Howdy Howdy, Quick Update

We're in Boulder, Colorado. We arrived in Denver about ten days ago, met up with our pal and old India hand, Carla, at the airport. Thereupon we rented a car (uh, a minivan), and headed south into the wilds of downcountry Colorado.

We're on a research trip for The Geography Of Hope, and our first stop was Taos, New Mexico. We rented an Earthship (photos in this link to our GeoHope blog) outside of Taos and spent a few days exploring. Then last weekend we attended the June Earthship seminar with visionary architect Mike Reynolds, out at the Earthship Biotecture headquarters on the bald mesa west of Taos. We were inspired, we were amazed. We took a whole whack of photos, which will eventually go up on Flickr. But we were also pretty convinced that between the drought and the blistering sun and the giant shiny spiders, New Mexico was gettin' set to kill us. So it was time to pack up and head north, back into Colorado.

We stopped at a weird little community off the highway north of Alameda, where everyone was very obviously growing pot as their livelihood because Hoo Boy were they paranoid. Asking directions to a community garden we'd heard about, someone demanded to know if I was FBI. Note to the citizens of that weird little town (name to come): There's a list of twelve different special soils for sale, up next to the cash register at your little grocery. Do you think you're fooling anyone about the "We all work in construction" thing?

Then it was Snowmass, and some time in Aspen, and a visit to the Rocky Mountain Institute. Then Nederland where we visited an alpaca ranch, and now we're in Boulder. This morning I took Carla to the airport.

I know this is a shitty update, I'm writing under a big time pressure and with only half a crappy sauerkraut hot dog in my tummy, so it may not last in the long run, but that's it for now. I'll leave you with this photo from our hike up at Maroon Bells, above Aspen:

photo by Carla Bellamy

Categories: GeoHope

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(Use The Franglais Pronounciation): Frustration!

Categories: Ash

Comments [0]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review... Uh, I Can't Remember At This Point

Sloane hasn't made her preferences clear between the mescal and the home-grown lime margarita, here at the Woody Creek Tavern.

Categories: Sloane

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Taos, NM

We're in Taos, New Mexico, fresh off the June Earthship seminar; photos to come on the Geography of Hope blog. This is just a check-in to say Hey y'all, we're good! We're hanging with Carla! And living in an Earthship (solar powered & heated, water recycling, skylights, completely cozy and wonderful while somehow also spacious, with a near-outdoor shower)!

This being the Southwest (as in the sauce), the spiders are fricken HUGE! So far the tally is Ash, Turner and Carla 9, spiders 0. Which is the good news. The creepy news is that when we smashed one of those spiders, a giant WORM unfolded from inside and started to crawl away, obviously looking for another HOST!! We all had completely revolting dreams that night, I tell you whut.  

But the desert is beautiful, we're eating wholly organic, and having a lovely time, though we haven't yet had a Julia Roberts sighting. Keeping the eyes peeled, though.

Like I say, photos to come, probably from Aspen (we leave tomorrow to head back to Colorado).

Categories:

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Keep On The Sunny Side

You know that song? It's on the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Yeah, that one. Get it in your mind:

Get on the sunny side, always on the sunny side; Keep on the sunny side of life!

It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way; if we'll keep on the sunny side of life...

That's it, you've got it. Now - speed it up, just a little. Picture your old record player, and that switch that would let you (for what reason, I dunno) speed the sound up about 33%. Just that much. Enough to sound manic, and wild-eyed rocking-back-and-forth giddy, possibly cracked.

...Riiiight. There you go. That's where I'm at today. Right. There. Right now.

A Matter Of Tardy Arrival

So. Last night we were at Marcello and Moonira's wedding, and it was great fun and we were damn lucky to get invites, having just met them this year, really. It was at the Cochrane Ranchehouse, and it was beautiful and fun and we cried and ate and danced and handed out bindis and bashed Rob Payne and posed for photos and ate our weight in cheese, and generally had a super time. And I was even the designated driver, so there was very little booze involved in my version of events. (See, kids? You don't have to drink to have a good time - let this be a lesson to you all.)

But anyway, we were a bit late in leaving. Like, not late exactly, but we had juuuuuust enough time. Having been married so recently (2 years ago) myself, I remember pulling up to the hall, mad as hell that I was twenty minutes late. Every wedding I've ever attended started waaaaaay late of the posted time, and always because of the bride. And I was fricken DETERMINED that that wouldn't be me. I don't know why I staked a portion of my anxiety about my wedding day on whether or not I made it to the hall on time, but I did.

In any case, as Uncle Leo (who was driving) pulled up to the hall, Uncle Larry came down the steps and opened the door of the car for me. As he helped me out, two friends from Calgary scurried past us, obviously just arriving. "Hiiiiiii! You look beautiful!" they gushed, as they grabbed my hands and beamed. And - uncharitable me - all I could think was, "Get in the fucking hall! I'm twenty minutes late! If I'd been on time you would've walked in right as the ceremony was ending? What the fuck?" But I grinned and hugged them and was like, Yay! You're here! even though inside I was being a judgemental asshole.

So. Before I was married I always arrived early mainly because I didn't know you could arrive "on time". And now I arrive early because I never want to be those idiots arriving late - and lucky - that weddings don't start on time.

The Babysitters: An Introduction

Now. It's the World Cup, right? And Brucio just installed a whole home theatre thing, specially for the occasion of the World Cup. We're talking a ridiculously giant 9 foot x 15 foot screen, a whole projection unit (which apparently requires some kind of crazy burns-out-in-a-few-months $1000 bulb), and blackout curtains that render the entire basement completely dark. Like, black as the dead of night in a tomb. I went to Douglasdale to check it all out, and completely barked my shins on the stairmaster in the gloom, after ill-advisedly coming in through the back door and, hence, directly from the direct sunlight into the Pit Of World Cup Darkness. Brucio and Leo, deep into the Poland vs. Ecuador game, didn't even notice me arrive. To call my male relatives "soccer fans" would be to understate things to a grotesque degree, is what I'm saying.

Brucio was our first shift of babysitting for yesterday. We needed to leave for Cochrane by 2:30pm at the latest, in order to make the ceremony. But because our departure fell right in the middle of the afternoon game, we had to deliver Sloane down to the guys glued to the tube down in Douglasdale. Brucio sez to me on Friday, "Lookit Ashley, for the next month it's the World Cup and that's my first priority. But my granddaughter TOTALLY comes second, like, above everything else. She's completely the focus. Except the World Cup, because it comes first. ...So bring her over and she can watch the Argentina - Cote d'Ivoire game, but I can't come get her, because halftime is only about fifteen minutes and it's not enough for the round trip to your house."

I guess you can't fault someone when they're that clear on their priorities. Or, perhaps more to the point, when you don't have any other options for babysitters than your photophobic Calgary football hooligan relatives.    

So in the end I sent Turner to deliver Sloane, and I stayed home to write out the bedtime routine instructions and set out Sloane's dinner for our second babysitting shift, the incomparable and beautiful Alexis Bahry. (...Ladies and gentlemen, Alexis Bahry. Thank you.) Also to do my toenail polish. Because if there's one thing that my old friend Jenn Foley taught me, it's that you can't go to a wedding without polish to match your outfit. Which I had, so it was applied, and I flapped around the house finishing my hair, packing the wedding bag (camera, tums, eyeliner, money, extra underwear, and toothbrush & toothpaste), and writing out the gift cheque. And getting increasingly stressed about the time. I wanted to arrive on time. Things were not looking good.

Just Under The Wire

Turner finally made it home, changed into his wedding gear, and we roared over to pick up Chris and Meike in Crescent Heights. And then made our plodding way out of the city, confounded at every intersection by the worst timing in traffic lights that I've. Ever. Had. We took the lesser of the two routes (Koentges totally suggested a better way and I overruled him), and I did some serious speeding, not to mention a ballsy passing-at-the-last-minute-before-the-exit of a huge truck on our way into Cochrane. And we roared down the hill to the Ranchehouse in a cloud of henshit and small stones, ran across the parking lot, and, panting, signed the register, with (barely) enough leeway to pee before the ceremony started, nearly on time. Folks, my nerves were shot before "Hello".

We had a great evening, but I was sober, and we left for home reeeeeeeally late. I never quite wholly calmed down from the frantic driving-to-Cochrane adventure, so I was nitpicking at Turner the whole night, uncharacteristic behaviour for us (at least, in public). We got home around quarter to three, fell head-first into bed, and slept. I dreamed about biting my hands, and clocks, and general anxiety. I don't know what the hell had gotten into me, but it stuck.

Those Patio Lanterns, They Were The Stars In Our Eyes

So. Today. I got up and I knew we had a buncha things to do. I didn't look at my daytimer, but Turner was going to the Herald Book Sale at Crossroads Market, and Jenny Repond's going-away-forever-to-England party was this afternoon, and I was picking up Jenna and Jackie at the airport at 3pm. A busy mid-June Sunday to be sure.

Sometime around 1pm, Brucio showed up and suddenly decided that This! Was! The! Day! to make a gift of new patio furniture. Which is to say, he announced that he'd buy us new deck furniture, but only if we left right then, and only if I'd choose it from the one and only store he was going to take me to. When we arrived, I was overwhelmed by the lovely and scary outdoor sets, all snazzed up with placemats and stylin' umbrellas and fake plants. And the sale was ending today, so tomorrow all the prices would jump 25 - 30%. So I didn't have the option of coming back. I wandered around, a bit paralysed, looking at the beautiful furniture, trying to picture any of it on our (lovely) deck in our (ghetto) neighbourhood, and wondering how long it would last if we didn't bolt it to the deck surface with locks. Then Sloane started to get grumpy. And hungry. And began calling for the bottle and the baba. As I paced around the store with heightening blood pressure and unable to choose which set I "wanted", I was also obsessively checking the time, which was growing shorter and shorter before I had to leave to meet Jenna and Jackie at the airport.

Finally I picked a set; it took nearly fifteen minutes to pay for it (those fancy furniture store people have to earn their commission even at a psychological level - "Sooo I need to staple all these things together... aaaaaaand take your address... aaaaaaand have you sign four forms... aaaaand now I have to inexplicably go to the back room for a while..."); and then it started to rain. It was five minutes after 3pm, and I prevailed again on Brucio to PLEASE just accompany me to the airport, but he had some other vague-sounding "errand" to run and he "couldn't" come to the airport, and I "had" to drop him back at Spiller Road so he could collect his car there. And then Sloane wailed the whole way home, baaabaaaa.... botttt-eeee... baaaaabaaaa... bott-eeeee... You know, it wasn't the end of the world, but I was pretty strung out by this point.

But, When It Rains, It Pours

The rain turned into a downpour. The sort that, in Calgary, usually twists a bit to the left to suddenly become hail and irredemably pock your paint job. Through this, I was weaving down Deerfoot with the wipers on Ludicrous Speed, them whapping back and forth, and in my mind going Fricken racken-fracken Dad, why the hell can't he just fricken come to the fricken airport for ten fricken minutes so I can make it on time for Jenna and Jackie... racken fracken ME and MY fricken weekend time management, why couldn't I fricken just tell Dad that I couldn't do this today? Forty-five fricken minutes is no kind of fricken timeline on which to buy fricken expensive deck furniture... But on the outside I hoped I was achieving the grateful-yet-hurried outer demeanor I meant to convey to Dad, who had, after all, very kindly gifted us a beautiful (if speedily-chosen) patio set. Even if I did have to drop him at his fricken car, which was parked at our house, necessitating a fifteen minute detour. And, you know, if you're at home now anyway, you might as well run in for ten seconds to get the damn baba and make a damn bottle for the poor daughter all bent out of shape, back in the car.

Put On The William Tell Overture

So. I leave Dad standing on the side of the road in front of our house, and PEEL away from the curb with a true screech of the tires. (Let me just note here, just in case you don't know me: I'm really, really not that kind of driver. At all. Ever.) It's 3:15pm, and if the flight is on time, Jenna and Jackie are walking off the plane as I navigate my screeching route through Ramsay and Inglewood, back to the Deerfoot. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change... Squealing through the Spolumbo's intersection on a very stale yellow light... to change the things I can... Breaking my own iron-clad rule for never using the cel phone while driving, trying to change the message on our home answering machine while merging onto Memorial from the Zoo bridge, and realizing, on the trunk down to Deerfoot North, that our cellular service provider obviously isn't Telus, because it won't allow access to our phone-company-controlled home voicemail system... and the wisdom to know the difference... Giving up on the phone and just concentrating on getting to the airport a) at top possible velocity, but b) alive.

I pulled in to the Calgary airport's short term parking garage at 3:42pm, now nearly a half hour late for Jenna and Jackie's flight. There were no parking spots anywhere remotely near the WestJet end of the garage, and, in a momentary fit of complete and context-necessitating shitheadedness, I parked right in front of the door I needed, in a handicapped spot. (In case you're wondering, I'm not in any way physically disabled.) Unceremoniously yanked Sloane out of the car seat. Slammed & locked the car doors. And then I RAN like I haven't run since way before I got pregnant, two years ago. Bang, out the doors and across the "Caution: bus" talking intersection. Started scanning the faces in the taxi queue near the terminal doors. Sprinted across the intersection, boobs and baby bouncing merrily below my crazed head. And burst through the WestJet doors, into the lobby. Heh! Heh! Heh!

Looking at every face, every chair, looking for Jenna and Jackie. Are! They! Here!? Jogging down to the baggage carousel, zipping through the crowd, bobbing among the faces, looking for my cousin and aunt. I checked the clock: fully a half hour late. I pounded around the lobby for a good ten minutes, checking the flight schedules, hoping they'd come around a corner, out of a store, from behind a pillar, down the escalator. ...But no, it was increasingly and finally clear: they weren't there. I'd missed them. I called John to tell him what I'd done, and he hadn't heard from them. I called Dad to tell/guilt trip him that I'd missed them at the airport. And then I just stood there, holding Sloane's hand, looking forlornly at the arrivals gate doors. And knowing that Jenna and Jackie weren't going to miraculously come through them, now, 45 minutes after the plane landed.

Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I'll Go Eat Worms

That was the point when I quietly removed myself from the public eye with as much dignity as I could muster. I herded Sloane into the ladies' washroom and sat down on the floor of the wheelchair access stall, handed Sloaner my wallet to keep her busy, and had a giant cry, looking at the air vent in the ceiling.

Oh woe is me. Oh, I am a bad cousin/niece. Oh, I shoulda never gone with Dad for patio furniture if it was all going to be such a rush. Oh, now Jenna and Jackie have taken a cab to my house, and I'm not there, and I've got Jenna's keys to her car. ...I guess the fair thing would be to reimburse them for their cab ride since this is all my fault. Fuck, that's about $35 I don't have. ...And I'm such an asshole. I was paralyzed by the patio furniture. I never should have gone, today. ...Oh man, I hate having to drive that fast, it's not safe. ...I wonder what my blood pressure is, I can feel my heart pounding in my eyeballs, that can't be good. ...Oh LORD, I can't believe I took a handicapped spot out in the parking garage! I wonder if I'll be fined. Super, a couple hundred bucks for sure. ...Oh jesus, poor Jenna and Jackie, they totally don't deserve this, Jenna's graduation weekend, oh man. ...They've both always been so loyal, they've always stood by me and been so supportive. ...What an asshole I am, they're on their way back to my house in a cab, thinking I forgot about them. ...I SO SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME, I'm an asshole, I never shoulda let Dad talk me into the patio furniture thing today... I...

...I ...uhh...

That's when it hit me. That, uh, I was there a day early. Yes, Jenna and Jackie were coming in tomorrow, on the 3:15pm flight, on Monday. ...That I'd completely lost my mind, I'd rushed the patio furniture thing, I'd gotten SO mad at Brucio, I drove like a maniac. I'd completely ruined the whole day, over NOTHING. Over a mistake, a logistical scheduling error.

Keep On The Sunny Side

So. Crisis averted. Or, perhaps I should say, Non-Existant Crisis averted. No need to be mad at anyone. No need to self-flaggelate about being a crappy airport picker-upper person. No need to lament my own time management prioritization, or regret the patio furniture foray. No, no need.

I very quietly gathered up Sloane, washed my face in the airport bathroom washroom, and walked back to the car. We drove home silently, at a normal, safe pace. I handed our girl over to Turner, and as he put her down for her nap, I set about doing the needful for my shattered nerves: frozen vodka heals all wounds, particularly on an empty stomach. Numbs them, anyway. After my shot, I pulled out the food processor and whipped up a giant pile of hummus, leaving all the dirty bowls and utensils and empty cans everywhere, and set myself up on the couch, to stare into space. Strangely zen. Completely cooked and done. Serene but a bit on the "gone" side. As in, "Gone Fishin' ". I couldn't even reflect much on the lessons that were sure to be on parade through this experience. Just needed some time, let the vodka & hummus do their work. I very rarely get worked up about stuff, so I'm somewhat poorly equipped for those periodic days of frothing stress. I felt like a zombie. And then the soundtrack for this whole fricken 24 hours came to me, and started to smile. Then laugh.

A: "...Turner? Please? Could you put on that song? [humming]"

T: "Which one, madam?"

A: " ...'Keep On The Sunny Side'. That basically sums up everything right now."

T: [laughing] "...You got it."

A: [laughing] "Keep on the sunny side, all-ways on the sunny side, KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF LIIIIIIIIIIFE!"

T: "True enough."

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Family | Friends

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Travis's Maple Leaf Meme

Travis sez: The challenge: draw a maple leaf. Like it appears on the flag. So g'wan. Try.

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

My contributions, courtesy of Microsoft Paint.

Turner sez: "You did that? Without looking? ...Pretty good for not lookin'."

Categories: Canadiana

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Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: Week 63

Sloaner, she like-ah the goggles.

But you? She no like-ah you.

So: To Hell-ah, You!

I-ah eating-ah chips-ah! And, ah, you-ah can't-stop-me-ah!

At the Gustafsons' place, Browse Loop, Nakusp.

Categories: Nakusp | Sloane

Comments [3]

What's That You Say, Sonny?

All my life, my mother has been deaf. Deaf, deaf, deaf. There was a very obvious component of selectivity to the deafness, of course. I think every mother has to choose what to hear and what not to hear. With 3 kids running around screaming at each other all the time, I don't blame her for tuning some of it out. A crucial nugget of my whole sense of humour comes from the following scenario, which played out many many times in my youth:

"Mom?"

Waiting. Nothing. Ash goes to the back hallway and calls.

"Mom!?"

Waiting. Nothing. Ash goes and checks the garage - yes, the car is still here. Val is in the house somewhere. Ash heads towards the kitchen, calling as she goes.

"Mom? Mama!!"

Waiting. Nothing. Val isn't in the kitchen. Ash winds up and takes a deep breath.

"MAAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!"

Nothing. ...No, wait, Val's voice comes from very far away, upstairs:

"...She left!" 

While frustrating at the time, that, my friends, is truly hysterical on all kinds of levels. I fully intend to employ this one on Sloane and her siblings.

Now, most busy households are noisy, I'll grant you. But I grew up in a house of hollerers. Part of it was the house. Frickin HUGE is one way of describing this thing. I had no proper frame of reference for its size until I took some friends past it (we didn't live there anymore, by then) waaay after university. We rounded the corner and Thab goes, "Holy Sixteen Candles! That thing is massive!" I kind of cocked my head and looked at it again. Superimposed it onto the other houses I'd lived in since high school. And she was right. It was enormous. I don't know why I'd never really noticed before. It was just our house.

But so anyway, we lived in this big mausoleum of a thing, and whenever the phone rang and it was for someone else, common courtesy dictated that we cover the receiver before bellowing at the top of our lungs, JOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHNNNN! PHOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNE!!! Because the house was so big, people could be any number of places upstairs or downstairs or outside and usually far beyond the reach of your lazybones teenage feet. So making use of the lungs god gave us was the Bristowe solution to this situation. That's the first thing.

But the second thing is that Mom was, and is, deaf. There was really no use in using an "inside voice" at our house. Because whether you screamed or you whispered, chances were Mum wouldn't hear you anyway (the above "she left" example notwithstanding). More often than not volume dictated the day and we were screaming down two flights of stairs at each other, even when whoever we were yelling at could hear just fine. It was par for the course at the Bristowe residence because over the years we just normalized to a very loud environment. People who came to visit our house would always say with a slight cringe, "Gee, do you have to yell?" And we'd be like, "We're not yelling, we're calling." The visitor would give a little nervous giggle and feel to see if their ears were okay.

Now, we'd tell Mom that she was deaf, but it never really occurred to me that Mom might actually be deaf. Brucio for his part had looooong been convinced Mom wasn't just deaf, but that she'd exacerbated the situation with "all that crazy aerobics music" over her years of being a fitness instructor. I wasn't so sure - us kids just figured Mum was losing it a bit, and it's not that she didn't hear us, she was just tuning us out. In high school I took to calling her "Val" if I needed her attention in public places, since she'd respond to that name when "Mom" didn't work.

So let's fast-forward a decade and more. Here we are in Nakusp, and it's 2004/2005/2006. By this point there's no question in anyone's mind that Mum is at least partly deaf. Over the years and after countless incidents large and small of Val missing "the middle bit"; and claiming we never said that; and not picking up the thing at the grocery store we called out just as she was leaving; after all that, everyone had finally come to an agreed conclusion that Mum was, truly and sincerely, partly deaf.

Everyone, that is, except for Val.

Talk about denial. "You people mumble!" she'd yell. "You go, 'Murrrrrmmm furrrrguuuuummmm murrr-murrr'... and when I say Uh? What? you get all red in the face and you scream, 'YOU'RE DEAF! YOU'RE DEAF!'. ...I hear just fine!"

"No you don't," we'd grumble.

"I heard that!" she'd screech.

"No you didn't," we'd grumble some more.

Michael was fully in agreement with us, by the way. While it might have been plausible that she didn't want to hear what we-all had been saying all those years when the Bristowes were a family unit, it seemed insane that Mom would willfully tune out her second husband. I knew things had reached some kind of crazy level of weirdness when I arrived in Nakusp one time and found a "Guide to American Sign Language" in the upstairs bookshelf, with Mike's name inside the cover. Mom held the line, though, never breaking rank. "I'm not deaf!" she'd yell. "You people mumble!"  

But finally she snapped. Mike and I were yammering away at dinner last fall, joking about Val's lack of hearing. And Mom got all up in it. "You people won't be happy until I go and get my hearing tested!" she yelled. There was a pause. Mike and I looked at each other. Actually, that's exactly what would make us happy. Val just stared. "Fine! I WILL get my hearing tested and when it comes back tickety-boo all of you mumblers can go to hell!" We agreed to those terms.

I don't have to go on and on about what happened next, but I will say this. Mom went to Kelowna for tests and was pronounced deaf in a very specific portion of the hearing range - that being in the middle tones, where most women's voices fall. She hears high and low pitches perfectly. But in the centre of the range: almost nothing. Because both her ears have exactly the same kind of damage, the doctor concluded that she'd lost it in a high, prolonged fever, probably when she was young. True enough, an illness fitting this description was well documented in Val's youth. The doctor told Mum that she'd probably been lip reading the majority of what she'd been "hearing" for years. The kicker is that Val is a counsellor, and basically listens to people for a living. She's really good at her work, so the only conclusion to draw is that she's a champion lip-reader.

In any case, the deafness diagnosis finally and officially confirmed, Mum called around to eat crow.

"Welll... you were right. I am deaf," she said.

"NO KIDDING. HOW ARE YOU FEELING?"

"Uh? Just fine... How are you?"

"GOOD! GOOD. I'M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU'RE WELL."

"Uh Ashley, you don't have to yell, you know. I'm deaf, not foreign."

"SO ARE YOU GOING TO BE FITTED FOR HEARING AIDS?"

"Yes, I'm getting the top-of-the-line ones. They're exorbitantly expensive. It's criminal."

"EVERYONE IS GREEDY, THEY'RE ALL BASTARDS."

"Really Ashley there's no need to yell."

"I'M NOT YELLING, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I SUPPORT YOU IN THIS DIFFICULT TIME. YOU WERE SO SURE YOU COULD HEAR PROPERLY, IT MUST BE SUCH A BLOW TO REALIZE YOU WERE WRONG ALL THOSE YEARS."

"You know, when people ask how I went deaf I tell them it's damage I sustained after years of listening to my children repeatedly yell, You're deaf!!"

"...THAT'S PRETTY GOOD."

So like Mum said, she got the expensive hearing aids. They're all digital and fancy and white-person-flesh-coloured and so tiny you don't notice them at all. Except. Except! Val won't wear them. 

Why? I don't know. I've heard of this so many times - people's parents and grandparents are deaf, they get hearing aids, they're so pleased to be able to hear the world once again... and then they refuse to wear the hearing aids. I know that many deaf people find the world very noisy when their hearing is restored through a hearing device, and I can grant them that.

But? Uh? The whole point? Of the hearing aids? Is to hear? You know? I can understand not wearing them while you're gardening, or sleeping, or going to the bathroom. But, like, at dinner? Maybe you'd wear them at dinnertime. Because people are all gathered around the table and you're all there, ostensibly, to enjoy each other's company. And probably to talk a bit, because that's what you do. At dinnertime. Around the dinner table. You know.

So every day we beg Val to put in her hearing aids at dinner time, and half the time, she refuses. After years of all the "Sorry, what's that?" and snarky head tilts and "I didn't hear you, you'll HAVE to speak up" and the denial, it's really rather aggrivating to have to endure it now, especially with the (ridiculously expensive) hearing aids sitting right there on the table next to Mum's plate.

But the other night, Papa Mike did us proud. The conversation was rolling along, and Mum missed a few things. Please put in the hearing aids, we said. No, she said. A little while later she was all, "Sorry? Repeat that?" And in comes Mike: "Well Val, maybe if you push those things up your bum the echo will eventually filter up to your brain!"

And that folks, as they say, was the end of that.

Categories: Family | Nakusp

Comments [2]

Ramsay In Bloom

Although we're in Nakusp, before we left Calgary I ran around taking pictures of all the amazingness of spring in Ramsay. As such we now bring you the photo essay: Ramsay in Bloom (2006)

Categories: Calgary

Comments [0]

Granny Val And Papa Mike Versus The Bats

The first I heard of the bats was years ago, some time after Mum and Mike moved to Strawberry Hill. They'd adopted their first Siamese cat, Ming, and she was driven just about to the edge of her sanity trying (and failing) to keep the house bat-free. Apparently there were a few living in the attic, under the drywall, and they'd flitter disconcertingly around the house at night, often meeting their end as Ming plucked them out of the air near the ceiling fan.

And yet there were always more bats the next night, much to everyone’s growing dismay. One or two bats? Okay. But one or two bats every day? Not okay. Not remotely okay. You start to worry that they’ll get caught in your hair. You start looking over your shoulder, and begin to imagine little high-pitched squeaks (a prelude to the imminent dive-bomb attack on your eyes). You start envisioning a tennis racket massacre with flying debris and bat juice all over the furniture. And you really hope it doesn't have to come to all that. Plus the cat was starting to seriously go round the bend, twitching at every bug and dust bunny to pass through her peripheral vision. Something had to give, and since Mum and Mike weren't exactly going to move house, they decided that the bats had to go.

So they looked into exterminators, but were told right quick that all bats are protected under British Columbia law, and that the only actual option legally open to them would be to have the bats captured and removed. So they hired a little man to come to the house. He arrived wearing an all-over-protective suit and carrying a wet/dry shop vac. Mom and Mike watched as he climbed the ladder to the attic and then boarded himself up, inside. From there we can only infer what happened, but apparently he crowbarred off the plywood 'drywall', exposing the insulation. And immediately revved up the shop vac, and spent the next twenty minutes pounding away on the ceiling of Mum and Mike's bedroom, staggering around the attic sucking up flying rodents by, apparently, the many many hundreds. Mama bats. Baby bats. All kinds of bats, many many many of them. Many. Because after the attic wall came away it was clear to the little man that what was supposed to be a "small bat problem" was, in fact, one of the LARGEST bat infestations he and his wet/dry shop vac had ever handled. Bats everywhere, squiggling and squirming, living all entwined in the insulation and escaping out big holes where the eaves met the roof. Bats! Lots!

When at last the vacuum whine fell quiet and the little man unboarded the attic door, what emerged from the top level of Mum's house was apparently a hunched-over figure covered in guano (bat shit), hauling a now very heavy wet/dry shop vac full of alive (and take note, British Columbia wildlife service authorities: unharmed! Apparently!) bats. The little man got into his little car and drove the bats down to Burton (50+km away), and once there, he set them free.

Now, bats like the places they like, and you can't tell them not to like those places. Bats will return year after year after year to the same spots - the same barns, the same trees, the same houses - after migrating back north every summer. You can't tell them to bugger off: Hey! Tryin’ to watch tv, here! Get lost! Because aside from being blind (which they're not), they really don't listen too good. At least to people. They've got their sonar ears which apparently work real well, which is how they manage to swoop around and get bugs on the wing. But I digress - you can't invite them to please leave. Back they come, every year, welcome or no.

Which is to say, if you suck them up in a shop vac, for example, and then you go set them free somewhere, those little fuckers'll take one look at the night sky or figure out the vibrations of the magnetic longitude, or something, and immediately fly right back to where you took them from. Before he drove away the little man suggested that Mum and Mike had one, maybe two days max before the bats would be back, sure as God made little green apples. And then he was off down the road.

So Mum and Mike set about lickety-splitty filling in all the wee tiny cracks under the tin roof with wire mesh and expanding foam. I think they stayed up all night and took the next day off, too. They replaced the insulation and filled the holes from the inside. Replasticked everything and glued it all down and put in boards, and nails, and then re-hung the attic walls, carefully making what they hoped would be an airtight (and bat-tight) seal. Through all this activity, Ming watched from her place atop the bookshelf, suspicious and ever vigilant, not at all believing they'd seen the last of the bats swooping around above the washer/drier.

They finished up the roof and attic work with a couple hours to go before sunset the next day, and then they set to waiting. The first night: no bats. A few days went by, and no bats. A week went by. No bats. Two weeks. After three weeks they heaved a first, cautious sigh of relief. And the next day they went in to work and heard that a neighbour across the road had been recently dealing with a sudden onslaught of bats. That she was so surprised because she'd never had bats before. Hundreds of them, all of a sudden, she said. I think they’re in the attic! Oh you don’t say! sez Mum and Mike, rocking on their heels, eying each other and whistling don't-look-at-us tunes, but quietly high-fiving each other on their way out of the staff room. Bat-free city! Aw yeah… and they high stepped it back to work, celebrating.

Uhhh… We'd like to report that the story ends there, but you know it doesn't. No sir. Do I tell short stories? I do not tell short stories. But I will certainly tell a long story in many parts. So this is the end, as they say, of Granny Val and Papa Mike Versus The Bats: Part One.  

Categories: Family | Nakusp

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