Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 6

Autocorrect, #2

A couple of people have asked to be able to read the words to my youtube poem, “If Autocorrect were your teacher…”

So, here it is! Click the link here: Autocorrect to watch the video.

Thanks to everyone who is tweeting and sharing and liking… isn’t it ironic, but it’s quite fun too! :)

 

If autocorrect were your teacher…

Homework would be obsolete,

How bittersweet

To hit delete

When the teacher begins to browbeat

Your tormented soul with…

Knowledge?

Knowledge is in the shiny wee device vibrating in your pocket.

Is that your phone, or are you just happy to see… your selfie?

With a plethora of gadgets beeping and clicking these days,

It comes to me, in my middle-aged haze,

That the youth of today are becoming dependent,

On a new form of teacher, so much more resplendent

Than I am… sporting my cardigan and pince-nez frames…

No one knows what those are, but I like to throw out words that confound.

Obfuscate.

Complicate.

Discombobulate.

(student madly googles to determine definition, defying cognition,

their brain’s ignition turned to…

neutral.)

Your teachers grew up in a world non-digital,

And forgive me if I sound hypercritical,

But if you can’t spell “there, they’re, and their” its unforgivable,

And the consequences are… unthinkable

if we lose our language thanks to… Autocorrect.

Oh… and did I neglect,

As my thoughts roll on, unchecked,

To show respect,

To the technological mastery our modern wee prodigies lay claim to?

In my failure to connect,

The dots

Between wiki, google, wifi, insta, snap, face, twit, tumble, redd, kijij, bbm, message, lol, ttyl, and brb and tmi and… who am I…?

Who am I…? To judge?

I tweet, therefore I am.

If Autocorrect were your teacher there would be no red pen.

No need to defend

The error of your ways,

when you can blame the machine.

Autocorrect is a librarian stoked on caffeine,

Mainlining codeine,

Spreading verbosity like gangrene

Not using it would be like going back to the Pleistocene,

When no one could f***ing spell anyway…

Students have been making corrections before corrections were cool.

If Autocorrect were your teacher, there would be no grading,

No effort at persuading

You to learn.

Of course it’s not degrading,

For your brain to be masquerading,

As a constantly upgrading

interface, gently serenading

Your ego.

“It’s ok not to know. You have Autocorrect.”

If Autocorrect were your teacher, then Google would be your God,

Or at least a favorite uncle who brings you candy.

And cat videos.

And porn.

A highly useful education.

But let us not adorn

This benevolent presence with a mantle of scorn,

For I would be foresworn

To pretend that I have not indulged in a wee dabble of digital delinquency despite the debilitating dependency degrading my dendrites daily with despair every time I google…

“What rhymes with porn?”

“How do you make curried shrimp?”

“What are the lyrics to that new Miley song?”

Sure, I sing-a-long.

I know the tune.

Google knows all.

Autocorrect will save me,

Or not

when I try to spell formulate… but it gives me fornicate.

When I try to tell my dad I was meditating, but it gives me menstruating…

When I want to say something gentle, but it gets all genital

Up in my grill.

No one will blame me…

If autocorrect is my teacher.

Dear Autocorrect,

I mean no disrespect,

in suggesting you’re imperfect.

I only wish to protect

The developing intellect

Of the youth whom you misdirect.

Perhaps your influence is indirect,

And while I vivisect

Your flaws

I fail to reflect

On the bigger picture.

It’s not your fault.

It’s ours.

It’s the moms and dads, the teachers, the politicians, the bottom line, the upper crust, the high life, the how-low-can-you-go, the quick fix, the middle of the road, the …

…the idea that Life is a drive-thru window.

Biggie size my fries, extra ketchup, twelve pounds of bacon on my burger and don’t forget my pickle.

And I want it now.

I’ll eat in my car.

You should have to work harder than that.

It’s not Autocorrect, that blameless pedagogue of thoughtless authority,

Appealing to the majority,

Providing information logically,

And, perhaps, blamelessly…

It’s…

Mediocrity.

Autocorrect gives me “medicare” for mediocrity.

“Compose” for complacency.

“In vireo” for incurious.

When I spell them wrong. On purpose. Just to see.

“There is no excuse for medicare when the population is composed of in vireo individuals who fail to menstruate for the well-being of their genital souls.”

Thanks Autocorrect.

That makes perfect sense.

If autocorrect were your teacher…

Oh wait… you missed what I was just saying?

Because you felt compelled,

To check facebook, twitter, tumbler, reddit, and kijiji?

While tapping into your credit card for your Kim K game?

And beating the next level of Candy Crush?

Someone’s texting you?

You just got a snap chat that’s hilarious?

While I was trying to teach you how to spell “there, their and they’re”…?

I fear my position is precarious,

And while it may seem ridiculous

That these addictions make me nervous,

I fear the situation is serious.

We’re all becoming delirious.

Feckless.

Thoughtless…

But we don’t have to be.

Put down your phone,

LOOK at each other.

Nice.

We don’t have to pay the price

Of dependency on a device

Our brains may be imprecise

But they will suffice

And the best advice

I’ve ever heard didn’t come from my phone,

My ipad,

My twitter feed,

It came in a time of need

And it has become my creed…

You CAN learn stuff.

You already have ENOUGH

Of whatever it is you need to be able to LEARN.

It’s time to make a u-turn.

And I’m not telling you to spurn

Technology.

You can’t. I can’t. No one wants to.

But when the zombies come scratching at your cave door, baby,

I hope you can google ‘apocalypse’,

Because I know autocorrect can’t fix friendships,

It can’t support you in hardships,

It won’t win you apprenticeships, or partnerships,

Or soft lips,

That whisper ‘I love you’,

When the lights go out.

Compared to the power of your brain,

Technology is mundane.

It is the novocaine

On the root canal of society’s forebrain.

And yes, you may have to bluff

When times get rough,

But you’re tough.

Learn stuff.

Google is NOT your God.

Autocorrect is NOT your teacher.

Life is.

Turn IT on.

Turn Autocorrect OFF.

Learn something.

It’s the only way to defeat the zombies.

 

If Autocorrect were your teacher…

I’ve been teaching for just over a decade now, and what a decade it has been! We’ve seen the advent of facebook, cell phones, twitter and the entire encyclopedia of social media tools threatening to overwhelm both our common sense and our social skills. Technology has transformed the classroom and the children who walk into the school in lots of positive ways, and in an equal (if not higher) number of negative ways.

I don’t have the research statistics at my fingertips, but I know that fine motor skills are decaying, literacy rates are poor, social anxiety is rising, attention deficit disorders are reaching staggering levels, and the constant battle to get the kids to focus, to speak for themselves, to look people in the eye, and to STOPTEXTINGINCLASS is driving teachers to the brink of the edge of the skin-of-their-teeth… Yet we must embrace technology, and all of its inconvenient bedfellows, because to suggest that we can ignore it is to go the way of the dinosaurs.

I’m quite partial to Little Foot, myself. Those were the days… pre-facebook, pre-instagram, pre-twitter… “The Land Before Time” movies. My children loved them. Sometimes, in my classroom, as I struggle valiantly to make sense of the ipad icons that seem to hearken back to the days of hieroglyphics, I feel like a dinosaur myself. But then I taught an Advanced English 11 class, and my faith in the future was restored.

Sort of.

They whined a lot, and I spent a small fortune on snacks and treats, and the begging for “just a few days’ extension” on assignments haunted me in my sleep… but they were pretty cool kids.

They wanted to learn. They challenged my ideas. They laughed at my wiener jokes.

(Sometimes, when a teacher is dangling on the brink of the edge of the skin-of-her-teeth, it’s really nice when the kids laugh at her wiener jokes.)

When school was finished for the year, I had a facebook conversation with the lovely Deena. Deena is an Egyptian princess with a penchant for ranting, begging for candy and making huge sappy doe-eyes when she asks for an extra day to hand in an assignment. We fought a lot. She called me “poop-hole” and I called her “dingle-nuts”, and we mostly got along famously.

Until she let Autocorrect interfere with our facebook exchange.

It may (or may not) have gone something like this:

Deens: Damn autocorrect… I meant to write gentle…

Me: You just told me that your friend is very… genital…

Deens: Not my fault! Autocorrect!

Me: Turn that shit off! You need to know how to spell!

Deens: You aren’t teaching me anymore. You’re not the boss of me!

Me: Yeah… well… Autocorrect isn’t your teacher either…

Deens: I wish.

Me: Do not.

Deens: Do too.

And so forth. I have to admit to not always being entirely mature and role-model-ish with my students, but we do laugh a lot, and this poem was born out of that conversation.

I’ve worked for the past week or so, trying to animate the poem so I could stick it on youtube for the kids at school to see. Headaches, brainaches, backaches… I believe I have a unique horomonal response to technology which may be akin to road rage. I never get as worked up with other aggravations in my life… my kids, my finances, my ex, my boggy uterus… as I do when technology gets glitchy and won’t work the way I want it to. It’s as if a tiny geyser of molten lava explodes in my right kidney and I have the uncontrollable urge to create the sound of smashing. I fought with the technology. I sort of won.

I used a cool little program call VideoScribe which only made me want to hurl body parts at the screen a half dozen times, which is pretty good in my techy experience. The voice-over is kind of sucky, but after three trips to the computer store and a variety of thwarted efforts with a microphone, ya get what ya get… ya get me?

So here is my spoken word effort at addressing the addiction to technology that causes me great woe in my classroom… it’s not a negation of techy things, it’s not a when-I-was-a-kid-I-walked-to-school-uphill-both-ways kind of ranting diatribe. It’s just an observation. A concern. A belief that our kids need more faith in their brains and their abilities than in the power of their cell phone.

And yes… isn’t it ironic that I’m blogging this, youtubing it, tweeting it, sharing it on the web. It’s reality. Virtually.

Hope you like it! Click on the photo to go to the youtube link. These lovelies are three of my dearlings who generously gave me permission to use their picture (after they stole my ipad and did secret-ninja-photo-shoots over which I had no control!)

Bread, Expanding Foam, and Marilyn

I don’t think I can eat bread anymore. This is a new thing for me, having a colon that is approaching fifty years old, and, being a cantankerous old biddy, she seems to be unhappy with bread. And dairy.

Wine is fine. Thank the Gods.

It was a cloudy day. A dark and stormy night, if you will, except it was daytime. My Love was at work, my spawn were pursuing their various spawn-like activities, and I was alone with an entire day to maché.

Bliss.

Except for the bread. Which I ate for breakfast. Which my colon disapproved of.

When I say I was free to maché, you, gentle reader, must understand the near-manic passion with which I pursue the maché. I am making fishermen, mermaids, piping plovers, fish, eyeballs, hands, cats, puppets… and Marilyn Monroe.

My Love: “It’s ok, you know, to take a break. You don’t have to maché every minute of every day.”

Me: “I love you, but… I MUST MAKE THE MACHÉ!”

He backs away slowly, hands raised in bewildered surrender.

Marilyn is my newest challenge. Life sized. Anatomically accurate. Marilyn was 5’ 5”, with measurements of 35”, 22”, 35”. I bet she could eat bread and not suffer the consequences.

When making a life-sized maché model, it is important for it not to be too heavy. It has to be portable and liftable, so I try to add the least weight possible as I build it.

Enter: Expanding Insulation Foam.

Lightweight. Carve-able. Priceless.

Marilyn’s boobs and hips. Impressive physical features which would be perfect for the expanding foam idea.

On this day of days… a day with NO ONE home to thwart me… or offer good advice, or counsel, or warning… I decided to build Marilyn’s boobs out of expanding foam.

 

Technically, it was a great idea. Except I had to keep running to bathroom, because of the bread and the almost-fifty-year-old colon, and except for the fact that expanding foam is NOT firm when it first comes out of the can, and it is NOT mold-able when it’s oozing down Marilyn Monroe’s chest.

I sprayed on perky, feisty, 35” bust sized breasts… and then they did what all good breasts must do… they sagged. Dramatically. Like my own. I grabbed onto them, with both hands, and tried to gently tease them back into place.

I should have asked My Love for advice on the man-handling of breasts. He is an expert. I should have realized the futility of fighting gravity. I should have read this warning on the top of the can…

 

Always wear gloves. Oh. Really?

I shouldn’t have eaten bread for breakfast.

When you google “how to remove expanding foam from skin”, you get a variety of suggestions ranging from dire warnings of “WEAR GLOVES” to “gasoline”, “acetone”, and most impressively “Forget it. If it dries, you’ll peel off your skin trying to remove it.”.

Both of my hands were covered with expanding foam, which gets oddly sticky and syrupy when you touch it, to the point that my fingers were growing webs between them and I felt a strange compulsion to try to climb the walls of the house like Spiderman.

IT WOULD NOT WASH OFF.

I WASHED MY HANDS FIFTEEN TIMES.

Dish liquid. Dove. GoJo. Rubbing alcohol. No success.

I managed to clean off one fingertip, enough to text My Love for help.

Me: I have expanding foam all over my hands. Help me!

My Love: You should have worn gloves.

There are moments in every relationship when death by dismemberment is a distinct possibility for the object of one’s affection.

This was one of those.

Me: Duh. Will gasoline work?

Pause of several silent moments wherein he does not reply and I run wildly to the garage, ever cautious of flammables.

Me: Gas doesn’t work. I now stink and am STILL sticky! HELPME!

My Love: I googled it. Acetone.

There are moments in every relationship when one half of the partnership glares into a cell phone, screeching: “WHAT THE FUCK IS ACETONE?”

This was about the time that my almost-fifty-year-old colon remembered that it had eaten bread that morning, and it was unhappy with this dietary choice.

Me: HELPME!

My Love: White bottle.

There are moments in every relationship when one half of the partnership explores the other half’s organizational planning in the garage, whilst trying to prevent one’s fingers from permanently sticking together, whilst valiantly fighting the urge to poop, when that one half wonders aloud… WHERE THE FUCK IS THE ACETONE?

This, was one of those.

The combination of expanding foam, dove soap, gasoline and acetone creates a kind of slick, plastic-like covering that get particularly clumpy between the fingers and in odd random streaks on the forearms that you don’t notice until hours afterwards when you are lying in bed with Your Love and you start picking at your arms like a monkey looking for lice. You hope that the burning sensation will stop, as you also hope that whatever ingredients are in the hand moisturizer you immersed your hands in will not react badly with the acetone, which you did manage to find, in the white bottle, moments before you had to dash to the loo because of the bread, with the expanding foam all over your hands, fearful that you were about to explore a whole new definition of “crack filler”.

This, is how I roll.

Today… two days later… I have peeled off the most offensive of the crusty residue on my hands and Marilyn has boobs that are virtually sag-proof. (Would that we could all paper maché our boobs in place for eternity).

I don’t think my skin is going to peel off, but my hands look like they belong to an eighty year old man instead of an almost-fifty-year-old woman with a weak colon.

 And the moral of the story…?

Don’t eat bread when you’re going to be alone with your imagination and the necessity to make 35″ breasts on a dark and stormy night.

Except that it was daytime.

And always… ALWAYS… know where he keeps the acetone.

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A rose is a rose, by any other name…

I named four children. Two names each. Nice, solid, reasonable names… names that are recognizable, have no inherent hilarity hidden within their syllables, and are easy to pronounce…with the exception of my son, whose name is Elias. We call him Eli. On the South Shore of Nova Scotia, when you are seven years old and win MVP for your hockey team, it is extremely embarrassing for the announcer to read, loudly, into the microphone…

“And most valuable player is…um… Ellie?”

I’m sorry, Eli. I just didn’t see that coming.

I knew someone who named their third daughter Dakota, because he had to sell his truck when she was born. I knew a Holly Wood when I was a kid. And I heard some parents talking about Caliki and I thought it was their husky… but it was their child.

Names are challenging… I maxed out my repertoire of favorite names with my children, but I am a writer of fiction, so I’m giving birth to new characters all the time. Characters who need names.

It’s hard.

Sometimes I hear a name and I just know I have to use it, somewhere, sometime. In my first novel, That Thing That Happened, the main character is called Cosy because I heard a presenter at a teacher inservice talking about a student with that name. Parker is named after a teacher I worked with years ago, because he was kinda sexy. In the novel I’m working on now, there’s a Colton because I promised one of my students that I would name a character after him.

Recently, on facebook, I stumbled over a post from a person named Kroetch.

I don’t know this person, and it is wrong of me… wrong, I tell you… to find such delight in this name. My spawn wring their wee hands… my children, who were not allowed to say “shut up” or “stupid” when they were little… when their mother messages them in paroxysms of mirth to share her discovery of the new and marvelous name… Kroetch.

Me: “What if his name was, like… Harry?”

Spawn: “Harry Kroetch… yeah. Funny, Maw.”

Me: “Or Ima? Or Ivannah?”

Spawn: “Ok, Mom.”

Me: “No, wait… Bernie! What if his name was Bernie Kroetch?” (Followed by a dozen emoticons of mirth, including the fat cat eating a piece of pizza because that one’s my favorite.)

Spawn: “Mother… that’s not even funny.”

Me: “Ivannah Bernadette Kroetch… get it?  Ivannah Bernie Kreotch? Bahahahaha!”

These are the conversations I have with my children. Sometimes we talk about world events and politics, but most of the time… not.

In my long, socially inappropriate life I have known a Butts. And a Dicks. Johnson. Hickey. Kuntz. Bush. Seimen.

Ok… I’ve never actually known a Kuntz, but I did once know of a guy named Hunt.

First name Mike.

And that’s close enough.

In my novel, Lily’s Valley, I have a character named Murple. My friends, upon reading the early drafts, said gentle, supportive things like: “That’s a really stupid name”… but I couldn’t change it. She was born Murple, and Murple she would stay. Sometimes you just get something stuck in your craw… or your Kroetch… and you can’t let it go.

I now live in fear.

I have Kroetch stuck in my craw.

I believe… in my philosophy of life… that things enter our lives at the right time for the right reason, to teach us something. We learn from every person, and every experience, as we move painstakingly toward enlightenment.

My enjoyment of Kroetch is most likely setting me back several lifetimes… but I fear it may find its way into a novel. I fear I may not be learning the right lessons from my discovery of Kroetch. Empathy? Openmindedness? Basic, rudimentary polite manners?

Ivannah Bernie Kroetch.

I’m going to hell, but hopefully I’ll work that name into a novel before I do.

Here’s a cat eating a piece of pizza. Just in case you don’t have a Bernie Kroetch.

Thanks for reading… many thanks (and apologies) to the Kroetch’s of the world!

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Keepin’ the sled on the slope

When I first started dating my Love, he told one of his friends that I seemed nice, and easy-going, and pretty reasonable… for a woman. Divorced men, and maybe men in general, think that women teeter precariously on the precipice of insanity, and that the merest breath of testosterone-infused breeze could send us spiralling toward mania. My Love calls it “flipping your toboggan.” His friend nodded wisely and counselled him not to trust it. I was, after all, a woman, and the flipping of the toboggan was a certainty, it was only a matter of time. Five years, apparently.

“Ya can’t trust ‘em. They act all sweet and friendly and then BAM, it’s crazy time. Five years. It takes five years to know a woman before you can trust ‘em.”

My Love and I have been together for five years, today.

The toboggan has remained running upright on it tracks. There have been no unscheduled stops at Crazy Town. We feel like we’ve made it somewhere. Or at least, we’re happy the sled is still mushing merrily along with both of us on it.

A divorced-persons’ relationship is different than a newly-wed persons’ relationship, in so many ways. We’re not raising kids, we’re not building new careers, we’re not fretting over buying a house and wondering why the mother-in-law seems to hate us. We’re having fun. We’re throwing caution to the wind. We’re having sexy times without worrying that the toddler is going to walk in on us. I believe there are five keys to success, for a “mature” relationship such as ours. (Hahaha, mature relationship! As if!)

   1. Embrace each other’s weirdness.

Men are weird. It’s a proven fact… just spend an afternoon with one of them and it will become abundantly clear that weirdness abounds. Women are weird because we love male weirdness. There’s no helping us. And we seem to get weirder as we get older. My Love and I laugh at each other all the time, without worrying about trying to fix the weird things the other does. (But of course, he’s way weirder than I am… ;)

2. Country, and AC/DC

His AC/DC is loud, howling, painful vocal chord abuse. We’re going to see them live in September. My country music is pathetic, whiney and lame. My Love knows all the words to “Honeybee”. Love each other’s music. That way, you’re always dancing in each other’s arms.

3. Share your spectacles.

Neither one of us can see well. Our hearing is going, too. His back gets sore, my uterus threatens to fall out, his feet hurt, my elbows ache. Sometimes we can only find one pair of glasses in the house and we have to share them, taking turns reading and squinting. Sometimes we go to a restaurant with only one pair of glasses, so we share, or read each other the menu. It’s like sharing one pair of eyes. Love isn’t staring longingly into each other’s eyes, it’s squinting myopically in the same direction.

4. Have lots of happy, funny sexy times.

In deference to my children, who may read this, I’ll just leave it at that… except to say that my father, who married the Woman of his Dreams when he was seventy, recently ended an email to me with the words “remember to keep touching each other.” This is not something my father ever said to me, or to any of my boyfriends, in my youth. But now that we know I won’t get grounded for it…

5. Choose lobster.

Love in the kitchen is the seasoning of life. Lobster is about $11 a pound right now. We’re probably not going to have lobster tonight. But we will cook together, whatever we have. I make a huge mess… onion skins across the counter, flour dusting the floor, butter smeared on the sink… and he cleans up after me. Then we’ll search for a pair of glasses so we see each other, put on some tunes, pour a glass of wine, eat, laugh because we’re weird, and thank my Dad for giving us permission to get our hands on each other.

I used to think relationships were hard, but they don’t have to be. Just keep the sled on the slope, and love each other. Love the quirks, the weaknesses, the preferences and habits, and all the wrinkles, and love is grand! My Dad’s new wife, who is also in her 70’s, told him when she married him that she would be happy to have five good years together. They have also reached, and surpassed, their five year mark and now she says she wants forever. That is a beautiful thing.

Ok, I’m lying. We’re totally having lobster tonight… it’s been five years and I haven’t flipped my toboggan. I think we have something to celebrate!

Keep the sled on the slope, friends, and keep touching other!

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The Zen of Wiener

“Dig deep, don’t give up, overcome the obstacles with undying enthusiasm                  for whatever goal you have determined to be worthy of your talents, and Get All Wienery on That Shit.”

When things start to get overwhelming in my small life, I look to my wiener for inspiration. The therapeutic and holistic benefits of wiener-stroking have been scientifically proven, and since my particular wiener is usually lying snuggled against my belly, I have easy access to the peace and serenity afforded by wiener-stroking. It is The Zen Of Wiener. Some people turn to mediation, others to drugs, still others to obscure sexual pursuits which are better off not discussed in polite company… Wiener Stroking is both politically correct and socially acceptable.

This is my wiener. I know… you want to stoke him too. He is thick, and long, and furry. He keeps me warm on cold winter nights. He is my muse. He is a symbol of determination and faith.

Jeep has decided that all the baby chickens MUST DIE. When I say baby chickens, I mean song birds. Chickadees, virioles, nuthatches, sparrows… all are baby chickens and all MUST DIE. I’ve been tormenting my poor wee wiener all winter because I feed the songbirds and they flock by the hundreds onto our deck like an unattainable smorgasbord buffet of voluptuous plenty.

“I vill kill zee beebee chickenz! Zey vill fill mine belly vith deliciousness!”

This is his mantra, as he lurks, quivering, at the patio door, taunted and mocked by a plethora of fluttering delicacies mere inches from his reach. (I once had a flock of real chickens. Egg laying, cluck-clucking, peck-pecking hens. Jeep killed them all. Every. Single. One. One by one, with sleuth-like serial killer precision, all the chickens met their wienerly death in his slathering jaws. I have yet to recover from the trauma.)

My wiener is dedicated to his task. Jeep does not allow his shortcomings to thwart his intentions. His legs are two inches long. He cannot fly. His breath melts eyeballs at fifty paces. Yet he waits, in raptures of bloodlust, Every Single Day at the patio door, just waiting for the opportunity to leap wildly, yapping and scrabbling for traction, in an endless quest to reach his goal.

If only we could all be so motivated.

I get bogged down in “I suck”, and “it’s too hard” and “I’ll never make it anyway”. Whether it’s a writing goal, or a maché project, or a dream to travel the world as a motivational speaker to save the lives of young people who struggle… too, too often I succumb to the inner voice that tells me that whatever it is I think I can reach is unattainable, and I’d be much better off eating another plate of nachos, watching Netflix and going to bed early.

The wiener never settles.

The wiener endures.

So what if his goal is… horrendously violent? He is an inspiration.

His other obsession is lying on my Lover’s face. It’s a wiener thing. It will never happen… re: breath that melts eyeballs at fifty paces… but every time my Lover sits back on the sofa, Jeep is there, poised, ready to leap full-body-stretched-to-his-impressive-twelve-inches to cover the mouth and nose of his target.

He is thwarted. Every time. But he does not surrender.

I think there is a lesson here.

Dig deep, don’t give up, overcome the obstacles with undying enthusiasm for whatever goal you have determined to be worthy of your talents, and Get All Wienery on That Shit.

One of my daughters recently asked me if I will get another wiener on the unhappy day when my current wiener curls up and succumbs to age and dysfunction. What will I do, when my wiener can no longer jump into my lap, unaided? He is getting a bit grizzled around the chops. He’s not as stalwart as he was in his youth. But it grieves me to think of future wieners, knowing that none can replace the triumphant enthusiasm of the wiener I have loved for the past eight years.

I think, I will not think about it. I will just embrace the Zen of Wiener which states that No Goal is Too Lofty, and No Desire is Too Elusive no matter how long your legs, or how bad your breath, or how thick the glass is on the patio door between you and the baby chickens.

Dream big, friends. Dig deep. Baby chickens await.

 

 

Puppy breath

There are fifteen dogs in our household right now.

One wonders if that is enough.

One glimpses the mounds of steaming brown evidence in the yard and one muses on the wisdom of having fifteen dogs in one’s household. But then it snows again, and all is forgiven.

Rolla, one of our five Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, has had seven puppies. Round, roly-poly, furry little bear cubs who, at three weeks old, are starting to stagger around like tired drunks who can’t quite control their limbs. All they do is eat. Poor Rolla. My own worn out mammaries ache in sympathy. Any woman who has birthed and nursed any number of progeny would flinch to hear the gluttony of slurping and sucking and lip smacking that goes on at the Smorgasbord of Rolla. She just rolls her eyes and sighs. And then licks their bums. Ah, motherhood!

We’re also babysitting a black Lab puppy for a friend. At ten weeks old, little JoJo is a wrecking ball of energy. I collect a pile of debris every day… things she isn’t allowed to chew, but wants to. My phone, the remote, socks, pens, paint tubes, Philip’s ears, my shih Tzu, Max. Josie is a mouth on legs. She loves Philip’s beard… we think she’s nuzzling for a nipple in it’s furry depths. Yes, things get weird here on the Dockcove ranch. Don’t judge.

And, of course, we have the weiner. Jeep has succumbed to the cuteness of JoJo, just as we all have. Jeep… a miserly, hateful, stinky, neurotic weiner dog who pretty much only loves me… loves the Lab puppy. He lets JoJo lick his teeth. It’s not pretty. It looks dangerous and unhygienic to the innocent bystander, but it happens, and both parties seem deeply satisfied.

(Jeep is actually in raptures of joy in this photo.)

Having puppies in the house means broken sleep (just like having a human baby), bad smells (just like having teenagers), and worry and concern about their well-being (just like motherhood itself). It also means moments of extreme cuteness and wonder.

It’s getting us through winter, this plethora of canine delight. I don’t want to think about what the yard will look like… or smell like… when the snow melts, but for now we’re snuzzling.

There’s nothing like puppy-breath on a cold winter’s day to make you feel that all is right with the world.

To Shovel, Or Not To Shovel…

If Hamlet lived in Nova Scotia…

To shovel, or not to shovel – that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the winter to suffer

The snow drifts and blizzards of tumultuous Mother Nature,

Or to wield a shovel against a six foot snowbank of ice chunks

And by toiling remove them? To dig – to heave –

To groan. And by heaving to say we wrench

The sacoriliac, and endure the thousand woeful aches

The flesh is heir to. ‘Tis an occupation

Devoutly to be avoided. To slog – to toil –

To toil – perchance to strain: aye, there’s the twinge

That cripples the sciatica and reminds us painfully

That the muscles that make up this mortal coil,

Must give us grief: there’s the injury

That lasts the rest of our long life;

For who could bear the sweat and blisters of digging,

The frozen fingers, the snot dripping nose,

The pangs of frostbite, and our jealous rage,

As our insolent neighbor smiles and waves,

Behind the roaring ease of his snowblower,

When he himself might our driveway plow

But we’ve just finished shovelling it? Who would this irony bear,

To grunt and sweat under a drift,

When with dread we hear the snowplow,

The nemesis of our toil, from whose blade

All our effort is undone? It puzzles the weary,

And makes us rant and weep and cry

Why me? Wh-h-h-y m-e-e-e?

Thus winter does make lunatics of us all;

And thus our love of Mother Nature

Is sicklied o’er with each new forecast,

And the pristine beauty of the freshly shovelled driveway

Is a ruse to taunt us in the currents of eddying snow,

And we are defeated. Damn you, snow!

Mother Nature, in her malevolence,

Isn’t through with us yet,

And all our aches are remembered.

 

Thanks, Snow Plow Guys!

Thank you, Snow Plow Guys! What would we do without you?

“This is, actually, the best time to be out driving, because, like, everyone is being so much more careful. You know, right?”

Wow.

My daughter and I shared a telepathic moment of stunned silence before we both chuckled. Rudely. Loudly enough to be heard by the woman ahead of us in line at the grocery store who apparently must have walked, or teleported, or aspirated her way through the snow storm while the rest of us risked life and limb on the icy roads in quest of Storm Chips.

For those of you who may not have experienced the Snowpocalypse which is the Canadian winter, Storm Chips are a thing. Other frailer, wimpier, less-likely-to-survive people stock up on candles and batteries and generators when Environment Canada predicts WINTER, but the real survivors haul in a motherload of Storm Chips. You can burn the kids’ toys if it gets too cold, you can melt snow if there’s no water, you can bundle up in bed when the power goes out, with the dogs, the cats, your hairy Uncle Bubba whose gaseous emissions could boil water on Mars, but if you ain’t got dem Storm Chips? That’s true suffering, you!

If the power goes out for three days, and we have to poop in the woods? I’ll make it… as long as there are Storm Chips.

Is that why people drive like hooligans during blizzards? Is the quest for Storm Chips the motivation behind the erratic and foolhardy derring-do on the highway when there are three inches of ice on the pavement and a visibility of nil? There’s got to be some powerful force inspiring people to merge at 100 km/h into a line of three hundred cars creeping icily along at 60. And is that woman sliding sideways across the yellow line texting the store, to beg them to hold an extra few bags of All Dressed on the side, because she’s definitely not looking at the road!

Maybe she’s checking the weather to see if it’s storming.

Or maybe she’s updating her facebook with a picture of the terrible condition of the highway. Looking at your lap while driving, as snow swirls merrily across your path and ice falls from the sky like crystal Shards of Death is the new incarnation of Snow Blindness.

Yet, this lovely woman in front of us in line at the grocery store was thrilled to be out driving in the horrendous ice sheet slalom course that was the 103, because everyone drives safer in bad weather. She obviously didn’t meet this guy:

I happened to see this poor motorist moments before the cops pulled him (or her) over and fined him (or her) for driving with an obstructed windshield. I felt great sympathy for that poor driver, who was obviously suffering from tendonitis due to extreme indulgence in Storm Chips the night before, resulting in an inability to adequately clean the windshield. Lifting those dip-laden chips repeatedly to your mouth is strenuous, people! Injuries and inconveniences can result! Winter is a dangerous season, for us all!

If the Snow Plow Guys can spend all night clearing the roads, the least we can do is clear our windshields.

Thank you, Snow Plow Guys.

I get a twist in my gut when I go on facebook in the early hours of a stormy day and see posts complaining that roads haven’t been plowed. I mean… seriously? It snows like a son-of-a-bitch all night, and those guys… bearded, weary, Tim Horton’s caffeinated guys are Out There, all night, plowing a million roads and keeping us safe and salting like champions… Thank You!

It took us three hours to plow our driveway and clear paths for the dogs to poop… what? I have tiny dogs. They need paths or they disappear in the snow!

It took us three hours just for our driveway after the latest dumpage of winter’s blessing, and while maybe there are a few back roads or little lanes that get plowed later than others… those Snow Plow Guys are AWESOME! A winter storm can come and go between the hours of sunset and sunrise and our roads, for the most part, are plowed. Yes, they’re still icy. Yes, you should stay home and eat Storm Chips and watch Netflix and warm the cockles of your heart by the fire…but… the Snow Plow Guys are Out There. Making it happen. Making it safe.

Thank you!

Because, you know, we all drive so much more carefully when the roads are bad…

Be safe. Stay warm. Hug a Snow Plow Guy.

The Brothers Evans

My latest assignment for my Art and Literature class at NSCAD involves creating a short story based on a piece of artwork. The story is supposed to be 2 – 3 pages long and have some connection to the artwork through character, theme, setting or some such literary element. My story is nine pages long. It relates to thirty pieces of art by the artist Robert W. LaDuke. I’ve made it into a video.

Am I a rebel? An overachiever? A verbose and blousy middle-aged wannabe wordsmith with too much time on her hands? An English teacher in search of a class?

I blame Michael Chabon. Yup, it’s all Mikey’s fault. Mike and me, we’re, ya know, like this. Twins. Peas in a pod. Buds.

Not really… that’s a fantasy quite similar to the one about me marrying Neil Gaiman (damn you Amanda Fucking Palmer!) and close to the fantasy of me marrying Stuart MacLean (damn you… um… CBC… Stuart, are you married to the CBC?). Whatever it is, it is a fantasy. I think I would faint in a mute swoon of incoherence should I ever meet Michael Chabon. I love his words.

Whilst in the throes of writing the story, The Brothers Evans, for my Art and Literature class, I have been reading “Gentlemen of the Road”, followed closely by “Wonderboys”. I inhaled “Kavalier and Clay” several years ago and it’s due for a reread. Love. Lovelovelove.

Wordy, dense, lyrical, a thicket of prose that clings to your skirts and tickles your fancy while you thrash your way though it with a machete and a pair of needle nosed pliers. Unbelievably beautiful sentences like this:

“Like apes on a rock at sunset, like crows in the trees, like the bells in the watchtowers of a city under attack, the men of the Brotherhood fell to talking all at once, as those nearest the gates and those at the extremes of the encampment sought to reconcile the stark prodigies of observation with the grandiose inventions of rumor.” (Gentlemen of the Road)

Ahhhh… raptures!

I could live in such writing forever.

Anyways… that’s what I was reading while I was writing and it has resulted in my own creation of such sentences as:

“Widow Evans reached out one cadaverous arm, the thinness of which caused Theodora to glance around for a hearse or an undertaker or at the very least a doctor should the suddenness of the gesture and the diminutiveness of the perpetrator result in tragedy.”

I know… it’s not Chabon… no one wants to marry me for the attraction of my prose alone, but I am quite pleased with it all the same. I also use such words as “salubrious” and “testosteronic” (which isn’t actually a word, but, whatever. I grew up reading Dr. Seuss.)

So, here it is in all its wordy splendor.

Robert W. LaDuke, clever lad that he is, creates these gorgeous, bright, funny paintings which just begged to be narrated. You can find him in various places on the web…

This website: http://rwladuke.wix.com/laduke

Try him on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.w.laduke?fref=ts

Or on this art site: http://www.dailypaintworks.com/artists/robert-laduke-2712/artwork

The video is about 20 minutes long. Thanks for listening!

J