Crappy Customer Service

Nostalgia is for Wussies.

Sundry asks us if we miss our teens and 20's at all.  I'm in the HELL NO camp.  Right up until I met my husband at 23, I was miserable all the time.  I was taking antidepressants and still crying myself to sleep at night.  I was thinner, but it was because I'd come home from work and go to sleep until morning.  Every day.

I couldn't get a date if I stood naked on the roof of Barry T's.  My friends were assholes.  My mother was going through menopause and was a pain in my ass.  My dad was still an alcoholic and verbally abusive.

Even after I met and fell in love with my husband, which improved my life in every way, we were dirt poor.  I don't know how we managed.  I failed in two careers after truding my way through school twice.  I was living on EI for a year, which ain't no happy welfare state, FYI.

The only thing I miss, which I believe is what most people are longing for, is my perfectly functioning, beautiful body.  I should have been a lot more respectful of it.

Schlep, Schlep Out The Barrel

Mr. W and I bartended my cousin's wedding last Saturday.  Here are the highlights:

• I discovered that my husband may be a closet chef/mathematician, but he really wants to be a bartender when he grows up.  I have never seen my darling backward mild-Asperger's only-child husband be so gregarious.  He claims that it's because people will eventually walk away from the bar.
• When you buy 20 drink tickets, and drink them yourself, and stay upright, you will impress me.  Not in a good way.
• Bartending in heels hurts.  The soles of my feet stung.
• My cousin and his new bride are both happy hugging drunks.  I hugged more that night than I have in a year.
• The under-30 set likes Sailor Jerry, the over-30 set likes Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, and never the twain shall meet.
• The bar star pours, but the second in command gets the truly glamorous job of ice management.

That, And The Terribly Hard Seats.

Big Fat Deal asks us to read Roger Ebert's column Nil By Mouth.  He has similar things to say as did Jon Reiner in his article The Man Who Couldn't Eat.  While I cannot imagine food and drink leaving my life forever, as it has Ebert's, I was intrigued by how their sense of smell dominated their thoughts and dreams.

Reading these articles, I thought about my experience in going back to school this past Thursday.  I have started another course on my long & expensive journey to a Supply Management diploma.  This time my course is on the U of A's main campus.  I attended the U of A for a year when I was 17 - it was a decision on my parents' part to keep me in school for another year so I could be 18 when I started at NAIT.

I hated university and I felt it was a waste of time to be there.  It's hard when you're under the drinking age, which is strictly enforced.  It was a large stumbling block to my social development.  I didn't like the learning environment either.  I knew I wasn't staying so I made almost no effort to learn anything for the first time in my life.  I was absolutely miserable because I wasn't making any friends, my 23-year-old roommate was never around and vastly uninterested in me.  My high school friends had all moved on to their own post-secondary paths - and they were all 18, of course.

Toward the end of the year I ran into some long-lost friends from my hometown and had a better time.  But the U of A has always been associated in my mind with that feeling of being set adrift on the sea of adulthood too early.  Those feelings rushed back to this 36-year-old overgrown girl when I set foot in one of the buildings where I had a class.  It was the smell - that institutional, cement-based waft with overtones of chemistry.

First Of All - Thank You to Anyone Reading This Year. And Then...

I am glad to see you all in such a festive way this year.  There seems to be more celebration than ever.  Mr. W has taken to telling people "Happy Festivus" when they wish him Merry Christmas.  He says 90% of all people just say "and to you" or "OK" and walk away puzzled, but 10% laugh and say "For the rest of us!"

My personal celebration for this time of the year is Yule and the solstice.  It makes me so happy to see the days growing longer.  It marks the beginning of the end of living in darkness, literally, at this parallel.  Each day the horizon is a little lighter when I drive over the bridge at 156 street.

I got an Aerogarden 3 from my in-laws.  I am glad to have the small unit, which tucks away into a corner of my already crowded kitchen.  I love plants but my home is a terrible environment for them (dry & dim), so I miss them through the long winter.  I have started basil, chives and thyme.   Now here's hoping the cats don't discover the kitty salad up there and eat the lot once they sprout.  Margo in particular is a connoisseur of growing things - especially rose petals.

I got a lot of books from my parents & brother, which is the way every year.  I enjoy scoping out their Amazon.ca lists and picking things they added ages ago.  Come to think of it, everyone in my family is happy to get a book as a gift.  My big get was Martha Stewart's Cooking School - I had no idea it was such a tome!  It makes me hungry every time I open it.

Mr. W's and my gift to ourselves is a trip to Las Vegas at the end of January.  Mr. W has never been, and I haven't been for about a dozen years.  Some people roll their eyes when we tell them we're going, but I figure it's the type of place you have to see once in your life.  It's a cheap, short vacation for us, the Canadian dollar is strong and the flight is almost straight south.  We don't drink much or gamble so it's a sightseeing trip, capped by finally getting to see Penn & Teller.  We are huge fans from way back.

Shopping Professional Takes to the 'Tubes

I'm enjoying Christmas shopping so far.  I only have one really tough buy, for a married couple who have absolutely everything on the planet that they need.  I want to give them something tangible - I don't do gift cards.  And it's two guys which makes things just a little tougher.  If you still have time to buy online you can look at some of the nice things I found.

• Have you seen that amazon.ca is now selling non-book items?  Plenty of squee-worthy stuff in there.  And plenty to ways to drop some serious cash.  I put this lamp on my wishlist. Every year I find twice as much stuff for myself as I do for my loved ones.  I am my own best personal shopper!

• I try to buy a good portion of handmade things every year.  It's never difficult because everything's so frigging cute.  I just keep track of the things I want and buy a batch of them.  Like Lavendar Lizard's crochet lip balm holders, complete with handmade lip balm from another seller, for my cow-orkers.

• And just now I bought a few coupon organizers from Austin Artisan.  She had some nice non-girly ones.  I always have random coupons floating around the place and expiring, so I figure everyone else does too.

• FragranceNet.com ships to Canada and you may find a pretty good deal.  They sent me lots of coupon codes, too.

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.