Thursday 27 December 2012

Messy mind, messy life, messy page

I'm not sure if many of you have noticed but this blog writing thing is kind of difficult. It's kind of like life - it's easy to lose track and just let it go. Then one day, you wake up and you're pissed you let so much time go by without actually doing or writing SOMETHING! But you're not quite certain what to do or write.

That's me today.

I'm sitting in my warm house looking at the snow piled up outside, facing six days of rest and relaxation. But inside, I'm bubbling and boiling. I can't relax. I don't want to read the current novel I'm wading through, I don't want to do laundry, I don't want to clean up, I don't want to write in my blog, I don't want to write. I don't know what I want to do. My skin is prickling with over stimuli and I just want to cut and peel it off. I'm sweating from anxiety, my stomach clenching. One minute my mind flashes quickly through a sequence of thoughts; the next minute, I'm struggling to remember the dog's name.

I have to do something today, something! But what?

I've forced myself to put away dishes and fill the dishwasher but there is no satisfaction.

Yesterday, I tried to leave the house, drive to town, get away. But the Genius was full of questions - Where was I going? What was I doing? How long would I be gone? I didn't know. I had no set plan. He wanted us all to go together, maybe see a movie. I wanted to be alone but my heart soared at the idea of a movie. Darkness, popcorn, an escape from reality for two hours, bliss. The Goobers didn't want to see the same movie we wanted to. They didn't want to see the movie they were interested in at the same theatre complex while we (the adults) watched what we wanted to see. They didn't want to leave the house. I gave up. It's like I can't escape, even for a few hours.

I have to do something today - something! Please!

Only six more days to go.

Sunday 23 December 2012

A state of grace


Well, The Genius was a bit bummed out by my last blog entry. He said he “liked” it BUT it depressed him. So, I thought I’d try to lighten things up a bit.

Grace – that wonderful pre-meal tradition where you thank some invisible dude for the food you’re about to eat that you know damn well was actually grown or produced by a farmer somewhere, purchased with your hard-earned money and cooked in your stifling hot kitchen. When I was a kid, grace was a big deal. It was always said before each meal and the honor of spouting it off was usually rotated through myself and my three older siblings. My parents never had to say it, although on special occasions – like Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving – my mother seemed to have the power to whip a long, flowery one out of thin air. It would go on and on and on and on as the food steamed and went cold around us.

As the youngest and least powerful member of my family, the job of saying grace seemed to fall on my shoulders a bit more often than everyone else. I hated it. I was hungry. I wanted to eat the meal that I knew my mother actually prepared, not some high and mighty invisible deity. Why’d I have to thank HIM? As with all things I didn’t want to do, I eventually rebelled.

I think I was about 14 or 15 when the incident happened. For my 13th birthday, my father had finally given in to my years and years of incessant whining and begging and had purchased me my very own horse. His name was Pongo (named in honor of the dog in One Hundred and One Dalmations) because he resembled a dalmation – white and covered in brown spots. He was purchased at the annual Norwich horse auction and I was never prouder than the afternoon I led him up our farm driveway, much to the horror of my mother (she wasn’t a fan of horses).

Owning Pongo resulted in many adventures that I might share with you some other day, including near death experiences for both the horse and myself. As a result of an illness that almost killed Pongo – a story for another day – he experienced “off” days when he wasn’t 100 per cent healthy and would lay around groaning in the field. It was amazing how often these episodes seemed to correlate to the times when I wanted to go for a ride.

It was during one of these bouts of equine malaise the great grace incident happened. It was a Saturday and I had spent most of the afternoon sitting beside my groaning horse in his pasture rather than actually hacking with him down the road. I was concerned I might have to phone the vet – again – and my father wasn’t home to bounce the idea off or finance the visit. I was contemplating selling my new English saddle to pay for the vet bill when my mother yelled out the back door for me to come in and have dinner. About 10 minutes later, she was back shouting for me again. After the third shout and the use of all three of my names, I decided I better go in. With one last concerned glance back at my suffering steed, I went in the house to eat.

It was just a small group for the evening meal – my sister, her boyfriend, my mom and I. As I sat down after scrubbing my hands in the laundry room sink, my mother informed me they had already said grace but I was going to need to say it again since I was so late to the table.

“GodisgreatGodisgoodletusthankhimforourfoodamen,” I mumbled, actually reciting that blessing faster than the speed of sound.

I reached out for a bowl of mashed potatoes but was stopped by the sharp use of my name.

My mother wasn’t impressed with my amazingly speedy recitation. She trembled in her chair with outrage.

“You’re going to say it again but this time, with feeling,” she said through clenched teeth.

I’m not sure what made me do it. Maybe it was the idea of entertaining my sister’s boyfriend. Maybe I was unstable after the stress of caring for my sickly horse all afternoon. Maybe I just wanted to be a smart ass. Whatever the reason, I mentally snapped. She wanted a grace said with feeling, she’d get a grace said with feeling.

The rest of them were open mouthed in disbelief as I stood up from my chair.

“GOD IS GREAT,” I boomed in my best impression of a Baptist preacher, both of my arms extended up to the ceiling like I was worshiping the wagon wheel chandelier.

“GOD IS GOOD,” I added, pointing at each one of them sitting around the table.

“LET US – THANK HIM – FOR OUR – FOOOOD!” I shouted, rattling the plates and silverware as I pounded my fist on the surface of the dining room table to the beat of my voice.

Now for the big finish.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEN,” I sang, holding the note for as long as I could.

I plunked back down into my chair and once again reached for the potatoes. I KNEW those acting lessons would come in handy some day.

My performance was met with complete silence. I think I was two spoonfuls in to loading my plate when I heard the first noise. It was a choking sound deep in the throat of my sister’s boyfriend. I quickly glanced up at him. His face was turning deep purple and I knew I had him. A laugh exploded out of his mouth along with some green beans. He gasped for breath in between bouts of laughter, tears streaming down his face. My sister soon followed, her shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to keep in the sound. She soon lost the battle, hanging onto her boyfriend for support as she laughed and laughed.

My eyes turned to my mother. If I thought she was trembling before, now she looked like she was experiencing her very own internal earthquake. She positively vibrated in her chair. Her eyes were huge, her face pale except for bright red patches on each of her cheeks. She gripped her cutlery, her knuckles white. We stared at each other for what seemed like hours. At first I was worried. She looked pretty pissed off and she was holding a knife in her hand. But then I saw it, that slight quiver in the corner of her mouth, a small curve to her lip. She was fighting back a smile. Without a word, she dropped her eyes back down to her plate of food and I did the same.

It took my sister and her boyfriend a few minutes to gain back their composure but they too were soon eating their meals.

The battle of grace had been waged and I had won. I had made my point, expressed my opinion, let my view on the exercise be known in the best way I knew how – like the smart ass I was.

After that, my mother always paused before asking me to say grace. Perhaps she wasn’t sure what I would actually do. Or maybe she was just trying to choke back a chuckle.

Friday 21 December 2012

The big black blob of blah


It’s been a tough week. Not tough in the sense of hard or difficult. It’s been tough in the sense of blah.

I have a big black blob of blah that builds up inside of me from time to time. And no I haven’t been smoking wacky tobacco or popping illegal drugs. It’s “big” because it’s constantly growing, feeding on the disappointments and negativity in my life. It’s “black” because that’s what my mood becomes when it shows up. I call it a “blob” because it works pretty much like that creeping amoeba-like alien that Steve McQueen had to deal with in the movie – it covers everything and cuts off all that is good and light, growing bigger and bigger as it consumes more and more. And “blah” is pretty much self-explanatory – that’s how I feel inside when it’s around.

The big blob of blah has been around for a long time, pretty much since high school. I’ve always envisioned it looking like a really evil black Barbapapa. One day I’ll feel fine – laughing and joking – the next it’s like “clickety-click, Barba trick” and the blah descends (it's usually NOT smiling).



I try to work through the big blob of blah, forcing myself forward, always forward. Get dressed, go to work, do work, socialize with co-workers, go home, interact with the Goobers and the Genius, try to write. But the blob is made of sticky stuff. Peel it from one surface, and it’s soon stuck to another, like an annoying burr of negativity. And lately it’s been getting worse.

Back when I was young and gung-ho to change the world, I composed a mental list of experiences and accomplishments I hoped to achieve in my lifetime. The list was lengthy and – shall we say – overly optimistic. Here’s just a sampling of the feats I was going to accomplish:
  • Win an Academy Award – At first it was going to be in an acting category, then I moved on to directing. Now I’d settle for original work or adapted screenplay. Who am I kidding? I’d settle for best sound.
  • Write a “great” novel – Of course, along with that “great” novel would come fame and fortune, a Governor General’s Award, possibly the Giller or Man Booker prize, and the opportunity to adapt it to film, thus leading to the Academy Award.
  • Earn a university degree – When I toddled off to university many, many years ago, I was an immature idiot. I partied like it was 1999 (actually it was 1989) and blew all kinds of opportunities, mainly the chance to earn a degree. It’s something I’ve regretted very much. I have tried various times to get that ever elusive degree but life always becomes too busy and formal education falls by the wayside. So, alas, I only have an honors diploma.
  • Travel around the world – I have been to some amazing and beautiful places in my life, such as Israel, Egypt, Mexico and England. But currently I seem to be stuck in a rut of work trips to Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin. These are lovely places with great people but when you say Green Bay, exotic and exciting doesn’t come to mind.
  • Win the Triple Crown with a filly – I love horses and I love thoroughbred horse racing. I’ve always dreamed of owning a horse farm stabled with some of the fastest horses in the world. Of course, their bloodlines would all trace back to the great Man o’War, the original Big Red. Breeding and training a three-year-old horse that can win the Triple Crown is a great achievement and hasn’t been done in about 40 years. And it has never been accomplished by a filly.
  • Meet and be friends with some of my favorite celebrities – Yeah, right! Welcome to Fantasy Island! This has been a steadily shifting list of favorites that once included David Hasselhoff (from his Knight Rider days) and Mr. November from the 1986 or 1987 Chippendales calendar (I can’t remember which year). Now I’d want to party with Matthew Gray Gubler, the guy who plays Rick on The Walking Dead, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Robert Pattinson (K-Stew can stay home) and a steady stream of dead famous people (Alfred Hitchcock, James Mason, John Belushi, etc.). And then I’d probably want Taylor Swift to write and sing a song about it.
  • Win an Olympic gold medal in the Three-Day Event – I can still remember the day my boyfriend in high school informed his mother that this is what I wanted to do when I “grew up.” The stunned minute of silence paired with rapid eye blinking should have been my first hint that this was maybe a bit much. Now, I’d be happy if I could fit into my riding breeches and heave my fat ass up on a horse.
  • Win the Nobel Prize for Literature – In order to win this baby, you have to have actually written a book; well, several books. And they would have to be REALLY GOOD. About the only criteria I currently meet for obtaining this great honor is the fact I have a pulse.
So, as you can see, having a firm grasp on reality and setting realistic goals are not my strong points. Thus leading to the big black blob of blah.

I’m getting older and older and older and with each passing year, accomplishing even one of these dreams is becoming harder and harder to attain. And that bums me out. BIG TIME. I had all these great ideas and optimistic goals (well, overly optimistic) and I haven’t been able to come close to even one of them. And the big black blob of blah likes to remind me of this – often. As a result, I take lots of blob-busters, lay on couches and talk to nice, understanding people, and wonder when the big black blob of blah will finally consume me.

Friday 14 December 2012

The sharp blade of justice

I have this strange fantasy. No, it’s not some sexually perverse bondage thing or involve the use of animals. It usually comes over me after something really bad has happened in the world: a woman is murdered by her husband, a teenage girl gang raped by a group of boys at a school dance, two toddlers stabbed to death by their father, or a crazed 20 year old – pissed off at his mom – walking into an elementary school and shooting dead 20 little kids.

My fantasy is this: I can make all the bad shit not happen. I would have the ability to foresee who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. With this ability, I would be able to “take out” the evil, perverse and wicked of the world before they had a chance to destroy, sort of like cutting the rot out of a tree so it can live and flourish. It would be like Minority Report meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or The Equalizer meets Kill Bill (all the volumes). I’d be one mean bitch with a samurai sword of justice.

I told you it was a strange fantasy.

It first came to me when I was 15-years-old. I was in the final few months of my freshman year of high school when my best friend was involved in a serious car accident. Her boyfriend was driving her to a school dance when he slammed head-on into another vehicle. He survived. She lived for about a week before she died, just a month short of her 15th birthday. There were all kinds of rumours about the accident – her boyfriend had been drinking, he had intentionally swerved in front of the car, the usual crap. It didn’t matter to me what the circumstances were. I just wanted him dead.

I planned his demise for days, weeks and months. Stabbing, smothering, drowning, pushed in front of a car, shoved down a flight of stairs, kicked in the head, run over by a tractor (I was a rural kid), trampled by a horse, eaten by pigs, drowned in a manure pit – I considered them all.

It was like some kind of weird therapy for me. It was rather morbid and violent but it made me feel better, like I was more in control. I might not have been able to stop the bad from happening but I could punish the person who I felt was responsible. I could do what the justice system never did (no charges were ever laid in the accident, at least none that I knew of).

Lucky for my best friend’s boyfriend – and probably for me – I never saw him again. After the accident, he disappeared. I never heard about him or was in his presence again. But even after all these years, I still keep an eye out. I’m not sure what I would do. I’m older now. I’ve tried to work out my issues, my demons, mourn my losses and heal. But there’s still this strange fantasy that comes along when I feel the world is off kilter, when the dark is overpowering the light. I imagine what the handle of sharp justice would feel like in my hand. And if I would have the courage in my heart.

Monday 10 December 2012

Making a buck

I had a rather horrific day at work yesterday that has unfortunately resulted in a night of insomnia. I've been tossing and turning in bed, replaying the day and how I could have made it different, a rather futile exercise considering the day is over and I haven't yet discovered the secret to time travel.

But as I've been lying in bed torturing myself, I've also been remembering some of my first employment experiences - cringe-worthy horror stories in themselves.

Like a lot of country kids, my first employer was my father. During the summer months and some weekends, my mother didn't always have someone available to watch me while she was at work as my older siblings all had full-time summer jobs. So I would be packed off to spend the day at my dad's office, which happened to be a manufacturing facility that built products from fibreglass and aluminum. My dad owned and ran the company with a partner and spent the day selling and managing the factory workers. I spent the day exploring the back fenced storage area for toads, frogs and wild cats, riding empty resin barrels like a horse, sorting sales brochures, playing with the adding machine and tracing routes on the large map of Ontario that was pinned to my father's office wall. I also liked to fiddle with my dad's address book, which was equipped with a metal arrow. You slid the arrow up the side of the address book to the letter you were interested in and then pressed a button at the bottom. Presto-chango, the address book would open to that page. I could play with that damn thing for hours.

After awhile, my father obviously got annoyed with me kicking around his air conditioned office. Or perhaps he was amazed by my prowess with the adding machine. Regardless, he soon found a summer job for me.

It started out with sweet corn. Although my father ran a manufacturing company, deep down under the collared shirt and tie, beat the heart of a farmer. And, as such, he had this great idea that selling fresh produce in the parking lot of his company, which was located along a very busy highway, was the perfect thing for me to do. So, he put out a table, a cash box, a lawn chair and what seemed like 100 dozen of fresh sweet corn and set me to work. At times it was an extremely hot and boring job. I'd read my Nancy Drew books and dream about that air conditioned office as I sat on the hot pavement in the direct sun, sweat dripping down the back of my shirt. I always seemed to have to use the washroom a lot. But soon I had enough truckers and harried factory workers starving for fresh sweet corn to keep me busy for hours. Huge semi trucks would pull over in front of my stand, hissing and whistling and chugging while the driver bought six cobs of corn from me (50 cents). Before the driver was back in the cab, he'd be husking a cob and eating it raw as he drove away.

The sweet corn was such a success, my dad decided to up the anty and invested in a truck load of peaches. The flats were stacked in the air conditioned office for storage and I would take a few baskets out at a time to set up my display. Soon I had truckers buying corn and baskets of peaches, juice dribbling down their chins as they drove down the highway, corn silk flying out the window. The smell of peaches soon overpowered the smell of fibreglass in the office and customers interested in fibreglass and aluminum products were soon buying baskets of peaches as well, unable to resist the aroma.

It was a very educational summer that taught me an important life lesson - how to add, subtract and make change in my head. My father checked that cash box every night and if the daily sales total did not match up with my sold inventory, I received a lecture on the importance of adding and subtracting money PROPERLY. I was soon a pro, counting back change from $20s without batting an eye.

The summer after that, I worked for my dad on our farm doing field work in the vegetable patch and picking up piles of potatoes by hand. I swear those potato rows were two miles long. He would harvest the tubers with a special machine that dug them up and dumped them on the ground behind. We had to grab the greenery and shake off any spuds still attached and then pick up all the potatoes and put them into bushel baskets we dragged behind us. It was back breaking work and I can remember laying on the front lawn trying to crack my back into place as the potatoes were being washed with the garden hose.

The summer I was 13, I dressed in my best T-shirt and shorts, tied my hair back in a ponytail, shoved it up under my black and white Flamboro Downs hat and mustered up the courage to pedal my bike down our concession road, just over into the next county, to ask Doug Arthur for a job. And for some strange, mysterious reason (I think it was the hat) he gave me one. The Arthur's bred, trained and raced Standardbred horses. And I LOVED horses. I decided that summer the best job in the whole wide world would be to shovel horse shit and clean water buckets while surrounded by huge animals that liked to bite and kick you. I had experience with horses but not horses like these - pampered, spoiled, tempermental divas who were coddled and had zero stable manners. My first day I had to be rescued from a rearing stallion who had managed to pin me in the back corner of the stall I was cleaning. I loved every minute of it.

Unfortunately the barn manager didn't love me. I was fired after one week and told to come back when I was older - and faster at shovelling shit. I cried all the way home. But in my pocket I had about $300 in cash, the most money I had ever earned in a week. And I learned another important life lesson - sometimes it's hard to make a buck in this world. But it's really easy to spend it.

Friday 7 December 2012

Random thoughts

Sorry I've been tardy with the blog.

I've been away on a trip for work (see previous posting) and have just settled back into the routine at home. Traveling takes a lot out of me although it is fun to sit in a hotel room and have a big screen TV to myself and not have to listen to Futurama or Family Guy episodes all night (fucking Netflix!). Sure the episodes can be funny but I get tired of that crap after awhile. Sometimes I just want to reach into the TV and throttle Peter Griffin (although I do wish I had a friend like Bender I could hang out with).

Despite the much coveted solitude and (sometimes) amazing bathtubs, hotel rooms really aren't my favorite place to be. Invariably, they all end up being the same - despite the price.

The wi-fi is always too slow and unpredictable - even when you're paying $10 per day for the access - and the marble-looking counters in the bathroom are always flecked with specks of stone that if you stare at long enough turn into small dancing elves and gnomes. (Try it) Of course, the same thing happens in the cheesey fake wood panelled elevators, except the imagined figures in the wood grain look a lot like Munch's The Scream.


The carpets smell like steam cleaning detergent, the toilet paper chafes (do they make 0.5 ply?) and the TVs just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger but there's still nothing worth watching on them.

I usually spend half the night wrestling with my Sleep Number bed and, like Goldilocks,  trying to distinguish which is the hard pillow, which is the soft pillow and which is the just-right pillow. Invariably, I end up so thirsty and exhausted I stagger down the hall in my PJs to get a Coke from the vending machine that promptly eats my change and delivers nothing. Suddenly that $5 bottle of room temperature water is looking really good.

Out of boredom, I usually end up searching through the room trying to find the Bible that is usually stashed in one of the bedside table drawers. (It's kind of like that game in kindergarten where you have to find where the teacher hid the blue bug statue.) I've always wondered why there are Bibles in hotel rooms. Personally, I don't think the Good Book makes for light bedtime reading. Why not Goodnight Moon or Green Eggs and Ham? I mean - the Bible - REALLY!? Do only heathens or people in need of "saving" stay in hotels? Maybe we're all cheating on our spouses and a glimpse of the Bible will lead us down the right path. Or maybe everyone staying at a hotel is really lonely and unbalanced and finding that Bible (rather than a rope, gun or knife) in that drawer is going to make all the difference.

RIGHT!

I guess what freaks me out most about hotels is the other people staying there. I can hear them all around me. That flush of water in the night, the slamming doors, the blaring of TVs or bursts of laughter or yelling through the walls, the pounding footsteps up above. I wonder why they're there. It can't be for the same reason as me (no one else could be that lame). Are they running away, visiting family, vacationing, enjoying a dirty weekend or weekday?

In the end, I usually fall asleep out of exhaustion around 2 a.m. Inevitably, I wake up in the morning in a fog, not having a fucking clue where I am. The Sleep Number bed has usually deflated in the night, trapping me like some brain addled turtle in the middle of the bed. I manage to swim my way out of the king-sized pit only to be inundated with about 50 different images of my half asleep, scare wig self - because hotel rooms also have WAY TOO MANY mirrors!

I'm glad to be home.

Monday 3 December 2012

On the Road

Today was a driving day.

As part of my day job, I’m required to attend conferences and events throughout North America. This week, I’m in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a four to five hour drive from my home in Ontario, Canada.

I rented a car for the trip so I didn’t have to worry about wear and tear on my own half-dead jalopy, which has a dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree all year long. Driving a rental is usually a pleasant experience but this time I was given an Elantra – the world’s smallest car – with the baldest tires I’d ever seen. According to The Genius, it wouldn’t have passed a roadside safety check. At least there’s no snow forecast for Michigan this week – a blessing this time of year.

The trip itself was rather uneventful. It started out a sunny, beautiful day but the closer I drove to the border, the foggier it became. By the time I crossed the Blue Water Bridge between Sarnia and Port Huron, I thought I was on my way to Hogwarts or was about to pop out of the forest near Forks, Washington. Waiting in line to clear customs, I expected to hear a foghorn and really dramatic music from a 1940s war film.

Soon I was on the highway to Flint and Lansing and ultimately, Grand Rapids. Driving on Michigan roads is always a treat. The cracks and potholes in the concrete usually match up to the beat of the music on the radio. Combined with the horrible shocks in the rental I was driving, I was dancing and bopping along to the music without any effort on my part. 

I also LOVE the way Michigan records its highway mile markers. Rather than have small signs that show the miles, the state transportation authority just dumps a deer carcass along the side of the road. While this is a rather creative way of recycling, it’s a bitch to keep track of how far you’ve actually traveled because you have to keep count of the deer carcasses you pass. And after about 50, it’s easy to get confused and forget what number you were at. And sometimes, people stop and cart off the deer carcass for butchering and you’re really screwed because you’ve actually gone two miles instead of one by the time you see the next dead deer. And that just fucks with your gas mileage.

Sunday 2 December 2012

Furnace Fighting

For the past week or so, my husband - let's call him The Genius - has been spending
a lot of time in the basement banging around like some so sort of psycho tinsmith.

To call the dank, dark and damp area located under half of our house a basement is
an exaggeration - it's more like a dungeon, a monster's lair or the perfect spot for a
mad scientist's laboratory. But it's also where some of the key elements required in
the proper functioning of a house - furnace, water pump, electrical panel, sump
pump, water heater - are located.

It's like a special playroom for The Genius. He has a little workshop/laboratory set up
down there amongst the cobwebs and God-damned spiders (that's another story)
and periodically we can hear him through the hardwood floor talking to himself (it's a
genius thing - at least there's no maniacal laughter). Other noises can also be heard
from time-to-time, including hammering, power tools, and the strident wailing of
alarms (sometimes it's the smoke detector, which has been screwed onto a support
beam to give the rest of us fair warning if some creation has exploded).

Basically, we're used to strange noises coming from under our feet.

But lately, the cacophony has been unusually loud. That's because The Genius is
currently at work on his latest "project" - replacing the old, decrepit, money-burning
oil furnace with something new and shiny that hopefully costs less to heat the house.
Why he waited until the end of November/beginning of December (when
temperatures being to dip below freezing) to do this is a whole other mystery.

As part of replacing the furnace, The Genius had to disconnect our current central air
conditioner, wrestle the old furnace out of the way (it now joins the OTHER old
furnace rusting in a corner of the basement - how many old furnaces does a house
need?), put the new furnace unit in its place, construct new duct work, wire the new
furnace into the electrical panel and thermostat controls plus install the new air
source heat pump/air conditioner unit thingy outside where the old air conditioning
unit sat. For some reason, this involved A LOT of noise.

As The Genius pounded and screeched with power tools in the basement, The
Goobers - that's what I'll call the kids - bitched. They couldn't hear the TV or their
music, they couldn't hear their friends on the phone, they couldn't concentrate on
reading or their homework, and my oldest Goober started texting blow-by-blow
descriptions of the activities in the basement to her friends. As the percussion
symphony continued, the cats began slinking around and hiding under furniture while
the dog started shaking and whining.

And periodically, between blows, the sound of loud cursing could be heard from the
basement.

Lately, the noise has quieted, except for the new sound of heated air whooshing
through the duct work. The project is almost complete and The Goobers are feeling
very relieved. Once more they can hear the laugh track of SpongeBob SquarePants
on the TV and their friends giggling on the phone. The pets can once again relax on
top of the furniture rather than underneath it.

That is until the next "project" begins.

Saturday 1 December 2012

In the beginning ....

In the beginning, the Sky and the Land were created.
And Land was without form, and void; and darkness was upon its face.
A bunch of doctors, in conjunction with vast amounts of medication, decided there should light.
The light was considered good: and was to be divided from the darkness, which was considered bad.
And the light was called Sanity, and the darkness was called Crazy.
And that is how the first post of Crazy Land was created.