Posted by Zoom! on September 2, 2010, at 8:59 am |
I came across my grade 6 class picture a couple of days ago. I’m not in it for some reason. But as I looked from one student to the next, and remembered their names, each was accompanied by a short flash of memory.
John Shaw: even though he grew up on a farm, he was convinced chocolate milk came from brown cows. Danny Manship: my first kiss. Darlene Yuck: my only enemy. Barbara D: my best friend.
I saw her once, after we’d both grown up. She looked me up and we met for coffee. She told me that she’d gotten pregnant at 16, and she and her boyfriend got married. When she went into labour he took her to the hospital in Arnprior and, as her labour progressed, he began to panic. By the time they reached the delivery room, he was saying things like “Oh my god, I never wanted to get married, I never wanted a wife and kid, what have I done, oh my god, oh my god oh my god!”
Finally the obstetrician looked him in the eye and said “Look, if you can’t be more helpful than that, then get out.”
He didn’t have to be told twice.
He left.
Barbara never saw him again.
A few days later, the obstetrician felt so bad about having inadvertently delivered the death blow to the marriage, he invited Barbara and her infant son to come live with him and his wife until she got back on her feet.
She stayed with them for six months, then struck out on her own, determined to make a fresh start in life.
She left Arnprior and moved to Ottawa. She cut all ties with her very odd family. She changed both her first and last names to something of her own choosing. She got an apartment and a job. She raised her child.
I wonder how she’s doing now. If I could remember the new name she chose for herself, I’d look her up right now and ask her.
Here it is, already Monday again. That was one fast weekend.
I did laundry and housework and played with the birds and read on Saturday. On Sunday, GC and I made a good dent in fixing the front steps. He did the carpentry while I did the cement work. It has to be finished by the day after tomorrow. I’ve cemented all the easier holes and cracks. Now I just have to do the deeper ones. This could be a problem, since you’re supposed to let the cement cure for 24 hours after every half-inch layer. I have one crack that’s pretty deep. I think what I’m going to do is duct-tape that crack so I don’t have to worry about the depth. Then I’ll put a thin layer of cement over the duct tape.
Originally I was planning to buy bags of cement and a cement mixer, but then we went to Home Depot and discovered a bag of cement weighs a ton and a cement mixer costs $649. So GC and I checked out all the guys who work at Home Depot and picked the one we thought looked most knowledgeable, and asked him what we should do. He turned us on to the easy $37 solution. All we had to buy was a 5 kg bucket of stuff and two trowels. (The duct tape was my own idea.)
After we’d put in a couple hours work, I insisted we knock off and go to the Museum of War to see the Camouflage exhibit and the World Press Photo 10 exhibit. The Camouflage exhibit is only here til next weekend, so if you’ve been meaning to see it, it’s time. The photo exhibit is in the lobby, so you don’t even have to pay to see it. A lot of the photos are extraordinarily evocative. If you don’t feel like feeling some intense feelings, don’t go. (I’m glad I went.) (UPDATE: Oops, I just realized that yesterday was the final day of the exhibit, so you can’t go even if you do feel like feeling some intense feelings.)
Speaking of camouflage, did you read about that missing woman whose husband found her body four months after her disappearance? It was in the house they lived in, under a pile of hoarded junk. The police had even gone through the house with search dogs who hadn’t found her. Can you imagine the state that house must have been in for a decomposing body not to be found for four months, even by police dogs? This story made me feel virtuous about my own housekeeping standards.
I have to go cook some oatmeal for my birds now. I’ll leave you with cats trying to figure out a treadmill.
I’ve always read the obituaries, ever since I was a little girl. Some people think it’s morbid, but I don’t.
It’s not so much about looking for people I know, though there’s an element of that, of course. It’s mostly about gleaning what I can from the encapsulation of a person’s life in such a small block of text. It’s about pondering the questions that emerge from the gleaning.
For instance: “Dad is survived by his wife, his nine children, his 26 grandchildren, his nine great-grandchildren, and the many women in his life that he loved and cared for.”
That intrigues me.
Or sometimes there’s an idea for a story. A few days ago I read an obituary for a woman who had eight daughters and no sons, which left me thinking about the various ways that could have played out, depending on the personalities involved. Did she and her husband end up with so many kids because they kept trying “one last time” for a son? Were the births of their daughters met with joy, or with disappointment? Was it a big happy bubbly girl family, or a simmering stew of resentment?
Occasionally an obituary will betray dysfunctional family dynamics: “He will be sadly missed by his loving step-sons, Mark and Andrew. Also leaves a son.”
Sometimes I read about a person and wish I’d known them. “He passionately taught his children and grandchildren about everything from attire to fishing lures, and instilled in them his life-long values of integrity, humility, acceptance, and caring.”
I like obits that go beyond the basics, and include a few quirks or qualities about the person. “Don rejoiced at the invention of the Post-it Note and carried with him at all times his Letts Diary, including a fold-out list of past events – some four decades’ worth – in 6 point font.”
Lately it has become the standard to include a photograph of the person in the obituary. I wonder who chooses the photographs. Family members? Or the dying person? And why do they so often choose a photo taken when they were much younger? A few days ago there was a picture of a young woman of perhaps 20, accompanying the obituary of a 93-year-old great-great-grandmother. Is it because she wanted to be remembered as young and attractive? Or is it because she doesn’t really feel like that old person she became?
Sometimes something just strikes me as funny. Like last week when I read the obituary of a woman who had been predeceased by her husband, Harold Assman. Harry Assman! Ha ha ha ha ha.
(I shouldn’t laugh. Death isn’t funny.)
Anyway. Does anybody else out there love the obituaries?
I subscribe to a couple of job notification thingies, which send me daily emails letting me know about job openings in Ottawa. Every day for the past couple of weeks, this job has appeared in that email:
Witer/Administor/Communications
I don’t qualify, since I’m not fluently bilingual, but I’m tempted to contact them and offer my services as a proofreader.
What else is new? Well. I’ve been trying hard to find someone to patch my cement steps. It’s the weirdest thing. I’ve contacted about ten contractors, and only one of them has submitted an estimate. Two have not inspired any confidence, and the others have either not returned my calls, or they’ve said they’re too busy to do it, or they only want to tear it down and replace it (which would be a reasonable thing if my neighbour, with whom I share the porch, were willing and able to share the costs at this time, which he is not).
The one contractor who did submit an estimate wants $966 (plus 13% HST) to do it.
I’ve pretty much decided to do it myself, which apparently will cost about $50. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to last forever, it just has to pass the City’s inspection. The City’s interest is safety – the Inspector told me they don’t want anybody to catch a heel in the cracks and break her leg. (I pointed out that nobody ever visits me in high heels, but he seemed unmoved by that argument.)
Anyway. I’ll be willing to consider more elegant and permanent solutions when my neighbour is ready to act…which should be soon, since he’s going to be facing a court order from the City any day now.
The only other thing I’ve been thinking about, besides birds, finding work, and fixing my steps, is that weird Justin Bieber kid. What’s so special about him? Why do all the girls like him so much?
I’m completely enchanted by my baby birds. I want to spend all my time playing with them and teaching them tricks and cuddling them and feeding them and just watching them as they learn new things.
I know it’s a cliche, but they really are growing up so fast. They’re five weeks old now. Already they can fly and two of them are weaned. Baby Oboe still likes his formula, but Piccolo and Banjo are big kids now. They eat big-kid food.* When they’re not eating or sleeping, they build forts out of baby towels, and play hide-and-seek, and swing on the swing.
Just last week Banjo had a major baby-bird crush on me. He’d come running whenever I came into the room and he’d climb the cage to be at my eye level. He’d beg for me to pick him up and cuddle him. He’d push the other babies away from me because he wanted me all to himself. He adored me. It was very sweet and I have to admit I was flattered.
This week? He’s got no time for childish crushes. Sometimes I walk into the room and he doesn’t even acknowledge me. I swear he sometimes rolls his eyes when I call his name. (But if I pick him up and go lie down with him, he’ll snuggle into my neck and fall asleep. Sometimes he practically purrs.)
Little Oboe was depressed for awhile there because the other two were sitting up on the high perch while he was still grounded on the floor of the cage. He hung his sad little head and huddled against the bars looking profoundly depressed. I let him come downstairs and sit on my shoulder and help me make a pizza. That cheered him up. And now, just a few days later, he sits up on the high perches too.
You know how I am with new hobbies. I tend to get a little carried away. I’m reading everything I can about birds, and checking out all the different kinds of birds and subscribing to Bird Talk and ordering bird toys online and getting ready to join the local bird groups and marking upcoming bird shows on the calendar and researching local breeders. I want to start an aviary and breed all kinds of birds.
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my babies. They’ll be ready for adoption in two weeks. I think Kathleen still wants one, and the Elgin Street Irregulars ought to consider having an Official Bird. (Maybe Oboe. He’s the Third Bird, which would fit well with their Fourth Dwarf.)
I’d like to keep one baby for myself, but I don’t know which one. They all have such distinct personalities and I adore them all.
By the way, the webcam is still on during the days, but not for much longer.
I’ve read a few articles over the years about how the Internet rewires our brains. It actually causes physical changes in our brains. Adaptations. I’ve been online since 1989. That’s 21 years. And I’m not a light user, either. I’m a seriously committed, heavy-duty, addicted user. I don’t find it a stretch at all to think that the Internet has physically altered my brain and the way I process information and think.
These are not subtle changes, either. I’ve actually noticed them in myself. For instance, it’s much harder for me to concentrate on dense or complex material now. I used to like nothing better than to sink my teeth into really meaty material. But now I seem to prefer to get information in a much easier, faster, and more superficial way. I click and scan, click and scan, click and scan. What sinks in, sinks in. If I miss something, it doesn’t matter, because there are a million more fragments of information streaming past me. I just grab whatever’s easiest. As Nicholas Carr says, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”
But it feels like such a lazy way of learning. I can pick up bite-sized pieces of information this way, but it’s getting harder and harder to stretch my brain to really truly think about anything.
I also interrupt myself constantly – and allow others to do the same – while on the net. Some people call this multi-tasking. At this moment, for example, I have 15 tabs open in Firefox, plus multiple menu and tool bars, and several other programs. The instant my attention flags, I’m elsewhere. I also have pop-up notifications to let me know when a new email arrives, which is literally about every five minutes, and I always at least peek immediately to see who it’s from. In the bottom right-hand corner of my screen, I get little pop-ups from Twitter, letting me know who’s saying what out there. I always scan these, and I frequently click on the links they’re sharing.
My short-term memory is deteriorating too. I’ll give you an example. It’ll occur to me to google something – I don’t know – maybe healthy foods for baby birds. But in the instant it takes to think this thought and move my cursor up to the google search box, I’ll have scanned two tweets and forgotten what it was I was going to google. This happens a lot. I can’t seem to stay focused long enough to get anything done. No problem. I’ll just do something else instead. I think I’ve acquired attention deficit disorder.
Carr’s article also pointed out that other forms of media had to change in response to the way the Internet was changing the way we think.
“As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets.”
In other words, because the Internet is dumbing us down, everything else has to dumb itself down too, so we can understand it.
Anyway. I still love the Internet, even if it is making me stupid.
Today is the third day of a three-day migraine. I get them fairly often, and they’re pretty predictable. They’re not as bad as some people’s migraines; I don’t throw up or anything like that. I can function, more or less, as long as functioning doesn’t require a lot of motion or noise or strong light or thinking.
After screwing up so magnificently with respect to the testing on Wednesday, I returned to the test centre that afternoon for the English Writing test. It was on spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence order and vocabulary. I love taking tests and I think I aced this one.
I sent an email regarding the test I missed, asking if there was any chance I could reschedule.
On Thursday they got back to me and said they’d rescheduled me for September 8th for the Situational Judgment Test. YAY. (Thanks, by the way, to all of you who commiserated or left hopeful comments on Wednesday’s post – I didn’t respond, but I did appreciate your support.)
What else is new? Well, Piccolo can FLY. Yes he can. He flew from my finger and landed on the bars of his cage. The only one who can’t fly yet is Oboe. Pretty soon it’s going to be like living with flying toddler triplets!
The other big news is that GC outdid himself in the kitchen last night.
I’ve never been a big fan of fish, largely because my mother hated it when I was growing up because she associated it with Fridays in boarding school, where she was forced to eat fish until she threw up. Every Friday. For years. Needless to say, she never made fish when I was growing up, and she spoke quite disparagingly of it.
I was a picky eater as a child. It didn’t take much to get me to dislike a food. In fact, disliking food was my default position. I didn’t like anything with ingredients in it, like spaghetti sauce. I liked my foods very simple. I could have lived on Jello, pancakes, Smarties and naked pasta.
My mother said my sister and I could each have one food we never had to eat, but we had to eat everything else that she served. It was easy for Debbie, since the only food she disliked was liver. I picked peanut butter; I hated it so much that even the smell made me gag. But I didn’t eat everything else on my plate either. I stuffed it in my pockets and discarded it in creative places when she wasn’t looking. For example, in one apartment there was a “bottomless pit” under the kitchen counter. At least that’s what I thought. I shoved all kinds of unwanted food into that slot. I also flushed food down the toilet, tossed it off the balcony, and threw it in the incinerator.
Anyway. I digress. I was talking about fish, which she never served.
Now that I’m a grown-up, I still harbor suspicious feelings about fish, even though I know it’s very good for me. I think I should like it, but it kind of creeps me out. GC, on the other hand, loves fish. And he has taken it upon himself to help me like it more.
Every couple of weeks he cooks fish and I eat it. It’s okay. He hasn’t served anything I hate yet. I find the tilapia mild and inoffensive.
But last night he made blackened rainbow trout. (Coincidentally, the sky was full of rainbows last night. Did you see them?)
It was delicious! I loved it. He even had to give me some of his after I devoured all of mine.
He found the recipe online, but modified it to make it healthier.
1/2 tsp paprika
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
olive oil
4 oz rainbow trout fillets
1. Take the batteries out of your smoke detector and open some windows.
2. In a small bowl, mix the spices and make a paste with some olive oil. Set aside. Heat a heavy cast iron pan on medium-high heat until extremely hot.
3. Gently rub each fillet with the spice paste.
4. Place fillets into the hot pan without crowding. Cook until fish has a charred appearance, about two minutes. Turn fillets and cook until charred.
GC served it with a fresh baguette, some broccoli and a wedge of lemon. It was amazing.
Have you ever screwed something up that was really important to you? That’s what I just did.
I was scheduled to take two tests today to qualify for a pool of government writing jobs. I really want one of these jobs. They’re one of the few government jobs that don’t require bilingualism. Actually they’re one of the few jobs of any kind in Ottawa that don’t require bilingualism.
There was a Situational Judgment Test from 8:30 to 11:30, and an English Writing Test from 1:00 to 3:00.
I google-mapped the location, I OC-Transpo-Travel-Planned the location, I wrote down the directions, I planned an earlier-than-necessary departure just to be sure I wasn’t late, I trained GC to feed the baby birds their lunch, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, showered, gave the babies their breakfast, and by 7:05 I was on my way. I had my directions on an index card in my back pocket.
They disappeared somewhere along the way.
I got off the bus where I was supposed to get off the bus, according to the directions as I remembered them, but it didn’t seem to be the right place. There was supposed to be a Westin Hotel. I seemed to remember I was going to 3700 Carling, but I was at 3685 Richmond. I distinctly remembered seeing Moodie and Carling on the Google Map.
I still had 20 minutes to spare. I phoned GC, who immediately came and got me and drove me to 3700 Carling. We got there with two minutes to spare.
BUT.
You know what was at 3700 Carling? A Mini-Golf place, complete with a polar bear, a zebra and a hippopotamus.
I felt sick. Then we went to 3701 Carling, which was government-y, but not the right place.
Then we went to 3500 Carling, which was at Moodie, and which was the old Nortel complex.
Then we went to 3500 Richmond, which was almost directly across the street from where I’d originally gotten off the bus. It was a Best Western motel, not a Westin Hotel. And it turned out that that was where I was supposed to be.
I had been in the right place at the right time at 8:10. I just thought it was the wrong place. And now it was 8:50 and I was back at the right place but twenty minutes late.
There were signs on the hall door saying testing was in progress, do not disturb. There was nobody in the hallway to plead with. I left.
I’m still going to go back for the afternoon testing, and I’ll go early and try to find someone to plead with about rescheduling the morning testing, but I’m not optimistic. I think I screwed up any chance I had at qualifying for this pool of jobs.
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