As I look around the rooms of my already cluttered house, I think about all the ‘stuff’ that will be unwrapped come Christmas morning. As always, I’ll gaze at all the unwrapped presents and think, ‘Now where do we put all this new stuff?’
I seriously wish I had enough money and time to get rid of the old ‘stuff’ to make room for the new. What can’t be sold must be put into the trash – garbage is expensive to put on the curb these days – and for what can be sold or given away I need time. The very same time I need to go out and buy NEW stuff for Christmas.
Remind me, would you? To do some spring cleaning come April.
I was going to title this post with the obvious – Friday the 13th – but the words above more clearly state what my day has been like so far.
I woke up bright and… well, late for me. I’m usually up for the day at 5:30 but His Majesty (my youngest son) allowed me to sleep in ’til 6:30. Anyway, at 6:35 he turned on his laptop to find a virus. Not just any virus it seems, but one which wouldn’t allow me to do anything with the computer but shut it down and re-install Windows.
I don’t understand what the people who write and distribute these horrible worms around the internet get out of doing it. It was one of those ones that, if we can read (His Majesty can’t) we usually know better than to click on unless we’re half asleep or drunk – a pop-up with a badly drawn Windows-like shield, telling the user that the computer is at risk. Yeah, from you, dickhead. I mean seriously, do some people have nothing better to do than sit at their computers and snigger at other people’s misfortune? Ugh!
Anyway, I bought Kaspersky Pure virus protection a few months days ago, so I’ve installed it now on all the computers in the house.
I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. The decorations are great, the coming together of family, the big dinner (which I have to cook, but I don’t even mind that), the joy and the caring community – *needle screeches across record* – wait, what was that? Caring community? HA!
I live in what I expect is the politest little city in the world – eleven months a year. But on that twelfth month, you’d better watch out!
If I lived in Whoville and the people from here could be called Whovillians for most of the year, come December they can only be considered Whovillains. The claws come out in the shops and they’re in such a hurry, they’ll run you down with their cars as soon as look at you. Gone is the interminable wait at a four way stop for everyone to say, “No, you go first.” Now it’s every man, woman and child for themselves.
It seems Christmas brings out the worst in people when they’re out in public – it makes you wonder if those same people are as thoughtless at home as well, or if they’re just taking out their frustrations on people they don’t care about. Either way, it’s the most horrible time of the year to have to go out shopping!
‘Tis the season to be surly, fa la la la la, la la la la. Sing with me!
Deck your friend and plow your neighbour, fa la la la la, la la la la
There are the old standbys, like not walking under a ladder (which is really common sense if you think about it), or the black cat crossing your path being bad luck. For good luck we have the found penny, though it seems to me there are fewer good luck superstitions than bad ones.
If you think of any more, leave them in the comments.
Anyway. The real reason for this post is to talk about the superstitions that run in families. Many of us have them I think.
Mine include:
if your hand itches: rub it on wood and it’s sure to be good, rub it on your ass and it’s sure to pass. This refers to good luck. Hey, there’s one!
lilies signify death. Don’t give them.
never seat 13 at the table – I’ve never known quite what to do if I actually have 12 guests. Then again, I’ve never had a table big enough. 😛
if you drop a knife, don’t pick it up yourself or you’ll have a bad surprise. When someone else picks it up for you, don’t say thank you, or they’ll have a bad surprise. So if you come to my house and there’s a knife on the floor, you’ll know why. And don’t expect any appreciation if you pick it up. 😉
I’ve had one of these every year since I was a child.
I used to be the only one in the house with one, now every year I buy four – one each for the kids,
and one for me.
I don’t know… Apart from the obvious miniscule sugar rush each morning, there’s something inherently comforting in hunting down the right number for the date, and then popping open the little door. And if you’re lucky, the chocolates didn’t all come unglued during shipping, and they’re not all sitting down at the bottom of the packaging.
So far, so good.
Blog post of December 4th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
I read once, when my kids were very young, that a baby who laughs when it is startled is a baby who trusts his or her mother. It’s something that I found followed through to their toddler years and beyond. I joked with my kids that I was going to do horrible things with them; cook them and eat them for dinner for instance. They’d laugh, knowing I would never do such a thing, because they trusted me.
There was one instance that I will never forget and I try not to regret for the simple reason that it taught me something.
I was leaving the pool where Alex was, at the time, doing physiotherapy. He wasn’t walking yet at the time, so he must have been less than five years old. I carried him out of the building, loaded with purse, swimming clothes and Alex all in my arms. I remember it was cold. I put him down on the curb in front of the car but to the side where I could see him, so I could wrestle my car keys out of my coat pocket. Had a car come, I was prepared to stand in front of it to prevent him being hurt. I proceeded open the doors and put the bags in. Then I waved goodbye to him and pretended to get into the car, expecting him to laugh. He knew I would never leave him there by myself. But instead of laughing, he smiled at me and waved back.
Whether he didn’t understand the joke or not, the vision of that tiny little boy sitting bundled against the cold, waving goodbye to me with a trusting smile on his beautiful, innocent face, still brings a tear to my eye.
Our children live in the world we construct for them. Whether they are healthy or sick, they can learn to be happy from us as parents because they trust what they see – the example we set. Alex spent the first eight months of his life in the hospital. All he has ever known, from birth, is pain. To this day he wakes up almost every morning with reflux, trying to vomit past an operation he had at six months of age called a fundoplication – basically, a knot was tied in his esophagus to prevent anything coming up. And yet he is the happiest child I’ve ever met. Other people observe this and ask me if he’s ever unhappy. It’s all he’s ever known. He sees me deal with his morning time retching with ease and he is reassured that it’s normal.
One day I know he will find out that it’s not. Will he stop trusting me at that point? I have no idea. It’s for sure that I’ll have the task of assuring him that even if it’s not something everyone experiences, it’s just the way he is, and that’s okay.
The point I’m trying to make I suppose, is that our children are our sponges. They take from us what we show them, and whatever that is, they trust it, because from the very beginning, we are all they know. I hope, for my own part, to preserve that for as long as their personal experiences away from me will allow. And that they will continue to laugh all their lives.
: luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for
: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also: an instance of this
The above is according to Merriam-Webster online.
The most notable instance of serendipity in my life was the meeting, for the second time, of my children’s father.
Luc and I first met when we worked together in Aurora, a small town just north of Toronto. He came into my workplace and asked for my boss. The first time I laid eyes on him I remember thinking to myself, “And what the fuck do you want?” It had been a hectic day, or so I tell myself twenty-eight years hence. I was, hours later, to find out that he was my new manager, and I thanked the heavens above that I hadn’t said out loud what I was thinking. We’ve laughed about it many times since.
Months passed, and he and I got along well. He’s a nice guy. Then he was transferred. A few weeks later I found out that he’d broken up with his girlfriend. I, too, had broken up with my boyfriend and was looking for a roommate. I offered, he refused. Shortly after he decided to go back to Montreal, to be close to family and we lost touch completely.
Seven years down the road found me living close to Ottawa. I’d been there for a couple of months and was heading back home to see my mom near Aurora and I stopped for gas. Luc was there, working at the pumps. It was serendipity – fate, if you will. A year later we moved into our own house and I was pregnant with our first son.
Three kids plus a few years later another seemingly serendipitous event occurred in my life. As it turned out, it wasn’t so lucky and my relationship with Luc ended. Perhaps it was fate, but if it was, I haven’t seen many benefits from it. I am single, yet again.
This all comes to mind because I met someone online, a couple of days ago, with whom I have a great deal in common. Whether it will continue into a lasting friendship or fizzle into nothing as these things sometimes do, remains to be seen. But for now it feels like fate.
We never know what fate will drop in our laps in the next instant. We can only hope to have great serendipitous events, that brighten our outlook, that give us hope for the future, and that help us to believe that maybe there is such a thing as good luck.
Serendipity can take us to important periods of our lives, which may seem to have been fated to happen. On the other hand it could be some little thing, like losing and then finding a piece of jewelry. Just about everything leads to something, right?
What is your best serendipitous event? I’d love to hear about it. If it’s really wonderful, why don’t you blog about it? Just please be sure to put a link in the comments here, so I don’t miss it.
I find myself saying ‘If I could only just…’ a lot.
If I could only just find more time to write…
If I could only just have more money…
If I could only just find true love…
It goes on, ad infinitum. But all these things denote that I’m not content, when for the most part, I am. I have my children here with me, we have a roof over our heads, the air inside is warmer than outside, and there is food in the fridge. And I’m keeping up with my writing quite well, although sometimes it’s a struggle to do anything else.
So what is it which makes me wish for more? Is it simply the human condition to keep striving? It’s hard, for me at least, to keep my mind from going, from wandering, and from wondering what it would be like if I had just a little more.
Now if only I could consume nothing but coffee and chocolate and wine and cheese …. then I’d be happy.
I read in the paper the other day about a man in Northern Quebec who is whining about the fact that people don’t want to bring their kids to his daycare. He advertised locally, with simply the name of his business, his address and his phone number. Parents showed up to check the place out, seemed happy, but then declined his services once they found out he would be running it and actually be the one looking after their kids.
Now, while this may, on the surface, seem like gender discrimination, the fact is that people want their young children cared for by women. It’s not a matter of ability, necessarily, but more a matter of instinct. YES, men have most of the instincts required to look after children, but many parents don’t see it that way. Then there are the stories in the news of men (what is it, 1% or less?) who have been known to abuse children in their care, in some way or another. I wish it wasn’t true, but every major city has had these stories.
The article about the daycare brought up in my memory another occupation which I found out doesn’t welcome men. At the dry cleaning business on my paper route there is a wash and fold service. They will not hire a man to do this job. It makes sense – many women wouldn’t bring their clothes, particularly their underwear, in to be washed and handled by a man. Does it make sense? No. Panties are inanimate objects. Even if the guy behind the counter is sniffing them, they don’t care. But women, like parents, are sensitive to some things.
Would you take your kids to be looked after all day by a strange man? I wouldn’t. Ladies, would you take your underwear to be washed by a strange man? …depends how strange he is.
Is it fair that men are discriminated against in these cases? Maybe not. But it makes sense.
Warning: The following my cause you to spit coffee out of your nose. Please read with caution.
Do you ever have so many things go wrong at once that you wonder if you’re on a sitcom and nobody told you? I had one of those moments at 6:30 this morning – far too early to start wondering who started the cameras rolling.
So there I was, standing at the counter in my kitchen, painstakingly crushing my son’s chewable vitamin with the blunt end of a knife as I do every morning. He won’t chew it – I have to stir it into his yogurt.
Anyway, there I was with this fine fine powder on the counter when my cellphone alarm went off in my pocket. I reached for the phone and pulled the crushed pill off the counter – all over the floor.
So I go to the broom closet, take out the broom and drop the dustpan. Bend down to pick up the dustpan, the mop falls and hits me on the head. Stuff the mop back in the broom closet, go back to the kitchen. Sweep up the mess, almost knock an opened bottle of wine on the floor with the broom handle.
Yes, there was a stopper in the bottle; no, I don’t drink wine at 6:30am, though I’m not sure why not.
All this happened in the space of about ninety seconds. One of those mornings when I just wanted to go back to bed and start again, you know?
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