Crappy Customer Service

When I Was Your Age

(Thank you evany, whom I have been reading since year dot.  I think she was probably one of the first bloggers I ever read.)

When I was your age...

We had an old TV with a busted dial.  My dad attached a pair of vice grips to the dial stem and that's how we changed the channel.  The grownups would say which channel they wanted and the kid nearest the TV had to change it (usually my brother because he sat inches away, frying his eyeballs).  And there were only four channels and one was in French.

I'd get on my bike after sunset and ride around for hours, all through and around the edges of town, unaccompanied.  As long as I was back by bedtime no one worried.  I never had a helmet.

I used to be able to sit in Hero Pose with my butt completely on the ground.  It used to freak my parents out.  Needless to say I can't even get close anymore.

I used to write notes to my friends which contained fully formed sentences, written with a pen and paper.  We also did drawings and wrote poems.  Text just wouldn't cover all we had to say to each other.

Making Off With The Goods

I just got back from visiting my parents at the farm in the bustling nowhere of Tangleflags, SK.  I've been thinking about my mom's cooking non-stop for a week now.  My mother grows more famous in the area as the best cook around as the years go by.  People eat at her house like it's their last supper.  There were three pies - a horrible pumpkin for the suckers who eat that sort of thing, saskatoon (similar to blueberry) and chocolate.

My parents live next to my aunt & uncle, who own the farm my great-grandfather claimed and settled.  Aunt & Uncle are known for taking in stray humans, dusting them off, setting them on their feet and getting them going again.  They have no children of their own but many adoptive/casual foster types that fall from their family trees.  Currently living with them is a young man of 22 who got a blow-n-go lock on his car after his first DUI.  He is lucky to be living with my uncle, who pays him to help with farm maintenance while he attends Lakeland College.  He is even more lucky to be living next to my mother; my aunt isn't much of a cook.  My dad tells me that when he gets desperate enough he hangs around until mealtime - and he'll probably have to get in line.  My mother told me she helped out with a local funeral and a man she hadn't met before asked everyone in the crowd about her and how he could get her to give up her egg salad recipe.  (Just so you know, dude, there IS no recipe.  She just does whatever and it turns out amazing.)

My dad likes to tease people who show up with the intent of sticking around for eats by pretending to be upset at second helpings.  "It's easy for you," said one of the strays.  "You live in The Cookie Factory!"  And I agree, he's had the benefit of her combination of skill and natural talent for nearly 47 years, so he can just relax when I go into their cool room and start rummaging for canned pears and relishes.

Wanted: Power Tools

I'm still tired from digging post holes for our new deck on the weekend.  By hand.  Who is the masochist in my family?  My dad, who has probably dug 10 000 post holes by hand in his lifetime.  He is absurdly strong for a man on the small side - a classic Scot, in other words.  And since I am half my dad and absurdly strong for a woman, I got to dig the last foot of each of the holes.  My house is sitting on the world's stickiest clay that would ball up in the digger.  Seriously, my dad tried to make a pot out of it.

We also mixed our own concrete, since my dad has a mixer.  His presence, complete with tools, probably shaves $2000 off this project.  But WHY doesn't he buy an auger?  Especially since I now owe him quite a bit of manual labour at his place?

Hook, Line and Sinker

This weekend past I was at my parents' place, which is situated in the middle of nowhere, SK, on my uncle's mixed farm.  It was time to brand, vaccinate, chip, ear tag and castrate the calves.  It's an easy task to sign up for when the dividend is a year of free-range, grass-fed, custom-cut beef at $4 a pound.  I posted some pictures on my Flickr photostream, with a few more to come. 

My mother, aunt and I catered lunch and dinner for the cowpokes.  During this meal my second cousin Dwayne was telling stories about my Uncle Bill, who was present at the time.  Bill loves to mess with kids' heads because he knows they are very gullible.  He doesn't have his own kids but he has scores of nieces and nephews so there's plenty of time and opportunity for pranks.

I reminded my uncle of a time he gulled me and my three cousins.  He had a motorboat that was rigged for waterskiing.  My family spent time with him and his various girlfriends every summer because my dad loved to waterski.  The boat had those seats up front in the nose.

Once, Bill took the four of us out to the centre of a lake and pretended to run out of gas.  He handed each of us an oar and told us we had to row the boat back to shore!  Now, I don't know if you guys know anything about boats but a motorboat with an outboard big enough to haul two grown men is insanely heavy.  I know this because I rowed one back to shore from the nose seats at the age of six.

I told Bill this story - he didn't remember, having played so many other tricks on relatives and friends dumb enough to believe his line of bullshit that this one was lost in the mists.  After pondering on it for a moment, and asking me which lake it was, he said, "Well...that does sound like me."

Felicitations

My great-aunt Maggie got married again last weekend.  This was her fourth marriage as well as his.  They are both 74 years old and they started dating only a year ago.  When I heard they were getting married I asked my mom why, I mean, I'm pretty sure no one is going to give any guff to a couple of seniors who shack up.  Mom says Maggie is very traditional - she was widowed three times, not divorced.  (Insert impending groom-doom joke here.)  Anyway, there's no mistaking the joy on her face on her wedding day.  I have mixed feelings about marriage but I'm rooting for these two.