I get hives, thinking about those lights

Last weekend I cleaned up the rest of the Halloween things, chucking the cotton spiderwebs and folding the home-made ghosts and spooky things, the haunted house sign and the foam pumpkins carefully into a box.
When I was finished it went neatly into the pantry on one of the storage shelves. I was pleased. It fits nicely there.
Unlike the clump of boxes squatting evilly on the floor nearby, spilling green and red things at the slightest provocation.
It's the dreaded Christmas crap.

It doesn't bother me so much that I'm starting to hear Jingle Bells on the hardware store musak, or that the grocery store in town has two giant wreaths up in their vestibule, wired and ready to go on next weekend. Or that my childrens' school is already rehearsing for their Christmas concert - guaranteeing me almost two entire months of the same four carols, sung endlessly (okay, maybe a little bitter about that one) or that last night Rosey wanted to begin her Christmas list.

What hangs over my head like Damocles' sword is the Christmas decorations.
We have a pre-lit tree. I honestly thought that meant the end of tangled lights and much of the Christmas clutter. (I'll pause while you laugh yourself sick.) Yeah, that.  I'm not sure what I was thinking - but it definitely didn't factor in two Christmas geegaw loving small people who love to colour and draw and make stuff, or a stapler-gun toting spouse who'd outline every inch of the house if I didn't put an end to it.
My family likes decorating for Christmas. While I am of the Scrooge-ish opinion that we have enough.
But really, how many ornaments, tinsel, Christmas villages, reindeer, Santa Clauses, wreaths, strings of (tangled) lights, candy canes,  gift wrap, boxes of Christmas cards, advent calenders, music CDs, and lawn ornaments does one house need?
Last night my husband brought home a wooden reindeer for our front step. I shot him the look and he had the good sense to look a little sheepish, but feigned deafness when I pointed out we already had a front step decoration, a perfectly festive and gorgeous one from last year, and.....
I stopped talking when it became apparent he couldn't hear me over the squeals of delight from the kids.
Oh that's why I have too much Christmas stuff. I was too busy channeling Scrooge to remember. Something about the glow of colored lights on snow? And the feet under the Christmas tree? Faces lit up with wonder?
That's it.
But those tangled strings of lights still give me hives.

image credit: son of groucho
This is an original Canada Moms Blog post. Jessica blogs and studies and tries to resist the siren song of the Christmas cookies baking in the next room - sometimes successfully.

riding in cars

I've been thinking a lot about cars lately.
Now, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I'm blessed with one of those minds that can't tell cars apart (It was....white? With a....butt?) so to have me recognize a car on the road is no mean feat. 
(This is also part of the reason all the neighbors think I'm super-friendly. I wave at all the cars that pass.)
I'm not really going to go into how I can be counted upon to get into the wrong car at the grocery - who knew there were so many small red cars? Not me, obviously....
Or how I once followed who I thought was my husband home from the grocery only to have this very puzzled man pull to the stop at the head of his driveway.....My husband was following me. It all got sorted out. Whew.
Maybe it would be more correct to say I've been remembering cars that I've ridden in.
My grandmother took me on a trip across the country when I was fourteen. I still remember the smell of the leather interior and her Giorgio and how the flatlands of Kansas seemed to go on forever.  I curled up on the floor of the front, a sheet or something over myself to try and be in the shade, and dreamt of riding bareback through fields of grain. I woke running with sweat. When we stopped, we drank ginger-ale and I ate kiwi for the first time. I was just starting to come out of my shell then, discovering that maybe I didn't have to be shy all the time and I liked different things than everyone else.

---

My first serious boyfriend had a black Chevy Nova that was so battered it was a miracle it held together. It crouched at the end of the driveway when he'd pick me up, looking like a giant cockroach, setting my mothers' teeth on edge. But the front seats were good for necking, even if the car smelt of paint thinner and was littered with crunched cassette tape boxes.
When B and I married we had an ancient car, a real workhorse that ran us back and forth for years without complaining. When I was hugely pregnant with Rosey, we looked at the Eagle's tiny backseat and decided it was time to get a new car. Two kids, both in carseats? We needed the most room we could get.
So we bought an SUV. It was so big and foreign I wouldn't drive it for a few months, but soon I was used to it, and it became 'Mama's truck', hauling kids or whatever everywhere. I love that big carnow. The gas mileage sucks, but I know where everything is, and it fits me now, as a mom of two with all the assorted gear that brings.
B bought a new car last year, and all of a sudden my truck wasn't the shiny new mobile it'd been. Suddenly, it looked....big. And clunky. And the little new car was so speedy....
Today, when the kids and I were cleaning the SUV out, getting out the detritus of months of school projects, McDonald's wrappers, unidentifiable plastic toys and sticky things out from under the seats, I realized the new car smell is gone. There's not much joy about the Blazer anymore. It's ordinary now.
But I remember riding in it, bringing a new baby home, the rest of my family around me, back when the dash sparkled and the ride seemed smoother than possible. Back when having a family was new and the beginning of a grand adventure.....




Jessica blogs at daysgoby when she's not tooling around  and glancing sort-of-enviously at the newer cars on the road.....

making the bread

I have always baked bread in times of sorrow. Or joy. There's something about my chemical makeup that feels contented and useful and providing when I get my hands in the dough, mixing and pounding and kneading, making a minor miracle out of ordinary household ingredients.
You can get a lot of stress out, baking bread.
I can't remember my mother baking, nor my grandmothers, but there must have been someone - it's usually generational, isn't it? And while my daughter is eager to climb up on the chair, lean over the counter, and smack the daylights out of the dough, she's a bit young yet to share confidences with, or to work out possible solutions while wrist-deep in flour-dust and yeast granules. To ponder and think and make strategies that perhaps don't solve the world's problems, but bring me closer to center.

It's probably best that I have this time alone, when my hands are more useful than my lumbering brain. Pondering something over is hard when it's time for urgent talks about plastic ponies and school assignments and who's going after who on the playground.
She'll be grown soon enough. Some day when she's a bit older, some day when nothing has gone right, when it's all horrible and she can't seem to catch a break - that's when I'll ask her to come talk to me in the kitchen.
That's when I'll show her how easy it is to take your frustrations out on a lump of forgiving dough, and how the sweet smell of the rising yeast can make you think of new pathways, new ways of trying to work things out. How waiting for the next step of a recipe is a lot like life - good, bad, or indifferent, all things happening in their turn. How things usually - not always, but usually - look better in the morning.
That's when I'll show her how to make bread.

photo credit: foooooey
This is an original Canada Moms Blog Post. Jessica blogs here and sometimes here, and usually leaves traces of flour on the keyboard.

pink for peace

I wrote about this last year here
The second Thursday of the school year in Nova Scotia is known provincially as Stand Up Against Bullying Day. This began in 2007, when a freshman in an Annapolis Valley High School was bullied by  seniors for wearing a pink shirt on the first day of school. Two other seniors took note and decided enough was enough. Pooling their money, they bought fifty cheap pink shirts at a discount store and emailed everyone in the school they could think of, asking them to wear one of the shirts the next day. They figured that they could get twenty to thirty people to wear the shirts, but that twenty was enough to show that they were taking a stand.
The next day, they handed out the shirts - and were astonished to see over 400 other pink shirts worn at their school. There were pink accessories, pink jackets, pink sneakers - even a few pink basketballs on the gym floor that day, all worn to stop bullying.

The idea attracted attention, and by the end of that month, the two teens who started the movement were invited to Province House to watch the Premier sign a proclamation making the second Thursday of the school year officially Stand Up Against Bullying Day.
Last year there were patches. This year the Pink Shirt movement is stronger than before - in all age levels of schools and universities. School buses in Nova Scotia today are over-run with pink -
because our kids are tired of bullying, and because two other kids thought they should take a stand.
photo by novanewsnow.com
This is an original post to Canada Moms Blog. Jessica sent her kids to school today wearing pink and hopes they grow up with empathy for others and fairness as their leads.

an american girl in canada

I got pregnant four months after I moved to Canada.
Somehow, through all the rigamarole of applying for permanent residency and applying for a work permit and tearful phone calls from relatives who were convinced I'd lost my mind and gone to the North Pole (Students in the United States are NOT taught as much geography as Canadian children are - the entirety of Canada is left as 'our friendly neighbor to the north' ) and trying to fit into an area with a much smaller-town feel, the stars aligned and the heavens sang (or, come to think of it, could have been all that newlywed sex) and I started feeling....off.
I held off going to the doctor until I was convinced I was dying. We were fumbling with bills and finding our way as a new couple - why would I put the added stress of co-pays and office fees onto our plate? Surely this would go away. Conditioned from years of having to drop thirty dollars every time I even set foot into a doctor's office, I was panicked by the idea of having a chronic illness far from home. The tests that would have to be run would bury us. And what would happen if whatever-this-was was classified as an existing condition?  I knew my husband loved me - but what if this was something ....big?
And how in hell were we going to pay for this? It was enough to make an American girl heave.
When I finally confessed that I was scared out of my mind that I was going to bankrupt us and force us to live in the streets, Jamie was less than comforting. He was completely uncomprehending.

You see, in Canada, that doesn't happen. People don't lose their houses trying to pay for their health care or take out second mortgages for unexpected illnesses. People don't get turned away from emergency rooms because they don't have insurance. There are no horror stories of people with ruptured disks (a horrible, debilitating injury) being sent home without getting help. That doesn't happen here.
Canada's health care system is based upon a single-payer system. (This differs from the 'socialist medicine' label often slapped on it.) The government doesn't decide what treatment you're getting or have any say in what tests or medications you need - your doctor does. The provincial government pays for it .
That's their only role in your health care. They don't choose who gets what, they don't say yay or nay.  Your doctor (or hospital) bills one single payer, so there isn't any waiting to find out if you have insurance approval, no waiting for reimbursement. There just isn't. This means that the Canadian health system costs much less than the States model - running one company to pay out is much more cost-effective than dozens of companies, all with their own checks, balances, and wait times for reimbursement.(And executive salaries, but that's another post...)
I'm not saying Canada's health care system is perfect. It's not. But it's a damn sight better than worrying that having an illness or injury - or bringing a baby into the world, which is what I did, a few months later -  is going to bankrupt your family or mean years of bills and worry.
Some very good articles: Denver Post  Diemer.ca  Campaign For America's Future


Jessica moved from the United States in 2000. She blogs at daysgoby and is grateful every day to live in Canada, where she can get medical treatment whenever she needs it without having to choose between having food in the house and seeing a doctor.
Photo by vtgard

cheesed

Like most people who read blogs, I have a sizable blogroll. Certain themes have trended in through time - I had a lot of baby blogs when my daughter was a little, and when I went to work at the local hospital, blogs written by doctors, nurses and paramedics stacked up in number.
There are always blogs to follow about almost any profession, hobby, craft, whim. Even things you never thought you'd be interested in. But we're eating at home a LOT more these days, and in between the 100 mile diet and trying to show my children that with a little ingenuity, we can do almost anything, I've found myself reading all sorts of new and incredible stuff - and then trying it out.
For example, I adore cheese. Even the stinky stuff most people won't touch. Did you know you can make a lot of cheeses in your kitchen? Seriously. Like ricotta. Known around here as the glurp-glunch-YUMMY lasagna cheese. Or paneer, an incredibly basic but delicious Indian cheese that squeaks between your teeth if fried lightly in ghee. Even semi-hard and hard cheeses can be made at home.

Cheese curds - the main ingredient in poutine - is even possible (and delicious!) in your kitchen. (Imagine! Making your own poutine!)
Mozzerella! The pizza and string cheese champion!
Now, armed with a few recipes, some milk and a little time in the kitchen, I can make cheese. My kids think I'm a superstar and I'm saving money. It's a win all around. Besides, I like appearing out of nowhere lke Houdini...with pizza! Pizza topped with fresh home-made cheese!
Now if I could just manage to beat the deer back from eating all my fresh tomatoes and basil....
(sigh) Back to the blogs, I guess....
Hmm. How to get the deer to leave your garden alone. Must bookmark that....
This is an original Canadian Moms Blog post. Jessica blogs at daysgoby and tries not to drool on her keyboard while reading recipes.
photo by PirateAlice

how to put in a pool (an ongoing story)

1) First, set the scene. Occasionally whine and moan to your husband how you miss the Great Lakes, how you're dying to swim, how you dream of cool, clear water...Ignore him when he (mildly) mentions that hello? You live near an ocean and there's a river in your front yard. Sigh heavily and mournfully when pools come on the television. (This is especially useful if you watch a lot of CSI: Miami.)
2) Next, pray for a heatwave.
3) When your husband finally mentions that Store X has a sale on pools and maybe you want to come check it out? Don't jump up and down and don't run and get your paperwork that clearly shows that Store Z has a better price or flash your handful of recommendations of brands and sizes. Now is not yet the time.
4) Be delighted. Even when his idea of a pool is three sizes smaller than yours. Remember, first ideas are adjustable, and you have all those recs and facts and figures to back yours up with.

5) Buy pool. Drag pool home. Be glad you brought the big car and the strong husband - because baby, those things are heavy.
6) Pick out spot on lawn that looks level. Watch DVD of pool installation video several times until you notice you're humming the kicky little music under your breath. Go outside, full of vim and vigor (and that kicky little song.) and unfold the pool. Begin filling the pool. Curse a few times, teaching the impressionable children near you new words that you'll regret later.
7) Really curse a few minutes later, when it becomes apparent that the level spot in the yard? Wasn't level, damn it. Open stopcocks and empty pool.
The next day:
8) Move pool. Measure out sixteen foot circle and spray paint it. Stand in middle of circle and wonder what exactly the hell you thought you were doing. Think sad thoughts about your lawn while husband gathers shovels, turf cutters, a level, string, several screwdrivers and mutters about using the roto-tiller. Wonder to yourself how on earth one levels a lawn, and begin to suspect you won't like the answer.
9) In a few hours, when all the turf has been cut out of the circle, know you hate the answer. Stare at the brown hole of doom, and weep bitter tears. Wonder where on earth you're supposed to put the grass that's been moved.
Begin to believe this was a mistake.
10) After six hours of shoveling, raking, attempting to level, and hissing through your teeth 'No, you can't play with the shovel right now' to your terminally bored offspring, figure THE HELL WITH THIS and go inside. Where you'll discover you look like you've been rolling in mud and your sun allergy has come out full force. Spend night itching and trying not to scratch.
The next day:
11) After much coffee and glasses of mango-papaya-orange juice (because isn't that what they drink on CSI: Miami?) look outside at the circle and discover it is by no means level. Send husband to work on it, because you will absolutely break down if forced to go out there again.
12) Wait for load of sand to come. And wait. Aaaaand....wait.
Wonder if you'll ever enjoy this pool so much you'll forget all this. Nah. This is going to be rattling around in your head for a long time.
Future steps: Spread sand in hole, level sand, set up pool (again), have fire truck come over and fill pool. You can guess which one my kids are looking forward to.
This is an original Canada Moms Blog post. Jessica is the proud owner of a 16 foot dustbowl in her yard. She blogs at daysgoby when not pestering her forgiving husband and hoping someday to have a pool that she can actually swim in.