Christmas crushing (the first of many)

Anything by Monteal artist Peter Hoffer. Anything. (Estimated price: in the $000s.)




Black-banded skull watch. Not this one, but the one from Pom Pom. (Again, Adoring and Wonderful Husband, in case you missed it, THE ONE FROM POM POM.) (Estimated price: $26.)

The History of the English Language. (Estimated price: $99.95.)

Tattoo on the back of my neck. (Estimated price: I'll see on Saturday.)

insomnia

10:00 pm. A quick channel flip to the Outdoor Life Network brings up Pilot Guides. Featured destination: Australia. "We should go there for the winter next time I'm on maternity leave," I say to Adoring and Wonderful Husband. "We'll take off for four months or something and rent an apartment on the beach. Wouldn't that be fun?"

Crawling into bed, my mind is racing. Australia. Australia. I want to go to Australia. We need to start saving money. I want to go to Australia.

I want to take the kids travelling for two years when Boh is 14. (The others will be 12 and 10.) I want three kids. I want to take my three kids to South America, put them in school for a year, have them learn Spanish. (They will already know French by then.) Then we'll go to Africa for eight months. Volunteer somewhere doing...something. Then just travel for four months. Start in Spain and work our way up the through Eastern Europe, to the Nordic countries, to London, and back across the pond again in time for grade 11. (But what about the eastern Pacific Rim countries? Maybe the kids should learn Chinese instead of Spanish? I could teach English in Korea, or Taiwan, or something. I want to go East.)

I want to be the Go-To Guy at work. I want to be excited every day I wake up and jump in the shower. I want to make a difference.

I want to learn French. I want to learn France French. I want to take my kids to spend eight months in the South of France. Check out the Cannes Film Festival. Lie topless on the beach.

I want to learn to write. I want to author a book. The ABCs of Policy Analysis. Or fiction to rival Atwood. Or just be able to blog something witty once a day.

I want to keep my house clean. I want to walk my dog everyday. I want to spend my nights watching Boh play hockey, football. I want my kids to follow their hearts. I want my kids to be kids. Have the time to follow their hearts.

I want to learn not to want.

I want my kids to grow up with their grandmas nearby. I want my kids to experience the world. To know how they would solve the crisis in Darfur by the time they are 18. To know where Darfur is by the time they are 18.

I want my kids to feel the Saskatchewan soil of farmers past course through their veins. I want my kids to smell a prairie spring day. Fresh.

I want a cabin at Regina Beach.

I want Adoring and Wonderful Husband to live his dream. I want a four bedroom house in Sandy Hill. I want to live out of a backpack.

I want to live the simple life. Learn to live in the moment, be happy with the day.

I want you to like me. I want to be the kind of person people like.

I want to run the New York City Marathon.

I want to learn to paint. Or sculpt. Anything that will outlive me. Capture my essence. Say something about humanity. Sign and signifier.

I want to understand the market. The world economy. The rise and fall of our empire. Mathematics.

I want to die an old woman, surrounded by my husband of 50 years, and our kids, and our kids' kids. Speaking Russian. Say to them, "There's nothing I wanted but you. You're all I ever wanted."

I want to go to Australia.

I want to fall asleep.

[I want to quit coming back to add things to this list of things I want.]

Fendi, Fendi, bo bendy

Dear Fashion,

I'm looking for you. I've been saving, and I'm coming to find you. You're a wily bugger, let me tell you. I've scoured Vogue and Flare and In Style, and heretofore the clues to your whereabouts are few and far between. So far I've surmised you like black nail polish this season (dark plum for the working girl hesitant of the honcho's furrowing brow) and red, red, red anything (which is FAB-U-LOUS, since I haven't been able to wear that crimson silk scarf purchased in the heart of the Puerta del Sol for two winters now). Other than this, you elude me. I have faith that Grandma's recent studies in New York dernier cri will guide the way, and I will keep a sharp eye on anything that doesn't cut across the bias, or shorten when it should elongate. Though I admit to you here and now: I haven't quite resigned myself to downplaying my boobies. Because I love them.

Until we meet,

W.

I shop, therefore IKEA

Every so often I have I crisis of capitalism.* I will shove my way through the herd that congregates at the Entrance/Exit of [insert name of any evil megastore that provides lobodomies free with purchase of 24 pack of toilet paper, or stuffed rat, here] and wonder if this is really what I was put on Earth to do: consume and discard illimitably. Why spend Saturday afternoon trolling the aisles of [insert name of soulless corporate entity that will determine who the 44th US president will be, as well as next Spring’s fashions, here] when I could be exploring the hills of Gatineau, reading a work from the canon of English literature, or generally marveling at the sun, moon and quarks that make up this amazing world we live in? Does lululemon really define me as an individual? Will KitchenAid really help me build a better burger (if I even cooked?) How can I honestly say that I care about the fate of Mother Nature when everything I buy from [insert name of distributor of finely stitched cashmere blazers, a.k.a. the scourge of child labourers and their arthritic hands everywhere, here] is triple-packaged? And then I think: Where would I buy the shoes I need to go hiking if I gave up retail therapy? And those books that would lie on my bedside table if really wanted to poo poo the brand new flat screen TVs that bring us the news of what may or may not be detonation of North Korea’s first atomic bomb? Would I need to type them myself? lululemon? I haven’t found a better cap for running yet.

I don’t really know how to end this post other than to ask if anyone else is bothered that the hotdogs you can buy in the IKEA restaurant cost less than the coffee. You’d think the flesh and eyeball matter of a once living creature would cost more than a bean in a disposable paper cup. (I would stay and sigh, but I’m busy posting ads for our appliances on UsedOttawa.com. Reduce, reuse, recycle, right?)

* Guaranteed when Adoring and Wonderful Husband read this, he mentally said, “Yeahhh, rigghhttt. I’ve got bank statements that beg to differ.”

dignity, on sale now for the low, low price of $29.99

University was my thing. For some, glory came in neat annual packages entitled Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior. (As in: high school. At the prestigious U of R, we simply called ourselves First Years, Second Years, Third Years, Fourth Years, and – in some prolonged cases, such as my own – Fifth Years.) For me, university was my chance to break away from the label-conscious high school era and into a time when sweats were the haute couture and nerds were integral fixtures of the social scene (finally, I had a life).

I met a far wider variety of fine folk than I’d ever encountered. Pink-haired people. Tattooed people. People with more piercings on their face than I have hair follicles on my head. Marxists-Leninists (it was the U of R, after all). Feminists. Lesbians. Lacto-ovo-vegetarians. And often, all these traits could be found in just the one person sitting beside you in Stats 151.

I also met poor people. Like C., a girl from Moose Jaw I became fast friends with in Political Science 101. Sure, I suppose there was poverty around me in my high school days (it was an inner city school, after all), but I never really paid attention to it until I met people my own age who struggled to live the life I took for granted. Unlike me, who was propagated with the wisdom of Cicero and CB Macpherson for free, C. had save and scrimp and scrape and suffer in a way that was foreign to me, in a way that I didn’t understand, still don’t, and hopefully never will.

One day we went shopping together at Value Village, the one great retail equalizer where everyone is of comparable taste and means. I loved the Village, and still do, for I have found some amazing articles of apparel there. Like the pumpkin orange, three-quarter length suede jacket I wore that day as I shopped with C., purchased at a Salvation Army in Calgary for only five bucks.

“Look here!” C. called, browsing the men’s outerwear section. “It’s a jacket just like yours!”

“It is!” my eyes lit up as I grabbed the leather from her hands, in lust immediately. Only subtle details differed: more mahogany than tenné, with thick cream accent stitching to give it an ultimate wow! factor. I coveted it, and I knew C. did to.

“I would love to get this coat,” sighed C., taking the jacket from my clutches only to resignedly put it back from where it came. “But I just don’t have the money.” And I knew she didn’t; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she couldn’t have afforded $5.99 that day, let alone $29.99, which is what the price tag read.

“Me too,” I ignorantly chimed. “I love my jacket so much; it would be so great to have two. I don’t have any money on me now either, but maybe I can see if my dad will lend me some.” And he did. And I went back that night, and got the coat. The look in her eyes that said “you bitch!” (and rightly so) didn’t even faze me.

I recall this episode now, and I wonder how I could be so nescient and neglectful. Chalk it up to being nineteen, I suppose, and a young girl who wants, wants, wants. Just like Akakiy Akakievitch, my overcoat was my undoing. It’s funny how a Value Village could be the scene of so much avarice.

In case you’re wondering, I still have the coat, and wear it every Fall. It’s perfectly suited for over a pair of blue jeans or a dress, in those October instances when I’m still clinging to summer.

Ed, the green-eyed monster

I think it’s safe to say that Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I are veritably content with the state of our existence. Each and every year since we’ve met, pretty awesome events have filled our calendar. Life-altering things. Things that are nothing to sneeze at. Par exemple: Year One – Buy a house together just twelve months after He of Yee-Inspired Stomach Flips (what he was known as before becoming Adoring and Wonderful Husband) first held the door open for me on my first day back as a summer student at the east-end auto claims centre in Regina. Year Three - Marriage at a big red barn on the prairies in front of 125 or so family and friends who were promptly served following the nuptials slab after slab of deep fried steak worthy of being featured on the Food Network. Year Four – Harrowing move across the country with nothing to cling to but a couple grand in student loans, a bunch of wire hangers in the trunk, and the hope (the hope!) that Adoring and Wonderful Husband wouldn’t file for divorce as soon as we were in our new jurisdiction. Year Seven – A babe. And not just any babe, but The Babe. The Babe to end all babes in fact. So, are we good? No, we’re better than that: We’re freaking fantastic.

But that doesn’t stop the pangs of jealousy that kick us in the gut every once in a while, doubling us over like a you-know-what who's just been sucker punched in a back alley somewhere. Take the evening preceding this morning, for example, when Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I were reading the blog of a friend’s sister and learned that Friend X is apparently preparing for an imminent move to New Zealand. New Zealand, you say?

Cue. Latent. Hostility. Here.

“So, Friend X is moving to New Zealand?” I asked, the end of my question intoned at a slightly higher frequency than it would have been if I had asked instead about, say, whether or not hemorrhoids were itchy, or if they just hurt (because how am I supposed to know if I ever get them?)

“I guess so,” Adoring and Wonderful Husband replied, dully, with the same cadence that he might use if he were to state blankly that the weekend fliers were on the front step, did I want them?

“Hmm,” I said.

“Hmm,” he responded.

“That’s cool,” I offered.

“Yeah.”

And that was all the time we devoted to that topic. That’s cool. Which it is, but would be so much more so if WE were the ones moving to New Zealand instead. Just like as cool as it would have been if WE were the ones to buy low and sell high in Calgary this past spring, making 100-grand plus profit. Maybe even as cool as if WE were the ones to take classes in how to dive in the waters of a tropical paradise as opposed to studying up on The Essentials of Risk Management or Public Policy and the Third Sector. Cool? Cool indeed. That is, if the colour of cool is green, and it lives in your closet, and is named Ed.