Following Friday, bruise was rekicked in the opening minutes of the game.  Coach/trainer/husband of one of the players went running for ice (aka frozen wet sponge in a baggy).  Player continued on, and made even more marvelous the colour and contours of her dramatic injury.

The girl will continue to play.  It made her sweat and her heart beat faster!  Felt kinda good after 25 years away from the game…

Seven Pounds - Will Smith, cried lots and then again on the ride home.

Mama Mia - Glen Close was fabulous.  Pierce Brosnan was painful.

Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch - Always a favourite.

Batman - Twice in the theatre.  On DVD, fast forwarded through any part without Heath Ledger.

Glass Castle - Memoir of childhood spent in poverty of circumstance yet rich in meaning.  Read for book club.

Books Worth Rereading

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

I am a Luddite.  Yes, surprisingly it’s true.  And I was not aware how uncomfortable I’d be, putting my ‘stuff’ out there where folks could see and potentially track it back to me.  I teach school and hadn’t quite realized how much I had shut my ‘self’ off.  Even though I have been known to say to a class, “You do realize I am not really as nice as they pay me to be at school?”, I was in denial how much is now kept hidden.

Things I would write about on my secret blog:

1.  Being designated as celibate by my gynecologist.

2.  My mother trying to set me up with her school friend’s son.

3.  Poems with sex in them.

4.  Attempted Divorce issues.

5. Feelings about having to move back in with my parents.

6. Behaving poorly at local Rodeo caberets.

7.  Ginny?  Anything I’ve missed?  How about ‘When we were young’ installments?

An enjoyment of authenticity in others’ writing has highlighted the lack of it in my own.  It’s not bad, but the information being held back needs to be out there, somewhere.  Or does it?  Maybe I really am as nice as they pay me to be to my class.  But if memory serves, I doubt it…

     New short story book, The Withdrawal Method, includes a piece that I thought would make me pee my pants laughing and cry my eyes out at the same time.

     “The Slough” (p3-42) lines that made me say, “Wow!”:

     “There was something suddenly disquieting about the idea of bacon.” (p. 3)

     “He had felt, lately, that his life had become a raisin – if only he’d got to it sooner, when it was ripe from the vine and bursting with juice!  But, no, it had shrivelled.  If he handed out his life to trick-or-treaters at Halloween, a retributive bag of feces would appear flaming on his door step.  Or maybe someone would pee on his mail.” (p. 4)

     “Back on the TV, a fellow in a sequined pantsuit was spinning an equine-looking woman by the legs, round and round, to ‘Devil with a Blue Dress On.’

     ‘Come on, fall,’ he said, slapping the coffee table.  ’Fall, you fuckers.  Fall, fall, fall!’” (p. 6-7)

     “Some of the creams were a mysterious robin’s egg blue, others were white, others were just cream-coloured, the colour of cream.” (p. 9)

     “His own briefcase, on his own lap, had been her idea.  ’You can’t go to work with a plastic bag!’ she had told him one day.  ’But all I take is a sandwich,’ he had said, to which she had replied, ‘ Well, take your sandwich to work like a man.’” (p. 10)

     “A store to his left was selling bongs and bongos.” (p. 11)

     “Over the crowd of people in complicated shoes they locked eyes and winked.” (p. 15)

     “He nudged again and she looked at him, exasperated. ‘What?’

     ‘I love you,’ he said.

     She stared at him.  ’And?’

     ‘And do you love me?’

     ‘No, I hate you.’

     ‘Really?’

     ‘Yes.’” (p. 16)

     “Sonya’s so close I can smell the cat odour on her.” (p. 31)

     “I pull out fistfuls of letters, cassette tapes, birthday cards, bills, postcards, receipts – here’s one for a pizza delivered two years ago, in case we ever feel like returning it.” (p. 41)

     The button labelled ‘wake up calls’ directed me to a sultry-voiced eastern man who informed me I had the wrong number.  When I explained that I had pressed the button on the phone for ‘wake up calls’ he said he could make it happen.  He asked my room number and desired time.  I thought I heard a click, but then in the confusion of accents and transferred calls and the sound of someone dialing another number in my ear, I didn’t hang-up.  Maybe I was supposed to wait on the line to give my information again.

     My son was in the same room.  I winked at him to let him know that I wasn’t impatient, that this sometimes happened in big hotels when someone was doing something important like making a wake up call reservation.  I whispered to him,  ”You are so beautiful.”  

     “I know I am,” whispered back the helpful wake up call guy.

     I never got my 6 o’clock call the next morning…

“retaliation ships”

“friend shop”

“shake spheres”

“shake spear”

“lover of her life”

“over bored”

“tutus his own horn”

“pocking into other people’s business”

“in the storm of cap sized boats”

Yes, I truly am a bad person.  I can find humour in children’s mistakes.  Our support group meets twice yearly, during provincial exam marking sessions.  It’s okay, I know I make mistakes, too!

     My kind, kind son pushed me out of his bed and onto the floor.  As I was falling, (just to teach him a lesson) I gasped out with my (cough, cough) dying breaths, “Call 911 – -” and I got back, “But, Mom, I don’t know the number!”  Then he jumped on me and started shoving me in the chest, trying to revive me.  Ouch!

   The next time I played dead, he started shouting, “C3P-O!  C3P-O!” meaning of course – duh!- CPR.  I avoided getting bruised boobs, just in time… whew!

     At supper tonight, when asked about his school’s Remembrance Day ceremony, the little darling sweetly turns to his older brother and says, “I saw you once in the gym, but then Mrs. D wanted to talk to me in the hallway.  She put a uniform on me and had me march with the soldiers.”

     “Oh?” I butt in, worried that I have missed some honour graciously and impromptively bestowed upon my child, “Did you know ahead of time?  Did you win a Remembrance Day drawing contest?”

     “No, it’s because my shirt was the reddest.”  I had found out last minute this morning that the students were to wear red for the service.  I had panicked, checked the closets and then done a wonderful sales job on a corduroy button up shirt and a Flames jersey for my older son.  The little guy had already picked a shirt with a red centre panel and a skull with wings coming out of the sides.  It had taken a lot of convincing that the bright red, cover-up shirt would be his best bet.  He left his skull shirt on underneath, but we both (eventually) agreed that it probably wasn’t the most sensitive choice for the veterans to see.

     “Did you get to lay a wreath?”

     “Yes,” concerned,”but I’m still not sure what it was.”

     “Oh,” I am ever helpful, “that’s the circle with the leaves and poppies on it, with the sash.”

     “Ah,” still hesitant, “yes, that’s what I did.  I wore the sash.”

     “Across your chest?” 

     “Yes, but it was only for my own class.  Nobody else got to see it.”

     Doubt dawns, “Well, it is a good thing you have parent teacher interviews tomorrow night.  Mrs. D can show me the pictures and explain to me who the wreath was for.”

     Pause.  Backtracking…

     “Well, actually, that’s just what I was hoping would happen…”

     I guess I must have misheard him.

     Later, freshly out of his second bath, we are experimenting with a new skin cream.  I want to patch test it.  He suggests his face.  I chose his left leg, but it spreads farther than I thought it would and ends up on most of his left side.  To avoid his imminent bed time, he starts to pose.  He’s been watching little girls dance at school and manages a few rather dramatic tableaus.  I am uncomfortable.  I ask him if he is sniffing his armpits.  He scratches one, and sniffs.

     And as I sit here thinking about some of the other things he did today, I find myself unable to write it down.  It’s too weird, worse than the posing naked.  Phone me, if you want additional reassurance that you don’t have the most disturbing children on the block.  Kids, eh?  (insert nervous laugh here)

Sugared Pecans with Maple Courvosier Sauce on Baked Brie

• 1 round of brie
• some pecans
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp Courvosier

Puncture top of brie round.  Place in close to same size, oven-proof dish.  Place pecans on top of cheese. Mix sugar, syrup and hooch.  Pour onto pecans.  Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes.  Serve warm with spoon and crackers.

Main Course

Pear Lettuce Salad

• 1 fresh pear, cored and cubed
• 1 head of lettuce
• 1/3 cup of Renees Pear Guava Dressing

Sweet Potato & Potato Bake

• 3 white potatoes, 2″ cubed
• 1 sweet potato, 2″ cubed
• 1/2 tsp Victorian Epicure Onion Seasoning
• 1/4 tsp Hawaiian sea salt
• 4 tbsp butter
• parchment paper

Place ingredients on parchment paper, potatoes first.  Seal into folded-edge pouch.  Bake at 350 F for at least an hour.

Baked Tomatoes

• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 28 oz can of tomatoes
• 2 torn up hotdog buns

Place in baking dish.  Bake with potatoes.

Rib Steak

• farm-raised, penicillin & growth-hormone free, hand-fed, had a name
• barbeque with Hy’s seasoning salt, rare to medium-rare