White Supremacy

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.