Dear Mr. Harper

Dear Mr. Harper, I can’t stand you. (Is it all right to say that in this country, or will I be hauled in for treason?)

It isn’t only that you wrote policy for the Reform party; that you shake your children’s hands when they go off to school in the morning; that you have switched party allegiances more often than I change my underwear; that you pay wages to a – your – personal stylist; that your stance on abortion, especially in light of developing countries (which means everywhere), is archaic; that you have virtually and single-handedly killed the arts’ programs in Canada; that you planned to put the food industry in charge of its own inspections; that you are dangerously secretive; that you do not see Canada as a bilingual country; that you ignored a private member's bill calling for an inquiry into the CFB Gagetown/Agent Orange issue; that in 2009 you appealed to members of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters to contact opposition MPs and pressure them to support legislation that would scrap the gun registry program; that you have made comments such as, “You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society” and, “The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things" and, as vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank, “Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should... They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country.” (Speaking of defects…)

No. It isn’t just this.

It’s mostly that when I look at you, which I do as little as possible, you remind me of a clammy, dough-faced puppet-master from a cheesy 1960’s horror film, the perspiration settling just so beneath your baby bang brow of wig-like hair, the focal points of your eyes hitting two completely different targets at all times, your skin rubbery and malleable, as if at any minute you might pull it away from your skull and expose who you really are – a minister for a right-wing church, for example, or a steamy Boy Scout leader.

These are just my opinions, of course; they don’t belong to anyone else.

Still, it’s interesting. It all kind of reminds me of what my daughter said years ago about first impressions: “Mum, sometimes you can look at someone for just a few seconds and know almost too much about them.” And you know what? Sometimes you can.

Sincerely yours,

Taxpayer and law-abiding citizen

He Who Laughs Best

It’s hard to make friends when a) you are a woman living with a woman b) you are a woman living with a woman and you used to live with a man c) you are a woman living with a woman and you used to live with a man you loved deeply d) you are a woman living with a woman and you used to live with a man you loved deeply and he died e) you’re over a certain age (and by certain age, I don’t mean 37).
I don’t mean to be a hound dog either, but it hasn’t been all peas and gravy in the past few years. For example, one set of friends moved away to California and although we were never considered a part of their in group, Mary was a good friend with one of the women from way back (high school), and I grew to love her myself. She was eternally bright, wickedly funny and remarkably dear, and what a loss she has been to us and to the neverending friendship we had imagined.
Another woman we knew, and another long-standing friend of Mary’s but someone I also grew to call friend, also moved away to the West Coast, fell in love with a man, married and, despite her years as militantly active lesbian, disappeared from our lives. This isn’t an uncommon or an entirely unexpected response, and you don’t need a Dr. Phil (ugh) to say that the best predictor of future performance is past behaviour. Still, we were deeply disappointed.
Add to that another woman I mistakenly understood as a soul sister – how old am I? – who really needed someone to temporarily help her through a bit of a rough patch away from her usual circle of friends, and a woman who ultimately decided – as many heterosexual women in my life have – that I didn’t quite fit into her world because my choices haven’t aligned exactly with hers, and let me tell you ladies and ginnelmens, it’s been a kicker of a time.
In fact, I have been deeply disappointed most especially in women, and in women of my generation, who claim to be all about 1) women they refer to as their sisters 2) equal rights 3) inclusiveness and 4) generosity. (And I ought to add here, in fairness, that Mary and I have other friends who treat us as if we have deep and real meaning in their lives – but saying this might spoil the begrudging nature of today’s entry. Harrumph!)
Anyway, this all said (and the whole point of this entry is that) every year our neighbours and friends, Mike and Stephan, host a summer party to which we are always invited, included, welcomed, appreciated, and where we can lounge outdoors among the beauty and safety of the stars and the trees, eating and drinking and laughing – relieved that the trip home is about twenty feet away and a dozen or so stairs. We always look forward to this annual event, and even more so this year, given our recent disappointments. The party, in fact, is slated for next Saturday.
Yesterday (this might seem like an aside but isn’t) was a busy and somewhat disheartening day. Despite the arrival of our fabulous new sofa and the expert grout cleaning/sealing job Mary has done on the kitchen floor, Saturday’s downtown violence in response to the G-20 Summit (or so goes the excuse) has been outrageous, horrific, and monumentally disappointing. I am ashamed to call myself a citizen of Toronto, and I uncharacteristically feel deeply for David Miller (and for this city that is soon going to give itself up entirely to mayoral bullying, which is another story, I know, but still makes my blood boil).
At some point during the day we also noticed that Mike and Stephan seemed to be hosting an afternoon gathering. We could smell the barbeque smoke, and heard the sounds of happy laughter coming over their backyard fence. Typically, we wouldn’t think twice about this, but the depression of the day and our pervasive disappointment in people we used to call friends left us feeling a little bit touchy.
“Wow,” I said. “I wish we had friends like they have. I bet they’re all over there ignoring the disgrace of this Summit and having a wonderful time. Can you hear them laughing?” (Okay, so these weren’t my exact words, but they were close enough.) “Does it ever hurt your feelings not to be included?”
“Yes, it does. Why don’t we go to the movies?”
“But why does it have to be this way? I know we’ve been invited to the annual party, and I know people have their own friends, but they sound like they’re having so much fun and we only live across the street.”
“Yes, that’s true. Life can be disappointing. Why don’t we go to the movies?”
“Yes, but wouldn’t it just be kinder if people knocked on your door and invited you to join them? I mean, we’re nice enough people. Or at least you are.”
Etc.
So go to the movies we did and had a darn good time (I even ate popcorn), telling ourselves that it really didn’t matter how things had turned out; that we are not only good but well-intended people, and that sometimes good and well-intended people are a) used as scapegoats, and b) not as interesting as rabble rousers. What this had to do with Mike and Stephan I do not know, but so goes the trail.
Late last night, then, on my way to bed, I, still a little bit mournful, checked my email – only one, somewhat subdued, from our neighbours and friends:

Hey Jennifer
We missed you at the party tonight...hope everything is ok.
lots of wine left for another bbq.
cheers
Mike and Stephan

My eyes practically fell out of my head, popcorn bits flying from the crevices of my teeth as I sputtered down the hallway: “Mary! Mary! They didn’t forget us! We had our dates wrong! We missed the party! We missed the party! Can you believe that? Isn’t it funny? Oh wait – shit – we missed the party.”
We missed the party.
I know this is a long-winded entry and somewhat anti-climactic (at least to you, faithful readers), and if you are still with me I marvel at your patience. But I do want to say that I think it’s an important lesson or two that I’ve learned, and I think what I’ve learned bears repeating:
Hope springs eternal.
It is always darkest right before the dawn.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
These things happen.
The best predictor of future performance is past behaviour.
(Or, as we like to say in Germany…)
Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten.

Coffey Talk

I was speaking with a young woman – by young I mean late twenties, early thirties – on Thursday when she happened to mention something about small talk and her mother. This woman said to me that she doesn’t understand why her mother wishes they could talk more often on the phone.

I asked this young woman what the matter would be in giving her mum a little of what she wants, and the reply I got was, “Small talk! All she wants to do is talk small talk.”

It hit me at that moment that my daughter and I had spoken no fewer than six times by phone yesterday. I admit that this might be some kind of record and that typically my daughter and I speak maybe four or five times per week, but yesterday we were discussing the earthquake and tornado and their occurrence in the midst of the G-8 and G-20 Summits, and exchanging ideas about paint colours in her new home.

I expressed to this young woman that in fact Sarah and I had spoken several times that very day, and she asked me why. I said something like, “Well, we live in different cities, which likely accounts for some of the calls, and my daughter has a daughter, which accounts for some more.” I met with warm but puzzled stares.

So for the rest of the evening, I thought about this notion of small talk, aware that I am as guilty of it as anyone. I asked myself how much was too much; what constitutes small talk, and was I bordering on the symbiotic? Here’s what I ultimately decided:

Small talk only works after the big talk has been done. In other words, if you have unresolved issues, small talk is likely going to feel extremely uncomfortable. Small talk, then, is what comes when two people feel safe with one another and when they care deeply enough to want to know all the ins and outs of that person’s day.

I love when my daughter tells me, for example, that she is making spaghetti sauce for dinner. I picture her standing at her kitchen counter, admiring the flowers she just planted in her garden, answering her small daughter’s questions. I want to know about paint colours – what she likes, why she is choosing those colours, what they mean to her. I love her sweet and funny stories about work and friendship and baseball, and I want to hear what makes her angry or afraid. And I am pretty sure she loves the same things about me.

I can’t even imagine her ever criticizing me for small talk, instead saying, “Ah Mum, it’s that thing about less being more.” And she would be right. I don’t know what I’d do without our chitchat; without our comparisons of who should be the next American Idol, or why Stephen Harper insisted on holding the G-20 Summit in this city whose people he seems to loathe. (Aha!) I can’t imagine what I would do without all the commentary we seem to conjure up in a day, or worse, what it would be like if the only things we talked about were what many people here consider “important.”

Not to agree, ever, with Stephen Harper, but it’s a little to do with that thing I have said about Toronto; about the intellectual snobbery in this city where people have no idea what it means to know everyone on your street and to have friends of all ages and to never find a discussion about weather boring. No. It’s the small things that make life rich; that keep me interested and invested; that make me feel important enough. And I can tell you this: when I am no longer on the planet it is that very small talk that my daughter is going to miss about me most, and about our lives together.

Not Waving, But Drowning

Well, I am heading to the downtown core. I’ve got my rifle over my left shoulder, my camera over my right, and I am well-protected against invaders of every kind.

Actually, I shouldn’t make jokes about this – especially not after the  military helicopters, the invasion of ants (more on that another time), the earthquake, and the Ontario tornado.

As it is, I am still puzzled by Pride’s recently over-turned decision – my God, what constitutes hate if it isn’t using the word Apartheid? –and I feel for every Jew who is equally puzzled and maybe more than a little enraged.

Absolutely, I think Israel has made egregious politicizing errors and too often sees itself as special and superior, and I think Palestine has committed horrific human error, especially in the way of its women and children, many of whom have been sacrificed for the cause.

But the Pride parade is about inclusion – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited, queer, heterosexual – and I just don’t see what or how or why Palestine and Israel have anything to do with this picture in any way. And how is this kind of warring and grandstanding going to make a difference for the gay teen in small town Texas or the lesbian prisoner in Sri Lanka or the dead homosexual in Saudi Arabia?

The LGBTQLMNOP community have much to be angry about, even in 2010. Why not use the parade, then, as a platform for uniting; for coming together as one group and setting an example for the thousands of people in other cities and countries who do not have the great good fortune that we have?

As a latecomer to this crowd, I am (as a result of coming/out late) sick to death of the ostracization (as a result of coming out late – if you take my points), and it seems to me that if more people waved their flags in solidarity instead of raising one higher than another, members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, for example, would find another venue/outlet for their rage against Israelis, and we, as observers of and marchers for Pride, could do our job: help save the rest of the world from the ravages of hatred and bigotry.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

So You Think YOU Can Dance?

Well, I got up this morning and they were at it again. It wasn’t enough that we had tornado warnings and an actual earthquake the very minute that Obama’s helicopter was flying over the house, oh no. Then again, nothing is ever enough. And it seems they are particularly devilish when it comes to the summer season of reality TV. This, then, is what I came down to this morning:

Sneakers: Well you see, Alex – oh, I mean Ralphie – it’s like this. You should go to youtube and take a look at some of the Fosse videos, and study his sizzle.

Ralphie: Yes, I did that. I looked at some of his film, and saw how he internalized – how not everything he did was physically explicit.

Boots: Yeah, uh, that’s what Sneakers means, Alex. Fosse did internalize, and that’s what I was missing from you, like you know what I mean? Like, it’s got to be from the inside out and small things, too, not just the big ones, like yeah? (giggles)

Galoshes (looking over at Sneakers and Boots): Inward! Inward! Inward! That’s the way you have to go, Ralphie. Take it from the inside out. Like a gumshoe on the lam from a runaway train. Ya know what I mean? You’ve got all the physical stuff down. Now you’ve got to reach reach reach for the guts of the thing. (Looking at Sneakers and Boots) You can do it!

Slippers: Cut to a commercial break! Back to the jidging panel after our second dance of the evening. Sneakers?

Sneakers: I think you’ve got to be careful that you remember to be careful when you are remembering the dance sequences. When I devised this show there was an element of carefulness that was embedded in the format, although you’ve got to be careful not to be overly careful. Do you see what I mean?

Boots: Yes, I have to agree with Sneakers. It isn’t about art form, but heart form – do you ‘ear me? Like, uh, you aren’t trying hard enough to be careful, so watch your form and feel the art – I mean the heart – form in your art. And in your ‘eart. (Appeals upward, as if speaking directly to God. Or Buddah. Or Nigel. Oh. I mean Sneakers.)

Slippers: And Galoshes, what do you think? Do you think that Michael wasn’t careful enough in his sequences?

Galoshes: Well, the thing you’ve got to remember is that when you’re trying to elucidate your space you’ve got to keep the feeling right here (grabs his chest) – you know what I mean? And yeesh, why am I crying? I guess it’s just that I have that mad feeling in me for all of you and I want you to be your best selves, you know? To reach for the stars and aim for the moon. And to remember to be careful, like Sneakers said.

Boots: Yeah. Like it isn’t that we aren’t all up for the mad choreography, but that was like a summer dance you know, and those were winter costumes. When I do choreography – oh wait – this isn’t about me, is it? (giggles) But. You know.

Slippers: Well, that’s all for tonight folks. Give these kids a big hand and don’t forget – if you want your favourites to stay in the competition, you’ve got to remember to vote. And what was it the jidges said? Be careful. That’s it! Be careful not to smile too much but to smile somewhat and be careful but not careful to be outward but inward and to be honest and just as real as you can be. That’s all for tonight! Thank you for tuning in.

At this point, I threw a pot of hot coffee toward the cats and asked them if, just this once, they could pick up their leg warmers and sweat bands.

You Know You’re Getting Old When…

1. Larry King looks younger than you do.
2. Being 30 pounds overweight feels minor compared to your four chins, three-layer arms and curling toenails.
3. Movies touted as wild and funny (e.g., The Hangover) feel bleak, sexist, homophobic, cynical, simple-minded and dull.
4. Your grandchildren spend hours playing connect-the-dots with your liver spots.
5. You phone your doctor for your annual appointment and the receptionist says, “You’re still alive?”
6. Your neck has more rings than Hira Guj, Birchi Guj and Kuttar Guj combined.
7. By the time you remember how to spell erectile dysfunction you no longer know, or care, what it means.
8. Your age is divisible by the age of your oldest child + 20.
9. National Geographic has approached you, gingerly, about a cover story.
10. Your eye make-up includes baking soda, super glue, plaster of Paris and toothpicks.
11. Apart from that man in The Book of Lists, you are the oldest living person in your village.
12. You go upstairs in search of your trifocals and return with a bottle of Geritol, your Civil War memo notes and four packets of denture powder.
13. Your face has been used on the library billboard: The Great Lakes and Their Tributaries.
14. You mishear hair brush for air brush, retard for leotard and girth for Goth.
15. You know who Arthur Treacher, Totie Fields, Jackie Moms Mabley, Mrs. Miller, Xavier Cugat and April Aldrich are, and can place them in order of height.
16. When you smile at the Mon Lisa, she smiles back – really big.

Nearer My God To Thee?

The co-hosts of The View are debating the topic of God and BP, the suggestion being made that prayer might be the thing to offer up since nothing else seems to be working.

Whenever I hear these heated discussions, where there is disagreement and yet everyone on the panel seems to agree that God is an entity, I sit here dumbfounded (which is maybe why no one asks me to moderate a television show).

Sherri Shepherd has just announced, by the way, that it’s okay if someone else understands God as a female, but in her eyes, God is a (the capital H is understood) He.

What’s wrong with people? Why is it that they expect that God, if there is such an entity, will come out from wherever s/he is hiding and rescue human morons from our man-made mistakes? Don’t you think the holiest of holies would have better things to do?

Are there not, for example, 22.4 million people living with AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa? Indeed, in the Asian, African and Latin American countries combined, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty." And every year 15 million children die of hunger.

In fact, according to ThinkQuest: Projects by Students for Students, “to satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US $13 billion – what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year” – little more than half the 20 billion offered up by BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward.

Further to the oil spill and closer to home is cancer, which will afflict every family in the world – as will alcoholism, drug addiction, and severe depression.

Where is their God? Where is mine? Where was God for my mother before she committed suicide; when Don was afflicted with neuro-endocrine cancer; when my brother was addicted to drugs?

And who is any one of us to expect, were there an exact idea of God that they expect, that this almighty spirit is going to issue forth a solution for the issuing forth – thus far 160 million gallons of it – in the Gulf Coast?

Call me naive, but it seems to me if we spent more time working on traits – generosity, understanding, study, hard work and compassion – we wouldn’t be spending our mornings (okay, I wouldn’t be spending my morning) listening to the co-hosts on The View debate whether God is male or female and whether he or she should be appealed to to stop the oil spill – the one created by greedy entrepreneurs who ought to have been stopped, by us, long before now.

G Stands for G. Gordon Liddy

Well, I was going to write a blog entry, but then I realized the date. And I am not referring to the first day of summer, although you would be right about that, too, I suppose. No. Today marks the week of the G-20 Summit in Toronto, which means, of course, that before I write another word I have other – far more critical tasks – cut out for me.

First off, I have to finish erecting the barbed wire fence out front of the house in case any of those terrorists (and not the neighbourhood crack addicts) decide that the east end of Toronto is an ideal location for bomb-launching. This particular chore wouldn’t be so arduous had the the instructions for electrifying the fence not blown away when I was out on the balcony watering the plants and keeping my eyes peeled for the drug dealers who hang out at the corner store.

Next, I have to hightail it down to Loblaws and stock up on canned goods: corned beef (there is nothing like a heap of corned beef hash to tamp down extraneous worry); devilled ham; Franco American Macaroni, which I know they no longer make, but a girl can dream, can’t she?; Habitant oui ‘ello split pea soup, and some of that white goopy marshmallow spread (which technically comes in a jar…I think). After all, who knows how long I might have to depend on supplies…or offer them up as bargaining fodder?

After that, I have to dash over to the vet’s and pick up three month’s supply of fresh needles (Boots has diabetes, and by then the addicts might be beating down our doors for injectionary supplies), along with kitty insulin, DM cat food and Yesterday’s News cat litter. You can imagine how quickly five cats can fester, and we wouldn’t want to contaminate this already fine neighbourhood while the city is under siege.

After that, I need to pop over to the nursery to pack up the car with a few more annuals still missing from our garden. At first I thought some simple daisies and nasturtiums would do, but now I’m thinking more along the lines of poppies and ambrosia. What’s that saying – if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em?

And that’s only the first page of several that outline immediate job requirements.

In the meantime, and I guess this will all depend on the neighbourhood in which you live, I have all kinds of instruction manuals over here should you need them. While it’s true that you can’t lure a cop into a crack neighbourhood with a twelve-pack of doughnuts and a carton of American cigarettes, just holler “G-20 Summit!” and those silver-badges will come creeping out of the woodwork faster than you can say…

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did…”

Rufus Wainwright Elicits Audience Raves

For every child who has danced on the corner of her mother’s Persian rug, twirling up and around to face the summer sky and feel a rare breeze making its way past the curtains through the third-floor apartment window, you will know what it means to attend a Rufus Wainwright concert: magical, mesmerizing, masterful, momentous, moving, mellifluous, and utterly memorable.

Rufus Wainwright was everything I expected and more, evoking (but not derivative of) George Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Jacques Brel (except that Wainwright’s discordant madness seems disturbingly and enchantingly genuine), Erik Satie, Edith Piaf (my apologies to his sister), Georges Auric, Philip Glass and I don’t know who else.

At moments I felt as if I were sitting in a 1930’s circus arena; a French dancehall; a church (hymns hymns hymns); a stage-action musical accompaniment cinema (that’s hard to say), and inside various movie scores – the entire time watching this commanding, powerful musician, his genius astounding with every key change and vocal surprise, awed by his paradoxical nature, his nimble shifts from high drama (see Act I) to self-effacement, from lush to spare, from assurance to shyness, and from sadness to wicked humour.

I know almost nothing about music, but I do know that this was perhaps the most complete concert I have ever attended. I was shocked by the audience, too – expecting to see mostly young men and women and instead finding families; grandparents; siblings; couples of all persuasions; best friends (you could tell by their outfits and body language) – that included every age group.

The fact of the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre, the Victorian setting, the simple stage candles sitting on the floor, the back-screen, and this hauntingly handsome man perched at the polished grand piano adjacent, but not completely within, a small circle of stage light (whispering hints of family secrets) only added to the graciousness of his performance, his final generous encore number (maybe his fourth…I lost count) – Walking Song – written by and dedicated to his recently deceased mother, Kate McGarrigle:

We'll talk blood and how we were bred
Talk about the folks both living and dead

Anyway, I know how cloying I must sound, even to some of the people who attended last night’s concert. And anyone who knows me even half-well knows how much I resist any cloying urge except in the rarest of cases – in this one Rufus Wainwright performing for Luminato at the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre.

Bravo!

Rating: 5/5

Complaints Department: Toronto Central

And this all in one day.

Where do I begin?

So, I went searching the Ethan Allen furniture site looking for swatches, when I immediately came upon eighteen (18!) pages of serious complaints against their company. And given that all of the Toronto items come from the United States (and, judging from the complaints, from as far away as China), there goes that lovely Bradshaw number in peony pink.

I thought nothing could be as bad as the reams of complaints I read against Up Country (come to think of it, perhaps nothing is as bad),  but when you add in all the damaged and over-sized goods I saw yesterday at some of Toronto’s “finest” furniture stores, well, wait ‘til Mrs. Trumble gets a load of this!

Then I thought...maybe Susan’s right. Maybe a futon is the answer. After all, the frames do come in mission style (hmmm…oh no wait. That’s missionary style) and in pine (for you, I balsam), and considering that they can actually be washed, they might be the ideal choice. So I went on the recommended website and found more spelling and grammar mistakes that I have encountered from an entire classroom of ESL students, which leads me to wonder – if their website is this careless, how good (or bad) might their products be?

So, while I was deliberating about sofas, I decided to look up Roots Active Bicycle shorts (I got paint on mine) and saw, to my complete delight, that Sears sells them. I called Sears, got someone who talks faster than John Moschitta Jr (reputedly the world’s fastest talker, at 586 words per minute), who too-quickly mumbled something, then transferred me to a department where I ended up leaving a (thus far, unanswered) message.

Next, I called Sport Chek, where Mr. Moschitta’s cousin was working and where I was put on hold – twice – for no less than fifteen minutes per call. (I counted.) Then I hung up.

After that I thought the wise thing would be to call Roots, the makers of the very shorts I wanted. A sweet young woman (also a rapid speaker) answered and told me that Roots doesn’t sell this item, and suggested I try Costco.

The man at Athlete’s World, also lovely, knew right away that his store did not carry these bicycle shorts, but he suggested I try Roots.

You see what I mean?

Anyway, I sit here terrified because now I have to do some business with Rogers, whose service agents always talk faster than I can make out; whose movie blurbs are among the worst ever written (riddled with grammar, spelling and content errors), and who charge, it seems, by the minute.

In the meantime, if any of you know anything about couches,  swatches or bicycle shorts, I’ll be sitting right here – on hold.

When It Rains, It Pours

Do you remember the little yellow-dressed umbrella girl in the Morton’s Salt ad? Apparently, the company's logo (1914) and its motto "When it rains, it pours" (1911) were developed to illustrate the point that Morton Salt was free flowing, even in rainy weather.

Anyway, my point is that I love when it rains, it pours. Soft rain is nice for newlyweds or for women who have just given birth, but oh, for a hard, pelting rain – the kind that slams into the skylight and soaks the window ledge within 60 seconds. That’s the kind of rain I mean.

When it rains like that I am inspired to clean, to write, to read, to be gentle with the cats, and in general, to appreciate my life. I couldn’t care less if the mailman came, the television cable cut out, or if there ever were such things as potato chips and Pepsi.

In fact, I am wondering as I type this where it is I really ought to be living; what sort of monsoon-like climates would support my benevolent omnipotence – the kind that gets things done.

The Internet (Solar Energy Charity) tells me that wettest place in the world is Tutunendo, Colombia, with an average rainfall of 463.4 inches (1177 centimeters) per year. The place that has the most rainy days per year [I am confused] is Mount Wai-'ale'ale on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. It has up to 350 rainy days annually. [Oh, I see. I think.]

Also from the Internet (Current Results), I learn that nine major weather stations in the continental 48 states receive an average of over 60 inches (1524 millimetres) of precipitation a year:

• Mt. Washington, New Hampshire
  101.9
• Quillayute, Washington
  101.7
• Astoria, Oregon
  67.1
• Mobile, Alabama
  66.3
• Pensacola, Florida
  64.3
• New Orleans, Louisiana
  64.2
• Tallahassee, Florida
  63.2
• Baton Rouge, Louisiana
  63.1
• West Palm Beach, Florida
  61.4

Places in the continental USA having over 160 days a year with rain or snow are

• Mt. Washington, New Hampshire
  209
• Quillayute, Washington
  208
• Astoria, Oregon
  193
• Syracuse, New York
  171
• Elkins, West Virginia
  171
• Buffalo, New York
  168
• Marquette, Michigan
  165
• Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
  164
• Erie, Pennsylvania
  164
• Olympia, Washington
  163
• Binghamton, New York
  161

As for Canada, “Prince Rupert's average of 3111 millimetres (mm) (over ten feet) of precipitation a year earns it the reputation as Canada's wettest city. Nearly all the moisture landing in the ocean port city of northern British Columbia falls as rain. … Rainier yet are some of the weather stations located at fish hatcheries and lighthouses scattered along coastal BC.”

The Atlantic coast, however, gets nowhere near the amount of precipitation that deluges Canada's Pacific coast. The average total yearly precipitation for some of the wetter spots in other provinces include

• Wreck Cove Brook, Nova Scotia
  1945
• Pools Cove - Fortune Bay, Newfoundland
  1829
• Louisbourg, Nova Scotia
  1599
• Sydney, Nova Scotia
  1505
• Alliston, PEI
  1182
• Charlottetown, PEI
  1173
• Sept-Iles, Quebec
  1156
• Stratford, Ontario
  1064
• Cameron Falls, Alberta
  1103

Having just come back from PEI last week, I can attest to the rainfall (which, as I said, I loved), because on PEI when it rains, it pours.

I’d Give My Kingdom for a Chesterfield

And I don’t mean the cigarettes.

At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to rustle up one furniture site besides IKEA and Leon’s. We need a new sofa (because this one is well past its overdue date), and I had tried looking a while back but couldn’t find anything online.

Times have changed.

Of the following list, I found approximately nine sites whose stores I’d be willing to try or can afford. Mind you, when you see the list you might be shocked that the percentages weren’t higher.

Still, if ever you’re in the market for a sofa, perhaps this elongated/abbreviated list will help. And if you want to know which nine, just ask.

• Bullet
• Industrial Storm
• Enchanted Teak
• Marty Millionaire
• Neat
• Kuda
• Tatami
• Consumer’s Discount Furniture
• Ante
• Commute Home
• Roomy
• Ministry of the Interior
• Filter
• South Hill Home
• Idomo
• Ridpath’s [I’d have to sell off three grandchildren and the car to afford anything in this store]
• Space
• Elte
• Chatelet
• Haven
• Tanya’s Furniture Gallery
• RusTeak
• Lifestyle Shop
• Decorium
• Dragon Heir
• Biltmore
• Roche-Bobois
• Kiosk
• Pillow Loft
• Hogar Home Decor
• Cosman
• Barrymore Furniture
• GH Johnson’s Trading Company
• Nestings
• Of Things Past
• The Living Furniture
• Twice Found Vintage
• Andrew Richard
• Forever Interiors
• Absolutely Inc.
• Smile Back
• Jalan
• Markham Furniture
• Finn Boutique
• Virez
• Kings & Queens
• Hollace Cluny
• BLVD
• Frontier Sales [maybe they sell wagon wheel coffee tables]
• Martin Daniel Interiors
• Greentea Design
• Akroyd
• Boo Boo & Lefty
• Fair Deal Furniture [don’t think so]
• Cornerstone
• The Country Store
• Angus & Company
• CasaLife
• Abacus
• Umbra
• Bungalow
• Quasi Modo
• West Elm
• INstyle
• La Vie
• De Boer’s
• Rang Home
• Simlpy Home
• Up Country [terrible reviews online…enraged customers]
• Ethan Allen [thank you, Mike]
• Smart Furniture
• Timon’s Furniture
• Nienkamper Retail Showroom
• Johnson’s Antiques

All I want to do now is make bad puns: Isn’t this divan? Don’t put your futon my lap. Let’s get high, boy! And so on. Reminds me of the time I spent a half-day looking up all the Arsenaults (or was it the Gaudets?), MacDonalds (or was it the MacKinnons?) and God knows who else in the Charlottetown phonebook. Scary. (From my end and theirs.)

Anyway, wish me luck. Somewhere out there sits a couch with my name on it. And that’s only the beginning. Eventually it will also be covered in cat hair; Boots’s diabetic leakage; hot dog condiments; Pepsi; cookie crumbs; loose change (although this will inevitably slip through the cracks, along with small toys), and wine stains.

In the meantime, sofa, so good.

One Art

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

Then practice losing further, 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

And Speaking of Bites

I woke up with another one. Right behind my ear. Or maybe I should say, behind my right ear. Just like the last one, only higher. On my mastoid, if that’s even what you call it. (Judy Garland’s father, Frank Gumm, died of chronic mastoiditis in a time when there was no treatment.) (See where my head goes?)

I wonder how I can still be allergic to bites at my age? They puff, they swell, they grow to the size of small watermelons, and there’s little I can do about it. I use dampened baking soda, cold cloths, and steamy bread poultices when the bites are bad enough, but nothing helps to any great degree except time.

The summer between grades two and three, my father took me away (thank God) to a camp where I was to spend one week. I wasn’t two days into my holiday – thus far only having had time to win the hold-your-breath-under-water ribbon (four minutes) – when I was sent home for what at first seemed to be a case of severe poison ivy and was later diagnosed as (137 – I counted, and I do remember, Camille…cough cough) insect bites, all of them situated between knees and ankles.

This episode reminds me of my mother and father, newly married and living in a tiny apartment on Walmer Road here in Toronto. At night, nestled in bed, my mother would whip out the flashlight and point it at the wall while my father hammered, with a flyswatter, the army of ascending bedbugs. Mind you, my father could kill a fly with his hand, mid-air (the fly was mid-air, not my father). Indeed, my dad was a man and master of many talents, but that’s another entry altogether.

Anyway, it’s one thing to suffer a few treatable bites or wipe out a dozen bedbugs every night, but there are far worse outcomes than these. Every summer when the air is rife with black flies and mosquitoes, I remember that dear four-year-old boy in Northern Ontario, lost in the woods for one day, who died from infection from black fly bites. Poor baby boy. His is not the only dire insect story I have heard, merely the first. And although some people might ask me why I keep such events in my head, I would ask right back – how could you not?

And no, I didn’t mean to begin the day (yours or mine) with upsetting news. It’s just how my brain works. Me and Doris Lessing, stream-of-consciousing it up a lazy river by the old mill run, the lazy, lazy river in the noonday sun. Meanwhile, the summer solstice is nigh upon us so grab your sprays, lotions, permethrin, Skin-So-Soft, netting, baking soda, cool cloths and bread and milk (don’t forget the pot), and when in doubt, call your pharmacist, ask your herbalist, or check the Internet http://forestry.about.com/cs/treetips1/a/mosquitotips.htm for advice.

Or better yet, stay indoors and read informative, lively, uplifting, restorative blog entries written by monstrously talented (it occurs to me now that there are people in the world who would take this seriously) 37-year-old women who react badly to mosquito bites (and other things that shall here remain nameless). Or as the song goes…

Linger awhile in the shade of the tree

Throw away your troubles, dream a dream of me

Hoagy Carmichael and Sidney Arodin

It’s All In The Bite

Dentistry has come a long way since I was a girl. I remember my first dental experience taking place when I was about eight years old, agonizing in a Renfrew office. In those days, if there was anaesthetic I certainly didn’t see or feel any. I clearly remember the bulky, horn-rimmed (glasses, I mean), brown-panted dentist coming at me with what looked like a giant pair of pliers, stuffing his big mitts into my small mouth, twisting and pulling until the offending tooth and its surprisingly long roots had been yanked out and tossed into a metal garbage container. Plunk. I can still taste the blood.

Several years and about a dozen abscesses later, I trotted my own young children off to our kindly Charlottetown dentist, Dr. James Murphy, where I consistently grinned toothily and lied to my kids, telling them they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Mind you, basic dentistry has long been free for PEI children, so there was actually something to be happy, and consistent, about. I am proud to say that even after all of these years, not one of the children has had so much as an abscess, let alone a root canal (although my youngest has inherited his mother’s terribly crowded teeth, which, let me tell you, is no picnic).

Still, anyone my age can tell you their own horror stories about personal dental experiences: wadded gauze sliding precariously toward the throat; skin graft hemorrhaging; two-hour filling procedures; Nurse Ratched assistants; exorbitant fees. Why, I can recall people insisting that their mercury-filled dental fillings could pick up remote radio stations! (Imagine Glen Campbell singing By The Time I Get To Phoenix in your teeth.)

Nowadays, however, dental work isn’t nearly the trial it used to be – and I say that as someone who still suffers from the occasional abscessed tooth. (Seems to be my thing.) In fact, the dental technician I have – her name is Michele – is so blasted funny that I barely have time to remember where I am, let alone worry.

Today, in fact, she regaled me with the story of the family’s late Springer Spaniel: her mother-in-law’s discovery of the suddenly deceased dog; her husband’s over-riding grief (apparently, he couldn’t eat dinner in the house for two weeks, saying it was just too painful to sit in the kitchen), and her young daughter’s complete indifference to the animal’s parting, apart from her wish that, when she is “mercated” (cremated), she would like to be placed in a pink dish and not the unsightly beige bowl in which her dog’s ashes now rest.

It might not sound very funny from where you sit, but that’s partly because I am the one telling it, not Michele. But every time I go to have my teeth cleaned, I come away with kind, funny, real stories about the same kind of wacky and wonderful (or weird) (or both) families we all come from. I lie back in the chair, imagining Michele’s husband frenetically working away at nineteen simultaneous house projects; her mother and father tumbling down ski hills in eastern Ontario, and her four-year-old daughter impatiently reminding her mother that Barbie dolls are passé.

When my hour or so is up, I am almost sorry to leave, my little bag of dental treats – brushes, floss, picks and paste – in hand. I slowly pull away in the car, inevitably reminding myself that dentistry, and the people who work in the field of dentistry, have come a long, long way.

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working
She'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call…