A Family Is A Family

My children had to drag me away from Mrs. Doubtfire and the closing credits while I, who barely cried privately, let alone publicly, sat there sobbing with my hands up to my face.

So it was with happy anticipation that I waited for Rosie O’Donnell’s A Family is a Family, especially knowing that, as with the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, we were going to hear that a family, boys and girls, is made up of all kinds of people.

On the one hand, I wasn’t disappointed –- seeing all those adorable children in their various familial relationships, expressing that a family might consist of two mommies, or two daddies, or a mommy and a daddy, or a daddy and a grandmum, and so on. I laughed and clapped my hands and delighted in all of their youthful wisdom and honesty, tapping my feet to the happy music being performed throughout the show.

On the other hand, when the program ended forty minutes later, I said to myself…wait a minute…where’s the other half? Where is the part that says that some families have trouble, and sometimes family members have to go away (and that sometimes they aren’t able to come back, and sometimes they do), and that just because we’re related to people, even if it’s not blood-related but just related, it doesn’t mean that we are always going to feel safe or happy.

Okay, maybe take out the safe part, because no one wants a five-year-old to watch a TV show that suggests she might not be safe.

But honest to God, if I had been that child, waiting for my mum to come home from god knows where, not knowing who my father was, wishing I had siblings to take care of me and who I could help take care of, I would have been in my own childlike (that is, semi-subconscious) way devastated by what I had just seen on TV.

I would have felt like an outcast, an oddball, a misfit, betrayed and alone and somehow responsible. I would have said to myself, they forgot the poor part; the hungry part; the lonely part; the hard part. I would have wondered how I could go and find one of these families and then wonder, if I couldn’t, did that mean I didn’t deserve to have one?

The only hint of difficulty I heard in the short documentary was from Rosie herself, who asked her six-year-old daughter why she, Rosie, had grown up without a mother. “Because you’re mother died,'” was the response, which isn’t exactly what I’d want a child to be hearing either.

I guess what I wish is that Rosie might have called her documentary something that had the word or implication or concept of ideal in it. This way, children might know what it was okay to aspire to, and not feel quite so panicked when they looked around them and saw that mum had gone off to the bingo hall, dad was wasted in the bathroom, and brother Bobby had just set fire to Aunt Mildred’s hair.

Oh my dear Katie. You know some parents, when they're angry, they get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time, and they can become better people, and much better mummies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't dear. And if they don't, don't blame yourself. Just because they don't love each other anymore, doesn't mean that they don't love you. There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighbourhoods, in different areas of the country - and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months...even years at a time. But if there's love, dear...those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever. All my love to you poppit, you're going to be all right... bye bye.

Mrs. Doubtfire.

Out, Damned Spot!

I had what I thought was a eureka moment the other day…a way of getting at the bits of dirty grout staining the new kitchen floor.

Rather than use an ordinary cloth, pot scrubber or SOS pad (do they even make those anymore?), I decided to use a toothbrush. And rather than just any ordinary toothbrush, I would use the Crest Electric that has been lying fallow in the bathroom cabinet lo these many months (to quote Kevin Kline).

Actually, I’m not sure why I have never used it. I think I was afraid, worrying that I would polish the veneer right off my front tooth, or fracture the bridge, or dislocate my shoulder in a splendour of swirling frenzy.

Anyway, I picked up one of the sweet yellow kitchen chairs, and placed it close to the most offensive blemishes. (I don’t kneel very well. I think it has something to do with a fear of God and the rolls of translucent flesh bulging between my breasts and my thighs.)

Forgetting that I have short arms, I sat down, toothbrush in hand.

I was able, with careful manoeuvring, to angle the brush at 45 degrees -- barely touching the grout, this is true, but convincing myself that this was some sort of a start. 

I began my work.

Slowly, I made my way about an eighth or a quarter of an inch, wishing that I had not bitten my nails the day before, because holding down the battery depressor (if that’s what it’s called) was beginning to hurt. Along with my stomach. And my back.

In the meantime, the cats kept lying down and rolling across the cool tile, the dog began barking for her dinner, and the telephone rang about 17 times. (Sixteen telemarketers + my daughter.)

I figured at this point, if I could slide to the edge of the chair I would be more likely to reach a wider area and place greater pressure on the stained spots. I shooed the cats away, yelled at the dog, and wondered what people would say could they see me.

As hard as I pressed myself and the toothbrush forward, I could see, even beneath the overhead light, that I was making no progress. The grout still looked discoloured, and I had no idea what to do.

Rather than read up on stain remover in my new Reader’s Digest book, I stood up, slid the chair over to the table, and tossed the toothbrush into the kitchen sink, figuring that if I at least cleaned it, the brush would be good for the next household task.

No, this isn’t going where you think it is. As much as I wish I had something funny to say or some interesting sidebar, the best I can do is tell you that the next day, when Mary asked me if I realized I had thrown an electric toothbrush into the sink and I replied, “Yes, of course I know that. I wanted to clean it, so I tossed it in with the soaking dishes,” I had no idea, until she spelled it out for me with the word electric, that what I had done was ruin a perfectly good, practically unused, Crest electric toothbrush. And a battery.

Which all reminds me of the time I used the electric mixer to whip up a cake mix and, forgetting to unplug the machinery, put the chocolatey surplus up to my greedy lips, most fortunate, as my friends pointed out later, that I hadn’t electrocuted myself. (Mind you, it might account for that bout of salmonella I had the same month.)

I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this, except to say that the reason they’re called epiphanies is because they don’t come cheaply. In other words, the next time you think you’re having a eureka moment, remember the words “out damned spot!” and hire someone else to do the job.

What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?

Macbeth, Act V Scene I

Katy Perry Is Appalling

I first saw Russell Brand on The Graham Norton Show. While it’s true (as I have to keep reminding myself) that a person cannot know another person through a television or movie screen, first impressions have to count for something.

I was immediately taken with this articulate, agitated, irreverent young man, largely because he seemed authentic. He had a look in his eyes –- wild and longing -– and I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of childhood he had had.

A few months later, I saw him on a (New York City) comedy special, where he was regaling the audience with anecdotes of his recent stint as host of the MTV Video Music Awards, all of which made his autobiography -– My Booky Wook -– that much more enjoyable at the cottage last summer. He is, after all, laugh out loud funny, and darkly, hauntingly tragic.

I half-heard a few months ago that Brand was dating Katy Perry, a woman who has never caught my attention, mostly because her Ur So Gay and I Kissed A Girl seemed like another pathetic (that is, boring) ploy to garner immediate and widespread notice. Nothing capitally wrong with that, I suppose, but behaviour that seems more in keeping with attention-seeking children, and therefore beyond my interest or patience.

Last night I tuned in to American Idol, a show I watch with embarrassing gusto. (Jambalaya, crawfish pie, filé gumbo…) I think it took me all of seven seconds to ask, “Oh my God –- who is this rude girl?” And rude was only the first word out of my mouth, followed quickly by off-putting, affected and appalling.

That Simon Cowell, who I often like, generally takes a harder line with young adults who come from troubled backgrounds –- watch how he responds to anyone who has survived cancer or suffered a string of foster homes, and see if you don’t come to the same conclusion (I often wonder if he is terrified of being sick, or if he is worried that he will be seen as somehow soft) (or perhaps he is, merely, fatefully, cruel and ungenerous) –- but I find myself extremely irked when that young person can also sing -- Simon casting them away with a flick of his wrist and, if he’s up to it, a sneer.

Last night, a young man named Chris Golightly, at the least a solid singer and, as it happens, an orphan, sang a snippet from Stand By Me. When he finished, I expected the usual cynical comments from Simon Cowell, but I was blown away by the grotesque (postured? gunning for the fourth judge’s seat after Simon vacates? trying to live up to the Russell Brand experience?) response from Katy Perry –- birth name Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson –- who said, in response to Kara DioGuardi’s impulsive, emotional reaction, “This isn’t a Lifetime movie, sweetheart.”

The first word that came into my head isn’t blog-printable, but bitch will do for now. (And what’s with all of these young women and their inappropriate terms of endearment?) Who does this juvenile, hair-dyed, costumed lightweight (this isn’t the UN, after all, or the cure for cancer) think she is, comparing this young man’s life in foster homes and his clearly stated lifetime loneliness –- he was shown speaking, in a clip, about the terrible pain of holidays and birthdays going by without family –- to a Lifetime movie? Is this what comes from having a boyfriend who, so desperately hurt himself (read his book), has had to approach life with his own hawkish acrimony, a lengthy heroin hook, and alcohol and sex addiction? (And I write this with sympathy, having had a mother who was perpetrator and victim of same.)

Chris Golightly isn’t cool enough, standing there in a sweet, ordinary way, waiting earnestly to hear what the judges have to say, his vulnerability making him a target of the typically cutting Simon Cowell and this fabricated, transparent girl of twenty-five?

Hell in a hand basket (as my mother also used to say -- spinning in her grave, her own troubled history in tact -- if she could see what a world we live in now): vulnerability almost always equated with weakness; bad behaviour rewarded, kindness laughed at, empathy all but unheard of (let alone experienced) by so many under-thirties.

Anything for attention. Desperate. Ungenerous. Empty. Mean. Cruel. Tendentious. Callow. Smug. Egregious (they hope). Appalling, disheartening, shuddersome, depressing, bleak.

We sat there last night, mouths open, muttering, “Katy Perry is appalling.”

What Are The Odds?

When I was eighteen and trying to get to know my father again (although I hadn’t known him when I was young and living with him; I only mean when I re-met him after several years apart), we would sometimes play poker, as a ‘family’ thing, on those weekends when I hopped the train from Toronto to London, usually to take care of my much younger brother.

Anyway, my father had a poker habit that ran completely contrary to his daily habits, which was never to lie about a great hand.

For example, if he held four aces, he would turn to me and say, “Don’t bid against my hand. I’m holding four aces.” (Which wasn’t anything like his wife who, when playing Blind Baseball, a game in which a person holds his or her cards up to her forehead, facing out, so that everyone but s/he can see them, would sit strategically across from the reflective hutch and read her cards surreptitiously, hoping that no one would call her out.)

The trick with my father, of course, was to wonder if this was the time he was lying. I have to admit that his admonition was my favourite part of every game: does he or doesn’t he? will he or won’t he? sort of thing, a way for me to believe that if I believed him -– which mostly in these cases I did –- he would never, could never possibly betray me (or anyone) again.

So much for that.

Anyway, today I was reading to Mary from my Christmas calendar, when I happened upon their “daily extra” section for January 21, in this case the rank and odds of poker hands. It got me to wondering in a vague sort of way whether, if my father -- who was, after all, a mathematical genius -– had been aware of these odds, would he have altered his strategy?

Life of course is full of hits and misses; odds and evens; conjectures and suppositions. I will never know what my father might have done, although I can tell you that during the next few years that I knew him, he never once lied about his poker hand. If he told me he was holding four aces, I believed him. In fact, I think my belief in him was what he was counting on, which was probably why he did it in the first place. (Apples and trees sort of thing.)

So, in case any of you were wondering, here are the ranks and odds of poker hands, which frankly, all in all, astound me.

1. One pair 1.37:1

2. Two pair 20:1

3. Three of a kind 56:1

4. Straight 254:1

5. Flush 508:1

6. Full House 693:1

7. Four of a kind 4,164:1

8. Straight Flush 72,192:1

9. Royal Flush 649,739:1

Mind you, had I seen these odds back when I was eighteen, I couldn’t have possibly believed he was telling me the truth. And I guess that is what is meant by paradox.

~ Bi Lines ~

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

A Rose By By Other Name

You would think that reading, television, news programs, documentaries, films, and discussion would be enough. In fact, before I became a volunteer reader, I was sure I could pronounce at least 92.7% of all names I came across.

What I have learned instead is that for every language (Ethiopian, Hebrew, Welsh, German, French, British English, North American English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Middle Eastern…) I look up, pronunciations, even among one’s own lexicon and inter-regions, can vary…widely.

If, on the other hand, you think you can do this in your sleep, you ought to become a volunteer reader (at least). And as a way of testing your ability, try these names/derivatives on for size, and see how many -– and ALL nuances count, because nuances are usually the thing that hold most of us up -- you have right. (I have taken these from the book I am reading now.)

Good luck -– and if you get 98% correct, consider yourself an linguistic genius!

LaPlacian

Joynson (Hicks)

Pigou (Arthur)

Abbabisci (Addis)

Haeckel (E)

Knutsford (Cheshire)

Zuckerman (S)

Piaget (Jean)

Coonoor

Norske

Portmadoc

Tutte (WT)

Ismay (General)

Vernam (Gilbert)

Auchinleck (I nearly fell over when I discovered the Welsh pronunciation)

Michie (Donald)

Zapotek

Irvine (Lyn)

Bernal (JD)

Dedekind (R)

Peano (G)

Frege (G)

Fermat

Beobachter Dienst

Gneisenau

Dunkerque

Winterbotham (FW)

Vannevar (Bush)

Rouse (Ball)

Vignolles

Boughey (CLF)

Mauchly (J)

Lorenz (K)

MacKay (D)

Criccieth

Annan (Noel)

Cribgoch

Womersley (JR)

Mermagen (PHF)

Rajchman (JA)

Zuse (K)

Peierls (R)

Trethowen (Illtyd)

If this helps, I thought I knew 98% of these pronunciations, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Word of the Day

For Tuesday, January 19, 2010

umpire: “In medieval France, a noumpere was a person without peer or pair –- that is, someone who could either be fair in rendering a judgement because bound to no one party or family, and not paired in the sense of being part of a team in a competition. The word entered Middle English in that form, but in time, it lost its initial letters to become the modern ‘umpire.’”

It could not always be said that he was fair in rendering a judgement, so moved to indignation was he with what he felt was unfair. But his temper, oddly enough considering all of the fowl tempers I had already encountered, was one of the things I will always love most deeply about him. He was so close to perfect in so many ways that this human foible made him feel more real, in fact, and therefore nearer to me.

In another way, though, he was not bound to one party or family, although I know he loved us more than he could love or would have loved anyone. But it was his sense of duty to the world that moved him beyond the boundaries of the thing he loathed most –- tribalism -- and therefore remains the characteristic that best reminds me how lucky I was to have him in my life. He could have chosen anyone, been chosen by anyone, but he chose me. If that sounds vain, I say it with only gratitude and surprise, even after all of these years.

It’s funny, too, reading this entry for umpire, because he was, after all, a Libran, the sign specially allocated to judgement and finding balance, and we often talked about how the search for that illusive moderation, that perfect harmony, was the driving force behind so much of that other anger –- the one that gnawed at him day-to-day, especially at his work, where he spent too much of his life trying to make everything right for other people and trying to correct the impossible mistakes, and repercussions, of war.

Despite this angst, he used to come home from his office in January laughing, in search of a warm towel to soak up the ice pellets that had hammered at his bald head, mopping up his scalp, reminding me of Mikhail Gorbachev because they shared the same kind of scar. It wasn’t unusual for him to sling his son’s newspaper bag over his shoulder, and march straight out again into the cold with the undelivered papers, and then return home to whip up four different dinners while I was working my shift at the bar. Thank God for people who cook, I used to say.

And as he lay dying, his body overtaken by another kind of cold -- a cold I could not assuage -– I never thought, still never quite believe, that he would die so young, so suddenly, so shabbily treated by a medical system that claimed to save lives. The night before he died, he could no longer open his eyes (I think on account of the creatine), so I read him poetry from the Norton Anthology, which he would recite back to me line by line, in perfect rhythm, each word and each non-word in place. The last full sentence he spoke to me, or to anyone, was, “Are you all right?” “I’m all right,” I said. “Are you?” “I’m all right,” he said.

Six years may seem like a short time to most of you, and for sure that can often feel true. But nothing has felt longer to me than the absent sounds of his beautiful cadent voice, his unexpected deep-throated laugh, his Florsheim shoes clicking on the pre-dawn cement as he made his way off for the day, or the whispered hush of his anger as he tried, harder than anyone I know, to determine what was fair.

I can tell you what’s fair. But I could not have told him.

Nothing.

~In loving memory of Don Ives, who died January 19, 2004

Golden Globes: And The Winner Is…

Most Dignified Recipient: John Lithgow, who gave thanks, succinctly; who loves his wife devotedly, and who respects grammar.

Least Supporting Actress (and no wonder, because she should have won over her co-star): Jessica Lange, who seemed to have a few sour grape stains down the front of her dress.

Best Puppet Face: Quentin Tarantino

Best Supported Actress: Cher

Least Supported Actress (see above): Jessica Lange

Most Gracious and Cinema-Scholastic: Martin Scorsese, who reminds me, every time he opens his mouth, how devoted, intelligent, appreciative, hard-working and modest he is.

Most Deserving of the Fiddle Dee Dee! Prize: Drew Barrymore(“Who, me?!”), who offered up the most deliciously disingenuous speech of the decade. I was thrilled!

Most Authentic on the Red Carpet and On-stage: Sandra Bullock, the woman who used to suck her pop through licorice straws, and whose father is ill, and who wears her heart on her sleeve but always behaves sweetly and with good-humoured dignity.

Best Rehearsed Ad Lib Speech: Meryl Streep, who I can never forgive for so mercilessly and connivingly trashing Philip Seymour Hoffman on The View those many months ago. Clever, clever puss.

Least Supported Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been outstanding in a long list of films (This Boy’s Life; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; Catch Me If You Can; Blood Diamond; Aviator; The Departed…) and who seems to be endlessly applauding others.

Most ‘umble: George Clooney, who is undoubtedly a nice man, but who goes a little too far in the Goodness Department, eyes cast downward into his lap (spurning images of that naked man running from the house fire, perhaps?), Bambi lashes sweeping across his taupe-tanned cheeks.

Funniest Line from an Awards Show Host: (on introducing Mel Gibson): “I like a drink as well as the next man…unless the next man is Mel Gibson.”

Best Torch Passer, Most Confident, and Most Likely to Believe in Her Own Immortality: Tina Fey

Best Response to An Actor in a Best Performance Category: the audience, to Jeff Bridges

Least Liked Nominee/Winner: James Cameron. Whoa! Talk about trying to reverse his bad image from “I am King of the World!” -- you just know he is a man who makes proper nouns out of common ones -- Titanic days, days that also seem to include a bit of wife bashing. Whatever, no one seemed fooled.

Biggest Surprises/Losses: Gabourey Sidibe in Precious (I have not seen Precious, but from what I gathered from the previews, and given that Monique won…); Colin Firth, in A Single Man (oh my god he is phenomenal, although I suspect that Jeff Bridges is, too); Jessica Lange, who, in my view, performed head and shoulders (knees and toes) above Drew Barrymore, although I am no longer able to judge that young girl by any standards that come close to fair. But listening to Steven Spielberg’s goddaughter talk as if she had never seen a stage before!? What a pile of horseshit. And outshine Joan Allen, Anna Paquin and Sigourney Weaver? I don’t think so.

Best Come Back: Robert Downey Jr., who, while a little crazy-eyed, still breaks my heart, ranking alongside Russell Brand for the tile of Men I Wish Were My Brothers.

Worst Performance Over All: the orchestra, for cutting in on all the lesser-knowns: animators, writers, English as a fourth language speakers, and so on.

“And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.” ~ Martin Scorsese

I wish…

Where Have All The Children Gone?

I tuned into the news yesterday because of the travesty in Haiti. A journalist was interviewing a teacher and several students from a grade eight class, and I can’t express how impressed I was with these thirteen-year-olds, who were thoughtful, generous, expansive, and in general reminded me of the actors chosen to play eighteen-year-olds in ‘50s movies who all looked forty-two and as if they had a downtown job and a spouse to hurry home to. In fact, one of yesterday’s students sported a moustache (a moustache!) and when he spoke he took on the cerebral overtones of Oliver Sacks.

Late last night I tuned in again, this time to George Snuffaluffaguss’s (if he can forgive me, so can you) The Hour, because I knew he was going to be interviewing Saoirse Ronan, the fifteen-year-old actress who played the part of Briony Tallis so brilliantly in Atonement (speaking of…).

Well, how shocked was I? She couldn’t have possibly been more informed, articulate, self-possessed, well-read, confident, serious, expressive or absolutely, utterly, completely, wholly irritating and unlikeable. I wanted to claw my eyes out –- or hers. I thought I was listening to a grand dame, a budding Miss Havisham, a proliferating prodigy about to expound and pontificate on any number of erudite subjects. I couldn’t believe that she was born in only 1974. Surely they had got their century wrong.

And when Rachel Weisz, who is equally informed, articulate, self-possessed, well-read, confident, serious, and expressive, joined Ms. Ronan on the set, I felt as if a breath of fresh air had blown through the city, despite the tension I sensed between the two young actresses.

These are only my opinions, of course, and I have all kinds of them, many of them wrong-headed and ill formed. But it never fails to stun me how an innate absence of generosity, at any age, so betrays the victim, in this case a young enough girl who, perhaps with time and a more emotionally difficult experience, might find her way to something akin to real. As it is, I won’t be able to view her in the same way again (which is a shame, because I love Atonement), and I won’t be buying a ticket to her next movie.

That said, I won’t ever forget the classroom students, who working together could teach the United Nations something about world diplomacy, peace, and aid in the time of crisis. Perhaps these are the children George Snuffaluffaguss should be interviewing on The Hour.

Keeping Abreast

The first time I met her she stuffed my head between her over-sized breasts, her sour smothering wetness overwhelming my seven-year-old face to the point where I thought I would pass out.

She smelled nothing like my mother, who was all roses and talcum powder and springtime freshness, even on the worst days.

Don once told me that crazy people -– even when they pass as sane -– carry a bad odour. I can’t tell you how happy that made me, having her horrible acridness confirmed as completely out-of-mind. (Which doesn’t excuse her, of course. We’re all responsible, no matter what our curse.)

After all, she was crazy. Cruel and crazy, which just now informs me that when Don said ‘crazy’ I implanted ‘cruel’. (Funny, too, that I use the word implanted.)

She never pressed me to her again, thank God. She had other ways of dealing with me physically, but that wasn’t one of them. I would take all the beatings all over again, even at the expense of this cushion on which I sit, if it meant I had to -– even for a second –- find myself enveloped in her impossible…what can I call it? meloncholia? globulousness? titularity?

I don’t mean to complain about her –- about it –- exactly, either. But today, with the sun streaming in through the back window, and Lainey dancing up a storm to the soundtrack from Atonement, I find myself impossibly lucky to have escaped her clutches, all these many years later.

Lainey’s Guest Blog

I’m not sure how app- app- app- right it is for grammie to be saying out loud I hate Dora! It’s one of my favourite shows and besides I don’t know what she means by strident and she shouldn’t use big words that I can’t understand.

The other day when she said I can’t stand Barney! I said I can’t stand Barney on his head because I don’t know what she means but it doesn’t feel nice when I am watching my favourite shows and grammie is talking so loud I can’t hear anything else.

I am in my blue princess dress now and I am playing with the soft elephant. I was playing with the windmill but I acc- acc- acc- dropped it on Bootses head and grammie said that it was time to put the windmill away and play with the elephant.

Last night we watched some singing show with a man who rolled his eyes back in his head and a lot of school boys and girls sang pieces of songs. Grammie had a lot to say about that too –- she has a lot to say about everything -– and we looked at pictures of mommy and how much I look egg- egg- egg- just like her.

I have to go now. Franklin is coming on in a few minutes -– he’s a turtle -– and even grammie likes that show. Maybe that’s what she means when she says there’s no accounting for taste.

Stay Tuned

Lainey’s Guest Blog will be up shortly, along with 1009 opinions I have developed in the last week regarding George Smitherman, John Tory, Simon Cowell, Palestinian suicide bombers, Pottery Barn (Eaton’s Centre), barbeque brushes, swans, caulking, this interminable flu and so on.

Meantime, the Wicked Witch of the West is flying in with the winged monkeys, and somebody wants me to save her.

All we own, we owe…all we own, we owe…

 

Auld Lang Syne

Sigh. I wrote this entry three or so years ago. How many times am I going to have to reprint it before I learn that I have to improve, behave, be consistent, try harder, move more, swim more, think more, do more, aim higher, walk faster and eat less?

~

Oh my. It's that time of year again. Resolutions. What to keep, what to throw away? Now, at my age and girth, I have no options when it comes to food choices. It's do or die, and I mean that too literally. You cannot know how sad it makes me, though, to have to part with so many things that I love -- foodstuffs that have sustained me through the cold and lonely wintry nights. (Okay, so I'm exaggerating in a Dickensian sort of way just a little...but what's a fat romantic girl of thirty-seven to do?) So here I go, my chubby fingers clutching the edge of my seat as I type out my farewells...

Good-bye guacamole dip made with just the right amount of fresh garlic and black pepper, and served on tasty Farmboy tortilla chips! Sayonara, too, to sesame crackers smothered in roasted red pepper spread. (I hate when they call it spread. You can literally see the fat content shoot up before your hungry eyes.) Bis dann brown sugar cookies baked in shapes of little moons and stars and served with hot cinnamon tea, and ta ta tahini-laden pita! A culinary kunda hafiz to over-salted crunchy crackers served in tiny pieces on a festive Christmas plate, and a sad sad adios to chocolate-peanut-noodle armadillos, tastier than anything you could ever imagine and so utterly delectable at night. Bye bye beer in special cans of burnished colours served up with zesty hummus (a special hwyl goes out to you), and a solemn beannachd leibh to Beef Wellington, my runny-nosed parting from puffed pastry a true lament to the succulent filet mignon that lay in wait beneath your velvety surfaces. A softened selamat pergi to crustless sandwiches everywhere -- tangy tuna and exquisite egg eyeing up at me from pretty painted platters -- and a lingering le'hitraot to lovely little lemon meringue tarts who I am sure called out my name...eat me, Jennifer, eat me...just before they disappeared forever. A swift and painful tschuss to maraschino cherry chocolates -- all three boxes of you -- washed down with a tschau and another bubbly bottle of Cuvee Speciale...good bye Cuvee! good bye!...and paalam, oh paalam, to my tiny pigs-in-a-blanket, your darling stubby feet tucked up cosily beneath your steaming shawls, sitting silently there next to your cranberry brie sisters -- my fir melenge to filo pastry everywhere a testament to my loyalty and my love. Zai Jian three-cheese lasagna served up with homemade Caesar (et tu, Brute?) salad and two fearless crusty loaves, and a half-felt hejdo, hazel nuts, and all your brethren kin. Sampai jumpa double-helping Atlantic salmon with a side of buttery potatoes and caramelized carrots, and finally, most tragically, arrividerci cheese-laden baked-stuffed potatoes and - dare I say it? -- ciao ciao ciao chocolate-chocolate pecan layer cake made with one cup whipping cream and equal parts brown sugar! And oh my god, I almost forgot! Pirmelenge my precious praline cheesecake, your nutty-coated chewiness sticking happily to the sides of my shiny-faced veneers.

I dare not look back to see what I have forgot, lest I hurry down (these too too sullied) stairs in search of more. Who can know how long I'll keep my steadfast promises, up here in my weeny wind-chilled garret? But speaking of weenies...

Please Sir, can I have some more?

<:^)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

They’re at it again. All five of them. I got up rather later today –- always a mistake in this household -– and there they were, arranged around the coffee table shouting orders and getting all puffed up.

Apparently, their staging is a re-enactment of that popular 60s movie, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, although I initially had no idea who was playing whom -- or what.

I came in in the middle of a rather heightened scene (although if memory serves, all of the scenes were fairly heightened).

Sneakers seems to have taken on the role of Spencer Tracey, the white upper class middle-aged father, whose daughter has just come home with her fiancé, a man she has known only ten days, and who happens to be black.

Sneakers/Tracey (speaking to Boots/Hepburn): Well, it’s true. He has quite the resumé. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a list so long, or written on such beautiful paper. Is it linen, do you think?

Boots/Hepburn: I don’t know, but I wonder if the fact that it’s coloured is of any significance.

Sneakers/Tracey: Don’t lick your paw! That’s not in the script!

Boots/Hepburn: You only chose me for this role because of the colour of my hair and because Ralph is too stupid to memorize lines!

Sneakers/Tracey: That’s not true! You’re so histrionic.

Boots/Hepburn: If it’s not true, then why I am also playing the role of my daughter? Why couldn’t Ralph take on that part?"

Sneakers/Tracey: Ralph’s too busy playing all the other roles. Besides, you have to admit that Hepburn’s daughter, who happens to be her real-life niece, isn’t all that talented. Have you ever seen such gleeful exuberance in all of your life? All that skipping about and giddy exclamation?

Boots/Hepburn/Houghton: Oh, I see. So Ralph is too busy to play the daughter, but I have the right colouring? Who’s calling who stupid around here? Huh?

Sneakers/Tracey: Let’s get on with it, shall we? Now where was I? Oh, that’s right. I had just finished yelling at the maid and was about to recite your fiancé’s cv.

Boots/Hepburn/Houghton: CV?

Sneakers/Tracey: You know what I mean. Let me get on with it. (throat clearing) Look, darling, look at this list. I admit that he is rather diligent. Doctor of Medicine with 12 sub-specialties. President of the WHO. Founder of World Vision. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize four years running. Pulitzer-prize winning adaptation of a screenplay taken from a novel based on Albert Schweitzer’s uncle, the unknown doctor who discovered the cure for fungagealitis. And in the middle of all that, widowed and suddenly childless.

Boots/Hepburn/Houghton: And so handsome!

It was at this juncture that the five of them spun around to find me hiding on the stairs, at which point I was accused of snickering and mocking that which I did not, could not possibly understand. “You do not, could not, possibly understand!”

They may have a point of their own, but I intend to come back tomorrow in better disguise to see how the whole thing turns out.

January

Am I the only person who dislikes January; who is unable to see it in all its new year splendour; who wishes the skies were a little brighter and the winds less bitingly cold?

January must be the reason for all the February vacations. The frigid temperatures, the letdown following the holidays (which by themselves can be a letdown), the added girth…driving people away from the chilly air and from themselves.

Most striking for me, however, is that January is the month when I held out my last bastion of hope that they would find the source and therefore the cure, and that recovery would be inevitable.

Sometimes I think that January ought to make me grateful that I am still here to give what I can to the children who want what I have left to give. But other times, I think of the long nights that he lingered on in pain, wordlessly, uncomplainingly, still lovingly, and I long for the sun and the flowers and the more distant memories when I cannot see his face sinking into eternity and the light in his eyes moving further and further away.

Weighing In the New Year

Oh my God.

So, I got up and did the thing I promised I would. (I have $250.00 riding on this, after all, and I can't afford to lose a penny.)

I stepped on the scale/s.

Oh my God.

Moby Dick couldn't have felt any worse on his worst day.

I didn't know numbers went up that high.

I didn't know I could count that high (which might be the only positive outcome of the entire dynamic).

Mind you, I stopped smoking years ago, so that's one minor plus. Apart from its other challenges, smoking adds 10,000 heartbeats per day per pack. Or is that per pack per day? And what does it matter?

I'm fat.

More than plump, more than chubby.

Fat as in obese.

I think if I tested my BMI, it would explode. I would explode.

So here's the deal:

As of today, I'm

- back on Weight Watchers
- back to the pool
- back to tracking measurements (I need giant sausage casings for my arms just to keep all the cellulite all in)
- back to salads, which I keep avoiding, using my new dental crowns as the excuse. Mind you, it's true: the lettuce does keep sliding off my teeth, and I spend half of my lunchtime choking on romaine

How did this happen?

How did I let myself go? Or not go?

I think it had something to do with the cheese and mushroom pizzas, the Girl Guide cookies, the Lays potato chips, the movie popcorn, the gallons of Pepsi, the mashed potatoes, the little crackers with hummus, the rye bread, oatmeal bread, egg bread, sour dough bread, homemade bread, the rotisserie chicken and gravy, the cheesies, Coffee Crisp and Crunchie bars, the M&Ms, those delicious lemon tarts.... I keep eating as if I am flailing on a life raft and this is my last chance for a meal.

In the end, I suppose it doesn't make any difference. I am as big as a large family-sized house, and I've got to do something about it. All the I'll start on Mondays is another fat lie, and if I gain so much as a pound I'll need a service elevator to get me up the stairs. And I say this with all due respect to anyone who has had to fight these demons.

It isn't easy losing weight. But it's a whole lot easier than spending my life waiting for tomorrow to begin.