The best game you can name

This is the fifth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Hockey jersey from local New Brunswick team

Hockey doesn't feel real here. Sure, there are tons of loyal Capitals fans around, judging by the personalized license plates, but this isn't a hockey town the way Montreal is. I miss my Canadiens. I miss listening to the games in French, and I miss watching them with my brother.

We loved making jokes out of the players' names. Plekanec was one of my favorites. Good ol' Pleck-a-Neck. Zednik and Kostitsyn were pretty good too, because of the high consonant concentration. And when the team gives you someone with a name like Bouillon, they're asking you to have fun with it. If he looked strong during a game, he was Bouillon de boeuf - beef broth. If he was playing badly, he was Bouillon de poulet (chicken broth). Inevitably, when Bouillon scored, we'd make his name into "Boo-yah!" like a couple of dorks. As for the player named Bonk, every time he scored a goal, we'd bonk heads. Naturally.

The year before I moved to the States, the Canadiens made the Stanley Cup playoffs. My bro and I put on our team jerseys and settled in his room to watch a game on his TV. He sank into his big green easy chair and I flung myself onto the unmade bed. The music at the arena drowned out the TV announcers' voices. Spotlights tracked across the surface of the ice. Player after player was introduced over the loudspeaker to the roar of the crowd. The Molson Centre* was packed with excited fans who'd been lucky enough to score themselves expensive and hard-to-get playoff tickets. It seemed as though everyone, in every seat, was waving a white towel emblazoned with the team logo. My brother stood up and left the room for a moment, returning with two white washcloths. We whirled them for all we were worth every time our guys rushed the opposing net.

I can't quite get myself as psyched when I'm watching a Capitals game. Even when the Habs make the playoffs and I have a chance to see them play on TV, I don't pull out my jersey. It feels silly when it's just me. I hereby declare that the next time the Canadiens make it to the playoffs, I will pack my jersey and a white towel, and head home to Montreal to watch a game with my bro.

*It's the Bell Center now, but I can never seem to remember that name.

Night Owl

This is the fourth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

 

I surveyed the yellow options and selected "Dandelion" from the pack. Slowly, I drew a neat circle, filling its middle in with even pressure. The orb of my sun completed, I reached for blunt-tipped "Orange". It took a sharper point to get the rays just right, so I peeled back the thin paper and twisted the crayon carefully in the sharpener embedded in the back of the box. Humming, I swung my feet back and forth as I drew.

"All right, honey, bedtime." Mom approached the table, cradling her coffee mug in both hands. "Go brush your teeth."

I looked up from my paper.

"I can't, Mom. I have homework."

"In kindergarten?"

"Yeah, Mrs. W wants us to draw pictures and then we're all going to bring our pictures to class tomorrow and show them to the class and talk about them to everyone."

"Well, you look like you're almost done. Five minutes, then teeth."

"But Mom, I have to do more."

"More? How many more?"

"TEN!" I held up both hands, fingers spread, to show her just how many.

Mom put down her coffee cup. The spoon rattled. She sat in the chair next to mine and spoke at my level.

"There is no way your teacher wants you to do ten pictures tonight. You must have heard wrong."

I panicked.

"But I'll get in trouble, Mom! I need to do my homework!" A lip trembled. Tears threatened.

Mom looked over at Dad, standing in the kitchen doorway. He shrugged. Mom shook her head. I sniffed, put a white page on top of my drawing, and started my next picture. A nice juicy red, for an apple...

Three pictures past my bedtime, Mom pushed her chair from the table and stood up.

"This is insane. She's six." She walked across the living room to where the phone hung from the wall. She flipped through the little notebook on the side table, picked up the handset, and dialed. My legs stopped swinging.

"Hello, Mrs. W? I'm Jennifer's mother... I'm calling about the homework that Jennifer's working on tonight. I realize she's taking some classes with the first-graders now, but this seems an excessive amount for her age."

A pause.

"The drawings... she's doing the ten pictures she has to talk about in class tomorrow."

A longer pause.

"Oh."

Mom turned to look at my father, raised an eyebrow, and turned to me. I shifted uncomfortably and looked down at my pile of crayons.

"I see." Mom turned back towards the phone. "Well. I'm very sorry I bothered you."

She hung up and crossed her arms across her chest. I looked really hard at my crayons. I tensed, ready for some yelling. Instead, incredibly, I heard Mom laugh.

"You got me, kiddo. Now put those crayons in the box and we'll talk about this tomorrow. Teeth. Bed. Hustle."

Bonjour, hi.

This is the third of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here.

Grenouille/Frog

I'm a Frenglish-Canadian.

You see, I was raised with two first languages, and have never been quite sure which box to check for "mother tongue" on official forms. I have a very English first name and a very French last name and have consequently had my name impressively mangled by both English and French speakers over the years. One French co-worker called me "Jane" for the two years I worked with her, because she just could not wrap her speech centers around "Jen".

I've never been comfortable defining a spot for myself along the language continuum. In Quebec, you're Francophone or Anglophone, and your social world will change according to your label. You read The Gazette, or Le Journal de Montreal. You either went to McGill or to UdeM. You spent Saturday nights at the bars on Crescent Street, or on Rue Saint-Denis. There were some who crossed into foreign territory, of course - it's not as though there were language guards at the doors - but those people were definitely in the minority.

As a kid, I never really understood that there was an unspoken divide. We spoke French with Mom's side of the family, and English with Dad's side. It was English at home for the most part, but from kindergarten onward, I was in a French Immersion program, speaking French half the day. We didn't just have French class, we had classes in French. Maybe one year, history and ecology would be in French, with math and music in English, and the next year it would change.

I didn't feel like an Anglo, but I didn't feel quite French either. That lack of specific language identity never bothered me until I got a little older and get a taste of bullying and language discrimination. I know, right? White girl in Canada, who am I to talk about discrimination? But when you're walking to the city pool with your sister and a friend, and some French kids no bigger or badder than yourselves throw gravel at you because you're speaking English, and tell you to "Go home, fucking English"*, what else can you call it?

The kids were idiots, obviously, and we ignored them and continued on to the swimming pool. I wasn't traumatized by the event and I'm not crippled by it now. But it stayed with me. Every time I ask myself whether I'm Anglo or Franco, I remember sting of the gravel and the bite of their words. I'm both, and I'm neither. I can never remember the French word for peacock or the English word for pamplemousse. I stumble over the gendered nouns of French, and yet I'll "put my coat" or "pass the vacuum" and not see a damn thing wrong with what I'm saying, despite the funny looks I get. My accent comes out when I drink, and when I'm really mad, or watching hockey, I curse in French.

I'm just going to define myself with my made-up "Frenglish-Canadian" and if you don't like it, you can piss off, câlisse.

*One, I was home. Two, they insulted us in English. If you're going to insult me, do it right.

It's not real, but it's spectacular

This is the second of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here.

This is not an ornament. I am totally cheating.

For my family, the only acceptable Christmas tree was a real one. Not that we ever trekked out into the woods with an axe and hauled back a fir, of course. We were suburbanites in the 80's, which meant we would go to one of the places that popped up in grocery store parking lots in December, pick out the perfect specimen, and crawl back home with an 8-foot tree strapped to the minivan roof. Every turn on the trip home was exciting, as the tree strained against its twine restraints and the trunk shifted slightly left or right, just barely visible through the rear window if you were looking for it, which of course we kids were.

My husband recently talked me into switching to an artificial tree. A "7.5ft lighted Grand Fir with 400 warm white faceted LED mini-lights", on sale at Target and with excellent reviews online, naturally. It's nice. It fits the space. It doesn't need daily watering, or daily chasing the cats away from the nasty tree water. It doesn't drop needles everywhere. It never has any gaps between the branches, because we can fluff them up however we like. We don't need to saw off the bottom of the trunk to make it level and to let it take up water. There's minimal risk of harassment from cartoon chipmunks stowed away between the branches. Most importantly for my husband, it's pre-lit, which means that he doesn't need to fight with strands of lights, untangling them and stuffing them deep into the tree.

I think I'll always prefer the idea of a real tree, but because my husband does most of the work involved with putting it up and taking it down, I felt that I should back down and let him get us a tree that would be easier for him to deal with (I have a similar policy when it comes to purchasing tools or yard equipment). I'm allergic to Christmas trees, unfortunately. Two years ago when we had a real tree and I decided to do the hard work of jamming light strands into place, I ended up with scratches on my arms from the sticky branches. The scratches quickly puffed up into angry welts and my arms itched for three days despite the Benadryl stupor I placed myself in. I guess you could say we bought an artificial tree for medical reasons.

I miss some things about real trees. One is the annual family outing to select the perfect tree. Doing that as a child, I felt like Charlie Brown or Linus, wandering through the brightly-lit tree lot, looking for just the right tree to bring home. We needed one that wasn't too small or too tall, one that wasn't too skinny or too fat, one that had branches in all the right places and that was pliant and fresh. It was a family quest. Each of us branching out, hunting, bending thin branches to test their flexibility, and shouting to the others when a good candidate was found. It's difficult for me to imagine the annual trek to the garage to drag out the Christmas tree box becoming a treasured tradition for our future children.

More than the hunt, more than anything, I miss the smell of a real tree. All through December, arriving home and opening the front door used to mean walking into Christmas. Even before the decorations or tree were visible, the fir smell would get up into my nose and push familiar buttons, making me feel warm and excited for the holiday. My Christmas spirit, it seems, is tied to my sense of smell more than I realized. Maybe a real fir wreath, placed near the door, will awaken that side of my Christmas spirit again.

The tree is beautiful, though, regardless of its chemical composition. A huge part of its beauty, for me, is our precious collection of Christmas ornaments. We each have our own favorites from our younger days (thanks, Moms, for keeping them for us), and we add to them every year as we move through the world together. Every vacation, every new adventure, beings us a new ornament to tie to those memories so that we can revisit them every year as we decorate the tree. And now that our tree is up, and our dear memories are on display, we've got Christmas in the house. No humbugs for me this year.

The advantage of sensible shoes

This is the first of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here.

Big Ben

We rested for a while in the common room of the hostel while Marketa gingerly applied band-aids to her blisters. We had spent a full day hopping on and off a big red bus that looped past all the guidebook must-sees. Even with a double-decker covering most of the ground for us, hiking around the streets of London in plastic flip-flops was an unhealthy choice.

"Thank God we saw everything today!" Marketa pulled socks over her band-aids. "I need a break!"

I sighed. Maybe she needed a break, but the light was fading outside, the city was starting to twinkle, and I was going to miss it all, stuck in a cheap hostel with a bunch of loud Germans in bright pants.

Dave noticed my distress and spoke up.

"My feet are okay. Was there other stuff you wanted to see?"

I hesitated. I caught Marketa's eye and she waved me off with her hand.

"Go, I'm fine. I have tea and there's a TV."

"Are you sure?" I felt guilty leaving her behind, even if I craved some time alone with Dave. She had agreed to let him join us on our European adventure, even though I'd just met him two months before the trip, and I didn't want to make her regret the decision.

"Yeah, look, there's a soccer game on. My feet are dead. Don't let me stop you from going back out, if you have the energy."

I shot a grateful smile to Marketa, then a delighted smile to Dave. We studied our map and planned a bus route, then stepped back outside in our sensible walking shoes, ready to see London at night.

We found ourselves by the Houses of Parliament as Big Ben was chiming the hour from the top of the clock tower. Lights made the tower glow like warm gold, and across the Thames the London Eye was a brilliant silvery ring. I reached for Dave's hand. As he laced his fingers through mine, I pulled my hand back. He looked up at me, concerned. 

"We got it wrong." I told him. "Try again."

"Wrong? Holding hands? How can you get that wrong?"

"Your thumb needs to be the one on top or it feels all weird." I reached over again and wove my fingers in differently. I nodded, satisfied. "See, now your thumb rests on mine and it's much better. You get to be the dominant thumb. Not that I'm saying you're in charge in general, though. Just the thumb." I grinned.

"Riiiiight."

We walked for a while, but I don't remember where we went. We talked a whole lot, but I don't remember what we talked about. I know we ended up resting at Trafalgar square, sitting on a stone step beside the regal lions at the base of Nelson's Column. I leaned on Dave and we stared out at the city lights, enjoying the view and our moment together. 

Soon, the teenagers making out below us on the steps attracted the attention of a couple of police officers, and we decided to move on.

"What do you want to see next?" Dave offered his hand to help me up.

"I'd love to see the bridge. Do you think it's too far to walk?"

He smiled. "Nah, we can make it."

December blog project

I've spent a month talking myself into and out of attempting a blog project.

My writing class has been helpful, to a degree, but it's becoming clearer to me that what I really need right now is practice. I can write, sometimes quite well, but I don't do it often enough to feel like I'm a writer, which is where I want to be. Nobody can be a musician if they only play their instrument for three hours a week, and it's silly of me to think that writing is any different.

But I procrastinate. I find other things to do. Not because I don't enjoy writing. I love it. But I have so much self-doubt that I'm afraid to put anything out there. Recipes and home improvement posts are one thing, but the "real" stuff is harder. 

You see, I want to write a book. A real book, on paper. And Kindle, I suppose. I have vague ideas about what I want it to be, and I have some stories I need to build on. But I have no idea how to take my ideas and stories and make them into something people will enjoy reading. I need to find my voice. I need to learn to edit. I need a plan.

I got the idea, last month, to take some of these stories, as elemental as they are in their current form, and get them out of my head and into words. And I could build the stories around my beautiful Christmas ornaments, and make it an advent calendar of stories for the readers of my blog. 

The problem with this is it's already December, and I only have one story written. I can spit out a story a day for the month, but I know that without more time to play with them and edit them, they won't necessarily be very good. If they're not good, I don't want to subject my readers to them. You see my quandary? If I can't do it well, I don't want to do it. But I should do it.

So I will do it.

The stories might be rough around the edges. Some may be written more like a memoir, some more "novel"-ish, and some might just be the bones. I seem to have multiple writing voices, which I need to learn to melt into one clear voice. That's really hard. But I'll do my very best to get one story, as polished as I can manage it, out each day through Christmas. Keep in mind that these are mostly meant to be components in larger stories - they're rough drafts. Bear with me, and maybe, hopefully, enjoy.

Christmas Decorations

I can't believe December is knocking at the front door so soon. It just doesn't get cold enough here in November for it to feel like Santa's reindeer are out training for their big run. I'll admit, though, that it is easier to put up strings of lights when you don't need to be fumbling with thick mittens, so I do appreciate the milder climate.

I was outside last weekend, putting up the lights and giant ornaments on the front porch. It looks almost the same as last year's design, except that I put the white lights on the shrub and the colored lights up on the eaves. I stick to that general arrangement because it's the simplest way to decorate the front of the house without putting in support hooks around the window or door, or running extension cords to light up other trees. Maybe I'll do that eventually, but this is easy and pretty.

I searched in vain for last year's wreath to put up on the middle hook. It refused to be found, so I went to Michaels for some supplies and made myself a new one. It's not bad, but not quite fancy enough. I tried putting some ribbon on it and wasn't happy with it. The result looked like a quick craft project from Michaels, and I was hoping to achieve more of an illusion of actual value. We're going for simplicity this year, folks.

Of course, it's not Christmas without the return of Christmas Duck! I lost the little scarf he wore last year (possibly eloped with the wreath), but I think this new floral arrangement works well.

This year's addition to the lineup (besides the new wreath) is Mr. Moosletoe. First of all, it is a moose. Wearing a garland of holly and bells. This, in itself, is fantastic. But, even more impressively, it is a pun. Therefore, it could not be left at the store. Mr. Moosletoe had to come home with me.

All right, December.

Bring it.

Cheer Bear

Cheer Bear isn’t the pretty pink she used to be. Her fur is flat and smells of old closets. Her seams are strained, and her stuffing is lumpy. The rainbow embroidered on her tummy is worn after many years’ worth of nights spent hugged to my chest as I told her stories.

1983

She came into my life on my third birthday. It was 1983, and Care Bears had just been introduced. My parents selected soft pink Cheer Bear for me, and my siblings received their own carefully-chosen Care Bears in the next few years. My sister’s Wish Bear was a pale minty green, and he wore a bright shooting star that could be wished on again and again. My brother was the youngest, and so waited the longest for Funshine Bear and the smiling yellow sun on his plush tummy. We eventually got more Care Bears as gifts from family and from Santa Claus, but those were the first three, the ones who spent the nights with us in the small bedroom we all shared before we moved to the big house in Saint-Lambert.

For years, I dragged Cheer Bear with me almost everywhere. She enjoyed Easter ham at Grandmaman’s and giggling sleepovers with my friends. I only ever left her at home when my family went on vacation. My wise decision not to bring her to Niagara Falls spared me much heartache. As it was, I spent half of my trip home moping in the back seat of the minivan, upset that my cruel and unfeeling parents wouldn’t turn around to retrieve Racky Raccoon, whom I’d left under a hotel bed. Had it been Cheer Bear under that bed, I’d have been inconsolable. I missed Racky, of course, but I would have mourned Cheer Bear as only a seven-year-old can.

Over the years, the paint slowly wore off of her bright eyes, burdening her with sad teddy bear cataracts. Her nose faded too, but Mom touched it up with nail polish now and then. Once a bright strawberry pink, the little plastic heart is now glossy with two coats of Revlon’s “Fuchsia Fever”. Her little arms are stubbier than they used to be, because being constantly swung by the arm isn’t healthy for a teddy bear. Both arms needed to be stitched back into place more than once when they dangled from their seams.

As I got older, so did Cheer Bear – she faded, lost her softness. I stopped bringing her to sleepovers, stopped telling her about my day. But she remained in my life. She stayed by my side as my parents divorced and I moved from home to home, apartment to apartment, getting used to new bedrooms and new nighttime noises. She followed me to Maryland, securely packed in a bag of my winter clothes, and found herself carried to bed by her arm and hugged every night as I adjusted to living on my own. She’s in my closet now, nestled on a shelf above my sock bin, where I see her every day. Some nights, when the world scares me and I’m three years old again, I take her down and hug her to my chest, so she can remind me that it’ll be okay.

2012

Can't call it the Green Room any more

We've been referring to the wood-paneled room downstairs as the "Green Room" since we moved in, deciding to name it for its astroturf-like carpet instead of the woodsy charm of its pine walls. It's mostly a storage room for now, because it's got a whole wall of built-in shelves for books and DVDs, a deep cabinet for musical equipment, and a closet suitable for Christmas decorations. You can see that it's also home to stuff we haven't found other homes for yet. Dismembered computers, mainly, waiting for the day my husband will need a cable or a fan to repair another machine.

"Green Room" before the project

When we updated the floors in the house, we decided to leave this room alone, because the carpet was in decent shape despite being so old, and we weren't using the room very much. Unfortunately, after we got a few quotes and started the process, Mojo started to pee in the corner of the room. At first I was able to get the smell out, but he kept going back, and it became unbearable. We plan on replacing the carpet with vinyl tile sooner or later, but I couldn't stand coming home to an unfriendly whiff of cat pee every day (worse if the heater was on, because he was peeing by the radiators). I took matters into my own hands and pulled the carpet out.

I started by pulling the corner free of the tack strips underneath, which was easier than I expected. I folded it over and used a box cutter and something called a "flooring knife" to cut off small, manageable sections. It didn't take me long to figure out that cutting it from the underside was much easier than trying to drag the box cutter through the fluffy carpet side. The main difficulty with that was the need to fold over a large enough area of carpet to work on, and the backing was a thick plastic netting with very little flexibility. The geometry got tricky at times, and I had to kneel and work at funny angles to avoid cutting myself. This is what the floor looked like underneath:

First corner gone

Thin orange padding, disintegrating into dust, and some ugly tiles that are possibly made of asbestos. I had no serious concerns about working on the carpet demolition, because asbestos is only a problem when it's kicked up into the air as dust. A handful of tiles were cracked, but as long as I wasn't cutting through the tiles with a saw, or beating them into smithereens with a hammer, my lungs were safe. This was not a dangerous venture, according to the Internet and the two flooring guys we spoke to.

I did wear gloves and a mask, though, because the carpet was nasty. Between the cat pee and the pounds of powders I'd dumped onto it to mask the smell, this was a seriously offensive project. The area of carpet closest to the radiator was very badly stained. As I worked across the room, I found several old, dried up stains, which makes me think the previous owners also had pets who enjoyed peeing on carpets.

Almost done

I filled a total of six large trash bags with carpet and padding, and I was delighted that the trash collectors actually picked them up. I was afraid they might be over the weight limit and we'd have to drag them to the dump. Under all that carpet and padding, I found a mysterious substance - sand. Lots and lots of sand. Part of it is just plain dirt, part of it is disintegrating padding and carpet backing, and part of it is the remains of powder-based carpet cleaners that make their way through all the layers and don't get vacuumed back up. A few minutes with the Shop-Vac took care of most of it, and when I take a mop to the floor later this week, I'll get the rest.

The tack strips along the edges were nailed down incredibly well, and I wasn't quite strong enough to get them up. I had to ask the man of the house, he of greater upper body strength, to take over. There were two rows of strips, and he pulled them up using a hammer and small pry-bar. There are some missing pieces of tile at the edges of the room, and the nails from the tack strips left some holes, but I think that the vinyl tile will be able to go right over all that without any trouble.

So, here's what we're left with as we wait to get flooring installation estimates from a few other companies. It doesn't look any better than what we started with, but the house is rid of its stink, and I am delighted. I'll take ugly tile over stinky carpet any day.

"Green Room" after full carpet removal

Apple Pie

I'm sure there are more complicated ways to make an apple pie. I've seen recipes involving nuts and cranberries, vanilla and allspice, and delicate lattice crusts. I'm sure those are very nice, but I like to keep it much more simple.

The apples: there have been physical altercations over the types of apples that are "supposed" to be used in an apple pie. There are very aggressive Granny Smith and Golden Delicious contingents. Northern Spy is often praised as a pie apple, but I've never seen one in the flesh, so I've never tasted one. One of these days I will have to spend a day making a dozen apple pies with different apple varieties so I can see what all the fuss is about. As for my pies, I've always used McIntosh apples when I can find them, and Spartan or Empire as a backup plan. The internet will tell you that McIntosh apples get too mushy when cooked, but it's not like you get an applesauce pie at the end. I don't like my apple pie to have a crunch - the filling should be pretty soft.

The crust: I have tried making my own pie crust, and I find that the effort put into the process isn't worth it when the quality of pre-made refrigerated crusts has gotten so much better. Homemade is better, but not better enough for my pie needs. I used the store-brand stuff, because it's really close to the right texture.

The spices: Cinnamon and sugar. The end. I use about 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 tsp  ground cinnamon for a pie, but the measurements are flexible. I scoop out some sugar into a bowl, sprinkle cinnamon over it, and mix it up. It's ready for the pie.

The pie: I lay out my bottom crust in the pie plate, then I peel my apples and put them, whole, in a pot of water with a dash of lemon juice to keep them from browning as I go. Once they're all peeled, I dry them off one at a time and cut them into big wedges, tossing them into the waiting pie plate. Once I get a full layer, I sprinkle a mix of sugar and cinnamon over it using a big spoon. I aim for near-full coverage, and it's okay if some of the sugar falls through the gaps and gets to the bottom. I keep adding apples and sugar until I have a nice big mountain of apples.

Notice how big I keep the apple pieces? If I cut them much smaller than that, then they may get too soft once they're cooked. That is probably because I insist upon using the wrong apples for pie.

The top crust goes on to cover the apple sugar mountain, and holes are poked to let steam out. I covered the edges of the crust with foil to keep them from getting too dark, and only realized at the end that I should have tried that with the top part, too. I got a brown pie. 

I also may have left it in a tiny bit too long, so the filling got a little closer to applesauce than I like, but it was tasty anyway. 

Yes, that is a dirty plate. That's because it was my second helping and I was so eager to eat my first piece that I didn't bother finding my camera.

HOORAY FOR PIE!!