Sweet Tradition

July 28th was our first wedding annivesary. So, when we arrived home on July 29th, in keeping with tradition, we took the top tier of our wedding cake out of our freezer. I had been craving this cake for months now and I was really looking forward to the romance of eating wedding cake and reminiscing about our first year of marriage. I was also looking forward to freeing up the freezer space.

So we carefully opened the box and unwrapped the plastic wrap that had been covering the cake. It had preserved beautifully. It was so lovely. I'd forgotten how much artistic talent and skill had gone into its creation.

Then Mark said, "Do we let it thaw first?"

I shrugged, "Seems to me that letting a year-old cake thaw might be asking for trouble. Wouldn't it get soggy?"

He shrugged back at me.

So we decided to cut it frozen and then if it was too cold to eat right away, let it thaw a bit on our plates.

Mark got out the knife. But before he cut into it, I pointed to some sparkly anthers protruding from a few of the top flowers, "Those aren't edible, I don't think. We should take them out."

"Of course they're edible, it's a cake."

"No. I seem to remember Rob saying something about some part not being edible...." The conversation had taken place a year and a day ago. I took out one of the little pieces and poked my finger with it and then poked Mark's finger with it. It was definitely plastic. So we tried to remove all of them. However, they were frozen to the flowers and a few flowers came off with the anthers.

Then we examined the base of the cake. It was covered in a ribbon and held in place by sewing pins. We carefully removed those too.

Then Mark set the knife ontop of the cake and pushed down. He pushed down even harder. It was a very sturdy cake. He got the knife down most of the height of the cake and then it came to rest ontop of the base (where the ribbon had been pinned) and it got stuck. He began to saw vigorously. It just didn't want to cut through. He re-maneuvered the cake and began cutting a second incision. The knife again got stuck at the base. But determined Mark widened his stance, planted his feet firmly on the linoleum and really heaved on the knife. Finally, he was through.

He carefully lifted the piece of cake triumphantly to the plate and we discovered the reason for the resistance in the cake base. It was made of an inch of styrofoam carefully covered in frosting. We had to cut horizontally to remove it from the edible part.

Within a few more minutes, Mark had managed to free a second piece of cake and we sat down at the kitchen table. With a bit of sweat on his upper lip, he managed, "Happy Annivesary."

"Happy Anniversary to you, too." I replied smiling.

Then he paused with his fork hovering in the air...."You go first."

So I ate a bite. And it wasn't all that bad. In fact, it was tasty. Chocolate on the bottom. Vanilla on the top. And the icing between the layers was delicious. I got a little taste of the outer-covering of frosting and it was very dense and kind of chewy.

"Don't eat the outer icing, Mark, you won't like it."

So he ate a forkful of the outer icing. He chewed it like bubble gum and made a increasingly disgusted face until he had to spit it into the garbage.

We sat back in our chairs staring at the mess of half-frozen cake.

"What do we do with it now?" I asked, "I can't see giving it away. Who wants year-old cake? And is it bad luck to throw out your wedding cake?"

Mark shrugged, "Maybe we save it til next annivesray."

Victoria

Victoria is a sweet, out-going, out-spoken 12 year old that I met in Thunder Bay on the holiday from which we just returned. Victoria is Mark's dad's girlfriend's grand-daughter. She announced, the moment she met me, that she was very excited to meet me because she just LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVES pregnant ladies. She patted my belly lovingly whenever she had a chance and every time I made a face or shifted in my seat she'd ask if the baby was moving.

On Monday, we went to Montanas for supper. It so happened that Victoria and I had to use the washroom at the same time, so we left the table together. Upon arriving in the Ladies Room, Victoria pointed at the biggest stall, the one that was wheelchair accessible, and stated very matter-of-factly, "You'd better use the big bathroom; it'll make it easier for you to move around in there."

Things to do in Thunder Bay

I am an honourary Thunder-Bay-ian, being married to one and having visited here three times. I have driven the 16 hour trek from Toronto and I have also visited by air. Having one of the best tour guides in these parts, here are some tips.

1. Bring a toque and mittens, no matter what time of year. If you are, what they would call, a "Southie", then you may think that August is the best time for warm days and lovely "cool" evenings. However, in Thunder Bay, an August evening can mean having to turn on the space-heater and sport your favourite toque if you go outside before sun-up.

2. Bring golf clubs. Although I'm not a golfer, Thunder Bay is golfing country. EVERYONE golfs. And even more fortuitous for golfers, because Thunder Bay is close to the time-zone line, it doesn't get dark in the summer until well past 10 p.m. making it completely feasible to play a full 18 holes after supper.

3. They aren't called Beaver Tails, here they are called Elephant ears. Get it right.

4. Resign to the fact that Tim Hortons is outnumbered by Robin's Donuts, in a ratio of 5:1.

5. Persians are a delicacy that only Thunder Bay has the privilege of knowing. A simplified description would be, a cinnamon bun type donut covered in a thick, creamy icing with little red "cherry" flavoured specs. The Persian Man, a bakery that sells these, closes at 4 p.m.! But it's been said that "The Five Star" has the original recipe. They run out early in the day as well.
Also, to assist in sharing this delicacy with the rest of the world, if you order in advance, they'll give you a dozen persians with the icing in a separate container, for you to freeze and then take to other parts of the world.

6. Port Arthur vs. Fort William. Which part of town are you from? It makes a difference!

7. Coney Island is in New York, but apparently, all the Coney Island Cafe's came to T-bay. You can get a pretty great coney dog from a handful of mom'n'pop cafes in the Great North. Coney sauce is like a weird purréed chilly without any beans and it's spread on top of hotdogs or hamburgers. When you're in one of these high-class establishments, with grease clinging to the rafters and the menu overhead in black press-on letters on a white sign, never, ever ask them if you can have tomatoes on your hamburger. The choices are ketchup, mustard, onions and coney sauce, you tourist idiot!

8. There is only one cinema and the price of admission is $7.50. On Tuesday nights, it's $4.25.

9. Terry Fox ended his journey on a stretch of highway just outside of T-bay. Visit the memorial site.

10. Never say "cottage"; say "camp". I.e. We're going out to Dan's camp this weekend. If you happen to slip "cottage" out into a conversation, you will be instantly balked at for your snootiness.

11. If you stay up past your bed-time, and you happen to be at the In-Towner Bar, be aware that you might run into some fun-loving, drunk locals with no pants on. We're not sure how the pants stores stay in business in Thunder Bay.

A Delicate State

I'd just like to take a moment to sincerely thank all of those folks out there who have treated me like a delicate, if not somewhat mysterious, phenomenon since I announced I was pregnant. Being in certain realms of one's world are variably protective and also a bit entertaining.

The first realm was the world of the elementary school, filled with an abundance of women who have already had children. The encouragement and interest was overwhelming. "Have you picked a name yet?" "Have you felt any flutters yet?" "Will you find out if it's a boy or a girl?" "How have you been feeling today?" "How are you coping in this heat?" "Have you felt any flutters yet?" "When do you go for your first ultrasound?" "How is the baby treating Mark?" "Have you felt any flutters YET?"

And my neighbours' interest in me has peaked considerably. Eric calls across the road to me every time he sees me to remind me I'm going to be a Mommy. Brenda makes lists of local obstetricians and comes over with strawberries on the day of my ultrasound so she can see the picture. Sharon tells a few of her veteran pregnancy stories. When walking down the sidewalk, people stop their lawnmowers momentarily as I go by.

But some of the sweetest reactions are from the people who aren't, at first, sure what to make of it. The T-bay crowd of friends met at Dan's camp this weekend. I was nervous at first at the prospect of hanging out at a drinking fest and staying up late with a bunch of rowdies. But it was touching how, without knowing exactly what to do with a pregnant woman, they over-compensated: carrying my overnight bag to and from the car, ensuring I had the best bed in the place, asking frequently if I needed to rest, chatting it up with Mark about baby names around the camp fire, lovingly nicknaming me "the pregnant wife", razzing Mark whenever I did anything even remotely strenuous such as carrying water in a pail or unpacking groceries. They even sweetly debated what type of ball I must be carrying around inside me (too small to be a basketball, they all decided, possibly a volleyball.) But the most memorable comment came from Dan (or Danderson as we sometimes call him), a guy who a week earlier had said to Mark "I'm not sure I really GET this whole BREEDING thing", around two in the morning, as I was getting ready to pack it in and everyone else had had more than their fair share of beer. Keeping in mind that Dan's camp has no electricity, the running water isn't working and the indoor toilet has a broken pipe, so we were using the outhouse. Dan smiled at me with a drunken grin of satisfaction and said "YOU can use the inside toilet." I said, "Isn't it broken?" And still with the drunken grin, he said, "Yup." His fiancé looked up from what she was doing and asked, "Can I use the inside toilet?" He looked at her and without pausing to think said, "Nope. YOU'RE not pregnant!"

Not being sure that his liquid-soaked mind had fully thought the offer through, I opted not to use the inside toilet. However, being OFFERED that privilege by a man so practical as Dan was the ultimate gesture of sweetness.

Disjointed Blog on Cinema

I went to see The Dark Knight last night at the Thunder Bay Theatre.

It was a very good movie.

Apparently, it grossed more in the first weekend than any other film....ever.

These last two ideas are completely unrelated in my opinion. Movies don't rake in mounds of cash in the first weekend because they are good movies. Everyone who decides to contribute to the coffers has no idea whether the movie is good until after they've paid! If people could decide AFTER the move is over whether they want to pay for the ticket, well then I'd say that the amount of money a movie makes in the first weekend is directly linked to how good the movie is.
But no, movies gross lots in the first weekend because of hype and hype alone.

Heath Ledger, bless his soul, loved by the multitudes (and became even more intriguing, I dare say, with in his mysterious death) was apparently so haunted by his role of The Joker that he was "never the same again". And then he overdosed on drugs which may or may not have been related to some psychotic backlash of his delving too deeply into the character of The Joker. A casualty of the story, so powerful its hold was on his mind. That is a kind of hype that no trailer or life-size poster can create. Bittersweet happenstance, speculation and a touch of the inexplicable conjured up an anomalistic degree of hype and the piggy banks of Hollywood are all the more full because of it.

Second point: Although pump-your-own butter popcorn at the AMC seems like a brilliant idea, it has been the sorrowful demise of many perfectly good buckets of popcorn (and pants).

"Sidewalks on both sides of the street is just shameful extravagance."

It Takes a Village to Build a Shed

We're feeling a little bit untouchable...like we could conquer anything thrown at us now...now that we've built ourselves a shed.

We calculated approximately 8 hours to dig the foundation, lay the gravel and screening and level the patio stones ontop. Probably 10 wheelbarrow loads full of dirt, hidden around the yard under shrubs, behind the compost heap, between cedar bushes and behind the new shed. (Note: When borrowing a wheelbarrow from a friendly neighbour, ensure the tire is not flat.) It took fourteen 60-pound bags of gravel and nine bags of screening (which, I've learned is not like the screen on a screen door, but rather more finely crushed gravel...also very heavy). It took nine very heavy patio stones and seven smaller ones which we scavenged from a mysterious corner in our back yard.

On construction day #1, we had to return to Home Depot at least four times to replace damaged wood or to buy wood we didn't know wasn't included, or to buy the right types of machinery, such as metal snips or a chalk-line. (Thank GOD for chalk-lines!) But once we got going on the walls, we were laughing. Who would have thought.... we were building walls!












Construction day #2 left us short-staffed. Dad had returned home and we were left to put up the roof alone. Screwing nails through a tin roof never seemed so foolish. We tried using a screw driver and a hammer and a ratchet. We discovered after stripping two screw driver bits with the funny hexagonal screws that the bit we were using wasn't actually a screw driver bit at all. Once we returned to the hardware store and purchased a real drill bit, things got a bit better.

My flowers succumbed to a fatal blow when the door that was being installed fell on them. Frankie's not sure what to make of the new edifice in her play area, and Mark's left thumb may never be the same again (certainly the nail won't). But we've left our mark. We built us a shed.

Do you think it's a good idea, honey?

Some dude woke up yesterday morning, drank enough beer to become impaired and mowed his lawn. Then he popped a joint into his shirt pocket and grabbed another cold beer from the fridge and called to his wife, "I'm just goin' down the road to mow Stuwie's lawn, hon!" Then he mounted his riding lawn mower, still holding his beer, and headed off down Yonge Street. The article states, that when the police officers finally caught up to him, they found he was showing indications of drunkeness. I like the "when the police officers caught up to him" part. He must have really been motoring.

The moral of the story is that you ought to never draw attention to yourself when you've got pot in your possession, particularly, by driving intoxicatedly down busy mainways on riding lawn mowers.

Because You're Teachers....

Why would you expect us to know how to compose a statement with grammatical correctness to reflect the author's intent?

Because We're Teachers.

You wouldn't expect to see me write "Because Were Teachers..." or (heaven forbid) "Because We're Teacher's..." now would you? That would be blasphemous, not only because it's grammatically incorrect, but also, BECAUSE WE'RE TEACHERS! Teachers ought to know this stuff. That's the general consensus, of which I was reminded today, but not for the first time. I find this slightly amusing.

You see, the general population (those in the teaching profession included) has very little idea where to properly insert an apostrophe (or how to spell it) or a coma or a colon or a semi-colon. (I ask you quite honestly to tell me the last time you even used a semi-colon.) So if I am repeatedly incorrectly using punctuation, my argument is that most of the general population (I was going to say "my readers" but I have a very superior sampling of followers) wouldn't find it appalling at all, because they wouldn't even notice. (I misspelled the word "weird" for the first 29 year of my life).

Today, J. Duffy, one of Mark's very best friends, phoned us in the late morning. Because we are teachers in the summertime and because Mark was out at a concert late and I had to go get him at the GO station at 2:30 a.m. and because I couldn't get back to sleep because my abdomen gets in the way, we were still alseep (don't tell J. Duffy - I told him I was up). And I'm sure J. Duffy had some social reason for calling (I forgot to be really conversational since I was half-asleep), but when he discovered Mark was not coming to the phone, he decided to go to Reason #2 for the call. "You guys are teachers, right? So we have a question for you." I was then bracing myself for an educationally-related question, such as "Is it okay to put your kids in French Immersion if the parents don't speak French?" or "What do you think of a segregated gifted program?" And when J. Duffy began, "You know how people sometimes put signs on their front lawns...." I began to expect a political question such as, "Do you feel the Catholic Board should get as much funding as they do?" or "How do you feel about Black-Centred Schools?"

Instead, I got, "When people put signs on their front lawns, you know, that say THE SMITHS or THE WARDS or THE DUFFYS....should there be an apostrophe? You guys are teachers, so we thought we'd let you settle this argument."

And suddenly honoured with all this power, I began to falter and doubt myself. Did I really know the answer? "Well," I said, "Do you mean to say, this place belongs to a bunch of Duffy people? That would be DUFFYS with no apostrophe because you're just pluralising the DUFFY. But if you mean, this house belongs to a person named DUFFY and you want to show this is DUFFY'S HOUSE, that would be apostrophe S. However, there are two of you, so if you want to indicate that there are several DUFFYS and this is their place, you'd write THE DUFFYS' (HOUSE) with an S THEN an apostrophe," then I added, "but, nobody ever does that."

There was silence. Nobody ever does that was a funny thing to say about correct grammar.

"Are you still there?"

"Oh. Yup. I'm just shocked."

"Why is that?"

"'Cause it's been about twenty years since I was wrong about anything." His fiancé in the background called out, "I WAS RIGHT!" J. continued, "The guy at the sign store said that too, that it should be DUFFYS with no apostrophe, but I just thought, you know, it's a small town, what does he know?"

The pause was a 30-year-old guy (sweet as pie but stubborn as an ox) changing his mind because a TEACHER had told him that this was the way it was.

"Huh. Well, I like your reasoning. (That's a very dignified way of saying, I ACCEPT your reasoning. I might have been wrong) Thanks, Meliss."

"Any time J."

And another apostrophe can sleep peacefully tonight knowing he will not be called to duty somewhere that it is inappropriate for him to be.

(I'd better go back and proofread my work.)

Disclaimer: Teachers don't really necessarily know where to put apostrophes, by the way.

Is that your Watermelon or are you just happy to see me?

This article, which claims that eating watermelon can help to treat erectile dysfunction, similar to Viagra, spurs a few questions in my mind.

First of all, how did anyone discover this amazing secondary effect? Was it similar to how depressed smokers were being treated with Zyban to alleviate their depression and they suddenly found they had quit smoking without meaning to? Did a bunch of old polar dippers or stogie-smoking golden oldies find after a watermelon eating contest or perhaps just after an overindulgence at a family picnic that they had abnormal mojo-ing powers? I am inclined to say it was some smugly smiling retired ladies swapping stories at high tea who finally made the connection. I think the gents would probably have just been so gleeful and probably attributed their newfound virility to their own biological "second wind". It would take a lady to sit down objectively and say, "Now, Walter wasn't doing THAT on his own, you know? He must be getting some "outside" assistance, if you know what I mean. What have I been FEEDING him lately?"

Which brings to my second question: Why aren't more people eating watermelon?

Intelligence Test

If you have ever, in an exceedingly exasperated tone, said to a child, "READ CAREFULLY!" then turned to a friend/colleague/fellow parent and said, "Kids these days, they never read the questions"....

then you need to do this intelligence test.

http://www.brainbashers.com/iqtest.asp

Buffer Zone

Today, I walked to the gym and decided to use the stationary bike for 30 minutes.

In the Ladies Only section of the gym, there were only three of those upright stationary bikes and the far right one was being used. So, as unspoken gym protocol requires, I got on the far left bike in order to leave the requisite Buffer Zone between myself and the current biker.

Alas, that bike clicked. And you just can't have a bike clicking at you every half second for thirty minutes. That's something like three thousand six hundred clicks. It's enough to drive a woman to insanity. Or at the very least, make her abandon her already fragile exercising mind-frame. So I had no choice but to move to the middle bike - immediately next to the current biker.

Now the bikes didn't look evenly spaced, so I did shimmy the middle bike a little bit away from the current biker before saddling up, however, I realized too late that it had not been enough. Our shoulders were no more than a foot apart and I'm not sure whoever decided the exact social distance required between complete strangers for optimal comfort, but it is definitely more than a foot, shoulder to shoulder. The closeness was awkward and strained. We were both uncomfortable. I was afraid to catch her eye in the mirror. I tried leaning imperceptibly away from her. But I couldn't get off my bike and re-adjust. That would be rude. Besides, I had already moved my bike away from her. She'd be insulted, I was sure, if I so showed such a blatant distaste for our newfound closeness.

No, I'd just have to wait until her biking regime was done. I wondered if I could glance down at her time screen to see how long she'd been at it already. If she'd only been going for 30 seconds, I'd need another plan. But I couldn't bring myself to do that either. We were far too close. And even something that seems as subtle as a shifting of the eyes is very obvious when you're surrounded by mirrors.

Luckily, she disembarked less than a minute after I'd gotten on the bike next to (ontop of?) her. And she got on a treadmill instead.

The "Young" Childless Neighbours: Us

Sometimes I think back on how I used to classify the neighbours in my childhood communities. There were those who had kids, those whose kids were grown up and those young couples without kids. There was always a sense that the latter two groups were far less fun than the first, but that the "young couples" were the least approachable because, it was possible, they were not child-friendly people.

The "young couples" were usually more private people that we saw less of. Families always had someone out mowing a lawn or gardening or running under a sprinkler or building a dog house or tackling a brother or biking up or down the road covered in mud or playing baseball in someone's back yard or throwing tennis balls over a garage. These were very visible folks. "Young people", by contrast, were mysterious and, it was surmised, nocturnal, for we didn't see nearly as much of them outside during the day. As a child, I thought they must be grumpy, unapproachable people - a fairly unjustified assumption.

Now, however, I sometimes wonder if we've become the "young" childless couple on the block. We moved in and then no one saw us until the first heavy snowfall and we had to go out and clear our driveway. Dave walks Darren every day and Paul, even during the coldest of winter days, walks up and down the street in his shorts bringing Kathy's homemade baking (and persimmons) to various neighbours. But we hibernate.

And since we're the "young" childless couple, I wonder if we're regarded as grumpy and unapproachable by kids. And then I wondered if it is true.

For instance, one spring day, Mark and I were outside in our backyard patio area, building our patio furniture. For three hours, we listened to a boing-boing-boing-boing-boing on the driveway next to our yard, while a long-haired pre-teen bounced on his pogo stick. Up and down the driveway he bounced, without pause, for the entire afternoon. Mark looked about ready to stick the screwdriver into his eye socket by the end of it all. And I wondered, when did we become so annoyed with children? Aren't we teachers, after all?

Then, we were out eating supper at our new patio table, when we heard a different sort of BOING-BOING-BOING and saw children's faces appearing and disappearing over our back fence, staring intently at us and laughing maniacally. "A trampoline," Mark said with exasperation, "that's wonderful." To our further dismay, we soon discovered that our neighbours just across the way also had a trampoline and kids (and other friends of their kids) who loved to bounce on it and shreik with delight. When did children's shreiks of delight become so bothersome? Was it when we became the young, childless, nocturnal, poker-playing, beer-drinking, professional couple?

Sometimes, even in the late evening, we'll be lying in our bed and we'll turn off the television to go to bed and we'll hear the incessant boing-boing-boing-boing of the pogo stick. We'll wonder when pogo sticks became popular. We'll wonder if the boy is getting his recommended quota of exercise on the thing. We'll wonder if he aspires to join the pogo stick Olympics. Mark will get up and open the curtains and stare at him as he bounces and bounces and makes that excruciatingly persistent boing-boing-boing-ing. We'll fantasize out loud about waiting until everyone is asleep, or until the boy leaves it out on the front lawn to go in for dinner, and then running it over with our car.

Then one day, Mark was staring out the window at the neighbour's yard and he said, "You know. It's not the boy I should be upset with. It's the dad. He's an enabler."
"How so?" I asked.
"Well, he buys the kid these things. In fact, you'll never guess what he's giving the kid right now."
He shook his head in disbelief, "A unicycle!"

Brainpower

Babies require an inordinate amount of brainpower. Well, not exactly babies. Being pregnant seems to require an indordinate amount of brainpower.

I first realized this last year when I wasn't even pregnant yet and I attended a pregnancy workshop. The friendly Union rep spent two hours explaining how to go on maternity leave and still get your benefits and whether we should pay into our pension plan and which forms to complete and how to apply for a top up for the first six weeks and how you know when you can go on leave and how you know when you should go back to work and what if you want to be off for longer than a year......And I didn't understand one single thing. I am not used to not understanding. I have always been on the honour role in school. I used to consider myself fairly clever. Apparently not. I wrote everything the lady said down, desperately hoping that when I needed the information either it would suddenly be a lot clearer or someone more knowledgeable and intelligent could translate it for me.

And the most recent reminder that pregnancy is far more complicated than I anticipated came at my first visit with my obstetrician. There were requisitions for ultrasounds and a blood sugar test and bloodwork. I had to make appointments for every month between such and such a date and then every two weeks between such and such a date and then every single week after a particular date. There was a manual to read (which, by the way, is too frightening for night-time reading) and there were hospital registration forms to complete and questionnaires regarding food preferences (which really weren't all that hard to fill out - I was just feeling overwhelmed at the time). I have so many appointments between my family doctor, my thyroid doctor, my obstetrician and my prenatal massage therapist, that I'm not sure how other women do the pregnant thing and also succeed at holding down a permanent job! And to make matters worse, my dayplanner, I just realized, ended mid-July.

Well, I've had to spread out all my requisitions in organized piles on the spare futon in my office. I've got colour-coded sticky tabs and I've photocopied the really important documents. I have a list of all the medical labs that will do bloodwork for my area and I've mapquested the nearest ones. All my requisitions are grouped with paperclips and stuck in a special compartment in my purse. I had to immediately go out and purchase a dayplanner which had ALL of July and at least 12 months thereafter. And I've even backed up the appointment data in a Microsoft Outlook dayplanning program.

I'm not sure what less organized women do.
I guess their uterus just does all of the work.