Single Mom Central

Oh, it's kind of a disaster around Chez Bristowe-Turner right now. I could really use the Noo-Noo.

Turner's away for three weeks to Denmark and England doing research for the next book, and Sloane and I stayed home on this one. Boy do I NOT envy single moms. Not one bit.

I decided to take the opportunity presented by Turner's absence to do the now-absolutely-crucial sleep training Sloane was needing. Our darling child was such a good sleeper for such a long time that we didn't go ahead and train her sleep on a schedule or to fall asleep on her own... we had all those books and couldn't deny that the ideas were probably sound, but since we could get her to sleep with a minimum of fuss with a little bit of boob and rocking tag-team work, we took the path or least resistance. It was grand for months and months.

And then the boob and the rocking stopped working. She wanted to be rocked for 20 minutes. Then 30 minutes. Finally Turner was staggering out of the bedroom after an hour of rocking and developing tennis elbow; Sloane would drink her fill of milk and then thrash around like a drunk squirrel and determinedly not be almost-asleep as planned; our baby had long ago grown sick of our respective lullabies (mine: "Asleep" by the Smiths, Turner's:"Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" by the Flaming Lips) and so we were now into any B-side we could think of. She started waking through the night and crying and crying at naptime, crankier and fussier during the day. Things were getting a bit out of control.

So when Turner was going to be away for three weeks, I knew it would be enough time for me to pick a program and stick with it. One of the ladies in our baby group had had miraculous success with the program described in Good Night Sleep Tight (her son was taking two-hour naps morning and afternoon, and sleeping twelve hours through the night with no wakings - if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is), so I roared down to the bookstore and purchased myself a copy on the very day Turner was set to depart. Read the whole thing. Set the plan in motion.

Well, we're at the nine day mark of the regimen, and things are going fairly well. We had some seriously hairy moments during the early days, though. Sloane was getting enough sleep, but I certainly wasn't. There was a great deal of screaming. Yelling. Flinging of soothie. Biting of crib railing (her, not me). Heartbreaking babbly cries of "Mamama, Mamama, Mamamaaaaaaa..." as I sped around the house with earplugs in, praying to all available gods that she go to sleep, please, please go to sleep. I knew I was doing the right thing in the long run, but the whole process put me so on edge that I stopped being able to sleep, myself - my body was in a perpetual state of tensed readiness, waiting for her to roll over and start to cry. I'll say that it was stressful, and you'll believe me, but you'll only know what I really mean if you've been through it yourself.

We haven't yet achieved roaring progress with naptime, but she goes for an hour in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon on a regular schedule, which has been mostly great. With the overnight sleeping business, I finally exiled myself to the futon in my office, and things are going a bit better overnight, now. (Can anyone come over and help me move the crib to the baby room? I can't do it by myself, and lordy, it's time.) Sloane is sleeping blissfully through the dark half of the day, and I'm only waking every hour and a half.

...Basically our accomplishment in nine days can be summed up thusly: we traded schedules. But at least the baby sleeps - I'm thankful for that. I'm sure I can be trained to sleep through the night eventually, too.

Categories: Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [4]

Paternity

Yeah, I guess I don't have any questions about where I got the shape of my schnoz (known as "the ski-jump nose" amongst Bristowes).

Taken in September on an errand day in the van with Brucio.

Categories: Family

Comments [0]

Typety-type

I hate forwards. I truly loathe forwards. I used to write each of my family and friends calm, gentle emails requesting that they not send me forwards of any kind. Some people persisted. Oh ho ho, they thought to themselves, this one's SO funny that I KNOW Ashley would enjoy it, despite what she says. Those people got reminder emails from me that were a bit less subtle. If there was a third breech of my requested ban, I sent out The Bomb email. It was pretty blunt, possibly "not so nice". Some of my friends and family didn't like me very much after receiving The Bomb. But I should say this: afterward, I didn't get any more forwards from those people.

It started to take more time than I had to compose those "please: DON'T SEND ME FORWARDS" emails. People obviously forgot to leave me off their lists on a regular basis, and although The Bomb worked, it wasn't a deterrent-type solution and I tried to use it as a last resort. Finally, I attached a "signature" to my email address that provided a sort of automatic message at the end of all the emails I sent out. It read:

Please don't send me forwarded emails under any circumstances - I don't want to receive them. Never send me jokes, or sweet poems about life, or "interesting" articles from the internet - even if you think that Bill Gates might actually be giving away money. Never send those amusing-because-they're-true lists, such as "10 Ways To Know If You're A Grad Student". Never send "funny" photos of cats, or satirical cartoons of Osama bin Laden superimposed onto the Dr. Strangelove missile, or even seemingly-legit virus warnings. Believe me, I would rather get the virus (highly unlikely) than get that forward.  ...I know you want to share forwards because they touched you in some way - in the heart, in the funny bone. Please: DO NOT share them with me. I will NOT be touched - I will delete the message, and the fact that you sent me a forward will affect my opinion of your character. So just to be perfectly clear: never, never, never send me forwarded messages. Thanks.

It was pretty long, but it worked. I think I got a number of raised-eyebrow "henh?"s from the people who got emails with that signature. But nobody who knows me ever sends forwards anymore, so in that way, it totally did its job. (The people who break rank get The Bomb right off the bat, now. Apologies to our neighbour Cheryle - I warned you!)

However. I accept forwards from one person, and that person is Mr. John Bristowe. John is a seriously big-time computer guy, a Microsoft developer-evangelist, and the Spiller Road Things-Computerish Troubleshooter extraordinaire. And he gets messages and forwards from people all over the world. But the boy has an excellent filter. He knows me, and he knows that I hate forwards. He is spare and careful in what he sends to my inbox, and to a one, I've always opened and read and enjoyed his forwards. I should note however that over the years he has forwarded me perhaps a dozen things, total. So when John forwards it to my email address, I know it's going to kill me.

Today's forward, lucky number 13:



I almost choked to death in my own kitchen, ill-advisedly drinking some tea while watching this animation. Priceless.

[Please: don't think you can match my brother's expertise and nuanced selective powers just because this made you laugh, too. Don't try me on your list for the next forward you send. Don't. I mean it.]

Categories: Internet

Comments [0]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 31.0

Today was a lovely day of guests and busy-ness around the house... Shannon Babcock came through town with her aunt and uncle, and we hosted a nice pancake breakfast for them here at Chez Bristowe Turner (with Brother John also in the house to inhale a few flapjacks and bacon strips). Later, M. Phil Hofton, a man only mere weeks away from becoming a father himself, dropped by for a few hours of making the baby laugh despite her recent dive into the crabbypants pond. (Turner heads to Denmark tonight and will be gone for three weeks - I'll be spending much of his time away trying to train Sloaner onto a more regimented sleep schedule, in the interest of improving Missy's mood.)

Categories: Friends | Sloane

Comments [1]

My Memory Has Just Been Sold

MuchMoreMusic Retro... They know we're watching.



Upon enduring Centrefold, by J. Geiles Band:  I first heard this song in high school, when it was sent to me on a mix tape from Jenn Foley. Musically, I didn't know shit from shit back then, though I suppose it could be argued that I still don't know shit from shit. (Turner does, every time I roll my eyes at the whole "Neil Young is a genius" collective dellusion.) It's a great track - but the video (which I saw for the first time tonight) is terrible, terrible, terrible. Lord. A classroom? Ladies dancing past the blackboard in tiny skirts? The song's good, like I say. Just don't look at the tv.

But perhaps I'm being too hard on them... Sez Turner: "The only videos from this era [1980-1986] that were any good were from people who didn't think they were making videos for television -- like Devo, who thought they were making short art films." I saw Turner and Deans do their amazing rendition of Whip It at an off-King karaoke bar in Toronto in 1999 (at a time when being off King was really - seriously - not far from The Edge Of The Earth) ... although we all contributed to the destruction of a perfectly good clothes drier earlier in the evening (all hail the phenomenon of performance art), there's nothing that could have better recommended Devo to me forevermore, frankly. So I'll buy Turner's take on things, I guess.

Anyway, the truly troubling thing with MuchMoreMusic is the commercials.

...It's like they know we're watching. By which I mean they know that me and Turner are watching. It's all diapers and kids' games and long-sleeved-shirt-under-tshirt-wearing-guys- holding-toddlers-eating-Cheerios: commercials aimed at us, one after another after another. It's glaringly, painfully, poignantly clear that CityTV has done their research, and they've found that it's basically me and Turner watching Channel 82.

Us, and all the young Canadian parents like us: Yes, teenagers in the 1980s. Yes, we know all the words to Wham's "Careless Whisper" (helluva song, in retrospect), and the whole INXS "Kick" album, and various of the many Huey Lewis And The News hits (these last against our will).

And now, broken zombies at the feet of our infant offspring, we are finally exhaused and willing to sit through The Fabulous Life of HRHs William And Harry and a wide range of those various Countdowns...  We're not really discerning viewers, per se. And the new parent's shattered attention span means that familiar videos from years ago are the perfect jelly to stuff into those moments where you're just trying to wind down from the day. They're using our school memories to make us pliable, vulnerable.

We came from a simpler time, it seems, although we never would have guessed it at the time. We are the MTV generation, I suppose - the first one, anyway. And now those bastards have co-opted the music of our youth to sell side-panel air bags in our never-gunna-afford-them mid-size sedans.

Our pop-culture spirits are broken - these are the Hummer years, despite everything we hoped would happen, back in the 1990s. Our university pictures make us look like undeniable prudes in the face of the Britney-ization of the teen dress code. And The Arcade Fire and The New Pornographers notwithstanding, let's face it - most of the shit on the radio is crap, pure and simple, and hardly worth dancing to if you're not looking to have grind-y sex in the club bathroom stall. So I guess we're ready to switch baby bum-wipe brands if you successfully argue that the one you're shilling will actually sing the Teapot song from Beauty and the Beast. ...Whatever you want, we're here for you.

Heh.

Hehhhhh.

Categories: Mom-ness | Olden Days

Comments [0]

Ash & Sloane's Long March

Yesterday Sloaner and I went up to the University of Calgary to do a bit of research at the library. Sloaner was superbo in the stacks, hanging onto the side of the carrel as I skimmed through the books I needed, and smiling like mad at the people in the lineup for the photocopier. I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out the online periodical index and had to actually go and ask for help (wherein I ended up having to use the phrase, "I graduated in 1996 and things have changed a lot since then," and was met with a sympathetic nod from the balding Gen-X'er behind the desk). Then Sloane started to squawk and the low-rise-jeans-and-sideways-hat-wearing kids-who-were-in-kindergarten-when-I-started-university began to stare, so we vamoosed and got a falafel at Mac Hall.

We did a bit of reflection on how much things have changed and not changed on campus in ten years (although I didn't attend U of C, in high school I spent my fair share of time drunk at Bermuda Shorts Day and volunteering at Rock Against Racism upstairs from the Black Lounge), and Sloane entirely agreed with me that there is far too much retro-80s clothing on the kids these days. And I truly feel that piping in Peter Cetera and old Phil Collins is deeply unnecessary. Whenever I'm out shopping now it's like warping back to dances at Nickle Junior High. And y'all, those were terrible, terrible days. I feel I should be compensated by society for having to endure that music again, just as I'm finally over the trauma of my early teens.

Anyway, after lunch Sloane fell clunkingly asleep in the backpack, and I headed to the C-train station. But in a fit of ...inspiration? ...foolishness? I decided to keep going over the Crowchild bridge and down into the community. I figured we'd walk home. Yep, walk. It's about fifteen kilometres from U of C to Chez Bristowe Turner, I figgered. I bet we can be home by dinner, easy, I thought.

So away we went. Walk walk walk. Through Banff Trail, through Capitol Hill - that part of Calgary is on a partial grid with numbered streets, so I knew I wouldn't lose my way. I set my trajectory roughly parallel to 16th Avenue, the Trans-Canada corridor through the city. After about half an hour I switched to walking in the alleyways, always the more interesting way to see a community in this city (which excels at making streetscapes as bland and soulless as possible). I found an old tennis ball along the way, and kicked it for a few kilometres. Walked past a guy building a 15' stone waterfall in his backyard. Saw a poppy garden in seed, lots of raspberry bushes finished for the year, and a bare-chested old man in dress shoes and pressed trousers painting the worn bits of his fence.

By about 10th St NW I was pretty tired. Sure, I was an athlete in high school, but the whole nine years of university followed by desk jobs and then the pregnancy+motherhood thing has taken a lot out of my body in the interim. I'm a flabby and untoned shell of my former self, in fact, although nobody informed the ambition part of my brain about the new physical state at any time along the downward slide. Turner'll tell you that I get myself into these situations with some regularity, the walking tooooo far. And I'll call home from wherever the hell I've ended up (in Kentville town after walking in 10km at 6am last summer with Pony, at the Antigonish town limits a few months ago with Sloane, downtown Calgary, etc.) and sort of whine, "Uhhhhh! I walked too faaaar! Come an' get meeee." And Turner will come and get me.

Aha, but Turner was going to be out doing errands until 6pm, that was the plan. And it was nowhere near 6pm. I considered my options: backtracking to a C-train station, getting a cab, or making a try for Alexis' house in Crescent Heights. I decided on the last option. We had to deek into an A&W on 16th to feed and change Sloane, give her a break from the backpack, and get some water, but then it was only a few more blocks to Alexis' house, where I figured I could wait out Turner and get him to pick us up whilst visiting with my lovely friend. Alas, said lovely friend wasn't home, so we sat on the porch for a while, checked out the new adventures in gardening Alexis has undertaken this year, and surveyed the state of her new deck. All in order but still no Alexis, we decided to push for home.

Off we went, headed south now through the lovely community of Crescent Heights. (So lovely, in fact, that I went directly to MLS.ca that night to check out the for sale listings in the area, hoping we could trade up from Ramsay to such a pretty, well-groomed and kid-friendly area in which we already have a nice friend. ...Sadly, no.) Past the high school. Over to Centre Street, and down down down the hill to the bridge, passing the running-shoe'd walking wounded commuters from the downtown towers making their way home after work. Into Chinatown, through the old 'hood from when I worked at Canadian Heritage. And finally, to the C-train line on 7th Ave.

I was PRITTY tired by that point, I tell you. Sore back. Sloane a bit pissed and cranky. Thirsty, both of us.

So we caught the C-train and sat down in the Priority Seating area right near the door. There was a young man, perhaps 23 or 24, sitting on the same bench. Had a few earrings, reading an alterna-mag of some sort. Exactly of the demographic that generally ignores all babies. But he looked at Sloane, and then did a double-take. She looked at him. They looked at each other. And then the hipster Calgary boy says, "Wow. What a perfect baby... like, her head is perfect! Her eyes are huge!" He seemed genuinely impressed. I was like, Uh, thanks. But really, Ow my aching feet, etc., was what I was actually thinking. The guy is still looking at Sloane, though. And she's still looking at him. And then he says to her, suddenly, "...You're not supposed to be so intelligent! You know exactly what I'm thinking!" Now, at this point I know what you're thinking: this guy was high. But he wasn't. He was just sitting there, all normal, just commuting like the rest of us, but probably having his first sitting-near-an-alert-baby experience. He introduced himself to Sloane (not me): My name is Dale, he says, and yammered away unselfconsciously to her for the rest of our journey. Sloane, for her part, continued to stare at him while chewing methodically on my scarf, giving a few well-timed eyebrow twitches, serving only to further convince Mr. Dale that Sloane was the all-knowingest and all-seeingest baby of all time. I didn't try to disillusion him - I do like to think Turner and I have produced an other-worldly genius, of course.

We hopped out at Erlton ("Bye-bye Sloane!" calls Dale), just in time to see the bastard 433/403 minibus driver pull away from the station. What kind of jackass driver leaves the station just as the C-train is disengorging passengers? A jackass bastard driver, that's what. I think the very long walk was affecting my empathy centre despite the nice train interlude of Dale's fond appreciation for Sloane in all her Sloaneness - for lo, did I despise the 433/403 driver in those moments as I watched him speed away.

Sighing and hoping that 5:45pm was close enough to 6pm to mean Turner would answer the phone, I called the husband, who was luckily just pulling up in front of the house after a long and productive afternoon of pre-Denmark errands. He came to get us in a jiffy, and we finally made it home, more than four hours after we'd left the university.

Me, I was pooped. Needed a foot rub like mad. Needed a low-back rub like mad. Needed a bath. Ate a quarter of the roast chicken from the grocery store just standing there at the stove like a wild-eyed hobo. I walked toooo faaaar! I said to Turner, in a kind of faraway nearby zone. He says, You always do this. You always walk too far. 

I knowwwww, I said. But I walk and walk and then I walk tooo farrr. I can't help it! ...Ow my aching feet.

I started at the University of Calgary, the X at the top left of the image above.

A: Found the tennis ball

B: Backyard waterfall under construction

C: Naked old guy painting his fence in dress shoes

D: A&W pit stop

E: Lovely community of Crescent Heights

F: Uphill-trudging commuters on the Centre Street bridge

I blessedly caught the C-train downtown on 7th Ave. at the convention centre, the X at the bottom right. Dale meets Sloane, etc. (Erlton Station and bastard 403/433 bus driver not shown).

Categories: Calgary | City Planning | Mom-ness | Sloane | Work work work

Comments [13]

Goodbye, Sir John

Today we say goodbye to John's dad. All the best to you, JJ.

Of Jack Johnston, I have this story to contribute: he was the man who gave me permission to love cheese. I was visiting Oxford with John in 1998, and we sat down for lunch. Or dinner. I can't remember which. But this I remember: after the meal, it was time for coffee, and cheese. I was sitting at his right, and Jack turned to me. More delightedly than I'd ever heard any adult speak about food, he exclaimed, "Do you like cheese? I LOVE cheese!"

I sat for a moment. Clearly the man loved cheese. Lovely dignified old John's-dad loved cheese. I blinked. And then, I admitted it: "...Yes. I love cheese too. I would be a cheese taster as my career, but I'd eventually have to be lifted out of my house by a crane." It's totally true.

Oh yes, he readily agreed, being a cheese taster would be the best. As he got the cheese ready, Jack explained about the blocks' provenance and flavours in a way I'd never heard cheese described. With love. With real affection.

In the house where I grew up, cheese came in two sorts: cheddar and in-the-can pre-grated parmesan. We didn't veer off into the deli section - it was just the dairy-case cheese for us. But despite the pedestrian fare, there is a famous story in our family about how much Brother John had loved cheese as an infant: inconsolable in his high chair, mouth full of cheese and cubes in both hands, crying because he couldn't get it in fast enough. It's a ho-ho-ho, "silly John" sort of parable amongst the family. But I was there that day on Parkway Drive in Thunder Bay. And even though I was only three years old, I remember that moment. John was to my right, in those old high chairs with the pull-tab metal lock-levers. He was bucking, hands in fists with the cheese squeezing out the sides, eyes shut. And screaming. He loved the cheese, he wanted more cheese, there was very certainly not enough cheese in the world to satisfy this desire for cheese. It's always been a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I memory for me, and whenever this story was trotted out at gatherings I'd sit there silent and sweatingly relieved I'd had enough wherewithall as a baby to hold my shit together over cheese. ...Because as an adult, I am clearly gaga.

In the year before my 1998 visit to the UK, I was living in Guelph with Thaba. She can tell you about how I went about sampling feta at such a prodigious rate that I finally blew myself out on it (to this day I veer around the feta section). Later, at a dinner with my first yucky old grad advisor and fellow advisees, I was introduced to goat cheese for the first time and it became my mission to put it on basically everything else I ate. (Much as I tried to convince her of its charms, Thaba never succumbed to the goat cheese siren - having spent so much of her life at a farm where goats live, she finds that the cheese smells and tastes undeniably like wet goat, an unpalatable flavour at the best of times, I'm sure.)

I was an obvious and slavish, though somewhat secretive lover of cheese, because my family thought of it as "fattening". Okay, sure, yes - cheese is definitely "fattening". But it's also an ambrosia. Turner'll tell you that as the house chef here at Chez Bristowe Turner, "hm... could use more cheese" is a refrain he's heard every time there's pasta, burgers, omelettes on the menu. He even grates up a little extra dish for me and sets it down with a decidedly here's your extra cheese that you're already getting ready to ask for even though you haven't tasted the food yet clink. I smile and sit satisfied knowing I married the right man, a man who brings more cheese.

But see, I'd never really made my peace with the don't eat/must eat dichotomy that surrounded cheese for me, until visiting Oxford.

Because then there was Sir John "Jack" Johnston, grinning over the cheese tray at the head of the table. Clearly, loving cheese as much as I already did could be a serious undertaking, given the right mindset and a great deal of restraint in the amounts-eaten department. Obviously knowing cheese could be as subtle and epicurian a hobby as serious oenophilia. 

When we moved to Spiller Road, it wasn't long before we discovered the nearby Crossroads Market and the fabulous Say Cheese Fromagerie therein. I highly recommend the cave-aged gruyere; and I'd tell you to sample the Norweigian vodka cheese, but they just stopped carrying it, a terrible shame. However, the new Guinness-cheddar is interesting, and we had a fabulous Stilton from the discount coolers in the summertime...

Thank you, Jack.

Categories: Friends

Comments [3]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 30.0

Shown here practicing for future geisha gigs, Sloane makes sure her lips don't touch the chopsticks.

(Out for Sunday-dinner sushi, to celebrate Papa Mike's completion of Level One of his Life Coach course. Mike's been staying with us the last few days while doing his training here in Calgary.) Photo by Mike Garvey

Categories: Sloane

Comments [1]

Glorious, Glorious Hot Water

As an early birthday present to me, Brother John approached Dad and suggested that a new hot water heater for Chez Bristowe Turner would be just the thing. We were finally at the point where the old tank couldn't fill the bathtub, so for Sloane's daily bath we'd run just the hot and hope that the water level got high enough to sit in. Yes, it was sad. I mentioned the wrenched-from-my-grasp experience of almost getting a new hot water heater a few months ago here. In the wake of that thunderous disappointment, I had kind of resigned myself to always having too-short showers and sitting nightly with my baby daughter in four inches of lukewarm bathwater.

But disappointment-and-glaze-eyed-broken-spirit-of-yore be gone! Dad does understand my love of long showers, being a man who himself just spent approximately seven bazillion dollars and six months of his life renovating his (what was already a perfectly serviceable) bathroom into what could now quite accurately be described as Calgary's answer to Abano Terme. I'd prevailed upon Dad-dad-daddy-o months ago for a new hot water heater and was told that I was 31 years old and old enough to figure out my own hot water heater situation. But babysitting Sloaner one night last week, during bathtime Brucio saw the wretched lack of hot water-situation for himself, and swung into action. In only two short days he orgamunized a brand-new giganto-sized super-efficient hot water heater, which was installed on Thursday.

We waved goodbye as a family to our ex-hot water heater, as the 27-year-old calcified drum was unceremoniously hauled away by the nice little Newfie plumber who installed the new tank. (Photo by Chris Koentges)

And Friday night Turner gave Sloane a bath, a bath where he even had to add some cold water to the hot so as to achieve a nice balance in the temperature. And a little while later, for the first time since moving into this house two years ago, I took a shower wherein *I* decided when it ended. The shower ended not because the water had gone cold, but because I was all done in the shower. First time, that. First time. I was giddy. It was glorious.  

Great birthday present, Dad. (And thanks go out to Brother John for putting the bug in Brucio's ear!)

Categories: House

Comments [14]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 29.0

From around October 9th: the arrival of a huge package from Grampa John and Gramma Margo!

(Babies love boxes bestest of all!)

Categories: Sloane

Comments [14]

The Great Wrap Dress Search, Part One

Sloaner and I drove all over the south side of the city yesterday afternoon doing errands. You know... library, groceries, high-end-cooking store to pick up a Henckel garlic press... the usual.

I ended up going to that maternity store in Willow Park Village to look for a wrap-around dress for Sister Ains. Now, you should know that I hate the lady who works in that store. The first time I'd ever been in there was last year, around this time. I was four months pregnant, and Dad marched me down there before Ainsley's wedding with the intention of making me pick out "a pantsuit". I did not want "a pantsuit". I embellish not in the least when I say that I was in a foul mood that day.

So later, thinking back on the experience, I was willing to consider that my temper might have played a role in the impression I had of the woman who works in that store. Skinny, cooler-than-thou, and really not all that interested in selling the items the store has to offer, I came away with what's called a "bad impression" of that lady. She reminded me of those bitchy girls in junior high who never talked and had the trendiest pencilcases. The kind who grew up into women who wore really high boots with pointy heels, and who never found their friendly place in life.

But as the pregnancy months wore on and I was starting to nest and look for various items for the baby and whatnot (and, hell, possibly another pair of pants), I decided to give that store another try. I went in very consciously with a fresher, more positive attitude, taking a page out of all those affirmation books that say you create your own experiences and teach people how to treat you with your outlook... And she completely sucked, again.

Obviously a woman who has no children and intends never to become pregnant herself, I don't know if she's the manager or the owner or just a minimum wage schmuck with a huge attitude, this clerk leaves a seriously negative taste in the shopping mouth. In our birth-prep class, the ladies and I ended up in those inevitable conversations about the maternity shopping experience around Calgary. And to a one, we'd independently all arrived at the same conclusion: the lady who works at that store totally sucks. Essentially she gives the average pregnant person the impression that you're fat, and rich, and stupid, and to please get out of the shop.

Now, admittedly, the people who usually frequent Willow Park Village are, for the most part, those walking-too-fast frosted-haired frappalattechino-carrying lululemon'd wife-dolls, yes. And I have this suspicion (unconfirmed) that they get treated just fine when they walk into that store all coiffed and radiant with their requisite 0.91 pregnancy, looking to lay down the Avion Gold card and walk out with one of those $125 Petunia Picklebottom diaper bags. So real people with real budgets and real bodies are out of place somewhat in that milieu, I'll grant you.

But goddammit, I was forced to go back again after Sloane was born, when it was deduced via internet research that the swaddle blanket I wanted to buy was available ONLY at that damn store. I don't even need to tell you she sucked again, but I will: the lady who works in that store sucked again.

By that point I'm thinking, c'mon, this store isn't that busy. I've spent money in here every time I came in, very obviously out of desperation and against my better judgement. Don't you like my money? Don't me and my money look somewhat familiar, now that I've been in here five times in five months? Do you think you could kiss my ass just a little bit? 

In any case, I am a stoopid dumbass, and in the search for a dress for Ains, I tried that store yet again yesterday. The things I do out of love and devotion to my sister. I went in and avoided the girl, and started looking through the dresses. Finally we had the conversation:

Her:    [calling from the till. There's no one else in the store.] What are you looking for?

Ash:    Uh... a dress. I'm looking for a wrap-style dress.

Her:    [shaking her head] We don't have any.

Ash:    Oh. [Looking back at a rack I'd already been through.] Well, are you sure? I already saw one just in that rack, there.

Her:    No, there wouldn't have been one there. [Deigning to come over]

Ash:    [Going back to the rack with the wrap dress] Yes. This one. This style is what I'm looking for, but not exactly this colour...

Her:    That's not a wrap dress.

Ash:    [looking at the dress, seeing the wrap style] ...Uh... okay... whatever you'd like to call this style, where it wraps around the body and it's a dress... I guess that's what I'm looking for.

Her:    Yes, see, that's not a wrap dress.

Ash:    [Calm, still calm.] Okay. Whatever this style is called, that's what I'm looking for.

Her:    [Going over to a different rack, pulling out a knitted poncho] This is a wrap... we don't have any in a dress "style", though.

Ash:    [Looking, trying to stay polite.] Yeah... I don't really want that sort of thing. I'm looking for a dress for my sister. She's looking for a wrap dress that wraps around the body. [Showing, miming wrapping ties around the body, front to back.] On the internet they're called "wrap" dresses. I guess you and I are just using the same word for different styles. I'm looking for a dress like the one back there [pointing back at the wrap dress on the first rack].

Her:   No. We don't have any.

Ash:    ...Fine. Thank you.

Her:    Mm-hm. [Leaving to go back to the till]

Ash:    YOU SUCK!! [Stomping out.]

Okay, so I didn't really yell 'you suck'. But she would deserve it, if someone did yell that. She does suck.

And Ains, I couldn't find a dress for you yesterday - I'll keep looking.

Categories: Calgary | Family | Pregnancy

Comments [8]

Nighttime Gardening

There are days when things catch up with me, and I get all in a lather. Hoo boy, don't talk to me, don't come near me, and don't you try to stop me from cleaning and getting stuff done. Turner will tell you that sometimes when I'm puttering around I hum what he calls my "Doin'-Stuff Music". Y'all, last night I was not humming the Doin'-Stuff Music. 

It was a lovely night last night, a chinook washing over Calgary. Living in Ramsay gives me a totally different vantage point on the weather than my brain's default of my childhood 'hood of Bonavista. In the southeast you just see the clouds, the horizon flanked on all sides by the sea of houses and the wide roads of suburbia. But here in the central city it's only a few blocks down to see a cityscape view of the weather pouring out of the mountains, over Stampede Park and the adjacent cemetery on the hill. It feels like a different city, here. In any case, it was a gold and blue evening with the chinook arch, and the weather was a wonderful companion.

In the midst of a cleaning rampage that included all the bitsy bits of the kitchen and a great deal of laundry (using the shitty shitty shitty now-not-even-draining-the-spin-cycle-water Chez Bristowe-Turner washer and the needs-to-go-'round-three-times-to-fully-dry-the-clothes Chez Bristowe-Turner drier), I ended up stomping outside, at first to put out the compost and turn the pile. On the way back inside I got sidetracked into pulling up the finished tomato plants. Dumping soil out of the planters. Raking a bit. You know, stuff. ...Shut up. Don't talk to me.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the groundcover bed along the side of the house. That bed... It's been on my mind. The cover is a particularly persistent plant that is murder to remove - the roots are deep and apparently near-un-kill-able. But I have this idea about having a thick poppy grove up that walk, with nasturtium all entwined into the fence, for next summer. The poppy: because poppies are the best. And nasturtium: because the flowers are edible, and hell yeah, we're all about the edible flowers here at Chez Bristowe-Turner.

So, like, it's 9pm. And it's dark. But I've got a fuzz on for that bed of groundcover. I don't have my gardening gloves on, and I'm just wearing the jeans of the day, sort of too-pretty for kneeling in mulch. But, get out of my way, the dancehall reagae in my head sez Kick It and I stomped towards that bed and - fukkitt - tore it all out with my bare hands. (The actual work of removing the roots and such started today - it's not a short project.)

Yes. Yes folks, that's how hard core I am. I. Tore. Out. All. Those. Plants. With my bare hands. In the dark.

Motherhood: it's raw, it's real. And it only leaves you a few hours a day to yourself. The new craze, sweeping the nation of new parents: nighttime gardening. As Grampa Bruce said today: "You know, so the plants can't see you coming: surprise! Suckers!"

[Note: due to the camera being in the shop, no photos are available of the groundcover bed carnage.]

Categories: Calgary | House

Comments [1]

Funny Wurds

Asshat. Batshit. Wombat.

Hahahahahahaha!

Categories:

Comments [12]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 28.0

From October 2nd, 2005...

Meh-mah and Sloaner on the trampopoline in Nakusp.

Categories: Sloane

Comments [0]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 27.0

Uh, I haven't been the most prompt of posters of Sloane's PWIR photos. Today I again play catch-up...

From September 25th...

Every year here in Calgary, BP (formerly known as British Petroleum but now just "BeePee" - they're an "energy" company now, not an oil company, they sez. Do not look directly at the Tar Sands, don't mention the price of natural gas...) sponsors the planting of a birth forest for all the babies born in the area that year. Sloane got her invitation in the mail a few months ago, so on the appointed day we headed down to pick out a tree (from a selection of species native to the area, Sloane chose the Douglas Fir).

Aside from a minor incident involving Turner berating the organizing officials for allowing the Calgary Police to display their Hummer as part of the festivities (T, frothing at the mouth only mildly, quite rightly pointed out that the idea of planting a forest for future generations is at complete odds with the whole philosophy surrounding the most wasteful and conspicuously dangerous car on the road. The PR lady completely agreed with him... which is what PR ladies do, but anyway, the point was made), it was a lovely fall day and we had a grand time.

Categories: Sloane

Comments [11]

Congratulations, John And Fiona!

Hearty congratulations go out to Brother John and his fiancee Fiona! As soon as we got the announcement call late Monday night, we charged down the alley with a bottle of New Zealand bubbly and our champagne flutes to toast to the happy couple. Cheers!

Yessss! He's done it, folks! John Alexander "Jay-Blade" Bristowe got down on one knee and finally popped the question!

Fi, on the phone with Nanny. The happy couple got home from their dinner and immediately set about calling every family member on the planet - regardless of time zone.
 

(The wedding date isn't yet set - it'll be small, and outdoors, say early reports from the Johnjohn-Fifi camp. Here at the Chez Bristowe-Turner Family Gossipwatch Centre we're predicting a 90% chance of summer 2006 nuptials, with an 8% chance of "yeah, fuck it, let's just elope somewhere hot" in late winter/early spring 2006. A 2% margin is reserved for a surprise New Year's Eve wedding involving Pema as the MC.)

[Photos to come - my laptop melted down last night and we're in the process of trying to pull the data off the hard drive... which includes all the photos from the last three months.]

Fi's side of the story, here.

Brother John's side of the story, here. (My brother is a man of few words, note.)

Fifi-Bro.J Official Engagement Photo

Categories: Family

Comments [0]

But I Should Add This...

Viki Bristowe, ByWard Market, Ottawa, summer 1996.

One of the great things about being an obsessive chronicler of your own and other's lives is that you have photos of stuff like this, just sitting, ripe, in the archives.

Categories: Family | Olden Days

Comments [1]

There's No Other Way

At Dana's behest, our man Turner (the ex-Clark dj de la maison) has put together a Clark Standards songlist, and I'm listening to it right now. It's wonderful. Cheers, cheers, CHEERS to Clark Hall Pub, circa 1991 - 1996 (my tenure at the place - I'm sure it's still awesome, but I can only personally vouch for the years when I was a regular).

"Jesus Built My Hotrod" by Ministry. At the time, I didn't understand why this song was, or why it appealled to me. All I knew was that it was 1994, my parents had broken up, and I'd spent one HELL of a summer dealing with the aftermath. I came back to Kingston in the fall and called Sean Monkman and said, "I want a mix of all the angry Clark music. And I want that Jesus motorcycle song". And he made it for me, bless him, even though Sean believes that you should know the whole album if you're going to yoink a single for a mix. But this was the first song on that mercy tape. It's a love affair, mainly Jesus and my hotrod (yeah, fuck it).

"Head Like A Hole", by Nine Inch Nails. I can't help it, it reminds me of you, Harry Cho. We were the only people on campus with eyebrow rings in 1993, and for whatever reason, we decided that made us friends. You and me and many others danced and bowed to this one numerous times over the years. Much later, in grad school, I was on some half-baked river watershed study and this song came on the radio. In a glee I told my study partner, "Oh, this song reminds me of this friend from undergrad!" ... Bow down before the one you serve... you're going to get what you deserve... he looked at me and was like, uh... great.

"Debaser" by the Pixies... oh youse. I knew ALL ABOUT the Pixies before I even got to Queen's in 1991. I SO have my cousin Alanna Thain, and high school friends Melissa Darou, Margaret Drummond, and Elliot Long to thank for my prescient arrival in their fabled realms. By the time my university contemporaries had arrived at the Pixies' promised land, I could recite lyrical circles around them sevenfold. So when Clark played this one, it was a quaint reminder of driving home early on Friday afternoons in grade twelve, making the van "dance" with the brakes, at the time never suspecting I wouldn't see these rearview mirror friends again for years and years to come after first year university...

"Cannonball" by the Breeders. Oh, and I was so ahead of the curve on this one. I arrived in Kingston a few weeks earlier than everyone else before fall term started in 1992, and Kim Deal and the Breeders were still holding high ground before the Pixies' Trompe Le Monde release that fall. "I'll be your... whatever-you-want..." C'mon, as if we all haven't been there. SO GREAT. This song fed the Clark Hall spinning-dancers' fancy for years to come.

"Elephant Stone" by the Stone Roses. My 1992 beau John Johnston had this shoe box where he kept his music tapes (yes, tapes, 1992 was that long ago). And it seemed impossible to me, but whenever I'd come into his residence room and say, "Hey John, you know that song, ....nuh nuh nuh nuh...?" he would go to the shoe box and pull out exactly that album, and flip it into his tape deck, and fast forward it to exactly the song I'd been nuh-nuh-nuh'ing. I resolved to never look directly into The Tape Box (and I never did), because obviously it was magical and could produce whatever music I wished to hear.

"There's No Other Way", by Blur. Yet another set of props has to go out to Father Ted. The bad-seed young priest asks Dougall, "Which do you like better: Blur or Oasis?" Dougall, clearly having never heard of either band, stabs blindly: "Uh, Blur?" And the bad-seed priest spits in horror. "...Uh, Oasis! I mean Oasis!" counters Dougall, and the bad-seed priest is mollified. ...But I should note of course that this was a Clark favourite. I have a great many memories of standing in line, listening to the strains of this one coming through the doors at the top of the stairs, and pleading with the staff to hurry the fuck up in letting us in: we gotta drink! we gotta dance!!

Now it's "Loser" by Beck. To this song, it's April 1994, and I'm going down Laurier in the back seat of a sedan, driven by I-dunno-who... Jenn Bascom and I are in Ottawa for a rave. We're headed to the liquor store to stock our crew for the warm-up before the night's party, and it's unseasonably warm, and the windows are down, and we're singing this to all the pedestrians en route. Cousin Jana and I arrived at her then-boyfriend's house earlier that afternoon with the help of Jenn's signs posted throughout the neighbourhood, "ASHLEY: TURN LEFT HERE" etc. and finally, "ASHLEY: YOU MADE IT!!! YOU ARE A GODDESS!!" I still have that final sign, laminated, in my collected "archives". Get crazy with the cheez whiz!

And, oh, "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys. To this one, I'm out in front of Grant Hall at Queen's University. It's the day before the start of Orientation in 1994. I'm the Speaker of the Orientation Roundtable, the ostensible overarching organizing body for the school's fall orientation of new incoming students, and am about to convene the first big chant-fest for the orientation leaders before Orientation itself begins the next day.  This song is blasting and distorted through amps on the roofs of the vans belonging to the Engineering orientation leaders, the Frecs (led by their fabulous, devoted, worthy frontman, Mike Corcoran). The Frecs are slamming their jackets on the cement sidewalk in time to the beat, and the rest of us are standing around, basically wishing we were engineers.

Ah. Now it's "Jump Around", the House of Pain anthem. Everyone remembers this one, everyone jumped up and down in time to this one. Krishna knew all the words to this 'song', and if he'd had enough to drink you could convince him to perform it. C'mon, can you say you know all the words? ...I didn't think so. I'm the cream of the crop, I rise to the top...

"Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe" by Whale: I must've been drunk. This one just reminds me of being in Clark on Thursday nights late, beer in our mugs, laughing with Sean Monkman. In a specific effort to make sure we got some work done, we'd head to Clark at midnight on Thursdays - after dinner we'd work and work and work on readings and assignments until the penultimate moment. I'd leave the Brock Street house in the cold still of night, run up to Earl and collect Sean, and together we'd run over to Clark for last call. For some reason this song was a late-nite favourite and always played just as we were vaulting the stairs to order our three last-minute pints.

Hey hey. This one. Oh me, oh my. Dogs barking and I'm at Ritual. Ah, Jane's Addiction. There's not much to say about "Been Caught Stealing" other than: Awww yeah. ...The sun through the open windows, the smell of fallen leaves on the air, the smell of beer spilled on the floor. Gimme Clark any day.

"Big Time Sensuality" by Bjork - I know I heard this at Clark over the years, but for me, this was just a song of thrilling recognition: I love Bjork, and in her I found my musical doppelganger throughout university. So, I know I flung my face at the ceiling and threw my arms about and pranced around the dance floor to this one at Clark, but there were so many resonant times that held this song... so many times.

"Underwhelmed" by Sloan... even though I would eventually name my firstborn child Sloane, I never paid much attention to this Canadian band. When my dad arrived at the hospital the day after Sloane's birth, he asked if we'd named her after 'the band' and frankly I was floored that he'd ever heard of Sloan. His reply: "Well, you know... I searched the internet." (Cheers, Brucio.) This song reminds me of watching people play the old sit-down Ms. Pac-Man machine they had by the emergency exit at Clark - why, I dunno.

Oasis' "Supersonic": walking the street away from Clark, heading to get some food for the over-Ritualized tummy. Also very probably the source of most North Americans' first encounter with the phrase, "what I'm on about" in context. 

Lordy! "Basketcase" by Green Day. 'I think I'm cracking up... Am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?' - Even though me and drugs are basically strangers, I love that line. For this one it's standing in line for beer at Clark, lovely white-rugby-uniformed-staffers pulling pints, bumping past people on the way back to my friends, beer spilling over onto my hand and being shaken onto the floor and splatters onto my toes in sandals. Mmmmmm.

"Miss World" by Hole. I remember watching Hole on Saturday Night Live in early 1995. About thirty seconds into the first song, Krish turned and basically summed up the whole thing: "Uhhh... they lick." They did - Courtney Love was high or drunk or something, and it was horrible and embarrassing to watch. I ignored Hole for the rest of that year. Then Thaba and I moved to Guelph and one of us somehow acquired the 'Live Through This' cd, and it became the de facto soundtrack of that first semester of grad school, a sort of "holy shit, we miss Queen's" series of anthems. So really, this one reminds me of missing Clark more than actually being there.

"Homeboy" by Adorable. This was one of those songs were I'd go find the other people I knew in the bar and chat during the 'break'. I was always a dancer, at the bar to dance and laugh and drag people to the dancefloor (when I wasn't doing air violin to "Istanbul Not Constantinople", of course). This isn't much of a dancing song, unless you were of an interpretive bent. The chorus is okay, but the rest is too mellow. A go-an'-get-another-beer-sort of song. But really, this is Turner's mix, and yes, he was the actual dj there and me only a lowly Thursday-late-night-and-sometimes-Ritual regular, so I don't have much of a serious say in the songlist. But still, even for me it's a Clark sort of lovely-momentish song.

"Supernaut", 1000 Homo DJs... yeah, again, I must've been drunk. (My old housemates'll be nodding.) I have only vague associations for this one: late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows beside the dj booth, the feel of the wooden chair arms, toodling to the bathroom and leaning my head against the friendly purple beside-toilet headrest (as widely advertised circa 1995).

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", REM. Actually, I'd been a fan of REM since grade nine, and I'd heard this song approximately seven zillion times by the time I hit university. So it was no revelation to hear it at Clark. But in truth, this song actually and always reminds me of meeting Matthew Currie on Stephen Avenue Mall as he was busking in the summer of 1994, and we hadn't talked in two years, and we were still mad at each other, but I watched him do this song, and then we hugged and walked away, and then at the same time turned back and hugged again. ...And didn't talk again for three years.

So tonight here's a buncha cheers to Turner, and big cheers to Sean Monkman, plus special cheers to the phenomenon of Clark and all youse who made it great, Joey and Harry and Anne and Adam Teather and y'all and sundry. Whoo! And gimme an "I Am Superman" for good measure, in a nod to my first-ever visit to Clark with Sean Nazerali, oh-so-early in the fall of my first year at Queen's.

[Do you know us? Would you like a copy of the limited edition DJ Turner 92 - 96 Clark Hall Essentials cd? Let us know, it can be yours for nuthin'!]

Categories: Olden Days | Turner

Comments [11]