More Tunes for the Road Trip (the Festive Alt playlist)

Do you ever fall out of the habit of listening to music?


I do.

And it's awful!

Yes, yes, it's good to keep current on the important news  But getting traffic 'every 10 minutes, on the 1's'? Is that really necessary when my commute to work is 7 minutes down one road?

When I finally go back to the tunes, my first thought is 'WTF was I thinking, listening to traffic reports for a month?!'

So here I am, grooving to my Festive Alt playlist ('cuz it's close to Christmas, after all).  And loving every second of it.  Bif Naked, Weezer, The Raveonettes... all Classic Christmas Carolers!

I listen and go 'whoa! this is good'.  Then the next one 'whoa! this is gooder.' And I keep turning up the volume. On the computer. Then on the speakers. Then I'm searching for 11!

And I start arm dancing. I'd be full dancing, but I'm sitting here typing so the legs are stuck to the chair and it's just the arms that can let loose from time to time. (Kind of like Thom Yorke, but I use both arms...)

Like when I'm driving and the song is particularly awesome (pretty well anything by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Sleigh Bells).

Some people are picking their noses in the privacy of their car - I'm arm dancing like a moron.

No shame, baby, no shame.

(Shoot, just turned up the sound again. Verging on 11)

Am now in the anti-Christmas part of my playlist, like:

• Christmas at the Office Party with the refrain "Christmas, F&*k ya, F&*k ya, F&*k ya" by the Fugitives
• "Bizarre Christmas Incident" by Ben Folds (cuz "Santa got his big ass stuck, Mrs. Claus is gonna sue my ass" - lawyers love this one!) 
•  Blink 182 with their ode to jail time, due to an unfortunate incident with carollers. 

But despite the anti-C music, I do like Christmas. Here's my list of faves:

• Christmas lights - Whether tasteful, gaudy, delicate or grand, sparkly, subtle or shiny. It's all good. 
• Christmas trees - Ours is a collection of fairly random stuff, but I particularly like long shiny drippy things, coloured glass and stuff that needs to be explained. 
• Fruit cake - Mine has lots of dried fruit and bourbon and makes my stomach hurt if I eat too much (which is pretty well every time I eat it)

Lots of other good things, of course - family and friends being high on that list. 

So from our dope family to yours... have a Very Merry!

(And a Fabulous 2015!)

L'auteur (est moi)

I was recently reminded by a friend that I'm supposed to be writing the great Canadian novel.

She's suggested a thinly veiled parable about shenanigans at a large, disorganized financial institution.  The characters will be fictional, of course (because there's no way you'd know who "Mesley" is, right?)

Can't quite bring myself to do it, though. Firstly, because I'm not really sure what a parable is. And secondly, because if the veil is too thin, someone might guess which financial institution I'm riffing on. Since I'm still a shareholder, it's not really in my best interest to inadvertently contribute to the death spiral.

So there is no parable about shenanigans at a large, disorganized financial institution.  Instead, I started a novel - a work of fiction - that is meant to be funny, ironic, sarcastic, about a young woman who's been cast adrift for most of her life... And although it  might incorporate some fictional-ish shenanigans (write what you know!), that won't be the primary focus of it.


When I started the novel in some earnest a while ago, my young teenage son said skeptically "But that's not a real job".  Which was true.  (And which also reminded me that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree)


Yet I created this daydream, where I imagined a lovely little writing shack up at the back of the yard, where I'd go every morning, make some tea and write, write, write, while I looked southwestward towards the Georgia Straight and Vancouver Island, waaaaay off in the distance.

But who would read my written words?  Probably not my son (maybe if I SnapChatted it?).  Probably not my daughter either (unless I added photos and tagged her in every one?)

More importantly, who would pay for those words?  I'm sure it's difficult enough for the really great Canadian writers to make a living from their words. And I'm certainly no Miriam Toews or Ann-Marie MacDonald. Sigh.

So I knew there were hurdles. But hurdles that I was willing to fight against.  Until I realized the biggest hurdle that would shoot my daydream down in flames...

Ummm, I'm not really a tea person.

So, I'm asking... would bourbon do?

SQUIRREL!

My dog likes to chase squirrels.  Not a great revelation, I guess, since most dogs like to chase squirrels.  But even though this is not unique to my dog, and even though it happens every time we go into the woods, it still seems fresh and funny and makes me laugh. Every. Single. Time.

I marvel at a few things every time:

• First, that my Super-Chill Epsilon Dog who's has been trotting calmly at my heels suddenly becomes thrashing, crashing, tree-chewing Wild Maniac Alpha Dog.
• Second, that once he's got the whiff and has been distracted, it takes quite a while before he can refocus and get back to being Super-Chill Epsilon Dog again. 
• Third, I'm reminded that the phrase 'barking up the wrong tree' isn't just a euphemism... For my dog, it's a regular occurrence. 

And yes, that's my voice in the background, encouraging him to 'get it'.  But before you get all PETA on me, I know there isn't a chance in hell my dog will ever actually 'get it'. The squirrels are fast and cunning; my dog, not so much.

Of course, he's hopeful... 

In one of our nearby wooded patches, there is a large swath of forest that is kept safe behind a pointy wire fence.  This is our local watershed, so nothing domesticated is allowed in... No dogs. No people. 

But the squirrels are another story.  Lots of squirrels in there.  Kept safe behind the pointy wire fence.  Oh so bold behind the pointy wire fence. They chatter and scold as we walk along the trail beside the fence.  

So every single time, my dog stops at the fence and looks imploringly at me to let him in. Like this: 

I'm convinced that he's convinced that the squirrels on the other side of that fence are going to be much plumper and much, much slower than the ones on his side of the fence; that his squirrel-chasing would be much, much easier if he could only get to the other side of that fence; that he'd catch the 'big one' and then he could give up the chase altogether.

But that's why he's a dog and we're humans.  Yes, sure, we're thrashing around and losing our focus and barking up the wrong tree on a daily basis too.  And yes, sure, we sometimes look across the fence and are convinced that's where everything would be much, much easier for us. 

BUT most days we also realize that the squirrels on the other side of the fence are just as fast and just as hard to catch.  AND (thankfully) most days we also realize that it's not the catching that's important, it's the thrill of the chase that's the best part.  

Final gratuitous picture of the dog, contemplating squirrels in trees

On the Vine

I absolutely love home-grown tomatoes - they have a pungent. slightly rot-y smell (but pleasant all the same) and a rich earthiness to their taste, like they've been sprayed with a superfine mist of loamy dirt. Even the tastiest ones from a store are no match for home-grown, as they are missing those extra sensory pleasures.

It has been about 7 or 8 years since I'd last had tomato plants, which I remember as being a great success. There had been bushels and bushels of plump, bright cherry tomatoes, which had amply supported my caprese salad obsession that summer.

Aromatic goodness in a perfectly formed globe.

I was keen to repeat that success and had vivid dreams (both waking and asleep) in which pert tomatoes, creamy fresh mozzarella and succulent basil leaves frolicked in a kiddie pool of EVOO and balsamic.

They were calling out to me, beckoning me to plant, grow, create and consume.

So six months ago, I bought a few packets of tomato seeds and a seed starter kit.  The kit consisted of cute little peat moss pods in a tray with a clear plastic cover.  Kind of like an incubator for plants.

I placed 100+ seeds in the pods, then very carefully watered and tended them.   When the little shoots sprang up, I thinned those, put them in little pots and made them more hardy before subjecting them to the cruel outdoors.  (Not so cruel this year - it's been a spectacular summer!)  

They grew.  They grew some more.  And then some more.  They all had to be re-potted in much bigger pots (with thanks to my daughter and her NY friends.)  And they just kept growing.

EXCEPT they didn't seem to want to grow actual tomatoes.

Turns out they weren't beckoning me in those dreams - they were taunting me.

My plants were enormous (evidence here):

My crop, not so much... Herewith my harvest to date (these ones are supposed to be orange... I think):

Yet tonight I had a fabulous caprese salad for dinner.  With home-grown tomatoes that were pungent and misty/dirty and cheerfully red and absolutely perfect! 

No, no - of course they weren't mine.

Our friends (of > 30 years - can you believe that? How old are we?!) came over last week and brought a lovely little gossamer bag of the fruits of their tomato plant labours. So fine. So tasty.

AND she told me her secret.  No, it's not the potting soil, the type of tomato, or the position in the sun.

Turns out that Costco is the secret. It's where to go to buy thriving, strong tomato plants that will produce tons of tomatoes without even trying.

So next year, I'll be first in line at Costco to buy some plants. And maybe I'll use my special plant incubator to grow some sort of cash crop instead.  You know, like kale, or quinoa, or something else that would sell well on the West Coast...

And this year?  Well, I trimmed my plants back to just the stalks with fruit on them (all very green and hard, of course) in hopes that I can get them to stop growing taller and focus on the fruit!

AND I'm withholding water until they show me some love.

Even 2 or 3 more edible tomatoes and I could at least make a sandwich.

Why I Love the Dog Days

It's hot tonight.  The family, including the dog, have all retreated to the cool downstairs to sleep.  But I'm stubborn. And I like my bed. So I stay upstairs. With the windows closed, for fear of Coyotes, Cougars and Bears (oh my!) 

Obviously, no humans can sleep in this heat.  So this human's mind starts to wander.

I'm thinking back to that movie, Dog Day Afternoon.  Did you see that?  Starred Al Pacino - a much more youthful Al Pacino, but already chewing up the scenery.  And (I'm no film expert but...) seemed to have one of the earliest portrayals of a transgendered character in a mainstream movie. Lots of swearing too, as I recall.



A bit fuzzy though, because I was 12 years old when I saw it. My 16-year old sister and I ventured across town to the Denman Place movie theatre to see it.  Definitely not on our home territory.  Not sure what possessed us to go over there, or how our parents allowed it.  My theory is they were just tired and worn out by that point, and maybe couldn't remember, on any given day, how many of the 6 of us even lived at home any more.

So we found our way to the exotic and (at that time) slightly sketchy West End, had to talk our way into the movie (I was vastly underage for the movie's classification), grabbed some popcorn and sat down. No need to worry about cellphones and texting interrupting our experience - those things DID NOT EXIST YET.

As I recall, we enjoyed every second of the movie.  The heat, the sweat, the swearing (*#!%!!), the over-acting...

When we emerged late at night, we found the streets covered in snow.  In Vancouver, 'covered' means about an inch of snow.  Prairie equivalent would be about a foot. Enough to bring our city to a halt.

But we didn't really know that the city was at a halt.  We were kids. So we trudged the 2 or so kilometers over to the bus stop for our direct bus home, confident that we'd hop on and it would whisk us away to our house on the hill.  We got there with damp shoes but in high spirits, practicing all the movie swear words (*#!%!!) while we walked. 

And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  It was still snowing, so the one inch soon became two inches. We amused ourselves by watching the cars sliding down and spinning up Burrard Street.  Unaware of the significance of this... We were kids. And so we waited some more. 
 
Eventually, we figured it out.  No bus was coming.  We were 12 and 16 years old, downtown, at midnight, no money for a cab, and not even sure how to take a cab if we could have found one . Hmmm. Time to phone the parents.  At midnight.  In the snow. From the Hyatt hotel, whose staff seemed intent on keeping us damp, scraggly kids out of their pristine space. I think I finally teared up and snuffled, so they relented and let us in.

Pretty sure we woke the parents up when we called.  I prefer not to think about why they weren't still wide awake, worried sick about the fact that their 12 and 16 year old girls had not yet returned home from the wilds of the big city.  But, like I said - there were 6 of us kids, they were tired and worn out. They'd lost count.

Dad said he'd come get us.  Although the hotel had let us in the door to use our dime in their payphones, they saw no reason why they should have us hanging around inside the lobby disturbing their paying guests.  So back we went outside, to the bus stop to wait for Dad.

It took a long time.  Remember, Vancouver comes to a halt in one inch of snow.  And now there were 2+ inches.  But eventually he made it.  That brown & beige Chevy Concours (an ugly, ugly car) never looked so beautiful as when it turned the corner from Georgia and slid up in front of us.

Being in the car reminded me of the movie we'd just seen - a blast of heat, a bit of sweat, definitely some swearing (*#!%!!) - from Dad - and lots of over-acting - from us - about the trials and tribulations we'd suffered in the last few hours. But it was really cosy.  A warm and safe embrace.

Maybe it's why I like to stick it out upstairs, even in the doggiest dog days of the summer.  It's a warm and safe embrace - especially with the windows shut tight against the wild, wild world.