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
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.
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.
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.
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