The Corningware Stage of Life

Mark and I got engaged and we were ready, I suppose, for that stage of life. At least, it was a well-known stage that we were familiar with. Now since last Saturday, we find ourselves in a new and lesser-known stage which I shall fondly call the Corningware Stage of Life.

It all began at a bridal shower that my Aunt Jo threw for me. I was overwhelmed by all the wonderful presents we received. Then, when we got them home, Mark and I had to start to replace our old things with our new, grown-up things. Suddenly we find ourselves with real pots. For the first time in my life, I’m not using a mish-mash of orange pots and green pots and silver pots and glass pots and some lids that match and others that don’t and some pots with loose handles and some with grime that won’t come off. We're actually reading instructions on how to properly care for our cookware. And we suddenly have an abundance of lovely soft, matching towels. We have beautiful dishes that one might serve on at a cocktail party (mind you, we only have four pasta bowls, but it’s a very respectable start). We have a pizza stone for heaven’s sake. No University student has a pizza stone. In fact, we even have a pizza cutter. I don’t think I have EVER owned a pizza cutter (my mother used scissors). We have matching placemats and we have a lasagna-shaped corningware. I can be one of those women who frets at potlucks that she won’t get her corningware back. I can stick a piece of masking tape to the bottom and boldly write PERON in marker (notice I said Peron….not Loftus). We have a beautiful brass bell. University students don’t have art in their backyards. They have couches and road signs and kegs. We have original pottery – a lovely teapot made by a local Owen Sound artists. And, get this, we have a kettle that whistles when it’s boiling. (Mark was horrified to read, as he was throwing out the old kettle (see earlier blog) that its warning said “If pot EVER boils dry, discard immediately!”). And I knew we had left an era behind when Mark filled our kitchen cupboards with our new glasses and carefully laid our old ones out on the table. There they sat: those skinny beer cups that are impossible to get your hand down to the bottom, a few lone survivors left from some collection of long ago, a few bought at a garage sale for a quarter, and maybe a keepsake stolen from a Kelsey’s on a drunken impulse.

Gone are the stolen Creelman cutlery days; Welcome Corningware Era.

Moms just know

My good friend, Hilary, came to my bridal shower on Saturday with her seven month old son, Jacob. She came in from the car looking like she’d just been traveling with a seven month old baby who kept projectile-puking and who wouldn’t eat when she’d planned on him eating. She was handling it gracefully, as always, but her arms looked tired. So I said to her, “Would you like me to take Jacob?” She, of course, said she was okay. So I wanted to respect her space despite the fact that I sensed she could have used a break.

Not even three seconds later, my mother breezes over to us, takes one knowing glance at Hilary and says quite matter-of-factly, “I’m taking your baby!” She gently took Jacob from a relieved-looking Hilary and began making baby noises and gently bouncing back and forth from hip to hip in a very skillful way.

Moms can get away with doing stuff like that because moms just KNOW.

Glasses

My brother joined about 15 ladies at my bridal shower on Saturday. He is very comfortable in his masculinity that way. Actually that’s not it. He and his girlfriend, Michelle, were off to Sudbury immediately afterwards and he’d come along in order that they not have to back track too much. So he helped himself to a plateful of spring rolls and crackers and smoked salmon and went into the basement to hide away.

During the shower, we played a survey game about me and a bit about Mark. My sister had made it up. It was multiple choice and the winner would be the lady who could guess the most correct answers. It reminded me of several things. First of all, that I used to pretend my little red wagon was a cow that I could milk. Secondly, that I was a pretty saucy little toddler who spoke about herself in the third person. Also, that everyone in the room unanimously agrees that I am an extremely overly cautious pre-planner. When all was said and done, I was astonished that the two people who got the most questions right are the two who have known me for the least amount of time: my friend Carolyn and Jay’s girlfriend Michelle.

So as I caught Jay coming up the stairs for a second helping of goodies, I said (completely out of context, as my comments often are) “Your girlfriend knows me REALLY well!” To which Jay replied, “Is this because of the glasses?” I had no idea what he meant. I examined Michelle’s face and she wasn’t wearing any eye glasses. I, on the other hand, was, but Michelle hadn’t made any comment about them recently. I brushed his comment off as Jay-doesn’t-really-GET-bridal-showers.

Then, Jay and Michelle had to leave early. So I opened their gift and saw they had bought us a set of drinking glasses. I went to give them a thank you / good-bye hug and Jay said, “Did I give it away?” I squeezed him and again had absolutely no idea what he meant.

They left. I watched them walk down the front steps to their car and I watched them get in.
Several minutes passed before I had my OH-I-SEE moment.
So then I realized Jay had probably been sure he’d given away the surprise but I had just been playing dumb and I had to explain how oblivious I am in my Thank You card to them so he wouldn’t feel bad (as well as because it's true).

Truth be told, he’ll probably read it here first.

**Note: For the record, when you google the word "glasses", reading glasses pops up FIRST.**

Associations

I love the material on my brother's blog, so I was surprised today to realize that I have begun to have a negative association with his blog page. My heart sinks ever so slightly whenever I visit it.

Then I realized that this is because his blog page has a black screen.
The black screen reminds me how dusty my computer is.

Solution #1: Have Jay change the background on his blog page.

Solution #2: Don't visit Jay's blog page anymore.

Amateur Comedy Night

My cousin is “in comedy” which means she’s a comedian-in-training. She’s a first year student, however, she’s already taken the initiative to start a sketch show every Monday evening at a local bar. Last night was her last show of the season, and since I hadn’t made it out to any of the subsequent shows and I really wanted to show my support, it was my last chance. So I piled Mark into the car, we picked up my brother, his girlfriend and his friend, and we went to the show to support her.

There were many amateur comedians – some did skits and others did stand up comedy. I could never have the courage to make myself as vulnerable as they did that night so, for that reason, I truly applaud them and their efforts. However, despite the fact that I love my cousin and found her skits to be very enjoyable and funny, there were other parts of the show which were very difficult to witness. I defined, in my mind, several different kinds of laughter that night. Allow me to explain.

The best kind of laughter is spontaneous. It surprises even you. Suddenly you notice yourself laughing, it’s not premeditated laughing, it’s pure reflexatory laughing and it’s genuine and takes no effort. This laughter happens easily during very, VERY funny presentations or when the asshole who’s been tailgating you for seventeen blocks gets pulled over by the cops.

Then there’s the more forced laughing. It’s when you’re sitting on the edge of a laugh, anticipating something funny, and worrying slightly that it won’t come. This kind of lying in wait of a laugh can be very draining. During an amateur comedy night, you can find yourself in the state of anticipating a laugh for quite a long time before it occurs. When you’re this nervous, even a moderately funny occurance is such a relief, that the laugh can get forced out as if you’d just opened a flood gate.

There's also painful laughter. Not the fun kind of pain that you feel in your jaws or your side when you’re laughing whole-heartedly straight from the belly. No, painful laughter is work. When you want to encourage a slightly less funny amateur comedian into not running off stage and giving up on his dream and into trying another joke, all the while knowing that it’s possible you’ll need to exude a painful laugh in reaction to every successive joke thereafter, that is painful laughter. It sneaks out sometimes when the rest of the audience is quiet after a joke that no one understood.

Embarrassing laughter surprises you at the worst possible moments. For instance, when grandma farts at Thanksgiving dinner. Or at church during prayer time, when someone asks you to pray for the zookeeper who was trampled by an elephant.

I found this analysis of laughter, as it came to me last night, to be actually surprisingly humourous. And for a second, I wondered if it might hurt an amateur comedian’s feelings to read this blog. However, like everything else, we must walk before we can run and we must float before we can swim (I might have made that one up) and, I suppose, we must be not funny and then only moderately funny before we can be sincerely and absolutely side-splittingly funny.

Cheers to those who persevere through all the types of laughter in the audience!

We’ll just follow you

My mother and her boyfriend, S., came to visit me in Mississauga today. We met at a shopping centre then the plan was to go to the golf course where Mark and I are going to be married this summer and then to proceed to my place. S had a little hand-held GPS gadget which could give directions on how to get to your appointed destination given your current location. It was quite neat, however, when we were leaving the golf course to go to my apartment, it began to act funny (we were, no doubt, not using it correctly), so S just said, “We’ll just follow you!”

I immediately get tense with this suggestion. I remember, about a million years ago, when I was just a little tyke and my mother and I were driving around in the crazy jungle of Toronto traffic, following my Aunt’s car on a highway to somewhere. This was before the days of the cell phone, or at least before we had begun using them. Anyway, I was very small and I told my mother that I had to pee. She looked at me desperately and said, “Melissa, can you hold it?” I remember telling her it was very, very urgent. However, she couldn’t catch the attention of the rest of our family members in the car in front of us. No matter how we honked or waved at them, they didn’t understand that we had to break out of the procession for a pit stop. My mother wasn’t sure of the directions to our final destination, which obviously couldn’t be that important because it’s slipped my mind. However, the fact that we didn’t know how to get there on our own was VERY important. My mom just shook her head at me, told me to be a brave big girl and that we could not stop. I ended up having to use some disposable container found inside the car and crouching in the leg space in front of the passenger seat in the middle of Toronto’s rush hour traffic. The only saving grace was that it was an 80’s Grand Le Mans and not a 2007 Honda Civic.

This is all going through my mind when S suggests he’ll just follow me. Also the fact that we (my mother and I) become excited and frantic and exasperated very quickly in high stress situations like trying to time lights so both cars can get through them and not losing the person tailing you. So I said, “I’ll give you the address in case we lose each other.” The fact that they did not write it down did not ease my worries.

Well, there must be about thirty stoplights between that golf course and my apartment. And within the first four, they were out of eyesight. I was obviously driving too fast. Or S was driving more slowly. Or the lights were not cooperating. A black SUV hedged his way between us and then we were no longer together. I pulled into a left turning lane at Erin Mills Parkway and squinted into the rearview mirror to try to recognize S’s bronze civic. When I finally did, I tried rolling down the window and waving my arm frantically. A friendly driver a few cars behind me waved back. As the bronze sedan approached the lights, I willed him into the left turning lane. I willed him to see my car and recognize it. Unfortunately, they drove past and all I could do was honk a few times as they passed so they’d at least realize they were passing the turn.

They did.
They turned around and made the correct turn BEFORE I managed to make my left hand turn. So now I had a car “following” me, which was in front of me. And my fear was that they might speed up in order to catch up to the ME they likely believed was in front of them. So I had to speed up in order to catch them.

All in all, we got to where we were going. As I’ve become accustomed to, most of the drama was actually all in my mind. If I can offer a word of caution though, the “we’ll just follow you” method of navigation is a good plan A if, and only if, you have a good plan B.

Life Lesson #457

Never ask a coworker, at a barbecue, "So, where's your husband tonight?" unless you're absolutely sure she has one.

Good Uses for CAA – Part 2

This isn’t a recent event. I just thought of it while my friend Ryan and I were talking about the silly things drivers do. This is a story of me and a silly thing I did while driving and the poor impression the good folks at CAA must have of me.

I was Christmas shopping in Peterborough at a small strip mall with a Mark’s Work Warehouse. I always buy my brother clothes and he particularly likes the khakis they sell at Mark’s WW. I parked in the parking lot and went into the store to do my shopping. When I came back out of the store, I got into my car and was delighted to see that the car in front of me had pulled away. A pull-through! I relish the small joys in life. I threw my car, Jola, into first gear, pulled forward and was shocked by a loud Ba-Bump as my car was thrown into the air and then crashed down with a hard thud. I was only shocked for a moment as I had a sudden flashback to when I had initially pulled INTO the parking spot and seen the parking median between my spot and the one opposite. The excitement of a potential pull-through had distracted me from this fact, and so I now sat with my front and back tires straddling a parking divider. Poor Jola sat helplessly up to her metal armpits in cement and as I panicked and tried to pull back off the divider, she squealed in agony. I thought maybe I could just drive forward with enough momentum to yank her back wheels over the divider too, but when I began to instill that plan I could immediately feel Jola’s guts being wrenched out from underneath her. She complained quite loudly.

So I got out of the car and saw a big, strong man with his girlfriend standing a few parking spots over. They weren’t trying too hard to conceal their giggling. It occurred to me that maybe this man could help me lift my car off the parking divider and rescue me from my predicament. He shrugged and asked, “Do you have CAA?” When I replied that I did he grinned and said, “You’ll need it.” And off they went.

So I phoned CAA from a payphone. They said they would be there to help me in 20 minutes. I had forgotten my jacket in the car, but I was so embarrassed that I preferred to stand there huddled in a half-phone-booth than to stand next to the idiot’s car.

Finally, my rescue tow truck pulled into the parking lot. I went to greet him only to discover that he could not lift Jola over the parking median because some asshole with a PT Cruiser had parked, yes actually PARKED, in the half parking spot containing Jola’s stranded front end. As if the mortification was not acute enough, we had to go into Mark’s Work Warehouse and have the cashier put an announcement over the PA system to have the PT Cruiser owner come and move his car so the loser who was stuck on the cement parking divider could get a tow truck to unstuck her.

I felt like an idiot. Jola felt embarrassed too.
But I’m sure I gave at least a handful of people something to laugh about over Christmas dinner.

Apartment Search

Carolyn needs to find a new apartment.
And it’s kind of a sketchy world out there – you know – driving around to strange places as a single woman to meet unknown real estate agents or potential landlords. It pays to be safe. So Carolyn took me a long to look at the last apartment she was interested in.

The guy seemed nice enough, although it was kind of distracting that he wouldn’t take his blue-tooth remote cell phone out of his ear. He seemed laid back about when she could move in and he didn’t put any pressure on us. So we spent a few minutes chatting him up, before dropping the bomb about Carolyn owning a dog. In that few minutes, we tried to lay on the charm. You know, I mentioned Carolyn is a teacher and how quiet she is. The guy mentioned that he had once been an occasional teacher. We told some anecdotes and laughed a bit. Then he turned to me and said, “So, you’re a teacher too?” And I said, “Yes, I am.”

He smiled then made what I can only assume he felt was a very liberal and open-minded assumption, “It’s so nice when two people get together who are in the same profession….you know, same holidays and such…”

It is nice when that happens.

29

I’m about to turn 29.
And I think I’m ready for it.
I know some people have a hard time turning 30 (although having a hard time doesn’t slow the process any). But when you turn 29, you suddenly realize you’ve only got a year to do all those things you told yourself you’d do before you turned 30.

Upon re-evaluating though, those were naïve goals. For instance, I thought I wanted to be married with all my kids by the time I was 30. I said that years and years ago. I wanted to have a house. I wanted to have a dog. I wanted to have already written a Pulitzer-prize-winning novel. I wanted to be as skinny as I was when I was 16. I wanted to live next door to my sister. I had an idea of where I’d be at 30, dreamed up when I was a lot younger. And although a little girl HAS to dream and fantasize about the life she’ll lead, there are things she can’t possibly know when she’s that young.

First of all, you just can’t live next door to your sister. She has dreams and I have dreams and they aren’t the same – right now they aren’t even in the same country. I haven’t written a Pultizer-prize-winning novel, but I have started to regularly blog as practice for that feat. And I’ve been busy inspiring and being inspired by young minds.

At 17, I thought being skinny would make me happy. How could I know that losing 5 pounds could never compare to the victory of having finished a race that seemed unattainable. I’m 29 and I’m engaged to one of the most wonderful men I know. I feel lucky every single day. I used to think I wanted flowers every day. I’d much rather be reminded every day through some small gesture that the man I’m with has vision and sensitivity and care for people beyond himself. And how could I know when I was 17 that a woman can be all those things she dreamed of – married, living in a beautiful house, with kids – and still feel absolutely alone. Living in a basement, unmarried, with the man I love, with no dog, with one car, just happy to have our own laundry room at 29 might have, at 17, seemed like a less than perfect life.
Thank God I have the wisdom of 29.

I couldn’t be happier.

Las Vegas

I’d heard many things about Vegas. I had the impression there would be gambling and I knew people tended to get married there on a whim. What I wasn’t prepared for was the pure vulgarity of the place. It seems to me, quite literally, that it’s a city that will compromise any and all values for the pursuit of financial gain. There aren’t any seats in lobbies of hotels because they want you to rest only in front of a slot machine. They’ll sell you enormous yard-high daiquiris and let you carry them anywhere – on the streets, into other casinos and restaurants, even into the taxis, as long as it means that your judgment becomes sufficiently impaired that you dig mindlessly into your wallet. It’s not a dangerous place, in the immediate sense. But it doesn’t feel like a place where I’d want to take my kids. Everyone is either drunk or tied by a retractable leash to a slot machine or wearing nearly no clothes in order to display artificial boobs. You can smoke anywhere too, as long as you’ve got money. No one cares about my beautiful pink lungs.

Ironically, we went to Las Vegas for a wedding. At The Little Chapel of the Flowers. A real white little chapel, surrounded by carefully groomed Astroturf grounds with a white gazebo, attached flower shop and photography studio, and just next door to an adult video store and a replica of the CN tower. In the span of 30 minutes, we saw 6 brides come and go. The service was performed by a nice, if not a bit Dr-Phil-like man, who informed us that the ceremony was being filmed both for Kim and Keith’s DVD and also to be shown live on the internet. Also, we had to get off the property immediately following the ceremony and not take any personal pictures; that costs extra.

I had a small taste of the American two-tiered airport system. I could go inside and wait in line like I always thought we had to do, to check-in. OR, I could pay the guy on the sidewalk $2 and he checks me in right away.

Other things Americans do that are a bit less logical:
They charge $1.49 for a single quarter pounder with cheese and only $1.00 for a double. They charge $1.29 for a small fry and $1.00 for a medium.
That explains so much.

Persuasion

Today, Mark witnessed a heated debate between two grade 7 students about whether the tooth fairy actually exists.

Student A: Do YOU think your parents have ENOUGH money to give you a DOLLAR every time you lose a tooth? That’s like, a million dollars?

Student B: I guess.

Student A: And do YOU think your parents are SNEAKY enough to slip into your room at night and put a dollar UNDER your pillow without waking you up? And to take the tooth too?

Student B ponders

Student A: OBVIOUSLY only a FAIRY can do that! And only a FAIRY has enough money to do that! The tooth fairy HAS to exist! There’s no other explanation.

Student B: You make a good point.

I broke the kettle

It was a long time overdue.
It seems that, although I score fairly high academically, I am utterly incapable of keeping track of a boiling kettle. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve turned on the kettle, forgotten about it and let it boil dry, only to wonder to myself, hours later, why the kitchen is filled with steam and I can hear a dry hissing sound. The cupboard doors are covered in condensation and, on occasion, it’s begun to drip down onto the counter. It is a miracle I haven’t started a fire. And it’s phenomenal that this kettle has lasted as long as it has.

So the other day, as per usual, I forgot about the kettle and let the damn thing boil dry for about two hours. Upon discovering my mistake, I quickly unplugged it and, naturally, “let it rest”. The next day, I plugged it in (with water in it) and it began to boil. This time, I did a rare thing, and I did not forget about it. I could hear the water begin to boil. I walked into the kitchen and as I approached the kettle, it seemed to stop. It stopped boiling without me unplugging it. Oh oh, I thought to myself. I guess that’s it. I’ve been boiling on borrowed time.

As a test, I plugged the kettle in again and waited. And I waited and I waited. I watched and waited and the kettle wouldn’t boil. Dead.

As a second test, the next day when the kettle was cold, I plugged it in again. I waited and I waited. I watched and waited and the kettle wouldn’t boil. Done like dinner.

Later that day, Mark went to make himself tea. I watched him grab the kettle.
“Um…” I began, “I may have broken the kettle.”
He looked at me sideways. It might be fair to say that the reason I haven’t burnt the house down is in part due to Mark discovering dehydrated kettles-in-distress.
“Did it break because you let it boil dry?”
“Actually…” I said indignantly, “It had water in it when it broke.” Not a lie.
“You’re sure it’s broken?” he asked.
“Yes, I tested it.”
He plugged it in.
“…two times…” I added.

He waited and I prepared myself to proudly withhold an “I told you so”.
Then the stupid thing began to sigh. That kettle started to blow steam. And then it began to gurgle.

I guess I didn’t break the kettle after all.