Up! Magazine!

See "Mall In The Family" feature, above

It's a little late in the month to be announcing this, but if you're going to be on WestJet anytime in April, make sure you dig that in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of you. Turn to page 52. And lo, behold the West Edmonton Mall story Turner and I did back in December, in all its Sloaner-ific glory:

Aw yeah: Five page spread, 13 photos, and all the masterly writingness you'd expect from Turner for the text (including a Motley Crue reference). One free December vacation in West Ed Mall, and the Bristowe-Turners bring it to the masses. 

Categories: Ash | Sloane | Turner | Work work work

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For a long, long, looooooong time I have been complaining about Calgary's climate. I just seem to be hard-wired to prefer, at, like, a core and cellular level, humidity - even though I grew up in Alberta. ...I'm talking about 90% humidity. And it's not just the hair thing - my hair goes all corkscrew-crazy and huge in humid climes, a phenomenon I didn't properly appreciate until I got the hell out of Alberta for university. No, it's more than that. My favourite weather calls for about 24C, windy, and deeply humid. All you meteorologists out there might notice that that's usually the situation immediately prior to a summer storm in Ontario. And sure, Toronto's summers were pure awesomeness for me. The closer the air came to a soup-like consistency, the better, as far as I was concerned. I'd run around and dance in doorways and rush outside to revel in the surge before thunderstorms, while everyone else was battening down the hatches. I miss that weather, irredemably.

Most Calgarians keep lip balm in their car, particularly if they're headed to the airport to pick someone up. Because it takes only about as long as the walk from the airplane to the parking lot for the visitor to realize that every pore in their body is crying out for moisture - certainly their lips might actually be falling off. By the time you get to the car and you're putting their stuff in the trunk, you turn to find them patting their own pockets for non-existant lip balm, affecting increasingly-desperate twiddly fingers and lip-licking techniques (these are, for the record, never helpful). I won't go on and on and on, but what I'm driving at is that it's dry here. Very dry. This part of Alberta, while arable, is just this side shy of being a high-altitude desert plateau. I've always disliked the fact that my hometown wasn't a great deal more humid, and have made elaborate gestures (such as, "working overseas" and "living in eastern Canada for 11 years") towards trying to establish myself somewhere that the climate was more to my soul's liking. 'Twas not to be, and I ended up plunked back in Calgary anyway.

But over the last few weeks I discovered something extraordinary. Spring finally arrived and I got out in the yard to water the new little trees we'd planted. And I'd done some preparatory gardening over the fall and winter to prepare the beds for poppies and beans, and Turner has planted Uncle Ron's garlic, so those needed water. Dad had stepped up and arranged to have the giant tree stump out back removed, and we are getting ready for this year's tomato growing extravaganza, so I've also been watering those areas, to pack the soil and get things conditioned. So while I was out there having at 'er with the hose, I figured I'd water the huge row of lilacs on both sides of the house, since we'd massacred them during the fence building campaign of '04 and last year they looked a bit spindly. And there were the standard yellow/brown patches on the lawn because of the trampoline, so those needed a bit of water, too. Plus we have this fancy-dancy new hose head with, like, twelve settings, so watering the garden has a sort of low-rent video game feel to it; testing out and identifying which settings best suit which circumstances, etcetera.

It helped of course that it's been absolutely glorious weather-wise here for the last three weeks, so getting out there and communing with nature hasn't been the cold and dreary chore it usually is at this time of year. But besides all that, I realized something, and it might have changed everything for me, here. I've spent all this time out in the yard, watering all the plants and trees, and I was finding myself out there, without fail, twice a day, morning and evening. There's not much that I'll do twice a day, errand-wise. Brush my teeth, sure. Not much else. And it's not free to water the yard, mind - we're on a meter and so whenever I turn on the hose I'm well aware that I'm pouring our hard-earned money all over the lawn. But for some reason I felt so GOOD about watering everything in the yard. I felt so alive, and happy, and so at home, somehow. I couldn't help myself, I wanted to be out there, so much.

And then I suddenly realized, with a start, mid-water (water shooting out over the sidewalk, as I stared off into space, in the midst of my realizing-ness), that it's the smell. Aside from the practical benefits of watering the trees and shrubbery and flower beds in my yard as they're getting started on this year's growing season, it's the smell of the water - soaking into the soil, the mist falling through the air, the dripping drops showering out of the branches. I realized that I had gotten addicted, all at once, to the smell of a humid Calgary - my tiny piece of land being moisture-soaked in the midst of this arid plain - and that it had made this house and yard feel more like home than Calgary ever had.

So to hell with the water bill, I'm digging in, working on my microclimate. 'Scuse me.  

Categories: Ash | House

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Ah, The Quote Board

When visiting Cousin Jenna in Lennoxville I was re-acquainted with the staple of student decorating: The Quote Board.

How true. How very, very true.

When I was in undergrad at Queen's in the early-mid 90s, we had a similar ongoing group project at our house, the Rules Learned Through Experience, (Vol. 1 - approx. 20), a compendium of knowledge accumulated by the rotating cast of seven-or-so paying tenants and various honourary housemates who wandered through our house over the years. We were young, barely out of our teens, and loose on the world. We learned some stuff.  

"Beer left too long in the freezer explodes."

"When cooking pancakes, do NOT touch the pan with your hand."

"If you squee-gee the mop toooooo hard, the rod is liable to suffer a fracture, and thus become two seperate pieces."

...Like every other set of random Canadian undergrads, we didn't know shit about shit. I dunno what the hell our parents were teaching us at home during high school, but it obviously didn't involve any cooking, cleaning, financial management, or common sense.

"When preparing Kraft Dinner, it is a good idea to remove the noodles from the strainer before adding the milk."

"Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."

"When walking in the ghetto during a thaw, avoid all puddles - due to the irregularity of the level of the sidewalks, a puddle that looks like only surface water may well teach you that things are not always as they seem."

We had to learn it all from the beginning. So looking back on these lists now, I see so much that is now, of course, SO OBVIOUS. But the Rules, as a collection, serve as a (valuable!) reminder that we all have to learn these stupid things once, and more often than not, as a result of our own stupid behaviour - sometimes (gasp!) even drunkenness.

"There are no pasties like wine pasties."

"If you have to get up the next morning at 6am and drive 9 hours, don't go to Pub Nite and get really drunk the night before."

"If you are at the SkyDome watching the Vanier Cup, and you fall and crack your head open, and you don't notice the pint of blood that has gushed all over the front of your white shirt, the First Aid people are likely to strap your ass to a stretcher, accuse you of having a spinal cord injury even if you can prove you can wiggle your toes, and then toss you in an ambulance. Then the medical community may, depending on the amount of sadistic glee they get from watching you struggle, belt your chin and arms to the bed, ask you stupid questions like, 'What's your surname?', and finally try to coerce you into peeing in a bedpan before finally, 4 hours later, releasing you into the free world armed only with a photocopied page of Head Injury Instructions."

Overall, the idea was that any Rule had to be true, and thus any Lessons we learned were - natch - begot Through Experience. And some of us were... not so bright.

"Spaghetti sauce that has been opened and is left in the cupboard goes moldy."

"Don't set hot frying pans on linoleum."

"Styrofoam melts in the microwave."

Oh, university. Oh, youth. Oh, I'm so glad it's over and I only have stupid tax-and-parenthood-related Rules Learned Through Experience (Adulthood Edition) to look forward to in my 30s.

...Some of my other favourites included:

"Always remove the layer of foil from the neck of a wine bottle before using a corkscrew, or you may discover that that 'sticky cork' was not a cork, and you've just successfully drilled a perfect hole through the bottle's screw-top."

"The wrapping chicken comes in to stay fresh in the fridge? It need not remain on to keep the chicken fresh while cooking."

and of course,

"If you happen to be stirring two pots on the stove (at the same time)  you will be treated to a 240-volt surprise as you complete the circuit with your upper torso."

Categories: Ash | Friends | Olden Days | Ontario

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The Sun Shining On My Face

As with lots of families, the Bristowes had those seminal movies that informed the cultural corners of our childhoods. Among ours were Poltergeist, Out of Africa, Star Trek II (The Wrath of Khan), The Colour Purple, all the Star Wars movies, and The Dark Crystal. And anyone who's spent time with John and Ainsley and I will have noticed our propensity to quote an otherwise under-appreciated Bill Murray movie, Quick Change. (I do recommend you go rent Quick Change.)

In the midst of the catastrophe of our trip down east, I found myself repeatedly thinking of another movie we watched over and over as kids: Mask, which starred Eric Stoltz as Rocky Dennis, a young man with a facial deformity, and Cher as his druggie bike-gang-affiliated mother. At one point in the movie he's following her around the house, reciting a poem he wrote for class. Inspired by that poem of Rocky's, I have cobbled together my own for our recent Ontario-Quebec jaunt:

These Things Are Bad

• Humping a collapsable playpen up and down many, many, many sets of stairs
• No Royal Banks anywhere in Ottawa
• Setting off the house alarm at Richard and Stephanie's, and having to wait for the police to to arrive so I could explain that no, I'm not a burglar; please don't shoot, yes, I have a key; no I don't live here, I'm the wife of the nephew of the man who owns this house; yes, they know I'm here; no, I don't know why the alarm is going off 
• Losing my favourite scarf somewhere along the way, possibly stolen by that pierced-face francophone teenager on the bus
• and, Don't get me started on the Ontario health care system

Hour Fourteen of waiting to be seen at one of the hospitals (stethoscope not included)

These Things Are Good

• Luc Dominic's huge Horbow schnoz
• Jay and Jana (full stop), showering with the door open, obsessing about real estate on the MLS, and the smell of the maple woods up at Buck Lake

The sap was running as we took a walk one morning in the wet leaves of Jay and Jana's septic bed

• Richard's ridiculously rich deep-fried pork chops with the cream-and-pickle sauce (ow my arteries!), a resident bird for Sloaner to enjoy, and making pizza & gossiping with Stephanie in the kitchen

The McConnell canary, Charlie, was a big hit with our girl.

• Jenna's turret room in Lennoxville, the 'deli' train, and university students' concept of "baby proofing"

This woman drives a Flying Rectangle. Believe it.

• The blessedly fine lap-eating dinner party in our honour at Sean and Keitha's flat, also starring Cousin Viki and Mark Rajeha

Mark works the Baby Cam as Sean hams it up in the background, Keitha looks on (gorgeous as ever).

...And finally, upon arriving in Calgary, the sun shining on my face.

Categories: Friends | Ontario

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Continuing Sickness-ness

I am sicker than I've been in a long, long time. When we finally arrived in Calgary on Friday I felt like I'd been run over by a lumber truck. I had to ask the WestJet people to call the little gimpy-traveller golf cart to come and ferry us from the gate to the baggage carousel; I felt like I might fall down if I had to carry Sloane and all our stuff down that endless hallway. But thank christ, there were Turner and Margo, waiting for us, all smiles and helpfulness and sympathy. I thought I was pretty sick while we were still in Ontario and Quebec, but the focus was Sloane, and getting her better, keeping her safe and warm and (relatively) happy, as happy as you can keep a hugely snotty and underslept and croupy baby while far away from home. The antibiotics were working, and her ears were pretty much okay on the airplane, and at least she wasn't feverish all the time anymore.

But as for me, I guess my body knew that it would be only a few days, only a few days more, before we got home, and was holding off on the actual crash. Because I just fell apart when we got here. Sparkly spots before my eyes, nausea, laryngitis, and a truly spectacular chest-rattling cough. I'd bought about $24 worth of various cough suppressant remedies in Lennoxville, but my lungs were like, Ha, Double Ha, at all the syrups and pills and losenges. I've spent QUITE enough time dealing with the health care system lineups this week THANK YOU, and since Brucio was still in Argentina (or Chile? ...we just can't keep track these days), there's no queue-jumping service available. So we just slapped me directly onto the Cipro stash left over from the India trip, knowing that it's pretty good for respiratory stuff. It's taking its sweet time bringing me back from the brink, but yesterday I finally felt like I turned a corner away from consumptive death at the hands of my KGH-labelled "overreaction", or as I like to call it, "Fucking Bronchitis (Now Possibly Edging Toward Pneumonia)".

I'm in a convalescent state now, wandering around in the (truly magnificent) $9 satin dressing robe I got in Hong Kong and accepting tea and rubs from Turner. Sloane is doing great, just a bit snotty and the last-bits-of-coughy, and sucking back the oatmeal like nobody's business. And last night Margo made a truly perfect prime rib roast.

Categories: Ash

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Siiiiiick Sick Sick

Categories: Mom-ness | Ontario  | Sloane

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