be safe.  We must make sure that the people in charge of them are not psychopathic or perverted or dangerous to the child in any way.


R.E.S.I.D.E.N.T.I.A.L. S.C.H.O.O.L.S.


....yes, old schtick... it's because of that that the rules are so strict now.

Hmm.  Tell that to the Nigerian children who are accused of witchcraft and abandoned by their communities, usually on the authority of the caring US and Canadian Pentacostal missionaries working in those villages.  I don't see the combined adoption personnel of the world working themselves up into a frenzy of tongues about that issue.

Yes I know hard cases make bad law.  I don't friggin care.

But let's pull the lens in a bit.

Ireland's Health Service Executive.  Responsible for adoption procedures and for looking after children in care.

Here's a snippet I found on the Internet:

The Health Service Executive now believes that approximately 200 children have died in state care in the last ten years.  The figures are emerging as part of a nationwide probe and are ten times greater than the previously admitted number of deaths - the HSE had said that 23 children had died in care.... A senior figure in the HSE told The Sunday Business Post that it still did not know the precise number of children that had died while in care, but it was feared that the true tally could be in the order of 200. - Sunday Business Post, May 2010

 

Actually, the final audited figure was less than 200.  But that's not the point.  

 

There are two points of immediate relevance:

 

1. Children died in the care of the HSE, which proves they are not perfect.

2. The HSE did not know (until a month ago) how many children had died in its care in the last decade, which proves they are incompetent.

 

But that imperfection and incompetence doesn't stop them acting as judge and jury on honest, hard-working people who just want to have a kid and be a family.  That doesn't stop them defining what it is to be a good parent.

Let's pull the lens in a bit more.

If you are lucky enough to have all the right bits in place and find a man who has all the right bits and bobs in place and functioning efficiently, you can lie back or sit up or whatever, and have a bit of fun and slap and tickle as they say and then, bob's your father's brother, if the day's right, baby magic happens.

If you are lucky enough to have that gift of life, you can be a sociopathic liar, a thieving whore, a child-beating egomaniac. It doesn't matter.  You can just pop one out whenever you want.  Or pair up with someone who can pop one out for you.

If you are not lucky and try to adopt, you will fail.

If you are lucky enough to have that gift of life, and you are a good person but you have struggles in life, say... a brief period of mental health instability ... you can stay home with baby and try to get better and get some limited support from the state. Then, if you fight real hard, you can get some help to go to school or get yourself back into the workforce.

If you are not lucky, forget about adopting.  You are not normal enough to be a parent.

If you are lucky enough to have that gift of life, and the father/ mother of said child runs away and leaves you and your child in the lurch financially, you can get the government to track him/ her down and make him/ her pay you for up to 22 years, at no cost to yourself.

If you are not lucky, and you did any of those things ever, you would not be allowed to adopt.

 

If you are lucky enough to have that gift of life, you can injure your child severely and more than once before anyone will even investigate.  And even then, it would be a long time before your child was taken away from you.

If you are not lucky, you are prejudged on your disposition and ability 'to keep a child safe'.

Speaking of prejudged, let's pull the lens in a bit more.

If you are childless, you are prejudged automatically.  Unconsciously.  That little grimace when they ask you about your children.

Poor woman.

Can't.

Selfish bitch.

Won't.

One or the other.

You can tell by the grimace.

 

Either way, you are not really whole.  

 

Not normal.

A cause for amusement or horror on the part of the ignorant of those who can just pop one out whenever.

Some of us can't and spend our lives mourning and trying.

Some of us won't and spend our lives just mourning.

Some of us won't and don't give a shit until the grimace happens.

None of it is fair.  You're prejudged if you try and you're prejudged if you don't try.

This week I was amused and a little angry that the now pregnant ongoing carbuncle on my otherwise deliriously happy existence felt yet again that my childlessness was a stick which which I could be beaten relentlessly.  

 

See, according to her, my childlessness is proof that I am a bad parent.  That I must be kept away from her children at all costs.  Lest I infect them with my selfishness.

 

The social worker's report on her 'incident' is sealed, so I can't prove that she is a bad parent. Nor am I interested in pursuing such malevolent thoughts.  Life being too precious and her children too fond of her and all that.

But after today, I am not amused and very angry because the thought has struck me that her outburst is really just the sociopath's verbalisation of what all those child-bearing people think of us barren wans.

Really think of us, deep down inside, near their brimming with life wombs.

I can think of no other explanation that makes sense.

In the meantime, she can pop one out whenever she wants, without a licence or a psych. report.

And my friends can't.

 

So how do we fix this?

Do we prejudge everyone?

Or do we take a benchmark of real parents and apply those standards to prospective ones?

I don't know.  Any argument on this will be battered with the child protection argument.

I just don't understand how an organization that doesn't even know how many kids died in its care can even begin to use that one.

Maybe we should start with the word compassion.  In all its imperfections.

Compassion for bad parents.

Compassion for non-parents.

Compassion for would-be parents.

Compassion for parents that are a little different to us in whatever way.

Compassion for non-parents that are wildly different in every way.

Compassion for fantastic parents having a bad day.

Compassion for children who need parents.

The Lawrencetown worm massacre

It rained all day today which was good because the garden needed it, but bad because I didn't have my brain in gear and so left my umbrella in the car.  So did everyone else on the bus apparently, because when the rain burst onto the bus windows as we trundled over the bridge, everyone looked up from their book or paper and mouthed 'shit' simultaneously.

Then ran for cover when we had to get off a minute later.

But it's stopped now and my flip flops are drying out and so is the lawn.

Turdus Migratorius (American Robin)

From the window right now I can see eleven American Robins on the lawn.  I think that's a record for our house.  The poor worms that live beneath the grass are being massacred as I watch. 

Hoppity hop hop hop - stop.
Head cocked. 
Listen. 
Pounce. 

Another poor little worm gets hauled out of the clay by its neck, then pecked to death before the robin flies off to a tree to eat it.

I am waiting for one of the robins to encounter the two snakes that live on the front lawn.  I wonder who would win that contest.

On Reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello

I have been reading Coetzee again.

Elizabeth Costello this time.

As usual, I have only the faintest idea what the novel is about.  

It takes me a while with Coetzee usually. 

In this case, he introduces the story, such as it is, with an attempt to distance the reader from the story a la the deconstructionist trends of the eighties and nineties.  After doing that, he then presents a massive novel of ideas.   Then he rips a massive shredding rent between the world of literary ideas (as represented by the novel) and the other world of philosophical ideas (as represented by rights) by depicting an elderly Australian novelist -- who achieved fame with her novel of the real 'Marion Bloom' -- midway through her swan song tour of the world.  Dipping in and out of the lecture circuit, she insists on talking about vegetarianism and animal rights instead of literature.

She is accompanied by her increasingly bemused physicist son. (Coetzee is a mathematician by trade).  Who presumably represents the poor reader.

Because it's Coetzee, it's all very readable and spellbinding, but it is also very annoying to be sitting on the Portland Hills 159 commuter bus at seven in the morning, not very awake, having your mind blown apart by a six page atom bomb of a treatise on how chicken farms are the new Holocaust, and wondering what in the jaysus name is this man trying to tell me right now.

I have decided that Coetzee is getting older (he was in his sixties when he wrote this) and thinking about whether or not there was any point in him having been a writer.  I hope I am not wrong, because I will have wasted my time (and more importantly, his) otherwise.

Anyone with an opinion on this novel is invited to share it.  Of course, I will have sent it back to the library at that point so it will probably be moot.

This is what the Telegraph (Andrew Marr) said about it:

"In the end, as his heroine confronts death, he has been able to raise the deepest questions through some fictional safeguards - without settling on answers, or defending all the arguments as his. But this is fine, because the attentive reader will have been badly jolted. It is why Coetzee is famous: Elizabeth Costello is no cheap shock. It is a serious one.

The New York Times says this:

Old age is for Coetzee what nausea was for Sartre: our defining condition, the necessary horror that grants us access to a moral existence....... Coetzee's unflinching exploration of this desolate and strangely beautiful terrain represents the cruelest and best use to which literature can be put. 

So I guess I am on the right track.

But that is just the purpose of his depiction of the writer Elizabeth Costello.  As usual, his protagonist is someone past the height of their powers.  However, the ideas she puts forward in a series of lectures are mostly about animals and man's relationship to them.  And the suffering that ensues.  Usually his books are about the suffering we inflict on one another (humans) through totalitarianism and ideology.

Coetzee is felt by some to be the African Kafka (in a third subsection of the whole compendium of ideas that are not ideas, he has a section in the book which rips the idea of an African writer to shreds, which almost broke my heart... with a final plea to please read Okri who is the only African writer... and throughout the book he gets Costello to talk about Kafka at length).

Is he trying to write the definitive treatise on himself?

At one point, Coetzee tries to put the two completely disparate themes of the novel together in a lecture by having Costello speak at an Ivy League college and tell them that if she can imagine herself dead, then she can imagine what it's like to be a bat.  Or a chimp.  Or a chicken.  Or a beef steer. 

Understanding our own mortality will guide us towards a deeper compassion for life in all its guises kind of thing.

I don't know.  I haven't finished and because it is so fantastic, I will probably slow right down to make the most of his artistry and pleasure in tormenting us with ideas.

I also have the distinct sense that he is taking the piss out of Margaret Atwood the whole way through the novel, there's something about Costello that really reminds me of the worst of her.... 

Whatever.  JM Coetzee is probably the greatest writer to have lived while I did.  If you haven't read this book, you should, but you should read his earlier stuff first, so you understand where he is coming from.  I particularly recommend:

• The Life and Times of Michael K
• The Master of Petersburg
• Disgrace

in that order.

On collecting the manure dividend

I harvested the first of the peas tonight. Which is the first of the vegetables. If you discount the spinach, which I planted in a crappy wet part of the garden to see how an 'above the ground' crop would do. And then really ignored, because even though I could see from the deck it wasn't doing so well, I don't like spinach enough to put the effort in.

I ignored it and ignored it, and then half-heartedly checked on it, and realised the tall ones were in fact dandelions, and then trudged over to the shed for the hoe (which was broken) and then didn't buy a new one, and, well, you get the picture...

So I have a lot of spinach gone to seed, which Bunny likes to nibble on when he's bored of dandelions.

And some peas.

I went out with a bowl, and even though I only had to go through one gate and not the two that led to our garden at home, suddenly I was nine again and it was Sunday after 10 o'clock Mass on a breezy summer day and I was picking peas for the Queen Mum to go with the roast beef dinner.

My fingers touched every pod and there was that old satisfaction when I found one that was bursting with goodness, straining against the pod.

Twist and pull. Just like Paddy showed me.

It was all I could do not to sit on the back door step and shell them immediatey, stuffing most of them in my mouth.

But Himself is working nights down on the waterfront this week, so I will leave them for him to enjoy when he gets home... seeing as he designed and built the special stands they are twined around.

There is nothing that man can't do with some 2 x 4 and a piece of netting.

If he decides he wants to, of course.


After a lot of work, and some sunshine and just enough rain our garden is starting to make progress.  The potatoes and corn are very vigorous, so I am hopeful.  The pumpkin patch had about a 10 per cent success rate, which is not too bad considering we were making it up as we went along. 

We only need enough pumpkins for Hallowe'en anyways... I can't eat the stuff.

We are on our second round of cucumbers as Bunny likes them too.

And the tomatos are succeeding against all the odds.  Just when they needed to be tended I took a huff with the garden and ignored it for about two weeks straight.  Then got a rush of guilt and watered the bejaysus out of the little seedlings three nights in a row.  It appears to have worked, we have about fifty sturdy plants now.

I can't wait until the greenhouse smells of tomatos... it is the best smell in the world.  Better than cut grass even.

This year I managed to get a bit of formal gardening done as well.  I put in a new small bed, and cleaned up the SEVEN beds we have found around the property. 

Holy of holies, it's exhausting though.  And back-breaking.  I have been to the massage therapist so often this year he's been reading up on gardener's elbow.  Basically what happened (I think) was that a woman who used to live here designed and planted all the beds.  Then she split up with her husband and they sold the house.  Before they left they mulched the beds. 

Seven years passed and nobody disturbed them.  Then along comes I, all vim and vigour last year and took out all the mulch. 

Twenty six years of pent up weedlings saw their opportunity and SPRANG FORTH AND MULTIPLIED.

I am getting there.

It will be manageable in about five years, I reckon.

I've decided to plant lots of Asians so there will be no ground cover underneath.  Hydrangeas, rhododendrons, wigelias, that kind of thing.

Starve the little bastards out, you might say.

A garden truly is a lifetime's work.

Himself is Home

Himself is home. And not working nights, which is not home, as far as I`m concerned.

Let the normal times begin for the first time since February.

For a while at least!!

Hurrah.

Hoping for a white hot summer

It’s after eight pm and it’s still thirty degrees. Even though it’s only June.

Everyone is hoping this will be one of those summers. We haven’t had one for a while.

The first summer I was here was one of those summers. Endless. Hot. A constant glare of white light pouring down from a cerulean sky; so white that it washed some of the green out of the landscape, but not too much.

There was a day in August that we spent at Bear Cove and the sun was so white it felt like a wide-as-the-sky laser that burned every bit of physical pain and mental regret in my body right out of it.

It was so bright that day that the sea was pure silver and the spruce trees on the shore were pure black. The stones on the beach were cool under my feet, but they seemed to be made of glass, reflecting the sky back on itself.

It was so bright that from about four feet in front of me, I could only see down a sort of tunnel of light.

The sun did all this to me all day without burning my skin. But it burned every unnecessary thought in my head right out of it for about three months.

And when the sun went down and I started feeling a little chilly, Himself and the other guys there built a bonfire that could be seen from Grand Manaan across the Bay of Fundy.

That day I decided that I needed to live in this place where the heat and light could actually transport me out of my body. And sitting at the fire could centre me again.

Every year since then I have looked forward to that day in August as a kind of mental resurrection, a sloughing off of all the crappy little physical and psychic nagging aches and pains picked up in the course of a year.

Bear Cove is a kind of pilgrimage. Of the type I used to do to Mount Brandon.

I start thinking about it at Easter, when I should be walking Mount Brandon.

Last year we didn’t really get one of those days.

We went to Bear Cove, but we didn’t spend the night there, and Himself was so tired he fell asleep on a rock at eight o’clock. But although I was disappointed at the time, it turned out that we didn’t really need it because we were getting married and that was the day that carried us through the winter this time.

But this year, it’s coming.

It has to. If I don’t have a Bear Cove day this summer, I will not be able to get through next winter.

I would like to bring everyone I know to this place on that day so that they can be psychically lasered too.

You can arrive at that place on that day with a lot of anguish in your heart and leave feeling lighter.

I don’t know if it’s because I have spent a lot of time this year on my own, and I am starting to imagine things, but I am starting to get a little floored by all the anguish I feel coming off people at the moment.

A little flattened. But denser. Not lighter, the way it should be.

We had to go to a funeral today. It was the remembrance ceremony for one of our wedding guests. She slipped away far too early.

The vicar spoke about anguish and about how sometimes people are better off letting go of the burden of it if it is too hard to bear. Being the person I am I sat there getting furious about a provincial healthcare system and a culture that allows people to carry that kind of load by themselves in the first place, and wondering why the family had to pick up a new load of anguish now that will be equally ignored by our society.

Maybe I am just imagining things. But from where I’m sitting I see people who are carrying unbearable loads of sadness, stress or grief, people who are sick and expected to embrace wires and tubes and machines and all kinds of technologies that they would otherwise ignore just to get better, people who seem to have fallen off my map completely, people who are just suffering quietly, apart from the odd comment on FaceBook, people who can’t stop gnawing at their pain no matter what I say.

All kinds of people.

Good people.

I wish we could all go to Bear Cove on the hottest day of August, and lie in the long damp grass there and let the clover tickle our noses, and feel the heat unknot our bodies, and the sun blind us to what we’ve left behind on the mainland. And then when we are all completely transparent and light as a feather, Himself and I would cook a million lobsters and everyone would sit up and eat them with the juices running down their fingers watching the sun go down over the bay and listening to the whales blowing in the cove.

Just as it got dark, we would work together to gather enough wood to light a fire big enough to speak to each of us of those things in our hearts that we only take out and examine once or twice a year. But because we would be all there together in a circle it would never get too quiet.

And at some point someone who had found their centre again would wander down the beach and haul back the whitened bones of a fallen spruce, and we would lever it onto the flames and watch the sparks rise to the moon, carrying all those unspoken words up to whatever the hell it is up there listening to us.

The moon is up and very bright already, although it is still very light out. It’s a half moon tonight. It feels very near, just above my head.

Cancerian, I know. No sense of where I end and you begin. Near my birthday too. Yes, I know I talk a lot of shite when the moon is near.

But if anguish has made a pass at you right about now, you should come with me this time.

And if you can’t, promise me you’ll find your own Bear Cove this summer.

If we get a good summer this year, it will be because we all need one.

It’s nine thirty now and it’s starting to get dark. The bottle of wine has been opened. The peepers are peeping. The birds are calling goodnight to each other. Someone is tooling around the lake in a motorboat, but quietly. The dog is asleep under my chair. My inmyday list is echoing out into the night, that song that reminds me that I am just a speck in the cosmos.

Time to enumerate my blessings once again.

I don’t let myself stop until it’s completely dark. That way I know how lucky I am.

Solstice post done much better by Jeanette Winterson

She does it so much better than me. link is under the title.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/13/once-upon-a-life-jeanette-winterson

Formatting issues

I can't get the new template to do paragraphs, goddamit.

Or can I.

Heading towards the solstice... then the darknesss

 It’s hard to believe that we are almost at the equinox again.  It’s almost nine o’clock and I am sitting outside (unlike the other equinox) and it is still bright.  It won’t get dark for another hour and even then the last of the light lingers lingers lingers, as if it knows that soon the days will imperceptibly shorten again and it will fight the fight against the dark and lose. For me, the summer solstice is the saddest night of the year.  Ridiculous I know, but I feel it so strongly, the momentary nature of the triumph of light over darkness, before the darkness begins to ascend again. It also annoys me that the best time of the year lightwise is not the best time of the year heatwise.  Many nights you have to go indoors and sit looking at a beautiful evening that is too cold to be out in. Having said that, we have had a wonderful spring, and I have sat out on the deck on many nights, listening to music, or just listening to the birds settling down for the night; waiting for the peepers to start up, although they are fading out now as the heat dries up the muddy holes where they live. I am sitting here on my own of course.  This spring has been unbearably solitary.  Himself had to go to New Brunswick for 'two weeks', I think it was late March or early April. Apart from a couple of weekends, he only got back last night. We had to pretend I was threatening to divorce him to even get that to happen.   His employers don’t seem to think it’s unreasonable to make someone live in a hotel for nine weeks without any notice or consultation.    I think his bosses think I am the psycho from hell, I am always the reason why he can’t work unreasonable hours, or do the salting, or whatever.  Whatever works for himself I reckon.  If I ever meet these guys, I will be the psycho from hell, I am that fed up with their cavalier attitude to their workers.  Anyways, despite the fact that he was finally allowed to come back to Halifax, he is now working night shift at the refinery for the next while and he had to go to work at 6am this morning to do his orientation and then back for 6pm to work a twelve hour shift.  So even though he at least gets to sleep in his own bed and eat at his own table for the foreseeable, I won’t be joining him as I will be at work. Sigh.  At least the dog will be happy. I have spent most of the last few months just getting furiouser and furiouser with the whole capitalist schtick.   How did we let this happen to ourselves?     I know how, I saw The Corporation, I am being rhetorical. How did we let such a stupid fucking system become so dominant?  Why do so many people have to work so hard for so little and some others just muddle along for a bit more, and yet others make an absolute shite of the planet and all its systems and get paid more than anyone else put together? More importantly, how do you get off this bus? Of course, the beauty of it is that once you’re in it, you can’t get out.  So that’s why we ‘let’ it happen.  It’s pretty difficult to make it unhappen when you’re groaning under the weight of a mortgage and a car payment and a couple of kids to put through school, etc. And you’re lucky if that’s all it is. Usually there’s a whole pile of other stuff to pay for too. Anyways, I am rehashing a truth we all have known to be true for a long time.  And currently, I'm furious for all the usual reasons, global financial meltdown, government debt crisis, Gulf oil disaster, etc.  But I am also furious because it is so pervasive now, this ‘to hell with having a moral compass’ attitude that is rampant in capitalism, that it trickles down to the smallest cog in the smallest widget linked to the smallest wheel.  Hence Himself has to go to New Brunswick for months on end whenever ‘they’ feel like it without a penny extra for the turmoil, and I have to work on a rolling three month contract because public opinion wants smaller government. Also I am furious because the only way we have to moderate this is politics and politics is over. Politics is rubbish.  It is moribund.  It is about power and not governance.  Politics is ruled by opinion rather than fact and the people who give the opinions that apparently are all that matter to the politicians (apart from sucking up to big business) are the same ones that roll their eyes and say they’re never voting again... Here’s an idea, boys and girls... Stop doing telephone polls! Anyways, I guess I am grumpy because I never get to see my husband or if I do, we're both too grumpy to do anything.  I have been an obedient, albeit reluctant, capitalist for almost forty years now.  I am getting sick of being taken for granted. So are a lot of other people I think. Unfortunately, they are all joining the Tea Party. I think we should establish a Cabernet Sauvignon party. Much more relaxed and chilled out than tea. Maybe that will be my project for my forties.

Old Man Table

I bought the coolest table today.

Well, the little card stuck to it, with the price on it, said it was a table, but it's more like a large potstand.  About 3 foot high and 18 inches wide, the dark stained wooden top is balanced on the shoulders of a hunched up old African man, whose face peers out from underneath his load.

East African probably. The legs of the table/potstand are his arms and legs, and the base has his elegantly elongated feet and hands sitting on another circle of hardwood.  There are a few cracks where the carving is coming away from the base, but I can live with that.  I'm not a 'must be from one lop' purist.

It was sitting out on the street in front of the shop that is my consumer nirvana and which I walk past twice a day every day on the way from and to the bus stop.

Deliberately walk.  There are alternative routes.

It wasn't there in the morning.

But I couldn't believe it was still there at 4.30pm on a payday in the middle of downtown.

He must have sold something earlier and put it out around three.

This store is the greatest kitsch shop in the world.

It is the John W. Doull (bookshop of which I write much) of kitsch and I am not going to tell you where it is because you either know what I am talking about and are my competition, or you don't  know.  In which case you aren't going to be my competition if I can help it.

The owner does a lot of estate sales and has an eye for African and Asian carving.
And seventies furniture.
And traditional Maritime fishing gear.

Which pretty much ticks all of the must have boxes for both me and Himself.  And we like nothing better than a good hour long browse in there of a wet Saturday.

You can take your overpriced Agricola 'antique' strip and stick it.  Yah!

Anyways, buddy, who's name I misremember deliberately, puts items on the street on sunny days.  For to tempt you in.  He's really good at it, and you have to swoop.  Pronto.

But he torments you with a price list that's dated.  So if you wait another three weeks the price will drop.  If it's still there.

It's 'non-gambler with latent gambling DNA and a penchant for furniture' heroin.  That's what it is.

On Tuesday, he had a fabulous seventies chrome and black leather armchair sitting outside at 9am.

I was on my way to one of those totally pointless civil service meetings that you only go to if you are too broke to buy coffee, or can't find any real work to do, so I couldn't stop.

Being in the need of some coffee.

But it preyed on my mind all morning.

I just fixed the car and I am broke schmoke.

He's good though.  Real good.  It was a great chair.  A classic.

By lunchtime, I had figured out where I'd place it, how I'd pay for it, even how I'd get it home on the bus.

Stick it into the bike holder on the front.

I skipped buying a sandwich (in case it was really expensive) and hurried down, but it was already gone.

To my former hair stylist, apparently.

When I hauled the table in today to pay for it, he looked at me over his glasses and said 'what have YOU got today?'

Old Man Table, I said.

Mmmhhweh... he said.

We have an awkward relationship.   We used to get on great, then he spent two hours trying to talk me into buying the most beautiful Burmese teak bookshelf that I have ever seen in my life.

That I still think about.

But it was the week we bought our house.  And he wanted a thousand dollars for it.  Which it was worth.  Plus tax.  Which means of course I didn't buy it because we were buying a house.

But I really tried hard to figure out how to buy it.   And Himself told me if I wanted it I could buy it, which I love him for.  And of course you repay that trust by not buying said object.

But I never really forgave Buddy for putting the yearn in me for it.

And he remembers those two wasted hours.

As we tried to furnish the house we got a few bits from him and made it up somewhat.  In the meantime he sold the bookcase in March (just when I was getting back on my financial feet) ON TICK to some woman in a condo and faked innocence when I pointed out that I was not offered tick.

Then I got him on a bad day and sneaked two Zimbabwean stone sculptures off him for less than they were worth.

And told him of course.  Because I CANNOT keep my mouth shut to save my life.

Which he didn't appreciate.

And it didn't work out for either of us in the end because now all the Zimbabwean stuff is way over-priced and he's lost his best buyer.

So the mwehh about the table could mean anything.

The fact that he couldn't be arsed finding a bag to put over it for me probably means it's a pile of crock.

But it's okay, I just like the table.  And Himself will like it.

Because I didn't have a bag, and the table had sticky outy bits, I had to sit it on my lap on the bus.

A woman looked at it and said: 'I saw that table from across the street!'

Thirty five bucks, I said.

GODDAMN, she said.

We had a lovely chat all the way through Dartmouth about that store and furniture in general and how we love furniture because our mothers went to auctions and how cool it was that they could read the mysterious codes of silver and china marks, and how our gardens were doing and what's the best way to split a hydrangea and how difficult it is to grow snowdrops here and how difficult the soil is in Lawrencetown.

We bored everyone on the bus TO DEATH.

I could see eyes rolling in the heads of people who I have seen smile politely at the really annoying guy who stands in front of the bus door in January handing out the excuse for a newspaper we get for free nowadays.

And at some point I realised that even fifteen years ago I would not have been caught dead with my mother if she sat on a commuter bus somewhere with an African table on her lap discussing her hydrangeas with a stranger.

Not that that would have stopped her of course.

But now I understand how rewarding those activities are, I have a feeling I am going to really enjoy my forties.

More importantly, for sixteen months I have had a space beside the front door that needed something to put stuff on.  Keys and mail and gloves.

Maybe a spider plant.  Or a geranium.

And now the perfect object has found me.

I love when that happens.

A brief interlude of rain

Tonight it is blowing hard from the north east (I think, Himself is not around to confirm this) and it is raining.  Thank goodness.

Thank goodness?

Yes, we have not had any rain for a couple of weeks and my exciting new triple drum gutter rainwater siphoning system is bone dry.  So if it hadn't rained tonight, I would have had to spend an hour hauling buckets over to the greenhouse to water the plants.

But it's raining.

So I have the night off.

Himself who is a hydraulics genius, constructed a simple yet ingenious (or genius) water collection and siphoning system using three old barrels we found in the yard, some recycled 2" x 4" (of course), a length of hose and a gutter.

I come home from work, I go to the greenhouse, I lift the hose up and turn a little knob, and hey presto, while the plants are being watered I can have a sit down and a little meditation on the day in the muggy warmth of the cozy framed building we put up last year.

Our first cycle of tomatoes are already up.  I am hoping I didn't start everything too early.

Time will tell.

I haven't been blogging for a number of reasons.

Mostly, because my RSI is back and my arms are so sore after a day's work, I can't face the computer again.

But also, we had a beautiful early spring this year, so I have been out in the yard most of the time.

First of all, we had a fabulous March, so we started on our little woodstand.  Cutting down the dead wood and clearing out the seedlings to let in some light. 

Then we decided that the reason why the garden didn't do so well last year is because it's so shaded, so I started thinning out the tree stand behind the house.  Mostly alders and baby spruce.

Then Himself ordered a one tonne truck of horse manure and disappeared off to New Brunswick for a month.  Which meant that Queenie had to haul it into position in various spots around the yard.

I got it done just before he got home for a visit last weekend, and didn't he go and order another load!

Not much time for blogging.

Not much to talk about either, unless you want to hear about the difference in consistency between two year old and three year old horse shite. 

Or the best way to uproot a baby spruce tree.

Like Socrates, I have retired to my garden.

For a spell.

Haiti brings out the pedant in everyone

Haiti. 

What to say.

I was listening to Stephen Lewis, father in law of Naomi Klein and kick-ass international humanitarian in his own right, talking on the radio today (as part of CBC's National Day for Haiti, which was mostly a rehash of the last week's conversations with some added Canadian rock stars telling us to contribute to the relief fund) and he said that yes of course, it is completely normal for us all to feel numb, overwhelmed, and devastated by the news coverage of the earthquake.

I was thinking, why would I feel any of those things?

My house didn't fall on my head. 

I'm not from Haiti.  I'm not trying to find out what happened to my family that I had to leave to come live in Montreal, to try and have a shot at a life. 

My mother didn't die.  My brother didn't have to dig his family out from under what's left of his house with his bare hands.  My sister isn't lying under a sheet tent in a street with no food or water, waiting for an amputation when the MSF saws finally get through the 'bottleneck' at the airport.   My dad isn't working a backhoe burying thousands of bodies in mass graves.

Obviously, I feel very sad for all the millions of Haitian people who are feeling numb, overwhelmed, and devastated by the earthquake.  And supportive of all the brave kind people who are trying to help them.

But could we all get a little fucking real about this.

I spent the day shopping and getting my hair done.

Like millions of other western hemispherians.

Mostly today, I felt contented in a slightly sickening consumer-buzz kinda way.

Christ, I even put my dog in daycare.

To ease the guilt of leaving her on her own when I go out.

What makes me feel numb, devastated and overwhelmed at times is the fact that for the totally random reason of birth, I can do all of those things and for equally random reasons, billions of people round the world can't. 

Ever. 

Because if we all could do them, then there wouldn't be enough resources for it to happen.  And me and all my privileged western hemispherian colleagues would not have such a nice time.

And so we have constructed a world in which we make sure they won't ever get off their knees enough to realise that we aren't so great after all.

I know Stephen Lewis knows these things.

A lot better than me.

So what in jaysus' name is he doing on the radio mouthing platitudes at us?

Because if he went on the radio and lectured us all on the unfairness of it all, we'd get mad and his foundation would lose funding.

It has struck me forcefully that the media coverage of Haiti is different to previous disasters.

For me, anyways.

When you think about it, go back to that Michael Buerk report from Ethiopia in 1984 that everyone my age remembers so well (because it resulted in Live Aid). 

Bad stuff happened.  You saw it on television.  If you were in a house where there were newspapers, you read about it in detail.  If those newspapers were broadsheets, you got some sense of why it was happening.

You got past the word HUNGER.

But mostly it was a narrative that hyped the unfortunateness of some poor people and the bountifulness of the rest of us.

Nowadays, it's a little more complex.

The news breaks on Twitter, it's reported on 24-7 rolling news, the videos are put up on YouTube, they're shared and dissected on Facebook and other sites, Google brings millions of opinions to your fingertips.

It's at the same time easier and more difficult to get past the word DISASTER.

Reading around the issue I am struck by how RIGHT everyone who is commenting feels they are.

The US ARMY ARE WRONG.

It's the Navy, was my impression.

The Aid Agencies ARE SURRENDER MONKEYS.

They`ve been outflanked by the speed of the military operations, was my impression.

The news media are DISASTER JUNKIES.

For a reason.
 
The Haitian government is CORRUPT.

Well, which G8 nation is propping it up.

Too many viewpoints for me to figure it out.

But the hum of the rest of us feeling good about throwing another couple of hundred onto the credit card bill is coming through loud and strong.

Thank Christ for that.... maybe it`ll help with the numbness.
 
Interestingly, a poll of Canadians found that 88% of them felt that the money they donated would NOT get to the people of Haiti.

But they are still leading the world in donations per head.


Tonight`s the big face off between the Canadian mega-fundraiser and the Yankee one.  Which I have to go watch soon, because it is the thing to do in our house tonight.


I guess people are good, generally.  But they cling to viewpoints for reasons of stability and that is not good, generally.

Hopefully the intersection of the two aspects of us will result in a new, better, Haiti at some point in the future.

Social media so far is not impressing me with its ability to clarify complex issues.

This week's Friday is Saturday

I had the day off work today.  It is a great scheme that the provincial government has.  Basically, if you work an extra half hour every day, you get every third Friday off.

Talk about golden handcuffs.  Very difficult to leave a place like that.

Even if  being headhunted by a major corporation is a pleasure-suffused experience.

So I had today off and slept in till 9.30, which was not good because we had a date at the puppy resort.

I found one that had dates, not interviews.  Which was also cheaper.

So threw some clothes on, put the coffee in the travel mug and off we went.

Dumped the dog off.

They said I could call and check up on her as often as I wanted to.

wow.  I mean, I know I'm sad and all, but it would never occur to me to check up on her when she's in a place where someone else is being paid to put up with her.

Off I went to get my hair done.

Graham shrieked at my split ends.

I hadn't noticed I had any.

WHAT have you been doing to your hair?  Have you been using a straightener?

Again, I was a bit bemused at all the fuss over nothing, but it was nice to have them oiled and rubbed and cut and shaped and then he put me under the dryer for a few minutes (because I have SO MUCH HAIR) and I nearly fell asleep such was the pleasantness of the hot air on my sore neck (from Pilates).

If I had a kid today would have been yummy muymmy day.

Graham and his partner are adopting two kids.  One is 24 months and the other is 18 months.

I asked him was he insane.

No.  He's just a really really nice person, I guess.  He made me feel a bit selfish, what with not wanting to adopt any unwanted kids who will end up in care if I don't.

Ah well, selfish is as selfish does, I guess.

Then I went to the Home Depot and did the birthday shopping for Himself.

Power Tool section.

Of course.

I hadn't realised there was a power tool made that he didn't own, but apparently there was.

Then I went to the major store that I'm not supposed to shop in, but I do because it's cheap and I don't have a local electronics store to support (because they all closed down due to the intense competition from said mega-store!), and finally finally bought the external drive I promised Yandry the Cuban barman last November.

Now, just to get it there...

Also I bought a new phone, that is guaranteed not to cut out when the Internet is being surfed, like our current 24Ghz piece of crap.

And a new alarm clock, because I am tired of trying to sleep in a room that is bathed in eerie green glow all night.

And then I went to the bookshop I'm not supposed to shop in either, because it kills the smaller guy, and bought four books in the 80% off section...

Selfish selfish selfish...

I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do though - I got four books for the price of one.  That's three weeks reading.  I was down to Bill Clinton's My Life... yawn...

Then I went to an independent food store and bought lunch.  To make up for all the other sins.

Then I went back to the puppy resort and picked up my girl.

The puppy resort technicians were in tears when we left.

My computer just posted my post while I was still typing... new keyboard... I keep doing stuff I don't mean to. 

Anyways, either they are the best goddamn marketers I ever met, or the dog is one of those 'street angel, house devil' types.

Oooh, she's so gentle with the other dogs, and she's soooo pretty, and she's such a gooood girl...'

Whatever.

She's a pain in the ass most of the time.

Anyway, she's been asleep since we got back, so puppy resort is definitely ON!

Now I'll post until I think of something interesting to write about.

The thing I love about Friday being the Saturday, is that Saturday can be whatever you want it to be.

Sunday will just be Sunday.

Blogpost No. 650 - nearly five years of blah-di-blah!

This posting is my 650th on the blog.

In two weeks, the blog will have lasted five years to date.

Percy's Depressed started on January 31, 2005.

In 2007, it changed to Chocolate Court, to mark the fact that we lived near Chocolate Lake in Halifax.

Just under a year ago, in honour of our new home, it changed again to Essays from East Lawrencetown. Which is a little clunky, and doesn't get as much drive-by traffic as something with chocolate in the title, but it's fine, and I'm not using this blog to market myself, I am using it to get rid of my writer's itch.

We bought our house a year ago tomorrow, by the way, I cannot believe we have owned it a year already.  Here's a picture of the deer we share it with!


According to the site meter, which has had to be re-installed many times, I have had 16,500 visitors in the last 27 months. So that works out at about 16 - 20 a day I think, which puts me in the 'millions of other half-assed bloggers' list (below A-list, B-list, C-list, and up-and-coming list).

Personally, I am astounded that I am soon going to be able to say that I stuck at something (other than my education) for more than five years.

GO QUEENIE!!!!!!!!!!!

Bitter sweet Sundays

Somebody mentioned on Facebook today that Sundays are so bitter sweet.

True.

I love waking up on a Sunday knowing I don't have to go to work. But round about 4.30pm on a Sunday, I always get a really sad feeling.

I think most people do.

Sundays are such a strange day. They've changed so much over the years (well, if you're a lapsed Catholic living in a country where religion is not part of the DNA they have).

When I was young, Sundays meant you had to go to Mass. Then you had roast beef dinner and listened to the radio. Which meant listening to people drone on about Northern Ireland.

Then you went for a walk. Sometimes we went for a walk with the Queen Parents. Which involved a long walk in Portumna forest park, or somewhere like that (long for a kid, obviously) and then you went to the hotel for a mineral (pop) and a bag of crisps (chips).

Sundays we didn't go walking with the parents, we went to visit Paddy. That also involved a walk. A very very very long walk. And then sometimes a secret trip to the lemonade shop.

Also known as Kellys pub.

But that's a different story.

Then when we got a little older, I went to boarding school. Sundays meant you were getting a visit or not. If you were getting a visit, Sundays were FANTASTIC, until about 4.30pm, when you were sitting in the grimy hotel in Dungarven, having a mineral and a bag of crisps, and you remembered you had to go back to boarding school for another four weeks of misery before you saw your parents again.

I think that's why I get so sad on Sundays.

The brother went to boarding school for six years, and on Sundays he got to come home, bolt his roast beef down, and see his friends, before making a loaf of sandwiches and buying a bag of Pot Noodles and heading back to prison for another week. Four-thirty was round about the time of day he would start on the Queen Mum, wondering whether he could just stay home this time, and not go back to school.

I don't know who was more upset...

As for me, I got to go to secondary school at home, and Mass had been scheduled for Saturdays as well now, so Sunday was a big long teenage lie-in, followed by roast beef of course, then sitting in the playroom watching MTV USA, hosted by FAB Vinnie. Three hours of music videos and desultory conversation with Eileen or whoever else was around.

Then back to school on Monday.

When I went to college, weekends were often spent at home. Get the bus down on a Friday night. Spend Saturday doing laundry or catching up with people. Out Saturday night.

Sundays were when you had to get the bus back to Dublin. If you hadn't cadged a lift with Willie Burns on Saturday night in the pub. Or you couldn't persuade mum to drive you to the train in Tullamore.

Long, wet, boring trips through the midlands (before the motorway was built) in a smokey bus. Then trying to get a bus home to wherever you lived. Culchies roaming the streets of the capital with bags full of lasagne dinners and bags of spuds. Trying to fit into a pub stuffed with bags of clean folded laundry sent with love from Cork and Galway and Portlaoise and Donegal.

If I stayed in Dublin for the weekend, Sundays were a long, boring day of trying to stay warm in whatever hovel I was living in; writing an essay or just trying to find enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes to have something to do.

It was only when I started working that Sundays became a little more interesting. Long brunches in Odessa or somewhere trendy, with all kinds of people popping in and out and enough money to buy the paper and read it with a latte or a pint.

Now we have every second Sunday. This is a second Sunday, which means Kitty and Little 'Un were here for two days of chaos and noise and loud telly and cooking and feeding and whatever activities are on the menu. Then around 4.30pm the doors slam for the last time and the car heads off back to Truro and the dog lies abject at the gate hoping against hope that they're not gone and I pace around the house for an hour trying to find things to do to make the bitter sweet feeling go away.

But it appears on the other Sundays too.

5.33pm. Suddenly, completely dark. Shannon won't come in from the gate. I will go find some nice raw meat to bribe her with.

Even puppies find Sundays bitter sweet...

At least we don't live somewhere where you have to sit quietly and read the bible all day.

Inmytunes 2009: a cornucopia of Canadiana, brought to you by Queenie (and Rich Terfry)

Every year-end for the last few years, people who are members of the mailing list inmyday (of which I am a member, obviously) can put together a playlist of their favourite music of the preceeding year. Then share it with everyone else on the list.

Bingo!!

You start off the new year with a load of new music.

Of course, it being the inmyday Inmytunes compilation, there are rules, and of course it being Inmyday you are allowed to bend them. The original rule was that you had to make a compilation of the top 15 or so songs on your iTunes 'most played' list.

That turned out to be a little embarrassing if you had had a tough year emotionally.

So that quickly morphed into 'most played if I had a hyper-critical audience sitting with me at all times' list. Then as is normal on inmyday everyone just went off and did their own thing anyway.

By that I mean that I understand that sticking to the rules is some people's idea of doing their own thing.

Anyways, I have gotten to hear a lot of music that I would never have heard otherwise, seeing as I don't spend a lot of time buying music or reading about it anymore.

This year I was totally screwed. I think I bought two albums all year. And I gave them away before I ripped them. But I was saved by Buck 65.

Buck, or Rich Terfry as he was named by his mammy and daddy, who live near Enfield which is near here of course, DJs the Drive show on CBC radio 2. The show is for me and people like me.

People who don't like advertising.

People who like to listen to Rich shite on about baseball while they sit in traffic.

People who like the feel of the show, which feels like Rich is bringing in his own records to play for you.

People who want to know what's going on in the Canadian music scene, but who don't have the energy to go to gigs anymore because they don't start till ten pm, which is bedtime chez nous.

So, I cheated on the Inmytunes this year. Basically, anytime Rich and I agreed that a certain tune was a great tune, I made a note of it on a piece of paper I had stuck in the sun vizor (difficult on the highway trips). When I heard him spin it a few more times and we were still agreed that it was a TRULY GREAT tune, I put a circle round it.

Tonight I sat down and bought everything with a circle round it on iTunes.

Note to music promoters.... Rich Terfry moves downloads ... ohmylord he does... every song I bought was a massive spike of downloads, way ahead of everything else on the album.

So thanks, Rich. I really enjoyed this year's compiling.

If you're interested, on the Euro front, he plays Wilco and David Gray and the Waterboys to DEATH. And he's very excited about some woman singer from Dublin right now, whose name keeps escaping me, because he talks really fast when he's excited. But you should send him records. Because he sure sells them if he likes them.

I'm just going to take a moment to flip the playlist back to front. I had started with the electronica-type stuff and then got progressively folkier, but it's not working for me so I'm flipping it round.

Which is incidentally the order in which I downloaded them... I should've been a dj.

Inmytunes 2009

1. The Deep Dark Woods, All the Money I had is Gone (Winter Hours).

This is a very simple little song from a great folk band from Saskatoon. I thought it was pertinent for the year that was in it.

Rich and I dedicate it to all the capitalists out there who are hurtin'...

CBC Radio 2 had the strangest competition this year. The Great Canadian Song Quest. They got people to vote for 13 places (one in each province/ territory) and 13 bands (the same), who then had to write about said place in their province. DDW won the vote in Saskatchewan and wrote a song about Charlie's Bar, which sounds a bit like a Canadian Whelans and is being torn down.

Generally, the songs are a bit meh.... except for Quebec, which was won by...

2. Martha Wainwright, Four Black Sheep in the Snow (CBC Radio 2 Great Canadian Song Quest)

I think Martha missed the memo from Rich that said 'these songs are meant to be cheery for to cheer up Canadians who have lost all their money'. Anyways, I thought PFI would like to hear it, as Martha is 'known to us'.

Isn't it funny the way the guards say that about people. The Mounties don't say that. They just say 'he had a criminal record, that's probably why he got shot'. The guards say 'we don't know why he was shot, but he was 'known to us''.

Weird song. From a weird songstress.

3. David Myles, When it comes my turn (Things have Changed)

I think I am heading into my middle agedness, judging by the first three songs on the list. Or, maybe me and Rich are just feeling a little old arsey this year, what with getting to be married and all.

Not to each other of course.

I hate baseball.

I was about a month ahead of him I think.

Anyway, David is from New Brunswick I think, and he is just back from recording his new album on the SAME CONSOLE in some famous studio in Arizona as was used when Radiohead were there and recorded The Bends.

Which is my least favourite Radiohead album.

I'm shocked an album that miserable was made in the sunshine...

4. The Wooden Sky, The Late King Henry (If I don't come home you'll know I'm gone)

I just like the name of this song. And the tempo is kinda rollicking, maybe nice for kiddies.

Note to parents: Not only did I not put the song I really liked with the swear words on the playlist this year, I put on this song the kiddies might like.

Learning I am...

5. The Duhks, Mighty Storm (Fast Paced World)

I love the Duhks (ducks), who are from Winnipeg, Manitoba and so know a thing or two about weather. This is dedicated to all the Irish weather you`ve been having lately.

Bless.

6. Kathleen Edwards, Sure as Shit (Asking for Flowers)

This was our wedding song. So it goes on the list.

7. Bahamas, Southern Drawl (Pink Strat)

Man of mystery. Very difficult to find out anything about this guy. Apparently he's on tour with Amy Millan, so maybe he will turn up here some night and I won't go. Nice song though. Very smart.

Speaking of...

8. Amy Millan, Baby I (Honey from the Tombs)

Amy, the queen of Canadian pop. The homecoming queen for the nerdy boys. She pops up again later with The Stills. As she says herself: 'together, my own songs and these covers create a bed where the lonely can rest for a little bit, where little hopes, little deaths, and big loves are flammable but fallow'

Amy's fab. We are big fans, me and Rich. He nearly passes out when he talks to her.

9. Jenn Grant, Dreamer (Orchestra for the Moon)

Jenn has a voice like hot chocolate. Which is apt, because this song mentions her having a date at Chocolate Lake, where Queenie and Himself used to live (and dream), so it had to be included.

10. Cuff the Duke, Long Road (Sidelines of the City)

Okay, last of the alt: country, Canadiana type songs.

Onto more inmyday-ish type music.

11. The New Pornographers, My Rights versus Yours (Challengers)

According to the blog metatag, The New Pornographers are AC Newman and a group of ridiculously talented people uniquely equipped to realize his musical ambitions. You may know their album, Mass Romantic. It was considered the best indie album in Canada until Arcade Fire released Neon Bible. This song is from another album called Challengers. Either of them are worth a listen if you dont know these guys.

12. Metric, Sick Muse (Fantasies)

Emily Haines and James Shaw, the singer and guitarist in Metric also play with Broken Social Scene. Emily is one of those effortlessly cool blonde rockstars that make me feel completely inadequate, but despite that, I love this song.

13. Stars, This Charming Man (Nightsongs)

A lush retake of a Smiths classic, by the people who also bring you Broken Social Scene.

14. Stars, Your ex-Lover is dead (Set yourself on fire)

When there`s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

`Xactly.

Plus there are cellos. I do like a bit of cello in my eloquent, Montreal-based pop music. Even if they did support Coldplay recently.

... ah, the almighty dollar does strange things to us all. But these are the best lyrics on the compilation:

I`m not sorry I met you.
I`m not sorry it`s over.
I`m not sorry there`s nothing to say.

15. Holy Fuck, Lovely Allen (LP)

From the boys who are known as the Toronto evil super group, who brought you the Cowboy Cat t-shirt. Anyone who wants to buy me one is very welcome to do so!!!

Reminds me of God is an Astronaut a bit.

Anyways, folks, that`s it for another year. Hope you like them.