Crap Happens

I've had a few bad days in my time, but this one episode in my life ranks way up there....

My then-husband Larry and I had arranged to visit my eldest brother and his wife at their cottage for a couple of days. We were on holidays at our own cottage at the time, which was situated on the opposite side of Lake Winnipeg; so we got up early to drive into the city to drop off one of our vehicles before headin off to meet them at a rural golf course for a round. Larry beat me home by about twenty minutes, and when I came into the house, it was to the sound of a lot of swearing. Seems our main floor toilet tank had spontaneously cracked, and the water had been running for at least a couple of days, flooding a good portion of both the upstairs and the finished basement of our bungalow.

The destruction was terrible, soggy celing tiles collapsed onto the downstairs bathroom fixtures, ruined flooring, wooden baseboards and doors, sopping carpeting. We cancelled our plans with my family, called our insurance company and continued to futilely mop, bail, and wet-vac as much as we could. Within thirty minutes our driveway was filled with three service vehicles, out of which spilled men in coveralls with clipboards and state-of-the art equipment. Our wall-to-wall carpeting and bedroom furniture were removed to their warehouse for drying, huge heaters were set up throughout the house, and measuring devices determined the extent to which the water had "wicked up" the walls. It was impressive, and we stood by, stunned. We were informed that our insurance company would put us up in a hotel for a few days - the heat, noise, and humidity were unbearable in the entire house; but I called my brother and asked if we could just stay with them, as we had originally planned. There was nothing more we could do, anyway.

So we made the best of things - what else could we do? When we arrived at Grindstone Park, my brother hugged me and rescheduled our golf game for the following morning. It was pouring buckets when we got up (I was really startin to hate water, by that time), so we changed our plans again and got out the playing cards. At ten to noon, I decided an alcoholic beverage was in order, and I trotted out to my brother's single garage/workshop to get my tequila cooler out of the spare fridge. I wish I had noticed how easily the manual overhead door had opened, because then I would've realized that one hand on the handle would've been enough to close it again. But I didn't. I put my bottle on the ground and used my free hand to give the door a mighty tug.

There was another thing I hadn't noticed: Unlike my own (automatic) overhead garage door at home, the creases in this aluminum door "accordioned" shut upon closing. The middle finger of my right hand was squeezed flat, and the bone tip snapped off. Ouch. I had to open the door back up again to get my finger out. The tip was bent upward at a grotesque angle, and the bone was exposed through the skin that had torn open like a split grape. All I could think was, there goes the rest of my golf season.

I closed the garage door, one-handed this time, picked up my bottle, walked through the yard and up onto the deck, put the bottle down, opened the sliding doors, put my bottle inside on the floor, and closed the sliding doors again. Then I told the others what I had done. They thought I was kidding until I showed them my mutilated finger.

I learned later that there are nerve endings in the tips of your fingers and toes that go straight to your stomach. That explained why I felt so nauseated, forcing my husband to pull over several times on the hour-long drive to the nearest hospital, so I could gag on the roadside. We had to wait a couple more hours for the doctor on call to get to the hospital to reassemble my finger and close it up again with four big stitches. He sent me packing with some Tylenol 3's, and we went back to the cottage to resume our card game.

My brother Laurens expressed amazement at how cheerfully I accepted all of these events. How could I explain to him that when you've survived a high-speed rollover on the highway, a soggy carpet and a broken fingertip are small potatoes? And that was several years before cancer nearly killed me.

It was still a pretty crappy couple of days, though....

p.s. The bright side of all this (there's almost always a bright side) was, that I got new kitchen and bathroom flooring, which I needed. And we didn't have to pay our deductible as payment for the cleanup that we did on our own.

Talk to Me

I have added a comments facility to my blog, so if any of my handful of readers care to say anything in response to any of my posts, please do so. Just click on the link on the bottom of a story.

p.s. In order to read all of my stories, you may have to click on the "Archives" link(s) in the right hand column. Enjoy!

Things I Appreciate

I was reading someone else's blog, and her list inspired me to make one. Trouble is, I'm just not good at thinkin of stuff, off the cuff.....so I remembered and dragged out this Oprah-inspired "praise book" I kept a few years ago when I was suffering some serious life, and was ready to resort to just about anything - yes, even schmaltzy Oprah stuff - to keep from surrendering to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Well, long enough preamble: Suffice it to say that it actually worked. Hopefully it will again. Here's some stuff from my sporadic entries, plus a few recent additions:

I appreciate....

- the sense of humour that keeps me aloft
- shy brown eyes and the nimble flick of a tail
- the comical waddle of tuxedo-clad Charlie Chaplins
- the pitter-patter of soft summer rain on my window at night
- the melancholy call of a solitary loon
- the happy hum of contented cat in the early morning
- the light of understanding in a student's eyes
- his soft deep drawl
- sunny yellow daffodils
- summer nights that stay light til 10:30
- freshly laundered sheets on a crisply made bed
- the matter-of-fact tock and perfect arc of a cleanly hit tee shot
- classical music
- a beautifully turned phrase
- the miracle of hummingbirds
- their wild amber eyes, their untamed aloofness, their fleet-footed mystique
- straight white teeth
- greenness
- rock and pine
- strawberries
- their youth, beauty, curiosity
- the baby softness of my hair when it's freshly washed
- my cozy little house
- rare pain-free moments
- a warm encounter with a former student
- his warm crinkly brown eyes and perfectly arched brows
- the cheerful confidence and sweet clarity of a meadowlark's song
- how, every time he reassures me, I am amazed
- artistic talent - how I praise it! envy it! long for it!
- hearty laughter
- how my name sounds beautiful when he says it
- that he does not seek to improve me
- the delighted cry, "I did it! I did it!" of a little East Indian neighbour child who rode her two wheeler for the very first time
- the memory of my dad's face lighting up when I would arrive for a visit
- memories of log cabins, row boats, and carefree childhood days at Hilly Lake
- boiling purple clouds and angry thunderstorms
- the sound of sneakers squeaking on a basketball court
- detail
- soft paws, whiskers, and sandpaper tongue kisses
- half-closed eyes of contentment
- tabby cats
- good singing
- the way my oldest brother whistles while working, just like Dad used to
- woodland creatures
- a cozy room decorated in warm tones
- the susurration of waves lapping onto the beach
- still white wine

When Good Girls Go Bad

How many of you remember your first youthful experimentation with alcohol? Mine is indelibly etched in my memory....

I was a good kid, and an exemplary teenager - didn't drink, smoke, party or let boys touch me in any of those "secret places". (When a boy had tried to fondle my breast for the first time at Red Rock Bible Camp, it was without my permission, and he paid dearly for his bad etiquette with a swift punch in the neck.) But there came a time, at age sixteen, when my best friend Diane and I saw an opportunity to be "bad girls" for a weekend, and we took it: Her older brother Don and his girlfriend were takin us to her family cottage, and they figured that, with their supervision, it would be pretty harmless to let us sow a few wild oats. So we each bought a pack of cigarettes and gave Don a few bucks, placing our liquor order: Diane bought a bottle of gin, and I purchased the cheapest wine available - a Canadian Communion wine, of all things. Guess I figured it would be less sinful to drink that stuff.

That Friday evening, in the livingroom of the cottage, we poured ourselves drinks, lit a cigarette each (tryin vainly not to cough), and began a game of parcheesi. Before long, it seemed a bit more difficult to get the little marbles to stay in the holes of the game board, for some reason. Of course, we drank way too fast, and our innocent constitutions were no match for the effects of the alcohol. We decided that a midnight stagger to the fresh air of the beach might clear our heads.

I couldn't walk, and even crawlin on my hands and knees down the sandy road, I listed badly starboard and kept landin up on my side, giggling hysterically. I don't remember much else, except for a dim recollection of honkin my guts out on the back step in the pouring rainstorm that had suddenly developed.

Oh yes, and I recall insisting that I wash my feet before floppin back into bed (my mom's hygiene training still in full effect even through a heavy alcoholic haze). The cottage interior wasn't finished yet, and although there was a tap with running water, there was only a catch basin underneath it for the runoff. I tried clownishly to stand on one leg and swish my foot around in the basin of water, which of course, ended up with me gazin drunkenly at the ceiling beams.

I must have thrown up a hundred times. This was NOT fun. But the next morning was when I really paid the price: I awoke sprawled across a double bed, the hot sun beatin mercilessly on my throbbing head, my stomach churning and my tongue feelin like the bottom of a birdcage. I was in my panties and someone else's t-shirt! Oh, horror of horrors, what had I done?

Turns out that Don's girlfriend, worried that my rain-soaked clothes might give me pneumonia, had changed me into somethin dry. I was embarrassed and cowed for the remainder of the weekend. How was Diane? Truthfully, I don't remember, and I doubt if I took much notice, even then, for I was living my own private hell.

I've been a good girl ever since. It feels soooo much better. And at Communion, I never sip - I just barely dip my little wafer. Funny, I always get a hankerin for a game of parcheesi....

Halloween Humiliation

For my family, thrift was not only an economic necessity but an obsession. Anything deemed to be a frivolous expenditure was not only cast aside, but regarded with great scorn. What we kids regarded as frivolous was often quite different than what our parents did. Music or drama lessons? What for? You gonna make a living as a concert pianist or a Hollywood actress? Pshaw. Gymnastics? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You're a big-boned girl. Camp? Go play outside, it's free. A Halloween costume? Here, I bought you a black eye-mask at K-Mart, go be a robber.

A robber. There I was, in my be-ribboned frizzy home-permed hair (beauty salon perms are too expensive, a home Toni's just as good) and my homemade dress ( I did have pretty dresses, Mom was gifted with a sewing machine), white ankle socks and black strapped patent leather shoes...and a cardboard eye-mask. That single costume piece was more humiliating than nuthin at all. At school we would have an assembly, and we would all have to parade across the auditorium stage, twirl once, and announce into the standing microphone, for the entire student body to hear, what we were. I slunk across the wooden floor, twirled so fast that every boy in the gym got an eyeful of my undies, and muttered inaudibly, "mombler." The teacher emcee-ing the event called me back and made me speak more distinctly, red-faced, that I was to represent a robber. That day I learned an ugly fact: that kids are not the most tactful humans in the world.

I have become known, in my adult years, as a person who has an elaborate collection of extravagant costumes, theatrical makeup and wigs. Can't help it. Now that I have my own source of income, I enjoy indulging myself with frivolous UNnecessities. I've still had to scrap the gymnastics thing, though. Seems they just don't make tights in my size....

Why Cats Need Bungee Cords

When I was a teenager, our family acquired two Siamese cats, littermates whom my brother named Ying and Yang. A seal point and a chocolate point, they were beautiful and affectionate creatures, but dumber than a bag of hammers. Most cats are. Think about it: If you own a dog and step on its paw just once when it's a puppy, it will learn to stay out from under your feet for the rest of its life.....Own a cat, and you'll perpetually be trippin over it and then apologizing when it yowls in pain and indignation.

Anyway, the grooming and training of Ying and Yang fell to me. Training? you ask. Cats? Yup, believe it or not, I leash-trained them, which was no small feat, I can tell you. Felines are willful creatures at the best of times, and it must have been quite a comical sight to see me hog-tied by two hissing kittens determined to show me they were boss. My sheer determination to make them march smartly at my side pretty much destined me to become either a teacher or a marine drill sargeant. Didn't take long for them to decide that heeling was preferable to bein dragged on their backs down the sidewalk, and before long I had the whole neighbourhood impressed by the two Siamese who would slink shoulder to shoulder like bloodhounds.

But when they wanted out but I was not home or too busy to walk them, no one else would; and my parents took to fastening their leashes to the dog clip Dad had long before attached to the back step landing. Cats don't catch on to the notion that they are tethered. They become fascinated by bugs and birds and trash blowin in the wind, and their hunting instinct takes over. And do they learn that there is a limit to how far their leashes extend, even the hundredth time after they leap over the fence and dangle mid-air until they are rescued? Nooooooooooo.

Our elderly next door neighbour had a cheaply constructed fence separating our properties. It was a solid fence, made of sheets of chipboard nailed to posts. Knowin how dumb our Siamese were, I would check periodically out the kitchen window, and sure enough, would see two leashes tautly stretched from the clip on our back stoop, over the top of Mrs. Kennedy's fence. I'd run outside, stand on my tiptoes and mock Ying and Yang as they slowly spun, distress in their eyes, barely able to squeak their dismay because their halters were up under their armpits, squashin their little diaphragms. I'd have to rescue one, then the other, by haulin him up hand over hand until each purred gratefully in my arms. This happened hundreds of times, maybe thousands, and they never learned.

Cats are a lot like people I know, when I come to think of it....

Donkey Laugh

Most of us can probably remember the first real date we had. Mine was in grade 9, when a bright, popular and wholesome boy named Robert invited me to a movie. Up to that point, we had been friends and classmates. I had never regarded him as potential boyfriend material, but accepted because I was excited at the prospect of goin out on my very first date. From the moment I agreed to it, I began to worry and obsess not about what I would wear or how I would do my hair I was okay in that department but what in the world would I do when it came time for the inevitable goodnight kiss? I was a good girl, and good girls didn't play tonsil hockey on the first date. Besides, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW. And somehow, all the practising I had done on my own forearm didn't give me any more confidence, either.

If he tried to lay a wet one on my lips, should I turn away and allow him to graze my cheek? What if he got my ear and a mouthful of hair by accident? That would not be cool. Should I allow a pristine peck on the lips? WHAT IF HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, OR WORSE YET, TRIED SOMETHIN FUNNY WITH HIS TONGUE? EWWWWWWW. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't talk to anyone about it. So I fretted ... for five days .

When he came calling, we were both giddy and nervous, and we trotted awkwardly to the local movie theatre. It was a Peter Sellers movie, I'll never forget it. The Party. It was hilarious. That's when I discovered Robert's laugh .

I should say BRAY. It resembled a donkey in distress. It actually sounded like he was sayin Eeyore, at forty thousand decibels. I thought I would crawl under my seat with embarrassment.

I don't remember much more about the date itself, other than the old yawn and stretch ploy Robert used in order to put his arm around my shoulder. Yup, he actually did that. And we went for pizza after the flick. I know I could barely chew, worryin about the goodnight kiss. When we reached my back door and the moment finally arrived, I handled it with my classic grace and aplomb: I gibbered, ThankyouforthemovieanddinnerIenjoyedthemverymuch and slammed the
door smack in his face.

My charm school manners must have left an impression on Robert. Throughout high school, whenever his social calendar required a female companion (soccer banquets, etc.), I was it. I guess if he'd kept a little black book, beside my name he might have written the comments, "snappy dresser, pleasant conversationalist, good dancer, demands no commitment." We maintained a cordial and utilitarian dating relationship sans liplocks, and we continued to collaborate amiably on class projects and assignments. Truth to tell, I think we were both relieved to dispense with the messiness, inconvenience and risk of hot sweaty passion, so it worked out okay. I just avoided goin to comedies with him.

Apologies

As kids, I have no doubt we were all made by some omniscient elder, to apologize when we didn't want to. Having worked for years in recreation, at camps, in community centres and drop-in centres, and then for 25 years in education, I have had scores of surly youngsters dragged before me by the ear and forced to say, "I'm sorry," the words curdling on their lips like milk left three days on the heat register. (You know, the stuff they used to give you with a stale oatmeal cookie at snack time in kindergarten....) In their red cheeks and burning eyes, I recognize the feeling of humiliation and resentment I felt when I had been in their position, and I feel compassion. I knew they are not truly contrite for whatever their transgression was, and will mostly likely try to surpass its evil, first chance they get, to get even with us all.

Adults make unfelt apologies for reasons that are most often politic: An unfaithful spouse, whose infidelity has been discovered, may apologize in the hopes that s/he will not forfeit all the conveniences and comforts of marriage, all the while planning when s/he will have the opportunity to cuckold again. Someone in public office may say s/he is sorry in order to garner enough votes to remain in office for another term, even if s/he has no intention of making a change in (mis)conduct. An inmate applying for early release might claim to have undergone a character transformation, found religion, anything, so that s/he might return sooner to his/her life of crime.

Not long ago, a man in a deli cut ahead of me in line, even though I held the number before his. He turned to me and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, did I jump ahead of you?" and then proceeded to order enough cold cuts to construct his own cow.....1/4 pound at a time. Somehow, I don't think he meant it, do you?

A sincere apology is a precious thing. It feels good when you mean it, almost cathartic, although we must bear in mind that just because the apologizer is ready to utter it, doesn't mean the apologizee (is that a word?) is ready to hear it. An apology is not a guarantee of forgiveness, although some feel it ought to be. If you whack me in the head fifteen times and then say you're sorry, YOU'LL have to forgive ME if I can't immediately let bygones be bygones. You'll hafta wait for me to emerge from my coma first....

We have to be sincere when we say we're sorry, or it will become as meaningless as the "haveaniceday" that the sullen cashier at Wal-Mart drones at me between cracks of her gum, or the even more insulting version that appears in lights on the LCD display of the till at Safeway alongside the three-figure total for my one bag of grocery purchases.