Where the Walls are Soft…

Trojan Moose
Taken July 7, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

…a few
seconds
ago there
was a hand
in there!Yeah, yeah, I know I said I *hate* these things not two posts ago, but…The Best Memes in Life Are Stolen. Elle said that, so it must be true.

Stole this from Elle, who stole it from Angelika, who stole it from Why Are You Stalking Me?, who stole it from someone else.

1. Do you like blue cheese salad dressing?
– No.

2. Favorite late night snack?
– Mashed potatoes. And beer.

3. Do you own a gun?
– No.

4. What’s your favorite drink at Starbucks or other specialty coffee shop?
– Here in Canuckia, it’s Tim’s, and it’s either a black coffee, or an English Toffee something-or-other.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
– Not anymore.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
– I try not to think of them, or it puts me off them. Have eaten them. Will most likely eat them again.

7. Favorite Christmas song?
– Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
– I wish I had the nerve to say beer. It’s coffee, though.

9. Can you do push-ups?
– I can… but will I? HA!

10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?
– It’s a toss-up between my Grandmother’s little silver “broach-watch” thingy, or my father’s wristwatch. I wear neither of them, though. Or any other jewelry of any other kind, for that matter.

11. Favorite hobby?
– Digital Photography.

12. Do you have A.D.D.?
– Probably.

13. What’s one trait that you hate about yourself?
– I procrastinate. A lot. I probably stole this meme weeks ago.

14. The last disease you contracted?
– Wrinkles.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.
– I can’t possibly be expected to untangle THREE of them considering I might have A.D.D.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?
– Coffee, coffee and beer. Although ‘regular’ on beer has become more ‘few and far between’. And that’s a shame, if ever there was one.

17. Current worry right now?
– None. I refuse.

18. Current hate right now?
– See above.

19. Favorite place to be?
– I haven’t been ANYPLACE, yet. I’ll have to do something about that.

20. How did you ring in the New Year?
– I seriously cannot remember.

21. Like to travel?
– I hope so.

22. Name three people who will complete Sunday Stealing this week:
– No.

23. Do you own slippers?
– Yes, I do.

24. What color shirt are you wearing?
– Black.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?
– Haven’t the foggiest. Probably not.

26. Can you whistle?
– Can so.

27. Favorite singer/band?
– Impossible to attempt to decide.

28. Could you ever make it 39 days on the show Survivor?
– I’ll betcha I could. But what the hell for?!

29. What songs do you sing in the shower?
– I don’t. The Idiot Child does though. And in the sauna. And in the “bathroom”. And in her sleep sometimes.

30. Favorite girl’s names?
– Kyla.

31. Favorite boy’s names?
– Hmmmmm…. Matthew for my father, maybe?

32. What’s in your pocket right now?
– Nothing right now, but a few seconds ago there was a hand in there!

33. Last thing that made you laugh?
– How fast “Hand in My Pocket” started playing in my head after I typed the above answer.

34. Like your job?
– I do.

36. Do you love where you live?
– If you mean my apartment – yes. If you mean this town – not like I once did.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house?
– 1

38. Who is your loudest friend?
– “Real Life” friends – The Fly-Girl. “Imaginary Friends”, as my mom calls anybody I know online, I haven’t a clue yet. But it’s probably Suzi.

39. Do you drive the speed limit or speed?
– I always drive the speed limit. Unless I think I might have cocaine in my pockets.

40. Does someone have a crush on you?
– If so, I hope it’s a movie producer in need of new scripts…

41. What is your favorite book?
– Can’t say… too many. I like anything by Madeline L’engle. Or Douglas Adams. Or Robert Heinlein.

42. What is your favorite candy?
– Just gimme the candy.

43. Favorite Sports Team?
– At one time, it was the Edmonton Oilers, but then Wayne defected.

44. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
– Dancing in the parking lot.

45. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up today?
– I haven’t yet woken up today.

So, steal it if you want it.

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Gyasi Went Home” – Bedouin Soundclash

See Les Becker’s
“Off the Cuff” Gallery!

Aunt Blanche – 192?

The last
words
Gramma would
say to my
mom and
Helen were always,
“And don’t let Blanche
do all the work!”Aunt Blanche was my mother’s older sister. She was the first born – and she wasn’t very old before my grandmother realized she was a little, well, different. I suppose the proper, “politically correct” term to describe Blanche would be mentally challenged. She never went to school, never held a job, and never married.

I have a photo of Ky, when she was about 4, that looks just like Blanche. Ky hates that picture, which is why I’m going to dig it up someday and post it, ‘cuz I think it’s cute that she looks like a modern-day version of my Aunt Blanche, and I’m the Mom, and she can’t stop me.

Blanche held a very special place in my grandmother’s household, and was quite responsible in many ways. She had chores to do, like everyone else, and managed nicely in most cases. She would get upset, now and again, if things didn’t go in the order she thought they should.

My mother had a knack for calming her down in these situations. She could usually convince Blanche that since she was the oldest she should do the thing she didn’t want to do, or not do the the thing she wanted to do, because, being the oldest, she should consider what was best for all concerned and “take the high road”. Blanche always wanted the best for the family, and would generally concede the point.

There are a few snippets of “Blanche Stories” that I’m going to post over the next while. This is one of them:

My mother’s kin were farmers – and the largest meal was the one at midday, which they called “dinner” rather than “lunch”. That was the meat-and-potatoes meal, served with several loaves of fresh homemade bread, baked just after breakfast, many pots of tea, and something sweet to finish up with, usually pie or a jelly-roll, also made fresh that morning. There were eight kids in that family, three girls and five boys, Gramma and Grampa, and however many hands they might have on the farm to feed before the men went back out to work.

Every afternoon after dinner, Gramma would either lay down for a nap, or take a walk into town to sell eggs or run her errands. My mother, her younger sister, Helen, and Blanche would be left to wash the dinner dishes. The mountain of dinner dishes. The last words Gramma would say to my mom and Helen were always, “And don’t let Blanche do all the work!”

Because Blanche would, if you let her.

So, my mom and Helen would wait ’til Gramma was down the driveway, or sleeping, and they would tell Blanche that they were going to the outhouse. And they would say to her, “Don’t you dare do all the dishes without us!” The dishes were very lovely bone-china pieces from a shop owned by Gramma’s sister. None matched – they were “seconds” given to Gramma, that couldn’t be sold because of a chip here and there. Blanche believed that Mom and Helen enjoyed washing the dinner dishes, because the plates were so pretty.

So, Mom and Helen would go out the kitchen door, and sneak around the corner of the house to peek in the kitchen window. Blanche did enjoy washing dishes. And eventually, when they didn’t come back right away, she would go ahead and wash them all, and the pots and pans afterward.

It’s here I must remind you, that the farmhouse had no running water. There was a well, and a pump, but the water was hauled by hand, in buckets, and heated up on the woodstove. None of this turning a faucet and filling a sink with hot water, the way we have it, now.

When they still weren’t back from the outhouse, Blanche would dry everything and put it all away, mumbling to herself that if Maude and Helen were going to take so long, it was their own fault they didn’t get to help. She always thought she was getting one over on them by doing the dishes by herself.

Of course, once the kitchen was all cleaned, Mom and Helen would come back, look around angrily, and yell at Blanche, threatening to tell Gramma on her and get her into trouble. It wasn’t fair that Blanche should get to wash all the dishes, just because she was older than they were. Blanche would beg them not to, and they would reluctantly agree, if she would promise not to do it again.

But, of course, the next day after dinner…

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Let’s Dance” – David Bowie

“Little Red Shoes”
Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

My mom
was
the teacher
you didn’t want
to get,
because you couldn’t
get away with any
monkey business, and you might even (OMIGOD!) learn something!The Little Red Shoes sit in my mother’s Etagiere, if I spelled that correctly. Elle? Wanna let me know, Betch?! My mom calls it a “What-Not”. I think it’s because it’s to display all your knick-knacks and what-not in. Anyway, that’s where the Little Red Shoes are, when they’re not in the bathtub, with me and my camera. Bathtubs make great backgrounds for some pictures. Wet bathtubs are not necessarily good for cameras, but mine’s tough.

I love the Little Red Shoes, but I don’t have a story about them. I just couldn’t come up with a pic for the post.

I’m having trouble catching up with all the posts I have in draft. Hence the title – “Mish-Mash” is about what this one will be – just a couple of bits and pieces that I’d like to get out of my hard drive and onto the blog. This clip from today’s post by Cardiogirl reminded me of a bit about my mom when she was a kid, which, in turn, reminded me of one about Ruby’s mom…

clipped from www.cardiogirl.net

cardiogirl.net/">

So essentially we have a socially-accepted version of a wealthy pretty woman (former Ford model who must have earned a lot of cash) whose hobby is traveling the globe and shopping. So she finds “amazing stuff” and brings it back to New York to re-sell it. Do I have that right? I thought so.

And these aren’t your mother’s baubles. A telephone table finished in frog skin. I’m understanding this, though I find it crazy, until I get to the shagreen part. What is shagreen? Is it like shazam?

A million years ago, when my mom was a little girl of about 12, she and her sister were down at the nearby fishin’ hole with their cousin. My mom is the older of the three, but for some reason, it was Auntie and Cuz that did the ordering around of my mom. This was the story that made me realize that my mom was a little mouse when she was a kid. How she managed to grow up into a stern (SERIOUSLY stern) School Marm, I will never know. My mom was the teacher you didn’t want to get, because you couldn’t get away with any monkey business, and you might even (OMIGOD!) learn something!

At any rate (as Mom would say), they were down at the fishin’ hole, dib-dabbling around in the water, when the conversation turned to frog legs. As an appetizer. Because that was what the rich people ate. Probably every day, even. Imagine, they told each other, all the rich people in the big cities paying unbelievable amounts of money for a plate of frog legs, when there were hundreds of frog legs attached to hundreds of frogs right in front of them. For free.

And so Auntie and Cuz decided that they wanted frog legs for dinner. My mother didn’t think that was a very good idea. She thought it might be a little hard on the frogs. Auntie and Cuz didn’t give a damn about what the frogs thought of the idea, and they didn’t give much of a damn what my mom thought about it, either. They just sent my mom up to the house to get a knife. And my mom went. Slooooowly.

The whole walk up for a knife, she tried to think of a way to save those frogs. She couldn’t think of a thing. She considered just not going back to the fishin’ hole, but decided she might pay for that later, so instead, when she got to the kitchen she decided she would bring back a dull butter knife. She reasoned that it would hurt the frogs less than a sharp one would. At 12, my mom was all for “less hurt”, apparently, but all she can do now when she tells the story is laugh over the swearing from Auntie over that dull knife not getting the job done. I guess they didn’t get their frog leg dinner that day, but there were probably a few pissed off frogs in the fishin’ hole before they gave up.

Ruby’s mom, now, would have got the legs off those frogs lickety-split. She was a woman who got things done (she also had no forearms – there’s a story for the blog, huh? Soon. Honest.).

Despite being a woman who “got things done”, Ruby’s mom had a heart of gold, and hated to see any animal suffer. She lived a hard, rough life on a farm, though, and there were times that some animals just had to be “taken care of”. Chickens had to be killed. Pigs had to be slaughtered. Sometimes, you had to shoot your dog. And there were always kittens that couldn’t be kept, and had to be “taken care of”.

Ruby’s mom hated that job, but it had to be done. She believed that the most humane way to “take care of” kittens was to drown them. Most people would shove the kittens in a burlap sack and tie it shut, and pitch the poor buggers in the nearest river. Not Ruby’s mom. That wasn’t humane enough for Ruby’s mom.

No, Ruby’s mom would pull on a pair of heavy gloves, fill a pail full of water and, one by one, she would hold each kitten (gently) under the surface until it was dead. Oh yeah, and she would make sure to fill the pail with warm water, so the little dears wouldn’t die cold.

Random Song for the Day: “Alive” – Pearl Jam

“Emma’s Knight”
Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

By the
time
you met
your fellow inmates,
most would
be dangerous, psychotic,
unrecogniz-
able versions of themselves. I must apologize to the memory of my Great Aunt Emma, for this horrible photo of her painting. It’s a water-colour, framed behind glass, hanging in an awkward niche in my parents’ small space. To get the shot at all, I had to jam myself between the fake gas fireplace and the stereo stand, straddling something or other – it might have been a speaker; I don’t remember. I imagine Emma, if she could somehow see them, would marvel at both the fireplace and the electronics in the stand, not to mention the annoying blinds that caused me problems with the reflection shining on her painting, 70-odd years after her death.

The knight in the painting is Emma’s depiction of a Crusader, having his sword blessed before setting off to convert the heathenish sinners into unwavering faith in a God they’d never heard of.

And if you can’t convert ‘em, hell – run ‘em through.

When I was little, I used to stare at Emma’s painting for hours at a time. I thought, then, that it was Joan of Arc. I used to imagine that maybe Emma felt a little like Joan: misunderstood… ostracized… martyred. Well… “martyred”, I guess, came later for Emma.

She was my mother’s father’s sister, one of three. As you can see, Emma was an artistic soul, at a time and in a place where that was unusual. The time was the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, and the place was a teeny-tiny farming community on the Manitoulin Island – a community of hard-working, God-fearing, good people. “Haweaters”, they still proudly call themselves, and I’m just as proud to be descended from them.

Emma was a “difficult” girl. She was not exactly… dependable. Her moods were sometimes… erratic. Her actions often confused people.

Sometimes, she could be extremely morose. Depressed. Her family worried over her. At other times, she became violently angry, and frightened them. There were days that she was giddy, and loud, or just plain “odd”. There were also days, and weeks, and probably whole months at a stretch that she was just plain “Emma, herself”, and they would be relieved and nervous at the same time, wondering which Emma would be there next, and hoping by some miracle that her “fits” had passed for good this time.

My mother believes, now, that Emma might have had Bi-Polar Disorder, or what at one time was called Manic Depression. I think my mother might be right, but that was an unheard-of condition way back then. And I’m guessing you have a pretty good idea where Emma ended up.

It must have been a difficult decision, sending her away. Committing her to an asylum. The Nut House. Booby Hatch, Funny Farm, Loony Bin. Horrible, terrible names, I know. Back then, though, they were horrible, terrible places to be “institutionalized” – places where, if you were shut up into them, whether by your family, or by a magistrate, you would be shut up with other people that may very well have started out with troubles similar to yours, but over time had really been driven literally mad. By the time you met your fellow inmates, most would be dangerous, psychotic, unrecognizable versions of themselves. And you would probably end up the same way. And back then, they almost never let you out.

Emma’s sisters, Marjorie and Lavinia, would go and visit her when they could afford the trip to Toronto. Sometimes, she didn’t care if she saw them or not. Maybe during those times, she didn’t realize who they were. But there were also visits when Emma was “Emma, herself”, her perfectly normal “self”, the sister they loved. Those visits were especially hard for Marj and Vine, because Emma would cry, and beg them to please, please, just let her come home. She hated it in the asylum. The other patients frightened her. She was going crazy. Please, please, just take her home. But they couldn’t take her home, and they would have to say good-bye and leave her in that awful place, alone.

After awhile, they didn’t visit anymore.

Emma died some time during the Great Depression. My mother doesn’t know if she was still in that asylum or not, but she was still in Toronto when she died. No one had any money then. No one could afford to travel.

There was a man who came from the Manitoulin, who lived in Toronto at the time. He saw Emma’s obituary in the newspaper, and recognizing the family name, he decided to go to the funeral. He knew Emma’s people, and he wanted to give his condolences. He wasn’t able to.

He was the only person there.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Eleanor Rigby” – The Beatles