Alberia
15 October 2003I've decided that I really should begin writing again in some small, regular way. I need the discipline. I need short breaks during the day - I can't concentrate on work for eight hours, that much I know - so I've begun recording little scraps in Notepad. I'll cobble it into some simple journal format or other and update in the evening when I return home. There will be no graphics, no extensive linking, just text. I may even consider using a simple 'blog' interface so I can post during the day and not bother with UI. (But I'd hide it in a frame so it wasn't too ugly. Recommendations?) Something unlike previous journals. But that's a weekend project.
Also I'm in a really weird lull this week where I'm waiting for others to finish things before I can move forward, so it's "look busy" mode for a few more days. I'm learning that feast or famine is the normal mode for large client projects.
I'm calling the new thing "Alberia", for reasons fairly obvious: to honour my exile in this cold, desolate, inhospitable land.
At lunch today I decided that I should explore downtown a little before the temperature settled permanently under freezing, so I hopped on the bike and pealed into the Fußgängerzone (Stephens Avenue Mall) and ate a bratwurst from the "Old Munich Sausage Hut". It wasn't bad. Further on I found "The Yodelling Sausage", wittily billing itself as "The Best of the Wurst". Oh dear. Memories of the many, many bratwurst I consumed at the little stand in Pariser Platz, the tour guide/embassy lunch of last resort. Now that the world's lowest retail CD prices are even lower, I swung by A&B sound to pick up the new Belle & Sebastian CD for Maddy's birthday (see below). Their claim is not so outrageous, non-pirate retail CD prices probably are cheapest here (A&B was always the best deal, plus there's no provincial sales tax in Alberta). Good news for those too lazy (as opposed to moral) for downloading and burning.
The long weekend was simultaneously busy and sluggish. Friday night I was sufficiently dead after my first full week of work that I crawled into bed shortly after ten. I felt much better the next morning but still had a trace of the cold that nagged me all week so chose to skip the Saturday Bragg Creek ride (75 km at a moderate pace with the masters group). In the late morning Annette and I popped down to Urban Barn on Kensington to check a few fabric samples (we're doing the main living room curtain in a black/brown with yellow/gold dragonflies, which works pretty well with the faux Tuscan effect walls; for the dining room chairs she found a pattern of concentric squares in reds/golds/browns that I call "Gustav Klimt meets Ren & Stimpy" - it looks that good with groovy seventies Danish teak). We bought a small ottoman, on sale, thereby increasing from three to four the number of adults who may sit in upholstered comfort in our tiny living room; it also serves as a useful launch pad for Maddy's couch dives. Leaving the store we spotted a friend having coffee outside Higher Grounds and joined him. I dropped the ottoman down on the sidewalk - more comfortable than a bench - and sat in upholstered comfort. Some consideration was given to adding little shoulder straps so that I could carry it with me everywhere; I would call this invention the "Scottoman".
Shortly thereafter Annette disappeared for a long afternoon's big box retail store shopping (as opposed to mall store shopping, the only other variety in Calgary) while Mads and I hung with my parents. I went for an easy ride on the road bike - coughing a bit - while yon daughter napped in the jogger, parked in the back yard. At five we woke her up by pounding in a tree stake with the big sledgehammer. Some garden work - tying up the poplars so the new branches aren't bent by the snow, soon to come, staking the big Schubert that didn't go in quite straight last fall. Annette returned late then after dinner we thought we should exploit free grandparental baby-sitting by fleeing to a movie, our first since Christmas: Lost in Translation. Fun enough, I suppose, but then it's difficult to be critical when you see two movies per year and are generally just thrilled to be out alone. It was, as I'm sure every reviewer on the planet has noted, bittersweet.
Random typo-inspired band/CD name: Bittersweat.
On Sunday morning we hauled Maddy off early to Trish's house for her kid's third birthday, only twelve days before Maddy's own. We gave him a plastic bowling set and a copy of "Walter the Farting Dog" (a book so popular that I spent half a morning calling around in a desperate effort to find one, then bought the city's last remaining copy in the airport bookstore late one Friday night). I was not permitted to include a wind-up "Nunzilla", the walking angry nun toy that spits real sparks. At around eleven I gracefully excused myself from the festivities to slink downstairs and watch the world cycling championships on TV (it comes to Canada once every 29 years; I was allowed to view it live).
Later that afternoon, after a quick recovery nap and some panicky, last-second starch overproduction (small potatoes fresh from the garden plus mashed potatoes plus yam casserole, about four times more than were ultimately consumed) we drove en masse to Thanksgiving dinner with friends just up the hill. After dinner a karaoke machine was produced; I spent the remains of the evening upstairs with my parents, lips pursed, scheming of ways to escape the caterwauling. Mads wasn't entirely impressed, at one point telling us she was going downstairs to watch her mother "try to" sing. I think we extricated the child shortly after eleven; Annette returned much, much later.
[I'm just going to have to be cagey and blurry about friends' identities here because most of our social circle are junior faculty, who have students, though it wouldn't take much of a sleuth to figure out who they collectively are.]
Monday was basically about sloth. Late in the morning my parents left for Vancouver, via Lethbridge and the southern route. We relaxed and did not clean up. We took Mads for a walk and sat in the coffee shop while she slept like we used to do almost every Saturday last year. On the way home we paid an exhilarating yet terrifying visit to the local ski shop. Now that I'm working we plan to ski this year, but as it would be over a thousand apiece to equip ourselves, we may start with boots and rent the rest. Ski equipment has changed rather radically since we last spent any time on the slopes. Actually we may just start with Annette's equipment if I intend to drop a large lump of cash on speedskates. We finished the evening with an expensive festive dinner at the River Cafe, with most of the same group we had dined with the previous night. Again, something I would not have considered prior to becoming employed. Inspired perhaps by last week's Berlin traffic reports, I ordered the Shoulder of Wild Boar.
The parental visit was on the whole remarkably stress-free. I chose not to have that little discussion about scheduling, but rather save it for the christmas break. My mother is less inclined to meddle in the kitchen, and we are less inclined to react when they do or say something hideously life-threatening to their granddaughter. Watching my mother mutter grimly that a friend's refrigerator with in-door ice and water dispenser was "decadent" did get some yuks later on. I suggested that it might be decadent if it dispensed absinthe, but surely not water.
This week we will buy some shrubs and plants from among the garden centre's half-price leftovers, then stick them into holes in the ground. And we will clean the house. I will skate and cycle, and I will finally make a decision on the matter of which skates to buy. Perhaps we will also purchase ski boots for Annette.
Books on the to-be-acquired-and-possibly-even-read-one-day list: W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction; Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919; Anna Funder, Stasiland; Gitta Sereny, The German Trauma.
Otherwise I have nothing remotely useful to say about life in Calgary. I pretend I'm not here.
Meanwhile I'm trying to pitch a short magazine piece on Ostalgie (nostalgia for all things East German), 500 to 1,000 words. We'll see how that goes. It would pay for the speedskates.
Talking to Mads
Though I try not to gloat about it, her verbal skills are really quite frightening. Once I tried to stump her by inventing an overly syllabic word - obstrobopolous! (or obstrabopalous, depending) - but she fired it back perfectly. It now means obnoxious to a degree slightly worse than awful. We use it regularly. I'm not sure why, but it makes me think of a Greek-American restaurateur called Bob Strobopolous.
She knows exactly what she wants for her birthday, and has given us a detailed and (happily) manageable list: a piano with legs, a flashlight and a doll with eyes that close. She knows exactly what she wants to be for Hallowe'en: a "monster cat". This was entirely her idea. It says "Roar! Meow!" or "Meow! Roar!" Annette found a leopard costume at the grocery store (ridiculously nice for only twenty bucks - how do they do it?) and somehow we'll make it monstrous. I thought perhaps we could rip the limbs off a couple of dolls and glue their bloody torsos to the leopard suit's paws. Once again, vetoed by the wife.
In the car on the way home from Sundays Thanksgiving dinner-cum-karaoke fest, very late, I accused Maddy of being tautological; she ignored me and gleefully exclaimed "Heffalumps and Woozles!" Why, I do not know. Then she tried to make my parents say "obstrobopolous" and laughed at them when they couldn't.
Pooh has been a wonderful influence on her. When she drops a toy she will exclaim "Oh dear! Whatever shall we do?"
I didn't think it was possible to love her more than I do already, but then yesterday while driving around running errands after work we were listening to Louis Armstrong on the CBC and I asked her if she liked it. "No. I want Belle & Sebastian." Long car trips have become so much easier now that we've weaned her off Raffi and Madeline.
And finally last night, as we were folding laundry, I handed her a pair of my underwear, briefs briefs in fact.
"Are those Mom's underwear?"
"No, they're mine. They're new."
"Oh. I like your nice new underwear. Maybe we can go for a walk and find some little kids and show them your new underwear."
"Uh, well, maybe that's not such a good idea, me showing my underwear to all the kids in the neighbourhood."
"Okay. We could show them my underwear with the hearts. I like my nice little underwear."
"Good. It's important to like your underwear. People who don't like their underwear have no self-respect."
"Yes. I like my underwear."
A few more highlights from the archives:
Early in the summer she and I set out for the post-lunch nap-stroll in the jogger. She closed her eyes halfway down the block. I thought she was asleep. But then, a few minutes later...
"Why does Barney not have clothes?"
"Uh, because he's a dinosaur."
"Why?"
"Well, why are you a little girl?"
"Because I am."
"Exactly. And Barney is a dinosaur because he is."
"But why?"
Etc.
She eventually went to sleep.Now that autumn is upon us, the "whys" have almost passed, thank goodness.
More summer highlights, culled from old emails:
So tonight we set out for our evening walk at around eight-thirty Vita joined us again, walked all the way down the block. About halfway a magpie began harassing her, flying from tree to tree and screeching at the top of its lungs. Vita ignored the damn bird. Then Maddy joined in, yelling at the top of her lungs: "Go away magpie! Stop bugging my cat!!"
If you'd told me five years ago that I'd be out for a walk with my daughter, or out for a walk with my cat, I don't know which of the two I would have found more incredible. Probably walking with the cat. She's all grown up now, our Vita.Some weeks later I was cleaning my bike after being caught in the rain during a ride and Maddy offered to help me. I gave her a cloth and asked, "What could be more fun than helping your father clean his bike?" She thought about it for a second, then said "Uh, playing and running and jumping!"
On another occasion, she was seriously pissed off at me when I was trying to get her to sleep and kept saying "I don't like you." Then eventually she gave my arm a hug. I said "See, you do like me, you're giving me a hug" and she replied "No I don't, it's a little grumpy hug."
One final moment for posterity: I was trying to get her organized to go out for a nap-walk and instead of putting on her sandals she was messing around on the back porch. I yelled something to the effect of "What the hell are you doing?" and she replied "I'm just enjoying the world, Dad."Lists
Scenes from domestic life - the lists that live in notebooks and on scraps of paper.
spending priorities
- the summer's debt, obviouslynon-house -
- speedskates (VH semi-custom + used Maple clap or Bont complete or Viking complete)
- ski boots & clothing & possibly the works
- cat's teeth cleaning
- humans' dental work
- ice tires for winter commuting (bike!)
- decent winter gloves and/or bike pogies
- skeleton school [a 3-day course in which you learn to ride a sled headfirst from the top of the bobsled track, reaching 125 km/h by the bottom presuming you don't flip or hit something on the way down]house -
- humidifier
- attic insulation
- energy audit --> windows & doors?
- fridge (depending on kitchen reno plans)
- rain barrel & gutter repairnon-material -
- maybe think about RRSP & RESP for once...garden -
- evergreens for front (dwarf mugho, tall juniper), siberian dogwood, weeping caragana, spirea, chokeberry, misc. low juniper, was noch?
- plant the damn bulbs we bought last fallbasement -
- finish painting trim, baseboards, window casings, doors; filling & detail work
- paint bathroom
- handle & trim for sliding door
- paint laundry room floor
- hook up laundry sink; install shelf
- trim & insulate top of shop wall
- track for room divider; paint side of pantry cupboard
- fix/replace built-in vacuum
- light fixtures: bathroom, reading corner
- desk chair
- closet bar & shelves; finally, endlessly, organization and clean-upliving room -
- curtain & hardware (wood shutters done by x-mas)
- furniture: nesting tables, couch side table, hall table thing, dining area corner tables, chaise, stereo/TV stand, subwoofer/satellites; rearrange with couch under window etc.
- fireplace: replace current monstrosity with refinished antique deco oak mantle; trim & tile work
- cover dining chairs; oil table top
- lighting issues (solution?)bathroom -
- bathtub sealing
- light fixture?
- no further action until next spending roundkitchen -
- plan & scheme but no action until next spending roundbedrooms -
- ditto