The "Sleep"-Over

Eight weeks ago, I moved out of the "family home." At first, when I'd leave work, it just felt wrong, felt like my heart was being ripped out with every step I took towards my apartment, away from Hubby, who works in the same building as me.

Now, not every step feels wrong. Usually by the time I'm halfway "home" I start looking forward to what I'll be doing when I get there. This is now especially true, since I've recently adopted a new cat, "Bijou". My evenings can now be completely full of "cat-adoration". No matter how little the phone rings or how sad I am, my kitty is happy to see me and loves my home-made cat food.

Yes, I make her real food. Not a by-product in sight. Yesterday's menu, for example, began with a filet of sole. I poached the filet in milk, with a few slices of onion to add a touch of flavour, and salt and pepper. Once the sole flaked lightly with a fork, I removed it from the pot. And I threw out the onions. Next, I added some oatmeal and a few kernels of corn and cooked them in the milk. When done, I pureed the oatmeal/corn/milk mixture and combined it with the fish. I tasted it, it was delicious, and Bijou couldn't get enough of it.

Tonight, I'll be braising beef shank, bone-in for extra flavour. In broth, not water. With garlic, bay leaf, perhaps a touch of Worcestershire. Oatmeal again in the liquid, and possibly some cheese, and chopped sprouts to add a bit of crunch.

At last, I have someone who LOVES my cooking!

Well, Hubby came over last night, for dinner, and he spent the night with Bijou and me. He too, enjoyed my cooking, though he did joke about being fed leftover cat food... Actually, I made him, from scratch, sweet & sour meatballs, served on rice with a side of asparagus. And I baked scones for dessert. A brief reminder of "Life With Hubby" came as he - I am not making this up - scolded me for putting the tops back on my scones the wrong way.

"They're misaligned," he complained.

"Hey!" I said. "It's a BISCUIT! For godssake, get a life!"

And then we did the dishes, had some ... romantic time... together, then, like a good married couple, turned our backs to each other and went to sleep.

Hah.

I heard him softly snoring most of the night. I wiggled and twisted, fluffed the pillow, turned this way and that, most of the night. Went to the bathroom about six times. He woke up frequently, but, being a man, was always able to fade back into dreamland.

Once, I almost began to actually nod off, when Bijou came over and walked along my legs to my chest and sat there staring quietly at me.

"How long is this going to go on?" she asked me politely.

"I beg your pardon," I queried.

"When are you going to throw this bum out so you and I can have our CUDDLE!?" she demanded.

"Well, Bijou, I can't throw him out now, darling! I invited him to spend the night!"

"So," came her cold sniff. "This man means more to you than I do, does he? I don't see what's so special. I mean, look at the room he takes up in the bed!"

I had to acknowledge the cat had a point here. For eight weeks, I've had the bed all to myself. It's not the most comfy bed in the world, but at least I could stretch out in it, stuff pillows in the hollow spots and get rested! Just not tonight. There was a man in my bed - a big one. And any time our limbs would touch by accident, he'd smile and throw a great big hairy arm around me and draw me close... a completely effective sleep preventative. God forbid I should end up face-to-face with him - his breath was like gale-force winds, blowing my hair around, going up my nostrils, drying out my eyes... If I should be on my back, the wind went straight into my ear. I'd lie on the other side as long as my muscles could stand it, but eventually I'd have to give that side a rest and the cuddling and the blowing would re-start.

"I don't take up any room at all!" said the cat. "And, I can purr!"

"Yes, you certainly can, little one," I said softly to her, scritching her behind her ears.

She wasn't mollified. "Well," she said, twitching her tail at me just before jumping down, "I'm going to sleep on the chair. There's no room here for a proper cuddle tonight!" And she held her head high as she sashayed over to the easy chair.

I received a poke in the ribs.

"You were snoring," said Hubby.

Sure I was.

A Little Humor Goes a Looooong Way!

So, Ron James was on CBC last night.

Ron James is from New Brunswick, I think, and he's been all over Canada, and he's ADHD, and has a rubber face. And every time he's on, my lungs get a good cleaning out! Last night, so did my bladder, but I digress...

My landlady, who lives upstairs, was obliged to knock on the door and inform me I was scaring her animals. After that, I put a pillow over my face to muffle the choking, gasping, and shrieking.

And this morning, she called me at work to say that perhaps it would be a good idea, after all, for Hubby to install some sort of soundproofing on the door...

How does one describe humor? The look on someone's face, and all the meaning behind it? When he talks about the Moose being addicted to road salt, waiting impatiently for the sun to go down so they can head out onto the highways for their fix... His face, looking exactly like a moose's face one minute, and Robert DeNiro's the next... His description of the huge trucks on the road while he squats on stage, pretending to be in his Corolla...

There is no way to describe Ron James. But if you ever hear he's in town, sell the farm, buy some depends, and go see him!

In Praise of a Great Friend

I have a friend, R, who I've know since I was sixteen. We met in filmmaking class and formed an instant bond, at least part of which was due to the fact that nobody else in the class wanted to work with either of us. We had a reputation of being... um... let's use the term "determined", and leave it at that!

We developed an instant respect for each other, having recognized in the other this determination. Oh, and a radical sense of humor.

In fact, before I met R, my sense of humor was mostly latent. He was the first person I ever heard give voice to some of the stranger thoughts I'd always had but had been afraid to let out. Once he loosed my tongue, a world of hilarity opened to me. Not everyone was thrilled about this development, but at least R always got my jokes! And as long as I had one friend in the world who found the same things funny that I did, I was content.

R is an amazing guy. He's really, really curious about the world, not only "how things work" but "why" as well. He's an amazing photographer, proving that he "sees" the world much clearer than most of us who merely stumble through it. Not only can he capture the essence, the "feel" of the moment, he does so with images that everyone would love to hang on their walls. Balanced, colorful, beautiful, they draw you in and hold you, inviting you to linger, to breathe in, to understand.

R is a self-made man. Oh sure, he finished school like the rest of us. But he never stopped learning. Even before the internet, he read, he looked things up, the hard, old-fashioned way, in books! And of course, with the advent of the internet, he soared like an eagle. Now there was no limit to what he could understand.

Sometimes, those of us who were his friends would joke about "getting the lecture" from R. We knew that R would have an answer to every question we could put to him, and that he was more than willing to share the fruits of his labor with us, not chiding us for being too lazy to look stuff up ourselves.

Over the past 34 years, R has been my "rock." There was no difficulty I went through (and I went through a few) that he could not find some word of comfort, snatch a piece of reality to allay my fear, find some way to make me feel better.

R has also had his share of difficulties, but he's always used whatever challenge he faced to learn what he could about the world, about himself, about life.

He had an amazing business for years, which he closed in order to go back to school and get a degree, something quite a few of us in this age group did not do. It was one of the larger challenges he faced, to be sure. He needed peace and quiet to study, so he took an apartment while he was a student, continuing somehow to pay his mortgage, child support, kept up his family responsibilities including the "hithering and thithering" of his teenagers. I don't know how he did it. He would offer to explain stuff to me, but sometimes, see, listening to R can be a bit like the Star Trek episode with Nomad, "The Changeling". Nomad, you see, was this amazing machine that could absorb and send information faster than anything could receive it, leading often the to burnout of the equipment it was attempting to interface with. It often feels like that to me when listening to R. I have to close my eyes and screw on my thinking cap and remember to breathe. He thinks at warp 9, or something. And here I am, impulse drive only. I could never catch it all, one reason he's had to patiently explain things several times to me over the course of many years.

And after he pulled that off, he went back and did a Master's degree!

It is impossible for me to explain just how much I admire R. Very simply put, every day of his life, he does the impossible. Climbs the mountains, wades the oceans, never takes the beaten path, and still comes out on top. He has, to my knowledge, never once "lost."

Well, recently, I hit a wall with R. Where I sent him something that I found radically funny, something that made me curl my toes and squeal with delight, sure that there was only one person on the face of the earth who would "get it" just like I did.

Only, he didn't. He didn't find them funny. The first time, I tried to explain to him what was so funny, but dug myself a deeper hole, metaphorically speaking.

The second time was a birthday card. I saw this birthday card for sale somewhere, and even though at the time I couldn't think of a single soul who I could give it to, I bought it anyway. It was like a razor's edge. It had a picture of a shot of liquor in a glass on the front and said "A shot for your birthday". Inside, it went on something like "a cold shot of reality, hitting you in the face with the fact that half your life is over and the future holds only gloom and death..." Something like that. If you take it seriously, it's positively sinister.

It made me laugh till i peed my pants. I had it about three years, and kept pulling it out to re-read it. Because if I've learned anything from "Uncle R", it's that the only thing the future holds is opportunity. That no matter how bad it looks, joyful determination will find a way through. I've often felt as depressed as this card described, but not for long, because the memory of something R has said to me has snapped me out of it, brought the spotlight of reality into the gloom, and shredded the shadows of self-doubt and timidity with a loud "Pah!" Putting nonsense firmly in it's place.

And then I gave the card to R, and he didn't find it funny. At all. In fact, it made him feel depressed. He told me he often feels this way, and there is nothing funny about it. And that I was being a little insensitive to what he was going through.

I was horrified. It's taken me about two weeks to process this, it came as such a shock. Not just that my bosom buddy didn't find it funny, but that he was going through something he felt he couldn't surmount. That my friend R felt like a "failure."

I still have a hard time putting that word in the same sentence with R's name. I talked to Hubby about it. I used the phrase, watching his face carefully, "R feels like a failure." Hubby's face registered absolute shock. "What???!!! No WAY!!!" was his response. Because we both feel, very deeply, that if R is a "failure", then so is all creation.

R is the smartest man I know, and I dare guess he is the smartest man I'll EVER know. And not just book-learning. I'm talking about Wisdom here. And Street-Smarts. And Intuition. And Compassion. Foresight.

I'd rather debate Mr. Spock than R. I'd rather debate god himself than try to match wits with R!

And from my lowly perspective, R, you are a trailblazer, and yes, I guess it gets a little lonely at the top where you spend your thinking time. But that's only because so few ever make it to where you have arrived. I can only catch the occasional glimpse of your reality when you're patient enough to explain it to me.

You are Leader, a Great Man, an Original Thinker. And you've done this while also being a Great Husband and Father, something damned few other "great men" have managed. And you are a Wonderful Friend. And you've done all this while keeping your curiosity and humor undimmed.

As a human being, you have no equal.

A Tiny Visitor

Homer came to visit me this morning. No, not "D'oh!" Simpson, and not the Poet/Philosopher either. Homer, in this especial case, is my landlady's cat.

He was out for his morning romp when I brought my garbage to the curb, and gleefully followed me back into my apartment. He nuzzled everything in sight, walked on every surface, followed me around while I made coffee and gathered my wits for the working day.

He even allowed me to comb him. He so enjoyed it, in fact, that he lay down on my chest as I was combing him, buried his face in the crook of my arm, and purred to beat the band.

He dunted my face multiple times and asked for sustenance, but all my cat food and cat treats have gone back to the house along with Troi, my own cat, who prefers the larger estate and more accessible windows to life with mommy.

So I offered Homer a cup of water, and he even drank some. What a pleasant cat! A truly enjoyable visit. When I heard the landlady calling him, I had to pick him up and bring him to her balcony.

I miss having a pussy cat to nuzzle. To feed, to play with, clean up after, brush, dunt faces with.

I need more purring. I've had a cat in my life, all my life. Sometimes up to three at once. I not only love cats, I'm like them in many ways. For example, I don't like large places that are full of noise and people. I prefer calm quiet rooms, with one or two people I can watch carefully from a safe distance before I decide whose lap I'm going to jump into, so to speak.

I can also take a nap at any time of the day or night, no matter how recently I woke up. Come to think of it, I can usually eat pretty much any time day or night, as well, irrespective of how recently I've dined! Hmm. I hate getting wet, love to sun myself on a rock, and I have a bit of an ornery streak in me. Maybe there is something to this reincarnation business, after all! That, or perhaps not all humans evolved from apes - perhaps my origins are feline.

It would certainly explain my feelings about most of the rest of "humanity".

Culture Shock

Okay, today my job was downright funny.

I've been coding the HTML on a web page for a prof at the university where I work. This can sometimes be repetitive, and sometimes challenging, but it's almost never funny.

Today was quite different.

See, the research has something to do with the Inuit. Little kindy-garters way up in (who-knows-how-it's-pronounced)-land. Ice and snow pretty much most of the year, in the dark at least a few months, not much in the way of vegetation...

So I'm busy copying and coding the list of things they're trying to teach these little kids, and one of the items listed is...

St. Patrick's Day.

Okay, I mean, can't you just hear the questions from the wee ones?

"Miss? What's a snake?"

"Miss, if St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes, what did the people eat?"

"Miss, what's a shamrock?"

"Miss, what's green?"

They are also, apparently, learning how to waltz.

In the words of the great Dave Barry: I am not making this up. This is true. And fun.

But I'd sure hate to be the one trying to explain the Irish to the Inuit!

The Shadow Would Know...

I need a shadow.

No, not like Peter Pan's. Like they give... ummm.... well, I think the polite term is "mentally handicapped" nowadays. When I was a kid, we just called 'em twits.

Well, I'm a twit, and I need a shadow!

I keep getting off at the wrong bus stop.

I take the number 66 bus. It goes along a beautiful run through Westmount, and the name is "The Boulevard." Some of the houses along the route actually have both the house number and the words "The Boulevard" under the number. Sigh. Wouldn't that be nice, to live at, say, "Fifty-two, The Boulevard"?

The homes are lovely, the trees are dense, the sidewalks wide. The bus rolls up and down, swaying pleasantly... (Hah! Weaving through the potholes - this IS Montreal, after all!) Most of the people on the bus speak English, and they speak to each other. Some of them, myself included, even SMILE occasionally. You only get THAT on the BEST buses...

Then the bus turns, and my troubles begin. See, I have to transfer to another bus, the 144. The timing is perfect - about three minutes after descending the steps of the 66, the 144 turns the corner.

I KNOW it's the stop where I see the Montreal General Hospital. Just that, I usually DON'T see the Montreal General Hospital.

The first day, I saw it, way at the top of the hill, having got off two stops too late and finding myself down at Sherbrook street, having to walk two blocks back UP the hill. That, in itself, really isn't anything much to whine about - except that it was minus a gazillion, the wind was howling, freezing stuff was hitting my face, and both my knees were blowing up...

By chance, the next day, I only got off one stop too late.

So the next day, I got off too early, just to make up for it.

I can't visualize the damned landmarks! I don't know - am I looking for landmarks a driver would see, not a pedestrian? In the bus, you can't see the street names - and that actually doesn't help much, because the bus skirts "Cote-des-neiges" twice.

Today I got off two stops too early. Sighing, and hitching my purse a little higher on my shoulder, I calmly walked toward the goal, the 144 stop two blocks ahead of me, trying in vain to resist the temptation to keep rubbernecking around to see if the 144 was coming yet...

When I did arrive at the stop, about ten seconds before the bus did, one of the nice ladies who's been chatting with me smiled and waved. "So," she said as we climbed in, "Were you getting some exercise this morning?"

"No," I admitted. "Not on purpose, anyway. I just keep missing the stop!"

She proceeded to tell me all the landmarks, especially the hospital. God, that thing is so big, how could ANYBODY miss it?!

Well, I can, apparently!

I had a boss once who told me, "Deborah, you make the most INGENIOUS mistakes of any employee I've ever had. Nobody in their right mind would ever DREAM of making the mistakes you do..."

I guess the key phrase there is "in their RIGHT MIND." I'm a twit, and I need a shadow!

Or a leash...

The Road Less Travelled...

Well, here I am, 51 years old, and starting over.

From scratch.

After 14 years of ups and downs, I moved out of my family's ancestral home on Monday, leaving Hubby, Stepkids, and Dog behind, to take up residence in a one-room basement apartment with my Cat.

I know, I know, it's MY ancestral home, it's usually the woman who keeps the house, etc etc etc... But I don't know where this "separation" is going, and neither does Hubby. Stepdaughter will graduate from high school this June (with a little luck) and then we'll see about whether the ancestral home is still a prime location, whether a move is desirable, whether Stepson has (really) got himself a JOB yet, whether this, whether that, or whether not.

We'll see what the "whether" is.

Now, when I say "one-room basement apartment" I don't want any pity. It's a BEAUTIFUL big room, lots of interesting angles, not in the least bit box-like. And I had to turn the heat off for the first 2 days - it's dry and it's warm. And there are windows, two of which my Cat can sit in... if she ever comes out from under the bed, that is.

The Landlady is an animal-lover, so she's allowing visits from the Dog. Dog came over last night for a quick visit, incidentally. She was overjoyed to see the Cat, who wasn't quite sure she was overjoyed to see the Dog... Dog left willingly with Hubby, and Cat stayed firmly on the bed and watched them leave, then immediately rubbed herself all over me, as if to say "I think I just want to stay here with you for a bit." Come the summer, her tune may change, given the beautiful yard at the House, with birdfeeder to watch and bushes to lie under. But for now, this room's as good as any, to Cat.

Hubby is a basket case, but his jaw is set with grim determination to prove to me that I'm making a terrible mistake, unquote. I still love Hubby very much. But the absolute truth is - I don't miss the Chaos one little bit.

Getting to work from the House involves yelling at Stepkids, yelling at Hubby to get back up out of the bed he snuggled back into after his breakfast, yelling at him to get dressed instead of reading the paper from cover to cover, yelling at him to take a shower more than once a week, yelling at Stepdaughter to get out of the shower, off the phone, and get ready for school, yelling at Stepson to get the mattress out of his back before 4 pm and to GETAJOB... Lots of yelling going on. I don't miss that, and I won't miss that. Not for a second.

I won't miss the piles of laundry, either. A couple of months ago, a Dear Friend of mine came over to do a laundry intervention. I showed her the six-foot-high piles of teenager clothing and asked her "Is this me? Am I overreacting? Or is this as bad as I think it is?" She calmly assured me that, and I quote, "NO HUMAN BEING SHOULD LIVE LIKE THIS." Unquote. Whew. From that day the Stepkids were responsible for their own laundry. Stepson stepped up to the plate - three times already he's washed something... Stepdaughter, on the other hand, has wheedled her RealMom into buying her new stuff. Stepdaughter's piles of dirty clothes are growing... slowly, though, because she runs downstairs and takes things out of the piles to wear. But not a single load has soiled her laundry-free hands so far...

I won't miss the improperly-loaded dishwasher, the urine collecting around the toilets, the razors, toothpaste, hair elastics, and puddles of water that collect around the sink. The toothbrushes, glasses, and personal items falling onto the floor, the sopping wet bath mat and the hair collecting on the bathroom floor.

I won't miss the total lack of cooperation, the Stepson-cum-Sloth who lies in his bed till 4 pm, eats everything not specifically labelled for a specific dinner, puts breakables out of sight on the floor under the couches so they get knocked down on the cement floor at every available opportunity, whose dirty dishes, encrusted with Ramen and Kraft Dinner, lay under his bed for weeks at a time, whose unwashed bed linens smell to high heaven, and who regularly hides the remote controls.

Nope, I'm not going to miss that bit of attitude at all.

I could get up in the morning and walk 30 feet, from my bedroom door to the front door, and trip over six or seven things that annoy me, every single morning of my life. Used diabetes needles, and the used cases they come in, and the used labels that used to hold the needles in the cases, and the used test strips on the floor ... towels on the hairy floor of the bathroom, dirty socks on the floor or on the kitchen table, plates encrusted with kraft dinner - NOT placed in the sink to soak, but left on the table to dry out, coke tins, bread wrappers left open so the bread goes stale, milk left on the table to spoil, spills left to crust over, tea towels encrusted with previous spills that should have been wiped up with a dishcloth or paper towel...

I've been saying to Hubby, over and over, for fourteen LONG years: discipline your children. When they make a mess, MAKE them clean it up, don't clean it up for them, or they'll never learn.

But each and every time either of us pointed something out to either kid, the Kid would say "Oops, sorry," pick up the item, and go about dropping hundreds of identical items along their path each and every day.

I've tried humor. I've tried reverse psychology. I've tried sarcasm. I've tried tough love. I've tried calmly explaining. I've tried shrieking like a banshee. I've tried social workers. I've tried marriage and family counsellors.

Nothing ever changes. Hubby and his kids are like rocks. I'd break my spirit on them, I'd break apart, before any of them would show a little consideration for the other people they live with, or speak in a soft voice to me or to each other.

Life with THEM is full of Chaos, Screaming, and Frustration.

Well, I stuck it out for fourteen years, and on Monday, I left. The day after Valentine's day, after receiving a dozen roses, a handmade card, and a box of Laura Secord chocolates.

Hubby doesn't understand why. I've been telling him for 14 years: "Stand up to your Ex. Discipline your kids. Learn to communicate."

But he doesn't do any of those things. And he still doesn't get it.

Well, I can't help that. And I can't help him anymore. I need peace and quiet, I need to feel safe in my own home. I need to have some control over the state of my home, and over my state of mind.

So I got out. Started over. Day before yesterday, I took that "Road Less Travelled."

And I can tell ya already - it's a beautiful, serene road.