Fingers Crossed

Last weekend Granny Val and Papa Mike were in Calgary for visit - Friday was Mike's birthday and we all went out to dinner. I believe there was an obscene amount of time spent at Ikea, and some getting-lost-in-suburban-strip-malls. Par for the course for Nakuspers (Nakuspians? Nakuspees?) on shopping-and-visiting runs to the Big Smoke. Turner and I hosted Mum and Mike for breakfast on Saturday morning, where we join the conversation already in progress...

Granny Val:   [watching Sloane zoom around the kitchen] ...What's she interested in these days? Does she like anything especially? I mean, is there anything that particularly captures her focussed interest?"

Ash:            [thinking] Uh... yeah, actually. She's fascinated with the bottles of shampoo and soap in the bathtub. She'll knock them all over, and then re-sort them, moving them around, putting them up and taking them down for hours.

Granny Val:   Maybe she'll work at Shopper's Drugmart someday!

Ash:            Well, we can only hope, at this stage.  

Categories: Family | Sloane

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The New Door!

This one's for Margo & John, the kind benefactors of our lovely new (sealed, fit-the-frame, properly insulated) set of doors.

These doors, they weren't cheap. But WORTH EVERY PENNY, I tells you.

The front door was installed late last week, and on the first morning afterward I awoke thinking that the front door was open, there was so much light pouring through the front hallway. The new front door has totally changed everything about the balance of light and shadow throughout the main part of the house, entirely for the MUCH BETTER.

We've had a few... problems with the doors thusfar, mainly with the whole "ordering" and "receiving" process via the manufacturers (estimated turnaround: 3 weeks... elapsed time so far: 8 weeks and counting). First they didn't arrive at all. Then they arrived and they were all BACKWARD from their shipping labels (the handles and hinges were all on the opposite sides than they should have been). On and on. For a few days there Turner was back home in Calgary on his own and it was 30C, all the old doors had been ripped out of their frames and were precariously propped against the house, "closed". There was no air movement, and no way to use the previous screen doors to provide ventilation. Every time he tried to leave the house the cat would escape as he struggled with the doorknobs and frames. It was all hell.

But cheers to the tireless and persistent Stephanie & Mike (and Dave), friends who are doing the painting/deck/doors/carport/etc. additions this year for us. Stephanie is an old family friend from Bonavista and she has gone to the mat for us repeatedly all summer. She's absolutely LIVID about the whole door-ordering fuckup situation. As Turner put it to me on the phone when I was still back in Ontario, "Stephanie's SO MAD about the door situation, I don't even have to get mad. I mean, if she wasn't so obviously COMPLETELY PISSED OFF about how everything has gone down, I'd be a lot more angry. But as it is, I feel okay about it all."

Right now, the door is white. Eventually it will be painted deep burgandy outside, and remain white on the inside. I make no claims on interior/exterior design, and I have no design-y ambitions (aside from the extensive and grandiose renovations to our house about which I obsess on a daily basis), but we figured dark green house with lighter-green trim and dark brown fence + deck, plus dark burgandy doors, would be an overall pleasing colour configuration. I suppose we'll find out in the coming weeks once all the doors are in and the painting is complete.

Which is all to say: hurray! New doors! One installed, two more to go. They'll be put in as soon as they arrive from the manufacturer. Which is... any day now, we're told. More photos to come.

Categories: House

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Go, Mr.-Undemocratically-"Elected"-"President"-Of-A-Buncha-Wildly-Different-States-Desperately-Hanging-On-To-Nationhood-("We've been great since '48!")-Woulda-Been-Toppled-By-The-Collective-Weight-Of-Worldwide-"Paki"-Jokes-Long-Ago-If-It-Weren't-For-The-Arsenal-Of-Nukes-("Thank you, Canada's CanDo reactor sale!")-General-Musharraf, GO!

General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a man who first took control of his country by coup d'etat in 1999, last night pulled the publicity coup d'etat of a LIFETIME by appearing as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Turner and I sat, hunched and bleary-eyed and white-knucked just after midnight, when The Daily Show came on with its signature kettle drum-and-trumpet intro. "Oh Lord," we said. "Please let this go well."

I'll let the 'more subaltern than thou' among my readers debate the history of Pakistan and its present role on the world stage. Officially I'm speaking just as someone who has lived and worked in that region of the world, a white person who has friends there, somebody with a dwindling Urdu vocabulary kicking around the corner reaches of my noggin. I'll just say this: appearing in on television in a country where 99% of everyone would pronounce the name of his nation "PAK-istan", the President of Pakistan (for the record: "Paw-KIH-staan") held his own. Amazing stunt, a feat of diplomatic genius. I had to sit on my hands to keep from cheering, at points.

Lahore train station, 1999: Included here as requisite evidence of "I'm qualified to have an opinion on this"; this picture hangs in our kitchen as a reminder of our footloose salad days riding the rails of the Subcontinent. (Photo by Shezhad Ahmed)

And hella kudos to Jon Stewart for going easy, while being funny, and reverent - I don't have an exhaustive list of Daily Show guests in front of me, but Musharraf has to be one of the first sitting heads of state to appear on that show. Any American talk show. And how many erudite, composed and gentlemanly heads of pointedly Islamic states show up on American tv? I don't know that number off by heart either, but I should mention that even the vaulted Globe and Mail printed a photo in yesterday's paper that seemed to show Hamid Karzai with devil's horns. And we're the commie pinko neighbours to the North - Canada's National Newspaper has long been slapped with the dreaded "liberal" label by the American press.

I won't recap the segment for you - go watch it on YouTube. 

Categories:

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Working Together

Reporting and shooting the Antigonish piece for Up!

Categories: Married Life | Work work work

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Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review

I'll say this about Queen's: they love us alumni. And I'll say this about Clark Hall Pub: they haven't changed, still the centre of the universe. No one batted an eye as Jana, Alexis and I waltzed through the Alumni lineup for Ritual on Friday, toting one baby named Sloaner. And when we entered the pub, a buncha random arms rose out the crowd, bearing cameras and phones to capture the image of a 96' alumna and her class of '25 girl enjoying Ritual with all its rights and privileges.

In the lineup for upstairs-at-Clark.

We snuck in our own hooch for Sloane.

Shown here with Mike Corcoran and her Mama, Sloane is a bit pooped & sweaty after moshing to "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe".

It was Alexis' first Ritual, but Jana's an old hand, having cut her teeth back in '94. A fine time was had by all.

Categories: Olden Days | Queen's | Sloane

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The Oilthigh

So Sloane didn't get into the playschool. We're looking into "other options" right now. I spent two days so upset and mad that I was no kind of good company up in Howdenvale. I finally shook it off and sucked it up. Self pity and despair are so unbecoming, no?

We said goodbye to Thab and Phet and Ji and Seung Yi a few days ago. Zoomed south to Toronto, did a whirlwind turnaround at the Connacher Coach House - threw in the ol' Dance Along Sesame Street dvd to keep Sloane amused and set about folding the laundry I'd put in before heading north last week, wiping up the grimy Sloane hand marks on all the surfaces, and packing the stuff I'd left behind. Glancing feverishly at the clock, needing to depart in time to miss rushhour. Then finally, ZOOM, through the early afternoon streets of Toronto and up the DVP in blessedly minimal traffic. ZOOM! down the 401 at 130km/h (attention grandparents: I never drive like this. But Sloane has only a limited tolerance for the car and we'd been on the road for three hours already) and made it to Kingston in record time. ZOOM! up the Westport road to Jana & Jay's house on Buck Lake. Sloane only screamed for the last 30km or so. The only thing that would shut her up was repeated renditions of the Oilthigh.

What is the Oilthigh? It's the school song of Queen's University. It's in Gaelic. I have no idea what the lyrics mean and I'm among 95% of Queen's graduates in this regard. But it's to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Quite rousing. Etcetera. It's used at sports games and during orientation week, part of the whole 1984-esque indoctrination process. The Peter Lougheed, the new rector of Queen's at the time of my graduation, even started one at the convocation ceremony. You do a kind of modified can-can while singing the Oilthigh, holding on to your fellow revellers.

Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!

Queen's College colours we are wearing once again,
Soiled as they are by the battle and the rain,
Yet another victory to wipe away the stain!
So, Gaels, go in and win!

[The next part is yelled]
What´s the sport of Kings?
Queen´s! Queen´s! Queen´s!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil!
Yay Queen´s!

(A quick bit of internet research indicates that there are three more verses, none of which I've ever heard in real life; you can peruse them here.) And by the way, most of the lyrics above are pronounced roughly how they look, but the last bit, "Cha Gheil", comes out as "Kay - ah!". Gaelic is weird that way, ask anyone.

I thought it would be cute to get Sloane familiar with this song in the week leading up to Homecoming in Kingston, so when she heard it at the football game on Saturday she'd laugh and clap. So I sang it here and there in the car along with the other standards (You Are My Sunshine, My Sloaner Lies Over The Ocean, Colder Than You, and Blackbird among them).

What you'll know if you're a Queen's graduate is that the Oilthigh is fun, but once or twice is enough. It's repetitive. And can get pretty grating pretty fast. As the former Queen Bee of Orientation at Queen's, I can tell you that I've done approximately 6 squillion Oilthighs in my day, and I unpack them only under specific circumstances. Like at Homecoming. I've heard that many Queen's grads end up with Oilthighs at their weddings due to the critical mass of alumni on the guest list. Our wedding was not one of those weddings. Turner's not a joiner and like I say, I've done enough Oilthighs in my time.

So it was with no small measure of "oh no..." when it started to become clear that Sloane would only be satisfied with repeated Oilthighs in the car. That last 30 km to Jana's was hell. Every time I stopped singing (and often even between verses), Sloane would start to whine, and yell, and sign "Again", and scream, "MORE!" I'll tell you that my daughter is not only now familiar with the Oilthigh, it may live on in her noggin for the rest of her life. To keep myself sane I sang it in every conceivable voice, octave, and tone. Even the "underwater" version where you bibble your lips with a finger so as to sound like a mermaid or something. If only the shits from SOARB circa 1994 could have seen me. I think they'd have thought I was getting my comeuppance.

Categories: Olden Days | Ontario  | Queen's | Sloane

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Quotes

In an attempt to cheer myself the hell up, I present the Best Quotes of the last week or so...

We barged in on Beau and Julia on Saturday morning for an impromptu drop-by visit at their Pape St. digs. Set ourselves up in the livingroom and demanded to be entertained. We were not disappointed. Beau is telling us about how, as a child, he loved the smell of coffee. So, this one time, he actually chewed up a couple of coffee beans to see how they'd taste.

Ash: How'd that work out for you, there?

Beau: [totally deadpan] ...It was disappointing. It's like when you drink the vanilla extract? And it totally DOESN'T taste like vanilla ice cream or baking cookies? Yeah... 

 

We had some people over to Connacher's Coach House on Labour Day Monday, to hang out an' shit. Turner was the dj, spinning the tunes, standing at the stereo wearing his Singapore tshirt, which features the merlion, the accepted national symbol of Singapore. Various conversations were going on between different people around the room, but it suddenly became clear that Angela Pacini and AGP were completely convulsed in laughter over to one side of the living room.

Turner: What. What the hell. Are you laughing at me?

Adam and Angela: [speechless, laughing]

Turner: Whaaaat!?

AGP: We were just discussing what exactly Singapore is saying when they make their shirts to feature vomitting, lion-headed pineapples.

Turner: ...I could provide you with a very rational explanation of this tshirt, but I think I'll just leave it. Yours is way better.

Usually the (one and only) merlion, which fronts Singapore's giant harbour, is spewing out a stream of water. (Hence the "vomitting" idea, above; shown on Turner's shirt.) This photo, stolen from Google, was taken during an inexplicable... drought? ...I dunno. But you get the "lion-headed pineapple" bit from this, right?

Categories: Friends | Ontario

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SMOKIN' Mad

So I knew that there were lineups and wait lists and stuff like that for playschools. So I signed Sloane up back in March, paid my deposit. When I didn't get the promised receipt in the mail in 3-4 days like they'd said I would (a month later nothing had shown up), I called. They didn't answer my call. So I went back.

It's a great place and the kids look happy. The staff are friendly. It's close by. It reminds me of my own kindergarten. I put Sloane on the list for either full or part time, whatever came up first.

In Alberta you can't send your kid to playschool until they're 19 months old. Which means that to have childcare before that you can stay home, or send them to daycare ($25-45/day and up), or get a private babysitter of some description ($11/hr and up). Turner and I work in shifts (me - mornings, him - afternoons & evenings) and share the childcare at home. A lot of days Grampa Brucio comes over and takes Sloane for an hour or two. Our personal philosophies, combined with our financial situation, didn't really allow for dumping her in any ol' daycare. And besides which, there aren't many daycare places to be had, anyway. So I cobbled together my work in the free hours of my day, and although my career arc is transcendent at present, I was really looking forward to the chance to really kick out the jams.

Sloane is really social, too, and loves other children. She screeches, "Kiiiiids! Kiiiiiids!" when she sees other children at the playground, or we go to friends' houses with kids. We know she'd thrive in a playschool environment.

So it was with some measure of concern that I hadn't heard from the playschool yet. I'd perused the documents they'd given me, familiarized myself with the checklist of stuff I have to send with Sloane every day, read the bylaws, started scoping out the lunchboxes at toy stores. And yet, no call. By last week I'd put on my to-do list "Call playschool re: Sloane". And today I called.

1. The school is full for the fall. When I signed her up in March, I asked if I should be investigating other options. I said the words, "This is the only place I'm putting her on a waiting list. Is there any reason she might not make it to the top of the list by the fall?" The answer was, and I quote, "I don't see ANY REASON why she won't be here in the fall. Don't worry" (emphasis mine). So I didn't put her on any other waiting lists.

2. Other kids were brought through the wait list before Sloane. The administrator hadn't written that I would take full or part time, whatever was available first. They'd put "part time" by Sloane's name. Which means, and I quote from today's phone call, "Other children were placed ahead of Sloane". When I registered her back in March, they weren't sure whether they were going to cut the part-time program. Sometime between then and now, they went ahead and cut the program. If I had indeed wanted part time care for Sloane, I was not notified.

3. Fucking $100 per month from the fucking government. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. You know what $100 buys you these days in Calgary? Not even a blow job. I am absolutely repulsed by these fucking government buy-off programs. Ralph and his fucking $400. Do you realize that even Sloane got $400? Seven months old and she was sent a cheque for $400 by the Alberta government. And then they take $180/mo in health care premiums. Schools are falling apart. Multinational oil companies are subsidized to speed the irrevocable destruction of the boreal forest and muskeg in Northern Alberta. But my seven month old daughter got $400 from the Alberta government, and so did I, just for breathing - just for being a resident of the province. We put it all in her RESP. 

But this $100/month. I am SO ANGRY at that program. Where the hell is a national strategy for child care? I am SO ANGRY at ALL the fucking political parties that have been promising a national child care program since the late 1980s. There was this big study recently that showed that back-to-work rates for women in Alberta is the lowest in the country. I am part of that demographic because I CAN'T GET MY KID INTO PLAYSCHOOL. I COULDN'T PUT MY KID IN DAYCARE BECAUSE THERE WERE NO SPOTS, AND THE ARRANGEMENTS I DID FIND WERE TOO EXPENSIVE, OR IN THE FAR SOUTHEAST, OR IN TRULY SCARY NEIGHBOURHOODS.   

There is one slender ray of hope and it's this: some little kid in the program hasn't shown up yet. If he doesn't show by tomorrow, Sloane is at the top of the list. But here's the kicker: they don't graduate kids to the next "grade" until the end of the school year. Which means that once the year is full, it's full until the following fall. And Sloane doesn't turn 19 months, the age at which she can start, until October 19th.

I'm terrified to call back and ask if that means that some other kid, who is already 19 mo + gets the spot ahead of Sloane.

I hate facing this feeling - the one where I know I'd claw my way over another parent to get what I need for my child. I don't know what to do. I'm SO ANGRY.

Postscript: I called. If this other kid doesn't show up, Sloane can have the spot. But only if we pay for the month of September to hold the place. That's $675 for childcare we can't access.

Categories: Calgary | Mom-ness

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Feeling The Weight

I tell you, I would be a hella lot slenderrrererr if we lived in Toronto. I forgot how much you can walk to if, say, the city has been designed so you don't necessarily need a car to get around. Yesterday I walked and walked and WALKED and walked all around downtown Toronto doing errands, with Sloane in the backpack yelling at the streetcars ("STEEEET-CARRRR!"). It was great. At the end I was fricken exhausted.

And in Antigonish, I walked and walked and walked, because we were close to downtown, and it was just plain lazy to take the car most places. Even though we live in the "inner city" of Calgary, our community is still pretty spread out, and it's still a long hike to anything resembling a commercial district. I miss all that ambient exercise that used to pervade my life. In Calgary I consciously try to make up for it by taking the stairs, and doing lots of gardening. But it's just not the same, really.  

Categories: Ash

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Welcome, Samuel!

Bunked down in a lovely Lisbon private hospital, Sean and Pepe were blessed first with what sounds like The Greatest Labour Of All Time, after which they welcomed their son, Samuel Traca Nazerali. Hurray! Great work, folks!

Proud dad, Sean Nazerali.

I don't know anyone who looked this good after giving birth! (Personally, I looked (and felt) like I'd been run over by a truck full of chicken guts.)

Categories: Friends

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Cryptic Moth In Flight

Many of you know the handsome and fine man we call Ian Connacher. Do you know that we're staying at his place in Toronto? Yes, we are. A lovely, lovely place it is, too. A sanctuary for us in the city.

But where is Ian these days that the Turner-Bristowessesses can arrive en masse with our bags and camera equipment and travel playpen and Green Eggs & Ham books, and just set up shop in his Annex coach house? Well well well.

Did you know Ian's off shooting what will likely be the most important film ever made about plastic? He and the trusty Gad have spent the last half year and more circumnavigating the globe filming all the newest and greatest and most inspiring innovations in the world of plastics: research, applications in agriculture and infrastructure, recycling, impacts. Australia, Japan, Europe (Turner and Ian hooked up for some co-"research" in Germany in May), the US... I think India's up next, later in the fall.

Our Toronto peeps screening Alphabet Soup, the plastics documentary Ian made last year; the frontrunner for his current project that documented the accumulation of plastic in the Pacific ocean. From left: Turner, Beau Levitt, Angela Pacini, Adam Pasquella (aka "AGP"), Julia Chan, Joey DeVilla, Wendy Koslow, Anne Yourt, and the mysterious... "Paul".  

It's been in my blogroll for a while, but as we're here ensconced at chez Connacher, and since their blog has also recently hit a superb stride, I thought I'd point you in the Cryptic Moth direction.

Live, from the front lines of real change, check it out: http://www.crypticmoth.com/blog.html

Categories: Friends | GeoHope

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Change O' Planz

There's been a change of plans.

Montreal: off the schedule. Sad to say, we won't get to see our beloved Seany & Keitha Monkman-Roberts, or snazzy cousin Viki. Sorry, folks. We're disappointed.

The new planz include a) making up for the rain-rain-rain days and staying on in TO to finish up the photos here and make sure I have the gravy shots to make this shoot look great, and b) renting a car so as to facilitate getting up to Howdenvale to see Thab & Phet & Ji and Seung Yi, and to get me and Sloaner around and about the eastern Ontario mulberry bush next week when the lovely Alexis Bahry joins us here in Ontario for the Kingston-Homecoming 2006 portion of our program.

Montreal woulda been cool. Sorry folks. Another time...

Categories: Ontario  | Work work work

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Thankful Musings

Sloane also sez "Thanks!"

Categories: Ash | Ontario  | Work work work

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Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review

While I was figuring out the light for this shot, I accidentally snapped this totally flukey, non-photoshopped pic:

Another pedestrian is perfectly hidden behind Sloane - except for the legs. Note the washed-out CN tower in the background, and the relatively new lack of Varsity Stadium at the corner of Bloor and Bedford. I knew there was some reason I'd never noticed the great view of the tower from this intersection before...

Categories: Ontario  | Sloane

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Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review

In the end we were anti-social and didn't invite anyone to join us on the patio. It was just the Bristowe-Turnersesses and a platter of magnificent antipasto yesterday in Little Italy, and Sloane ate her weight - yet again - in olives.

Mmmm... provalone...

Categories: Ontario  | Sloane

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