Cheating Chirstmas

Cheating Christmas   AKA   Avoiding despair   AKA  Emilie teaches me to windsurf

“I have a sudden glimpse of all the Christmases of my life lined up one after another,” says Henry in The Time Traveler’s Wife, “waiting to be gotten through, and despair floods me.” This is a sentiment I can relate to. 

I would have liked to have gone hiking with my kids over Christmas in New Zealand or have chosen a random city, like Rome, to plonk ourselves down in to explore to our hearts content. But such options, this year, seemed beyond my budget, beyond my capability to organize, beyond possible.

I would have liked to have had a traditional Christmas at home with as many family and friends as we could round up with long snowshoe hikes and impromptu games of hockey out on the bay and huge communally cooked meals. But I don’t live anywhere, don’t know anyone, and can’t cook, so again, beyond possible.

Christmas, when you don’t have a family, or your family is totally messed up, is not the happy occasion depicted in movies with a large group sitting round a table together disagreeing on whose dressing recipe is the best.

The Time Traveler’s Wife starts out joyful full of laughter and light but then gets darker and blacker as events spiral out of control towards certain doom. No light at the end of the tunnel. I have read it often and it never changes. Each time the same bleak future first looms and then arrives. I have pulled it out to read yet again but am not sure I want to finish it. Perhaps I ought to stop part way through while there is still the hope of a different happier ending to the story.

But at the end of the book I am surprised, and surprised to be surprised, when, from beyond the grave, Henry speaks, almost as if to me. “Stop waiting and be free,” he says, “Go out into the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”  And I know this is what I must, somehow, do. Soon.

But the world is not my natural element and I do not move through it without resistance, so, instead, this Christmas, I cheat; I run away.

The details don’t matter. Nothing got planned in the fall for a variety of different reasons.  Ben (my oldest son) decides spend Christmas with his girlfriend in the states. At the last minute I convince Fred and Alexander (my younger sons) and Laura and Emilie (their girlfriends) to go to Cuba with me.

And it is, for me, good enough.

We don't do anything spectacular, anything particularly special, anything even remotely outside our comfort zones...

But we do go sailing, and snorkeling, and play tennis, and walk the beach. We explore our resort and the next resort over and the nearby marina. We take the bus into the nearest small town to browse the markets and play mini-putt. We eat at buffets and a la carte restaurants; tiny appetizers with smoked salmon and prosciutto, lovely soups, lots of very fresh fish, and the occasional disaster. (One night my main course, the chef’s special, turns out to be octopus bisque, full of, yes, small whole octopi, complete with floppy heads and tentacles with suckers on them, which, unfortunately, is beyond my culinary limit.) 

When it’s windy the four of them pull out their kites and go kite-surfing and when it’s not Emilie teaches the rest of us how to windsurf. I, I have to say, am amazing. I’ve tried to windsurf before but have never gotten further than pulling the sail up and then falling off. Emilie shows me where to put my feet as I start and how to transfer them further back as soon as I am moving. She stresses the importance of keeping your forearm extended and of sticking your bum out. By the second day I am flying out to sea and back doing long steady tacks without even getting wet. The warm sun above, the turquoise water flashing by below, even the energy consumed by paying such close attention to my balance and the sudden surprising dunkings in the cool salty water when I forget to, all of it is fabulous, fantastic, freeing. As is the whole week. Surrounded by the youthful vitality and vivaciousness of the four kids I am once again wishing one could bottle essences such as these, save the whole experience somehow, to pull out and savour later.

I feel, just a bit, as if we are on The Axiom - the resort ship in Pixar’s WALL-E - because we are kept well medicated with alcohol. There are bars in the main lobby, in the restaurants, in the snack bars by the pools, in the pools themselves, and at various spots along the 1.2 km stretch of beach that belongs to our resort and they make excellent (free) drinks; pineapple with coconut run, strawberry daiquiris, mojitos with lots of fresh mint… and, as we take a break from activities in the afternoon and lounge under the beach umbrellas or loaf in one of the four pools, as we gather and play cards in the lobby before supper or board games afterwards, we drink our fair share of drinks.

By coming here with them I feel I have cheated, avoided somehow the spirit of Christmas. 
But I have also, for this year at least, avoided despair.

Baby hermit crab sand art.

Taxi hood ornament.

One of a gazillion paintings for sale.

Emilie, Alex, me, Fred, and Laura. :)

Dr Apt

Visit to the dermatologist.

I have terrible skin. My hands have more liver spots than a typical eighty year old, liver spots in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, colours and textures, some ominously dark, irregular and even overlapping, and my legs are covered in what I call ‘lizard skin’. This is due to sun damage that occurred when I was a kid. I don’t think sunscreen had been invented back then and my mother, with her Mediterranean colouring, didn’t know what to do with a blue-eyed blond-haired white-skinned kid like me. So each summer I burnt. To a crisp. More than once. I would wake up in the morning with the bed sheets literally stuck to my tender red skin and lie there trapped, tears silently sliding down my cheeks as I waited patiently for my mother to notice that I hadn’t come down for breakfast and find the time to come up and gently peel the sheets off of me. This happened every summer. Repeatedly. It was just the way things were. My mother loved me but it never crossed her mind to put me in a t-shirt. So now I have liver spots and lizard skin. I don’t mind terribly that my skin looks horrible but I have carried a low grade worry about the other possible effect of too much sun so long ago – skin cancer – for a long time. Today I went to see a dermatologist for the first time in my life. I figured that since I’m 50 I ought to start behaving like an adult and looking after myself. The weather, of course, was freezing rain, with snow and fog and other ugly stuff in the forecast as well, weather warnings up and down the yinyang, but, having waited months for an appointment, I checked that my health card wasn’t out of date, girded my loins, and gingerly head down the highway towards the city. An hour later, stripped to my skivvies, lying on a paper sheet with the dermatologist leaning over me, peering at me through a huge lighted magnifying glass, I had a strip torn off me. Apparently my skin is fine. Speckled, yes, and dry, but not, evidently, showing any signs of cancer. And, according to the dermatologist, having her inspect me was a waste of my time, her time, and tax-payer dollars. When I asked if I ought to book an annual check-up I almost had my head bitten off. I was not to come back, I was told, very firmly, if my only complaints were that my skin was showing normal signs of aging. (Normal? Normal! Normal for an eighty year old, perhaps.) However, I have to admit that, really, one could not ask for a more positive response from a dermatologist. I go and see a dentist once a decade whether I need to or not. I guess I’ll start seeing a dermatologist on a similar schedule. My actual problems may lie more in the area of hypochondria, there must be a specialist I can visit for that. I wonder if I can book an appointment during the summer….

Little Gems

Little Gems of Joy AKA Nothing Happens to Me.

At the beginning of the first episode of BBC’s Sherlock Watson’s psychiatrist tells him that writing a blog about everything that happens to him will help him. ‘Nothing happens to me,’ he tells her. This is very much how I feel. Nothing happens to me.

Yet I cannot lie; my life is punctuated with little gems of joy.

For example, Shelley invites me to dinner at her house in Deep River one Saturday and I use the trek up the valley as an excuse to do some power visiting. I stop in at Tim’s and spend over an hour sitting with my regular coffee group reveling in the fact that I didn't tell them I was coming and they are still meeting at the same corner table at the same time, in the fact that they are happy to see me and apparently don’t mind at all that I am interrupting their normal routines by appearing and dominating the conversation at first, in the fact that I don’t interrupt their normal routines overmuch and after a while they forget that I am there and return to chatting about the minutiae of their daily lives as always. I have a couple chores to do in town and everywhere I go I bump into people I know. It is almost Christmas and all of them stop to chat for a minute or two. The familiarly of it is bitter sweet. I drop in unannounced and have tea with Catherine and sit and talk with her for hours and then drop in unannounced and have tea again with Suzanne and her family. At Shelley’s her son Nick cooks supper for us and then disappears off to wherever it is that teens disappear to in Deep River and Shelley and I chat for hours. The illusion that I am still living here is so strong that I almost forget I have made the mistake of moving away.

For example, on my oldest son’s, birthday, another of my sons arranges a wing night out in Ottawa. I invite Geoff to join us and he picks me up in Arnprior and drives me into the city. We all meet at Fred and Laura’s place and walk from there down into the market, the first flakes of winter snow falling gently down creating, along with the Christmas lights that are already out, a friendly festive atmosphere. It is a lovely evening, relaxed and stress free, full of a good food and good beer and good company. We feel, to me, like a normal family, perhaps more so even than we did when we were all living together.  I had business to discuss with Geoff and had intended to talk with him about it on the drive back to Arnprior but in the end it had been such a lovely interlude that I couldn’t bear to bring up anything that might be controversial, risk wrecking the affability of it all, and so I let it lie.

For example, most weekends I turn on my computer for an hour or two to catch up on my e-mail and usually end up chatting with one or more of my sons for most of that time. The easy familiar conversations that I have with them, the ongoing dialogues about both the trivial and the critical aspects of their days, are one of the highlights of my week. Part of me would have liked to keep my kids under my own roof forever, to be aware, merely due to proximity, of the details of their daily lives, but now that they are grown and gone everything they choose to share has its own shade of preciousness that would be impossible to explain to anyone else who does not have adult children.

For example, I love the house that I am living in and the open view that I have on three sides of my house. The forever subtlety changing colours of the water/ice/hills/sun/moon/sky fills me with more pleasure than I can easily express. Sometimes I get up early and lie on the couch wrapped in a sleeping bag and fall asleep again watching the sunrise. Sometimes I bring my computer to my spot by the window to watch TV while eating supper but have it sit unheeded as I watch nature’s show instead, a storm blowing in, or the bay freezing over, or even merely the sky washing itself with a glorious range of colours as the light slowly fades in the evening and the two lighthouses I can see from my front window start to blink off in the distance.

For example, though I sometimes find it a little lonely living on my own, part of me also likes the abandon with which I can set my schedule. I can get up when I want to, eat when I want to, listen to the CBC to my heart’s content.These may seem like insignificant details, and I do not dispute that life would be richer were I living with a partner, but, as a woman/mother programmed to put everyone else’s happiness before my own, to not restricted, at all, by another’s schedule does have a certain freedom to it which cannot be denied.

For example, I love the fact that I am living close enough to two of my children that I can pop into the city to have supper with them, even when there is no occasion, or have them phone me up and ask if they can drop by and have supper with me.

I even like my job enough, that, were I hypothetically given the choice to move back to Deep River - which will never happen – I don’t know if I would take it.

So, though nothing happens in my life, though, like Watson before he met Sherlock, there is nothing to write about, I am muddling by. And there are little gems of joy. It is not good enough forever, not by a long stretch. But it is good enough for now. 

PPS

AKA  A benign re-visitation to the nightmares of earlier times... 

I had lovely Sunday. I went down to Ottawa and had brunch with Fred and Laura at a pub near where they live then went for a walk with Fred along the canal and then met up with a friend of mine from Deep River.

My friend had been out of town and her husband had read my blog while she was away. (Really, her husband had read my blog? I find this SO bizarre. I find it bizarre that anyone would read my blog, especially the husband of a friend. I see myself as so full of self-pity as to be nauseating and I can’t imagine the attraction that reading this would hold, at all.) He had become concerned upon reading my last post, titled “Bye”.

When I was a teen I had a repeating dream scenario that was a metaphorical representation of my erratic mental state. I would dream the same dream over and over, with variations. Where I was physically in the dream landscape represented where I was emotionally in my waking life. (I was not a happy teen.)

My dreamscape had two distinct settings; one the downtown core of a huge city and the other a vast field of wheat. The city had long straight grey streets, canyons with skyscrapers soaring up on all sides. It was always eerily quiet in the city. And very grey. Overcast. Gloomy. Dark. There was no indication of people or traffic. Just the buildings. The very tall buildings. The wheat fields were outside the city and stretched for miles. It was always sunny out in the fields with a sky blue and a gentle warm caressing breeze idyllically waving the wheat shafts. It too was a silent landscape but a far safer one. They were very different these two landscapes, one closed in, cold, and forbidding, the other open, warm, and free.

On bad days I would find myself - in my dream - lost, wandering the dreary streets of the downtown core, with the buildings looming menacingly on all sides of me. I didn’t like being in the city. Being there, even just walking below the buildings, was dangerous, ominous; they represented such a temptation, such a threat.

On really bad days I would be on top of a building looking over the edge and considering jumping. In my dreams I never climbed to the top of the buildings, never took the elevator, I would just suddenly be there, standing, contemplating. I never actually jumped in my dreams but as a teen I believed that if you died in your dream you died in real life too, so standing out there alone on the ledge, looking down to a street far below - even when I recognized that I was in a dream - was scary. I can to this day remember the isolation and desolation I felt, so frequently, as I stood, silent and still, looking down.

(When I was a teen my mother worked as an ambulance driver. Her least favourite job was using a spade to shovel up the remains of the jumpers and put them into body bags.)

On better days, however, I would be out in the fields, the sun warm on my back, the city so far off in the distance that only the tops of the tallest building were visible over the wheat - but still there, a distant yet present threat.

On really good days I would be way out in the fields, so far away from the city that I wasn’t even aware of it, couldn’t even tell which direction it was in. I could spin round freely, arms flung out, spin and spin and have no idea where the city was. Freedom.

I would dream and re-dream this silent landscape, but also, after it became an established part of my psyche, just check in on it at random times to see where I was and how careful/happy I needed/could be. It was my own private suicide watch system.

I do not dream this dream anymore. I have grown out of it. But I know that at present, were I to go there, I would not be walking the silent grey city streets, feeling the height of the skyscrapers pressing in on me and worrying about finding myself suddenly standing, yet again, unexpectedly, unhappily, on top of one of those metaphorical buildings and looking contemplatively down down down. No. If I were to go there right now I’d be out in the field so very far from the city as to be oblivious to its existence. I would be happy. Free. Safe.

Which is why it was a shock that my friend’s husband read potentially suicidal thoughts into my blog entry. I have been there so often, have had so many episodes of such deep depression that the  taste of the idea of suicide is a familiar friend, but now, no, not now. I am full of self-pity now and whinging and whining up a storm. I have passed through angry and bitter, on my journey back towards happy, and am firmly stuck in the complaining and carping stage (if such exists) but I am not, thankfully, black enough as to be considering, even for a second, a final goodbye. Which is good. Of course. Very good.  

And then I came home and wrote yet another extra blog entry. Yes. A lovely Sunday.

PS

Good Things Come in Threes  AKA  Less pissy than before...

I didn't want to teach this year. I didn't want to teach at ADHS. I didn't want to move to Arnprior. I didn't want to teach Art. I started off September in a pretty pissy mood. 

Today, however, three things happened at work that switched my mood just a wee bit.

One, I noticed that they had put a name plate on my door. It says, "Ms E Edwards".

I'm not sure what I think about the “Ms” part. I’ve never liked Ms. When I filled out my income tax last year the very first decision I had to make was what my title was. The software I was using wouldn’t let me continue without making a choice from the drop down menu. And there were only four choices. I didn’t want to choose Miss, because I am old enough that that implies never married to me, and I didn’t want to choose Mrs, because I didn’t feel married, and I didn’t want to choose Ms, because I don’t like it, so, as I said to Emily, who was in the room at the time, the only possible option was Mr. She thought I couldn’t do that but… I hope that’s not why they audited my income tax!

And I don’t know what I think about the “Edwards” part. I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep it as my surname or not. I don’t want to go all the way back to Ells. I’ve been considering going to Trepanier, which would be odd, since I wasn’t married to Andre, didn’t ever use Trepanier, and it is very French and I am not… The only other option I’ve come up with is to become mononymous, not be Emily Edwards or anything else but just to be Emily. To have one name, like Madonna or Cher. Why not?

But the point is I've been teaching since the 1980's and have NEVER had a name plate on my door before. It may seem like a tiny thing but it made me feel like I belong.

Two, I had a fantastic free lunch, at the school, for reasons I won’t go into, and, talking to the other teachers at my table I learnt that I might, unbeknownst to myself, have the qualifications needed for cat 4, so after lunch I called up the OSSTF and yes, sure enough, I could have switched to cat 4 years ago, which, obviously I didn't know, but at least I know now. The ramifications of this are that my salary will jump significantly right now, and, if I teach for another 5 years, then my pension with be significantly better too! Wow! Yeah! It would have been good if I'd known this years ago of course but at least I know it now... (And, I wonder, why didn’t I know this years ago? Did the topic just never come up at my old school during any of the many lunches with my colleagues there? Did the union rep who reviewed our qualifications each year not notice or not care? Why didn’t I know?) What matters is that I know now, and when I went back to say thank you to the teachers who had pointed it out to me they were genuinely pleased to have helped me, and I felt like I belonged.

And, three, when I was in chatting with the principal about my name plate (I was SO happy that I felt compelled to drop in and thank him, and yes, don’t worry, I was WAY more concise when talking to him than in my rambles here) he told me that my name had come up in the District Review report - well not my name since they can't do that but given as I am the only Art teacher I can't hide – the reporters apparently were  "particularly pleased with the engaging activities that were taking place in the art room and the way the assignments were structured to include student self-reflection.” District Review, for those not in the loop, is a BIG DEAL. Hot shots in suits come round and spend the whole day walking in and out of classrooms. They sit and stay a while, watch what is happening, make notes on what is or is not posted on the walls, and, most importantly of all, talk to the students, asking questions in edu-jargon, checking to see what the students think of the program, if they know what they are supposed to be learning, and so on and so forth.

I’d decided not to stress about District Review this year. Just to do what I was doing.  But don’t be fooled. I was stressed. Who likes being judged?

So. My principal was pleased, felt I’d brought honor to the school on District Review day. Who would have guessed? Wow. Go me. And it made me feel even more like I belonged.

All in all not a bad day at work.

And I am, I hate to admit it, in a little bit less of a pissy mood, than I was before.







PS (or maybe sometimes good things come in fours...) 

Report cards were due this week and, after they are submitted, the principal gets some sort of error report back from the computer telling him about the wee mistakes that teachers have made. My name wasn't on the list and so they, the principal and the secretaries, thought at first that maybe, since I'm new, I'd not known how to submit them, and then that maybe I wasn't yet on the correct school list at the board level or something, but, in the end, it turned out that the only reason I wasn't on the list was because I was the ONLY teacher at the school who hadn't made ANY errors on the report cards! (Well, any errors of the type that the computer can catch at any rate.) Wow. My principal was pleased with me again. Maybe I'll stay at this school after all. 

Bye :)

I have tried blogging from home before and it hasn't worked in past. It isn't working now. I just don't have anything interesting, at all, to share. I get up. The river is beautiful. I go to work. I come home. The river is still beautiful. I eat. I read. I do random activities. I feel constricted by geography and my, as I mentioned before, forlorn financial circumstances, but there is nothing to say. 

I had hoped I could dig deep, write about being a single older woman who had just moved to a different small Ontario town, how difficult - or easy - it was to pull up roots and start to put down new ones. But it isn't in me. I just don't care enough. My budget doesn't even stretch to IKEA shelving so much of my stuff remains unpacked in boxes, my to-do list, as long as my arm or longer, sits neglected, and, most serious of all, I am standing ostrich-like with my head buried deep in the sand, totally ignoring what ought to be my most pressing of all concerns, planning for my future. I know I won't like any answers I might find when I start to do the research and so I am not doing it. Instead I live day to day, putting time into my new job, exploring the area around here, traipsing frequently into Ottawa to visit with my oldest son, but not doing any of the things I 'ought' to be doing. 

So, I fear, my trusty readers... this is goodbye. 

I will continue to live in Arnprior, to teach Art, to put hours into my new job, and ramble about the area around here, and, of course, traipse into Ottawa on occasion to visit with my sons... but I just don't have enough to blog about so I will take a hiatus from blogging until I'm back off travelling again. 

I ought to have stopped posting, after all, just off the coast of Tahiti's little sister Mo'orea's shores where I swam with the whales. 

Or, more likely, I ought to have stayed there...  

Hugs, Emily.

3 a.m.

As usual.

It is 3 am and I am wide awake, unhappy, and writing in my journal.

3 am is not a good time for me to write in my journal. I seldom have anything positive to say at 3 am. This is true today.

Sigh.

Three small things happened after school today (by which I mean yesterday of course since at 3 am it is now already tomorrow.)

1) I interviewed someone who actually is willing to move in with me. He’s unemployed and smokes, but hey, I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore. (In Deep River when I was looking for a roommate Emily just appeared. She was young and cute and an excellent cook, she was brilliant (had a degree in Math) and enterprising (starting up her own business) and had interesting parents and friends, also, she happened to be named Emily which was fun… I’d just assumed I’d be able to find a similarly wonderful roommate here. Maybe not.) I say yes to him, but, now, at 3 am find myself second guessing that. Do I really want to live with someone unemployed who smokes? No. Not at all. He’s the first person in 2 months who’s shown any interest in moving in here. If I turn him down then there may be no one. Am I that desperate for a break on the rent? I can’t figure it out any more.

2) I went to a Rotary talk by someone who’d hiked the Akshayuk Pass in Auyuittuq Park up on Baffin Island earlier this year. It’s a walk that Andre and I did 25 years ago. Watching his slide show  (breathtaking scenery) and listening to the stories (some good days and some memorable ones) and hearing about the people he met there (including a French family who were in their 9^th year of an around the world voyage, their boat frozen into the bay near a small arctic town, on purpose, last winter) I am nostalgic, swept down memory lane, caught up in memories of the adventures Andre and I had on our trip (I want to interrupt the talk and tell about my own, ‘I was there too, and we, and I remember…’. But of course I don’t.) and, also, I am envious. The speaker was invited to participate in this hike. All expenses paid. Custom made gear. An ex-National Geographic photographer along as part of the expedition so fantastic photographs as keepsakes. Wow. I want to be him.

3) I chat, very briefly, online, with a friend of mine, who lives on a boat, and learn that she and her partner are taking a break and heading to Brazil for three months, to… well it doesn’t matter really, does it. Wow. I want to be her.

Three months from now I will be here. In Arnprior. I will be teaching everyday. I am not looking forward to it. I with either be living with an unemployed smoker or too broke to even consider going away for the summer. I can’t right now, at 3 am, figure out which would be the least bad of the evils. The potential for self-growth seems slim. I will not, of this I am over 99% certain, be being invited to go on an all-expense paid trip of a lifetime to the far north, nor will I be retired and living on a boat and planning exotic vacations elsewhere.

I seem to remember that I had fooled myself a few days ago into thinking there were some silver linings to my being here, imprisoned (by self-choice) in this existence, but, right now, at 3 am, I find that highly unlikely. I can’t, at all, imagine that there is any up-side to my being trapped here, trapped by my job and my forlorn financial circumstances,  and I can’t seem to think my way out of the paper bag.

In desperation I watch the latest episode Castle. Wow. I want to be Beckett.

Does anyone else see a pattern here.

Sigh.

Yes.

A typical 3 am.

7 am.

I ought to be getting ready for school. But it is pouring rain outside and my desire to go is at an all-time low. I have one very whiny grade 9 student who grates on my nerves and is getting me down. I don’t want to go to school. I want to go to Baffin Island again. Or Brazil. Or back to Bora Bora. Or even somewhere I’ve not yet been. Bali maybe. Or Bangladesh. Or, heck, even Bermuda would do, or the Barbados, or, or, or…

So. What I have to do is figure out a way to get there. I have to figure out a way to live the life I want to be living.  (And pay for it.) It won’t be easy. There must be a gazillion people who would like to be invited to go on an all-expense paid trip to Auyuittuq compared to the number that actually get invited to do so… so I’ll just have to be creative. I’ll have to take my head out of the paper bag that was suffocating it at 3 am and put my thinking cap on instead. 

I can do that. Of course. Why not? Just watch me!

Silver Linings

AKA A Rainy Shopping Day 

It was pouring rain in Arnprior Saturday so I went into Ottawa to buy a Globe and Mail. I like its crossword puzzle. I stopped in to read it on my son’s couch while he coded across the room. Very comfortable and congenial. We went out for coffee. I stayed for hours. But this is all an aside.

On the way home I dropped in at Value Village to look for curtains – not to block the view, I love my view, just to help keep the heating bill down at night because my windows are older - and I found 4 identical ones that looked like they’d do. They were priced one at $4.99, one at $8.99, and two at $9.99. When I got to the cash I asked what the return policy was, in case they didn’t fit or something, and was told it was 7 days. I asked for a month, since I don’t live in Ottawa, and the cashier allowed a compromise of 15 days. “Today is the 18^th,” she said, “so that would be the 39^th of October.” I pointed out that October doesn’t go to 39, that 15 days from now would be into November. “Oh. You’re right,” she said, “the 39^th of November then.” (What?) Next I pointed out that the curtains had different prices. She offered to let me pay $8.99, the middle price, for all of them, but I declined and said I’d just pay the ticketed prices so she then told me I wasn’t allowed to do that. (What?) At this point a supervisor came by and told her to give me all four of them at $4.99 each. She did. And my receipt says that I can return them for full refund up to the 39^th of November. It's all good. Except that I want to go back to teaching Math. I think there is a need in Ontario.

I put them up that evening. They’re great as long as you don’t mind the fact that they’re about a foot too long and drag on the ground. I’m undecided if I’ll tape them up or just cut them off. (Classy either way, I know.)

During the night a cold front came through. I was, I hate to admit this, very glad not to be at sea. The wind howled endlessly. I could hear it blowing through the trees, whipping up the water, tossing about whatever it could find. Something, perhaps my garage door, was rattling away outside. I went out to stand on my deck for a bit. Low clouds were scudding by overhead. The white pine branches - I have a fair size white pine growing up through a hole in the deck - were thrashing about. It was wild. And I was glad not to be on a boat.

Maybe I’m getting too old to crew.

The next morning, this morning, when I got up and pulled my curtains open the wind was still blowing away, the clouds were still low, and there in front of me was a bay full of angry dark grey water with so many whitecaps that they were crashing into each other. I was glad to be on land.

My house is on a point, has water on three sides of it, and picture windows all round. As I stood there and watched the water and the sky I realized that I choose to live here. This little house, for all its faults, its old windows and faulty insulation, was my choice. And I like it. I can’t really afford to live here, the rent takes up a bigger chunk of my pay check than I’d like, and I really really don’t want to know what it’s going to cost to heat over the winter (so I’ve advertised for a roommate to help out with that.) But I’m getting off topic again. As I stood there looking out over the expanse of water, the far shore a fall mix of dark green and gold with some patches of russet and red, several groups of Canadian geese flying low over the water, thinking, I’m sure, that it was about time to head south, I realized that this is the first place I’ve lived in, for ages, that I’ve chosen. My previous house, which was, of course, always, Geoff’s, was his choice. I came to love it but it was his choice. And before that, when I was in limbo, my mother always chose somewhere for me to live and I never stood up to her choices. And before that, of course, Andre had made all the decisions. It had been, I realized, over a quarter of a century since I’d chosen where to live. And I am happy with my current decision. I’m sure that most of my friends and acquaintances would be horrified - at the small size of my house, its rundown state, its hand-me-down furnishings, its Value Village curtains that drag on the floor… But I like it. I was sitting on my couch the other evening with a plate of dinner and a new National Geographic to keep me company and they both sat forgotten on my lap while outside, across the bay a series of storms flew east chasing after each, a line of flat wet steel grey squalls, and then later a huge double rainbow filled the sky and I wished I had a go-pro and I’d filmed the whole show and I realized that my supper was cold and I considered getting up and going to re-heat it but decided instead just to sit, a little longer, and watch while the rainbow faded and the darkness to slowly folded into night. And it was SO beautiful.

I still don’t want to be here, living on my own, in Arnprior, teaching, but there are silver linings both literal and metaphorical; I love the view, I love being close enough to at least one of my kids that I can drop in for coffee… and, maybe, in time, as I take ownership of the place (you know, buy cheap curtains and such) the rest will grow on me.

Art Teacher - Take 1

AKA   Impostor   AKA   If my day isn't fun all I do is look in the mirror to know who to blame

  

I am the Art Teacher at ADHS (is there some way to make sure that no one in Arnprior can access this?) which is, still, a bit of a joke. 

I did take an online "How to Teach Art" course. I even had to do a major demonstration project to go along with it in which I created a large original artwork, photographed all stages of the process, and wrote both a formal unit plan and a critical analysis. For this I opened the Curriculum Guidelines and found on page one (grade one) 'make a paper-mache animal'. I thought I could probably do that so chose it as my project. It was unexpectedly tricky. It took many many evenings to complete. Emily, my roommate, and I almost peed ourselves laughing, more than once, at my pathetic attempts to get the limbs to stay in the right orientation. I got a great mark though, I have to say. For two reasons. First I am very good at writing unit plans so I had a great unit plan, and, in my analysis I went on at great length about how challenging this project had been, how long it had taken me, how I couldn't imagine a grade one class actually doing it - but, that, given that there were paper-mache animals all round my house that my own kids had made in grade one, I knew that teachers really did do this with their classes. I was being dead serious but I think my prof thought I was being clever, writing tongue in cheek or some such. Secondly, my prof pointed out that many elementary teachers make the error of making demo projects that are too perfect for kids to emulate whereas my paper-mache really looked like something that someone in grade one could do! Go me! And this, this project, somehow qualifies me to teach grade twelve art! Someone in the government ought to look into that.

So, now, the joke's on me. I took the course, did a grade one project, and am now teaching Art grade nine, ten, eleven, and twelve!

When I was offered this job I did point out to my principal exactly how good I was at art to which he replied, "Oh my!" But he still took me on in this role. 

So here I am, in this classroom, doing my best. On the advice of a retired art teacher I downloaded and printed out the Ontario Curriculum Course Guidelines from the internet, and, frankly, almost cried. They were SO full of jargon that I really literally had no idea at all what they were trying to say. So instead of following them I do the best I can. My modus operandi goes sort of like this: I go on pintrest and find a project under any high school art site that looks both fun and interesting and comes with clear instructions and good examples, I repackage the information in kid-friendly language, make up a rubric, and present it to my classes. I give them a relevant chapter out of their textbooks to read so that they are getting a bit of theory, this takes about a day, and then I make up some introductory exercises to go along with the project I have chosen, this takes another three or four days, and then they start the project, which usually takes a week or longer. (Who knew art took so long to do?) During this time I wander the class offering my lowly opinion on how they are doing - mostly compliments with just a few constructive criticism questions thrown in (That looks like a busy background to me. What do you think? Do you think it might be more effective if you used your artist's discretion to simplify it so that the main subject gets more emphasis? I'm just asking, you are the artist. What do you think?) I throw in a bit of the Creative Process and the Critical Analysis Process and off we go. If I have chosen an appropriate project the kids a) enjoy it b) work hard at it c) stay on task and d) produce great results so I have little to do. Then, after ten days or so they hand in their work, I mark it, hand it back, and the process starts all over! I think if I knew more it would be a harder job, but, seeing as I don't know more, it is, at least for now, easy peasy. 

Part of me worries that eventually I will be 'found out' but, well, I'll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it. So, for now, I have time on my hands to write silly little blog entries like this and wonder if I have the gaul to include photos of the amazing art my students are producing. (I'd love to, but no...)

I hope everyone else who is working has a job that is as much fun! 

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving AKA A Time to Count Blessings.

It is Thanksgiving weekend. Definitely an appropriate time to count my blessing.

My husband wrote to me last week, after he had had one too many beers, stating that he felt his life had been sliced in half. I wrote back pointing out that he had his house filled with belongings, a good pension to look forward to, and a raft of friends collected over half a century living within a stone’s throw while I had none of these, that I didn’t know where I would be living in ten years, where any possible grandchildren might come and visit me, or how I was going to finance my future, that perhaps his cup was only half-full but that mine was empty.

That was how I felt at the time. But of course it’s not true.

So I will count my blessings again. Write them down. Remind myself of what I have.

And then, of course, stop feeling so angry, so sad, so sorry for myself, and start the job of living again.

I complain often that I am of no fixed address, have such a paltry pension as to be inconsequential and hence no idea how I will support myself when I get old, but what about what I do have? What are my top ten blessings?

I have, in no particular order, my sons, other assorted bits of family, a few friends and acquaintances, a job, some money, some stuff, my health, a Canadian passport, and the world as my oyster…

I lied. There was some order. My sons top the list for sure.

I have three fantastic sons.

Ben, my oldest, is out of town this weekend visiting his girlfriend, Steph, who lives in the States, but he lives a short 40 minute drive from where I now do and I have visited him most weekends this fall. He is in some ways my best friend and sounding board. I remember when he was a newborn and I was amazed and awed by his mere existence. It shocked me that he was male because, looking down at him sleeping in his bassinette, I would otherwise have seriously considered that he might be a clone. He has, unfortunately, a few qualities that I would not have chosen to pass on, a certain hesitancy and a definite lack of hubris (unlike the other two for example, who are just like their father, certain that they are god’s gift to mankind. They know in their bones that they are wonderful. I took up with Andre in the beginning mostly because of that very quality, the self-confidence which oozed out of his pores and radiated in all directions like a golden halo. I hoped that some of it might rub off on me. I didn’t. I am who I was. But the younger two kids have his gusto, poise, and aplomb, and hence negotiate their way through life with an effortlessness that leaves both Ben and I just the tiniest bit envious.) Ben, too, of course, is wonderful. And his similarity to me is what in many ways creates the easiness and comfort we have between us that is such a solid part of my first blessing. The other two, Fred and Alexander, are both so much like Andre that it constantly astounds me. Alexander came to stay this weekend, brought his girlfriend, their bikes, and a bag of apples. (Is he his father's clone?)The three of us, he and I and Emilie, went biking round town the first day and then off over to the nearest provincial park to explore it by bike the next. He also brought with him the news that he is working hard at school (he’s currently in 3rd year Engineering) and that he has just started a part-time job working as a landscaper which a) he loves and b) pays well and c) teaches him real life skills like how to use a rock saw and a backhoe and d) will morph into a summer job for next year. He is happy and healthy and thriving. Fred flew in from out west where he is living temporarily while looking for work to visit his girlfriend over her reading week. I knew that his flight arrived in Ottawa at 5:30 pm and so hadn’t really expected to see him that evening but Laura picked him up at the airport and they came straight to my place. He too is happy and healthy (though currently unemployed and perhaps a little stressed by this.) (I am, at the moment, so lost living here in random town Ontario that I feel an inadequate role model and so put no pressure on my kids to come and see me. To have two of them choosing to make the effort to do so, to break bread with me this Thanksgiving weekend, was beyond wonderful.) But, details aside, these three twenty-something young men, tall dark and handsome, kind, caring, and considerate, healthy, educated, and interesting are my far and above my first blessing. They give my life meaning. (As children so often do.) If I didn’t have kids, I sometimes say, life would be easier, I’d quit my job in a heartbeat, head out to the South Pacific to look for a boat, sail until I was broke and then jump off the back. But, please, don’t think that that in any way reflects on my joy in having them in my life, my thankfulness that they exist, my constant wonder that they have turned out so well… Yes, no doubt, my kids are my first blessing.

(Hmmm… if I don’t stop the wordiness this may turn out to be too long a post!)

Second, of course, though now there is no longer any order to my list of blessings, is my other random bits of family: my ex-husband who writes to me on and off, who procured a shed and put it in his back yard and lets me store my stuff there so that I don’t have to pay for storage, and who is good to my kids; my mother who meets me for coffee whenever I suggest it, lends me her sailing gear when I go off on trips, and willingly listens to my adventures; Andre’s mother who calls me occasionally, loves to talk about my boys, and always makes me feel like a favourite daughter-in-law when I go to visit her; my aunt Mary who has called me on my birthday for decades, my other aunts and uncles whom I know would make me welcome should I turn up at any time for a coffee or a weekend; and, perhaps, dare I include them, the three wonderful girls my sons are dating who might one day be daughters-in-law, who are all so different from each other, unique and wonderful in their own ways…

Third on my list of blessings is my various friends: Suzanne who had me to her cottage for the first night of this long weekend, and Shelley who will always take the time to walk with me and talk to me and with whom I have shared many many congenial glasses of wine over the past few years, and Susie who writes back to me, long thoughtful responses whenever I write to her, and Catherine whose door is always open, and Darcy who has never refused me a spot on her couch, and the list goes on… Shelia, for example, how could I forget her, my best friend of all who has helped my through more crises than I care to count, and Steve, who really cares about how I am doing, and Rick, my life coach, and Stefa, my newest friend, who is living the dream for me. Thank you all.

And then there are acquaintances, both old and new, who fit into their own category; colleagues from my old school who let me cry on their shoulders more than once, whom I know I could count on in any emergency, and the parents of my kid’s friends who helped me out so much while I was struggling to bring my boys up, and others whom I know even less, the members of the biking group I joined the year before last who pulled me through such a dark period letting me draft behind them and then filling me with sweet potato fries and fellowship, and, even more randomly, a man I went through elementary school with, who I haven’t seen since, who, bizarrely, had been following my blog and noticed when I pulled some recent posts and wrote me, more than once, to check that I was OK. Thank you all too.

I have my health. I can paddle a canoe and ride a bike. I can walk, and hike, and am fit enough now - though who knows for how much longer - to crew on sailboats. I live in a country where health care is provided, free, and my job comes with dental and vision and LTD benefits…

And my job, of course, which I say I don’t want, but which is lovely and easy and actually lots of fun. It provides me with a living wage and would, should I choose to keep it for a while, provide me with a pension. It also gives me a certain social standing and keeps my mind occupied. I don’t know if I’ll ditch it after this year. At risk of sounding repetitive I might choose to cross my fingers and close my eyes and jump, head to sea, but I have it now and it is, without a doubt, a blessing.

Which leads, of course, to money. They say that if you have enough loose change in your pocket to buy a cup of coffee you are richer than the average person on this earth. I spent a whole post complaining lately about how much money I’d recently spent, that I’d rented a lovely house on the river and bought a new car and paid a huge tax bill, and, yes, I do know I ought to be more than just a little ashamed of myself. That I can, that I can do that, all that, that I can spend all that money in one month, and bitch about it, yet not have it change my standard of living one iota, well, that is a blessing for sure. A huge blessing. One that ought to be high on my list.

And then to stuff. I have also complained this past month, too often, about how I am living in an almost empty house, with only one chair. And this, of course, is merely a reflection of relativity. It pisses me off that my husband has so much stuff, two households full, that he is paying someone else to sell it all for him, while I have, relatively, so little, but, yet, compared to the world as a whole I have lots of stuff. I have, did I mention, so much stuff that much of it is being stored in boxes in a shed in his back yard, Even here at my house where I feel I have nothing I have two bicycles, and two boats, a car, a phone and a computer and a camera, a huge bed, a comfy couch, and, really, though I might complain a lot, I have everything I want, and, when I find that I don’t, I have enough money that I go out and buy it. (I see that I am going in circles now, my blessings so rich that they are all getting muddled with each other.)

I am living in a random town in Ontario. This is another thing I have been known to complain about over the past month. But, seriously, it is a blessing, and I ought to be grateful. A quick glance at the news will tell you that many, so many, parts of the world are less well off; ebola, famine, wars… What the heck am I complaining about? I have within walking distance a wide range of shops selling anything a normal person, even from this society, could possibly want, restaurants, two grocery stores stocked with food from around the world at affordable prices, a sports center offering a wide range of activities, a library full of books (and free internet access). There is clean water that flows past my house and cleaner water that flows from my taps, there are good roads, and no chance of being shot at or blown up on the way to work, a fantastic hospital round the corner, and, as I know from the explorations of this very weekend, bicycle trials all over the place. It is paradise. To top it all off I am living in a house on the river with a view out of three sides that, if it doesn’t exactly take your breath away, at least lets you breathe. I watched the sky turn pink this evening as I started to write this – it was so beautiful that I got out my camera for the first time in ten weeks - and I know that the moon will rise soon and lay a silver trail upon the water leading right to my window. It IS a blessing.

And, because of all the above, I will not have to win a lottery in order to live, at least for a while, the dream. Though I may, or may not, go off out into the world again, I have the possibility and ability to do so. If I quit my job I will have ten years (I expect) before my health and money will run out and if I keep it I will still have two days every weekend to hike or bike or canoe a ten week block every summer to leave, fly, free, to go wherever I choose to go, to join a boat to crew or merely to traipse from hostel to hostel and explore. And I have kids and friends who might even accompany me for bits and pieces of it. So either way, with ten years to visit or ten summers to do so, I have the world as my oyster, and nothing, nothing, nothing at all to complain about.

Nothing, no I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to complain about. I have my children’s lives unfolding to look forward to and friends to share my joys with, I have money and health in abundance, and I live in a country that allows me the freedom to do as I choose. I have blessings, compared to the average person in the world, yes, but also, just, without being compared to anyone, blessings, blessings galore, spilling over. I do not have an empty cup, nor one that is half-full, no, I have a cup that is so full it is running over, a cup so full it is almost embarrassing to admit to it. I have everything, everything, absolutely everything that anyone could ever want.

All I have to do is remember that.

And be happy.

I think I can.

I will.

Happy Thanksgiving all!