Archive for the ‘Things I Don’t Understand’ Category

• The Scariest Thing I Did At BlogHer’10

  Date: 2010.08.11 | Category: Things I Don't Understand, Things that are made of awesome | Response: 13

  I did the scariest thing I’ve done in years at BlogHer’10. I signed up to run (yes, emphasis on the run) in Ottawa’s 5km Run for the Cure. It’s Laurie Kingston’s fault. She posted on Twitter and Facebook and then posted an open letter on her blog asking if anyone would be up for running on a team called “No Pink For Profit.” Laurie would have to put it in a way that leaves me no choice but to say yes.

  Some of you may think that this is not a BlogHer post, but it is. Without BlogHer I would not know Laurie. We would not be friends.

  A few years ago (2006 I think) I started noticing someone commenting on my posts at BlogHer. Usually the Canadian posts but sometimes book posts as well. I commented back and eventually started following their blog. It was Laurie and her blog Not Just About Cancer. Thanks to BlogHer and our blogs, and eventually Twitter and Facebook, Laurie and I became online friends. I remember the day that she posted that her cancer had returned. I cursed and threw something at the wall. I was pissed. I was mad. I was scared. And at that point I hadn’t even met her.

  A few years later I ended up moving to the same city she lives in and we became friends live and in person. We meet up as often as our schedules allow and sit in a pub, drink pints, knit and get caught up on our lives. You know, the parts that don’t make it onto the Internet.

  As I got to know Laurie better I became increasingly aware of how much pink for profit campaigning there is every year. I was aware of it before I knew her. I remember being particularly disgusted by a promotion where if you spent $$$ on a new mattress you’d get a special! limited edition! pink sheep! Of course, a portion of the profits made go to breast cancer research. I was cynical and avoided them, preferring to give my money to actual charities.

  I became increasing aware of how wide-spread it was thanks to posts like Suzanne Reisman’s, “Pink Ribbon Madness: Say No To Breast Cancer Exploitation for Corporate Profit.” Yes, buy a can of soup that we’ve slapped a pink ribbon on and we’ll all be saved. (Oh and yes we’ll make money if you buy a lot of them but shhhh let’s not talk about that.) I knew that these campaigns often hurt breast cancer survivors but it became more than that — they were hurting my friend. Now I wouldn’t just avoid these pink for profit, I’d swear when I saw them. I’ve been known to rant occasionally. (Shocking, I realize.)

  So yes, when Laurie asked if anyone would sign up for her No Pink for Profit team I couldn’t say no. Money does need to be raised for more research, and I’ll run to do that. I’m thrilled with the subversiveness of the No Pink for Profit message that will be splayed across my t-shirt as I run to raise money for it.

  And that is no small statement. I don’t exercise. I like to describe my coordination as that of a dead drunk sloth caught in a wind machine. (Description stolen and always cited to Joshilyn Jackson who said in a blog post once.) I trip over my own feet on the sidewalk. I am, quite simply, not an athlete.

  But I am doing this. I am doing this because a friend asked me for help with something that is important to her. I am doing this because I am capable of it. I’m doing this because I’d like to live in a time when breast cancer is not something that can be used as a fear tactic to sell products for a profit.

  I’m doing it because I can.

  If you feel so inclined you can find out more about the No Pink for Profit team and make a donation on our team page. If you are in Ottawa I hope that you will come out and cheer for us on October 3.

• Grief

  Date: 2010.06.20 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 5

  It’s kind of funny. I hadn’t seen her much over the last ten years. I don’t live there anymore and our visits were limited to the odd hour here and there when I was home for a visit. But there’s a hole in my life and in my heart because she’s not here anymore.

  It was the knowledge of always knowing that she was there. When I was a kid she was always in her kitchen. Or at bingo. After my grandfather died she lived with us for awhile. We even shared a bedroom. Then she bumped around, staying with my aunts and uncles until settling into her retirement home seven or eight years ago.

  She was present. She was the glue that bound us together. She was the matriarch.

  Now she’s gone and I’m feeling lost.

  I don’t think I’ve let myself grieve.

  While she was in the nursing home, while we sat vigil, I decided it was not the time for tears. Her room in palliative care was not the place for me to breakdown. It was place for remembering her strength and pulling on some of it for myself. I was there for my mother and sister as much as I was there for myself and my tears had no place there. My mother didn’t need to deal with my tears on top of everything else. I didn’t know whether to wish that she’d go quickly or if she’s defy us all, doctors included, and wake up and tell us all off for thinking she’d leave us.

  I didn’t allow myself to cry at my sister’s place when I was home alone there. I was scared that once I started I might not stop. I didn’t want my puffy eyes to betray me when I went back to the nursing home to sit with my grandmother and pick up my mother from her overnight shift of sitting with her. If my mother could sit with her all night, getting by on just three hours of sleep a night for a week, I could hold to my tears.

  We were called into the room for the last moments of my grandmother’s life. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t breathe. I ran outside and sat on a bench and sobbed, alone in my grief. A few minutes later I pulled myself together and returned inside. Later, before the undertaker took her away, I kissed my grandmother goodbye for the last time.

  I allowed myself to cry a little during the funeral. I allowed myself to cry again driving to the airport, alone on the highway. When I told Lee that when we are in PEI I want to put flowers on the grave that she and my grandmother share my voice cracked. And I’m crying now.

  I don’t know how to grieve. I never have. To grieve feels selfish. I feel the need to be strong, to push the tears down and fight grief.

  Perhaps it’s because if I grieve it really means she’s gone and I can’t imagine a world in which she does not exist, except in our memories and hearts.

  I just know that sometimes the thought that of her being gone hits me so hard that I don’t know how to breathe. I feel like I wasted so much time and I wonder if she knows how much she was loved.

• Thinking of Granny

  Date: 2010.06.01 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 6

  When my cell phone rang while I was in the office and I saw the familiar area code and unfamiliar number I figured something was wrong. After answering it and hearing my mother’s voice I was pretty sure that something was wrong. I was right. My grandmother has had another stroke. She’s unconscious and they don’t expect her to wake up this time. The family is gathering. I’m not on a plane or in an airport right now because they don’t know how long she’ll stay. It could be days, even a week. So I’m staying here, trying to be normal while on high alert and waiting for the phone to ring. Pretending that everything is normal.

  I’ve looked into flights. I’ve looked into car rentals. Lee and I have already discussed that I’ll be going home alone this time because we’re already booked to go home at the end of the month and my work schedules are much more flexible than his. I was looking forward on this trip to visiting my grandmother at her nursing home. I’ve been told that since she had her strokes last year she’s started swearing like a sailor. My grandmother never, ever swore and it was amusing to everyone. I’m glad that Lee got to meet her on my last trip home. (At the end of that visit she still tucked a $20 in my hand.) But all there is for me to do is sit here and pretend that every thing is normal. And so I think.

  When I think of my grandmother I think of her in the kitchen of the house she lived in until I was in my early teens. It’s been close to twenty years since she’s really lived there but it’s where I remember her, even though we briefly shared a bedroom when she moved in with us after my grandfather died. The kitchen was the first room in her house you walked into. It was large and really had three different areas. There was a sitting area by the bay window where she could watch people drive by. She knew almost everyone who did drive by, many who waved or honked at the house because they knew she and my grandfather would be there. There was the cooking area with both a regular stove and wood stove that helped heat the house in the winter. And there was the dining area with the large formica table where you could easily sit eight people, or 10-12 if people were willing to squish. You couldn’t see the sitting area from the dining area.

  I spent a lot of time in that kitchen as a kid. I’d often stay with my grandparents during the day during the summer. I particularly remember being there during pickle making season. My grandfather made dills, which really only he and I ate. Together they made mustard pickles and occasionally bread and butter pickles.

  I remember her making biscuits. She kept hers in one of those tall Tupperware containers on the counter. There were biscuits at every meal. Sometimes she’d take leftover roast meat and chicken and make a pot pie out of it, topping it with biscuit dough. Her meals were simple and homey.

  She was always feeding people. A number of family members worked at a local fish plant and she’d cook a full meal for their lunch – meat, potatoes, biscuits and pickles. Sometimes she’d even have pie. She could hear the foghorn that indicated the break work breaks from her house and when it went off at lunch she knew she had five minutes to get the food on the table. The table would be set and people would file in, eat in a rush and run back out to get back before the final foghorn. She’d be left with a mess of dishes to clean up.

  During the right season I’d find leaf lettuce from her garden in a bowl of cold water in her refrigerator. It would be shaken and dried a bit before being put in a bowl with a pinch of sugar and a splash of white vinegar. I don’t see lettuce like that here so it’s been years since I’ve had it. She almost always used to send me home with some.

  Almost every Saturday night my mom and step-father went there and played cards. We almost always ate dinner there, again my grandmother’s simple but delicious meals. Almost every meal I had at grandparents contained one thing – sliced cucumbers in a bowl of icy cold white vinegar. I guess you could call them table pickles. I was always a bit of a cucumber fiend and could eat the whole bowl by myself if anyone would let me (they didn’t).

  I still do this sometimes. Lee doesn’t really care for cucumbers this way but it’s homey to me. Tonight when I sit down to a dinner of steak and asparagus I’ll put a dish of cucumbers in vinegar on the table. Lee might not eat any, I’ve gotten used to eating the whole dish myself — just like I always to do as a kid. I’ll think of her in her kitchen and try to imagine her swearing like a sailor.

• Petition against pelvic exams without consent

  Date: 2010.01.29 | Category: Canada, Health, Things I Don't Understand | Response: 1

  Catherine Connors, aka Her Bad Mother, has posted an open letter to protest the practice of pelvic exams without consent.

  Go read it. Sign it. Share it.

• NOT without my consent

  Date: 2010.01.28 | Category: Canada, Things I Don't Understand | Response: 3

  I was going peacefully about my day when a tweet crossed my path. It was a link to this Globe and Mail article (which will probably go behind a pay wall because that’s how the Globe rolls): Time To End Pelvic Exams Without Consent.

  Medical students routinely practice doing internal pelvic examinations while surgery patients are unconscious, and without getting specific consent, at least in Canada.

  Guidelines in the United States and Britain say specific consent is required but, by contrast, Canadian guidelines state that pelvic examination by trainees is “implicit.

  Implicit? IMPLICIT?

  No, I really don’t think it is. I think it’s called violating women while they are unconscious. And because it’s the way I roll I retwittered the link and asked women if they had undergone surgery in Canada. If they were unconscious. And if they weren’t sure they hadn’t gotten a bonus pelvis exam.

  The responses I got, from both women and men, were immediate. They were horrified.

  One woman had surgery two years ago at a teaching hospital.

  One just had surgery.

  Two women I know are scheduled for surgery later this year.

  One woman wrote the CMA, her MPP and her MP.

  The rest expressed their incredulity and outrage.

  Look, I know medial students need to practice procedures. I’m not against that and if I was asked if a student could perform the exam I’d let them. If fact, I have.

  I am, however,  against someone inserting a speculum into my body without my consent while I’m unconscious for practice.

  To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand how it’s not assault.

  It takes a lot to get me riled up to the point where I write letters to my MP or my MPP. Nothing has ever pushed me to that point before.

  This has. So as soon as I calm down enough to figure out what to say I’ll be writing them. And the CMA. And anyone else I can think of.

• Kitchen storage

  Date: 2009.11.09 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 2

  I’ve complained about the various kitchens I’ve had. Kitchens in rental apartments are frequently bad. When I was looking for my own place in Toronto I took one look at the apartment I ended up living in and said I’d take it as soon as I saw the kitchen. You see there actually was one. Most of the places I had seen online didn’t have a real kitchen. There of of the one cupboard, one shelf and if you were really lucky a drawer and an oven design. So not good for someone like me who cooks 95% of her own meals and owns the cookware to prove it.

  There has been one thing in most of the kitchens I’ve lived in that I never full understood. This:

  

  Kitchen cabinets that stop approximately 1.5-2 feet from the ceiling. It’s wasted space and of course it means that we use it to store appliances and other kitchen goodies that we do not use that often but use often enough not to shove into a closet.

  Being that this is a kitchen we’re talking about these don’t only get dusty, they get grimy. And gross. And just generally disgusting.

  This morning Lee had to leave early for a meeting and just before he left I remembered I needed the crockpot. He grabbed it for me on his way out the door and then I proceeded to clean the crockpot. In fact, I cleaned the crockpot twice because all the grime didn’t come off the first time.

  I’m not big on cleaning in general. I hate doing it, though I do like things to be clean. Especially in the kitchen. (The other thing I hate about our kitchen is how the lower cabinets never look clean, even five minutes after I’ve scrubbed them.) The only thing more annoying than cleaning is having to clean things twice.

• The red-headed boy

  Date: 2009.09.11 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 2

  He had red hair.

  It was the first thing I noticed about him. We redheads notice others. He was tall. Pale. He looked like he probably smiled more often than not. He looked tired, like he had just rolled out of bed and headed off to class.

  He wasn’t supposed to be there. We were huddled around outside our French class. It had just moved to a new location and there used to be a Spanish class in the same location. He was in the Spanish class but he hadn’t know it moved.

  He saw us huddled. Heard our whispers. Saw how upset everyone was. Then he heard the words “Twin Towers.”

  His head jerked up. “Did something happen?” he asked as he approached us.

  “Yes,” we offered tentatively. Words came out haltingly. Hijackers. Planes. Attack. Towers. Crash.

  Gone.

  He turned pale. “My mother works there,” he said in something that was between a whisper and a gasp. He looked like he was going to fall over.

  “Go!” we said. “Get to a phone. You’ll have trouble getting through but just go.”

  He ran.

  I don’t know if he got through to his mother. I don’t know if she was one of the people who got to work late that day. Or who stopped for a coffee like my coworker’s father. I don’t know if she was there or if she got out.

  I never spoke to him again. I saw him across campus once or twice but I don’t know.

  That is the memory that sticks with me the most of September 11, 2001. More than me uncharacteristically turning on the television that morning as I got ready only to see the first tower come down and the second one get hit and then watching that come down. More than the decision to go to French class because I needed to be around people and not huddled around a television, alone. More than coming back from class to find my ex, who hadn’t yet moved out, in bed with another girl. “The world was ending,” he said. More than yelling at him on the phone hours later. “Where are you,” he yelled. “We were looking for you in case there were more attacks. We’d go to the country with my sister.” “Like hell,” I said. More than going to work and begging to start early because I needed to do something. More than looking at an evening edition of the paper because of the day’s happenings, the first I ever remember there being.

  More than anything I remember the red-headed boy and hope that his mother got out.

• On Being Child-Free By Choice

  Date: 2009.08.27 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 73

  I do not have children. At this point, having children is not in my life plan. I do not think that my life is being deprived of anything because of that choice.

  Oh sure, I’ve been told many times by many people, those that know me and total strangers, that it is. I’ve been told that I’m young and that I might change my mind. I might change my mind. I’ve never disputed that. But for right now, no, I do not want to have children and if I never have children or want to have children my life will be just fine.

  Most of the time I can ignore the suggestion that my life is empty and meaningless but as I was going about my day I saw something on Twitter that caught my attention. It was a link to this: Child-free Movement: You say “child-free” I say “childless.” The tweet? What would you tell the “child-free” they are missing out on?

  To say that I wasn’t very impressed would be an understatement. I was pissed off and insulted.

  I’ve read the post a couple of times now. I’ve exchanged replies with the author on Twitter. I get that she was responding to the suggestion that she is selfish for having children, which yes some people really do believe. Much the same way people have called me selfish for not having children. Only I’m going against a societal norm, which I guess makes me and people like me fair game.

  My big problem is that the judgment against her was replicated.  I, my friends, and so many women I do not know, were judged and told our lives were lacking because we have decided we do not want to have children. Sure, if you want children there are benefits to having them. But benefits are benefits only if they are something you want.

  It was a slap in the face to women struggling with infertility because yes, there IS a difference for many of them between being childless and child-free. Their stories are heartbreaking and hopeful and wonderful. They are not moms, some of them will never be. Will their lives be forever lacking because of that? I sincerely hope not and I do not personally believe so but I can’t speak for them.

  I don’t judge people for having children. If they make the choice that they want to have children and they are able to I’m happy for them. It doesn’t mean that I love every child I meet. It doesn’t mean that I’m pleased by some of the ways I’ve seen children behave in public and the ways parents have reacted to it (or not reacted as the case may be).  I may not like where you bring your children. But do I think that you are selfish to have children? Most certainly not. No.

  But because I don’t choose to my life is lacking. I am selfish. I will never know true love. I lack empathy. I will never learn patience. I will never know how wonderful the world is. In short, I will live a dull devoid life until the day me and my shriveled soul die miserable and alone.

  I have friends who don’t want children. I have friends that have children. I have friends that are trying to have children. I have friends who have desperately wanted to have children and couldn’t. NONE of our lives are lacking.

  I am so weary of the way women use children to beat on other women. Children vs no children. One child vs multiple children. Staying at home with the children vs working outside the home. They are all part of the same stupid argument, which is “Everyone should do what I am doing because it is the best and only right way.”

  We all make life choices based on what is right for us. If you want children I hope you can have them and I hope you can have as many as you want. If you don’t want children I hope you don’t have them. If you want to stay at home with your children, or not, I hope you can do that. I support your choice to do what is right for you and your family.

  Just back the hell off of judging me for making the right choices for me and mine.

• Sports fans can we chat?

  Date: 2008.12.29 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 1

  I must confess I don’t often attend sporting events. I’m just not a big sports girl. It probably has something to do with me having the coordination of a rock. I do like attending a good hockey game now and then and last night we went out to see the USA vs. Czech Republic. We scored good seats in the World Juniors Ticket Marketplace. As in 100 level row C kind of good seats. Pretty darned cheap too. (Between this and the big ass tv we bought in a boxing day sale I am scoring some major girlfriend brownie points this holiday, yes indeed.) One of the awesome things about these seats was seeing the little kids near us being really excited about being so close to the boards. We were behind the net, near the corner and let me tell you those boards *shake* when guys get plowed into them. And the kids loved it.

  Which brings me to this, I realize that hockey games are fun events for grown up boys too. I do! Really! And that you like your grown up boy beverages. I was enjoying one myself. But keeping in mind that there are kids around do you really need to be douchebags? I mean, really?

  So I get that you don’t like Team USA and that you wanted the Czech’s to win. Well, you didn’t really want the Czech’s to win as much as you wanted the USA to lose. But when two little boys are chanting “USA! USA!” three rows in front of you do you really need to scream out “SUCKS!”? Because when you did I saw the grins and excitement fall right off their innocent faces. You sir, are nothing but a bully. A mean schoolyard bully. And you should be ashamed of yourself. (Just as you really shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel of your vehicle after consuming that many beers.)

  And then there was your friend who was sitting two seats over from you. He made some lovely “your momma” jokes about how she “liked it in it, out of it, and on it”. There was a kid sitting in front of him that was no more than nine years old. That’s classy. Yessirree. Looking at his Team Canada jersey I can’t tell how much national pride I was filled with. Not.

  I’m not saying you need to sit there with a cup of tea and your pinky turned out while you mind your p’s and q’s. I’m just saying that perhaps you should take a look around you and realize where you are. Trash talk the goalie all you want. Boo if you feel the need (even though I personally find it tacky). Drink your beers, but may I suggest you bring a DD with you? But maybe lay off the bullying and the crudeness when surrounded by kids?

  Just a thought.

• I don’t want to be Dooce

  Date: 2008.08.08 | Category: Blogs, Things I Don't Understand | Response: 16

  I’ve been thinking about this a lot since BlogHer 08. Yes, I do write for BlogHer but no, I did not attend (I’ve never attended). I followed the Twitter updates and read the blog posts during and after. I read a lot about jealousies, being ignored and not being invited to private parties. And then I read Rita’s post, “Jealousy Isn’t Always An Ugly Emotion” at BlogHer and all the comments. I simply don’t get it. I don’t get being jealous of another blogger – not for their traffic, not for their content, not for their income, not for the opportunities their blogs generate. I really don’t understand why anyone else is either. And I really don’t understand the hatred directed at other bloggers because they have any or all of those things.

  Are there bloggers I like? You betcha! Some of them I know either online or in real life but for most I fall into the Fangirl spot. Not everyone is going to be my friend and that’s fine. I don’t want to be friends with someone just because they are cool or write well. I really don’t want to be friends with someone just because they are popular.

  I can clearly remember the day that I decided that.

  I was in ninth grade and I hovered on the edges of the popular crowd. I was really too bookish and well, to be honest, too poor to be cool and popular. I didn’t wear the right clothes, I didn’t watch the right movies, I didn’t listen to the right music, I didn’t have cable, and I liked books far too much. If I were to classify my position in that group I was a pawn – I moved only in a few directions when commanded. I was the weakest link and easily expendable. One morning before homeroom I was sitting with my back against the lockers surrounded by the cool crowd when I looked around and realized that I had a decision. I could stay there and be the pawn that lives on the edge, frequently ignored except when needed for one of their games while waiting for the day they permanently cast me aside. It would be a life of insecurity. Or I could be the pawn that increased their power and to do that I had to leave. I could be in command of my own movements. I stood up, I walked away and I never looked back. I never regretted it.

  It’s probably one of the few truly smart things I’ve done in my life. That and when I stopped getting my hair permed (especially the bangs, OMG the bang perm! *shudder*).

  No, I don’t want to be popular/famous/whatever like Dooce/whoever’s name you want to put in this spot. Sure the income would be nice but the hate mail wouldn’t. The hate blogs wouldn’t. The threats wouldn’t. The scrutiny wouldn’t. The having people wanting to be your friend just because you are famous wouldn’t. The people thinking that they are destined to be your BFF because they see a tiny portion of your life wouldn’t. No, I’m not jealous of the popular bloggers one bit. I don’t hate them. I have a great deal of respect for them but I don’t want to be them. I won’t put them on a pedestal nor will I treat them with contempt.

  Yes, I do make money online. No, it’s not enough to live on. And, no it’s not directly through this site. And yes, you bet your ass I consider myself fortunate for the money I do make. But I work for it too. I have deadlines to meet and if I don’t do the work I don’t get paid. It’s work that same as my day job is. Or rather what my day job will be when I’m back to working. In case you’ve never been here before, I’m not working right now and it’s not because I’m rolling in online dough. My personal circumstances changed and I quit my job and relocated to a new city (so yeah, being out of work right now my student loan lenders really like my online money). I can make a damn good living in my industry and when I’m working and my online income pales in comparison.

  I occasionally get books for free from publishers/marketing/PR folks but I don’t do them in exchange for money nor do I promise them a good review. I’ve only once been offered something other than books to review and I declined (it was poorly pitched).

  No one is handing me money just for being here. No one is paying me money to write this. I don’t run ads (I have considered it – I might someday after I switch servers). I blog in three places. I write here for many reasons but mostly I write for myself. I write here for many reasons but mostly for myself. I write here and partcipate in this community for many reasons but mostly for myself.

  Yes I have writing envy sometimes. There are bloggers who are able to communicate and write in ways that I can only dream of and work towards. They push me to be a better writer and better blogger but not because I want to be them or be like them. I don’t want to imitate them. They push me to be a better version of myself – a more open, articulate, and sincere form of myself. The most that I hope for is that someone responds to my writing and my voice.

  I think that when we get jealous of people we focus on what or who we’re not instead of what or who we are. In a blog people respond to what you write, how you write and mostly who you are. Jealousy only diminishes that. Somedays I wish someone would explain to me why anyone would want to be anyone but who they are but even if they did I don’t think I’d ever understand it.