Kindergarten Drama

The oddest things become elaborate dramas when you’re teaching kindergarten. I was reminded of that today.

Twenty-two near-infants were put in my charge for 45 minutes. I decided to take them outside to play on the playground. In that span of time, two children got hit in the head with rocks, one was kicked in the face, one got a blister on her foot, a club was made banning boys, then a boy broke the code and went inside anyway without saying please, stones were thrown at another child several times, stones were thrown up the slide, a magical stone that was smooth around the outside but that had split in half was discovered, then someone stole it from that person, one child vandalized a wooden post with a pen she’d found, and one boy walked face first into a metal pole.

Here is one strange conversation I had with a little boy, E, and a little girl, K.

K says, “E kicked me HERE” (points to her face).

I say, “E, is that true?”

E nods. His nose is running.

I say, “Was it by mistake or on purpose?”

E says, “On purpose.”

I am shocked by his honesty and try not to laugh out loud.

“Why did you do that?” I ask him.

E thinks hard, “I….I….sometimes my foot moves and I don’t tell it to move.”

I look at him with concern, “No. When you tell your feet to move, that’s the only time they move. Watch me.” And I proceed to say, “Left foot move!” and I do a little jig with my left foot. “Right foot move!” and I do a little jig with my right foot.

E looks at me seriously, then at his feet and says, “Right foot move!” and then doesn’t move his feet at all.

I try a new tactic, “Well, did you think how you’ve made K feel?”

I turn to K, “When E kicked you in the face, did it hurt?”

K looked me in the eye and said, “Nope.”

Call me Mrs. Spontaneous

I received a Health Watch Newsletter in my mailbox at school the other day and was perusing its pages when I found an article about striking a healthy balance in life. What I found particularly ironic was the break-down of your day that they suggested. 60% of your day should be filled with things on your to-do list, 20% should be spent on something else that I can’t remember, and the last 20% should be spent on spontaneous things. Does this seem funny to anyone else? A prescribed fraction of the day dedicated to spontaneous acts? Those two ideas, dividing up the day into specific chunks and throwing oneself into unanticipated activities, seem strangely opposite to me.

I know that I find comfort in pre-planning an event, activity, well,….actually nearly everything. And this has been my strength, for the most part, during the wedding planning. But in August it all ends.

In August, I have given myself up to the spontaneous ME. This is the ME who knows that the consequences for not having everything pre-meditated and pre-dissected and pre-listified are not terrible or earth-shattering. This ME (the one that most of you haven’t met yet) is going on a honeymoon that she hasn’t yet planned. She’s left it all up to her beloved fiancé and she’s totally cool with that. In fact, with 38 days left before the wedding, no destination has been determined nor a “sail away” date or a “sail home” date. The plan (and I use that term loosely) is to wait until the last minute and snatch up some fantastic bargain (and constantly fight away the OTHER ME who loves structure and predictable situations). We might sail a day after our wedding or we might sail halfway through August. Who cares! The sky is the limit. We will be Mr and Mrs Peron, enjoying our first month as legitimately matrimonial partners. We need no tickets. We need no itineraries. We need no lists (well, just a few with the basics). All we need is us.

The Oldridge Cottage

A weekend at the Oldridge cottage usually involves a few shenanigans, often stemmed from ridiculous amounts of drinking. This weekend, however, with fewer people, the shenanigans seemed to evolve simply from a few creative minds, a timely trip to the dollar store, some great comfortable friendships and the initiation of a new one.

There was less poker this weekend in Muskoka. And more Settler’s of Cattan, Mastermind, Rubik’s Cube and Boggle. There was a bit of floating in Aqua-didies (inverted life jackets with legs through arm holes) with cans of beer in hand, but perhaps even more importantly, there was the introduction of the inflatable alligator and shark to the mix. Bobby Bork (the very tame chipmunk) made an appearance for the coveted peanuts. Even being squirted by a water pistol did not deter him. The water pistol and several dozen water balloons were part of the surprise ambush on the deck after dinner Saturday night (we should have known it was peculiar that Mark and Matt were being so diligent in clearing the dishes away).

Just the right amount of Sangria was consumed. The nickname of “Butler” was first coined, although no one can remember how (something to do with naming children W.B. Yeats). A naked, hairy ass became the wallpaper on aforementioned Butler’s cell phone (who checks their cell phone at the cottage anyhow?) and a tribute to Weird Al took place for the three hour car ride home.

Very productive weekend indeed.l

Stupid Symantec

I recently renewed by Norton Antivirus online. In fact, I upgraded to Norton 360. I asked Mark if this was safe to order it online and he said yes. But I was skeptical.

My order came to $74.12. I printed off the electronic confirmation because I’m just that kind of a gal. (Truth be known, I printed it off twice).

When I checked by Visa bill though, I’d been overcharged. Not by much. By $2.09.
So I went to Symantec’s website and I typed a very brief but to-the-point e-mail regarding this issue.

I got a response that I found useless. They re-iterated that I had been charged the correct amount and their documentation showed it. They also forwarded me another copy of my electronic confirmation.

I got this e-mail yesterday morning and at first I replied to the e-mail with a letter about how I wouldn't cause a big fuss over $2.09 but this incident would CERTAINLY affect whether I did business with Symantec in the future.

But I couldn't let the injustice go, so I decided to phone Tech Support right away (7am). Surprisingly, there isn’t a long wait at that time of the day. I was very blunt about my problem to the customer service dude and I said the response I’d received had been condescending and unhelpful and I JUST needed someone to go over to Accounting and confirm that I’d been OVERCHARGED for my product because surely they had on records how much my Visa had been charged. He said he’d check.

He put me on hold for at least ten minutes.

When he came back, he was quite calm and, to his credit, not the least bit snarky when he explained that because of the Exchange Rate of the Canadian Dollar my credit card bill may have shown a slightly larger amount than the actual electronic confirmation.

I said, “Oh…..that was in American dollars?”

He said, “Yes.”

And I swallowed my pride….(it took several gulps)… and said, “Well you’ve been VERY helpful today. Thank you SO much for your time.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with today Miss Loftus?”

“No. You did a great job. Thanks.”

EPILOGUE:
This morning I received an e-mail from a very flustered and apologetic tech support lady (the one who received my e-mail yesterday) and she'd like me to send a digital screen picture of my credit card statement showing the inappropriate charge and they'll do whatever they can to regain my trust in the company.

Timing is everything

I am a passenger in Carolyn’s car.
It’s hot so the windows are down (they are power windows).
She is parallel parking.
We hear a crunch that I am sure is just twigs beneath the tires.
She says, “Did I just hit the curb?”
I lean my head out to be sure
at just the moment that she decides to close the windows.

These things only happen to me.

Mark’s Quilt

I made myself a quilt one weekend at my mom’s house. It was fast and easy and people seemed very impressed. I had to sew the backing onto the filling and the front by hand because I didn’t have a sewing machine then.

Then Mark bought me a sewing machine for Christmas and his mother bought me some beautiful quilting books. And Mark started asking, “Where’s MY quilt?”

So I started to make him a quilt. Carolyn came with me to Fabricland. It took over an hour to pick fabric. He’s very trendy and doesn’t like anything too girly or with flowers or with paisley swirls that might be construed as flowers. Even things I’d consider “masculine” like turquoise and blue and brown stripes he objects to. Apparently turquoise is never masculine. So I decided to go black and white, which is a bit boring. But I picked a black fabric that had musical notes on it. Mark collects records. It seemed good.

Then I went home and cut and ironed and pinned and sewed. Yes, you read that right. Instead of going straight from cutting to sewing, I actually ironed and pinned. I decided to move up the hierarchy of sewing mastery. I decided that this quilt was going to be great. I had sewed half of the patchwork together before I realized that I should have pre-washed the fabric. I consoled myself that cotton shrinks but if the whole quilt was cotton, everything should shrink at the same rate.

It took a few months, but I finally finished the front of the quilt. And then on Saturday night, I really kicked it into high gear. I went to Walmart and a pleasantly round and friendly lady who worked in the fabric section and who was obviously a seasoned quilter spent nearly 45 minutes teaching me some basics about quilting. She took twenty minutes and carefully explained how to make beautifully bound edges on my quilt and how to create lovely folded corners. Then before choosing the batting to go inside the “quilt sandwich”, I explained very carefully how Mark is always hot. How his internal thermometer, much like my own, registers very high. How even in the winter with the windows open wide, the two of us together create some strange type of human thermal combustion reaction that is probably visible from space. I explained that the quilt batting had to be VERY cool. “The coolest possible filler you have,” I insisted. Well, she pointed me to some very fluffy polyester stuff and assured me that cotton would be hot, so this fluffy stuff would be very cool.

Then I selected a fabric for the back of the quilt. I was odd black and white shapes and it made me kind of dizzy to look at, so I thought Mark would like it.

I took it home and set it next to the quilt and hated it.

But the next day, I sewed it on anyway. And then I bound the edges. I did the corners exactly as the lady had explained. It didn’t seem logical to me (it even occurred to me that I ought to look in one of the beautiful books Maggie had given me for a second opinion, but I was too lazy). Then I went to flip the blanket over to sew the other side of the binding and CRAPOLA, I’d been right. The corners were F@#$!@#ed! Absolutely ridiculously scrunched up. Irreparable? Well, I tried to cut them free and then realized I had loose frayable edges now. I cut a new piece of binding and attempted to sew corners on top of my corners. But I didn’t commit to one type of stitch. I tried to do normal stitching by hand, but it looked atrocious. So I tried to switch to invisible stitching, but in truth, I don’t know how to do invisible stitching so I was afraid it would just come right off if Mark sneezed too vigorously, so I took a crack at using the sewing machine on the corners. By this time I had about eighteen layers of fabric all bundled into those stupid goddam corners, but my sweet little machine took it like a man.

Mark came home and was delighted, absolutely DELIGHTED, with the quilt. He LOVED the dizzying fabric on the back and he didn’t care at all about the corners. I believe he might have even said they were “not bad”. And as a treat, so he could sleep with the quilt immediately that night, we threw the thing in the washer and dryer.

Now keep in mind that when I made the quilt, I’d wanted it to be larger than the one I’d made for myself. So I added more squares. But I forgot to count the half inch of fabric I lost at every seam. And I certainly didn’t bank on the kind of shrinkage that that poor blanket suffered in the dryer. It came out looking just a little bit shriveled and when poor Mark lay it over him, his feet stuck out.

I was trying to keep optimistic about the whole thing. I’d just spent a good 10 hours of my Sunday sewing a blanket with shitty corners and that had shrunk about a half a metre. “Your feet get too hot anyway,” I said to him.

He got the blanket tucked under his ankles and wrapped around him.
We laid in bed, in the dark, for a while in silence.

At least thirty minutes went by. Finally Mark leaned over and whispered tentatively, “I’m a bit cold.”

POINTLESS

Definition:
Aero-racing on a stationary bike.

Rattlesnake Point Golf Course

Yesterday could not have been hotter or muggier. And we were to go golfing with Gina (a coworker of Mark’s and whose children he also tutors a few times a week) and her husband Norm. They’d invited us over for dinner a few times and we’d kept having to cancel, so I knew this was it. Despite not being a golfer in the least, I was not getting out of this one.

I was covered in a slick layer of sweat, Toronto smog, pollen and chalk dust by 3 o’clock, so I was glad that Mark picked me up early and we could go home to change quickly before meeting Gina and Norm. I was doing my best to put on the golfer guise. I had khaki cotton pants and white runners and a pink visor. I think golfers wear visors. I even had a golf shirt on. It’s actually CALLED a golf shirt – what could BE more golf?

We got in our car and went to Gina and Norm’s. There, Mark realized he hadn’t brought any golf balls for me. I already had no golf clubs. (I thought this was an excellent way to start off a golf game). Gina had an extra set (for show) and in actuality we were going to share hers. I was telling myself that this would be just fine. Gina was making a big deal out of how terrible a golfer SHE is and how she NEVER plays. It was sort of making me feel better. But I also suspected she might be one of those people who SAYS they’re awful then makes you feel several layers south of awful because she’s world’s better than you are.

The drive was stop-and-go and I was beginning to feel queasy. It was hard to distinguish whether it was the traffic making my tummy act up, or the fatalistic nausea of a soul facing her doom. Then the skies began to look black to the west. We began to debate whether the haze was just smog or a storm approaching. To our east, the smog was a light gray. To our west, a blacker gray. I began to pray.

We pulled up the beautiful winding laneway of Rattlesnake Point and it really was gorgeous – and ritzy. Norm ran to get the golf cart. Mark unloaded the car. And I peered hopefully up at the sky. Make hesitated then and whispered superstitiously, “It really does look like R-A-I-N.” I smiled. “Golfers never say the R word, Melissa,” he explained.

In my mind, I said, “RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN.”

Then we saw lightning. And we heard thunder. Norm had no sooner packed two sets of clubs onto the back of a cart when we realized we would not be golfing that night. He took the cart back and we went into the clubhouse.

We started out on the patio, but the winds soon became too relentless. From inside, we watched the rain begin its pounding (and sideways) fury while trees bowed humbly at the storm’s mercy.

I sipped my wine gratefully.

And God whispered, “You’re welcome.”

Being a bad boy in China

While Mark was in Japan, he did mini-trips to other places. His good friend Dan was also teaching abroad, but in China, so Mark went to visit him.

Apparently, while in China, he saw bicycles for sale for $2. It seemed like a good way to get around, so he bought one. I forget all the details of the story, but it seemed to involve a basket on the front of the bike which proved perfect for carrying six-packs of beer, which may or may not have been consumed while Mark was riding. The beer version is the most recent one I've heard, but I remember a previous version of this story involving what might have been a one-way street. We may never know exactly what went wrong that day in China, but what we do know is that a very angry chinese policeman stopped Mark and scolded him.

As a punishment for whatever infringement Mark had done, he was forced to stand on a street corner with a large orange sign with chinese writing on it. He had to hold it high above his head for an hour and when his arms began to give, the policeman would poke him with a stick and yell in chinese.

Who knows what the orange sign said. I've learned though, that in Japan, they often use dishonour as a punishment (if you don't sort your garbage properly, they put nasty alienating stickers on your garbage bags presumably saying things like, "I'm a bad person. I don't give a damn about the environment. I like to waste limited resources. I am a detriment to society."), so perhaps China was delivering Mark's punishment in a similar punishment. I'm sure he would have been more ashamed, had he known that the sign read, "I am a stupid North American who can't tell when I'm riding the wrong way down a one way street!" or "I am an embarrassment because I spit on the sidewalk". But he had no idea what it said. He just knew that his arms were getting sore.

At one point, he did yell, "You're only doing this to me because I'm white!"

The policeman then pointed across the street where a chinese man stood on an opposite corner holding a similar orange sign in shame.

There’s an eel in my bathtub

Mark has some of the best stories. People love to hear them and even though I think I’ve heard most of them, they somehow never get old. The other day, he told one of my favourites, so I thought I’d share it with you.

For those of you who didn’t know, Mark spent a year teaching English in Japan. He tried taking Japanese lessons before going (because Thunder Bay is reknowned for their Japanese lessons) but somehow still had communication issues while abroad. These “issues” lead to some quirky mishaps and fun stories. This one came up as he was explaining to a friend how delicious barbecued eel can be.

He apparently loves to enter his name in contests. So one day, while in Japan, Mark entered his name in a contest at the grocery store. A week or so later, he received a phone call at work. Someone was speaking very excited Japanese which he did not understand (not that he was an expert at this point at understanding less excited Japanese either) so he handed the phone over to a co-worker who reported to him that he had won something!

Off Mark went to the grocery store, likely quite excited and a bit curious. He was horrified when the salesclerk handed him a bag containing water and a live eel. Not knowing exactly what to do with this live eel, he freed it into the depths of his bathtub. Then he avoided showering for a week so as not to have his toes nibbled on.

A tiny old, old, old lady who lived down the hall from him (whom he also paid to do his laundry and bring him hot lunches at work every day) came by to visit one night and asked him how he was doing. Despite their communication gap, she could tell by his exasperated (if not a bit greasy) expression that something was wrong. She followed him to the bathroom and saw the eel. How jubilant she was. “You won the contest!” she exclaimed in Japanese. She reached into the bathtub, secured her tiny hands around the eel’s neck-region and swiftly twisted. An audible cracking sound that made Mark cringe announced the end to his shower hiatus. Then she went back to her apartment and cooked up some wonderful and delicious barbecued eel.

I’m sorry

Arguably the hardest thing to say…ever.
Especially if you’re not sure you were wrong.

Some people never master wrapping their lips around those words, but if you listen carefully, you learn to hear it in other ways.

My mother, for instance. She makes pancakes. We used to have the most enormous and ugly blow-outs when I was a teenager. The next morning, she’d be up early (and she’s not a morning person, nor a breakfast-maker) making pancakes. And I understood.

I am also not good at saying it.
I think I clean the bathroom instead.

More of AC's Work

(also, he fixed my computer today. I wasn't kidding when I said he was talented.)

The Talented Mr. AC

AC is a man of many talents. Not only is he a cop (by day), but he is an accomplished photographer in the making. He has kindly volunteered to do the photography for our wedding and today he took us to some parks to take some engagement pics. He and Mark both thought pictures on a railroad track would be a neat "urban chic" touch.

Note to my dad: We could see for miles in either direction and we were right near a signal booth which would begin to ding when a train was nearing.