Monday, May 20, 2013

nancy spots a whale and other tales - personal in nature......




(this is a repost about my last visit home. at the moment i'm up to my ass in children, planting the garden and greenhouse, making stuff for the farmer's markets  and getting cows ready to go to summer pasture...... jesus christ i'm tired)


my oh my, how time flies when your losing your mind. where to start - not the beginning - that's too obvious - not the end..... i think i'll not start at all, i'll just carry on. let's pretend in april i sighed somewhat dramatically, took a sip of tea and then looked pensively out the window for awhile. 

i went on an aeroplane. that practically ruined my entire summer. the anticipation of the crash. of whether i would ultimately sacrifice myself to save other passengers or in the flush of adrenalin i would toss them out in hopes of creating a soft pile to land on.

in the end i went and we did not crash. i hated every second of being on that plane. i sort of forgot about falling from the sky and instead found considerable issue with how uncomfortable i was, how confined and chubby if felt, how goddamn much a mini can of pringles cost, how long it was taking....

but then...
6 days in my mother's house. 6 days of sleeping on feather pillows that were created before WW2. 6 days of not eating any vegetables except canned peas. 6 days of laughing and laughing. 6 days of realizing i no longer belonged in this place. 6 days of soaking up the song of a people that is still my own. 6 days of my dear susan

i grew up among people who value the art of the telling over the art of the tale. which meant we thrived on the details. god how i miss that. i miss the sheer thrill of the tell. where facts are passed over for the more speculative approach. where judgements are passed before plots have unfolded. and to have 6 days of that wonder and recognizing yourself in the words and cadence of those around you is just to lovely for words.

during those 6 days i had use of my mother's car. firstly she said - "i would appreciate if you didn't go over 80km." i didn't see that restriction coming. that's the great thing about my mom - you can't predict her next move. her offensive game is just outstanding. mom had other rules regarding her 1991 ford focus. no driving after dark. no rough roads. no unlocked doors or windows left down. and under no circumstances was i to hit a deer. hmmm...

the first time i sat in the car. i said "ok little ford focus, you better keep your frigging mouth shut about the next 6 days or i'm going to slam your tiny, god damn ass into a deer." 

those 6 days were filled with immaturity and joy. my baby girl got to see humpback whales with here auntie sue. we ate clams and lobster and fish. we slept in the ancient lakelawn motel where we found blood, mysteriously smeared on the door and top sheet. we all had our theories and we felt delighted to have been assigned this family double. we found sea glass and iridescent blue plastic tampon holders on the beach. we picked apples and ate them unwashed. we sang filthy, dirty songs about sailors and german soldiers.

we had the time of our lives. but at times i looked in the face of my friend and found a happiness that i cannot find on my own.

bev

Friday, May 3, 2013

let's review the tape..........



i must warn you, i'm going to use the word anus in this post. not that's such a bad word. its just one i find quite startling to write. i not used to typing it. i say it a lot  - as in - "my husband being a giant anus" but i rarely write it down - as in -  correspondence to my mother - "your son-in-law being a giant anus." i ran into a similar problem when i used the word masturbation in a post. again, i just don't write that word a lot. i don't put pen to paper and say the neighbours' boy lost a thumb from vigorous masturbation. so hang on when you see anus.

some people bring out the best in others, some the worst. i seem to bring out the unexpected. people have the habit of saying the oddest things to me. sometimes my friends think i'm lying when relay a tidbit from someone else but then they're with me, it happens, and they look at me in shocked silence  and i say "weird isn't it".

this past week a perfectly nice lady cornered me and told me her god had a special plan for me. to be frank i did nothing to illicit this, i was minding my own business, eating a hot dog. she introduced herself, we chitchatted and then boom - she leaned in close and said "god has a special plan for you." as a nearly atheist, agnostic girl this was troubling. why was her god targeting me? why not give her a special plan? i was led to assume that this special plan was most likely carnal in nature. jesus, everyone wants a piece of the deliciousness that is me.

i also had a awkward encounter last week with a nurse. i asked what i could possibly give a baby girl, who was in my care, to boost her immune system. let's just put it out there that i was confident she was going to say vitamin drops. i was just about to say "i'll buy some on my way out." then, out of the blue she says, "breast milk." i was dumbstruck -  breast milk. how is breast milk the answer to any question in my world. "well, as it turns out," i said, " i don't have any." not deterred she told me to go to the milk bank. again i replied, "well, as it turns out i don't know where that is." "never mind," she said," i know a woman whose producing 70 oz a day. i'm sure she share with you. here's her number." "yea, maybe not today. i said.

of course
 when i moved to the prairies and started my my life as farm wife i found that farm women liked to talk about worms - specifically worms in their children. there were two camps, those who wormed and those who didn;'t. i fell in with the non-wormers. over the years i have heard an ever increasing number of ways to detect and expose the worm. when my children were small, people simply gave their children a worm pill in the spring - much like we give our cows. although, the cows get a liquid poured on their back to kill all and any parasitical intruders. sometimes i would spill a tiny bit of this bovine medication on the kids' heads and hoped that would do the job for them.
 in the last year or so i have heard of mothers actually going looking for the worms. no more blind dosing. people are becoming proactive. one mother told me that she goes in her kid's room at night pulls down their pants and shines a flashlight on their kids ass. then shuts it off and looks for worms - the worms apparently climb out of the anus at night and glow in the dark. jesus, jesus, jesus, so much planning. the csi flashlight, lying awake, waiting for opportunity and body position.

but
the mother of all evidence gathering came from my friend whose name rhymes with tim. she said her friends' mom  taped her kids anuses at night and in the morning pulled the tape off and the worms apparently stuck to the tape. sort of like a fly trap or one of those glue mouse traps. well this information sent me to the borders of my imagination. what sort of tape did she use - gift wrap invisible or standard duck tape. i assumed the tape would run vertical  like a adhesive thong. was it pulled off quickly like a band-aid or slowly for the big worm reveal? what age range were the children? who in holy hell thought of this? who said "i've got a idea let's put a bit of tape on the little fellers' ass and see what crawls out. come here to mommy."

so you see you can't shock me. well, you can shock me but only for a second and then i'm good to go.

bev
ps. for those who would like to know
hornet had a heifer calf this year and we named her terri
sally the christmas horse is lovely. she is halter broke and the apple of my daughter's eye