Frecklicious

Saturday, July 23, 2022

Fatigue Rating

So I still haven't managed to work existential angst into a field safety form yet, but I've recently encountered a new avenue for expressing myself through interpretive safety form-ing and I'm really pumped for it: a client company wants field staff to assign themselves a fatigue rating of 1-7 each day, with 7 being extreme fatigue and 1 being so foreign to me at this point that I'm not entirely sure what it might mean... Anyway, the tricky thing is that if you rate yourself as anything 3 or over you're to stop work immediately and call your project manager to discuss how to mitigate your compromised condition. Naturally, this means no one can ever actually disclose their true fatigue rating because they're all too fatigued to fuck around with nonsense like that, and it is in this procedural grey area where I feel an exciting opportunity for creative self-expression lies.

My proposed new fatigue scale lies outside numbers, and indeed outside of logic. One simply senses how fatigued they are, and expresses that sense through brief, evocative tales. The scale is thus deeply personal, unique to each individual, and cannot be interpreted in a way that would require additional paperwork. Wins all around!

I invite you to join me in my own non-numerical exploration of field-season fatigue:

- gosh, why can't I remember the words for anything today?

- closed cattle gate with self on wrong side

- huh, that's not a cool new sedge at all, it's just a beetle standing on a piece of grass

- sat on an ant hill

- NO. CLUE. where I was when I woke up this morning

- propositioned hotel clerk

- drooled lightly on fieldsheet during microsleep

If there happen to be seven levels here it is purely coincidental - like how the 1-4 on your child's report card definitely doesn't translate into actual grades at all, wink wink. And I won't go confessing that I'm running at a solid 4 or 5 these days because that just wouldn't be safe, winkwinkwink, but I can tell you that I had to get Emergency Naked on the prairie at one point this week because my clothes suddenly got REALLY full of ants for some reason. Oh, and I was staying in Consort. It only took me like five minutes, tops, to figure that out every morning.

In unrelated news, I've got a bunch of plants here that I have to look up the names of, so I guess I'll sign off and get back to work. G'night, and godspeed!

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Anti-Résumé

So I've been working on this concept lately that I've taken to calling the anti-résumé. I think it came out of sheer hatred of LinkedIn and all its nonsense and posturing. Wouldn't we rather be real for a change? Like, really real? Maybe painfully real??

Enter the anti-résumé. Think of it as a place to document all your failures and failings, to be handed around freely and discussed at will. It would be nicely formatted and spell-checked, obv. Updated regularly, say annually, or as needed to capture any spectacular new fiascos you've managed to accomplish (uncomplish?) since the last update. And I know regular résumés tend to stick mainly to worky stuff but I envision the anti-résumé really blurring the boundaries between the personal and professional, 'cause isn't that like half the problem in the first place? This would also give it a broad applicability not achieved by a regular résumé - you could include it in job applications and your online dating profile. Honestly, I think it would be liberating to do things this way - just rip that band-aid right off, get the dealbreakers out of the way now rather than a couple of kids and a mortgage into things. (Or for the younger folks out there, a dog and a two-year lease agreement.)

Speaking of which, I haven't fully fleshed out how to include any salient external feedback - just build it right into your bullet points? That would really speak to ownership of your own bullshit, but on the other hand a separate friends/family/colleagues/etc. quotes section might pack more editorial punch. Do you think the "references" should be people who will happily smack talk you? Or maybe a more traditional "references" section would be better, complete with pers. comm's and literature cited... either way you'll definitely need an Appendix or two to include any documentation, because if you fucked up big enough to make the paper it's 100% gotta be in your anti-résumé.

I'm still polishing mine up - having a bit of trouble with the verb agreement TBH - but in the spirit of really-realness I'll give you some highlights to tide you over until the finished product is ready:

Easily distracted by more interesting tasks.
Chronic procrastinator-slash-workplace adrenaline junkie.
Conflates oversharing with emotional intimacy.
Thoroughly convinced of my own genius and unwilling to take conflicting evidence into consideration.
Elevated cholesterol.

Feel free to use as inspo for your own anti-résumé, but definitely don't limit yourself to my examples - make your failure flavour fully your own!

Successful implementation of the anti-résumé will obviously rely heavily on individual self-evaluation and honesty, but for workplace applications I think it will also require prospective employers to be fully open about the limitations of their organizations. Given my nearly 30 years of employment and subcontracting experience, plus (let's be honest) probably a titch of bullet point #4 above, I've got a few ideas on this topic as well:

Old boys club galore.
Pays poorly.
We have no idea what we're doing.
Will shove work down your throat like we're planning to eat your liver on crackers for Christmas.
Shitty coffee.

Again with the verb agreement, but you get the gist. If both parties believe they can deal with the other's crap, well then you've got a deal! Let's share a toast to the start of a ~~beautiful~~ ~~decent~~ hopefully mutually not-terribly-disagreeable relationship. Santé!

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Someone Else

Holy moley, everyone. You've heard me whining about them for years, and I think I've finally discovered the root of the problem: my children seem to believe that they are union employees.

Let that sink in a minute. Let it marinate. They believe they are union employees.

I recall working in a lab at one point where a lightbulb had burned out. The replacement lightbulb was in the room with us, but could we just... replace the bulb ourselves? No. No we could not. What we could do was fill in a requisition form; schlep it down to the maintenance office; and work in the dark for five days until someone whose job description specifically and explicitly included the screwing-in of lightbulbs had time to screw in our particular lightbulb.

And my children believe our household operates on a similar system - for themselves, at least.

From this perspective, anything that has not been specifically and explicitly spelled out in their collective agreement in watertight legalese is Not Their Job. Following this logic, it must therefore be Someone Else's Job. Who is this mysterious Someone Else, you might ask? Why that, my friends, is absolutely none of their unionized fucking concern. I suppose if forced to consider the question they might shrug and say, "I dunno. Some contract staff or something?"

When unionized, I've observed that not only are things Not Your Job and therefore may be summarily ignored, you can also blithely announce the need for "downtime" or "me time" or simply "I'm on spring break" and lie in bed staring at a screen for literal days on end with nary a care while Someone Else magicks your cushy lifestyle into existence outside of - below, even - your notice.

Downtime? Downtime?! FROM. FUCKING. WHAT.

Like, pardon my French, but honestly. These are real true questions, asked in 100% sincerity as the lowly contract staff-slash-magic household entropy reduction elf who is genuinely trying to comprehend the privileged lives led by the union employees of the home: What is it, exactly, that you need downtime from? Is it the hard work of half-assing everything and leaving the fallout from said half-assery for Someone Else to deal with? Is that what you find so wearying? Was it really that hard for you to walk away from the food you dumped in the cupboard around the compost bin in your hasty pursuit of pressing the start button on the dishwasher after eating the supper that Someone Else cooked? Golly, I hope you were able to recover from all that. Please, allow me to do some more work on your behalf that you actually directly caused me to have to do, while you grab a little me time - no need to thank me.

Y'know, I used to believe lightbulb guy just plodded along from ticket to ticket all day, but now I wonder if he didn't go have a bit of a lie down after each one instead. Probably drove his mom insane. Speaking of, this rant has been downright exhausting - I think I'll take my glass of wine and go have a little downtime myself. If anyone deserves it around here, it's this Someone Else person I keep hearing about.

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Forbidden Fruit

I often hear people talk about how nice it is to be curled up indoors, warm and cozy, while it rains outside. But no one talks about the utter state of transcendent bliss that is being outdoors in your top-of-the-line, recommended-by-all-the-hottest-archaeologists, wildly expensive but oh-so worth it rain gear, warm and dry while it pours around you.

That you're eventually going to get soaked through may be inevitable, but like so many things in life, the fragility of this perfect state of being is part of its charm. For a brief window in time you are an impenetrable fortress of coziness, smashing through the forest with impunity thanks to your thick, rubbery shell. You cast your consciousness into each dry and toasty part of your body in turn, celebrating all the choices in your life that led to being able to savour this particular slice of heaven on earth.

Wait a minute - are you getting paid for this?! You pinch yourself just to be sure you didn't roll your truck on the drive to site and are actually experiencing some sort of outdoorswoman's fantasy afterlife. Hm, seems real enough, but you check your pockets anyway and find... ah. Beef jerky and a sad apple. The food would be way better in your fantasy afterlife so you're pretty sure you're still alive.

At some point, regular old earth-on-earth will yank you back to reality, perhaps by way of a cold, creeping dampness in your sleeve cuffs, or sweating through your base layers so thoroughly that you're just as soaked as if you hadn't worn rain gear at all. You try to cling to that prior, blissful state, but it is spoiled by the knowledge that it's only a matter of time before your feet start to squidge inside your boots and you'll have to eat that fucking apple and you'll start to wonder, Am I getting paid enough for this?

So you let the feeling go - for now. Perhaps you'll experience it again tomorrow, or maybe not until next season, but you know you'll experience it again sometime. You smile a wistful smile, send a small prayer of gratitude to your archaeologist pals for their excellent rain gear recommendations, and continue trudging through the forest. Damply.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Endearingly Sassy

You've probably heard of Occam's Razor: (in brief) Of two competing theories, the simpler explanation is to be preferred.

You've probably heard of Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

But I'll bet a shiny nickel you've never heard of Folden's Razor - on account of I made it up.

Folden's Razor is something along the lines of: Welp, I'm sure they're doing their best.

That's it. Super simple. Except you actually believe it, and not just in a thinly-veiled Hanlon's Razor sort of way. Like, you roll your eyes while saying Folden's Razor? Still Hanlon's Razor. "I'm sURe They'Re DoiNg tHEiR bEsT" - Hanlon 100%, obv. Say it in genuine sincerity yet mentally punctuate it with a /s so quiet that it wouldn't even wake the precious baby jeebus? Yeah, sorry to break it to you - still Hanlon.

Since I'm the one writing this it may seem like I'm gatekeeping, but honestly it's not me, it's Folden. And she would happily let you in on it, but it's simply a level of goodness and decency I suspect most people just can't ever hope for in themselves. At the end of the day you're the one with the Hanlon problem and there's nothing you can do about it - trust me, I've tried.

I have found that, with practice, you can damp your Hanlon down to a barely noticeable tinge around the edges of your otherwise pure and generous soul. At least some of the time, anyway. When people aren't being dicks about stuff too much.

In typical fashion, though, Folden assumes you're doing your best and finds you endearingly sassy rather than in possession of a generally poor attitude. And really, what else can a person do with that kind of grace but keep trying to live up to it?

When people aren't being dicks about stuff too much, anyway.

Friday, July 2, 2021

Fully Fledged

Medium Fry has been moved out for less than two weeks, and she already claims to miss our cooking.

Naturally, I took that to mean our delicious cooking, because I am a sucker for flattery and this dovetailed neatly with my idea of myself being a good cook. But when I woke up this morning I discovered an alternate interpretation had crept into my mind overnight: she misses our cooking, in the gerund sense. Implicit in that sense of it are also our planning the menu; our buying, transporting and organising the groceries; our doing the cooking... and her dining well every day for the low, low cost of occasionally washing some dishes.

Hmm.

I expect she does genuinely miss "our cooking," but it also wouldn't take long - perhaps less than two weeks, even - to start to get an inkling of how much work actually goes in to "our cooking." Knowing she was going to move out soon, I've been trying to back-lead her into some ideas by forcing DH to engage in fun dinner table discussions like, "What did you cook for yourself back when you were a student on a budget? No, really, I am suddenly extremely interested in this topic and we should discuss it in great detail. Right now. I insist."

Also: "Wow, this simple, healthy dinner with plenty of leftovers only cost seven dollars to make! That's less than a dollar per serving - what an amazing meal idea it could be for a student on a budget!"

Also: "Beans sure are an economical yet nutritious choice, for instance for a student on a budget!"

To which Medium Fry would smile politely yet vacantly, as if my mouth sounds were washing pleasantly over her but were in no way consequential to her life. And thus died my educational campaign on the merits of meal planning and beans.

On the bright side, DH and I ended up having quite a bit of fun talking about what we used to cook for ourselves back in the day. 89¢ Swanson meat pies featured heavily - but that was before, when they were way better, and did we mention eighty-nine cents?

Ugh. I'd tune us out, too. We sound like Reader's Digest and Woman's World had a profoundly stupid love child.

Anyway, I sent her off with a little rolly-cart to tote her groceries home in and nearly 21 years of exposure to my organisational mastery, so now she gets to figure it all out however she likes. Maybe one day we'll get to try her cooking and find that she has moved past the "+ side salad" days of yore without any back-leading needed on my part at all. I can hardly wait to wash those dishes up afterward.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Gardening Gods

I rarely feel the need to shoot anything. It's just not my jam. But there is nothing to put me in a murderous rage quite like squirrels digging in my flower pots. I have waited eight months for some greenery to reappear in this garbage climate, and those little a-holes killing my precious flower babies to bury their stupid peanuts - why, it's enough to make me fantasize about cutting a hole in my kitchen window screen and spending my days obsessively shooting them with a BB gun, just like my Dad used to do* with the magpies that ate the cat food** at the farm***.

* After the divorce. (Or possibly contributing to it? Timeline unclear.)

** Barn cats. Also raccoons.

*** I've come a long way, baby.

In my imaginings I then roast the squirrels over a bonfire and gnaw their stupid peanut-digging bones while making prolonged crazy person eye contact with my stupid peanut-feeding neighbours. Broad daylight. Gunfight slide whistle sounds float on the breeze. Squirrel grease (?) drips down my chin and I don't even wipe it away.

In my mind's eye, it is beautiful, although my mind's eye does occasionally move on to wondering what my life will be like once dementia begins to strip away the civilised veneer I've so carefully crafted in the years since I last shot a magpie through a kitchen window.

Anyway, instead of all that, what I actually do is this: Head to the "global" aisle of the grocery store (or whatever questionable term they've decided to roll with at your local store) and buy the biggest, reddest, hottest-looking sack of ground chilies I can find, which I sprinkle liberally over the soil in my planters. And then I pray to the gods of angiosperms and vengeance that the squirrels be plagued by the spicy shits of a thousand burritos if they ever dare to enter my flower pots again.

Reapply after heavy rains, and feel free to alter your prayer to suit whichever gods you prefer for these sorts of applications. Works real good, at least as far as the squirrel problem goes. I'll let you know when I figure out how to get the peanut-feeding neighbours to lay off.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

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Monday, March 29, 2021

Pantry Paradox

Years ago, when Small Fry was a baby, a visiting friend of mine complained that my kitchen cupboards had "no food, only ingredients!" I LOL'd then, and I still have a good chuckle over it now and again. Sometimes, however, I have a bit of a grumble instead, usually when I'm feeling snacky and all there is in the pantry are containers of quinoa and flour and so forth - ingredients but not food, you might even say. As paradoxical as it may seem, my friend's assessment was hilariously accurate.

Here's a secret, or maybe a not-so-secret since I say it all the time: if [delicious item] is around, I am liable to eat it. You can put whatever tasty treat you want in those brackets and it probably still holds true, so my solution is basically to not keep snacks or treats around and trust that laziness usually wins out over snackiness. (Usually.) Speaking of, please remind me to delete the Skip the Dishes app from my phone when I'm done writing this.

That same friend calls it Skip the Bitches, by the way. She really is a master of the apt observation. Maybe I'll keep it around after all - there is simply no way to predict when you might need to defuse a bitchy day with a food delivery. *checks period tracker app* Like maybe Thursday this week, for instance. Who can guess.

Small Fry opened the pantry the other day then promptly slammed it shut again, with an exasperated, "Oh my gawd, our snack cupboard sucks!" Despite never having lived in a house with this feature and having been told roughly every single day of his life to eat a piece of fruit if he's hungry, he has somehow come to believe that a snack cupboard is a thing that we have - it's just that the one we have really sucks. (Unless you're super into dried beans, in which case you are well and truly covered for snacks at my house.) I corrected his misconception and pointed him yet again toward the fruit bowl, much to his disapproval.

Small Fry leads a charmed life. So charmed, in fact, that our shitty/nonexistent snack cupboard may well be The Thing. You know what I mean: THE Thing. The Thing that he has to go to therapy for and pins everything wrong in his life upon. The Thing his parents did to him that made it so he, I dunno, can never trust people fully and fears commitment. Or, y'know, whatever, just a totally random example there.

Every parent worries about The Thing, right? By this age he's surely already experienced The First Memory so that ship has sailed for me, fingers crossed it was a good one, or at the very least fairly benign, or at the very very least not one of the three to five potentially traumatic moments I have in mind. But I might still be able to control The Thing. I just really don't know when The Thing is solidified for a kid, so I've been walking on eggshells here for years. Will it be that all we ever had for snacks was g-d fruit in a fricking bowl and not even a cupboard like civilised folk? The cruel Halloween tax I charge every year, payable in tiny, hard-won KitKats? That I am The Boss of Christmas so the tree gets decorated the way I want? That time I found the stick person porn he had drawn?

... Ooooohhhh.

Yeah.

That was probably The Thing.

Okay, never mind. Seems unlikely I'll be able to do anything that outshines that little vignette in his mind. Parenting spiral over, carry on.

And if you're hungry, I have zero guilt about saying this: just eat an orange, dammit.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Butter Cabin

My dad died this week. It was sudden, but also not completely surprising after all his health issues the past couple of years. It felt for a while now like his doctors were playing whack-a-mole with symptoms - as soon as one thing would improve, something else seemed to go wrong. And then it was just... over.

He was 66.

Saskatchewan's Covid guidelines allow for funerals, with a maximum of 30 attendees if safe distancing can be maintained and everyone wears a mask and doesn't socialise afterward. Honestly, it was the least "Saskatchewan" event I've ever attended in Saskatchewan. Short about 200 people I didn't know but who somehow knew me. Everyone standing awkwardly 2 metres apart, giving the occasional fist-bump of condolences (if you were lucky to get even that much human contact). No one went out for coffee afterward. Was it even really in Saskatchewan without those things, or did we jump briefly into some parallel plane?

It's a little-known fact that precisely zero comfort or closure can come from a service where there are no egg salad sandwiches and you do not ugly-cry at dozens of elderly strangers; I was yesterday years old when I found that out.

Someone got up to speak a bit about Dad, and they talked about what a good cook he was. In the middle of everything, it actually gave me a little chuckle - he definitely was a good cook, but he wasn't always, and I flashed back to the concoctions he would make for my brother and I when we visited him on weekends after our parents divorced. We ate a lot of squeeze cheeze on crackers, scorched shop coffee heaped with sugar and powdered creamer (which I still have a taste for), and cheap/weird/gross/all-of-the-above things between ultra-thinly-sliced-for-economy white bread (which I do not). But in my mind, the food item most emblemic of those times before Dad figured out how to cook was the butter cabin.

It wasn't called a butter cabin then. I don't think it had a name. It doesn't even have a recipe, exactly, because it's not really made of things you would tend to think of as ingredients for food. Food that you would eat, anyway, and especially feed to children as a meal. But right now it feels important that I share it with you, so here goes.

Butter Cabins

~~Ingredients~~
~~UNgredients?~~
You will need:
a sleeve of saltine crackers
a pound of butter (fridge cold)
ketchup
HP sauce
a small, sharp knife

Method:
Sit down at the kitchen table with your... materials. Peel the foil wrapper from the butter. Use the sharp knife to cut medium-thick slices of butter - if it curls up it's too thin, we're building a cabin here so this is not the time to be thinking of heart health. Upon cutting each individual slice, carefully prop it up along one of the edges of a saltine; continue slicing and propping until you have crafted a four-walled, open-ceilinged enclosure out of butter around the perimeter of the cracker. This structure comprises your butter cabin.

This is where the cabin analogy falls apart, but we shall press on.

Fill the butter cabin with ketchup. Place a small dollop of HP sauce on top of the ketchup. Whole thing immediately down the hatch in one go because it's impossible to bite a quarter cup of ketchup and if you wait too long the walls will melt.

Repeat until your crackers are gone.

Due to attendance restrictions, I think I was the only person at the funeral who knew Dad from before he could cook. I suppose we all feel we know a special, secret side of people in our lives - likely everyone there was thinking about their own unique moments. But our relationship was strained for a long time - don't worry, nothing to do with the weird food, your kids probably won't hold your cooking against you - and maybe I was clinging a bit to the feeling of being an historian specialising in a certain span of his years that no one else there had experienced. Which I suppose is why I wanted to share butter cabins with you: I just needed to work my authority on the subject into the conversation somehow. (Ugh, experts, amirite?)

By the way, I don't recommend trying butter cabins. They're not very good. But if you'd like to borrow the recipe I guess there are worse things to be remembered for.

My takeaway from this experience is that I hope everyone in my life will have some perfectly weird memories of me on file for when I'm no longer around. Each friend and family member can be an expert in some silly, obscure part of my history that no one else knows, and share it (or not) as they see fit. And vice versa - basically, whoever goes first, their survivors should be equipped with things that make them smile, or even more ideally, choke down an inappropriate laugh at the funeral. Exactly the kind of life goal I can get behind.

Friday, February 19, 2021

RIP, HCFM

Do you ever start out on the internet with good intentions, but later find yourself having been led astray? I don't just mean going down a rabbit hole, but a close cousin of rabbit holing where you start out with lofty intellectual reasons for going online but later find yourself having been lured into an opinion piece from 2018 about Henry Cavill's moustache. Similar to a rabbit hole, except you can literally feel yourself growing stupider: "Wait a second, didn't I come here to find out more about Denisovan DNA? What does that have to do with Henry Cavill's moustache?"

Probably something to do with interbreeding, because that man is clearly of a different species, moustache or no. He he.

Note that it is not Henry Cavill's moustache per se that makes you stupider, but rather this ridiculous supplemental thought is what finally pushes that one clever little neuron that inspired you to go online at 8 o'clock this morning completely over the edge and it just smashes the ol' apoptosis button out of sheer frustration and *poof* - you're a little bit dumber now than you were when you started, and also somehow missing two hours of your life? But by golly you are now armed with an opinion about Henry Cavill's former moustache, RIP, so I guess there's that.

After this example you may want to label this phenomenon a simple horny tax, but please note that it isn't necessarily about Henry Cavill's moustache - that was just the first thing that popped to mind. For, um, no particular reason. It could really be anything, as there is a great deal of stupid shit on the internet that I have been sucked in to. Neither horny taxing nor rabbit holing quite capture it. I'm actually thinking it's more along the lines of... devolution. Which of course isn't really a "thing", evolution-ari-ly speaking (honestly, I'm too dumb now to know whether that's actually a word), but I think it could be a thing if you're talking about delving into the intertubes and coming out the other end legitimately stupider. I'm just gonna go ahead and call it a thing.

When Small Fry was just wee he once said to me, "Sometimes I say to myself, Myself, sometimes you're a little bit darnit." I think of that a lot, because sometimes I'm a little bit darnit, too. Since reading some articles about toxoplasmosis a few years ago I've been pinning a goodly quantity of my own darnit-ness on that. I mean, I've always been a cat person, and it's so much nicer to blame one's peccadilloes on a potentially brain-altering parasite than imagining oneself as having poor impulse control or foresight, right? But if my proposed internet-engendered devolution is a thing, which it definitely is now (see prev. parag.), I can take the heat off of cats and point to the internet as the source of all my darnit. Win-win!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, thanks, Henry Cavill's Former Moustache, not only for improving the reputation of our feline friends, but also for enlightening me to... well, to several things I did not know about myself before this morning.

(Or was it the Toxoplasma gondii driving my brain that made me say all this? Mwuhahaha!)

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Hot Topic

About a year ago, Small Fry paid me possibly the best compliment I have ever received in all my days: he told me I have beautiful, olive-green eyes.

Stahp. My heart. I can't handle that much sweetness.

He then went on to clarify that my eyes were like if someone picked two nice, ripe olives off of an olive tree, and cut the pits out, and stuck them in my eye holes. At which point we discussed the meaning of the phrase "to quit while one is ahead." For my own purposes I like to just remember the initial compliment before things got weird, but I've offered the whole story up to you today to illustrate a point, which I hope to get to eventually.

I bought a new conversation starter game for the holidays and busted it out for New Year's Eve. The website promises things like "genuine connection" and "togetherness", and I'm not saying that those aren't possible outcomes, but I will tell you that there is no warning label on the game that mentions there is also a non-zero possibility that your kids may rip your heart out and watch the light leave your eyes during regular play. Figuratively, of course, and I think inadvertently, but still. "Is this... genuine connection?" will be your dying thought. "It feels... so... cold..."

The issue was caused by a card that asked the person to your left to answer a question about you, to the tune of, "What is your all-time favourite topic of conversation?"

Obviously different people are going to have different notions of what I like to talk about. For instance, I have some relatives who must surely believe I am a serious amateur meteorologist for all I talk about the weather, when in reality I'm just trying to throw some sort of neutral common ground in front of whatever racist or otherwise bananas crap I sense may be destined to come out of their faces next. With DH I think we spend most of our time talking about the kids and what's for supper. With you guys I suppose I tell stupid little stories a lot. Point being, it varies depending on context. I get that. However.

After much consideration, it finally came to Small Fry what his loving mother's all-time favourite conversation topic is: I like to tell people what's wrong with them and how to improve themselves.

Oof. Jesus.

All this time, all these calm and gentle heart-to-hearts that I imagined were lovingly steering Small Fry toward realising how his actions affect others, to understanding what other people might be feeling, to solutions on how we might work together to do better in future - all of this hard emotional work of doing better than my parents - boiled down to, I like to tell people what's wrong with them. And by golly, I like to do it an all-time favourite amount.

Frankly, I'm wallowing in this a bit. I was just complaining about feeling like an NPC in Small Fry's life, but it was still sortof okay because snacks are cool, right? But now - like, what is his actual impression of me?

I'm struggling to file this one away under "one day when you have kids you'll appreciate me" - it seems too distant a payoff right now, and of course there's always the possibility he chooses not to have children. (Side note: Is vindication why people lobby so hard for grandchildren? Discuss.)

I distinctly remember thinking at the time of the literal-olive-eyes talk that one day Small Fry might want to compliment a cute classmate, and on that day he might remember the time I taught him to quit while he was ahead on his compliment game, and he would realise I had done him a solid and send a wee belated prayer out into the universe like, Thanks wingmom. Isn't it funny how these little conceits come back to haunt a person? In reality, he may tell some cute girl or boy that they have the literal ocean in their eye holes and literal wheat upon their heads and never understand why he didn't get that date, and never have any kids, and never truly understand where I was going with all of the Abundant Telling of the Faults that I apparently do.

I guess I just have to keep doing my best, and revisiting the sweet moments as a salve against the occasional gutting. This kid has put a real fear of misinterpretation into me so I definitely won't tell you to try the same in your own endeavours. Just... good luck.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Homing from Work

I mean, can we really call it working from home at this point? The boundaries seem blurrier every day. I've been working from home for over seven years and everyone stopped respecting my space back when... actually, now that I think on it, did they ever start? So with the move I finally have a real home office with walls and a door, but now I have to fend off sexual advances from the guy the next office over in addition to my regular "work" routine of conducting minor first aid procedures, helping with homework, providing general counseling services, and - of course - answering my all time most dreaded question. Let's just be honest here and admit I'm homing from work at least as often as I'm working from home.

What bothers me most isn't the lack of respect for my space... and time, and work, and boundaries... actually, yeah, it definitely is. But what also bothers me now that Small Fry is doing online schooling from home is the distinct sense that I'm not much more than an NPC in his life, providing well-timed snacks to help him get through his next challenge and doling out sage hints like, "Did you read the instructions?" "Hm, I wonder if the teacher gave any instructions...?" "Consider reading the instructions!"

I suppose I also narrate our lives in song quite a bit, although on consideration I doubt that's helping my cause.

So what's a gal gotta do to be recognised as A Real Human around here? Wishing on a star didn't work, and I've been all kinds of truthful and unselfish, to no avail. I tried changing my clothes but I think the only person who noticed was DH, on account of he's gotten accustomed to the low levels of weekly laundry afforded by Covid. My next attempt at attaining Real Human status in Small Fry's mind may have to be something drastic - perhaps I'll flip a table, or make him source his own snacks. Heck, maybe I'll make him get me a snack!

I once heard somewhere that raising a son would feel like the slowest breakup of my life. I'd argue that's true of parenting a child of any gender, but there's definitely something to the idea. Maybe our breakup is just starting and I'm feeling a little insecure - as one does sometimes during these protracted splits. But once again, I'm going to turn my gaze to the long game and hope that Small Fry - indeed, both my Fries - wake up one day and realise I was always so much more than a trusty, singing, food and money dispenser: I was A Real Human all along.

And, plot twist, so was the laundry NPC.

Minds. Blown.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Bog Body

Has everyone seen that video of a whole-ass bog* sliding away downhill somewhere in Ireland? (If not, here is the video - go ahead and watch, I'll wait.)

Like, WHAT in the actual hell is going on there, right?! Is that not the stuff of nightmares? I saw The Neverending Story as a kid and was thoroughly traumatised by the Swamp** of Sadness, so I'm already a leetle freaked out by floating fens; if I was in a bog that just up and strolled away I would seriously lose my shit. Don't get me wrong, I love floating fens, they're like nature's waterbeds or whatever, but you do have to admit they're a bit spooky. Like, where IS the ground, exactly? And where did Artax get off to...?

Fun side story, I really did have my horse disappear once while doing fieldwork. It was in the prairies, though, so he just ran off after a coyote rather than sinking in despair or some other as-yet unquantified Field Level Hazard. He eventually came back, which I attribute to the immutable bond between a girl and her (borrowed) horse. Or possibly to the oats I filled my pockets with every morning as an insurance policy against just such an occurrence.

I've had some pretty terrifying moments in the field and I'm still going strong, but I think if I got sucked into a floating fen or steamrolled by an Irish Wandering Bog* (assuming I survived) it would put me right over the edge. I'd have to give up fieldwork because I don't think I could come back, emotionally speaking, from being murdered by the actual landscape itself. Like, a cougar or something - fair enough, circle of life, blah blah blah. But if I'm ever a bog body in a back room of some piddling museum somewhere and people are marvelling at how well preserved my fucking chin hairs are, by golly I am gonna be choked.

Anyway, final fun side story for the day is that I am totally going to work despair into a safety form at some point in future. Watch this space for details.

* I have no idea about wetland classification in Ireland.

** Or Fantastica, for that matter.

*** Honestly, half the time it feels like a crapshoot just in Alberta. Most days I'm standing around in my mud boots wondering how the heck I got to this point (figuratively speaking; I have excellent spatial perception). Which is probably how Tollund Man feels, what with everyone going on about his whiskers all day long and him just wanting to be remembered as the hilarious, sexy genius he was in life. So frustrating.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

'Bones of Christmas Future

Small Fry started middle school this year. Over the summer, kids were allowed to select which options they most wanted, but then most option courses were cancelled due to Covid (who could've guessed?) so Small Fry got put in band. Then band was cancelled because they didn't want kids blowing their Covid all over each other (again, completely unpredictable, amirite?), but not really cancelled, the kids just have to learn their instruments online from home in addition to their regularly scheduled classroom time, during which they... I'm not sure what. Blow Covid all over each other, probably.

And now, as I listen to the mournful honks and bleats of Small Fry's new trombone issuing from my basement, all I can think is, "A FUCKING TROMBONE?!?!"

Whoops, that was the inside part. The more acceptable thing I'm thinking is how smart I am for buying a bigger house. Train wrecks I couldn't possibly have anticipated five months ago were averted by buying this house. Train wrecks like someone learning the fucking trombone in a 1,000 sq ft semi-detached home, just as a totally random example. They didn't even ask what the kids' living situations were before assigning instruments, by the way, so if you're out there wondering what kind of horrible people would allow their kid to learn the trumpet in your apartment complex, just know that they're probably dying inside over it way worse than you are.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that several far more sensible alternatives to sending unwelcome instruments home with kids who never wanted to be in band in the first place spring to mind. I took a 3000-level music appreciation course in university that was basically 100% transferable to Grade 7 if you just made the essays a little shorter, for instance. Or - crazy thought here - are there not positively oodles of instruments that don't necessitate the blowing of the Covid? Or heck, switch everyone into art class and paint rocks** in the gym - as long as they don't send the messy parts home, I don't care. And IMHO, learning the trombone is a decidedly messy part.

Really, my point was less about painting rocks and more about how much smarter I am than everyone else in the world. Oopsie doodle, inside part again! Here's my real point: As salty as I am about the fucking trombone, I'm sure everyone is doing their best to deal with this craziness, so I'm gonna need to chill the F out. When Medium Fry first picked up the violin 13 years ago it was just before Christmastime so she was learning something festive - Jingle Bells, I think - and I remember joking with DH that it sounded like Santa had run over some cats with his sleigh. Now I like nothing better than making her play Christmas tunes for me all month long every December. So who knows where Small Fry will be with his trombone in a few years' time - maybe I'll be looking back fondly on these novice toots and braps while he begrudgingly plays me Christmas songs. (After all, he has often had some tricks up his sleeve at Christmas!) Regardless of where the current hoots and blarts take us in time, I've got the space - floorspace and headspace - to accommodate them now.

And in a real pinch, the garage has a heater.

** I say this as if I ever painted rocks in art class. My university music appreciation course was genuinely ridiculous, but my middle school art classes were awesome - not a painted rock to be found. Thanks, Ms. Ichino and Mr. Thibault!

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Points System

My field season has wrapped up for the year (I hope), but I still have some field thoughts saved up that I've been meaning to share here. First off: a six-wire fence is excessive and annoying, but fuck right off with your eight-wire fence. It's just ludicrous, and if this intrepid old fatty still managed to get through - well, it's not actually any more effective than a nice, reasonable three-wire, now is it?

Secondly, and not unrelated to my first point: keep your tetanus shots up to date, everyone.

Now on to my most important thought: a field points system. If you've ever done a points-based diet program you may associate points with the relentless drawing-down of your calorie ceiling for the day (i.e., in a generally negative light), but as a seasoned dieter I am SO over that shit so the sky is the limit here - you can collect all the field points you can stuff in in a day, and celebrate every delectable one. Taking back points, yeah! Originally I had envisioned this as field Bingo, but realised my idea to have Achillea millefolium as the free space might not translate well to all field folks. With the points system, we can all share in some commonly encountered outdoor delights while still tailoring the points to suit our respective disciplines. And I say disciplines, but to be clear, outdoorspeople of all stripes are welcome to participate - this is an equal opportunity game!

Common-ground points developed to date are as follows:

- Toss your shovel over a fence and it lands sticking up out of the ground - 2 points

- Step over a barbed-wire fence - under 5', 3 points; 5'0" to 5'6", 2 points; 5'6" to 6', 1 point; over 6', quit showing off, no points for you

- Pretend to wear an antler shed on your head - with audience (including collection of photographic or video evidence), 1 point; without audience, 3 points

- Perfect weather - 4 points

- Find a working pencil, Sharpie, lighter, or other small, useful item on the ground and add it to your kit - 4 points

- Eat a nice snack from nature (e.g., raspberries) - 2 points

- Eat a nice snack from agriculture (e.g., peas) - 2 points

- Eat a not-very-nice snack, any land use (e.g., silage corn, spruce needles) - hey, at least you tried! 3 points

- Eat a potentially dangerous snack from nature (e.g., psilocybes, roadkill) - no points assigned for liability reasons, but I can't wait to hear about your interesting life choices over drinks one day (my treat)

- Find a place that would be *perfect* for outdoor sex - 3 points

- Make an interesting cross-disciplinary discovery or observation (e.g., identify a cool beetle, decide you prefer sandy loam to loam) - 2 points

- Past You saves Current You's ass by stashing exactly the right contingency item for your present situation in your gear somewhere (e.g., non-perishable food item, extra moleskin) - 2 points

- Pay the favour forward to Future You by remembering to restock your field vest when you get back for the day - 2 points

- Nerd completely out over something only you and, like, twelve other people in the world would care about - 5 points

- A well-timed weather day in the middle of a long field stint - 5 points

- Particularly scenic field pee - women, 2 points; men, 1 point (it's too easy for the nozzle-equipped so unfortunately I'm unable to award full points here)

- Particularly robust, relaxing and/or scenic field poop - all genders, 10 points

This is a living list so feel free to share your common-ground points ideas, and definitely don't be shy about developing custom points to suit your own personal or professional experiences. A botanical example: Find a rare plant while peeing - 3 points. You do you!

In the spirit of clearly separating this points system from the dieting world I wanted to keep it super positive so I've avoided negative points - I trust you to know the days when you really deserve a second beer at dinner - but you can add them if you feel the need. I've also considered whether there should be prizes for field points, but some of these things are naturally a bit subjective so the accounting could get tricky. Unless you want to submit your field poops to an oversight committee for official tallying I think we're going to have to settle for the honour system.

Happy counting, field friends! I can't wait to hear about your record-points days - and your second-beer days, too.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

We All Scream

My fifteenth divine creation is churning away at this very moment. (French vanilla, in case you're wondering.) The ice cream machine has proven very popular with the whole fam, and likely Canadian dairy farmers as well. We've really come together around it - critiquing different recipes, flavours and textures. Ranking and reranking our favourites with every new batch. Complaining that Mom got to pick yet another flavour. Lecturing about being the person who does all the work so you bet your sassy ass I'm picking the flavours.

And there's still more: We've explored the botany of ingredients (tamarind, vanilla, tonka beans), the ethics of dairy, the chemistry of custard. I allow Small Fry to lick the churning paddle, which I feel is akin to a habitat enrichment activity in these self-isolating times. I've even grown attuned to the sounds of the ice cream machine, like a mother with a baby - I can differentiate between its contented liquidy whirrs and its distress cries when the ice cream is ready, from two floors away.

I think it's fair to say we've all bonded with the new ~~baby~~ ice cream machine. (Even DH, who you'll recall was not keen on the idea.) Gotta say, I think we're totally coming out on top of the suckers who only got Covid cats or dogs, and miles ahead of the poor saps who are due to welcome their new Covid humans in the next few months. Just really celebrating my wise life choices right now.

In fact, I'm so pleased with my recent decisions that I went ahead with another one: I purchased a mini in-home hydroponics cabinet. I figure it'll pay for itself in cilantro and arugula in about six months, however, it should be noted that I did this figuring (and purchasing) while DH is away camping and thus unable to object to my study methods. Surprise, dear! Still cheaper than a Covid baby! I think!

I yell, you yell, we all yell for... ba-sel? (Still working on the slogan.) I'll provide an update on my grow op in a few weeks when the herbaceous output projections are more refined. Fingers crossed that this turns out to be my next greatest mistake!

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Life, the Universe and Everything

I've made loads of exciting mistakes in my life - no need for me to cross-link them here, I'm sure several good examples have already sprung to your mind - but to my recollection none have garnered quite the reaction my latest one has:

"Oh my gawd, dear. What have you done." - DH

"I'm... actually speechless." - Uncle Matt

*enthusiastic screaming* - my kids

That's right, I bought myself an ice cream machine for my birthday, and I think my family's respective reactions really bring home what a fun mistake this is going to be. The new house is just so darn spacious that the "bulky items that formerly lived in the basement" cupboard had room for all those chonky basement-dwellers, plus space for just one... more... thing...

Don't think I made this decision lightly, because I gave it a lot of thought: I thought about living minimally. I thought about my lanky college classmate who got a deep fryer for Christmas and by the end of the next semester resembled a pregnant snake. I thought about how my kitchen may have extra room, but my pants do not. And in the end, I also placed an order for a bunch of premium spices and extracts to make my homemade ice creams extra-special. But I'm 42 now, which has imparted upon me all the wisdoms of life, the universe and everything (that's how it works, right?), so it seemed like a fortuitous time to make some bold choices. YOLO and stuff.

I ordered wallpaper on my birthday as well, which now that I think on it may have elicited the exact same response from DH as the arrival of my ice cream machine... probably just a coincidence. Strangely, I had great confidence in my ability to wallpaper right up until the product actually arrived, at which point I searched my newly-imparted wisdoms and found the wallpapering section rather lacking. An unfortunate omission on someone's part, to be sure, but not mine, 'cause of the 42 thing.

But let's focus on the positives! So far I have churned up seven divine creations: cinnamon, PB & chocolate, minted red fruits sorbet, chai spice, cantaloupe sorbet, mint chocolate, chocolate chai, and haskap berry swirl. (Oh shit, that is eight creations! I should probably slow down - even God took a break after six.)

At this rate, my next big mistake may have to be acquiring a dairy cow - if it comes to that, I'll be sure to post DH's reaction for its certain entertainment value.

P.S. If anyone knows how to hang wallpaper, I can pay for your help with ice cream and sourdough. Please PM me.

P.P.S. OMG there have actually been NINE divine creations - I forgot about the coconut one! Eek!

Friday, June 26, 2020

Mnemorize

DH found a new plant in our garden this week, and although he figured it seemed weedy, he left it in to see if I knew what it was. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly... that I had walked through a huge, prickly field of it with my field partner and friend - let's call her Long Tall Sally - on an overcast day in July 2015.

Could I remember something useful about the plant, like, say, its name? Nope, I spent five minutes dredging the depths to retrieve that, and even then I could only remember the scientific name and had to Google the English term to tell DH. But the colourful autobiographical memory - no trouble retrieving that! I have this problem all the time: 'Oooh, I remember keying this plant in a wetland in 2007! I was with so-and-so, and we found a duck nest with seven eggs!' But can I just pretty please remember the damn word for the plant? Buy a vowel, hum a bar, anything?

No.

It's as if my brain makes mnemonics even when I am not trying to make mnemonics, but regularly forgets what it was I was trying to remember in the first place. I'm going to name this mnemorizing, and it makes me mnental. It probably takes up ten times the brain space that a direct line to the information would, and lawd knows I could use that extra room on the ol' meat drive. If you've ever felt that I talk too damn much to say anything, then please understand it's honestly just how I'm wired: the train has to pop by all the stations, there is no least-cost routing, and we may make some unplanned side trips along the way. Whee!

Now that I've had this experience with the plant in the garden with DH in 2020 as well as in a field with LTSally in 2015, the next time I need to recall this species I guarantee it will have double the useless memories associated with it - maybe triple, since I'm writing about it here as well. Heaven forbid some poor soul accidentally asks me what it is in future, 'cause they are going to get an absolute earful of unrelated nonsense.

I've heard that brain fluidity decreases with age so maybe I'll get my routes all straightened out eventually. But in the meantime, just for the record:

Hello, future me. It's Galeopsis tetrahit, you high-functioning Hufflepuff. I cannot (but also 100% can) believe it was easier for you to look this up on your blog than it was to just fricking remember those words. So disappointed in ~~you~~ me us.

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

In Like a (Hel)Lion

I have an irrational fear of getting caught in a bear trap. I suppose the fear of bear traps is fairly rational, but the low likelihood of my getting stuck in one is what makes it a bit silly. Regardless, whenever I'm wandering through the forest I always task a spare neuron or two with watching out for traps.

Now just imagine the ruckus a person would make if they caught a leg in a bear trap, and you will have come to understand the amount of fuss Small Fry makes about any given injury: a stubbed toe, for instance, or a neck twinge. He is a massive drama queen. Which you expect to an extent with a toddler, but this kid is twelve years old so at this point I've had approximately ten years too many of his theatrics. Yesterday afternoon he bumped his funny bone and started carrying on in a manner that I feel should be strictly reserved for life-threatening injuries, e.g., getting one's leg caught in a bear trap. Which I told him, and had told him for the previous night's neck twinge drama, and the previous day's whatever drama, and so on and so forth back through the ages. Naturally, he is Officially Butthurt by my largely unsympathetic responses to all the bumped elbows/twinged necks/bad haircuts/etc. that life so often serves up, much as any drama queen worth her/his salt would be expected to be. (I ignore that, too.)

Compare this to Medium Fry, who in retrospect was an incredibly stoic child. She quite peacefully suffered migraines her entire life, damn near cut her Achilles tendon in a bike accident and tried to fix it herself with a band-aid, and suffered menstrual cramps for years without a peep - to the point that I didn't know she experienced them at all. (Needless to say, she was pleased to learn that ibuprofen helps.) Also in retrospect, she was a champion sleeper as a baby, an utter camel when it came to potty training, and a natural-born quiet self-entertainer as a toddler and youngster. Whatever the opposite is of drama queen (Job comes to mind), she is that.

I know, I know - you're not supposed to compare your children. But the respective levels of drama I've gotten out of the two of them honestly begs comparison. I didn't even notice how easy Medium Fry was until Small Fry came along like a... I don't even know what, a very whiny and sleepless hurricane maybe? I say hurricane to be kind - I'm pretty sure he was actually possessed by demons as an infant, and still there are days I'm not convinced we managed to evict them all.

In all likelihood I chalked Medium Fry's myriad successes up to my ah-mazing parenting, when in reality it was just her own peaceable nature shining through. But that, as I now warn all new parents who have "easy" babies, is how they trick you into providing them with younger siblings. Small Fry was crystal clear right from the start that he wanted to be the centre of the universe, forever, and after only six weeks of his demonic existence ex utero, DH obliged by silently walking out the door one day... and coming home with a vasectomy. Under the circumstances I'm glad he came back at all, but Small Fry's er, exit, was also pretty demonic and I wasn't quite ready to relinquish my bag of frozen peas just yet, y'know?

We left Medium Fry to hold down the fort for seven months while the rest of us travelled around Europe this past winter. It wasn't quite "Mom clean" when we got back, but the plants were still alive and things were mostly in order so I'd call the whole adulting experiment a success. Compare this to the other day when DH and I attended an afternoon barbeque, and after only a couple of hours I started getting texts from neighbourhood parents, plural, about the sleepover party Small Fry was apparently planning in our absence. Why yes, what a grand idea - just bring your sleeping bag and your coronavirus when you come! Again: practically begs comparison, don't you think? So there went any foolish notions DH and I ever harboured of leaving Small Fry to take care of the house some day - he's already planning parties the moment we walk out the door, and he's only twelve!

I think I've been secretly clinging to that old saying about March coming in like a lion but going out like a lamb - perhaps my little early-March lion would grow up a bit more lamb-ish himself? Seems time to disabuse myself of that notion as well. After twelve years of very consistent messaging on Small Fry's part, it's high time I realised I'll probably always have to have at least a couple of spare neurons assigned to the task of watching out for his antics.