SCHMIDT HAPPENS

A New Year, A New Vision.

2009-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of years, I have been orienting my year around a theme. A couple of years ago it was my Donkey Yote (not to be confused with Don Quixote) HeHaW (Health & Harmonic Wealth) tour with me and my ass in search of the answer to life, the universe and everything (in honour of turning 42).

And this year, my theme has been Truth or Dare: 2009 Edition - Game On! It's been a ton of fun thinking about my week ahead and choosing - Truth or Dare? More often than not this year, I have chosen Dare, if only because that is what I used to do in my tween days of playing Truth or Dare.

Admittedly, my dares have not been large. I didn't end up taking up pole dancing or the circus arts or really risking boldly. Sometimes just daring myself to stay in the game or mingle with others, or go yet one more intrepid mile each week felt audacious enough.

But I did take a couple of risks. Holy Hub and I renewed our wedding vows in Hawaii, in celebration of 25 years together. And I travelled back home to Alberta road-trip style, something I was not wont to do. While there, I went to see a renowned forensic psychic - in order to get at the hidden truth behind my niece's suicide this spring. And on the way home, I dared go zipline'ing with the kids and do a 10 am scary roller coaster after a big breakfast. Terrifying and stomach-lurching experiences, both - but fun, nonetheless. And I dared myself to step up and write a business plan for a wilderness education company - an industry sector I previously knew next to nothing about. I did this in exchange for sending my 13-year old son on their Coming of Age rite of passage expedition for boys next summer.

Choosing truth, on the other hand, has meant telling myself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about things I'd quite frankly rather not. It's meant being honest in my beingness instead of living the myriad little lies that can tend to add up to big ones if I'm not careful.

Sometimes those truths have meant saying no, giving up on things and bringing myself back to a place of integrity. At other times, it's meant being willing to really stand alone with myself in front of a bathroom mirror behind a locked door, and allow myself to ask my silent question and nod my head in affirmation or shake my head in disagreement. I have tried, above all this year to channel to the good bard in living the mantra - This above all, to thine own self be true.

And it hasn't always been easy. I had occasion to stumble, once again, upon a poem a month or so ago. I read it with new eyes and this time, it really resonated with me. Perhaps because I am not always so especially good at living at that most authentically honest level where things are raw and real.

"We live a lie when we misrepresent the reality of our experience or the truth of our being. I am living a lie when I pretend a love I do not feel; when I pretend an indifference I do not feel; when I present myself as more than I am; when I say I am angry, and the truth is I am afraid; when I pretend to be helpless, and the truth is I am manipulative; when I deny or conceal my excitement about life; when I affect a blindness that denies my awareness; when I affect a knowledge I do not possess; when I laugh when I need to cry; when I spend unnecessary time with people I dislike; when I present myself as the embodiment of values I do not feel or hold; when I am kind to everyone except thos I profess to love; when I fake beliefs to win acceptance; when I fake modesty; when I fake arrogance; when I allow my silence to imply agreement with convinctions I do not share." Nathaniel Branden

Packed into this mumbo-jumbo of words is some powerful truth of what it means to be human and at times, arguably, inhuman. I suspect it didn't resonate with me the first two times I took those words in, perhaps because I chose NOT to take the words in and hear many of them as my truth.

So it's been an interesting year, to say the least. I approached 2009 thinking Dares would be where it was at, when in fact, Truth is what has really seemed to define it.

And I'm OK with that. On my painted and decorated garden stake, which served as my anchor and office talisman for my theme this year, I had decoupaged a number of quotes about the notions of both Truth and Dare. One, in particular, stands out to me now.

"The Truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."

It makes me chuckle but also smile at a deep and cheerful level, because the truth of my being HAS really pissed me off. And to borrow from one of the year's most redundant quotes, it is what it is...

Which leads me to next year's theme. I have decided I need to back up and really sit with my beingness and embrace the present, all the while, planning for the future. So I've come up with Plan Be! as my 2010 theme. It is a reminder for me to stay grounded in the present whilst remaining methodical in strategic planning mode.

The Be also allows the word nerd in me to bring all those other juicy Be words into the realm. You know....like begin and become and bequeath and bestow and believe and behoove and beacon and beauty and beckon and bedazzle and befriend and behold and bejewel and belay and better and bestseller and bevvy and bewitch.

And as would befit the Plan part of the Be, I've decided to attach some further BEatitudinal theming to the months, in order to assign some kind of virtuous purpose and character building to my year. As such, my months translate to Begin, Believe, Beyond, Belong, Befriend, Beauty, Beacon, Benevolent, Beatnik, Bestseller, Beget and Bestow.

It is, in essence, a year of being and doing bundled into one rhetorical package. To be or not to be - that will remain the question. Perhaps at the end I will discover, as the ancient philosophers did, that "to be is to do". I may well discover instead that, in fact, it's reversed and that "to do is to be."

And my 2010 theme song? You guessed it: Let it Be. :) It speaks words of wisdom.

Blessed be. Shalom. Amen.

This is the Dawning of the Age of Expensius

2009-12-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

I am now officially the mother of a teenager. I seriously never thought parenthood out this far, which is entirely a good thing, of course, because anyone who plots the teen years prior to conception is 98% unlikely to want to have procreative sex. That's my own random freakonomic statistic but inherent within this grossly excessive percentage is no small measure of validity, I suspect.

It's why we don't give birth to teenagers right out of the garden gate. They'd begin mumbling and bitching about the uncomfortable journey and the myriad other indignities. Like how the air was cold and the light was so bright upon birth. And that they were left naked for so long. And how the doctor pinched and spanked them. And then how everyone wanted to touch their head and hold their pinky and count their toes and check out their private bits. Ewwwwhhh. And then how they got this boob shoved in their mouth.

I was the quintessential poster child for teenage attitude. I well remember the days when I would walk on the other side of the street from my mother on the way home from a movie, lest anyone dared think we were together. And I recall the incoherent, mumble language, which I would utter if and when I felt like it but not necessarily correlative to when I was asked a question. And of course, I remember how out of touch and stoneage my parents were about everything. Their sole raison d'etre on the planet was to embarrass me.

And this acute cellular memory is why I take great pains to ensure I pay the embarrassment forward. Truth be told, I consider it to be part of the parental reward system. Fear of embarrassment is the best behavior modification I know. It's amazing how quickly a facial expression can turn from bland to horrified, just at the mere mention of threatening to chaperone the school dance and do disco moves on the edge of the dance floor. That's nothing, however, compared to the humiliating scenarios I scheme in hopes of one day pulling a Hi-Jinks Nick TV parental prank. That is my loftiest goal as mother.

It's amazing how fast 13 years can morph by though, when you're otherwise preoccupied. I look at baby pictures and I can't even piece together the genetic links between the little boy I used to bath in the kitchen sink and the hulking, gangly, 5 ft. 11 inch teenager, who alternates between being a sloth (sleeping in, farming on Facebook and Wii games are his sloth activities of choice); being a narcissist (he likes to admire his handsome mug in the bathroom mirror); and being a food thief (the constant raids of the fridge and pantry have begun).

I don't dare complain - he's smart, multi-talented, wise beyond his years, exceptionally good with younger kids, polite to adults other than those he lives with, an Order of the Arrow, an Eagle Scout candidate, and he earns straight As in school. Priceless, right?

Well yeah, I suppose, as long as I don't add up the tangibles that come with his winsome personality. Like the cello that needs to be purchased this year (minimum cost for a student-grade cello - $2000), or the braces he's getting this week ($5000), or the annual cell phone and clothing budget ($1500) or the host of other expenses (school travel, summer camps, sports registration, etc.). Not to mention the upcoming biggies. Like the car (which is the only image accessory I refuse to purchase, let it be noted for the record). And university tuition. He has his sights aimed high - as in Ivy League heights. Don't dare ask him what he plans to study at said Ivy League schools though. That will only elicit a glare, a mumble and a healthy dose of that teenage indignation, unless, of course, you happen to be a stranger, in which case you will be treated to a politely-audible if somewhat vague response.

I try to look at the bright side of it all. I consider that I'm learning a new language and that it's my turn to be out of touch and stoneage.

I guess that makes me officially grown up now, more's the pity. But it still won't stop me from disco dancing on the fringe. It's a tough job being a shameless mother, but someone's gotta do it.

1,000 Places to See Before I Die

2009-10-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

I've been armchair travelling around the world this year, courtesy of my Page-A-Day calendar. I feel blessed to report that I have been to a good third of the locales listed on these pages - Lake Constance and Lake Como, the Bugaboos, Agra, Cape Breton, Milford Sound, Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Fiji, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, etc., etc. It's really quite affirming to realize that perhaps I have been a place or two on this planet.

Yet, as with knowledge, world travel has a way of hitting you over the head with its sheer enormity. The more I've travelled, the more I realize how little I've travelled. I've been to One Tree Hill of U2 fame, but I've never seen the trees of Yellowstone.

Today's calendar image is Halong Bay, Vietnam.  In a word? Stunning. I want to go there now.   Have you ever had a visceral reaction to a destination image thereby inspiring you to travel there? Movies can do that to people but sometimes a simple little calendar image can, too.  I got tired of being awed and amazed by travel brochure images of the Bugaboos, which happened to be in my own backyard. So I made Holy Hub drive 90 minutes down a dirt road and off the beaten path in order to see these mountain spires in person. I think it was worth the trip - he still grumbles about the heat, the dust, the detour.

Too many places, not enough time. But I'm determined to get out there in this world and experience a few of these majestic places for myself. Sometime, somehow, someway.

What's on my hit list? Mostly mountains. I monumentally love, love, love mountains. We've seen a range or two or ten in our lifetime - the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Southern Alps of New Zealand - and we now lived flanked by the Olympics to the West and the Cascades to the East. I'm convinced mountains will factor into the images that flash across my mind in those penultimate moments of life - Valley of the 10 Peaks, Mt. Rainier, The Matterhorn, Mt. Pilatus, The Three Sisters, Nanga Parbat - all these mountains take up a huge amount of space in my heart. But there remain, seriously, so many more I must, must see, trek, touch and bow to in reverence in an up close and personal kinda way.

Patagonia, the Dolomites, the Pyrenees, Bhutan, the Drakensberg in South Africa, the Pamirs, the Armenian Highlands (home to Mountain Ararat and Noah's lost Ark), and yes, even a few ranges considerably more local like the Tetons, are all on my must see, do list.

Which leads me to my next category - National Parks. I've been enjoying catching bits and pieces of Ken Burns' PBS documentary - "The National Parks: America's Best Idea"  - he's so right, they are. I was inspired by the adventurous escapades of Edward and Margaret Gehrke, who made it a point in the 20s and 30s to travel to all of America's National Parks.  While I don't feel inspired to see all of the 400 or so parks in the system, I would like to at least see Yosemite, Yellowstone, the main section of the Grand Canyon, and pretty much every single National Park in Utah.

My next category is Islands. We've vaycayed on more than a dozen gorgeous and memorable islands in the South Pacific, Caribbean Sea and Indian Ocean, but there are some elusive islands I still must paddle to ~ like Easter Island, the Galapagos, the Marquesas in French Polynesia, the Greek Isles, Aruba, Malta, the Andaman Islands, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Tasmania, Madagascar, Iceland and the Hebrides, if only because the latter sounds exotic. Reading books like The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife by Janna Cawrse Esarey struck a wanderlust chord within me to want to set sail for the high and low seas in search of sun, sand and ocean spray.

I haven't even touched on Mystical and Whoo-whoo Places. We've been to some sacred sites and ancient ruins, but we have yet to see the biggies like Egypt and Stonehenge or the Camino de Santiago or Machu Picchu or even the birthplace of Bono.

There are oodles of other categories that I haven't mentioned - coastlines and scenic road trips and historical cities - but the aforementioned are what really float my travelling boat.

How can you tell the bug has bitten me again?

Testing Testing

2009-09-18T11:20:00.001-07:00

If I knew a way to tote my custom domain to Word Press, I'd be so outta here because my Blogger problems have been huge these past few months.

Let's see if this posts, shall we?

Hauntings...

2009-07-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

My Blog is haunted. Well actually, I have a different choice word in mind for it but haunted will suffice.

It's been screwing up my settings, not permitting changes (and yes, I clicked "Save Changes"). It's a control and power thing. Technology likes to mess with me like that - seemingly assuming an intellectual superiority.

Anyhoo, our life and times - Blogger-notes version - is that we got Remannied in May on Oahu. I say remannied because that's what our wedding banner said - my husband's name, a popular German one, resembles the first in a two-word Latin descriptor for a particular natural form of birth control - you know the one - initials are CI. In any event, his name is shortened to C--t, which shares phonetic harmony with it's popular German counterpart K--t. Well, for our wedding, his sister, now-estranged - saw fit to fashion lovely car ornaments and head table banners with a stylized font (this was back in they day of dot-matrix printers).

So the R's became N's and our banner read as C-NT & (HOLY) - JUST MANNIED....I'll let you play Vanna. Why didn't we snip the R's? Because to do so would be to mess with the very precarious fabric that fuses the small Schmidt clan as one. Even the pastor was more than a little scandalized that day. And 21 years later, as I made the whirlwind rounds of long-lost but found family this summer, the tale still prevails. "Remember your wedding banner?" titillated family folk would ask, with a giggle and a hand to their pursed lips. (As if we could forget).

But I digress. We were re-mannied once more in early-May. It was a lovely sunset beach affair on the near-deserted Ke Iki Beach, officiated by Rev. Jofrey Rabanal and witnessed by our less than attentive kids, who were just a tad preoccupied with making faces in the video camera and kicking sand at each other than to show any sign of reverence towards the sacrality of the moment. Because let's face it, neither of us were entirely sure we wanted to marry each other again. Kidding aside, we wrote our own vows - this time Mr. Expletive wrote his own and it was stellar - he even promised to obey me this time around (a joking reference to the fact that I argued and lost my war of words with our Lutheran Pastor the first time around concerning having to promise to "obey".

So this ceremony was less the failed performative utterance that the first was (Obey?! - as if!, I mean, Yes, of course I will (not)) and more in keeping with where we were at 21 years ago last August. Our original nuptial vision was to have a small intimate watercraft affair and then escape to a tropical locale for a wondrous honeymoon. So this felt like redemption and might I add, as though I had finally come of age, maritally speaking.

We had a lovely time in Hawaii although unbeknownst to us until the tail end of the trip, tragedy had befallen our family. We learned (by an impersonal e-mail from above-noted estranged sister), that Holy Hub's 17-year old niece (from whom we were also estranged for reasons owing to her still living with her mother) had committed suicide at the hospital.

We performed a bittersweet vigil upon the volcanic rocks of the beach for her on the penultimate eve of our departure under the watchful glow of the most specactular sunset of the week, mere steps from where we enjoyed our vow renewal ceremony days earlier. And then a few days later, we flew back home for the funeral - which was quite possibly the most profane event I have ever attended (toilet humour in a eulogy that is supposed to celebrate the life and brief times of a cooped-up, medicated-from-birth girl is not all that amusing). The only saving moments were the lovely commemorating eulogies of her grandparents, your's truly/Holy Hub, and our brave offspring - who took the time to write and deliver their own heartfelt memories and poems of tribute to their cousin at the podium that day - but those were fleeting and did little to save the day.

We returned this summer to spend time with her grandparents who are still reeling with grief, as well as to visit her gravesite, see the hospital ward she was staying in, and visit with other friends and family.

We, the family, will remain forever haunted by her death. She was only a year away from freedom. She hinted as much on her various blogs, which discovered in hindsight, revealed much about her inner turmoil and unhappiness. We very much looked forward to resuming and beginning anew a relationship with her once she was out of the house. It was not to be.

So there you have it - the fine line between joys and sorrows, regrets and resolve.

I visited with a psychic who does a lot of forensic work, and was able to glean some interesting information about the circumstance(s) of her death. The jury is still out on what all this means or is a foreshadowing for, but in the meantime, the cogs of the wheel in the family, long dormant, have begun to gain momentum again, and that does not bode well.

PS (if you're inclined to leave a comment, do so here - my blog is still haunted.

The Summer Day

2009-06-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Drowning Fish

2009-05-29T08:48:00.001-07:00

Long time no blog.

To be honest, I don't even know where to begin. I feel ranted and raved out and yet, in counterpoint, I also feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of ranting. It just gets bottled and corked and like all good things left to ferment, it turns sour and distasteful.

Do I blog about my disillusionment with the media? No, it's not worth it. I'm being increasingly more selective about the media since the elections and I haven't been inclined to want to plug back in since, mistrustful as I am of the intentions and agendas of most major media outlets. Pick a story and that will be the case. I'm not interested in the prevailing story, angle, slant and skew. I want to hear the untold story and hear from the voices who aren't as loud, popular and boisterous. And I want to hear the real story.

In the spirit of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's The Invitation, I want to know what people ache for, if they dare dream of meeting their heart's longing, or would willing risk looking like a fool for love, for their dream, for the adventure of being alive. And if they have touched the centre of their own sorrow or have been opened by life's betrayal and can sit with pain, their's or mine, and can be with joy, mine and their own, and can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill them to the tips of their fingers.

Like Oriah, I don't care if the story they tell me is true - I, too, want to know if others can disappoint another to be true to themselves. Rather than being curious about what people do for a living or where they live or how much money they make, I am infinitely more interested in knowing if people can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. And like Oriah, I want to know what sustains people from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if people can be alone with themselves fand if they truly like the company you they keep in the empty moments.

I don't care if they stand on the side of conservative or liberal, black or white, privileged or oppressed, male or female, single or married, young or old ~ I care only that they dared live and speak their truth such that all those preceding labels become like so much useless armour.

I'm reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning right now. It's a clever book. She uses the most omniscient of narrative techniques by positing a dead, quirky narrator, Bibi, as the intrepid guide who takes the reader back in time along the Burmese Trail with an unsuspecting group of journalists, artists and travelers.

She prefaces the book with a delightful quote:

"A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price, With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."

Anonymous

I like travel tales. All life is a grand fish tale and the steps that define a journey. As such, all life, with its strifes and perils and plights and metaphoric peaks and valleys, can be aptly depicted within such narrative frames.

What does all this babbling have to do with the price of fish in Myanmar? Simply this: I'm hungry for fresh stories and a new mythology and the truth between the fines lines of the lies we tell ourselves in order to play safe and save face.

But above all, I'm especially hungry for a station stop - I've lost sight of where this train is going and as lovely as the landscape remains, I'm getting more than a little bored with the scenery. My own Burmese Trail adventure beckons.

The Late Great Planet Earth

2009-04-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth (1806)

March Madness

2009-03-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

Milestones
This is my 100th blog post. I’ve been thinking it begged a more extravagant form of performative utterance than this casual mention but it doesn’t. Onward, upwards and all that.

The same holds true for my writing or lack thereof. In my attempt to find new footing and get some traction again, I’ve been over-thinking what major thing I should write about. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and so I guess I shall reorient myself from there – that single step.

I get singular steps confused with big steps. They are not at all the same thing. One is measured qualitatively and the other quantifiably. I suppose if I want to justify my lapse of time, I can, indeed, measure numerically the million little things I’ve done of late.

I don’t know that the fruits of my labor (and loins for that matter) add up to anything of substance and tangibility now. All my vested interests feel that way – bound up in uncertain, future dividends. But process is like that – it can’t be measured with any real precision. To quote T.S. Eliot ~ “what we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning.” As winter fades and spring fast approaches, I feel that’s where I’m at; a place of resurrection, rebirth and new beginning.

On that note, I’ve begun the next stage in The Artist’s Way series ~ Walking in This World, wherein Julia Cameron, the author, introduces weekly walks to the “tool box” of spiritual-creative outlets along with morning journaling and a weekly artist date. The first chapter in this new book, no surprise, is about discovering a sense of origin.

Fresh start, clean slate, beginner mind – what a great place from which to embark on a creative and metaphoric spiritual journey.

Mindfulness
In this relative state of minding my own business, I’ve been contemplating the mind. I just read My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of where her brain was at in the days, weeks, months, years following her stroke. I’m also reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and all this brain food has been giving me fodder for thought on the issue of creativity vis-à-vis right and left brain thinking.

Along with this, I’m learning to see negative spaces. Perhaps I should say re-learning. I suspect I was born with that vision but have since forgotten it. Holy Son has a grey and white screened t-shirt that features a woman’s face on it. I didn’t notice the face for weeks. Now that’s all I see. I hope to keep it that way.

It’s starting to work though. Now that I’m beginning to notice negative space, I see a different view outside my office window – the leaves and trees are arranged in such a way as to create a kind of Greco-Roman statuesque face of Picasso proportions. I need to sketch it before a big windstorm comes up and blows the leaves off my face.

Yes, it’s true. I have Picasso on the brain. I headed up Holy Daughter’s classroom art auction project this winter and this is the final result (the background matte was woven by a creative helpmate - one of the other moms who was also juggling a staggering three other classroom auction projects of her own).

It sold last night at the auction for $1050. Unbelievable. And here I was, hoping it might sell for $75.00. Holy Daughter’s creations are second down from the top left and the center image.

Mypopia
Speaking of vision, distant objects have seemed quite blurry to me lately. It’s been a crazy, busy time of late. We’ve been juggling all the usual suspects of after-school arts and scouting round-around madness with the kids, as well as a host of medical appointments, family visits and attraction tours.

I can’t believe spring is almost here – this has been the winter that just won’t end. When it snowed again this past week for like the millionth time here in the past few months, Holy Daughter noted that it must be Mother Nature trying to get rid Herself of the last bit of cold and flakey stuff to make room for spring. There might be something to that.

All I know is I’m ready for spring. Holy Son is off to Washington, DC for a school trip next weekend. He’s most excited about staying at a Great Wolf Lodge during the trip. Holy Hub is trying to keep a low yet high profile at Boeing – a precarious, betwixt and between place if ever there was one. I’m still encouraged that, amidst all their layoffs, engineering jobs aren’t yet being touched. Fingers crossed. And summer is around the corner, for which I have nothing beyond Holy Son’s scout camp in Oregon etched on the calendar to show for it. Holy Daughter is flirting with going to circus camp this summer and I’m flirting with letting her. There are a couple of options in town – an actual circus arts school, as well as a cirque institute. We’ll see how that goes.

Mourning
Sudden death loomed large on the horizon last week ~ first, with news of Natasha Richardson’s unexpected passing, and next with the shocking news that a friend’s husband had suffered a fatal heart attack on Thursday. He was only 45. She does not stray far from my thoughts from moment to moment.

Musical
The kids finish up this afternoon with their Snow White play, which has been playing at Bellevue Youth Theatre to mostly sold-out crowds. Holy Son had a small singing solo in it – he played the role of The Raven and did a good job of mimicking and a great job with his singing Holy Daughter played the Huntsman’s daughter and also gave stellar performances. I look forward to having our after-school time and dinner hour back to normal again.

And to finding time to write again.

Green Green Grass of Home

2009-02-01T12:26:00.001-08:00

Shake 'n Quake
Rumblings were felt in the Puget Sound on Friday, no doubt a result of the 7-day stretch of cataclysmic and most-depressing headlines which The Seattle Times has been serving up this past week. All this doom and gloom had the very ground beneath our feet quaking in its boots to the tune of a 4.5 seismic shift. I woke up right about that time but it was to the loud if hollow drip sound of our ensuite bathroom tap.

OK, so I'm anthropomorphising things a bit - but for those of us interested in chaos and integral theories, I don't think it's all that outrageous to presume that all this collective ummm, shall we say, funky energy could take its toll. As above, so below and all that good, cause and effect stuff.

If nature was to imitate us humans in dramatic fashion, I can think of no better method than to posit a foundational crack in the ground. Real estate woes are finally real around the Puget Sound, albeit far less than elsewhere in the country. Our bubble doth done burst and oh woe are the dot-com and other gajillionnaires - investments have tanked everywhere and swindlers have made off with their hard and hardly-earned dough, proving once again that money really is the root of much evil.

And still, the layoff tales continue. Those once dead job fairs will now be packed to the hilt with executives looking to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. It's ugly but there are bright spots. I still contend that sometimes opportunity flies in the face of adversity and than some former corporate lifers may find their true calling from these ordeals.

Green Angel
Speaking of ordeals, some of you may recall that we've been waiting a year for word of our green card status (it was supposed to be a done deal last March). We had almost given up even as we have been apprehensive about next month's Boeing layoffs and how that might affect Holy Hub's job.

But we received notification on Thursday that we've been approved and green cards should be in hand within 3 weeks. Or rather, the entire Holy family has been approved except me - I confessed to my Mom that it had something to do with all that anti-Bush and political rant blogging I've been doing these past few years and she said, "I thought so!!" I then admitted that I was only joking and that it was actually something to do with my fingerprints - I have to re-do my biometrics at no cost to me...(like several thousands of dollars, not to mention several hundreds of dollars of advance-parole (out-of-country travel permits) renewal wasn't an additional cost incurred because of their slow-boat to China productivity, but don't get me started). I will be delighted to go back in and dip my foreign finiger digits in ink in order to get our green cards.

So what does this mean? In a word, everything. It means Holy Hub could get on permanent with Boeing if he so chose. It means he can look for other contract work and not be tied to a trade Nafta visa that permits him employment with only the one employer. It means I can work without having my work permit tied to our annually-renewing visa. It means we're still aliens, but we're legal aliens now...thanks Sting - I now have your mantra singing in my head. It means we won't expire for 10 years, we can come and go as we please, and while we still can't vote and could still get the old DHS black leather boot toe to the butt if we "abuse our status" - (whatever that means), but it mostly means.......

We can have a red, white and green party late February/early March! That's right, it will be happy hour at the Schmidt house with red and white wine and green beer.

I feel very blessed and appreciative, if I can rip a page from this blog to gush gratitudinally to the immigration gods for just a moment. Having to potentially move out of the country in 4 short weeks (if the horrific should happen) was not my idea of fun....especially having just bought a house at the height of the market, having just remortgaged to the tune of a full 2% interest rate drop, and having a kid enrolled in one of the top, albeit lottery, schools in the nation, which has literally hundreds of kids on a waitlist waiting for him to pull out. 'Twould not have been a good time to jump ship.

And I can't lie. I'd like to be both witness and change agent in this momentous, rebuilding time in US history. I'm glad it came through in the week following Obama's inauguration (even though I know it was rubber-stamped in the last days of Bush empire). But mostly I'm just happy, happy, joy, joy, glad. Our relief is palpable.

Bachelorette #1
Holy Hub and the kids were all away this weekend - Holy Hub and Holy Daughter on a Brownie overnight excursion and Holy Son at a Scout camp outing - and so I had 28 hours to myself yesterday/today.

I had all kinds of plans for this magical time. I was going to go on a girlie getaway or maybe take some artsy fartsy classes. Or I was going to go see a chick flick or maybe take myself out on a romantic solitary date. I was going to crank tunes and disco dance with my Swiffer Jet mop turned microphone to this and this, without having to hear anyone yell at me to turn it down, tune out and get with the new millennium. I was also going to get six million manuscript pages written and finish all kinds of incomplete projects and just generally be a lean, mean productive machine.

In the end, I pondered all of the above and chose none. I didn't even eat dinner. I just putzed from one thing to another - revelling in the space of having untold number of possibilities yet having the freedom to ultimately choose none.

I did manage to sneak in the time and headspace to read Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind and felt re-energized that I am that scary, random kind of thinker (I'm an ENFP) who will potentially adapt and thrive in this new conceptual age that he insists has dawned. He hints that MFAs will replace MBAs - this has me secretly scoping out local MFA programs - shhh, don't tell Holy Hub that - it could be grounds for divorce.

But more to the point, I think it's exciting to be raising resilient and outside-the-norm-thinking box children in this new age. I sense a creative renaissance emerging - I spoke of this in the previous blog post - such that they will be the amongst the first generation of Cultural Creative offspring who set about lighting the world on fire in a meaningful and engaging way.

How cool is that?

Anyhoo, here's hoping you have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious SuperBowl Sunday! Go Cardinals!

New Beginnings

2009-01-25T11:52:00.000-08:00

How will history weigh in on 2009, I wonder?

Will it be said that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times? Who knows. I do know this week has seemed to reflect a bit of that dichotomous sentiment.We went from a bittersweet MLKJ day - which proved to be the penultimate celebration and honour for an historic inauguration the next day, to THE day itself Tuesday, where we the people got to participate vicariously in the crowning of a new King, to resumption of doom and gloom headlines later on in the week - more corporate layoffs, more financial messes and quasi-confirmation of our darkest suspicions - that the Bush admin had been spying on members of the press corp and for that matter, on all Americans.

JOB SLOBS
I know of two people laid off this week - Microsoft and L3 Communications. Truth be told, our precarious future hangs in the balance next month, with the advent of 2,400 Boeing contractor layoffs expected. While Holy Hub holds the vision that he might be one of the "lucky" ones not to be axed, on account of his impressive work ethic, aircraft expertise and dare I brag, impressive value he offers to his department, he also knows that when it comes sacrificial lambs in the slaughterhouse world of corporate excess and mismanagement, altruism and pragmaticism don't always win out. Things like union demands and small p-politics and image do, which is all a bunch of do-do, but there you have it.If there was method to the madness, I would get it. I've heard talk that some of these corporate layoffs are nothing more than a legitimate guise for corporations to clean house of deadweight.

In the case of Boeing, I could only wish. It angers me when I hear about employees who didn't bother to go into work for much of the latter part of December, when there was a skiff or two of snow on the ground. These same fraidy-cats would think nothing of playing hooky and taking off to the mountains to go skiing. Or when I hear about employees who rape the company listlessof every conceivable benefit, from sick days to doctor's appointments to mental health days, because it's their so-called God-given right. And let us not overlook the employees who surf the net all day. These are the very employees, the real deadweight, who will be above the law and overlooked come D-day next month. Meanwhile, the contractors, the ones brought in from allover the place to lend their talents and big P produce are the ones who will be ousted.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul in times of famine (which I argue wouldn't be quite so famine had it not been for the greed of the machinist's union last fall, but don't get me started). It's not even a win/win for the company. Because then they end up having to shuffle employees from group to group, thereby incurring increased training costs, and decreased productivity for a great long while. And then when sunnier days come again, these same employees jump ship back to whenst they came, leaving these departments and divisions high and dry, once again, and screaming for contractors who heard the cry wolf one too many times and might now say to Boeing, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

But woulda coulda shoulda. Let it be. Corporate America will not get fixed on the wings of my whining. When push comes to shove, all life is trade-off. We traded safety and security a handful of years ago for this magic carpet ride called the contract world.All we can do is hold the vision. And update our resumes. I finally got my resume updated and I have to confess, I don't feel nearly so reluctant to send it out now. Sucks that my timing is a bit off. On the one hand, while I'm adament on choosing not to participate in this recession when it comes to job hunting - I'm also slightly amused that I picked a fine time to finally pound pavement in these parts. Oh well, it will only make the job-getting more sweet - knowing I had so much more competition.
Today's Career/Workplace section of the paper advocates a bit of workerbee brow-nosing. Not the annoying kind but the fine-line kind, wherein you document your successes, make your boss look good, hunker down uncomplainingly and work like mad.

Which is kind of sad. There are so many talented workers, who prefer nothing more than to stay below the radar, quietly going about their work whilst letting the bafoons and blowhards sing their own so-called praises. And likewise, there are so many hard workers in this country who exemplify hard work ethics and could teach the rest of us a thing or two about the guts and glory of contributing to a team and living the foundational values this country was built upon.

GOBAMA
Speaking of which, I want to weigh in on the inauguration. I confess I got teary-eyed when they announced Obama was officially President whilst still sitting in his folding chair staring off into oblivion in those handful of minutes leading up to taking his botched oath (I so love failed performative utterances, especially an oath of office - let the mistakes be made upfront).Beyond the symbolism and the firsts and foremosts of the day (ie. shift in political ideology from fear to hope, first black President, first true pop-culture, greatest political orator in quite some time) ~ I have this inkling - a dancing in my bones, if you will - that the ushering in of Obamasignals much more than a mere partisan and color spectrum shift.

When I hear of Obama's insistence that the arts have been too long neglected in this nation, and of the grassroots (well OK, Quincy Jones) movement afoot to appoint a Secretary of the Arts) or when I hear Obama speak these words - my heart sings with an excitement that we might well be on the cusp of a new cultural and creative renaissance in this nation, and indeed the world:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may
be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard workand honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of
progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these
truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility —a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties toourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

So while these may be the worst of times that recent history has brought us - economically, geo-politically and spiritually - they are also the best of times. I don't often (yeah, OK, never) steal pages from Celine Dion's songbooks, but I have to say, it does feel like a new day has dawned.

I looked back on a blog post from January 2007, when I offered up a little book review about a most-inspiring book I had just read - The Audacity of Hope - and it brings creative expression full-circle, somehow. In the crafting of that book, Obama new that he was launching the little engine that could dare to dream of one day soon becoming the next President of the United States of America.

AUDACITY
Audacity is exactly what is needed. In said spirit, I have re-framed my 2009 theme that I blogged about earlier, from New Gold Dream to Truth or Dare: 2009 Holy Edition (Game On!).

I'm in the process of creating a number of Truth questions and Dare statements for myself that, in the course of the year, I will draw randomly from my Truth and Dare boxes each Monday morning. If I complete the tasks, I can choose another.

For example, a truth question might ask, "When was the last time you blah blah blah? (insert obscure activity here) Go do such and such this week." Similarly, a Dare card might prompt me to go do something just a little bit risque or out of my comfort zone. I re-rented Groundhog Day yesterday. Remember that movie? I'm reading (skimming) a book entitled Groundhog Day: Transform Your Life Day by Day -and he captures this dual-vision nicely. On the one hand, we have our daily, mundane lives which is so same-old, same-old as to make us vomit just thinking of meniality. And then we have this wishful thinking, what if? spirit inside us, that wants to chuck status quo to the cautionary winds and fly kites instead. My what if? spirit destructively emerges like clockwork once each month, wherein I flirt with taking a wrong turn out of the schoolyard and heading down the highway Thelma & Louise style.

Truth or Dare is a cheap and constructive enough thrill, I suspect, for me to marry my inner closet Thelma (or is it Louise?) with my inner Suburban Sally Sue.

So last night, I dared myself to go to the movies alone. I had never in my life sat in a movie theatre alone. It was a little disconcerting but at the same time, it was also a bit exhilerating. I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was a great movie - I highly recommend it and if, in fact, it wins Oscars, I would not be at all surprised. I now want to read the book, Q&A, which the screenplay was based on.

I'm not sure what I will truth or dare myself next week. My questions and provocations will be further categorized into areas of focus in my life - (ie. career, home, leisure, etc.). Anyhoo, it could make for an interesting year.

Wyeth Officially Famous Now

2009-01-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

Andrew Wyeth died today. He is quite possibly the most brilliant artist this continent has ever seen, in my mind. I stand in awe at his work....he channeled the divine each and every time he placed brush to canvas.

His life and work was not without controversy but that will only make him larger than life in death. Same too might be said of the price of his paintings. Anyone, myself included, who didn't invest in his work prior to his death must be kicking him or herself now because in the spirit of supply and demand and guns and butter, his works will be worth infinitely more now.

Sad that one must die in order to come of age, artistically speaking.

Of Resolutions, Risk and Redux

2009-01-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

On the nineth day of the new year, my true love gave to me, nine non-resolutions.

That's my song and I'm singing it. I hereby don't resolve in grand pontification to:

1) seek meaningful work
2) finish my book
3) shop my picture book manuscript
4) blast through unfinished home projects
5) lose weight
6) exercise more
7) eat heathier
8) live life with more reckless abandon
9) buy the world a home and furnish it with love

You see, I can't remember a January in recent New Years' past, where I haven't resolved in good faith, spirit and proclamatin to do something kick-ass and worthy. But then again, I can't remember a February in the past decade, where I wasn't also proverbially kicking my own ass for having ditched said lofty resolution in favour of newfound sloth and apathy.

I've had a few New Year's successes. Well, OK, maybe only one that I can think of. I quit smoking January 1, 1990. I still consider that to have been a most amazing accomplishment but the secret to my success was that I mentally afffirmed my intention and quit date with each puff, drag and inhale of each and every cigarette for two months leading up to my quit date. So imagine how many meditative inhalings of each cigarette that might work out to be and then multiple that by 25 and then again by about 60 and that equates to quite the bombardment of positive affirmations I was assailing in inner addict with.

This year, as per the one the last, I resolve to resolve daily. To wake up and begin each day anew with manageable bite-size resolutions that are apropos for a 24 hour period. Period.

Anyhoo, stay tuned for more on this next week, once I've done some visioning work (tomorrow) on the year ahead.

Shades of Joe Clark

2008-12-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

It's an Animal Farm north of the border, politically-speaking, and I won't go there with which breeds and species I think the opposition parties have become. If you're totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, read all about it here.

Suffice to say, Canadian PM Stephen Harper has been reduced to a hunk of prime, mooing Alberta beef awaiting mad cow disease slaughter.

I wasn't at all into politics back in 1979 (pot and lit were more my style), when Joe Clark became PM for only a day or two or however brief his minority-rule stint turned out to be before the Liberals ousted him in a non-confidence vote. Perhaps it was months. It seemed like days.

But the parliamentary rumblings feel similar. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Clark entered into the fray in a very tumultuous economic time in Canadian history ~ post-Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his many "PET" projects, not the least of which was the Petro Canada (Pierre Elliott Trudeau Ripping Off Canada), not to mention the National Energy Program - an endeavor which proved, if nothing else, that "east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet."

Morph the decades ahead by two, and here we go again. A young, upstart and rather unassuming PM from Alberta who is way more brilliant a policymaker and leader than others might give him credit for. Sound familiar?

Just replace that old monicker, Joe who? with Harper who? - and exchange the old host of feathered foe of the black, Bloc and bluh (insert French accent here) variety, surrounding and pecking away at the conservative carcass until nothing remains but dried dead meat hardly fit for pemiken, with our new and not so new feathered friends, Dion, Layton and Duceppe, (a name that if you bastardize in a half-arsed attempt at guessing whether 'e' is pronounced as a soft or hard vowel 'e' in huck-too-ey Quebecois francais- minus the accent eh goos and upside down c's and fancy birthday hats and all that-, might easily rhyme with deceit).

So the latest and greatest is that in this coalition attempt to usurp and oust Harper, Harper has had to suspend Parliament.

Didn't emergency measures such as that just happen in Pakistan?! Egads - and Harper's not armed like Musharraf was. Holy hacked-up hockey sticks, Captain Canuck, what's going on up dem dar north of the 49th and east of the 100th meridian, eh?

Now having said all this, while I can't rightly determine where my vote might swing these days ~so far left-leaning am I even though I can't seem to muster up any enthusiasm for the NDP ~ I, nonetheless, still have to confess that any coalition involving the Bloc scares the bejesus and sacriste tabernacle out of me.

It's all a crock of merde (pronounced mare-duh), my apologies in advance for bringing something as lovely as female equine into something so unlovely as the Bloc mix, which is the manure that has lined the political streets for the running of the bulls event the opposition parties have been participating in these past few years.

I seriously don't think the opposition sees him in the light that posterity will prove flattered and prospered Canada in the long run. While I don't think Harper warrants a white cowboy hat and white horse, I do think he has Canada's best interests at heart and soul. And I think he won fair and square - the voters decided. And at the end of the day, that needs to stand for something.

So much for bragging this fall that we Canadians knew how to do elections right - drama and epic just weren't our style. Teehee. I suspect we might be in for a longer haul, if not an overhaul.

But whatever way I look at it, it still feels like 1979/80 redux all over again. Am I alone in thinking this?

November Rain

2008-11-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

Holy Daughter dressed as Snoopy the Red Baron - Halloween night

Holy Daughter dressed as Ugly Betty - Halloween Day

What a busy month. Whew.

I haven't been blogging nor journaling nor writing much - just mostly handling what's in front of me and taking this time to be introspective. The daily grind of listening to economic and mortgage doom & gloom as yet more crumbling pillars of corporate society take their place in the ever-growing soup kitchen line and beg for change, not to mention reading of certain disillusioned voters who are already quick to blame Obama before he's even taken office ~ it's all made me want to tune out of the whole blame game.

My personal favorite though is the Palin lovers, whose continued devotion to her has this stomach bug of mine sticking around longer than normal. It just serves to remind that the only normal is of the snafu variety.

Creation Theory
I've been up to my assets in alligators with studying creativity this fall. The fine art of it as well as my place in it. More on that later. In the midst of all this creative thinking, I wrote a kid's book, which I plan to market here in the near future. Sung to the tune of this little bookie went to market. Wish me luck...and a Newbery Honor.

I've also been pretty busy this fall spearheading my Artist's Way group at church. Our 12-week journey is almost complete and it has gone really well. I gauge this success based on the fact that I have only had 3 drop out - one because she felt too young, and the other two because of work demands. Given the intense, psycho-therapeutic nature of this work, having only 3 drop out is rather amazing. The other nine ladies have proven to be very committed to the journey and we have become a very close-knit group of creative types.

My job, apart from keeping us on task and on time with our verbal sharing and insights, has been to come up with creative exercises during the second half of our sessions, based on whatever the chapter theme happened to be. And so, in the course of the past several weeks, I have schemed various activities ~ ranging from drawing our muses, to making shadow self tarot cards, to playing an art auction game, to making play-doh gifts ~ to this past week's activity for the theme of Self-Protection, which involved creating a recipe for creative living card and asked them to come back with all the necessary ingredients and a way-forward list of instructions for how they can begin to manifest this in their daily lives.

This was my art auction creation, Tutti Fruiti - I decided to buy her back.

Said recipe for creative living is not to be confused with the cutesy, sprinkle in a dash of joy and add a pinch of variety and spice crap that you see in vile, errr virile e-mails. These recipes are more abstract and methodical, and are very much personal statements that resonate with each individual "concerning all acts of initiative" and creativity.

I have a more general instruction list for living that I've created for myself but I've noticed - because I stare at it each day such that I'm reminded when I am or am not living my list - that I haven't been heeding the first rule on my personal instruction list (a.k.a. the holy grail, secret to my universe stuff that got thrown out with my placental matter but has since been reclaimed in the netherlands of interplanetary, most extraordinary lost and found).

My first rule is to breathe.

How many short shallow breaths can a person take before they finally have to stop and, in Cheech and Chong "oh wow, man" fashion, breathe in the big kahuna? It will be nice for time to tick slower this week. I love how Americans have carved out this entire week practically, where life comes to a virtual halt. People are remiss to schedule things on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving, or so I've noticed. And that's fine by me.

Many Happy Returns
Holy Son played in his last soccer game of the season and scored a goal. That was a big deal. He's usually good for one a season, but not always. He mostly plays defense and has yet to really hone his offensive skills. He's almost a foot taller than some of his teammates, so it's a different game watching him run those long strides of his across the field with the ball.

He's gearing up for his jazz band concert tonight ~ last week was orchestra (yes, he's both a jazz spaz and an orch dork). That means we scrap Irish Dance and Scouts and watch him be the bass guitar dude. And he is beginning to look like a dude. Scraggly, shaggy blondish hair that spends most of its time in his eyes. He likes to brush it forward. He thinks the look becomes him. I fantasize about getting the clippers out in the middle of the night and shaving it all off.

He turns 12 this week, and as usual, we have to ownplay-day the age-ay ing-thay in front of all his 13 year old friends. Even though he towers over all of them and runs circles around them socially. Middle schoolers amuse me. I'm at his school every day to pick him up so I get my fair share of seeing them in the action. He's mostly oblivious to all the groupies he has until an adult happens to point it out. Like his former International Studies teacher, who is fond of stopping me in the hallway and pointing out conspiratorially, how my son "always has girls around him. They follow him everywhere!"

But as I say, he's clueless to the attention. He has one particular girl that he likes. I saw her in the school play. She is exactly his "type: - tall, leggy, long blondish hair and is 12 going on 22. He asked her to the upcoming Snowflake dance and she's all excited. She wants them to dress matching - she'll wear a bright fuschia dress and she's hoping he'll wear a matching fuschia tie. I said welcome to the world of girls, buddy. He bought her a snowflake necklace and his all excited to give it to her that night. Age eleven and already a player.

Cheater, Cheater
Holy Daughter has her own drama. She's been hanging with a certain boy in class who is the son of one of the most senior elected officials in this state. They are just friends, of course, but the whole class teases them about their chumminess. He's very smitten with her, on account of her being an animated, fearless and captivating extrovert. And she's extremely amused by him. He confessed to her that he was going to vote for Obama, despite his father being a staunch Republican. And he admitted that he stuffed the ballot box with 11 dirty ballots during their class Halloween contest. She thought that was pretty funny. So did I. If his father only knew.

She had a meltdown last week and decided that she's just way too busy with too many extra-curricular activities. Mwah-ha-ha. My evil plan is working. I've been desperate to dump a couple of these for awhile now. Brownies will likely end this year. I'm not sure we'll carry on but we'll have to see how that goes. It's only once every couple of weeks and is right after school, so that one is no biggie. And soccer season is over now, thankfully. That one was 2-3 times a week, although we never did make both weekly practices. The problem with dropping something like soccer is that it's the only aerobic exercise kids that age get. Gym is only once a week for 1/2 an hour and they usually only end up doing lame games and activities.

Ballet is the big issue. She wants to drop it. She isn't enjoying it, mostly because it's so repetitive and her instructor, the studio owner, is always a no-show. Ballet is the one activity I'd like to see her hang onto for awhile longer. She's agreed to see this through until the Nutcracker performance is over and then in the new year, switch studios to a more challenging class and see how that goes.

But during her meltdown she confessed that she's cool with dropping Irish dance, and that tickles me. Irish dance requires insanely high leaps and kicks, neither of which she's been able to muster to a competitive degree. And competition is where it's at in Irish dancing, unfortunately. Not to mention that it's pricey and we're at that stage of having to invest in soft and hard shoes, both of which can be awfully expensive. So, I'm holding the vision that by the new year, Irish dancing will be a thing of the past in this house.

Pumpkin Eater
Time has flown since Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm so glad we're not doing the turkey and pie thing again. This year for Thanksgiving, we're heading to our church potluck. It's a great way to be in community with our 'fellow Americans' and best of all, have an opportunity to enjoy the fun and feast without having to deal with a huge kitchen mess.

I'm grateful for the time to relax a moment or two. It's been a hectic fall with little time to chill out and breathe. Big fat sigh.

Tributes, Memories & Milestones

2008-11-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

Flowery Tributes

We honoured the 11th hour of this 11th day in this 11th month, as we have like clockwork, these past four years, by singing our national anthem, humming God Save the Queen and paying tearful, televised tribute to our war heroes, alive and dead for the annual and auspicious occasion of the 90th anniversary of Armistice this Remembrance Day 2008.

I don't like having to explain to the children this year what a poppy is and why they should wear it. It's one of the many small sacrifices of identity we make as ex-pats, I suspect. The kids easily spell favorite and think nothing of it. They say zee instead of zed but at least have the good grace to look at my guiltily when they do it. They're forgetting so much about Canada so soon and this makes me want to cry.

Holy Daughter pinned her poppy on her Brownie vest yesterday and she and her troop trekked off to the local Veteran's Hospital to sing songs, present cards and in her case, hand out poppies to the Veterans. It was amazing that some of the veterans recognized the significance of the poppy and were touched. It's not something Americans honour although of course, at Armistice and Remembrance Day celebrations elsewhere around the world, it's universally recognized as the symbol of peace reborn in the killing fields.

I used to have 'In Flanders Fields' committed to memory. Time and complacency have since dusted it from my childhood closets.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

Holy Daughter said she felt this warm glow feeling in her stomach at having visited the Veteran's and personally thanked them for their service to this country. She watched the CBC ceremony on television this morning and wondered aloud at why there was so much French being spoken. And I'll admit - it seemed a bit much today - or so it seemed to this Westerner who has never found the bilingual cloak to be all that comfortable and fitting. But it was great to be able to see Canada's last WWI vet pass the torch via the big screen from the comforts of his living room to the vets and active soldiers alike of the wars that followed, up to and including Afghanistan.

Holy Son is off at an all-day Scout training day this Veteran's Day - he's not wearing his uniform but he does have his poppy pinned upon his scout t-shirt, for what it's worth. I asked him to break for a minute of silence at 11am. He said, "But Mom!" And I just did the raised-eyebrow thing and affected my no-blink, no-compromise stare.

Such is the plight of young foreigners on American soil ~ that they should have to be subjected to their parents weird homeland rituals that bear little meaning and relevance to their own Americanized lives.

Memories
I am only a fraction of the way into my Nanowrimo Rebel project - I got a little derailed by Holy Daughter's art project, soccer, Irish dance performance and Nutcracker rehearsals this past weekend, but I hope to get back in the loop this week.

My book is sectioned off into three parts - I, Don't and Know - the 'I' section is my 14 predominant roles or archetypes in life, the 'Know' part shall be my so-called wisdom text of 14 epiphanies and the 'Don't' section is my negative precept tales ~ it's the one I've been most sluggish about.

Case in point: today I'm going to tackle Pee...as in Don't Pee....which shall be my prosaic witness to a most embarrassing and debilitating time in my teenagehood ~ having LBS (leaky bladder syndrome). Whenever I see a teen girl wear a hoodie wrapped around her waist, I pause to wonder if she too suffers the same ailment I once did. Of course, now there's Depend. :) Not that incontinent teens, with their low-rise jeans and g-string underwear would be prone to wanting to sport a granny diaper. But I was desperate enough back then that I might have considered something, had I known there was an option. It would be a long time before I finally went in for bladder surgery. Proactive medical concern was not a family strong suit. We were nothing if not nuclear reactive.

Milestones
Holy Hub flew home to Deadmonchuk over the weekend and drove his Pa's old pick-up truck back. It was loaded to the rafters with trash and treasure alike and a supply of poppies that will see us through the next few years.

Some of the treasures included a custom-framed Norman Rockwell needlework image Grandma Schmidt had made for Holy Son, Grossmutti's old grandfather clock, ceramic and metalwork candlesticks Holy Hub had made in his distant youth, retro train sets, and a great old Swiss trunk from the 1930s. We have nowhere to put some of this stuff so there it sits in our dining room and entryway, biding its time 'til it might find a more permanent home. Somewhere sometime.

Speaking of some who, what, where, when, why's, I'm preparing to launch my new year vision. Consider this my pre-launch party. My 2009 life vision theme is New Gold Dream: The Siren & the Ecstacy.

It seemed appropriate to pick a Simple Minds tune, first and foremost, because it will take a beginner mind vision of innocence and risk to pull this off. And also because the song and arguably the album, New Gold Dream, speaks to an era - 81,82,83,84 when I experienced one of the most profound archetypal deaths and rebirths. On this, the 25th anniversary of the end of that era, I think it's time to die again, in order that I might be give birth to a new gilded me.

Back in October of 2006, I blogged about this very song in reference to both my once upon a time and someday dreams. Here's the once upon a distant future day dreams I constructed that day:

Someday strutting in a parade with the Red Hot Mamas ~ as an update, I did get to strut in the St. Paddy's Day parade with a bunch of Red Hot Mamas but yes, my parade dream is still largely alive, well and raring to strut her stuff
Writing and self-publishing a children's book - here ye, here ye. I actually wrote a children's book last Thursday -voila! just like that - and am officially going on record here to announce that I am going to be shopping my manuscript to worthy publishers - the golden-tinge to this dream is that I hope to one day earn a Newbery and/or Caldecott honour for said achievements. Or die trying, anyways.
Embarking on a six-month sabbatical as a family to a far-flung place in order to assist with an international aid project ~ this dream is fast approaching a need for speed, on account of Holy Daughter being in 3rd and Holy Son being in 7th grade. Time ticks, carpe diem and all that jazz.
Finally learning to draw and paint ~ I've been flirting more and more with both of these but my inner chicken is Foghorn Leghorn in size and formidabishnish.
Visiting as many key mystical and ancient civilization sites as time, money and energy will permit in this lifetime - I've been to a few but not nearly as many as I would like. Machu Picchu still beckons.
Becoming a dragon boat racer ~ this one always ends up on next year's resolution list. Sad but true.
Learning to breathe and meditate ~ a did a teeny, tiny bit of meditation this year but I still haven't jumped in with both feet, save vicariously, when I sent Holy Daughter away to a Vipassana retreat this past summer.
Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with Holy Hub one day ~ this would be very cool. Holy Son and Hub made a pact the other night that they were going to crack open a 38 year old bottle of Canadian Club whiskey on a Mt. Rainier outing on or near 2014. I should maybe see if we change this up to be a family pass-the-cup affair in the wilds of Africa. Not that packing a flash of whiskey all the way to Africa would be easy but who said life was easy?!
Owning a vacation cottage or cabin in the mountains ~ still haven't made good on this, my most ardent dream. Shame on me. 'Nuff said.
Writing my memoir ~ this is finally in the works!

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It's funny as in remarkable that this top 10 list still vibes with me. Dragon boat racing could easily substitute for some other physical challenge or pursuit - a marathon or long pilgrimage hike could easily suffice, too. But apart from that - this remains my bucket list.

I'm pleased to verify that I've begun to act on some of these dreams, while keeping others in the forefront of my consciousness during these tricky, recessionary times.

Let it be known for the record though: 2009 is the year I guide, stride and high-tide them.

So on that note, I'll re-quote here the sage words I noted for posterity in my October '06 blog post.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the blowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in the your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain

The Killers Are Coming!

2008-11-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

Oh happy happy day on so many level, beginning with the post-election high hopes and ending with 107.7 The End's Deck the Hall Ball bash which I totally forgot about... now that I have satellite radio and never listen to regular radio anymore. Sigh.

So it turns out The Killers are coming and I didn't even know it. Talk about a sheltered life. So I'm taking Holy Son as a belated 12th b-day present - he doesn't know it yet - and Shiny Toy Guns and Death Cab for Cutie will be playing, as well.

Can't wait. It'll be the 25th anniversary year of when I used to hang out at concerts like this...I know what you're thinking...that was back when you were young, Holy. Yup. Still am. I'll have the concert tee to prove it, too!

In other Schmidt happenings, we have a new office desk suite. It took a year of shopping for me to find the color I was happy with to match the dark mahogany stain of our office futon arms. In the meantime, we were using Holy Hub's small kiddie desk from when he was 7. Kinda small and the drawers had this funky 60s smell - you know, the kinda odor that old furniture likes to give off. And it was just getting, well, old.

Craziness. The new stuff is not a perfect match nor is it swanky by any stretch - the furniture is a tad darker but it'll have to do. Best thing about this furniture is not the quality - it's mdf or some other such high quality pressboard - it's that it's made for small home offices and it's no-tool building. Everything snaps together. Kinda nifty. Not that Holy Hub thought so. Putting office furniture together and untangling computer cords was not on his priority list on election night, which comes two nights before he flies back to Edmonton on his whirlwind Keep on Trucking weekend (he's bringing his Dad's pick-up back across the border). But thankfully, it was a tool free and painless experience and he's a light packer.

Anyhoo, onwards, upwards. We've successfully torn down Halloween. I still have to get pictures posted. The power switch on our stand-alone computer decided to call it quits just as we were moving it around a bit. So it'll be awhile before I get pics posted. Holy Daughter looked priceless as Snoopy the Red Baron. I heart eBay...we picked up three great Snoopy masks in October online. I'm thinking of getting into ditching some stuff on Craigslist and eBay in the next few months.

In other news, we're all banding together in the house to support Holy Son on his Mr. Schmidt Goes to Washington project, which will be his option week trip next spring. He's very excited and I kind of am, too, because I now have 5 months of one-word command behavior modification. It works wonders. All I have to do is raise my right eyebrow - which is more dramatic now that I've had them waxed a tad thinner - and then I affect a poker-face stare and mention, "Washington..." and he bucks right up. It's beautiful.

We've asked that he try to raise $700 on his own through babysitting, chores, odd jobs around the neighborhood, money in lieu of birthday and Xmas gifts, etc. And he needs to earn his American Heritage, Citizenship of the Nation and Family Life merit badges for Boy Scouts as part of going to DC, as well. He's very excited. Who can blame him? The trip looks like a gas. We've discovered there aren't too many 12 years old who would take a trip to the other side of the nation without their parents. Luckily for him and us, Holy Son is already an intrepid traveler from these recent summers trekking off to boy scout camp without us.

And we're gearing up for Nutcracker season soon. Holy Daughter has a big part as a Snow Princess and Holy Son may be enjoying his last stint as the nephew, Nutcracker and prince. It's been a great run for him. He's grown out of three boots these past 3 years and is now working on size 10.5. I've threatened to stop feeding him now that he's 5 ft. 5 and a half, but so far, I'm not having a lot of luck with that.

Last but not least, my weekly Artist's Way group has morphed into a rather tight-knit creative circle. We're a great mix of newbie and seasoned artists. It's been a fair amount of work coming up with creative in-class assignments, but also a lot of fun. Last week we shared our creative collages. I did not create a new one from spring but I'm happy to see that my Obama image has since manifested into more than just a dream. As has my Art Club image. That's the cool thing about making creative dream posters. If you build it - the images, that is; they really can and do come true.

Anyhoo, I'm hard at work amassing a collection of 50,000 written words this month so on that note, I must make like Snoopy and type away.

Nanowrimo

2008-11-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

I decided to get with the program this year and hop on the Nanowrimo bus. It's one part impulsive, three parts scary, two parts liberating and four parts fun. Or something like that. Actually being given public permission to write without regard to editing - that is such a foreign concept for me. I edit while writing. That's my problem - the whole enchilada of writer's block right there in that insidious e-word.

I'm 1/5th of the way there already - I've been writing to beat the banshee the last couple of days. Is it a shitty first draft? You betcha. But in the interest of quantity not quality and an attitude born of altitude, I'm setting my sights high and not blinking until I get there.

Wish me godspeed and a daily flash of insight!

Spooktacular Events

2008-10-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

I think it was Holy Hub, who is ever the pragmatic and dare I add a reluctant if late blooming partyer ~ and his third muttering that we would have been better off to book a pool party, order a pizza there and call it a day rather than continue on with this spooktacular howler set for Holy Daughter's 9th birthday party tonight ~ that clued me in.

I would like to be one of those Moms that sets out cake and ice cream, has a civilized gift opening, and succumbs to the wild excess of a pin the tail on the donkey game for good measure, but I'm beginning to realize, that probably ain't gonna happen on my watch.

And I'm OK with that. Not everyone in this house is, but I will go to my grave defending that excess and Halloween actually share the same etymological root derivative.

Speaking of graves and roots and nonesuch, the party today is a graveyard one. Holy Daughter wanted to go a bit goth and creepy this year. So we put out strict orders that no one was to come dressed as a cute puppy, pretty princess or kitschy cartoon character. We switched the dining and family room furniture around - thankfully there wasn't much in the family room to begin with, and have set this room, which shares space with the kitchen, up as a haunted dining room with some Frankenstein costume-clad tall candlestick holders looking on. And I'm happy to report that once lights get turned off and candles lit, the room will be quite creepy and most kooky, mysterious and spooky, maybe even altogether ooky, just like the Schmidty family.

My little Vampiress wants to watch one of the scarier episodes of Goosebumps with her 8 friends in the dark downstairs and then after dinner, we're going to send the bravest of ghouls out to the backyard, where we'll have a Boneyard Cemetery set up, to collect bones for prizes.

All of which has entailed hours of planning and set-up for a 3-hour tour. A 3-hour tour.

I know. I totally get it. But I think it's about taking a stance upon familiar soil. Do I want to stand for lame parties and even lamer treat bags? Never in good conscience could I do so and be able to look myself in the hair eyeball of the morning mirror again. Nor could I stand way over there, at that blowout party extraganza place, which even now in my mind's eye, resembles more of a tailgate bash than the annual celebration of a child's birth. My kids have been to parties like that. Where every child in the Western Hemisphere was invited and where stacks of presents were presented and left unopened.

We've never permitted more than 8 or 9 friends and even that seems excessive, especially given the fact that both kids only have one or two friends they truly count as their closest companions.

So yeah, I kinda get my place in the mix - I like to think I stand on that middle ground soil. But after another equally anal PTA Mom and I planned Holy Daughter's year-end class carnival picnic last year and people were oohing and ahhing over all the little details that this other Mom and I thought nothing of (truth be told, we thought a lot of it was kinda lame given our limited time and budget), I realized that maybe I am a breed apart when it comes to event details. Color coordinating and decor and little chutzkahs have always mattered to me. Even back in the days when we were planning our first annual Christmas open house I can recall getting hung up on matching napkins to plates. It's a genetic flaw, I'm sure - I now know I come by it honestly - my birth family are party throwers extraordinaire. And I know that some of it has come from being so often thrust into the role of event planner in my career this past decade.

But I also get that life is long on fear, droll duty and disaster - especially of late - and rather short on fun. I'm channelling a little of that medieval carpe diem spirit which I know rhymes with evil, but it doesn't take a degree from a Freudian college to figure out that fun, feast, and frivolity are perfectly natural human responses to doom, gloom, and tomb.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much and perhaps that's true. But it's my soapbox so I get to hog the mic and defend, on behalf of anal home birthday party planners everywhere, our right to party plan.

A month ago, as all 5 of you faithful readers out there will recall, I went off on what I like to think of as a bit of a midlife coming of age rite. It felt, looked and acted a whole lot like a native naming ceremony might - I figuratively went out to the wilderness to figure out my role in this large tribe called earth and then owing to my already near-elder stature, I named myself. We worked a lot with figuring out our stances and lesser known but equally impactful defining moments in life, as a way to get clear on what we stood for and showed up as important to us. Early on in this process, it became clear to me that commemorating rites of passage was important to me. Everything from the sacred - milestone birthdays and events - to the profane - hitting my wild thing musical button everytime I accomplished some menial task - has meaning for me.

And so it is that I got tested not even a month later. And that's cool. I can't lie and say I don't feel uncomfortable with being mocked and held at gunpoint at trial for my excessive ways. That's not fun. But it's who I am and I finally own that now. I'm the one that gets the red carpet rolled out at party stores. They see me coming and their response is positively Pavlovian. So be it. It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it.

Same, same with Holy Hub. He takes a stand for quality barbecuing. It's a source of great pride for him as a Weber grill owner. He seldom buys anything but the best cuts of beef or most succulent breeds of salmon. He's also a Webernation member, which is an elite secret society of grill snobs who make it their business to evangelize grill owners of inferior brands as to the Truth of barbecue salvation. No word of a lie - he even has the marketing materials - buttons, stickers, brochures - to prove it.

So we all have our thing, our quirks, our ideosyncracies. For my sister-in-law, it's compulsively folding plastic bags into little triangles whereas for me, it's the tiny details on a party table.

To each their own, this above all, to thine own self be true, and all that crap.

On that note, I have a party that needs tiny details on the table. Pictures at 11.

Canada Votes

2008-10-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

I have my priorities wrong, apparently. I hopped over to CBC.ca to check out the winning anthem for Hockey Night in Canada and inadvertently clicked on the Canada Votes tab.

The Hockey Night in Canada theme song is THE voting concern in the nation, is it not? Apparently there's this other little matter of a federal election happening on Tuesday. PM Stephen Harper is worried - plagued as he's been this past while by Afghanistan expenditure disclosures, plagiarism issues and the usual dissent in the east ~ so who knows how that will all go. And let's face it - it's always a crap shoot. Canada's disproportionate election process is equally as snafu as the American electoral college. The election is almost always decided before polls have even closed in the west.

Anyways, of the real vote - Hockey Night in Canada - I'm tickled that my shortlisted favourite won. This will be his claim to fame - or in hockey language, he shoots, he scores!

Have a listen.

OCTaves

2008-10-09T08:21:00.001-07:00

It's been one of those weeks. The best of times, the worst of times. Not getting much done but not beating myself up too terribly about it either.

It's already Thursday as the crow flies - speaking of which, I had a crow almost fly right into my windshield this morning heading the wrong way. Aren't I supposed to be chasing him? Very ominous. I'm watching my back.

We had a crow fly right into an open window of our living room back in 1988. That was creepy because it wasn't like it was all that easy to just all of a sudden be flying along the north end of Halifax harbour like that and then suddenly, end up as a crash-landed wingnut on our floor. He must have already been nose diving. I remember wondering at the time if it was some kind of foreboding sign about our upcoming nuptials later that summer. I made sure no pictures were accidentally or even purposely knocked over and soon forgot about it.

I like when Monarch butterflies appear on my shoulder, for they signal rebirth, change and metamorphosis. But crows are just all around bad news. There's an old dittie about crows that goes like this - one is for bad news, two is for mirth, three is a wedding, four for a birth, five is for riches, six is a thief, seven a journey, eight is for grief, nine is a secret, ten is for sorrow, eleven is love, and twelve is joy on the morrow.

I saw one but I'll keep my eyes out for more - I'll take mirth or weddings any day over bad news.

And then just a few minutes ago, I heard the distinct sound of someone's voice ring out to me from upstairs. I'm home alone but I wondered if perhaps I might have left the garage and house doors open such that a neighbor was poking her head in. I went upstairs but the doors were locked and there was no one there. OK, very creepy.

I heard the song Psycho Killer on the radio earlier this morning. Which reminds me, I'm completely digging this heated leather seat and satellite retro radio thing in my mornings now. It so makes the commute to the old neighborhood almost worth it. But anyhoo, welcome to my brain. It's a pinball machine at times. So I heard this song and I thought to myself, yes, that's kinda like my anthem lately. Psycho Killer.

You know that fine line between genius and insanity? As Oscar Levant quipped, I think I've erased it. I vacillate between wanting to kill something and create something each and every day lately. I'm never quite sure which way the pendulum will swing.

Seriously though, I do have this kind of Frankensteinian energy but nowhere to direct it. I've been like the madwoman in the attic, feverishly concocting creativity modules for our weekly Artist's Way class. It's been very enlightening. I can't wait for our week on Abundance. I'm going to resurrect that old game, Masterpiece - do you remember that game? Even though I knew nothing of art history, I loved that game. Except I always ended up with forgeries, which really sucked wind.

I'm going to have the participants create a work of art of their choosing the week prior to class, and then unbeknownst to them, I'm going to auction the works off to the highest bidder in the group - whoever is feeling the most generous with her Monopoly money. Everyone will assign their own arbitrary value on the back of their artwork prior to class and then we'll debrief after the game and deconstruct the process. What was liberating and conversely, what felt uncomfortable? Did we bid on our own work? Why or why not?

I think there will be some interesting stuff come up around the issues of worth and self-worth, vis-a-vis our creations. I already know what I'm making. I'm going to nab this glass head from Pier 1 Imports, tart the face up a bit, maybe glue some earrings and hair on and maybe affix a brain inside and I dunno - we'll see.
But anyways, I am a walking, talking creativity bibliography lately. In fact, if you're looking for a book on creativity and you live in my area, don't bother checking the local library: I have them all. Who knew there were so many books on the topic? Who knew? I have another blog, Quinndskmo, where one fine day I hope to get around to posting the myriad creativity and writing bibliographies I've been amassing.

October is always a bit of a creative and festive month in the Schmidthaus. Canadian Thanksgiving is sneaking up way too early this month - we've invited our neighbors over for a feast Sunday afternoon. They lost their middle-aged son just this past spring so it's been a tough year for them. He died of a sudden heart attack. They were very close - he would come over for dinner like clockwork once a week. The kids really like them - Holy Daughter is forever running treats over to their dog and visiting and just generally annoying them with her presence.

And then we head into birthday party planning for Holy Daughter. She wants to have a spooky Halloween party - no princesses and cute fairies - it's all ghosts, goblins and ghouls. As it turns out, she's mostly inviting boys. We'll set up a cemetery in the backyard (perfect solution for our dirt pit of a yard) and send the kids on a bone hunt. And we'll do an indoor scavenger hunt. One year, I vow not to go overboard. But not this year.

And then there's Halloween itself. Holy Son wants to fly below the radar this year - 7th grade now, so he's cool, right? I may see if I can talk him into doing Mr. Candyman again - make it an annual tradition - except this time, we'll get him a bona fide, stylin' suit. He unloaded about 10 lbs. of candy off his suit jacket last year...and met most of the girls in his school as a result.

But Holy Daughter is going for the gusty - she has to top last year's costume, when she dressed as a potted flower. This year, she wants to dress as Snoopy, the Red Baron. We have the aviator gear and scarf but we need to figure out the Snoopy head. Go big or stay home - that's my Halloween motto. Case in point, check out my camel costume - my best Halloween costume ever - courtesy of my Birth Mom and Grandma Ring Around the Rosie. I totally had it going on that year. Holy Hub dressed as an Arab sheik (pre-9/11 when you could still be politically incorrect), and other friends of ours dressed as a harem girl and an Indian swami. Suffice to say, we garnered a lot of attention.

Can't wait 'til I'm old enough to start going out for Halloween again. I miss the Halloween hooplah.

Wassup & Other Nonsuch

2008-10-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

We've been knocking back OJ, frying bacon, cooking eggs and griddlin' waffles in honor of the OJ sentencing - 13 years to the day he was acquitted for the murder of Nicole.

Talk about karmic payback. I still can't see a white SUV and not think of him.

Anyhoo, that was SO breakfast. Lunch this weekend was an overdose of church meetings sandwiched between soccer games and Nutcracker rehearsals. I'm now teaching in Holy Son's middle school class, where we romp through world religions at nanosecond speed. Owing to the auspicious occasion of the Jewish high holy days right now, we're on Judaism.

And dinner is of the hamburger variety - school bbq Friday night, and then the kids and I had a burger last night at A&W - I love Teen burgers but A&W has not been available in Washington State until just recently, I presume. This particular A&W is situated in a precarious area near the Sam's Club - some weirdo walked into the A and dub and he started cussing and yelling up a storm - Holy Hub noted to the kids that that's what happens when you do drugs. Umm, yup, pretty much. We saw quite a few homeless men wandering the streets with their shopping carts as well.

We were there, as I noted, to check out the Sam's Club. I was so curious about Sam's Club, I made everyone stop what they were doing yesterday afternoon so we could go check it out. I had no idea it was Costco. Why didn't someone tell me that? Jeesh. So of course, owing to its look and act and smell like Costco-ness, we spent way too much money on stuff we probably don't need.

But it was the post-dinner kick-back that was most energizing. Hockey season is back - which means the snow should be flying soon somewhere - let it not be here! - and CBC Sports was busy hyping the new Hockey Night in Canada anthem.

They're down to 5 finalists - we listened to them all - not bad, the lot of them - but there was one clear winner in my mind. Have a listen and see if you can guess my pick.

Don't you hate those games ~ Guess what I'm thinking, come on, you know you want to? Like you care. Or maybe you do. Or maybe you don't. Some do, some don't, some will, some won't, I might. Vote for my pick, that is.

To Be or Not To Be

2008-09-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I was away on a spiritual retreat this month. It was only a few miles from my home but quite honestly, it felt as though I was a world apart in terms of where my headspace was at.

The retreat center was located on the water overlooking a particularly lovely setting in the Puget Sound. Our vista was the westward, Olympic Mountains view and the weather was hot with crisp blue skies each day.

The nature of the retreat was about getting some clarity around who I am, what makes me tick and then, celebrating that essence, that spirit. Sounds hokey, right? I thought so, too. My initial thought was, "Yeah great, but so what? I don't care about my Being-ness....I care about knowing my Doing-ness."

But what I realized, in retrospect (and it took me five days to 'get' this) - was that cutting to the doing-ness part is a little like putting the cart before the horse. I needed to get at the animal of my Spirit. And incidentally, as I think about that - the animal of my spirit - the animal that comes to mind for me is raven. But that's neither here nor there.

I can't lie and say the retreat was all fun and games. We were a group of 17 in communitas away from our larger communities, and as is the case with throwing any 17 people together into a relatively controlled environment, we were all vastly different in our worldviews, demeanors and energies. And yet what connected us was Love, arguably the only true Real thing that exists. And therein lies the magic and beauty of connection.

The retreat was also about finally stepping into my own shoes. Think Cinderella and the glass slipper minus the fairy prince and imagined fantasy life thereafter. I can't tell you how massively powerful that ownership and affirmation of Beingness is. All I can say is wow. It's huge, huge, priceless stuff. Finally daring to look deep enough to examine who I am, how I show up in the world, what I value most, and what my role in the larger tribe of life is. It was hard, freakin' work, let me tell you and for awhile I doubted if I had dug deep enough.

But finally, finally, self-acknowledgement came. It came to me late on the last night of the program. It spoke to me in code, actually. I went to bed that final evening with an incredibly sore and constricted throat. And it wasn't until I was able to process this in retrospect the next day, that I finally got it. The essence of who I am, since time immemorial, is about voice.

Prior to that, I had spent much of the weekend focused on what I perceived others might think of or define me to be. Was I too this or that? Was I maybe not enough that or the other thing? It was driving me crazy - most especially when coupled with my rejection filter. And more importantly, it was inhibiting me from doing the real excavation work. Once I stopped doing that and acknowledged and fully embodied that it is none of my business what others think of me, then and only then did I finally get to the real work. I got alone with me and I got real.

Who I am is Inukshuk Speaks, which is esoteric-speak for a wealth of things. I chose to be visual and spiritually totemic in identifying my essence because well duh....I'm a visual and spiritual kinda gal.

An Inukshuk, for the non-Canadians in the audience, is an Inuit stone figure, akin to a mountain cairn, that looks eerily human in shape. It is a sacred show and teller, of sorts. It serves to mark and commemorate the site of key tribal events and it also acts as a silent navigator, guide and way-shower for those lost upon the roads less travelled in Canada's netherland Arctic.

It's no accident I should choose this. I've always been hugely attracted to all things northern and Eskimo. My maiden name is Quinn and my favourite song growing up was The Mighty Quinn (when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy). I used to sing it whenever we played Eskimo on the playground as kids (what else was there to do on a minus forty day in northern Alberta, I ask of you?). One of the things I miss most about living in Alberta is being able to see and be dazzled by the Northern Lights.

But the affinity doesn't stop there. I am, if nothing else, the voice of truth and justice in the dark, the epitome of the road less travelled, and I am the commemorator in my family of all things sacred and profane. Being a guide or navigator is what I've always done in life ~ it has just taken many forms, is all.

I was one of two college class valedictorians honoured with being able to commemorate our time by cracking a joke or two. I have always worked in tourism ~ doing destination tour guiding, hotel show 'n tell site inspections and business consulting on next-step kinds of directions. My business name - how's this for a little northern altitude/attitude syncronicity? - is Summitup. And my current role, a la this particular era of my life, is as Speed Demon Driver and Satellite Radio Controller of the Honda Pilot, as well as Chief Cheerleader and Guidance Counsellor to the small Schmidts.

Anyways, I share this long diabribe - not because it's profound but because it's affirming. I have been running from affirmation all my life. Affirmations scare the living hell out of me, I guess because there's so much power in affirmation and because I've heard through the grapevine that they work. It's like being the ventriloquist's puppet who after a long time lying crumpled and lifeless on the shelf, comes to life when the breath of the great Animator breathes sound through the pipes. Scary stuff. Amazing schmidt happens (my nose no longer grows and I stop punishing myself and running off with the burlesque crowd), when I finally speak my truth and claim Who I am.

I finally owned a week or two back that I am here to Speak and give voice to my essence as Still navigator and way-shower.

After trying on so many odd pairs of shoes, I finally found the One(s) that fit and I feel like I've finally found that missing piece of me that got lost with my placental matter at birth.My wise-sage daughter, who is all of 8, asked me when I got back Sunday night ~ after having lived on much laughter, many tears, and very little sleep during the course of five days that felt more like a year and the journey of a thousand miles ~ "what was it like, Mommy?"

And I said, "Well...it was a little like being thrown into an old-fashioned wringer-style washing machine and then chucked into a dryer on gentle cycle with a bunch of warm, fuzzy towels." I'm not sure she got it and that's OK. I did. Finally!

Which brings me to my final thought. This spring, during a similar but more profoundly cathartic retreat, I wrote these words to myself: "I live happily ever after on a moment-by-moment basis, and die erect like the trees to the same ~ death will kill me standing up."

Those words meant several things to me - that happiness lies in the Now, that all life is rebirth, and that my actions will pen my epitaph. But now, in light of my new self-vision, I can honestly attest that "death will kill me standing up" has renewed meaning and vitality for me.

I now see the ground upon which I stand ~ where I have lived and upon where I shall die. It is where I have always stood. My legs no longer feel shakey when I stand there.

I now understand the notion of be-longing. It's that primordial place I've longed to Be. It's my solid ground and my stake in the world and I am eternally grateful that I got to do this soul-search before I died, instead of croaking and then getting called in for death detention into the office of The Maker, who would have sternly asked me, "It's a little late now, Missy, but do you have any idea or inkling of Who you were supposed to Be?" and then having to mumble in shame, "no friggin' clue, oh Hallowed Universe ~ please, do tell!"

The End but to be continued...as always.

Stuff in My Head

2008-09-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

Time Keeps on Slipping
As August fades into September, I’m always reminded of the wheel of time and the return of annual rites which seem to slip away in summer’s grasp but return in vengeance each autumn. Rites of passage such as the kids’ re-traipsing back to school following Labor Day ~ another year older, wiser and readier to risk and take hold of their stake in the world.

Holy Daughter is more excited than ever – despite the fact that we’re in the midst of a teacher’s strike that has postponed the start of school until God knows when. She’s excited because her school is brand-new.

And I look forward to returning, strike dependent, to my own fall rites – cocooning into creative projects like writing and volunteering and Christmas prep and new this fall – facilitating The Artist’s Way class at my Church, as well as hopefully finding the courage to splash colour on the walls of this old house.

With this seasonal return comes the eternal return to community, or in our case, overlapping communities. Soccer, ballet, Irish Dance, Scouts, Brownies, seminars, church committee all beg their place in the weekly schedule this fall, as do the inevitable Nutcracker rehearsals for both kids (Holy Daughter was cast as a Snowflake in Act I – a beautiful dance for a beautiful girl; and Holy Son, despite having grown another couple of inches, is once again playing the roles of the nephew, Nutcracker King and the Nutcracker Prince – handsome roles for a handsome boy).

I like how time circles back upon itself, shapeshifting the landscape from year to year so the soil appears freshly tilled and fertile, and the vistas, brand new visions. It is an Eliotian pilgrimage, of sorts, for to journey back in sacred return on any repeat visit is to “arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Never mind that said arrival is beginning to feel more and more like I’m riding a high-speed express train between years, akin to the train one might ride between airport terminals. Like that time and space between terminals, such a ride between the years feels innocuous, vacuous, and liminal. I am more sensitive to this sacred circling and dance than ever before – how it leads me to retrace my steps precisely with slight changes to the choreography to add some salsa to the mix.

I had the opportunity to experience this déjà-vu feeling firsthand this past weekend when Holy Hub, the kids and I travelled to Orcas Island for a mid-week camping trip.

Holy Hub and I had not been to Orcas in 15 years but it was prophetic that we should return exactly 15 years, almost to the month, since we had last stepped foot off the ferry landing there. Orcas was the site of an intensely personal retreat course we both attended (individually and separately within the span of a few months). I remember falling in love with the island in all its rugged and rustic beauty. It was little wonder, when asked to project ahead 15 years and imagine my life then that I should conjure a vision of Holy Hubby and I living on the west coast with two adolescent children, as yet unborn in thought and form. At the hedonistic age of 27, having to picture my life 15 years much less 15 minutes into the future was a long-term visioning exercise akin to walking over hot coals, which is to say an alternative form of hell.

And so it would be foretold that this prairie girl would find herself moving not just to the other side of the world, but to the west coast within 15 years, with same Holy Hub, two kids and considerably more baggage in tow. I confess, I’m a little disappointed that the huge timber-framed house with the panoramic window overlooking the Puget Sound which was the locale for my west coast family vision did not seem to come to fruition.

Alas, here is the water view out our kitchen/side deck window.

It is a lesson in living and dreaming and scheming, nonetheless. One I’ve not forgotten but one I’ve been more than a little afraid to recreate. It’s the old adage - be careful what you wish for: you just might get it.

And so here we are. And here I am, setting out to retrace the creative labyrinth, or manifest quest, as I like to call it, in communitas with other trepid creative types this fall, who fear not our inadequacies, but our “power beyond measure.” I’ve been shrinking and playing small for awhile now (even as my waistline of late suggests the opposite) but I can see, in kabalistic retrospect, that I have done so in tsimtsumic gesture. Just like God is said to have done in those penultimate moments of earthly creation, I withdrew inward in order to provide space for my darling creations to expand, evolve and flourish these past couple of years. And they have.

But I had a little lightbulb moment on this trip – when we were doing a little round table session where each family member had to say a couple of complimentary things about another member. Suffice to say the kids were at a loss as to what to say about their dear old mom. Oh sure, the usual suspects attached to the daily grind of life showed up. Chauffeur, homework-helper, etc. Not that I was expecting them to articulate their eternal gratitude that I have helped them to find and live up to their highest potential. Nothing so grand as that but I got me to thinking about my own highest potential and if I am somehow playing small by being a stay-at-home mom. And suffice to say, it got me to thinking about what kind of familial epitaph statement I want my kids to recite from their hearts at my funeral. And… “Here lies Mom. We’ll sure miss her. She always let me steal gum from her and let us listen to Radio Disney in the car.”…is not it.

On that note, I’m heading on a personal development retreat next week, aimed at giving me some more clarity on what the hell I’m actually doing on this planet. Carving out four and half days away from home with our schedule is no small feat. Holy Hub will virtually be working half-days (or no days if the strike continues) and taking the weekend off, to do the school and after-school activity runs. But the departure from the norm will be great. Perhaps the kids will see that I am more than a chauffeur and homework-helper. Somehow I doubt that. The more likely scenario is that I’ll return home with less of a vested interest in how they see me and more validation for how I see me. The wise adage that it’s none of my business what others think of me is one I continue to struggle with. It’s all part of the journey, I guess.

Nerve Endings
Speaking of journeys, my healing journey continues. My right hand and arm got wratched in the accident this summer. The whiplash has gotten progressively worse so I’ve started getting treatments at a naturopathic health clinic/college. They’ve implemented a multi-week regime for me that will encompass a combination of ultra-sound, massage and chiropractic therapy. The regular MD prescribed a night-time medication for me to help ease the nerve pain I was waking up with, but it turns out neuro medication moonlights as an anti-depressant. I stopped taking it. I wasn’t noticing much difference in the morning pain department but I was starting to feel a kind of heart palpitation feeling, not to mention an uncomfortable dry-mouth.

Chronic nerve pain sucks. But I consider we were most fortunate, in retrospect, to have sustained as minimal of injuries as we did, considering this was a high-speed vehicle collision.

Need for Speed
Not that anyone can ever accomplish much of a high-speed around here, with all the rubber neckers and gawkers. I have never seen anything so inane in my life as watching traffic come to a standstill on a freeway because there’s an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road or because there are construction cones on the roadside or because said drivers need to put their bifocals on to read the blinking traffic advisory sign board overhead. And don’t even get me started about traffic in the rain. You would think Seattlites would know how to drive in the rain…not. There’s some kind of strange correlation between the wiper blades swishing back and forth across the windshield and brake riding. I don’t get it.

Auto Pilot
And of vehicles, I have to say, we’ve owned Violet the Pilot (a.k.a. “the beast”) for almost a month now and true confession: I’m kinda digging the sunroof, heated leather seats (but not the fact that it was so cold one day this August, it merited a flip of the switch), and the satellite radio features. Holy Hub had what might be called a mini conniption when he discovered I had the XM dial tuned to Oprah & Friends – I love hearing Nate Berkus on the radio. He’s practically the most gorgeous man ever. And his boyfriend, Brian Atwood, isn’t too shabby either. Which reminds me of my first experience walking into a gay bar. It was a jaw-dropping experience on many accounts but most especially because never before had I seen a room full of such good looking men gyrating to techno music. I remember thinking, ohmigosh, THIS is where they’ve all been hiding! See how my mind works? I can go from vehicles to gay bars in just zero to 12 seconds.

Brain Food
But that’s not my fault. Blame it on the random firings of my neurons. I’m reading this fascinating book, This Is Your Brain On Music. I’ve been intrigued with music and brain patterning for awhile now, on account of the fact that the sound of music, like scent, is a great tool for tapping the memory wells. And on account of the fact that my son, the budding cellist and bass guitarist, is beginning to think and hear life in beats, which is sort of Last Mimsy woo-woo, but it’s also more than a little cool. I don’t necessarily make the same musical connections.

The author is a rock musician/producer turned cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist, who has penned such a terrific book for us nerdy types who are eternally intrigued, in a mysterium tremendum et fascinans kinda way, with all things neurological. He also dummies things down, which is no easy task, given that many of us musical neophytes struggle with discerning a staccato from a stiletto and a vibrato from a vibrator.

Memory Lane
You may be wondering how I can tie vibrator to my next trainwreck of thought. Well actually, it segues quite nicely to the latest book I’m reading ~ Loose Girl: a memoir of promiscuity. I have read so many memoirs these past couple of years, that I, too, feel more than a little voyeuristic and promiscuous. Can one be promiscuous in a literary way, I wonder? It was weird and somehow affirming to pop into a little indie bookstore on Orcas Island recently and recognize so many past-read titles throughout the store. I even saw a weight loss book by Mike Huckabee.

Political Madness
To be honest, the Orcas trip, up until that point, was a nice respite from the non-stop political madness this nation seems gripped in. And I do mean madness. How is it possible that campaigning has been allowed to overshadow real politics? Bush and Cheney have been arrogantly resting on their laurels, watching the campaign debacle with amusement, no doubt. In some ways, that bodes well for the Democrats. On sunny days, I trust beyond the shadow of a doubt that Obama will get elected. Because he stands for peace and equality and community building. But then the Republican fear-mongering blows upwind towards the Pacific on stormier days, and then I’m not so sure I trust in the hopes and dreams of the American public.

Madame Palin is representative of so many redneck mamas in this country not to mention Canada, where hockey moms rule the roost. She packs a pistol, cockily declares herself a spitfire and cut her political teeth on teen pageants and PTA boards. I’m all for women shattering the political glass ceiling but her NRA membership and Alaskan pipeline ambitions and pregnancy cover-ups scare me.

Holy Son bragged to his grandparents that if McCain wins, we’re moving back to Canada. I’m not sure where he got that but he’s not far from the truth. I don’t think this nation can sustain two war-loving Presidents hellbent on “victory,” especially when one of them doesn't even purport to know how many homes he owns. I can't believe that the victory rhetoric, relative to Iraq, is still being bantered about and served warm to a gullible public. The only true victory is peace and peace does not follow war except in the title of Tolstoy’s epic.

But maybe that’s what it’s all about: epic. This election campaign has turned into one. It’s both mentally and financially taxing. And it’s such a pity that all those campaign dollars are wholesale wasted. There ought to be a law against such gross wastes of financial resources to say nothing of our attention but then again, we’ll fixate on anything. Watching all those regular Joe, hanger-onner delegates at these conventions had me wondering: who are these staunch political groupies and don’t they have a real life?

Meanwhile north of the border, PM Stephen Harper is looking in the days ahead to call a snap election for mid-October. We’re talking about a campaign span of less than six weeks. Now that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it. Holy Hub sent me this clip of KC.

Back in the day, he was uber handsome. And so I got to wondering - where is he now? And so I took the liberty of Googled him 'cuz I was curious. I shouldn’t have done that. Suffice to say, he’s aged a tad and I don’t mean that in fine wine terms. More like a crumbly cheese.

But no sooner do I type cheese when what does Holy Son blurt out but, "Cheese makes the world go 'round!" He declared this out of the blue as though he’d solved the key to the universe. Apparently it starts with the cheese which attracts the mouse, which attracts the cat, which attracts the dog, which attracts the boy, which attracts the girl, which brings about love, which makes the world goes around.

Yessiree, it’s all circular. Journeys, chases and even time slips that shift the axis of perspective and cause all manner of disparate things like kids and retreats and island and nerves and traffic and SUVs and sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll and politics converge into one pregnant train of thought inside my head going absolutely nowhere.

Scary, isn’t it?

Back to School Blues

2008-09-01T23:34:00.000-07:00

Some parents feel blue when their kids go back to school. Much like an anthropologist, I am fascinated if a great deal suspicious of this rare and deranged creature.

Then there are the rest of us, who rejoice a la Julie Andrews romping through a valley of flowers, singing Joy to the World, the kids are gone, there tru-ly is a God! when the kids go back to school. And we know the moment down to the millisecond, for we have been fervently marking X's on our calendars just as our fellow prisoner brethen have taught us is the thing to do until the Get Out of Jail Free card comes in.

And the ones who rejoice the most are those of us who were too stupid and idealistic to schedule the heck out of our kids all summer, opting instead of summer camps to keep things footloose and fancy free in hopes of having "family time" to visit parks and attractions. Yeah well, let me tell you, that fun family fantasy faded fairly fast - and those are the only f-words I care to share in polite company - I think it was day two of summer in this household before I began spouting the other f-words, as I recall. That was about the time I Googled to see if drinking alone without benefit of other adult commiserate-types constituted pure and certain alcoholism.

I had made it all the way to my last calendar X, without benefit of much anesthesia, as miracles would have it (and yes, I'm bragging), when what could only be classified as a parent's worst back-to-school nightmare occurred.

The school district announced a strike tonight. No school until further notice.

My latest f-word is flabbergasted, to say nothing of feeling frayed at the edges and fried for breakfast at the thought of how long this strike might potentially last. Rumour has it the last strike in these parts lasted 7 weeks. I did the math and that's just asking for Social Services to come calling.

But I'm somewhat prepared to handle this emergency in the short-term. I have an unopened bottle of Bailey's and I know with absolutely certainly, without even having to Google it, that Bailey's is a 24/7 apothecary item. No 'After 6pm only' notation there.

So I'm good to go until Wednesday at the outset. After that, I dunno. You may want to send back-up in the event you haven't heard from me. Chocolate cake and a nail file may not cut it.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round 'n Round...

2008-08-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Long story short, we're on the other side of the insurance deal and we done good. We got a fair price and then some for our van - $5K more than the other insurance company was going to offer us which makes no sense. But don't get me going on insurance companies.

Short story long, we just inked a friends and family deal on a 2009 Honda Pilot. We pick it up Monday when we slap down our piggy banks. Here she is, in all her dark cherry and black leather glory.But holy schmoly, what a long process this has been.

During this whole process, we had company in from Canada, our 20th wedding anniversary ~ to which I still owe Holy hub a present - not that a brand-new, big-breasted SUV (stupidly uneconomical vehicle) isn't present enough. But we have yet to really celebrate our two decades with a proper date night, although we did enjoy a nice dinner with friends at a waterfront restaurant.

So with all this behind us, I'm hoping to still salvage a mini-camping trip late summer. I really want to test drive it in style and head due southeast to Utah. Fingers crossed.

Anyhoo, I see a couch and some pj's calling my name. Who woulda thunk car-price haggling would be such exhausting business?

Of Life, Limbs and Logic

2008-07-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

There’s a fine limbo line between control and acquiescence. I’m walking it with the insurance company of late. Half the time, I have no idea where the safety zone is, what ground I’m standing upon, or if it’s all a grand conspiracy or karmic payback for that time I rammed that unknowing jerkola from behind on the bumper cars in the amusement park. It was funny at the time, or so I thought.

Long, incredibly boring story short, they’ve decided to write-off our Odyssey as a total loss, for reasons having to do with the damages being worth more than 70% of what they deem the value of it to be.

But to be or not to be, that is the question. Safeco's (a misnomer if ever there was one) market comparables and mine don’t at all match. For instance, our Honda-installed trailer hitch, was $1,500.00. They chalk that up to a $77.00 additional value. Can you say, does not compute?

Our vehicle (long incredibly boring story longer here), apart from a couple of fine tooth comb scratches, was still in mint condition after all these years. The original carpet inside had never been exposed to wear and tear – the previous owner had custom carpet laid down inside such that it would always maintain a pristine condition. And we had religiously babied it with Honda servicing this past decade at monthly intervals. But that’s all blah blah blather to the insurance company. On paper, it’s worth a fraction of what we would have sold it for. And in reality, it’s just about the right size for the friendly neighbourhood junkyard dog now.

In any event, we’re now going between the two insurance companies in order to see whether our insurance company will designate a higher value. I don’t honestly expect them to – but part of that control thing is exhausting every avenue, how ever thin and tenuous.

So it appears we are now car shopping, which is an activity that ranks right up there with many other of my least favourite things to do, including but not limited to walking on hot coals. I’ve decided my minivan days are done, but only marginally because we’re now looking – in this day and age of anti-SUV – at a Honda Pilot. It seats 8 and pulls the trailer and is equally as gas gluttonous as its Odysseyian cousin, so it's a bit of a stalemate.

But what do you do? Bite the hand that supposedly feeds you – if near starvation might stand in for nourishment for a moment? Or do you feed the greedy system of oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, insurance companies and the like? It’s not merely a philosophical question: it’s the quintessential, middle-aged conundrum. You want to answer, screw them all, I’m outta here. This system ist sehr farocht and I want no part of it.

But owing to your city dweller status, you’re so entangled in the system, you couldn’t find your way out of the maze even if you were channeling a now grown-up Hansel and Gretel. Or so you think.

You want to think it’s all teleological when, in fact, the whole house of cards schema is ideological, which must and should always be confused with idiotlogical.

But still you hum and sing, because somewhere, somehow, someone told you there is a rhyme and there is a cadence to the entire affair. This is the vehicle that pulls the trailer, that becomes the house on camping escapes, that then parks in the garage like a giant square shape, which is adjacent to the door, of the house the Schmidts built.

Now if you’re a mathematician, you might, at this point, whip out your calculator in order to compute the number of times said trailer leaves said garage in a given year and then run some kind of impressive quadratic equation that factors in the cost of daily driving of said vehicle versus renting same said vehicle for three weekends a year instead. But you’re not, so you don’t.

Instead, you continue to sing, even though this, too, is not your strong suit. For this is the vehicle that hauls the kids all gloomy and glummy, to school and the pool, and then to dance, Scouts and sports with their chummy chum chummies, and gives them each space with a pillow and quilt, for long haul trips away from the house the Schmidts built.

Yes, those rare yet coveted trips away from the house. That’s what it’s all about. There is no price you dare put on the slim to nil escapes from the rat cage wheel of life. And so, you do your own simple balance sheet in your head, which is just like the kind you did on your college accounting exams (which is to say it never does ever balance, darnitalltohell, screw being a Certified Management Accountant – that’s a dumb career choice anyways and who wants to be pot bellied number cruncher in their 30s talking about financial statements at parties and sitting in a back room cubicle with a pocket protector?) And so, as then so now, you fudge the numbers, shed a tear or three in frustration at the ineffability of it all, and call it an even Stephen.

And then you paste a smile on your face and say things like, I’m just grateful we were all OK and not seriously injured (well OK, except that you're now sorely tempted to "give your right arm" for some coveted thing, because it's feeling pretty useless these days anyways). Or, I’m so glad the other guy had insurance ~ Thank! God! for that. Or, I’m glad we were able to salvage at least a week of getaway in our summer. Authentic statements, all of them, for you really do bow down to the god of vehicular collisions with respect to these things.

And then a big sigh builds up within you and you get all stoic and bodhisattva – a syncretism not entirely implausible given Alexander the Great’s oriental camel express train east way back in the day – but somewhere in that space between stoicism and Vibhajjavāda, you yield to a deep-seated jealousy that Alexander managed to eek out a helluva lot more than a week’s all-expense-paid getaway and to a far more exotic locale than a $27.00 dollar a night cabin on Camano Island.

But alas, when you are finally able to strike a yogic pose for a moment on account of your inability to breathe lately - and as you ponder the nature of all things – love, pain, the whole damn thing - in the best Texas twang and Scarlet O’Haran pose you can muster, such as whether meaning is (a) a priori; (b) a posteriori; (c) a freakin' pain in the posteriori or (d) all of the above ~ then and only then does momentary enlightenment come to you, such that you begin to spout the impermanence of all things ~ even, especially, vehicles. Which at a purely organic level, is just matter. And matter does not matter. But then you think to yourself, even your 11 year old son knows that positive one minus negative one equals two. Which might then mean that it doubly matters. And that spells double trouble, given that you come from a long line of worriers from way back. Well three lines actually, if you consider the not so small matters of marriage and adoption. All of which begins to make your head hurt, which then has you reading the fine print on the medical insurance forms the other insurance company sent you (paperwork that when subjected to purple infrared strobe lights, sports Please Do Not Sue! between the lines of the size 2 font text) to see if perhaps they'll cover headaches and brain strain. For it's all rather exhausting, all this meaning-making business, and it only serves to add to your lethargic laze of late, especially when you consider the anthropomorphism of the rain these past few days. Coincidence? You think not. The skies, they are a crying and that's not just a pathetic fallacy, it's real. Or is it? You no longer ascertain the acute differences between reality, unreality and surreality.

But you know it's pathetic, for you ken this in your bones. Most specifically, your clavicle, scapula, humerus, radius, ulna, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate, metacarpal and phalange bones. So then you revert back to the old-school philosophy you used to spout in a hashish haze – life’s a bitch, and then you die. But your mind has been so addled lately that even in this, doubt plagues you. What if that’s wrong? What if you've transposed the logic? Maybe it's supposed to be, life’s a die (and boy did you roll a schmidty number), and then you bitch. And you realize you're onto something. Some little nugget of truth that at last, and at very least, you can latch onto. Because at least there, in that small place of lame life, limb and logic, you have a place upon which to stand.

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Depressing Stories

2008-07-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

I see that book (I Feel Bad About My Neck) everywhere and think to myself, who the hell is this Nora Ephron and why should she feel bad about her neck?

It wasn't until I happened to have been feeling particularly bad about Meg Ryan's botched nose and lips (she used to be so gorgeous pre-2001) after watching her latest dismal movie, My Mom's Boyfriend, and did some googling, that I found out that Nora Ephron is a bigwig Hollywood screenwriter who wrote Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally, among other big movie hits.

Interesting stuff. Well, OK, maybe not. What is interesting, is that last week after doing the Seattle Underground Tour (a must-see/do activity for anyone, local yocal or otherwise, looking to kill a couple of hours in old downtown Seattle), we made our way to Elliot Bay Books in Pioneer Square. Elliot Bay Books has got to be one of the best bookstores ever. I adore it. But for some reason, it always reminds me of the charming bookstore in the movie, You've Got Mail. Turns out, however, that downstairs in the underground bowels of Elliot Bay Books is where they would shoot the coffee shop scenes for Frasier. I never knew that until last week.

Anyways, you're probably wondering why I feel bad about my neck. Or perhaps not. In either case, the reason I feel bad about my neck is that a scary thing happened to me on my way home from the specialty Irish shop in Seattle a couple of days ago, where we went in search of Irish dancing socks for Holy Daughter, who will be dancing in her first official competition at month's end.

I was on the I-5, minding my own rush hour business as our lane came to its predictable stop-n-go halt, when all of a sudden an SUV came up out of nowhere and ploughed into the rear end of my vehicle. Can you say Holy freakin' scary, batman? The kids and I were all OK, luckily and praise be to God, but my ass end isn't. It's flattened and crumpled and dented and extremely bruised.

And I feel bad about my neck.

My daughter and I had a doctor's visit yesterday and we are both suffering minor effects of whiplash - mine is mostly a right arm muscular pain extending all the way from my forearm up through to my shoulder and lower neck and back - likely caused from gripping the steering wheel and holding on for dear life at the point of impact, as we were pushed up to the car in front. Her's is an upper back pain. Her booster seat flew forward towards me and then was flung back wherein she bonked her head against it.

I also felt bad for the poor fellows in the car I hit. They were enroute from Vancouver, BC to attend The Foo Fighters concert in downtown Seattle but ended up getting stuck waiting on the side of the I-5 and enduring the stares and honks of lurking motorists, as we all did, some 75 minutes for the state trooper to arrive.

As with all sad twists of fate, crash and circumstance, timing is everything. My son stoically observed not many minutes after the accident that had I only listened to him and detoured for a bite to eat as he had requested, we would have not been in the scenario we found ourselves to be in. Woulda coulda shoulda is schmidta though.

It happened, as schmidt tends to do, just before we were about to embark on a camping trip for a week. We now have to cancel said trip, on account of not being able to pull the tent trailer, but as luck would have it, were able to salvage our state park getaway in small part by being able to find a nearby cabin rental for virtually the same price as a campsite. So we are now doing a marine rather than mountain retreat but I no longer have to stress about cooking with propane.

I'm also thankful to the God of small things that the repair shop did not deem the Odyssey a complete right-off, as is the trend in auto repair.

So in the meantime - which sounds to be 3 weeks - we'll be pimping a ride in a rental car, which as it turns out, means a red Ford Edge for this upcoming week of vay-cay. Which also means the kids will be sitting beside each other. Which is a cardinal sin in this family on account of being within intimate proximity to poke, punch, pinch, jab and jeer and pester one another. Which is the depressing part of this story.

I wonder if there's a special place in heaven for mothers, like say a luxe spa with the sign "Pas les Enfantes dans la Heavenly Spa, si vous plait."

Now that's my idea of heaven.

Lazy, Crazy, Hazy Days of Summer

2008-07-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Lazy
Today was the first day in a long while that the whole house (save Holy Hub, who is a 5am creature of work habit) slept in. Holy Son awoke at 10:50 am. Long live sloth.

And yet summer, in all its lazy splendour, barely begins and evidence of its demise is all around us. The more audacious leaves of the bunch dare to turn colour. Bathing suits are already marked down for clearance in the stores as the merchandisers impatiently prepare to bring the back to school stuff in. And the seasonal camping gear displays are now slim to nil. How sad is that?

Summer is short enough already. But I'm doing my best to ignore the department stores and their mixed up calendar.

Crazy
The latter part of June saw us prepping for our crazy Canuck street party. We were mostly on track with getting the house in order and food/drink together when we received a last minute call from out-of-town (country actually) friends that they were a couple of hours away and heading our direction with baby in tow.

The weather was gorgeous during their stay and one of the highlights was being able to attend the local Canadian Consulate barbeque, with Canadian wines and beers on perma-pour and Cadbury chocolate bars in huge abundance. We got to play hose hockey - our team name was The Touques - and we sucked which was not entirely good, considering the game entailed blowing a ping pong ball through various team member hoses attached to the sides of the blow-up hockey "arena" through to the opponent's goal.

These friends departed on the last Monday of June but not before said young mat-leave wife, who shall remain nameless, divested herself of the equivalent of someone's annual salary on anything and everything she could think to buy, most especially if it sported a designer name and a stiletto heel. We see our fair share of Canadian visitors who come to shop but she took the proverbial cake. Our friend advises that the shopping didn't let up even enroute back to the border. They couldn't even open their car door without something falling out. It brings new meaning to the term loaded. May the Lord have mercy on him. They've barely been married a year. He's in for it, I think.

I like when our life is graced with real shoppers though. It helps put things into perspective for Holy Hub, who harbours the erroneous belief that I'm a shopper. She's way out of my league, I'm afraid.

Anyways, no sooner did they drive off, then sheets were being washed and changed for our next arrival, a few hours later, of my sis-in-law, who caught took the Clipper over from Victoria with nanaimo bar ingredients in tow (Bird's vanilla custard pudding mix). At 5am the next day, I was busy making a triple batch of this quintessentially Canadian dessert for our party that night.

We were blessed to have 83 degree weather for the party that night and hosted the entire affair on our front driveway, which is quite large. Somewhere between 40 and 50 people showed up from the cul de sac, our old neighborhood and various other nooks and crannies of our life here. Holy Daughter set up a Canada Customs booth and our cardboard cut-out Mountie acted as sufficient deterrent for those hoping to sneak into the country without appropriate i.d.

Lucky for them, she was feeling generous that night. She permitted library cards, Costco and Safeway cards and even a red and white debit card. All visitors were then duly branded with a Canada tattoo and allowed entrance, but not before having to attempt to answer a series on not so skilled-testing questions about Canada. Holy Hub passed with flying colours - I barely did. I couldn't resist throwing a dud question into the mix that even the Canadians in the crowd answered wrong - see if you can find it.

1. What are Canada’s two national sports?
A. Ice Hockey, Basketball B. Baseball, Tennis C. Basketball, Lacrosse D. Lacrosse, Ice Hockey

2. How many lakes are there in Canada?
A. Unknown B. 500 thousand C. 1 million D. 5 million

3. Who was the first Prime Minister of Canada?
A. Alexander Mackenzie B. John A. MacDonald C. Louis Riel D. Wilfred Laurier

4. Canada has two national symbols. What are they?
A. Beaver & Maple Leaf B. Maple Leaf & Moose C. Beaver & Grizzly Bear D. Moose & Salmon

5. Canada has the longest covered bridge in the world (1,282 feet long). Where is it located?
A. West Montrose, ON B. La Sarre, QE C. Gold River, BC D. Hartland, NB

6. What university developed the world's first anti-gravity suit?
A. University of Toronto B. Simon Fraser University C. University of British Columbia D. Queen’s University

7. Andrew Bonar Law was the only Canadian ever to do what?
A. Win the Indianapolis 500 B. Serve as Prime Minister of Great Britain C. Board the MIR space station D. Win the Tour De France

8. How many National Parks are there in Canada?
A. 84 B. 25 C. 40 D. 60

9. In which year did Canada adopt the metric system?
A. 1975 B. 1985 C. 1967 D. 1970

10. How many time zones are there in Canada?
A. 6 B. 8 C. 4 D. 5

11. What is the highest mountain in Canada?
A. Mount Forbe B. Mount Logan C. Mount Kitchener D. Mount Lefroy

12. What is the longest river in Canada?
A. Fraser River B. St. Laurence River C. Mackenzie River D. Red River

13. What is Canada's most northern island?
A. Queen Charlotte B. Ellesmere C. Victoria D. Baffin

14. Which of the following authors is not Canadian?
A. W.O. Mitchell B. Margaret Atwood C. A.A. Milne D. Michael Ondaatje

15. Which Province has the largest concentration of moose in North America?
A. Alberta B. British Columbia C. Newfoundland D. Quebec

16. When was “Oh Canada” proclaimed as Canada’s national anthem?
A. 1870 B. 1935 C. 1980 D. 1999

17. What year did Canada quit using dog sleds as the main mode of transportation?
A. 1898 B. 1903 C. 1911 D. 1932

18. Which one of these inventions was not Canadian?
A. Roller skate B. Basketball C. IMAX D. Artificial Heart

19. Which one of these games was not created in Canada?
A. Trivia Pursuit B. Pictionary C. Scrabble D. Balderdash

20. 80% of Canadians live where?
A. In Igloos B. In Ontario C. With a Caribou D. Close to the US border

We featured Hockey Night in Canada street shootouts and Capture the Americanadian Flag in the back forest for the kids, while adults got to eat, drink Canadian beer or our own special yuckaflux, another Canadian tradition, and be merry. Holy Hub, who wore a cowboy hat made of out Molson Canadian beer boxes, made a saskatoon berry (a crunchy blue-ish berry indigenous to Alberta and Saskatchewan) cobbler in the Dutch oven that proved popular with Canadians and Americans alike. I looked equally as festive, decked out as I was with my Mountie-ish hat and RCMP apron.

And a fine time was had by all. One neighbour whispered that the block has never seen so much fun.

But the fun and frivolity didn't stop there. We then kicked into Holy Hub birthday mode with family celebrations starting the very next day, since Holy Hub and I were planning to be out for the evening of his birthday. Not just anywhere out but at the BB King concert, no less. A few months ago, I went searching the Net to see if I could maybe surprise Holy Hub with a flight to wherever BB King happened to be playing the night of his birthday. Imagine my surprise to find out that he was booked to play here, of all far flung places. Gotta love synchronicity.

So off we went, with little more than our newly-purchased beach chairs in tow, to our first outdoor concert at the local winery. Talk about feeling like a couple of naked, country bumpkins showing up to the city faire. All the couples - and that was pretty much the demographic - 50+ white couples - were decked out with little picnic baskets, bottles of wine, intricately-etched wine glasses, miniature cutting boards with cheese knives, imported cheeses, grapes, the whole wine and cheese enchilada.

I had thought to pack some cookies and chips. We bought our wine and our kiosk dinner there and then proceeded to sip serupticiously out of plastic cups and dine in dubious plastic fork and plate pleasure. And then we did what all good concert goers do - we grooved to the King. He was as much a delight to listen to, as he regailed the crowd with tales of yesteryear and now, as he was to watch. 82 years old and still oozing the blues. It was fun. I haven't smiled that much or felt inclined to break into musically-inspired tears so much in a very long time.

So little wonder that come the 4th of July, I was plum tuckered. We flew an American flag on the house for the first time - it was a landmark day in liminal citizenry. Attempting to hit the hay at 9pm that night in these parts, however, was an exercise in futility. Whereas our old neighbourhood was pretty quiet and devoid of covert pyros, our new neighborhood was a vestige of such. Firecrackers were shooting off from every side and in every direction. I felt like I was the lone dud popcorn kernel in a pan of hot oil that night. I finally gave up, got up, and with Holy Hub and the kids newly returned from their high hilltop fireworks viewing vantage point one neighborhood over, I joined them for a quick dogwalk around the block.

Hazy
Not even a week later, we would return for the same walk around the block in order to view the charred remains of a neighbour's house that went up in flames in the wee hours of yestermorn when, to quote Edgar Alan Poe, "each seperate dying ember" (of the lady's squashed cigarette butt) "wrought its ghost upon the floor." It was a cataclysmic awakening outside our bedroom window with fire sirens wailing, helicopters hovering, embers exploding, flames raging and smoke billowing.

And it was surreal on many fronts, to say the least. I had just finished drafting my memoir chapter on Fire, which details our own family tale of how much went up in smoke the day our house burned to the ground on January 7, 1970. Fire was very much on my mind. It's never been very far outside my consciousness, actually.

When I was the same age as Holy Son now, a house nearby to our own in Kenilworth blew-up - the fatality of a gas leak. I remember riding my bike over and standing there, aghast and in wide-eyed stare at the gaping hole where their house and home once stood.

As I trace our own married life and times - (two decades come August), I can't help but notice how often we have been touched by tragedy equally as close to home. In Edmonton circa mid-9os and only a few blocks away from our house, a young mother was brutally murdered by an intruder. Holy Hub studiously went about installing a house alarm system for us and I slept with one eye open each night for years thereafter.

In Islamabad, a Swiss man was senselessly murdered while hiking on the scenic-lookout hiking trail across the road from our home. Holy Hub studiously went about fostering increased security and international relations in our parts by plying the Checkpoint Charlie police at our corner with all-you-can-drink tea and chat.

One year later back in Canada, our brother's house caught fire. All escaped relatively unscathed but as I recall, he wore that tragedy with "like father, like son" pride for years to come.

And then not long after settling into our Calgary home, our neighbor just three houses up was found dead at her front entry landing ~ supposed the legacy of a random intrusion. But those of us who knew her to be estranged from her disturbed husband, an aldermanic hopeful in the previous civic election and fundamental Christian with a troubled teenhood, knew different. Rumours quickly spread of how the kids were found locked in their bedroom upstairs. What mother locks her kids in their bedroom unless fearing a danger far greater than fire?

Three years ago, tragedy again struck close. Shortly after moving to the U.S., we awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of fire engines. Turns out, a disgrunted divorceed man a couple of blocks away had set fire to the house for the insurance claim. The house next door caught fire, as well, and three years later, it has only just been rebuilt. The burnt remains and blacked shell of a car in the attached garage of Mr. Arsonist's house (who now sits in jail to ponder the perils of playing with fire) stand as testament to his bonfire of vanity.

And here again, the home fires burned. "A spark neglected makes a mighty fire" is perhaps the greatest of Herrick's understatements, as our now homeless neighbors have learned.

Suffice to say, I'm thankful for a little quiet on the western front from hereonin this summer. The closest I wish to get to fire this summer is at marshmallow stick's length away, superstitiously chanting "I hate white rabbits."

Summer in the City

2008-06-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

The kids end their school years today and tomorrow respectively. They only attend school for 2 hours on the last day and I always question, why they do this when they already have a half-day on Wednesdays. Why not tack on that two hours to Wednesday and give them the last day off altogether. How stupid and bureacratic and political and did I mention dumb?

So I have one last hour before summer madness begins.

It won't be madness so much for the first while, as we intend to relish the advent of no fixed schedule and homework. Holy Son was still studying up until the night before last. It's been a full-on year for him with school work but he's done really well. Straight As except for German and even then, his mark would probably count for an A- in a different grading system.

The best part of summer is not having to run around with the after-school activities like soccer, dance, jazz band, youth theater, Brownies and Boy Scouts, cello lessons...the list goes on and on in this insane house.

And that's partly why I've scaled back our summer plans, which would have seen us running around Western Canada visiting friends and family and schlepping suitcases in tow. We've always been vagabonds - it has fairly defined us these past two decades but I have to be honest, for the first time ever, I feel no burning desire to hit the road by plane, train or automobile. I worried this might be a sign of aging - this desire to cocoon - but I think it has more to do with coming off a very tiring year with the kids and house buying just prior to the market tanking.

Speaking of tanking, the good news of the day is that the Boeing Tanker deal is back on the table. This makes me happy if only because we happen to be a Boeing family. I hope they get their fair shot at the bid this time.

Anyways, that aside, we've also been busy gearing up for a Canada Day barbeque party we'll be hosting July 1st, on Canada's 141st birthday. This is the very opposite of cocooning, I realize, but I've been feeling lately as though I've been channeling the ghost of Erma Bombeck. I've been putting off having anyone come over because I feel bad about our lack of furniture, and our minimal decorating, and that I haven't painted yet so all the walls are pretty stark. And that some of our black plates are chipped, and that I don't have a full set of wine glasses.

And that people will come over and sneer, judge and zillow, and then make semi-apologetic comments to the effect that we must feel awful that we bought our house at the height of the housing market boom and now it has softened drastically. It's been like the conference of the neurotic birds in my brain - all this chattering of reasons why not to host friends, except the birds have not been mystical so much as foreboding and Hitchcockian.

Anyways, I re-read the Erma Bombeck poem - you know the one: If I Had My Life to Live Over....

If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."

There would have been more "I love you's".. More "I'm sorrys"...

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it back.

***********

And so in the spirit of Erma's redux, I'm going to finally unbutton the hatches, throw open the doors and bring together an eclectic assortment of Curt's co-workers, our neighbors, old neighborhood friends and school acquaintances, etc. for a street party. We've promised fun, food, drink, frivolity and Canadian wackiness and by golly, that's what we'll deliver. And so what if the house isn't totally together....who cares.

It's such a useless worry, as is the one where I worry incessantly about mixing the various peoples in my life - the partiers with the teetolers, the introverts with the extroverts, the conversatives with the liberals. I worry about it being a melting pot about to boil over, when the reality is that it usually makes for a tasty, simmering pot of fun. At least history has shown that to be so when we've hosted similar open house events.

My RCMP red surge apron is arriving in the mail, along with a number of Canadiana goodies my blessed MIL was kind enough to ship.

And so that will be the kickoff to summer and hopefully the start of some desperately-needed sunny weather, if only because I've special-ordered it to arrive in time for the party.

Godspeed the sun, the summer and a little bit of easy living.

Games Without Frontiers

2008-06-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Iceman Cometh
If you were to play Name That Tune in 5 notes (OK, max 12) and ask all 33.4 million Canadians to play along, you'd get a 99,9% accuracy rate on one particular song.

What tune am I referring to? Canada's penultimate anthem, of course. The one Wayne Gretzky dubiously dubs Canada's best song and arguably, the one that is the most identifiable sound in hockey, next to a slapshot.

If you're Canadian or a weekend NHL fan, then you know the tune and you also know the recent hooplah surrounding it. It's the Hockey Night in Canada theme song and the news of the week is that the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) is supposedly giving thought to not renewing the licensing on it.

I say 'supposedly' because we all know there was something rotten in the state of Ottawa and television negotiations in going viral with this "leaked" news. It's likely all part of the negotiations - appeal to the national sentiment in order to bring some sense and sensibility to an unsettled, $2.5 licensing lawsuit that the CBC wants the composer to make go away. Unsettling is definitely the word of the day in the matter. The outcry and uproar this has caused cannot even begin to be measured. It's a veritable afront to our national identity.

It's as near and dear to Canucks as God Bless America is to Americans. Perhaps even more so.

The song, composed by Doris Claman, came into being in the late 60s and it soon became the musical Saturday night battle cry and beacon call to armchair hockey fans nationwide to gather round their black and white, rabbit-eared television sets to watch Canada's hockey greats duke it out on ice. One didn't need to look at a clock if the TV was on....you just knew what time it was when you heard those opening melody...duhn da duhn daduhn, duhn da duhndaduhn, duhn da duhn daduhn duh....doodoodoodoo dooodoooo (tune fades significantly offkey)...

Ask any Canadian, go ahead. We all have our own rendition and way of bastardizing the HNIC theme song. Some of us go deep baratone, some whistle, some even brandish an air hockey stick and feign superstar hockey player position while doing so. But we all know it. It's permanently etched on our psyche to the degree that if there were to be tribal lineups in heaven, all the dead Canadian angels could easily be the choir at the heavenly hockey match.

That's the funny thing about being Canadian. We don't have much to show for our cultural identity that we can truly brand and brag about internationally - not like many other nations. But the few things we have - like our Molson beer, and our Tim Horton's doughnuts and our hockey theme song and our toques and curling brooms - we hang onto those tenaciously and if anyone tries to take those away, we get very pugnacious and well, like right some panicky, eh.

*Update*: CTV announced yesterday that they have bought the rights to the song, which is the ultimate in media scoops, considering this was a CBC deal, and that they intend to use the song during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Way to go, CTV. We love you. And they know this. They had the foresight to see that Canadians will feel a heightened sense of gratitude, loyalty and warm fuzzies now when they think of CTV. That's how much we love our song. For shame, CBC, although that's the difference between private sector take-action decisiveness and crown corporation procrastination.

Games Without Frontiers

Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching's is blue

They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu

Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games

Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names

Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside

Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle

It's a knockout

If looks could kill they probably will

In games without frontiers-wars without tears

Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers"

I never gave much thought to my Canadianness in Canada. It has only been through travel and living elsewhere as an expat that I've been able to see my nationality and my home and native land in new perspective and through new eyes.

I still get the accent thing all the time....people noticing that I apparently have one. And of course, while I've adapted to new ways of being ~ such as Americanizing my spelling, and alternating between saying either z or zed when verbalizing my e-mail address to locals, in direct correlation to how accommodating and/or sadistic I'm feeling when they inquire, "can you repeat that, I didn't hear that last letter?"), or refraining from barking whenever a neighbor talks about their roof (Holy Hub and I now just look at each other and smile and wink instead). It's a round-about kinda way of saying that while I've integrated, I'm still fiercely, fiercely Canadian.

I like to think I've become a little less tribal and apologetic in the three years since moving here though. My angry imperialism rants have lessened (somewhat), American politics leaves me feeling more indifferent than not of late, and I'm beginning to warm up to the notion that as light-year different as Americans and Canadian are in both worldview and character, we are perhaps not to very far apart.

But then schmidt happens that tests my magnanimousness. Like this article in Parade magazine last Sunday, which really pissed me off. Sometimes there is no better way to descibe a certain slant of anger than being pissed off. And I say that because those are the very words I uttered to the republic upon reading the propaganda, I mean article, from beginning to end. Although God knows, there will not be an end in sight to the issue soon. Pissed off also fits because the high Arctic is nothing if not the last unclaimed geographic pissing match and yet another so-called Great Game to be played between power-hungry nations.

Which, just thinking about the whole thing again, gives me pause for desperate prayer. Dear Great Game Scorekeeper, if Stephen Harper has nothing more to show for his legacy as PM in this early years of this new millennium, let it at least be that he does the right thing in our extreme north strong and free. And if you're going to let anyone else piss on the tundra snow, let it then be Norway or Denmark.

I don't trust this whole hunger for oil thing and the fact that all of a sudden, the U.S. has suddenly wised up to the fact that oil rights and mining reserves are unnaturally/unfairly rich in northern Alberta, the NWT and in Nunavut. I'm wating for the other shoe to drop - first Iraq, then Iran, next it will be Canada that will become the new enemy of the States. I can't fathom what hidden weapon of mass destruction we might be accused of hiding except stockpiles of hockey pucks, curling rocks and doughnut holes.

So all that said, I take back what I said about becoming less tribal. In some ways, being an expat in a foreign land has manifested in me a heightened sense of tribalism. I suppose that's only natural. Yet there's a lonely kind of liminality that an expat inherits upon receiving the exit stamp in the passport and thereby stepping off the precipice of kindred soil. The liminality is akin to any other cultural rite of passage from youth to adult, single to married, virgin to whore. You are no longer what you were before, and not quite wholly the other either.

As an expat, you remain on threshold ground between the two, able to see and participate ~ albeit only superficially ~ in the events, customs, rituals of both tribes. But you don't quite belong entirely with either group. It's a curious thing. You become, instead, an Iyerian citizen of a larger land outside nationalistic borders, even as you still identify and sympathize with the concerns and angsts of the overlapped tribes you have a toehold in. In its simplist, visual form, you can envision the expat as occupying the space between two overlapped circles.

So, in some ways I feel more tribal and emic, and in other ways, more like a long-distance etic - an Audubonian with Eddie Bauer binoculars and a keener vision to see the forest through the trees. I watch this Great Game play out on earth's northenmost ice, and I swear and I can almost hear the theme song for Hockey Night and Canada and see the Canada Kicks Ass banners waving ~ banners, incidentally, that owe their roots to the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the former USSR, in which Canada kicked some serious Russian zhopa.

It's hard not to get caught up in it all. Sung to the tune of, "when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score."

Holy Son and I played the game of Risk awhile back. It was interesting in a surreal kind of way. We both wanted Alberta - it was a small measure of homeland security, I suspect. He was intent on conquering it all whilst I was quasi-cool with amassing a collection of equatorial islands and such, ever while recognizing that no man or woman is an island. Suffice to say, before long, he blew me out of the water with all his strategic dominions and republics and armies and newfound geo-greed. I had nary a leg nor isthmus to stake my flag into - I went from Churchillian "I will never surrender" threats and promises, to finally having to lisp, "'isth mus end, this not so great game of ours. The world is your's - may you take great care with it." This was after much concession and not a small measure of a particularly fine-tasting shiraz. I noticed the more wine I drank, the more land I,too, wanted to consume, which made me ponder if alcohol and foreign affairs are perhaps a dangerous combustion.

I played an experiential seminar game once upon a time called the Game of Life. I played it eons before reality TV came into existence. The point of the game was, ultimately, not traditional win/lose tactics but rather, for participants to garner experiential insight around how they "do" life and play the game. Do I play to win at all costs? Do I sit back and let others take control? What's my stratego? ~ these were and remain the burning questions. If all of this is but a game, how are you playing it? And what I realized is that I'm a push/pull dichotomy of fascist and serf - I'm a contortionist who suffers each time I flip from take charge to take cover. Perhaps we're all a bit that way, which might explain why the inhumane game of war and peace seems destined to continue. We haven't donned our own oxygen masks nor mastered control of the puck in the interior affairs game. In economic terms, we're not export ready. That's my version of the story and I'll defend it to the death, on this day anyways. Tomorrow is a new day, a new game, a new frontier. Who knows what flag I'll be carrying then, or which silly games I'll be playing or rude names I'll be shouting out.

Speaking of tomorrow, if you clicked the two tribes link and heard the song then you may well have heard my favorite lyrics de semaine, which read, "if any member the family should die whilst in the shelter, put them outside, but remember to tag them first for identification purposes."

We've been listening to that song in the car the last couple of days and I'm trying to get the kids to commit it to memory, because the way I figure it, you just never know when you may need to utter such sage words of advice to others. It's been kind of amusing though because Holy Daughter has been asking all kinds of questions - "what does that mean ~ tag the body? How do they tag you if you're dead?," and my favorite, "but if you're dead, who cares?" She has a point, insofar as the historical record has pretty much proven as much on the global lack of care thereof.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I clutter their minds with meaningless fodder but at other times, I'm pretty certain they'll thank me for this daily bread I've fed them. One day, I'm sure. Perhaps when they're tagging my body and dressing me up in army boots. And when they do, I'll be sure to roll over. 'Cuz that's a mother for you - always trying to get the last punk in there.

White Supremacy

2008-05-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've been talking, thinking, threatening this for awhile. And I've finally done it.

I've ditched all things white that were beginning to consume my diet, pollute my eco-system and take up excess cargo space therein. I've been feeling really sick lately and my suspicion has been that it's a digestive issue.

So I decided to start eliminating, starting with the evil whityies. But I suppose I should clarify - it's not all things white so much as most things white. On Wednesday, I cut out coffee, dairy, sugar and gluten from my diet. By Wednesday night, I was back to an espresso shot with a wee sprinkle of sugar-in-the-raw in it. On account of the fact that I had my weekly Artist's Way meeting at the local Starbucks and well, I'm weak and insipid when it comes to sniffing coffee fumes. By Thursday morning, I was drinking my morning with coffee mate versus 1/2 and 1/3 creamer. So I'm still consuming about 4 tspns of brown sugar a day but that is it. It beats having to pop aspirin for awhile.

But the gluten and dairy - those are two culprits I want to focus my energy on steadfastly avoiding. So far, so good - I'm more conscious about grabbing whole foods although I still haven't figured out what to do about the grains. I'm just tickled that corn tortillas with salsa is an acceptable, gluten-free snack.

Anyhoo, we'll see how it goes.

And no small conicidence, we've just joined a local swim and tennis club (nothing like an aversion to wearing a bathing suit in public to fuel motivation for an elimination diet) and the kids are busy getting up to speed with swim lessons. They are both 2-3 years behind their peers in swimming ability, from what I've been able to gauge. In fact, Holy Son towers over most of the others in his swim class, including his instructor, a junior or senior who happens to go to his school. But he's cool with it and I'm hoping that with a few weeks of intensive lessons under their swim belts, they'll both be much more comfortable in the water. And of course, a summer spent hanging at the pool should help matters, as well.

I do not relish the fact of hanging by the pool, however. I hate water, as in I can't stand getting my face wet or having anyone splash nearby me. And I'm not a comfortable swimmer although I will consider taking lessons to push past some of my aqua/hydrophobia. Because I would like to take up swimming as a form of exercise now that we have this membership.

I like this time of year though. Where all thoughts are eyeballed to the summer season ahead and the advent of no school. School activities are winding down - Holy Son had his final orchestra concert last night. They played the Pink Panther theme song and he ended up winning an award for Best Sense of Humor amongst his orchestral peers.

Holy Daughter is gearing up for her year-end ballet recital and is still actively nagging us to register her in a summer feis, which is an Irish dancing competition where they compete for trophies.

And I'm gearing up to have nothing on the schedule, which explains why I haven't made any summer plans yet. I am feeling very anarchistic and anti-social lately. There are a handful of visit plans we would, could, should be making back home due north, but to be honest, we have such a crazy, busy schedule for 9 months of the year that I just feel no desire to travel any distance in excess of an hour by plane, train or automobile. And if this sounds rather anal-retentive, so be it. I'm pooped out ~ physically and figuratively.

Which is why like my good friend, Theo LeSieg and his pal Alice Low, I, too, like the things that summer brings. I say, bring it on.

And speaking of bring it on, tonight is date night with Holy Hub - no kids for the entire night. Can you believe we haven't even made a definitive plan for the evening yet? How to tell we've been married 20 years?

Dispatches from the Wet Coast

2008-05-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm convinced Mother Nature is either:

a) drunk and stoned on too much Fijian kava
b) on an impromptu sabbatical
that did not permit training a suitable replacement in time
c) a very sick and twisted demi-goddess
d) going through menopause

I'm going with (d) ~ final answer. How else to explain the hot flashes followed by extreme dip in temperature in these parts lately? No word of a lie, we've experienced a 50 degree climate dive just in this past week. This time last week, it was 100. Today, it's 50, cold and yucky.

Has to be menopause but let me assure you, there ain't nothing musical about it, unless you count the raindrops pissing on the tin can outside, which are causing that annoying clink, clank, ting, tang sound. Oh yeah, and the dim strains of my whining while the background viola gently weeps.

All hail the long weekend - literally, figuratively and meterologically. For many of us secular
folk, the May long weekend is sacreligiously set aside not to commemorate the Queen's birthday (Canadians just recovered from their long weekend in her honour just last weekend - but God save the old bat, she's ancient, what of it?)

Nor to pay homage to the American war dead (so sue me - I'm Canadian - we pay our respects 11/11 of each year). The May long weekend, for as long as I can remember, has always been about going camping. And invariably, said camping has always entailed rain, snow, hail, sleet, and all other manners of foul weather. We so live in the wrong corner of the world.

And so it is with great cynicism that we head out this evening for wilderness parts slightly due north where the snow still flies.

Getting out of Dodge will be so sweet and to be honest, even if it is raining, we've come a long way from the days of being holed up in a tent. I'm still really digging our tent trailer - which is our camping home away from home.

Between you me, the wall, and every Googler searching cyberspace for tent trailers and shitty weather patterns, rainy day weather whilst camping is often an ironic excuse to seek shelter inside the tent trailer, play games and eat Spitz. Not to mention a fine opportunity to stare out in abject pity and bemusement at the drowned-rat tent city campers next door, who make it pithily obvious that this is their first time camping, if only because they failed to remove the REI and Joe's price tags from their gear, and because they're still struggling to figure out how to button down the hatches and set up all their tarps. I love playing Rear Window out our canvas peephole by alternating my spyglass between the ruling class motorhome types with their satellite TV hookup on one side, and the peasant tenters on the other.

Poor souls, I think to myself of the peasants, ever while moving a few inches away from the furnace register that is at that very moment pumping too much heat through the cozy confines of our Coleman camp shack. But, of course, trailer trash that I am, I don't really feel overly concerned with their wellbeing. We've more than done our time and crime roughing it in the great outdoors and I gladly pass the tikki torch to the likes of such intrepid types.

Two decades of layering clothes and looking like the abominible snowman meets Mary Poppins on her first camping expedition is more than an initiation period. I've shivered in tents playing cards in torrential rain, I've stood at the fire holding a golf umbrella while Holy Hub cooked, and I've sat in the car fogging up the windows and watching the rainstorm pelt down, all the while
wondering why exactly "they" claim camping is supposed to be fun. And what I've come to realize in zen realism fashion, is that washing dishes and drinking moonshine by the light of the same in the great outdoors in the freezing cold is one of the best hand and belly warmer combos ever.

The little schmidtlets love camping.

Holy Son, despite being a boy scout on the chase for Eagle, is perhaps the penultimate fan of the tent trailer. He can invariably be found hiding out, playing his Nintendo DS or cards or eating
snacks or whatever. Anything to avoid being outside. This cracks me up. And ever the doting mother, I feel compelled to keep him company inside.

Holy Daughter, on the other hand, is the postergirl for her father's motto - which essentially reads as: "if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space." So suffice to say, she's always out exploring the environs out and about in whatever State Park village we happen to find ourselves temporarily living in. Rain, shine, cold, hot - she's out there.

And Holy Hub? Well he's like the grand Bhodhisattva of Camping. He achieved his black belt in
camping sometime circa early 90s in the Canadian Rockies. It was a self-appointed status - but then enlightenment of any kind is rather like that, isn't it?

Yes, without him, the rest of us Schmidts are essentially up Schmidt Creek without a paddle in the great outdoors. He handles everything with great adroitness if not a few well-poised mumblings. From set-up to tear-down to open-fire cooking to gourmet Dutch oven delights to propane stove lighting and water duty and lantern lighting and midnight hour bonfire stoking and firepit pyrotechnics, he da man. He is to Coleman what the Marlboro Man was to
cigarettes.

And me? Hmm, I guess you could say that I'm like the Martha Stewart of camping. I handle the other important things - you know, the fru fru stuff like sleeping bag making and fidgeting with curtain ties and tent trailer sweeping and picnic table cloth clipping and table setting and dish washing and reading and striking just the right pose with my giant purple plastic wine glass, as I sit and smile pleasantly at passerbyers from my campchair perch in front of the fire.

We're camping in the Snoqualmie-Mt. Baker Forest District at the very edge of the mountains this weekend and apparently, our particular campground, while open, has only just been ploughed clear of the white stuff ~ a testament to the freakishly long winter we had this so-called spring. So we'll be camping and hiking in the snow. Indeed, it must be the May long weekend.

Although having said that, Western Canadians had a lovely long weekend last Saturday-Monday. Temperatures were in the high 80s and into the 90s.

We will not be so lucky - we'll be packing our gortex and boots and toques and gloves - ready to brave whatever Mother Nature's alternate deems fit to dole out. Suffice to say we'll definitely be running the trailer furnace this weekend, God willing.

And failing the gortex, there's always alcohol. One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer on Holy Hub's end and a bottle of shiraz and some Baja Tango orange cream liqueur on mine equals three sheets to the Cascadina mountain wind. All that much better, I suspect, to numb the effects of near-hypothermia.

Yes, it's a veritable how-to manual on how to be a happy camper and other exciting and schmidty tales. Full story at 11.

Mom's the Word

2008-05-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm reading The Thirteenth Tale right now. The best gauge I have for books that truly captivate me is that I get annoyed when real life and circumstances impose themselves upon my reading time. I hate having to put these rare books down to eat, sleep and honour appointments and schedule commitments. The Thirteenth Tale is such a book.

I love 'word nerd' authors. It becomes immediately obvious that Diane Setterfield is one. I suspect it's her study of French literature that has honed her sense of the particular in sentence structure. She selects only the most fitting words and phrases to describe her characters and scenes, or so it seems. And then there is the placing and slant synonymic of her word choice. Whereas some authors might stick their pronouns in conventional places, she seems to mix them up and thus, toy with both the semantics and the reader, thereby conveying "a certain ambiguity in the expression." She does this on page 141, with Charlie Angelfield's epitaph, which reads:

CHARLIE ANGELFIELD
HE IS GONE INTO THE DARK NIGHT.
WE SHALL NEVER SEE HIM MORE.

Yes, it's a good book, a very fine book. I am now at the Middles section of the book, which follows, most naturally, after Beginnings, of course. Her chapter on The Friendly Giant was splendid. Like all Canadian children of a certain age and form, I came of age with The Friendly Giant. And so it is that I relate in part and mythic imagination.

Here is a slice from the chapter.

"Tell me..." the stranger began, and I suspected he had needed to pluck up the courage to ask his question. "Do you have a mother?"
I felt a start of surprise. People hardly ever notice me for long enough to ask me personal questions.
"Do you mind? Forgive me for asking, but--How can I put it? Families are a matter of...of...But if you'd rather not--I am sorry."
"It's all right," I said slowly. "I don't mind." And actually I didn't. Perhaps it was the series of shocks I'd had, or else the influence of this queer setting, but it seemed that anything I might say about myself here, to this man, would remain forever in this place, with him, and have no currency anywhere else in the world. Whatever I said to him would have no consequences. So I answered his question. "Yes, I do have a mother."
"A mother! How--Oh, how--" A curiously intense expressed came into his eyes, a sadness or a longing. "What could be pleasanter than to have a mother!" he finally exclaimed. It was clearly an invitation to say more.
"You don't have a mother, then?" I asked.
Aurelius's face twisted momentarily. "Sadly--I have always wanted--Or a father, come to that. Even brothers or sisters. Anyone who actually belonged to me. As a child I used to pretend. I made up an entire family. Generations of it! You'd have laughed!" There was nothing to laugh at in his face as he spoke. "But as to an actual mother...a factual, known mother...Of course everybody has a mother, don't they? I know that. It's a question of knowing who that mother is. And I have always hoped that one day--For it's not out of the question, is it? And so I have never given up hope."
"Ah."
"It's a very sorry thing." He gave a shrug that he wanted to be casual, but wasn't. "I should have liked to have a mother."
"Mr. Love--"
"Aurelius, please."
"Aurelius. You know, with mothers, things aren't always as pleasant as you might suppose."
"Ah?" It seemed to have the force of a great revelation to him. He peered closely at me, "Squabbles?"
"Not exactly."
He frowned. "Misunderstandings?"
I shook my head.
"Worse?" He was stupefied. He sought what the problem might be in the sky, in the woods, and finally, in my eyes.
"Secrets," I told him.

On a lighter maternal note, I found the fatherly sequel to the Mom Song made legendary in Youtubeland....check it out. She's captured dadsense in minutia, I think.

And Happy Mother's Day weekend to all mothers great and small out there. May you bear no secrets.

Uncoiling the Spring

2008-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Spring break is long over.

I can tell because I'm already thinking thoughts of another vacation escape the likes of summer holidays and a tropical Christmas getaway.

We are now 2/3 of the way through this crazy spring schedule that saw us overlapping three different play rehearsals. Holy Daughter's plays are now over. In her first play this spring, HD enjoyed a small cameo role as one of Geppetto's Puppets - total on-stage time was likely no longer than about 120 seconds.

Her second play entailed a far more daunting rehearsal and performance schedule - she rehearsed a few times a week these past couple of months for her part as the "punchline and punctuation" snail (she got to say period, exclamation point and question mark after all the snails said their one word lines) in a city youth theatre production of Sleeping Beauty. They enjoyed six sell-out performances and when she came home yesterday after the final show, she fell asleep in the recliner and skipped dinner altogether in favour of more rest.

So that's two down but one still to go for Holy Son, who is busy rehearsing in prep for an upcoming Shakespearean play.

This on top of soccer, Brownies, Scouts, Irish dance, ballet and cello lessons. Little wonder my mind is already on summer and next Christmas.

On that note, I'm going to take a little hiatus from blogging for awhile. I have another writing project I'm working on that I want to focus on. But I'm still here behind the scenes. Or here. Or manning the 24/7 phone lines at Mom's Diner & Taxi Service.

Lost and Found

2008-04-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

Looking back on my week in Vegas, I now tell people I spent a year there this past week.

Don't get me wrong. It was gigantic fun but it also ranks up there as pretty much the only place on the planet I've travelled to from a destination vacation perspective, where I don't feel a compelling need to want to pack up and move there.

It's changed tenfold since I was last there 15 years ago. The hotels are just enormous. Beyond enormous. I know big hotels or thought I did, having spent a good chunk of my career working for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, who have a few monster properties like the Banff Springs Hotel to brag about. But these properties make the Springs look like a small boutique inn.

We stayed at The Excalibur in a renovated room, which the kids loved. I think it has something like 4,000 rooms. We lucked out in that we were on a quiet floor and not too close or too far from the elevator. But of course everywhere you go when you stay on the Strip, you have to walk through a smoke-filled casino to get where you're going to. Unless you're going to the casino then you're in luck, (or so one is led to believe).

Even getting to the monorail, which takes you up and down the Strip entails a mile+ walking each way.

But the themed hotels - OMG, they were amazing. New York New York was by far my fave, although the Luxor lobby area was pretty cool, too. We spent time in the Caesar's Palace, Treasure Island, The Venetian, MGM Grand, Harrah's, The Flamingo, The Hilton, The Luxor and the Bellagio. Most are an attraction in and of themselves.

The best part of our week was going to the Grand Canyon. Wow, double wow, triple wow - what a view and we were only at the West Rim of the GC - I can't even imagine what the South Rim must look like. I was a very nervous Nelly on the paths near the cliffs' edges (and that's putting it mildly - my son tells it as, "Mom was like totally freaking out on us!") - I was almost in tears at one point so finally hubby and the kids relented and kept their distance from the edges.

And I changed my mind from a year ago and walked the Skywalk. I was wrong - the view is infinitely better from there. Holy Daughter was so brave, she circled that thing straight down the middle glass part (that feels like you're walking on air) no less that 14 times. She's a daredevil. Some people were shuffling along the side where it appears like there's a proper walkway as opposed to glass, and they were holding onto the rail for dear life.

The Skywalk folks boast that it can support the weight of something like 6 or 7 Boeing 747s, which is what I pointed out to one timid woman. It didn't get her away from the edge but she did begin to walk a bit faster thereafter.

We rented a black Nissan Armada SUV, so we cruised in style and perhaps best of all, we were able to separate the kids with their own back seat bench, which is important when you're taking a road trip with tired children. We barely managed to get them out of the vehicle for our Hoover Dam stop - "awwwhhh, do we have to!?" The security stops and Checkpoint Charlies reminded me of our travels through the nuclear zone areas of Pakistan...which is a sad twist of irony that speaks volumes to the state of this late great nation in this post-terrorist era.

Other highlights of our week included:

going to Mystere, Cirque de Soleil's amazing show - it was our first Cirque show but definitely not our last

sneaking our 53-inch tall, 8 year old daughter on the 54-inch tall height restriction, giant roller coaster at New York New York - she slipped her shoes off and stood on the tops of her heel backs so as to look the height but they didn't care anyways. I held onto her leg for dear life and didn't let go the entire ride, whereas she kindly restrained herself (for my benefit, as she recounted to me later) from flailing her arms above her head the entire ride, as she is wont to do on any and all roller coaster rides.

doing the rides at Circus Circus Adventuredome which is really lame and doesn't even begin to hold a candle to the indoor rides and triple loop roller coaster of Galaxyland at West Edmonton Mall. But it wasn't busy so that was a bonus.

going on the Star Trek Experience 4D ride and attraction at the Hilton - I'm not a Trekky but it was fun to meet and speak with a Borg and experience these virtual reality trips to outer space.

walking down the street or through the lobby with a drink in our hand - that was cool. Very liberal liquor laws

having a late dinner with the kids at Margaritaville - the kids had fun interacting with the dudes on giant stilts and hanging out in a bar with live music at 11pm

messing with the guys handing out girlie show cards with pictures of naked women on them - these dudes are all over the Strip but aren't allowed to hand cards to men (or women) who are walking with kids. I bet my son $3 bucks that I could play with buddy the card dude's mind. So the kids watched and giggled from afar as I grabbed a card from the outstretched hand of a very surprised Mexican, and innocently inquired in my best dumb tourist voice what the card was. (I didn't look at it - I maintained eye contact and my wide-eyed innocent look). He said, girlie show, and I said, girls? oh excellent, what do they do? dance? he mumbled something about stripping and I acted confused....and by this point, his buddies were laughing hysterically at him, he was blushing and I was still relentlessly curious. Holy Son and Daughter were busting a gut. Holy Hub was pretending he didn't know me and/or wishing he could sneak off to one of these girlie shows.

hanging out at M&M World - cool store - we came home with 5 lbs of colored M&Ms and a couple of M&M dispensers

slothing by the pool at our hotel drinking Rum Runners and catching some rays on an 80 degree day while the kids frolicked in the pool

attending the cheesy Tournament of Kings jousting show at our hotel - kids loved it...

finally making Holy Hub blow $5 at the slots at the airport while waiting for our flight home - it took him less than 3 minutes to lose it but he wanted to show Holy Son how quickly the slots eat money

checking out the dancing fountain show at the Bellagio, watching the sky turn from daylight to dusk at the Forum and the Venetian shops, and watching a lion sleep on a glass walkway above my head for 20 minutes or so

All that said, it was a good week but we're glad to be home. Been there, done that and I have to confess ~ I don't feel a burning need to go back...with or without kids.

I'm already plotting our next canyon trip though - I'm checking into a Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park camping vacation through southern Utah. Can't wait.

Life on Mars

2008-04-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

I SO got sucked into this. I suppose that's payback for waking my daughter up this morning under the premise that there was a giant spider in her hair. And then, in turn, waking my son up in a panic that his cherished pet guinea pig was lying around looking sickly, on account of the toxic flea spray we had doused him with last night. Holy Son bolted out of bed like his butt was on fire. He was right some pissed when he heard his sister giggling, "April Fool's!" at the guinea pig cage.

Anyways, I took some time filling out the questionnaire - which is linked and listed just below the search box on the Google home page, presumably until midnight PST. But alas, I submitted my answers, they tallied the results and as it turns out, I am apparently exceedingly normal, boring, and not exactly Mars material.

Hubby told me after I went through the motions that it was an April Fools joke. It never even occurred to me. It's late. I'm tired and need to go to bed. And as if I'd go live on Mars anyways. I've moved enough already.

But good one, Richard and Google gang. Can you imagine working at Google and writing Virgle April Fool's copy for a living? Sah.weet gig if you can get it.

Viva Lost Wages!

2008-04-01T13:04:00.001-07:00

So we're Vegas bound next week.

I had resisted booking this Spring Break trip for months, in part because I was feeling the urge to travel to a more natural and pristine locale versus ~ how shall I say, supernatural environment such as Vegas, baby.

I fantasized about driving to Yosemite or maybe Zion National Park but alas, the romance and mystique of those road trips would inevitably have given away to the reality of bored kids trapped in a vehicle that likes to suck gas like it's going out of style. Which, by the way, it is.

So we're back to square one. Vegas ~ family style. Which means no party like a rock star, excessive gambling, late-night burlesque shows and stripping on the Strip. Not that we would ever do any of those things, of course.

No siree. Our trip will be decidedly more tame - (pffft, right). We'll be staying at The Excalibur, doing all the thrill rides, gawking at all the hotels and their larger-than-life circus of exhibits and attractions, taking in some family-friendly dinner shows like the Tournament of Kings medieval jousting show; and The Blue Man Group, which I've heard is amazing; and the creme de la creme ~ taking a day-trip excursion to the Grand Canyon. Can't wait for that. Except that I'm horrifically scared that Hub and the kids will get too close to the edge. That frightens me beyond imagination - especially Holy Hub - whose motto in life has always been, "if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space."

While at the Grand Canyon, we're considering the option of taking a helicopter to the bottom of the canyon and doing a little boat excursion down the Colorado River. It would be a very cool, once in a lifetime way to experience the third of Seven Natural Wonders of the World, but also very extravagant.

If we do, we will certainly justify it as a more enjoyable way to piss money away rather than gambling in a casino - which neither Holy Hub or I have ever felt inclined to do. I've plugged a sum total of $25.00 in change in slot machines in Reno, Vegas, and Atlantic City, and only then out of a vague sense of vicarious obligation. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Anyways, come next week's end, I'm sure we'll have had enough fun, feast, frolic, frenzy and rude tourist line-up jostling to last us a fantastically long time. But I'll save that inevitable epiphany for next week's blogging.

Peep Show

2008-03-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

Check out the peeps I made today (courtesy of Ma Schmidt and her yummy Easter basket shipment of goodies to the kids, from which I took the liberty of stealing a few peeps).

The Seattle Times features an annual Peeps contest. I so wish I had got on this earlier - (procrastination is a....ummm, I'll get back to you on that) ~ I woulda, coulda, shoulda entered the contest. If it weren't for my abysmal photography. If you want to see real photography, click here.

Rub a Dub Dub, Two Peeps in a Tub

Playpeep Bunnies

Peeptacular Bouquet

Peeping Tom

Heap of Peeps

Jeepers Peepers

Sissy Girl

2008-03-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

OK, I am SO the demographic of this blog post, except that he directs his blog post at a mostly male audience.

Acually, I was about to qualify it further by noting that I am so the demographic except that I wasn't really embarrassed to be listening to these tunes back then ~ or even now. But that's not entirely true.

You see, back in the day, I actually did pretend to identify more acutely with the punkier, edgier, Iggyer punk rockers, or the headbangier, stonier Judas Priestlier metal rockers, rather than just admit reality: I was a Cindi wannabe and a Pet Shop girl in the making.

Not much has changed. Case in point, what tune, pray tell, have I been listening to on my car CD player?

Track 16 off the same "Vital collection of Canadian Music" disk, of 2-3 blog posts ago fame, which sports the Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft song. But that was like so yesterday, she says, smacking her bubble gum and blowing a big grape double-bubble.

This week I've been grooving to the Safety Dance by Men Without Hats. But I make sure my windows are rolled down and that no one knows this. It's embarrassing to be listening to such....well, sissy music.

But what can I say? I've even been secretly looking into buying tickets to the Duran Duran concert coming up in May. I wouldn't dream of admitting this to anyone I know in real life - Holy Hub included - he'd have a few choice words for such loserville lurking. I even went so far as to think, well maybe I could take Holy Son, but then I thought, what if someone he knew saw him at the concert - wouldn't that be embarrassing for him, too? Being seen in public at the Duran Duran concert, and with his mother to boot (or his mother the boot)? Or however that goes.

Oh well, I don't know much and I certainly haven't learned a heck of a lot since high school, I feel like I've ran so far away since then, but I do know that about the only sage and prophetic bit of gloppity-goo I gleaned from those years are words I imparted in my high school yearbook (thinking I was all being all thespian wise and wonderful): "this above all, to thine own self be True."

So there, I'll admit it. I'm an 80s sissy girl. Always was, always will be.

Save a prayer for me, won't you?

Luck of the Draw

2008-03-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

I love this story.

Mostly because I adore both the randomness and synchronicity of prosperity and luck. Law of attraction proponents will have a field day with winning tales such as this. Life is a lottery that is your's for the winning.

I'm convinced, as of this weekend, that the trick to turning luck from random to fated is to be the ritual. Saturday night, I tried this curious thought on for size.

Since I had been attending a long day's journey into night retreat program all weekend, I arrived home late that night to find Chinese food leftovers and my very own fortune cookie as the remains of the day from Holy Hub and Holy Daughter's dinner out. Holy Son did not dine with them, as he had a different dinner date, but he immediately cautioned me, upon discovering that I was opening and reading my fortune cookie, that if I really wanted it to come true, I should eat the paper fortune.

This was a major paradigm shift in auspicious thinking and ritualizing for me. Eat the words.

It was diamond path brilliant in its "walk the talk" and "words have no inherent meaning" sensibility, and thus, made huge sense to me. Sense as in big-picture, embodied awareness and smells right sense.

So I impulsively did just that, while spurring Holy Daughter to do the same with hers. She was less than impressed with how chewy the paper was, and how it got stuck to her teeth and wedged between them so that her tongue had to dig into the grooves and fell groovy, forcing her to then toothpick flick the remnant bits to clear them, or she would keep obsessing over it. Fortune in mouth syndrome. I thought to myself, yeah, thoughts I allow to become things are much like that, too.

Now, I have to be honest. I have no idea if the words on our collective fortunes will come true ~ I don't much care. They were vague enough fortunes for each one of us (the usual health, wealth and harmonic suspects), ranging from ~

Holy Hub: Something unexpected will come in the mail.
Holy Son: Good heatlh will come to you for a long time.
Holy Daughter: You will enjoy peace and harmony in your home.
Holy: You may have to be patient, think, listen and heed signs.

~ that I'm guessing in the immediacy, inevitability and infinity of space/time boundaries, will be bound to come to fruition somehow, somewhere, sometime. For the lucky lotto winners above, that sometime was now.

As above, so below ~ for that sometime was also now for me. I'm beginning to slowly realize that someday fortunes and happily ever after hopes and dreams are lived in the moment, not the future. This has been a hard one for me to grasp. So, that night, I ate my fortune with my Kung Pao chicken and felt as though my belly and self were both very full and satisfied.

And when that full to the brim satisfaction dissipated, (as it invariably does in matters of Chinese food digestion), it was yet further reminder to me that I had digressed to the past - oh there I go again, why did I eat Chinese food instead of something heartier? I know better. Blah blah blah, monkey mind chatter. And to the future - I wonder if I should let this digest and then have a bedtime snack later? It gave me pause to remember that happiness and fullness come only from within, and these are moment-by-moment choices.

Luck comes in threes, as did fortune cookie messages for me this weekend. After putting the finished touches to the campaign poster above for oh Holy Son on Sunday night after my spiritual retreat had ended, I paused to reflect on my own grace and good fortune of having such a wise son and teacher, who instinctively knows what it means to walk one's talk, eat words and be humble. He can barely walk, chew gum and talk on his cell without tripping, but he can trip along on a higher spiritual plane - figure that one out. To this, I bow auspiciously.

Stay with me now, though as I Orient the face of luck from Asia and leap over to Ireland, in these, the penultimate days leading up to St. Patrick's Day.

Holy Daughter is fast and furiously preparing for her Irish dances that she will perform on-stage in downtown Seattle this Saturday. And I'm stoked because on my 32 squares list of lifelong dreams, I finally get to realize one of my biggest dreams alongside her, by strutting in the St. Patrick's Day parade. OK, so maybe my dream square only specified "be in a parade" but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Or ass end, as it were, should I find myself behind any ponies or Irish rugby players.

So I'm very excited. I'm practicing and preparing my royal wave to the masses of adoring fans and lovers of all things Irish and OK, more than a few drunken partyers who will be literally littering the sidewalks that parallel our parade route. I myself am not Irish per se, although I come by it honestly from an environmental perspective. My maiden name is Quinn so I have a leg up on most, I guess. But as it relates to the parade, I have been given strict instructions by a friend to do at least one spontaneous act or gesture during the parade. Perhaps it will involve that same leg up - who knows. My intent is to see his sage advice and raise it a notch. We'll see where all that Irishnish leads.

Holy Hub sincerely hopes it leads us to the nearest pub. Truth be told, I think he's only doing this parade schtick in hopes of a pot of beer at the end of the parade rainbow. I hear him. And I sincerely applaud those lucky Irish who have life figured out and who lend themselves to the lore of their great nation. Sing bawdy ballads with a lilt and a wink, dance jigs with all of your closest neighbors, down pints til you burp, and zigzag home in the dark of the night. Life if probably not meant to be any more complicated than that.

So why oh why do I make it so?

I feel very much like a brewery these days actually. There is so much stuff fermenting and distilling and swirling inside me. Hops and yeast and barley and water don't even begin to cover it. My keg runneth over and is in need of a tap to keep it contained. And I know that if I drink too much from this primordial alcohol, I am bound to belch profusely and echo Ben Franklin's words about beer being proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

And there you go - I've worked my way back, albeit circuitously, to the notions of love and happiness. Altruisms worth raising the glass of life in toast to, to be sure.

That said, I will leave you on this note - the note of good fortune. Click here if you're feeling lucky. Click here if you're not. And finally, click here if you don't give a schmidt either way.

Irish you health, wealth and harmony. Cheers and bottoms up, blogland mateys.

Birds of a Feather

2008-03-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

On Travel

2008-02-24T09:51:00.000-08:00

I've been bitten in the butt by the travel bug again.

I can tell because I've been spending inordinate amounts of time on Mapquest, mapping out hypothetical and random roads trips between here and various theres in the Western US.

I love maps and road trips and yes, just plain travel.

Our kids have inherited the road trip gene - they're positively Pavlovian when it comes to car excursions. They immediately begin packing, upon hearing of said impending trip - regardless of destination - and then a full hour prior to departure, they can invariably be found already ensconced in their seats in the vehicle amongst myriad pillows, snacks, electronic gear and stuffies. Repeat rituals on return journey. Suffice to say they are stellar travellers.

Speaking of stellar, our quick and dirty road trip this week took us to Vancouver, BC. In honour of this homecoming, I decided to crank Canadian tunes all the way, whilst deftly avoiding all the speed traps set up along the way. Listening to Klaatu was very retro - I was making wide-eyed nanu-nanu gestures at passing vehicles while singing 'calling occupants of interplanetary most extraordinary craft.' (The Klaatu thing throws people who assume this to be a Carpenters tune - wrong-o).

What can I say? I was on the stretch between Marysville and Bellingham, WA and I was bored.
But not only was I pretending to be a Heaven's Gate cult member on this drive, I was also channeling my inner cuckoo nester, when I switched to glide by grooving to The Kings. One of my favourite ways to frighten my children is to belt out lyrics at the upper limits of my vocal range to songs they don't know. This is a particularly gratifying activity when said lyrics necessarily entail yelling: 'lunatics anonymous, that's where I belong!'

Sigh. My thrills, they are cheap and infrequent, especially in the road trip department. Road trips are stupendous and wondrous, but they are sadly lacking in our life lately, given our collective if impossible schedule.

I recognize that these are the best of times and the worst of times for we are in both the best and worst kind of vagabondage right now; encumbered by our dharma and lot in life, which is that of householder (2nd of four Hindu stages of life). The operative words here being house and hold.

On that note, here are some excerpts from a piece by Pico Iyer that I love, entitled "Why We Travel: A Love Affair with the World."

"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home.

We travel, then, in search of both self and anonymity - and, of course, in finding the one we apprehend the other. Abroad, we are wonderfully free of caste and joy and standing; we are, as Hazlitt puts it, just the "gentlemen in the parlor," and people cannot put a name or tag to us.

And precisely because we are clarified in this way, and freed of unessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves (which may begin to explain why we may feel most alive when far from home). Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse, and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation."

Some final thoughts on travel:

"We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what."

George Santayana

"We carry within us the wonder we seek without us. There is Africa and her prodigies in us."

Sir Thomas Browne

Disappearance

2008-02-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Disappearance

The leaf tips bend
under the weight of dew.
Fruits are ripening
in Earth's early morning.
Daffodils light up in the sun.
The curtain of cloud at the gateway
of the garden path begins to shift:
have pity for childhood,
the way of illusion.

Late at night,
the candle gutters.
In some distant desert,
a flower opens.
And somewhere else,
a cold aster
that never knew a cassava patch
or gardens of areca palms,
never knew the joy of life,
at that instant disappears-
man's eternal yearning.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

Happy Heart Day

2008-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Holy Daughter went to school this morning with a gigantic, bouncy spring in her step. She was so excited for Valentine's Day because she wanted to show off her special Valentine's box creation, which all the kids made as a container for their classmates to stuff their Valentine's cards and treats in.

We seldom do things in small measures in the Schmidt house. Her Valentine themed box was no exception.

Normally the cat itself, woulda coulda shoulda sufficed, but she was worried it wouldn't hold all the cards and candy. So what started off as a heart-shaped cat-shaped box, soon turned into the cat and a huge honking, diorama cat house, complete with bed, room decor, kitty litter and food. Check out the lightbulb she made at the top.

She had a ton of fun making it but I had to giggle because of course, the lion's share of kids showed up with wrapped shoe boxes with a slit cut in them.

Oh well, go big or stay home, I always say. Actually I never say that, but I began doing so today. This being the big splurge day and all. I can't believe the retail expenditure figures for Valentine's Day - $17 billion in the U.S.?

OK, that. is. insane. If ~ instead of buying flowers that die, and chocolates that make us fat, and cards that kill trees ~ we all redirected those funds towards providing much-needed vaccinations, food and safe housing infrastructure for the world's needy, think what a massive act of love that might be.

Anyways, tonight we're having a romantic Valentine's dinner at home, fam-damily style. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only free night on the calendar for the next month and a half. Holy Son will make homemade heart-shaped pizza for Holy Hub & I, Holy Daughter will mix up (perhaps literally) some raspberry mousse in chocolate cups, and we'll drink wine and eat salad by candlelight, while Holy Son makes his cello gently weep in the background, and while Holy Daughter cuddles the guinea pigs til they squeak. Sound romantic?

Welcome to my world.

"To hide the key to your heart is to risk forgetting where you placed it."

Timothy Childers

Spring in my Step

2008-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Seasonal Affective Disorder
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The birds are chirping, will you be my friend? and the sun is lighting the canvas behind a pale, light gray/blue sky. I'll take it. January and early February were beyond miserable. All the mountain passes nearby have been closed several times because of avalanche danger.

Holy Son's weekly snowboarding school pilgrimage was great but he claimed there was almost too much snow, although he said he did manage to nail a back grab or whatever it's called. I wouldn't know because I don't speak Snowboard. I just nod my head and pretend I've understood what he's excitedly imparted to me. So apparently they were knee deep in powder and it was too much. What boarder complains of that? Especially on the West Coast where you take the rain and slush with the snow and pretend its a stellar run.

But enough about snow. With the longer days equating to brighter mornings when we drive to school, and the advent of winter and spring breaks upon us, I can't help but think spring.

Even our one superstar Venus Flytrap, John, thinks so. He's been stuck beneath a fluorescent bulb - lucky dog - light is one thing we lack in these parts, artificial and otherwise. So all that warmth and brightness had him sprouting a big tall flower. It will soon be time to move him outside, now that nicer weather is upon us and Holy Son's science experiment is almost over. Feeding John, Jake, Jim and Joe has been interesting though. I've learned mealworms don't fight as much as earthworms. And that you need to squeeze the cricket a bit and then hold it down firmly in the trap before it closes and even then, wait a few more seconds before attempting to extract the tweezers. Crickets are feisty and quick and they'll fight to the bitter end for life and limb, as necessary.

Of course the greatest irony is that all those disgusting giant house and callobious spiders that set up house and home downstairs this fall are nowhere to be found. Who can blame them though ~ I'd be making tracks to the Bahamas to escape gross Seattle winters, too, if I was able.

Yes, thoughts of spring have sprung in the Schmidthouse and so, too, a manic schedule. Let me qualify that - more manic than the already manic schedule.

The Comedy of Errors
Northrup Frye dubbed spring to be the season of comedy. I think he was onto something because running around with my head cut off will be nothing short of comedic to those who will be watching from the wings. Like my poor, long-lost friend, Cor, who is coming to visit the last week of February in what might prove to be the busiest, logistically speaking. I will take her to see Pike Place fish market and ride the Monorail. It will be her own week's version of Planes, Trains, Automobiles ~ because the rest of the week, she'll be riding shotgun while we ferry the kids all over hell's ten and a half acre.

That's because the kids have each been cast in spring community and school plays March/April/May, with rehearsals starting today.

That's a total of three plays, on top of the regularly scheduled weekly programming of Brownies, Scouts, Irish Dance, soccer and ballet. There might even have been two more spring church plays on Sundays had I not schemed to blow the UU-boat and Jonas the whaler up and off the schedule. I don't know much German but I do know how to say das ist verruckt, which sounds similar enough to what I might have said in English to convey the gist of my newfound mania.

The kids are tickled though. Holy Son landed a good size role in Romeo and Juliet as a Shakespeare in the Park sarcastic commentator. It's his biggest role yet - 25+ lines - and I'm tickled because he'll getting his first taste of Shakespeare. Or Marlowe. Or Francis Bacon. Or whoever he was. Or wasn't. That is the question.

Holy Daughter, not to be outdone, nailed a very funny line in her audition so they have decided, rather astutely I believe, to cast her as the punctuation punchline snail in Sleeping Beauty. So she'll get the last laugh in each of her scenes, which is perfect for her....she has a natural sense of comedic timing. She will also be doing a group performance role in her school production of Pinocchio as one of Geppetto's puppets.

So between juggling those three rehearsals, on top of her Irish dancing in prep for the Seattle St. Patrick's Day parade, and ballet and Brownie cookie sales deliveries and spring soccer; and his Scouts and winter/spring camping and cello lessons and soccer and four hours of homework a night, I'm thinking they won't have um....much time to get in trouble. Mind you, neither will Holy Hub and I.

It's all part of my master plan to have them fall into bed by 8pm each night, meek and spent. This plan will invariably backfire, of course. I'll be the one falling into bed by 8pm - they'll be like revved up thespians who stole the second wind from beneath Aladdin's carpet as they beg for time to 'unwind and relax'. Code word: Wii.

That's right we are now official members of the new millennium. Wii'ved joined the Wiivolution and even video-game phobic Holy Mom (OK, so what if the last game I played was Ms. Pac-man, at least I played that so there) has occasionally been known to get in on the action. Never mind that Holy Daughter kicks my petunias in bowling. She is wickedly good. She maneuvers her aim this way and that and then delivers a throw that would knock even good ole Freddy on his backside. I ended up doing what I think it a superbly-executed release that always turns out to be a backwards throw that hits all the animated Wii spectators. They point and laugh at me, as does Holy Daughter, and the whole thing is rather humiliating, in an cartoony and thus, unreal kind of way.

Even Holy Hub can't touch her score and he can Wii pitch at 90 miles an hour. It's pretty funny ~ this business of eight year olds being far more technologically-proficient than adults.

But that's not the end of the technology story. We also bought a couple of new Samsung flat panel TVs - one for the master bedroom and one for the kitchen/family room, where the hole in the wall has been fairly begging for us to place one. I ended up getting Best Buy to price match Amazon - they claim it's against their store policy nationwide and that Amazon is a dot.com not a store retailer, but Google Best Buy price match Amazon for sport, and you'll see it's happening everywhere. Even here, in Amazon land. That was one of the many arguments I wadded up in my tenacious little straw and spit back out at them. We ended up saving $400 which equates to a free Wii, games and controllers so it was all good.

OK, and since I'm feeling magnanimous today, I'll even admit to our last purchase. Two brand-new Toto toilets to replace our old ones. Is that fascinating blog reading or what? Judging by the kind of Google search queries of my new and unsuspecting visitors, I would have to say yeah - inquiring minds do want to know these things.

Lucky Charms
Anyways, back to the crazy schedule for a moment. If you're a regular lurker on this site or my old site, you may recall me blogging about my new gold parade dreams. Well, guess what, I may not be a Red Hot Mama yet, but I would bet even they had to start somewhere. Check this out - I actually get to be in the St. Patrick's Day parade too ~ showing off my Mighty Quinn roots. Never mind that I'm adopted and so, thus, not technically Irish. I happen to believe Irishness is not so much a nation state as it is a state of mind.

Or so I will be convinced after drinking a couple of pints of beer for courage that day. Speaking of Irish and drinks, there used to be a day and age when I thought people from Ireland were called Iris - I thought the sh was just the Guinness slur that was added for good measure and froth.

Harmless slurs aside, I may rope Holy Son into joining along in the festivities with some of his friends. We could all dress in green and go as Gang Green. Spectators will be green with envy or some other reaction, I'm sure. Holy Daughter will be decked out in her Irish dancing gear in prep for an afternoon dance performance following the parade. And yes, I'll take pictures and post them here for posterity. Actually Holy Hub will take pictures because I know he'll want no part of the parade, save the pre and post Guiness drinking, of course.

So now I need a new dream to add to my Top 10 dreams list. I think it will end up being journey related. I'm always scheming and dreaming about new places to go rather than things to do. Like spring break. We're busy planning a fam damily getaway to Vegas but I haven't officially booked it yet, mostly because I feel like Vegas is been there, done that. I haven't been in 15 years so it's changed wholesale, but still I'm less than enthusiastic. I'd much rather we hooked up our GPS and tent trailer and set our sights due southeastlyish enroute the great American whirlwind road trip. Like to Yosemite or to Zion National Park or Yellowstone or some equally wild, west locale. Not that Vegas isn't the wildest place in the west but it's urban and my brokeback heart is craving rural.

Speaking of brokeback and hearts, I had a quasi-interview with a pharmaceutical company a couple of weeks ago. Long story on how the hell I, hater of drug dealers, ended up making nice with them, but what I realized in that fatefully-aborted job prospect moment was that I really do not need to sell my integrity to become gainfully employed. And I certainly don't need to get dressed up to schmooze a pharma suit dudes when I should be working on the big kahuna headhunter instead. I've decided I'm going to scheme my dream part-time, lucrative, summer and school holidays off job and paste it on a four leaf clover on my bulletin board, or I'll put it in my universe in-box and then see what shows up. God only knows what will happen, right?

I do have a couple of prospects in my industry - fingers crossed, but both would entail a ton of work and probably too much travel. To say nothing of the kids' after school schedules.

If nothing materializes right away, so be it. I suspect 'll be too busy living and volunteering at the local theatre and lamenting, oh, home-o, home-o, wherefore art my home-o....to notice anyways.

Kicks are for Trids, You Silly Wabbit...

2008-02-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

Holy Son was dubbed the Josh Brown of indoor soccer today by one of his coaches.

He booted the soccer ball from his spot midfield, just behind the half-way line and managed to score the most amazing goal of the season. It was a film footage-worthy event but well...all the good schmidt, lollipop and visits to the candy shop moments happen when you leave your camera at home, don't they?

Oh well. I suspect he will have the moment permanently etched in the temporal lobe responsible for storing random heroic incidences.

They ended up still losing the game but that's OK. As he left the arena floating on a soccer cloud, it was apparent that he was preoccupied with formulating his acceptance speech for impending induction into the Soccer Hall of Fame.

"I'd like to thank the Soccer academy for making this all possible and oh yeah, my Mom, because she drove like a banshee today to get me to the game on time."

Yeah, I'm sure that's what he was thinking.

Kicks are for trids and melusional doms, you silly wabbit.

Archetypical Moments

2008-02-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

Oceanography 101

I don't know about you, but I'm one of those people who tends to bumble through life, rather oblivious to what's really going on. The best analogy for that is to say that I am to the waves, drops and mist as enlightened beings are to the oceanic depth ~which is to say, I'm a surface dweller, a.k.a. not very spiritually-intuitive or grounded. But I'm learning to swim deeper without my trusty life jacket, and to hold my breath for longer periods of time.

To my credit (and oft detriment), I will admit that I happen to be a great deal more socially-sensitive and attuned than most. I get non-verbal semantics and can read conversational signs, cues and icons - perhaps overly so - I will never overstay my welcome or impose or monopolize, except by deliberate design. And I do most of my conversational reading between the lines, which is dangerous and discursive footing, to be sure. Or is it?

I have a nameless, blameless family member who has absolutely no clue that my entire perception of her is based on verbal cues, or lack thereof, that I pick up during our rather awkward phone conversations. I suspect some people assume that hiding behind a telephone affords them an opportunity to shirk all that non-verbal body communication - which supposedly accounts for between 65-90% of the communication and which more to the point, the other person isn't able to see.

Unfortunately, the non-verbal sets the tone and ends up being the shadow projected on the wall. This is why the slouching, insecure telemarketer who fears rejection will more than likely receive it. What you give is what you get. Smile and the world smiles with you, even (or especially) if you're a telemarketer.

On this same note, I also have long-time friends who I have finally given up on after years of ignoring the blatant, blinking neon signs they were flashing my way: if I wanted to continue the friendship, the street sign marked effort was going to have to be one-way.

But lately, I've been switching these intuitive radar signals inwards, in order to pay closer attention to my metaphorical thinking, such as what my life outlook appears to be at any given time. And what I've learned is bound up in some of the archetypal theory that Caroline Myss expounds in her book, Sacred Contracts. Stay with me: the nouveau age mud gets clearer.

Life Poirpose
Myss identifies 4 universal archetypes that we all share - child, victim, prostitute, saboteur - and goes on to list 70 additional archetypes, 8 of which each of us owns to some varying degree (in addition to the first 4). My 8 other archetypes, in no particular order, are: mother, addict, dilettante/amateur, networker, poet, student, guide, and seeker/vagabond/wanderluster.

One or a chimera of a few of these is my life calling, I suspect, but I have yet to delve deep enough into the ocean to fully know that yet.
So what I've been noticing lately, in relation to these archetypal realms, is the degree to which I resonate with them at any given time.

Myss suggests this exercise for determining one's archetypes, but here's my metaphoric alternative. Simply ask yourself this question: if you were to visualize and then compare life to any one thing or concept, what would it be? Then fill in the blanks 8 times.

Life is a....

Here is my list, together with my corresponding 12 archetypes who took ownership for the statement.

Life is a(n):

1) blank canvas or book (artist/poet)
2) Silk Road (seeker/vagabond/wanderluster)
3) school (student)
4) accidental ordeal (victim)
5) wondrous gift (child - magical/innocent)*
6) epic adventure tour (guide)
7) womb (mother)
8) revolution (saboteur)
9) free market economy (prostitute)
10) social opportunity (networker)
11) dress rehearsal (dilettante/amateur)
12) buffet/bar/bottle/plant/hotel room/slot machine - simply substitute your addict's chosen noun here (addict)

* this answer changes depending on my child. My wounded child identifies with 'life is pain and suffering,' just as my orphan child thinks life is a hero's quest.

My Many Coloured Days

Anyways, I have no idea why I've blogged about this little philosophical pondering of mine, except as a way of positing to all of you friends, Romans and countrymen who have lent an ear and eye, as to where I'm at this early-Feb morning.

The truth is, a series of unfortunate events (how to tell I'm in victim mode) has me feeling very reflective, pensive and confused about the big picture lately.

I attended a funeral Saturday for a truly, exceptional woman that I barely knew save through a mutual friend/acquaintance. I felt compelled to attend for reasons entirely ineffable. She had an incredible lightness of being and energy, and I was drawn to that (and judging from the packed church, countless others were, too) even as her candle extinguished much too soon. I find it remarkable that we shared a Pythagorean pattern of birth date numerics and life's purpose ~ 34/7 ~ and yet we couldn't be any more polar opposite. She clearly achieved her life purpose as mystic, mentor, spirit guide - I'm still reading the guide book, packing, making trip lists, and and scratching my head in veritable confusion, trying to figure out the best navigation to destination unknown. The old adage - one day my ship will come in but with my luck, I'll be at the airport rings true here. The Universe is probably pounding me over the head with my life purpose sledgehammer, but I'm too much of a numskull to know it.

To add insult to injury, a recent and relatively minor communication with a virtual stranger has me licking my wounds and feeling entirely disconcerted, debilitated and desolate about my whole lot in life. Holy Hub is astounded that I've let such an insignificant exchange affect me so much - I put way too much stock in what I perceive others might think of me. And while I know it's self serving, or thus spoke my ego, I also know it's not soul-serving. Quite franky, it's getting out of hand lately and has me treading water, gasping for breath and sinking amongst the stormy wakes.

Job hunting is continually discouraging and an exercise in prostitution if ever there was one. Last week, I got tarted up and sprayed my Charm perfurme on to go do a local job fair/dog & pony show, but most of the employers in attendance were not companies I (nor you) would choose to work for. And I come back to the constant dilemma of how it can ever be possible to find meaningful, gainful and lucrative employment on a part-time basis, wile still maintaining some semblance of a dynamic after-school life for the kids. As you can tell, I do most of my job hunting with my inner Saboeteur: it's right out of an AmEx commercial ~ I don't leave home without her. But seriously, I don't want them to be latchkey kids, although the irony is, if I don't find work soon, they'll be motherless and latchkey anyways.

I feel bad about my neck and other exciting psychoses lately and this has me wondering if it's possible to inherit hypochondria memetically from my dear, deceased grandmother who wasn't, technically speaking, blood related. It's the age-old nature/nurture t hing. In the past week, I have had occasion to believe that I am fighting a terminal battle with breast cancer, liver disease and other untold endocrine disorders that might be manifesting within me even as I contemplate them. I have lived to blog another day, but alas, I may not have many more.

Such is the daily battle and parade of my archetypes.

I feel like the many-faced Eve sometimes ~ minus the books, movies, notoriety, interesting personalities and manic tea parties. So there you go. Life's a bitch and then you die. Hmmm...I wonder which hidden archetype dared voice that analogy aloud.

Must be my inner Queen. God save her imperious ass....and all other utterances both noble and nebulous.

Warmongering

2008-01-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

Well here we are, at the one year and counting mark: 01.20.08 ~ which means 366 days til we get to boot Bush & Cheney out of office. Yeehaw, stick it to yer grandma.

That's still a helluva long countdown. Why there isn't a greater movement afoot in this country to impeach the President is beyond me.

Perhaps it's apathy. It must be. People just don't care. No, that's not entirely correct. People care but aren't sure how to mobilize their micro-level concern into macro-level action. And let's face it - when push comes to shove between the lesser of two evils - maintaining status quo versus. going out on a limb - status quo claims victory almost everytime.

Consider the degree to which American civil liberties have been raped, murdered and pillaged.

Wiretapping, Internet searches, racial profiling, surveillance cameras, e-mail, travel histories, library usage, credit card purchases, cellular phone records - the government has the veritable goods on everyone lock, stock and smoking barrel, to the degree that when they say vee haf vays of maykink you tock (a phrase, incidently, that has long shed its German accent in favour of an American twang) - they could be doing a rebub mix called 50 Ways to Spy on Joe Schmoe.

It's scary. And yet complacency still reins. In the name of combatting so-called international terrorism and yes, freedom and justice for all, it's amazing and sadly ironic what citizens will permit, regardless of the fact that by their very nature, said anti-terrorist acts are the antithesis of freedom and at their core, grossly injust.

I'm far from paranoid, but it would seem to me that in a day and age where indentity theft is rampant and mistrust of Big Brother at an all-time high, why would anyone endorse allowing microchips in driver's licenses and passports? Several states are allowing this, mine included.

Pretty soon we won't be able to pee in peace, without worrying that there might be a hidden wireless urine test packet waiting to see if we test positive for drugs and alcohol. That's not far off, I suspect. In fact, high schoolers in many parts of the country - this State included - must now succumb to random drug testing. I hate to even imagine what further injustice might be next for fear federal mind reading and thought control is now alive, well, legislated and privatized. Vee haf vays of maykink you tink bad tots.

And yet, I would be willing to bet the moral majority still believe the United States of America, from a human rights and civil liberties perspective, is a geographic nirvana. I won't mince words but to read them in print, I'll admit they make even this foreigner whince: in some ways I felt more safe and secure during my time in Pakistan than I have since moving here three years ago. It's because we always knew where we stood in a nation like Pakistan. I now stand on common ground, having stepped just across the border on shared North American soil, but I can't help but feel these are uncommon and seismic times, politically and economically speaking.

It's a sad but true reflection of the state of internal and external affairs in this nation, circa 2008. In these past several years, I have had occasion to question, albeit somewhat vicariously, every single civil liberty normally cited - freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, right to fair trial, right to due process and right to privacy.

So despite having just received my social security card in the mail last week, I'll confess - I'm not feeling all that socially secure in this post-world supremacy age of America, in which tyranny and theocracy and fascism are practically government departments.

Not only does the Pledge of Allegiance read wrong these days (one nation? - tell that to the fractured and fragmented voting public) but so does the Constitution. I always thought it started with "We The People" and ended with words pertaining to an intervention. But what do I know - I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm a Canadian in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently I'm not the only Canadian who isn't feeling all fourth of July picnic'y. The Canadian government was raked over American coals for listing the U.S. on its torture watch list. After enduring lesser and more subtle forms of torture and pressure, the Cdn. Dept. of Foreign Affairs acquiesed and removed both the U.S. and Israel, its supposed allies, from this list. Better not to bite the hand that feeds one for fear of having it chopped off.

Have you noticed that ever since the Canadian dollar starting kicking America's ass(ets), Uncle Sam and his forgotten mistress, Lady Liberty, have been acting a bit churlish towards his neighbor north of the fence? Methinks the lady and the stamp doth protest too much.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates went very public this week in dissing NATO troops in Afghanistan and their apparent lack of skills in counter-insurgency military op - sung to the tune of Blame Canada. Yet when called to task by angry Canadians who were quick to drop their drawers and yell Baiser ma derrière, Monsieur Gates!, he was equally quick to French cheek kiss his neighbor to the north by lavishing heaps of praise and admiration on Canada's troops for their hard work and valour.

It's a bit like the kettle calling the pot black, mais non? Because everyone who's anyone who's no one in the grand scheme knows the U.S. is doing a superlative job in the area of counter-insurgency. It's just so gosh-darn commendable, this whole war and peace business. And throwing $500 billion babies out with the bathwater....that's just so sage, as well.

If 'they' were smart, they would have picked on a kid their own size in a playground considerably closer to home. Holy Hubby commented on this very thing when talk and thoughts turned to the myriad troops stuck overseas during American Thanksgiving and the holidays. That Holy Hub, he's such a fart smeller....he's always thinking.

He noted to his co-workers a couple of months back that the Bush administration could have saved themselves a whole pile of money, time and trouble had they started an oil war with Canada instead. There are so many benefits to waging war against Canada. Think about it.

Americans could finally get even for so many things. Like that unfinished business of the War of 1812, and that worst kept secret, War Plan Red, which never did get off the ground. And lest we not forget the ongoing softwood lumber and beef export issues and those annoying Canadian ex-MPs who say the darnedest things.

And let's face it - everyone wants a piece of the north pole. And practically everyone who has visited both admit the Canadian Rockies are way more beautiful than their US counterpart. Plus, if America claimed victory over Canada, they could finally stand at chance at winning the World Cup in hockey. There'd be no more worrying about long line-ups at Canadian customs and border patrol, or about Hollywood films shooting north of the border....there'd be no more border to worry about.

Think of the savings! Yes, there are innumerable reasons, logistically and economically speaking, why a war with Canada makes sense. Let's talk turkey for a minute. The U.S. could fly their troops home for holidays and holy days like American Thanksgiving and even rotate shifts so everyone got every second or third weekend off. They could cut long-stay government rates with hotels, rather than having to set up the kinds of extensive bases that they do overseas.

And training would be a breeze. Troops would only have to watch the Michael Moore flic, Canadian Bacon in order to pass go and collect their $200 daily per diem in Canadian Monopoly monies.

And if they waged war with resort towns like Whistler and Banff, then everyone would be veritably begging for their call of duty. Better still, if they waged war against Quebec, the rest of Canadians would glady join the American cause.

Just think of the possibilities. The troops wouldn't have to import pork and liquor - pigs and booze are plentiful due north. And for all those stationed to guard the oil sands up in Fort McMurray, there is the dubious other "fringe" benefit of having an umm...ample supply of peeler bars, as well. So the troops would be well fed and happy.

And shhh, don't tell anyone, but we have real weapons of mass destruction, so oil aside, this war could be easily justified. We may not brandish firearms 'cuz, heh, we come in peace, eh?, but we have a formidable arsenal of our own. Like hockey and lacrosse sticks, and curling brooms, and if get really pissed off, we've been known to light Canadian whiskey, Molson Canadian beer and bacon grease on fire whilst chanting, Hey hosers - like take off, eh?! I mean, everyone knows that despite having the world's longest coastline, Canada has virtually no naval force to speak of. The only operational submarines we had were being used for a tourist attraction ride at another of the world's biggest and foremost - West Edmonton Mall - and now they're, well....toasted subs.

And there's a reason those in the know dubbed the not so-perfectly operational Canadian maritime helicopter the Sea Thing. I'm just saying, is all. I won't give away any other military secrets. Suffice to say Canada's lack of military largess is no secret. So all told, it's a no-brainer. And if 'they' hurry, they can jump on it in the remaining days they hold office and who knows, if all goes well, things'll be wrapped up in a few months. Of course that'll suck for us - we'll probably end up getting locked up in some Canuck internment camp somewhere, but I guess all's fare in love and war.

On that note, I suppose I should bid fare thee well to such thoughts. You never know who might be draining the brainwaves.

Tales from the Cryptic

2008-01-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

Wow - mid January and here I am, still in recovery mode from a sinus infection that has freeloaded a tad too long. It snot any fun.

And it's been bloody cold here - minus temperatures every night - I'm a little fuzzy on any and all Fahrenheit temperatures that dip below 70, but I do know that 27 is below freezing. This I know. For my shivers they tell me so.

We had a nasty spell of snow then black ice this week, which made getting in and out of our neighborhood, which sits perched upon a "mountain," impossible. After one scary slide back down the hill into oncoming traffic on a busy road but thank God I had another guy direct traffic so I could do so escapade, I finally gave up and parked in a lot below our hill and hiked in and out that next morning. Cars were abandoned left, right and center everywhere. And there were accidents galore so traffic was snarled Tuesday. The city finally got around to sanding and clearing the roads - something they should have done Monday night.

I sometimes marvel at civic tax dollar priorities - this has got to be the darkest lit city in America - yes, I know, its oxymoronic but there you have it - archaic street lanterns from the turn of the century or some time close to that, which are now dwarfed and hidden by overgrown trees that might have been tiny when the streetlights were first installed but which now block and and all light. This.Drives.Me.Nuts.

I've asked locals about it because it baffles me, and one guy who hails from Santa Barbara claims it's actually a bit of an American aesthetic-sensibility issue. Most prefer to have more dimly-lit streets. To me, that's really dim and not so sensible. You literally need infrared lighting to navigate these streets at night and in the wee-hours of the morning.

Ah well, whatdaheck - that's OK. I sleep at night knowing that the city is spending oodles of dollars on new soccer fields and downtown arts events. Such prudent budget spending has me resting assured.

Reeding, Righting & Rithmatic
But what can I say? The wheels on the Schmidt bus still go round and round, or as Holy Daughter would say, the wheels on the rhombus. I had to google what the hell a rhombus is. Thank God for Google or I'd only be as smart as a first grader.

She's learning all about shapes in math and has, just this new year, gotten into reading in a big way. Her current favola? Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. That's right - nothing but the best fiction for the children in this house.

Actually, this series received two thumbs up from my children's literature professor, who is, arguably, one of the world's foremost and top-ten kid-lit scholars. He hated the Harry Potter series and wouldn't even talk about Harry Potter in class, but Captain Underpants was A-OK. Go figure.

As one who has never touched the former but been read aloud most of the latter, I have to admit, Dav Pilkey was onto something. How do you foster a love a reading and help kids bridge that gap to early series books? Create a superfantastical protagonist and weave a never-ending spin of school escapades for kids to relate to. Of course it helps to fill it with potty-talk names, cook up endless pranks to play on the principal and teachers, and ensure that most of the words are spelled phonetically close but technically wrong, as would befit the spelling ability of the average 7 or 8 year old. If reading is for didactics and delight, then this series, albeit a bit crude, is formulaic fodder for the little farts. Literally.

Yes it's true - Captain Underpants literarily saved my butt and other exciting stories. While I was toiling away at university (ironically in this very same children's lit class), my son was one of those struggling emergent readers. This series really engaged him, and hooked him enough to get him progressing to other series such as Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Holy Son has skipped a grade in his language arts (the school raises the bar for all kids in his grade so there's more time within the curriculum for AP classes in high school) to 7th grade Honors Humanities, which means he's now reading "not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider" or thus spoke Sir Francis Bacon.

Get Smart
This critical thinking and reading thing is most difficult for him. Free translation: it sends him into hissy-fits. Previously guilty of whipping through a book with little or no consideration save having to deliver a 30 second oral account or draw a pretty poster for the wall, Holy Son is now having to stop, jot and droll and this pains him beyond all things.

It's a torturous process for him but probably more agonizing for me, because he makes me stay tethered within a 10 foot radius while he struggles through his humanities homework. I end up being a sounding board more than anything, which seems to work for him.

Holy Son: Mom, I have to ask an evaluative question after reading these two
chapters. How do I do that?

Holy Mom: (tired voice because it's almost 10 o'clock at night by this point) Well I don't know, hon. What's an evaluative question?(he proceeds to explain it to me)

HM: OK, so what transpired in that chapter that's so
pivotal that you're left with a burning question for one of the characters?

HS: What does pivotal mean?

HM: OK, what major event happened - like, did the main character make a big
decision, did something sad happen - that you're left wondering what if they had
made a different choice?

HS: Oh yeah! I get it! OK, I know one.

Sigh.

It's not always that simple. One night, Holy Hub was hard at work for 2-3 hours, helping Holy Son out with a math problem. Now here's the thing - Holy Hub is an aeronautical engineer - he kinda sorta does math for a living. This cracked me up.

Not that my plight is much better. With Holy Son snowboarding all day Wednesdays now, it's all but impossible for him to get any homework done that day so the 2-3 hours he normally has each night is now getting added to the other nights. Which has us all exhausted, as we have to ride his figurative board to get him to finish homework early. Not easy considering both the antagonist and protagonist in this non-fictional homework equation are both attention-deficit. Hence the 10 pm scenes.

And Venus Was Their Name
It wouldn't be so bad, but right now he's in the middle of a Venus Flytrap science fair experiment. Guess who's stuck keeping an eye on these carnivorous little buggers in the daytime to ensure a trap hasn't re-opened? And guess who's helping him feed the plants worms and slugs? It's amazing and creepy to watch the lengths crickets and earthworms will go to in order to escape once trapped.
And who's helping him stay on track with his research? Beats the heck out of snovelling snow outside, but still.

Thank God he's studying Canada right now (sad but true fact - this geography component is a repeat of his 3rd grade Canadian curriculum) so he can semi-coast through at least one course. He has the dubious honour of correcting his teacher whenever she pronounces Newfoundland as New-found-land instead of Newf'n lind, or when she bastardizes Saskatchewan by calling it Sask-catch-oh-wan instead of Sis'catch-ih-won, as Canadians tend to refer to it.

Or when she refers to First Nations people in Canada as American Indians or whenever she calls the Inuit peoples Eskimos. That sort of thing.
No schmidt shmerlock that his school is now able to brag about being the 5th ranked school in the country based on 100% college-readiness upon graduation - the work he's doing in 6th grade with essay preparation and science has me wondering if they could actually present a get into college free card in just a few years.

Maybe one day we'll say it was all worth it. Like when Holy Son is a poor, out-of-work cellist and Holy Daughter is a cruiseship performer or something.

To be fair, there is a silver lining in it for me, if I do manage to stick out this grueling schedule. I am getting pretty gosh darn smart as a middle schooler. I have re-learned what a mitochondrion is and I'm, once again, getting savvy to the ways of MLA citations.

And, to add masochistic insult to injury, I recently started tutoring a 10th grader (sophomore in American-speak) in humanities and international studies. Because apparently, three nights a week of 6th grade coursework isn't enough for me.

I take comfort in knowing that I only have to slog through another 3,000 days of this. And in knowing that pretty soon, at this rate, I'll be able to take my GRE exam. Don't laugh - that's my secret master plan - a graduate degree when my kids go off to college. I'll be so old, they'll have to drive me to school and then carry my books for me.

Yeah, like that'll happen. Never hurts to have a bucket list though. That way, if things don't turn out as planned, you can haul the bucket out back and dump it.

HealthCar & The Open Road

2008-01-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

We bought a new 4-passenger car last month.

It's not exactly top-of-the line. In fact, it's pretty basic. Mileage is negligible, not great. But it's safer than walking the local interstates, praying we don't get run over.

As well we should because for the first time in our life, we are making car payments to the tune of $500 and some a month, although had we opted for the fully-loaded version, we could easily be spending $900 or more per month.

I'm not sure if you've heard of this vehicle - it's called the HealthCar and so far, we've been making payments on it but have yet to even take it out for a test drive.

It doesn't go many places. It takes us to and from a tune-up and vehicle inspection specialist six times a year and also allows for major overhaul trips and emergency road services. And even though most of the year it wears a nice front-end black bra, I can remove the bra once a year and take it to the drive-thru naked for an undercover inspection. If ya know what I'm saying.

Making this vehicle purchase feels pretty awful though, I have to say. It took us 2.5 years to get to this point, but we were getting worried that if we encountered a health emergency with our children, there wouldn't be any public transportation available for them to ride to the hospital on.

It's also been difficult for us because we used to drive a perfectly good car back home. The government supplies every Canadian with a decent model healthcar, free of charge. There are rare exceptions such as if you are self-employed and thus, aren't eligible for an employee car. Then you do have to pay a nominal monthly surcharge for direct government supplied vehicles. And of course, Canadians pay extra and dearly at the end of the year in taxes, but one expects car allowances and taxable benefits when one has a health car with unlimited mileage, free gas and car wash.

Granted, our old car was not top-of-the-line either. Sometimes, if you wanted to go see the auto detailer for a shine, or a paintjob, or if you wanted to get a parts overhaul, you'd have to book an appointment and wait months, sometimes years, depending on the job. But in so many ways, the system seemed healthier and more trustworthy. And the car was so much easier to drive. For one thing, it was an automatic, so I never had to worry about trying to park on a hill or shift gears in rush hour traffic. The provincial governments adminstered the insurance, in concert with federal government monies, so insurance was very streamlined.

And it offered unlimited mileage. You could take for a car wash or tune-up daily or even more, if you liked without worrying about things like a co-pay fee.

Our new Healthcar is a standard transmisison, so we'll be constantly having to shift ideological gears to get anywhere. I'm not sure I like the stickshift thing ~ sometimes I feel like it's constantly stuck in reverse or neutral and decidedly not progressive ~ but I have no choice. Only a privileged or underprivileged few in this country get to drive automatic healthcars - seniors, veterans, military families and low-income earners. The rest of us are stuck driving these so-called fuel-efficient cars.

It wouldn't be so bad but everytime you turn around, there's a parking fee or a toll bridge fee. There are fees for everything - they call it fee-for-service but when you're used to driving a free-for-service healthcar, it's a huge adjustment, having to make sure you have spare change handy everytime you go visit someone to get your car fixed or looked at.

Here's the one tiny thing that I like though. I like that you can just call up and get an appointment to see whoever you want. Immediately. But I just question: at what price? I get scared when I see huge advertising dollars being spent by Healthcar shops, each vying for drivers to come bring their vehicles to them for services. And I get depressed when I read that this entire healthcar motor vehicles program is so dysfunctional and in-bred. It's virtually run by insurance providers and statistics indicate that more than a third of the astronomical costs of the program are wasted on bureaucratic inefficiencies - way more than other developed nations' healthcar transportation programs.

But what choice do we have? Not much, I'm afraid. So we have this car that sits parked and idle. I guess that means we're keeping up with the Joneszes because we're no longer a deprived minority ~ some 16% of the population is left stranded on the side of the open road in this country at any or at least some point in time each year. If and when these poor souls do get access to a Healthcar, studies show they end up taking it out for longer and more expensive road trips and causing traffic jams; having been deprived of basic Point A to Point B trips for how ever long, such as they have.

I know there is this whole, huge underbelly of society that are near and dear to the Healthcar industry - the salesmen, the management organizations, the insurance providers, the various tune-up places, the fuel companies, and all the countless car specialists - and I also know that most Americans don't realize there is a viable alternative or more to the point, that they are entitled and deserve a better system - but if they could see their world like us outsiders do, here's the theme song we, the outsiders, would attach to it. If you're easily offended or belong to one of the aforementioned segements of the population, maybe don't click the link. It has lots of swear words in it. Yet the profanity fits, and this system is nothing, if not extremely profane to my health and wellness sensibilities.

You see, I've always been an advocate for a Healthcar incentive program, whereby the less you use and abuse the system, the more you're rewarded. And where car specialists are rewarded for how quickly and efficiently they can treat and manage your car problems. And where the pharmafuel companies, who own Washington, no longer get to host their little puppet shows, control government policies, and quite generally, foster and prosper from a system that is so grossly unhealthy.

But on the off chance you clicked the link, and heard even just a few seconds, then you'll at least better appreciate why I've nicknamed our new vehicle the PIS Schmidt car or PISS car for short.

And then if naming the thing wasn't apropos enough, I even saw the neighbor's dog come over and lift a leg to the backtire the other day. What other proof does one need?

Suffice to say, I'll be riding my donkey on a daily basis and taking the car out only when necessary. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything

2008-01-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

Eureka: I've Arrived!

Thank God for my brother. Had it not been for him, I would have had no idea that in cosmic, metaphysical terms, this is my big year.

You see, I just turned 42 less than a week ago. Aha, you exclaim, nodding your head. (Or perhaps you're still scratching it like I was). If you've read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy then of course you'll know, as Sir Douglas did, that 42 is THE number. It's the "answer to life, the universe, to everything." Well, finally ~ I've come of age, much like a vintage wine or marinated steak.

Which is good, because the world just keeps getting crazier and more inexplicable. We came home New Year's Eve to the disturbing and shocking news of the Carnation Christmas Eve murder spree, in which six immediate family members were murdered by a psycho woman and her boyfriend, who were living rent-free in a trailer on the property of her parents. Ultimately, it was all about a bit of money and sibling rivalry. The twisted sister familial parallels are rather disturbing to us.

So in a world gone decidedly madder, it's nice to know that I now hold the golden compass in the number of rings of my tree trunk. I shall be the veritable solution - way, truth, life and all this year, rather than the problem or so the theory goes. I have to confess, I much rather like being an even rather than an odd number. I even feel younger and I even feel wiser. Wouldn't that be the grandest of elixers if it really transpired in such fashion - to be younger and wiser.

Resolute Day

That said, in the spirit of bold performative speech acts, I declare 2008 the year of 366 resolute days. It's brilliant really. 3+6+6=15 and 1+5=6 and so does 4+2 and 6 is mad at 7 because 789, and all other manner of things numeric.

I have to admit that this year did not start off with quite the same big bang theory. I was more than happy to shut the door on 2007 an hour early, but alas, Holy Family had other plans for my inclusion in their mandatory fun, which was not altogether fun, I confess, considering I had just spilled burgundy candle wax on our white living room carpet (I'll do anything to justify ripping out said carpet and putting hardwood in although thanks to Holy Hub's tenacity and paper towel and iron home remedies readily available via Google, we will be keeping our carpet for yet another day or two gajillion). So I stayed up, rather unwillingly, another hour, and then happily said sayonara to the year. Slammed the door and locked it and alas, I turned around and another door marked 2008 had opened.

I rather like this notion of turning the page of a book (or opening and closing doors, as the above metaphor illustrates) ~ turning the pages of life, moment by moment, to a fresh, clean page, uninked by life's messiness and candle wax spills.

Which is why I am attracted to the concept of breaking my resolutions down into bite-size, manageable goals. One day at a time.

I stumbled upon a site that sums this notion up nicely. The web author of IResolveTo.com advocates this very thing. She insists that it all begins with a promissory note - "I resolve to achieve my New Year's resolutions, One Resolution, One Day At a Time for One Year," and that it begins and ends with a five-step plan: Dare To Dream, Decide, Define, Develop A Plan, and Do It Daily. Every day is D day.

This, to me, seems far more achievable than setting grandiose goals on January 1st that are summarily broken on the 2nd and long forgotten by the 31st of December.

Waking up with a promise to self is a great way to start a day. Today I resolve to...(insert daily resolution here). But like any bold sailing into unchartered waters such as this might entail, a bit of course correction is necessary from time to time. And that is all well and good. Every day is a page - turn, turn, turn.

Here's a little true confession. I don't know about you, but I'm not Über gut at making and keeping promises to myself. I rather suck at it, actually. So this New Year's, I've changed my language. Instead of wrapping my promises up in futuristic end results that seem so out there and gosh-darn unachievable and then spending the whole time looking over my shoulder at Mount Failure in my rear view mirror, I'm binding it all up in the crumbs of effort I drop along the trail in the momentary journey. Baby steps and little crumbs.

I looked up resolution to be sure I "got" the meaning. I was surprised to learn that "resolution" actually stems from resolutium, which means "the process of reducing things into simpler forms." Breaking the big goals down to bite size pieces. Resolute means to "hold firmly" but in my mind's eye, the word resolute also connotes isolation to me, perhaps because, as a Canadian, I am long familiar with the hamlet of Resolute Bay (gateway to the North Pole), way up yonder in the remote Arctic territory of Nunavut.

Thus, I fancy the thought of making every day a Resolute Day in 2008, in the spirit of ancient mariners, who: "Like one, that on a lonesome road / Doth walk in fear and dread, / And having once turned round walks on, / And turns no more his head; / Because he knows, a frightful fiend /Doth close behind him tread." If I may be so bold as to turn Coleridge's albatross into a burdensome chimeric of my own chagrin: The failed ghosts of New Year's past which haunt me still.

And I fancy the idea of injecting meaning and daily rejuvination into my life this year.

As such, I hereby entitle my 2008 book The Answer to Life, The Universe & Everything: My Calendric Search for the Ultimate Question to the Meaning of Life. It shall be the non-abridged, 366 day version.

Donkey Yotey

And how shall said journey begin? On a donkey, of course. I chose donkey as the icon for my overarching pilgrimage this year because HeHaW is the abbreviation for my theme: Health, Happiness and Harmonic Wealth. And what the heck? It helps to have a sense of humour about such things.

If the visual and sound effects fit and all that.

Yes, the donkey is apropos, methinks. I'm beginning the year leisurely, as I always do, analyzing whether I should really bother with resolutions that I'll only end up breaking anyways. The last (and only) time I actually stuck to my resolution (to quit smoking) was 18 years ago on January 1st, 1990. Then, as now, I was on a mission to achieve something life-changing. And apart from one wee cheat puff three weeks into my born-again non-smoker mission, I've never looked back. I've turned the pages on the smoking book and glued them shut.

And as you just read, I'm braying and generally, balking in my ever-stubborn attempt to stay put and not move forward.

Donkeys also live large in pilgrimage lore - think Jesus riding into Jerusalem, Don Quixote sauntering past windmills, and even Donkey's travels to Far Far Away in Shrek, if you must.

So it's a trusty steed for my travels this year. Most especially because if the truth be told, I'm going to need to ride my ass daily if I hope to accomplish my goals and dreams of harmonic health, wealth and happiness (which now sounds like some kind of tribal greeting - "haheweha" instead of my donkey mating call, but that's OK: it never hurts to have an anagramic theme when embarking on metaphysical quests).

So that's how my story begins this year, and I'm sticking to it. Like flies to a donkey's tail or tale, as this year's story would have it.

Speaking of flies, I'm heading out tomorrow to purchase four healthy Venus Flytrap plants for Holy Son's Science Fair experiment.

He will be measuring the digestion rate of said carniverous plants by feeding each one a different type of bug. And while I'm at this shop, which specializes in exotic plants and indoor sun solutions, I may look into purchasing a sun lamp for myself. Because sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. And happy, happy, joy, joy is where it's at this year.

Dichotomy Lobotomy

I received two books for my birthday that will also figure prominently in my quest for harmony this year. The first, a gift from Holy Bro, is How To See Yourself As You Really Are: A Practical Guide to Self-Knowledge by the Dalai Lama (translated by Jeffrey Hopkins). I look forward to cultivating loving kindness towards myself and those around me and to ridding myself of toxic thought.

The second book, also Eastern in orientation and one I bought for myself with b-day gift card monies, is Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Wayne Dyer. I've had the PBS special taped for months but have yet to get around to watching it. I'm looking forward to reading the book and reflecting on the Tao Te Ching, an 81 verse text of chinois philosophie that deconstructs the ebbs and flows of the universe and the nature of all things. I especially relish flirting with polarities in thought and action, as a transformative tool, in accordance with what Lao-tsu instructs in the Tao Te Ching.

Thus, instead of flight in a fight-or-flight scenario, I will try fight. Or instead of action, I will choose wu-wei or non-action (effortless doing). Easier said than done or not done or whatever, but I'm nothing if not totally for the effortless path.

There you go, I took you there, albeit the long round about way, rather like the blind might lead the enlightened (think Pin the Tail on the Donkey). But this is a magical, mystical, inter-galactic tour and I am a kind of hitchhiker's (ie. lurker's) guide this year, after all.

There's only one rule if you're going to follow along on this two-bit donkey yote pilgrimage - no baggage allowed (note to self: no baggage). My ass can only take so much weight and God knows, it's packing enough already. And there's only one safety precaution - to avoid arriving at our unknown destination prior to my ass, I would ask that you remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened. Any questions? Fire away, 'cuz I've got an answer for everything now.

On that note, happy New Year, fellow time and space beings.

Do you have any resolutions that you'd care to share? Fork 'em over. After all, you know the saying: ass, grass or gas - nobody rides for free.

I'll Be Home For Christmyth

2007-12-22T18:24:00.000-08:00

I've acquired a lithp. We're back home in Edmonton for the holidays and even though we've jumped ahead an hour to Mountain Standard Time, I feel as though I've timeslipped back a million years to the Christmyths of my childhood.

Pick a holiday jingle and chances are I've been singing it. The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful....let is snow, let it snow, let is snow. I can't believe I've already forgotten the feeling of freezing snot dangling from my nose. Or the sound of crunchy snow beneath the feet or the pain of thawing numbed fingers and toes as they adjust to heat again. I've quickly been reminded and it's only been about -14 celcius ('though it did dip to minus 25 the other night which translates to freakin' cold in Fahrenheit). Yes, baby, it's cold outside. But it's nice to be home amongst friends and kin. My people. I've missed Canadians. I ran into a fellow Canadian woman at a Nutcracker party last weekend and we both agreed Canadians look distinctly different from Americans. I can immediately spot Canadians. Unless Canucks happen to live in a couple of affluent pockets of Canada's major cities, chances are they are dressed ultra casual and driving a pick-up. It's so not like the West Coast dressy casual look of our fair American city, where highlighted blonde hair, French manicures and pedicures and designer label outfits are the looks du jour. I've seen many First Nation peoples and Ukrainians, too. Both of these are my people, too. Speaking of Ukrainian, I'm looking forward to pyrogies and cabbage rolls for Christmas at my birthmom's. Yes, it's nice to be home where memories loom large. We drove by the courthouse and I recalled my days there, working as a judicial clerk whilst covertly searching the basement archives for my sealed adoption file. Driving by The Fairmont Hotel Macdonald brought back fond memories of working late nights in sales and promotions, in prep to re-open the grand dame to the public after an extensive restoration. Everywhere I turn, I see stomping grounds and old haunts and the ghosts of Christmas' past. I recall going to visit my grandfather in the penultimate days to Christmas - usually Christmas Eve -as a child. I remember the excitement of seeing the lights and hearing the holiday music and waiting for fresh snow so we could go toboganning. And I remember sneaking out Christmas Eve as a teenager with my imaginary Catholic friend to go to midnight mass, so that I could stay out til 2am. And I remember Christmas morning coming way too early those years.

I had forgotten how pretty the city is, all dressed for Christmas. And of course, my children have been away so long, they've all but forgotten the home and native city of their parental units. We are here to visit grandparents and siblings and other friends and family until the 30th. We have three families here so visiting everyone is impossible and very exhausting.

Holy Hub flies in tonight and then the real excitement will begin, as we visit families, check out the holiday lights of Candy Cane lane, and do our last minute stocking stuffer shopping.

Anyhoo, hope your holidays are filled with as much holiday fun, feast and frolic with family and friends - both mandatory and otherwise - as our's are sure to be.

Seasons greetings, one and all.

I Saw Mommy Dissin' Santa Claus

2007-12-20T11:22:00.001-08:00

Nineteen second photo, 19 bucks. And Santa isn't even looking at the camera.

Vive la Suisse!

2007-12-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

Our Swiss passports came in Saturday.

I feel authen+ically Swiss now, minus the multi-lingual talent, love for stinky cheese and ability to blow hot air musically through a mountain horn. Yet, I do possess a fierce nationalistic pride for this tiny, mountainous place I have only spent 21 days in pretty near to as many years ago. And I'm a minor shareholder in the Lindt company and I kinda think that has to count for something. I know enough French to comment on Micheline's shopping centre habits (that junior high textbook Micheline gal - she sure did get around) ~ as well as to make my urgent need to pee well known in Geneva. And I can say rooster and that's crazy! and I love you and schmidthead in German, which are all good words to sprinkle into tourist pub conversations in the northern Cantons, if nothing else.

This fierce love and pride is definitely about the mystique and a kind of disjointed heritage. Holy Hubby's father emigrated from Switzerland to Canada as a young child - although they went to Quebec so technically that doesn't count. They moved back to Switzerland but he left again in his late-teens, to Denmark and then again to Alberta to work as a farmhand, which is where Holy Hub's mother comes into the picture. I like teasing her that she was the farmer's daughter.

And although his Dad could speak heaps of languages - German, Swiss German, Danish, a bit of French - he all but left his Swiss-ness behind when he moved continents across the water. So apart from learning how to yell dirty, rotten swears at the cat and say 'ich ube geige' in German (which translates to 'I practice the violin' - a talent, alas, he does not possess), Holy Hub learned nothing about his father's homeland. They visited Grossmutti once or twice and celebrated Christmas Eve in traditional Swiss fashion, ate spatzli and enjoyed fondues from time to time, but that was about the extent of it.

It is sneaking up to 17 years since Grossmutti passed away - it seems like yesterday and we mourn her still - she was a dear, sweet lady (despite her penchance for serving lumpy cream in coffee and warm soft drinks on hot days). So quite naturally, his father feels no burning ties to Switzerland anymore. Her house in Aarau was sold, and with it, that final sense of home.

But we still feel the love and the tug of this begged, borrowed, stolen Swiss heritage. Holy Son has begun studying German at his international school and it is our hope that by his senior year, he will be armed with enough of a fluency to travel, study and perhaps even live abroad, if he chooses. Have passport, will travel.

Getting these passports has been on our to-do list for...get this...19 years. That's how long ago we initiated the paperwork process. And then set it aside. And then picked it up again when we lived in Pakistan. And then let it slide. So this time around, living outside Canada again, we decided to pursue this incomplete task in earnest, fearing that if we didn't, Switzerland would suddenly decide to revoke the grandfathered citizenship clause for all Swiss abroad not born or raised in the country. As it stands now, this citizenship is one that our children can pass down through the family pipeline for generations to come. And as it stands now in world history, having dual Canadian and Swiss citizenship is not too shabby of a deal.

So here we are - we're our own global village now, with dual-ing passports and a US green card that is right around the bend into the new year. We've just received our advance parols (travel permits allowing us to depart the US), which is a good thing since we're leaving the country tomorrow. Might have had to sneak out on our Swiss passports and that could have been messy.

By passport standards, the Swiss passport kicks butt ~ there is a colorful page and accompanying image that depicts each of the 26 Cantons.

Now I guess the tricky part is going to be putting it to use before it expires in 10 years.

Nutcracker Sweet

2007-12-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

Warning: This blog contains overt boastful parental statements concerning said blogger's beautiful, talented and holy children. Said blogger is aware that this may be the second blog in as many weeks to contain such abject praise and devotion but nevertheless, makes no apologies for this fact. After all, there's a reason the tag line says, same schmidt, different blog and there's a reason this blog is titled Schmidt Happens. 'Tis the season for fawning folly. Having said all that, if you should find maternal bragging to be in the least bit offensive, repulsive or disturbing, then do heed the following rating: BB (boring blog)....Reader discretion is advised.

We made it through another Nutcracker extravaganza season.

Holy Son was, once again, performing the roles of the Nephew, Nutcracker and Nutcracker prince in a local production of The Nutcracker with his sister's dance company this past weekend.

His sister danced in Act II as an angel and she was, to steal a quote from her: "heavenly." This was the first year she was able to audition and land a part, but hopefully not her last. She was terrific and when she moved across the stage with her big hoop skirt, it looked like she was floating on air.

Last year, there were two full December weekends dedicated to The Nutcracker - one for tech and dress rehearsals and the following weekend for four performances. A venue screw-up this year necessitated that everything be packed into one weekend, so the kids were up to their eyeballs this weekend with rehearsals Friday night and Saturday and two performances Sunday afternoon.

It was exhausting but rewarding. Exhausting because doing hair and make-up on a boy who hates me so much as touching a stray strand of hair. And don't even get me started on how he felt about having eyeshadow, foundation, transluscent powder, blush and clear lip gloss. It weren't perrty, Berty. Multiple that equation by the number of times Holy Daughter screamed, yowled and cried while we attempted to get her chin length bob into a bun at the very top of her head - thank God for gel and plenty of pins - suffice to say, it wasn't simple math. More like a combination of weird science and classic literature.

Good Ole Charlie sums up Nutcracker weekends best I think..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." But as in this last Christmas past, all the performances were near flawless, the music was seasonally inspiring and the performers enjoyed theatrical fun and fame. And of course it was rewarding to see how both kids continue to get recital and theatre stage experience, such that butterflies and jitters are pre-emptors to that wonderful feeling of achievement rather than dread. They both love to perform and are the very picture of grace under fire backstage. Me? I'm a nervous wreck.

Oh, and did I mention that our Prince was a regal sight to behold? (Re-enter boastful mother, stage left). This year, he looked more comfortable on stage and he even managed to smile and look quite animated for most of the show. Holy Hubby and I looked at each other in amazement, trying to figure out whose gene pool this theatrical flair came from - we decided it was the stork.

I was momentarily relieved to see that he had all but dispensed with last year's nervous tic of licking his lips at 10 second intervals ~ only to discover that he had, in fact, replaced it with an annoying if unconscious habit of grasping his long shirt sleeve cuffs and flexing his hands at odd and/or awkward moments.

Despite these minor moments, he provided great props to all the ballerinas, who were really the dancing stars. Holy Son had very simple choreography - no real dancing to speak of (which is good because he is not a dancer). He was there to look good, as the only male, apart from the small karate mice and the adult men at the party scene during Act I.

And he even managed to amass a bit of a following. One of the tiny Ginger cookie dancers took quite a shine to him - sending him little love notes all weekend to let him know what a great actor and dancer he was. She sent him so many notes that he relented at the end, with his mother's prodding, and presented her with a flower after the final curtain call. It was very sweet, and doubly so because he did this in front of his girlfriend, who made a special trip to come watch his performance.

He received lots of praise from friends, family and strangers and was even asked to pose for pictures with young children who were smitten to be able to see a real live Nutcracker Prince in person.

The weekend was topped off with a visit from my brother and SIL from Victoria, Canada, who stayed for a good time, not a long time. (Y'all come back now, ya hear?) I lived with them when Holy Son was born 11 years ago and Holy Hub was starting his Pakistan contract, so it was a bit of a shock for my sister-in-law to stand nose to nose with her nephew and realize that in a matter of weeks, he'll be taller than her.

So that was our backstage pass weekend. Short, busy and Nutcracker sweet.

Coquets, Cults & Circuitious Conundrums

2007-12-01T15:15:00.001-08:00

CopyKat
There Katie goes, copykatt'ng me again. And there I go, blogging about her again.

It started when she married Tom Cruise, who shares a rather dubious honour with Holy Hub of being born on the same day and year. Coincidence? I think not.

And now it would seem she's doing her married white female act once more - getting her hair cut and styled like mine.

Next she'll be moving next door, and starting a religion blog or something.

On the brINK
I heard the funniest thing this morning. It sums up precisely how inane our laws are.

Apparently it's illegal in this state and a few others for anyone under 18 to get a tattoo - parental consent or not.

I personally think this is a terrific law because I don't know of one single teenager (or 30 year old for that matter) who has the ability to project ahead in their life to the age of 63 to know with absolute certainty if they'd still be happy with their kitschy and wrinkly shoulder art.

But get this. Last week, a local 14-year old, JW boy dying from cancer made headlines for refusing critical blood transfusion work that would reputedly have saved his life. He died hours later. A judge had granted him the right to do so, on account of his religious convictions. Without parental signature.

So let me get this straight: our sonic youth cannot get a tattoo in some parts of this country but it's their party, they can die if they want to?

What a mixed-up, crazy, inane ride we're on. I'm just glad I'm sitting in the back with the party'ers because this trip would be hell on wheels if I wasn't medicated at least part of the time. It's not all fun and games back here though. The proximity to the washroom is a downwind nightmare, the ride is not exactly smooth, there ain't no view out the tinted windows to be had, and it's standing room only.

Not to mention that I'm stuck beside some guy who keeps mumbling, whoa dude...like who's driving this bus anyways?

Beats me. Ask the 14-year old - he'll know.

Walking in My Winter Underwear

2007-12-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

I miss the kids bounding up or down stairs with thrilling exclaims of, "It's snowing, it's snowing!"

But as would be the case with most places we move to, thinking we've escaped the worst bites of winter, winter follows us. We moved to Halifax in 1988 - it was bitterly cold - one of the worst winters on record. We moved to Pakistan a decade later and both winters, we got unseasonably cold weather, as in seriously, wear fleece, crank the heat up and shiver me timbers cold weather. Just prior to Pakistan, when I moved to Victoria for the birth of our son, we were snowed under in the worst blizzard ever for weeks.

So while I miss the so-called timeliness of these excited outbursts, alas, I'll admit - we still get them. Winter has followed us once again: it has snowed here every winter since moving here. We now live up on a mountain, or so the locals dub this them thar hill we're perched upon...so we get snow where others might not.

But for it to snow, like clockwork white, on December 1st, the first day of Advent in the Schmidt house, when six chocolate and/or toy-filled calendars (three each this year) vie to be the first window ripped open or pocket peeked in ~ that is simply and seasonally divine.

Yes, that's right kiddies - we woke up to a blanket of white this morning. Not quite skiing or tobaganning white, but if it's snowing here, it's dumping in the mountains.

This is timely because we will be setting up our newly-arrived, beaut and Noble 8 ft. Christmas tree in our vaulted living room tonight. We'll be lighting a fire, drinking some Merlot, listening to Holy Son play Good King Wenceslas on the cello, and lifting little Miss Wonder-filled up so she can dangle ornaments from the highest boughs.

And we'll be praying that we don't get the weeklong power outage we got this time last year during the wind storms. We managed to set the tree up but had to decorate it in the dark and weren't able to enjoy the lights until 8 days later.

On that note, I'm off to a snowflake workshop to make Christmas ornaments with Holy Daughter.

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

My Son is an Orc Dork & Other Exciting Stories

2007-11-21T08:27:00.000-08:00

Pride
Last week we got to watch our son play cello with his school orchestra in their performing arts center, which was a giant leap from standing in a crowded elementary school gym, listening to both the school band and orchestra. I'm so glad he chose orchestra and from a daily grind perspective, I'm pleased he chose the cello. Having to endure repetitive notes from some of those other high-pitched wind or string instruments...I don't think I could take it. Although I will concede that the viola sounds kinda cool.

For orchestra pieces, they played Sahara Crossing along with a couple of other impressive numbers. Have a listen - it's Übercool and perfectomundo for a budding young cellist. We were then able to watch performances by the two other middle and high school orchestras, allowing us to hear where our orc dork will be heading. You know what they say: if it ain't baroque, don't fix it. Unfortunately, there's a fine line between baroque and broke, if our $40.00 monthly cello rental and soon-to-be private cello tutoring fees are any indication.

The closest I ever came to string as a child was making cat's cradles. And my only acquaintance with musical instruments was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on my recorder and taking drum lessons from Bob Ego's brother at The Drum Shop on Whyte Ave in Edmonton. Bob was the drummer in Streetheart ( a famous Canadian rock band) at the time. I don't remember his brother's name. And I never did nail the 64th note on my drum pad. But I played percussion with precision, pride and pizazz. I was a boom chick boom boom chick.

Fat lot of good it has ever done me except that I have been able, over the years, to air drum that wicked drum sequence in In the Air Tonight with impressive accuracy, and speaking of air, I have become quite adept at playing the nose sax on dance floors, when the moment has called for it. This is many musical movements removed from our budding young Yo-Yo Ma ma's boy alchemic ability to read, interpret and transform sheet music from sight to sound.

As the Decade Fades
In just a few days, Holy Son turns 11. I accidentally bumped into him last week in the kitchen and had to take a second look because it felt like I ran into a Huskies linebacker. Who was this giant 5 ft. 4 inch, blue-eyed, teenage-wannabee dudester and what was he doing in my kitchen?

More to the point, what happened to our little eggghead (forceps babe), our baby whoa-wah, our meistieman? Time is the greatest of tricksters. One minute you're bathing your bare-assed babe in the sink, the next minute you're having to remind your bare-assed boy that mooning the family in the kitchen is perhaps not the wisest of options, considering that the next door neighbors have full view of his pretty posterior.

Ten years ago today, we were busy planning his first birthday party in Pakistan and desperately searching Islamabad for black string licorice. We planned the party to be a bit of a blow-out event, because we were about to be booted out of the country - a long story involving Nawaz Sharif not wanting to honour a signed joint venture agreement between his predecessor, Bhutto, and zat faymoose Canadiene PM bastaird, his right dishonourable, Mis-yewer Jean Createn. And a rather short bit about Holy Hub's company not realizing that the only way a contract really gets inked in the third world is when a little dirty money gets laundered.

This first birthday party and last big hooplah was hysterical. A dozen or so ex-pat babes from my Moms and Tots group attended, with parents, ayahs and assorted other servants in tow. As I recall, our son was the only one of the bunch who had his sea legs, having recently learned to walk. Holy Hub's boss graciously lent their lawn for the affair, which included hot dogs, chips, a double-sized zoo cake (adorned with a black licorice train track begged, borrowed, stolen from the British commissary) and last but not least, camel rides.
What a difference a decade makes. He still runs around impulsively sticking his fingers into light sockets and deliberately defying me whenever I tell him he can't do something. But we no longer see camels strut past our house enroute back to their villages miles beyond and centuries apart from the city confines of Islamabad.

I have a theory. It's a story I've always stuck to and that is that all that early social conditioning with weekly happy hour at the Canadian Club and having a bevy of Thai beauties ooh and ahh over him throughout his early travels to Thailand has forever shaped and altered him.

He now spends an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror, fiddling with hair products in order to get his hair styled just right. And his cell phone rings off the hook night after night with calls from girls. Pick a girl's name - chances are good it's saved in his contact list.

Two weeks ago, he decided to plan a group date at the local schwanky mall as a public way to be able to hang out with one particular girl he's pretty sweet on. He met up with about 8 girls from school and one of his scout buddies, who ended up bailing on him early afternoon. Having to go from perfume shop to Claire's to Mariposa so that all these tween girls could try on dresses and get the boys' opinions - that was too much for the other boy.

Prejudice
Holy Son, on the other hand, ate the whole thing up in one super big gulp. He was like a metrosexual sheik with a harem that day, trying on men's colognes at Sephora and modeling 'dudes' dress shirts at Hollister while the girls sighed and complimented him profusely. The only low point was when he walked into Zumiez, a skater-type shop, and the kid behind the counter called him a Hollister fag. He heard about the comment after the fact but it didn't bother him overly much because he knew that he looked good in his Hollister shirt and that he looked even better surrounded by a bunch of pretty girls. He chalked it up to jealousy.

And so begins his next decade, which shall be defined largely by image and typecasting, popularity and peer status, athleticism and academic standings.

I'm proud that he's self-confident enough to ignore snide comments. And that he was courageous enough in the midst of his gang of wallflower friends, to ask the girl he likes to dance in public view of all the 6th to 8th graders at the middle school social last month. And that he's brave enough to take the lead role in the Nutcracker again this year, despite not being a dancer and being the only boy in the cast.

And that he never hesitates to step up to the microphone in order to thank a coach or leader on the team or troop's behalf. And that he feels as comfortable playing sports or snowboarding or going on a scout backpacking trip, as he does sitting at the lunchroom table with a bunch of giggling girls. And that he instinctively knows to open doors and say please and thank you, and to do a good turn daily.

But I miss the little guy who impulsively yanked on the dreadlock of the sadhu way back that cold December day in '97 in Kathmandu. Not that he's forgotten the fine art of yanking - his sister's chain sees the bulk of it these days.

Time flies in the blink of an eye. The next time I should happen to glance up, my prodigal son will be looking down upon me in ways too multiple to count.

He's already begged to skip a birthday this year on account of the fact that all his school friends are one full year older than him and he wants to be, too. I want to tell him that I already have my parental seatbelt notched as tight as I can on this whirlwind ride that keeps getting faster and crazier and dizzier and more terrifying with every spin, and that every time I sneak a peek at the top of the track, I'm reminded how precarious this game called mortality really is.

To appease him at his birthday party with friends this weekend, we will put a generic sparkler on his cake and trust that suffices. It will catch up with him when he's 15 though, and his friends are driving while he is not.

As The Whirl'd Turns: Parental Edition. One minute it's Johnson's baby powder and sweet chamber music, the next minute it's defiance, car keys and tuition dues.

Stop the ride. I think I'm going to throw up.

Mediums, Channeling & Other Occult Musings

2007-11-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

God, Glitz and Politix
I finally get what drove Bruce Springsteen to pen 57 Channels (And Nothing On).

Two years ago when we moved to the States, one of the perverted prospects I found myself looking forward to was increased television programming. Goodbye 'predominant and distinct' Canadian programming (merci beaucoup to the CBC and Canadian tax dollars)....hello big network TV due south, which has continued to hold a certain mystique for me, since that much beloved day we first opted for cable television upon moving to the big city in 1976.Well, ask and ye shall receive.

Yes, I got the plethora of television programming, it's true, but it wasn't exactly the kind I had bargained for. In order to work my way up the food chain on the remote to the so-called higher channels where Biography and History Channels are located, I first need to negotiate through a minefield of home shopping, C-Span, local political and no less than four Christian broadcasting networks first. ow there's nothing wrong with any of these channels per se ~ this is a so-called free country, after all ~but insofar as they happen to be mandatory broadcasting networks that take up a huge chunk of American programming, I think they speak volumes. If you are what you program, then it is safe to assume that consumerism, nationalistic political speak and evangelism fairly define the cultural fabric of this nation.

Schmeebs & Dweebs
Conversely, Islamic nations don't get quite the same picture of America.

Tune into their English channel fare, and you'll find the obligatory BBC News, together with two of our finest, quality television exports - Baywatch and MTV.

I remember sitting in my modest shalwar kamiz some 10 years ago, watching a retro Baywatch episode with a few gaggle-eyed Pakistani (male) hotel workers in the lobby of the boutique hotel that we were living at for a time, and having to give these boys a reality check that North American women don't actually strut the streets in Pamela Sue Anderson attire ~ beach and Spring Break locales aside.

This seemed to tarnish their American dream, but regardless, the impression was formed and I remember feeling relieved for once that I had chosen to dress in modest local attire that day. Small wonder though, that some/many/most of them have a narrow, and some (not I) might claim false, impression of American culture.

We are what we broadcast and always have been. In fact, the more other-worldly, the better, at times. Embedded in that 1938 Orson Wells radio wave oratory was the fear of impending doom and gloom of the world; which was an apt projection, given that these were the penultimate moments leading up to WWII. Conversely, broadcasting also reflects our greatest dreams, such as it did on that beautiful summer day of 69, when Neil Armstrong provided one of the most infamous soundbites about the seamless labyrinth between one small human and all of humanity.
Sometimes these broadcasts meme our highest familial ideals ~ think Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best ~ and sometimes they remind us that we are not as evolved a species as Darwin once claimed - or so the plethora of reality TV will tell us. To be fair, the one bright spot in reality television programming of late was the $70 million raised for charity this past spring during the special airing of Idol Gives Back.

So if we are what we watch, what sayeth this about turn-of-the-millenium America? Does this neo-religio/politico/consumerism broadcasting instantly gratify us, or are more and more of us beginning to tune out rather than tune in to the endless array of garbage strewn across the telewaves of the atmosphere?I, for one, am selective.

When I want my garbage escapist programming, ABC more than delivers with my perennial faves of the moment - Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters and Desperate Housewives ~ three of the best satirical abstracts of our popular culture as one could ever hope for.

When I want to know what fears and fascist food du jour stream the consciousness and neo-con-tours of this nation, I watch Fox News. Or Glenn Beck. Either suffices.When I crave subtle imprinting of subliminal imagery on my brain (heh, don't knock it - it's cheaper than frontal lobotomy surgery and often as effective) - I watch CNN News. And when I wish to live in a bubble and not have any news from the world outside our immediate 50 mile radius, I tune into the local Seattle news channels: they always deliver on this front.

Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?
Children's programming has come a long way since the shows of old from my childhood - Romper Room, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and that great Canadian classic, The Friendly Giant. I loved the Friendly Giant and all those other mythical TV heroes, real and cartooned. Sometimes I despair the world will never know another man like him.
But if you follow the yellow brick road back to the 70s kid's TV, Sesame Street was The destination. It was utopia. Still is. (Oops - no sooner do I post this than I read a day later about warnings on old school Sesame Street episodes - what is the world coming to?)

Unfortunately, retro shows such as this get lost in the remote shuffle. Enuf of Snuffleupagus. PBS is many, mucho, muy numbers removed on the remote control from Nickelodeon TV, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, which is the land of the living dead where I often find my zombie daughter, when left to her own electronic devices.

She is so very much a product of this new media age of kid's programming ~ where product merchandising, the Net, and TV are one big happy ménage à trois ~ that I'm fairly convinced a cultural anthropologist need focus their lens no further afield than her bedroom for the perfect cultural study. Providing, of course, they can find a pulse and some semblance or sign of life, so mesmorized by the tube is she.

I can't begin to recount the number of times she has the sold the merits, features and benefits of a particular product, or imparted a little known piece of trivia, or even better, used a particular brand of humour with me. I ask her how she knows these things. The answer never changes: TV.

To television nay-sayers who see TV as the devil's babysitter, I say hear me out. TV is a form of junk food that is not good for the digestive system of kids, to be sure, but there are, at least, some merits.

I credit Popcorn Playhouse, a popular Saturday morning show that aired in my hometown of Edmonton and which featured a goldmining segment, with teaching me the fundamentals of kitty litter poop scooping. Digging for nuggets or turds, as it were, was all about depth of the scoop and quick flicks of the wrist.

Be this good, bad, ugly or a chimera of all three, TV is nurturing my daughter's inner diva. Whether this is because of too many Spongebob marathons, I cannot rightly say, but I do know that my daughter has a wickedly good sense of humour and keen sense of comedia timing, not to mention acute appreciation for voice, pause and intonation; things not as easily or affordably grasped from books or live theatre.

Case in point, she strutted on stage last week at her annual school cultural festival, and whilst many of her international peers jammed out at the mic, and shuffled away, too afraid to speak, she bucked the trend by confidently striding up to the microphone, boldly introducing herself, her class teacher, and the country from which she hailed, as though her obtrusive red maple leaf-shaped felt toque and bright, bold Team Canada hockey jersey weren't proof enough. "My name is (Holy Daughter) and I'm from Canada." It won't be long before she'll be drinking beer and spouting I.Am.Canadian rants, and/or I used to be Canadian rants.

And while she doesn't owe all of her personality to TV, it owns a fair chunk of her. I know this is not a good thing, but in the cosmic scheme of things, when this grand alien experiment is finally over and the mothership comes to get us, she will fit in perfectly with the rest of us homosapien drones.

It's true - I saw it on TV once.

Crazy 8

2007-11-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

I totally forgot that I got tagged late last week by Brenda. Oops. Sorry, Brenda. Time flies when you're as scatterbrained as I am most of the time.

OK, so here's how it goes:

(1) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves

(2) People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.

(3) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

(4) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

OK, so in no particular order, here's my Crazy 8 list of random, crazy things about me:

1) I am such a bargain shopper that I have been known to walk from one end of West Edmonton Mall, the world's largest shopping and entertainment complex, and back again to the first store I entered, in order to save a dollar or two. I go into paralysis by analysis mode when it comes to any kind of comparison shopping and oftentimes, I come home empty handed because I always think there's another better deal out there somewhere. Which there is. This explains why we haven't gotten around to doing most of our furniture shopping since moving in.

2) I can't swallow pills, no matter whether they are two tonne horsepills or eensie weensie birth control pills. So I end up chewing them. Most of them taste bitter and gross, so I wouldn't recommend this practice. One time, Holy Hubby got sick of hearing me whine and complain about my awful toothache so he secretly crushed some Tylenol 3's in my chicken noodle soup and didn't confess until after I told him the miracle of how the soup mysteriously took away all my pain.

3) Whenever my husband and I are in an elevator alone together, I always have to kiss him.

This annoys him, because of how obsessive-compulsive I am about it.

4) I'm also obsessive compulsive about picking his belly button and toe lint, and smoothing his extremely-unruly eyebrows. These things annoy him even more than elevator kissing, but what can I say? OCD habits die hard.

5) I have a thing about plastic bubble wrap. I can't just pop one, I have to pop them all.

I once told Holy Hub that he really didn't need to worry about fancy presents and wrapping - all he needs get me for Christmas is bubble wrap. And I mean it. I noticed the other day that Target sells rolls of it. I couldn't resist walking by and squeezing a few. I was just getting into it when my daughter heard the popping and caught me in the act. She yelled very loudly so everyone in the store could hear, so I had to stop. Which really sucked, because I was....on a roll. Sigh.

6) I get mad at my kids if I catch them pronouncing the letter zed as zee. Or asking for a soda instead of a pop. Or referring to runners as sneakers. Or calling something as quintessentially Canadian as a toque, a hat. It's not a hat, it's a toque. And I'm not talking annoyed mad here. I mean I get mad and yell at them for assimilating the way a good immigrant is supposed to. Talk about a crazy Canuck, eh?

7) I am a dentist's worst nightmare. I was recently turned down as a patient at the UW Dentistry office because "I'm not a good potential patient candidate for student dentists." Translation? Patient from hell. I have a bad gag reflex, mostly due to the latex gloves and that disgusting air - God, I hate the drool sucking air that gives me dry mouth and causes me to gag again. I usually need to have sedation dentistry for extensive dental work because I'm so bloody difficult. But the UW doesn't offer sedation dentistry. I've been known to bite dentists and hygienists, and have sent more than a few assistants into a panic when trying to run between the xray machine and my chair to get rear teeth bitewing impressions from me. Suffice to say, the wild animal look in my eyes is enough to scare them. I haven't been to the dentist in 2.5 years.

8) When my kids step on cracks on the sidewalk in my company, I go into fake convulsive pain and pretend as though they've broken my back. It's very animated and must look extremely weird to unsuspecting passerbyers.

And if there was a number 9 to this list, I would add that I hate following any kind of rules, which includes doing these chain memes in a timely fashion. So on that note, I'm only going to tag three people - KC, Tanya and Lynn.

Notes from the Trenches

2007-11-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

The ghost of a steam train echoes down my track

It's at the moment bound for nowhere

Just going round and round

Playground kids and creaking swings

Lost laughter in the breeze

I could go on for hours and I probably will

But I'd sooner put some joy back

In this town called malice.

The Jam, "Town Called Malice"

The Village of Eville

Once upon a long lost time, the beauty of life was that we could lead seemingly disconnected lives and remain pretty much oblivious to the evils and ills around the world, except when said ills occasioned and slandered our own idyllic communities.

Before podcasting and RSS feeds and the World Wide Internet and 24/7 TV and radio and telefaxes and wires and foreign affairs newspaper reporting, we could live our small lives with little or no regard to the bigger world around us. I mean, really. We could eat dinner peacefully, without having to see genocide footage, such as the 1994 Rwandan crisis and then having to murmur sympathetically, "how awful" before going back to our steak and potato feasts. If you have yet to see Hotel Rwanda, from which I just lifted the wryest and singularly most powerful quote in the film, or even Blood Diamond, machete open your worldview and make yourself watch these necessary evil flicks that tell haunting tales out of Africa.

Now as much as ignorance is not a justification for oblivious living, it is bliss insofar as its antithesis, knowledge, inevitably entails sorrow and discontent. The more we know, the more we feel compelled to act, even in the face of powerlessness. The more we know, the more we realize how little we know. The more we know, the more we're exposed to the insidiousness of evil. Pundits now label it axis, but the truth of the matter is, we can no more locate and eradicate the central spine of evil than we can pinpoint it's yang, which is good, so pervasive are both.

Guns Before Butter

All this talk of blood and iron

Its the cause of all my shaking

The fatherlands no place to die for

It makes me want to run out shaking

I hear some talk of guns and butter

Thats something we can do without

If men are only blood and iron

O doktor doktor, whats in my shirt?

Gang of Four, "Guns Before Butter"

It's too bad Yale didn't teach GWB about how to use a compass and identify an axis and for that matter, how to play a decent game of chess, at some point during his college years ~ it could have saved this late, great nation a tidy 8 trillion dollars (or 1.6 trillion, if the real costs are to be tallied).

But what's a little loose change, when the big dollars are made for oil slick politicians in 'insider' trading? And for that matter, what are a few scattered skulls and bones between nations and alumni, who apparently learned everything they needed to know about the preservation of secrecy and stealth in university? This above all, to thine own clan be true.

And so it is guns before butter. $200 billion more guns, if you please.

When I heard his little B**sh*t soundbite yesterday, in which he compared the Democratic attempts to pass budget proposals for health care and education ('pet projects' of the Democrats is how he worded it) as "acting like a teenager with a new credit card," I wondered for not an entirely small moment if there really was an axis of evil, and if we were just too busy, distracted and fearfully looking "out there" to plainly see what was in front of our noses the whole time.

Said pissing match reminded me of politics in Pakistan in the 90s, when Sharif's govt. would blame Bhutto's govt., etc, etc., to the extent that the endless row between the two political factions meant no public spending on any projects because inevitably, said projects always happened to be "pet projects" of the other party.

So it's only a little ironic that Bush dares admonish Musharaff for declaring a state of national emergency and continuing to run his quasi-military dictatorship under the auspices of democracy. Only a little. Mostly, it's just sad.

Recent polls suggest that I'm not the only pessimist pissing in the wind. We're all sick and tired ~ well OK, except granny in traffic yesterday who was sporting so many Bush/Cheney and soldier ribbons on her car, it was a wonder she wasn't driving a bloody red campaign caboose (the little engine that couldn't). Unfortunately, most of us, granny included, don't have adequate coverage to cure our sick and tired ailments.

Another recent survey cites 46% of Americans perceive the nation to be in recession. The remaining 51% of the population have their heads up their asses. Heads, they win (or is it their favorite dancing star or Idol that wins? - I get confused these days), tails, we're all losing. Big time.

I'm not even sure history will be any kinder to Holy Hub and I than it will be in glossing over Mr. Bushevik's revolution.

Make it or break it, 07....that we dared buy a house in the United States, regardless of the fact that we chose the stablest of all e-ville markets or so a recent Top 10 list claims - in the penultimate days before the dollar, stock and housing markets tanked.....what the flaming red firetruck were we thinking, over. Oh well, perhaps the tattered scrapbooks and future generations of Schmidts will be kind to us. They will say that we were Redneck Albertans who had the brawn and brass to grasp the big Texas bull by the horns but oops, we slipped and inadvertently made a grab south instead. Schmidt happens, dontcha know.

Axis Malum
And so it would seem evil is all around us, disguised in the unlikeliest places. It hides unsuspectingly between the letters in pleasantville and evangelist, it rubs slant rhyming shoulders with civil, and it dresses up in medieval costume as the party might dictate.

And sometimes, I'll admit, when it mocks most outrageously, I don't feel very Gandhian and non-violent ~ just the opposite. It rears its ugly head and I want nothing more than an eye for an eye, a death for a death.

We're being bombarded in the media lately with what a shapeshifter that Axis of Evil can be - it's everywhere.

Does it posit itself within the stepfather and his friend, who allegedly raped and murdered the nine-year old Missouri girl earlier this month? How can that be so, for they are spineless and their lives should now be deemed worthless. Or perhaps it is connected to the satellite rod that sits atop OJ Simpson's house and empowers him to tower above all laws - right, wrong and otherwise? Or perchance it is alchemic and Frankensteinian and only comes to life in chemical marriage to unfortunate gals named Laci or Stacy Peterson.

I'm not so sure. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the senseless murder (the most oxy of moronic word pairings, I realize) of Reena Virk. Tears gloss my eyes every time I think about this and I'm left grappling with whether evil really does mean "the absence of good," and if justice has a timezone.

On my udder blog, I've latched onto an Anne Frank quote, which I will paste here in its entirety. Anne's world, suffice to say, was neither ignorant nor blissful. She lived long enough to look evil in the eye and then shift her gaze to the idealistic landscape beyond.

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. . . ."
~ Anne Frank ~

Some make call her utopian outlook, in the face of genocidal slaughter, juvenile, naive; even delusional. Indeed, many claim religion is the ultimate delusion, like an invisible latchhook in the sky that we cling blindly to in times of extreme adversity. And yet I call it brave.

Ignorance is bliss but in the age we live in, it's near extinct. My 10-year old son has begun reading Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, a teen folk tale about the Holocaust and the fine line between Beauty and Ugliness.

Some may claim he's much too young for this book, and they're probably right. But I let him watch Troy last year, so the least I can do is have him read the best re-telling of Sleeping Beauty I know. And considering that our entire filter for the world is apparently firmly affixed by age 9, I'm, arguably, a year too late in having him read this mythical Holocaust book.

Suffice to say, if you have not read this book, you haven't read. Run to your bookstore or your library and read it. Read it and weep, for it is as powerful a narrative of why beautiful poppies dare grow and dance in the wind on battlefields, and why the soft and sometimes too-Frank voices of girls named Anne will always ring louder and more victorious than the Sieg Heil's of misguided fascist armies.

Perhaps there is an ultimate beauty that will triumph over all this worldly ugliness and evil. Perhaps when the curtains close on Act however many thousand or million or infinity we're in now, that tattered ugly, evil drape will finally lift and we will get to see the real show. Until then, the show must go on, even when we wish nothing more than to tune it out.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Karl Marx