Green Green Grass of Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Becoming a dragon boat racer ~ this one always ends up on next year's resolution list. Sad but true.
7. 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.
8. 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?!
9. 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.
10. 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