Truths and Half Truths

Where I Live

My dear friend Laura at Vitamin Sea has challenged us to "Play tour guide, and photograph your neighborhood or parts of your geographical area that you would like others to see."  She's got a bunch of links up to people who are doing just that.  I thought I'd play along ... so:

To get to where I live, you have to cross a bridge.  And not just a teensy little bridge.  This one is close to ten miles long over the Northumberland Strait between Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick, and Borden, Prince Edward Island.  If you look closely just above the water in this pic, you can see the Confederation Bridge.  (You may have to click on the image to enlarge)

Once you cross the bridge, you're in some incredibly beautiful green rolling hills.  In summer the greens are breathtaking, both in the sheer amount of green and the million different shades:

And beaches?  Why yes, we do have beaches - the entire North side of the Island is one long 120 mile white sandy beach.  Liberally sprinkled with scenes like this:

But Laura wanted us to go out and take photos, not just grab ones we had sitting in a file on our disk.  So this is my 'hood, taken in the last hour:

From my woodpile, which is about halfway towards being safely stored in my shed after spending the summer seasoning, toward the garage (and further to the house):

Our apple tree, an ancient thing that bears very tart apples, perfect for pies and crisps and crumbles but sour enough to make you make a funny face if you bite into one right off the branch:

I have raked probably four bushels of apples off the ground and still, after a windy day like yesterday, this is what I get:

But there is a certain beauty in an apple on a tree.  I can see this one from my office window.  Today.  Tomorrow?  Well, Allie's making pies ...

Why You Should Never Allow Your Kid To Volunteer At The Humane Society

Today, Allison came home and announced that, because of an outbreak of kennel cough at the Humane Society, a dog and her day-old litter of five pups have to spend time in a foster home.

Guess whose home?

And since we have an existing dog, not to mention two cats, the new arrivals will have to be put up in a room separate from the rest of the house.

Guess whose office?

But it's OK.  She promises she'll look after them, and that she'll feed them and take them for walks and clean up after them.

Guess who's heard that before?

Son of a Bitch!

Ow.  OW OW OW OWW OW GodDAMN sonofabitch bloody HELL OW.

Taking a goddamn break from mowing the goddamn lawn because I passed by the stupid goddamn Chinese frigging Bamboo or whever the hell it is (and I should have napalmed that crap back in the spring but "Oh, no, it's so nice and green") and it's flowering and swarming with frigging bees and one of the cockknockers stung me on the goddamn wrist and it goddamn bloody jaysus HURTS like a bastard and it's swelling up like a bitch and the frigging pain is shooting up through my goddamn arm and down through my hand.  I'm not frigging allergic to bee stings but I forget how much those little bastards HURT when they get you and Christ this is painful, intense, throbbing , get the FUCK away from me with that ice I'm sorry I don't mean to yell but Christ on a crutch it fucking HURTS pain.

OW. 

Shit.

Carry on.

Addendum:

When offering condolences and/or assistance to someone who has suffered a painful and potentially lethal sting by a venomous insect, the appropriate response is not "Oh, for God's sake, suck it up.  I shot three babies out of my vagina and didn't make this much of a fuss."

Second Last First Day

Allie:   "Got your camera?"

Me:     (blank stare)

Allie:   "Your camera.  You know - click-click?"

Me:     "I know what a camera is.  Why do I need it?"

Allie:    "First day of school."

Me:      "Ahhh.  Right.  OK, meet you out there."

22 years of pictures from the first day of school.  Always on the doorstep - although the doorsteps have changed twice.  Always dressed nicely (first impressions are lasting!); always carrying a backpack; and always with a bright smile filled with anticipation and excitement.

Two more years and Allison will graduate with a degree in Education.  She'll go on to teach English in Middle School, most likely.

So, like her sister, she'll have many more First Days of School.

This is the second last one for me.

For a while.

High Hopes

Over the past few summers, Erin has delighted herself by jumping on the mower and creating a maze of paths criss-crossing through the goldenrods and lupins out in our back field.  At this time of year, the lupins are long gone and the fall colours are just beginning to take hold.

It's lovely to walk around out there, but last night I encountered this rather optimistic lil gal:

I giggled, because she had built this amazing web spanning a footpath.  I can just hear her thinking "They can call me crazy if they want.  All it takes is one big score and I'm set for life."

I can identify.  I'm a writer. 

I have no pension plan, I have no back-up, I have no contingencies for rainy days.  I am working without a net. 

But all it takes is that one big score.

The spider was busy wrapping up a fly that had zigged when it ought to have zagged, a snack to tide her over while she waits patiently for something that - let's be honest -  may not ever come.  She's done all the work, prepared as best she can.  But sure - the odds are against her.

Even so, she waits.  Because she's a spider.  And that's what spiders do. 

The Wedding Album

... is on the right.  Enjoy.  I did.

So, It Went OK, I Guess ...

Still inundated by family, still being hosts, but since you're curious, yeah, it went just fine ...

She wasn't too terribly homely ...

People said we didn't look all that bad coming down the aisle together ...

And (note the footwear) she was able to maintain her grace and elegance throughout the evening, even when the dance started ...

I will, at some point, get a raft of pictures up and onto an album on the sidebar.  But not today.  Today I am still surrounded by family and friends, there is still beer in the keg, there are still stories to be told, and the celebration continues.  I'll be back when I can ...

This Vehicle Stops For Real Life

While I'm enjoying telling the story of my mom and dad and how they came together, I need to pause for a bit as present day love takes precedence over the past.  To be more specific:

    My daughter is getting married this weekend.

    OK, let me try that again: (ahem) My daughter is getting married this weekend.

    Nope.  Still not registering.  I can say the words, I can write them out, I can sing them, shout them from the rooftop, or tap them out in Morse Code but they still don’t seem to be catching hold in my brain.

My daughter?  Is getting married?  This weekend?

    Even with the different punctuation, it’s more than my brain can handle.

    For one thing, it is physically impossible for me to have a daughter who is old enough to be getting married.  That would make me ... well, old.  And I’m a lot of things, but old?  No way.

    Besides, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that a young girl I can clearly remember having to gently push across the threshold of her nursery school on the first day could be considered of marriageable age.  I mean, we do have laws in this country.

    Okay, she’s not in nursery school any more, obviously, but it was just a few months ago that I dropped her off for her first day of middle school.  She didn’t want to take the bus and I was up early in the morning anyway, so what the hell.  As I dropped her off, I expected her to leap out of the still-rolling car to avoid the humiliation of actually being seen with her father because “ ... Omigod he is sooooo embarrassing!”

    Instead, she leaned over and gave me a kiss.  Right there, in the car, in front of all her friends.  And it occurs to me even as I write this that never once has she ever bailed out of giving me a kiss goodbye, no matter what she was doing or how many cool friends were around, waiting to tease her.  There’s incontrovertible evidence that she’s a little girl, right there.

    The point I am making is,  these memories are far too clear for them to be more than a quarter of a century old.  They must be far more recent.  Ergo, I couldn't possibly have a daughter getting married this weekend.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. 

    I will now go and weep the bitter tears of a father for whom everything is happening just a bit too quickly.

    When she was a baby, I thought we'd never get that damn kid out of diapers.  Then she was barely walking when all of a sudden whoooosh it was her first day of kindergarten.  But elementary school dragged on and on until I realized she'd somehow made it into junior high when I wasn't looking.

    It was only a week or so later that I was helping her pick her high school electives - and then of course she had to decide what her major was going to be in University and  that was only a month ago.  So don't even try to tell me she's getting married.  Not buyin'.

Maybe it's just a dream.  That's it.  I'll wake up and she'll be bringing in a handful of dandelions to put in a vase for Mom.  Or she'll be rushing out the front door to find the bird that hit the picture window, and making a little nest in a Kleenex box and bringing the damn thing in to me and asking me to make it better. 

Or maybe I'll wake up to find her climbing that stupid tree that I've told her to stay out of a million times, then calling me outside to see how high she's gotten and making my knees go weak when I look up at her.

Well ... I can still look up at her, but now she's standing right beside me.  And my knees still go weak, but ... well, she's always had that effect on me anyway. 

And this weekend, unless someone fixes the tear in the Space/Time Continuum, she’ll take me by the arm and support me as I walk her down the aisle because I know my knees will be too weak for that.

I need to go and lay down, close my eyes, get some perspective on all this.  But now I'm afraid to do that. 

I mean, you can see why. 

Look what happened the last time I closed my eyes for a bit.

                     *****************************************************************

So, I promise to come back to the story.  I'm just not sure whether I'll be able to do much this weekend.  You'll be the first to know.

Another Saturday Night At The Movies

So, last night I rented The Ice Harvest, based once again on my trust in John Cusack's choices in terms of scripts.  It looked like a safe bet, a darkly funny film noir with Cusack and Oliver Platt, who rarely turns in anything but a great performance. Billy Bob Thornton's name on the poster didn't make my eyes light up - I find his work and his choices to be spotty at best.  But Harold Ramis was  directing - Ramis directed Groundhog Day and dozens of other marquee movies, so he's always going to be solid.  I figured it was worth the risk.

And ... I guess it was. It's one of those movies that I mostly enjoyed, but would hesitate to recommend to anyone who didn't have precisely my sense of humour and appreciation for the genre

 .Based on the novel by Scott Philips, The Ice Harvest is a comic film noir set in very cold and icy Wichita, Kansas. John Cusack is Charlie, a soft-spoken lawyer who works for local mob boss (Randy Quaid). Charlie hangs out in strip clubs, pines after femme fatale Renata (Connie Nielsen), and basically watches life happen all around him. Ready for a change, he and the much more hardened Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) steal $2.1 million from the boss and plan to play it cool before leaving town, trying not to create suspicion. All they need to do is make it through Christmas Eve--but of course Charlie spends the long night getting caught up in a series of very funny, very dangerous, and very bloody events.

Film noir is tricky stuff, I find.  Done well, it is breathtaking - the twists, the turns, the suspense, deceipt, raw sensuality, danger, and always that black, black sense of humour.  It's such a rich, structured genre - the unsympathetic loner, the femme fatale, the secrets buried in riddles wrapped in mysteries that pull all the characters along and draw the audience deeply into the story.  Body Heat, Body Double, Blood Simple, Chinatown - all of them dancing along a fine line.  One step in the wrong direction, and you slide over into camp.  A slip the other way and it's just ... well, boring.

Ramis walks that line admirably, I think - a few missteps here and there, but by and large he knows where the laughs are hidden when the lights go low.  The script is mostly solid and there are some laugh-out-loud moments (I love it when gangsters meet surprising and grisly-but-comically-ironic ends).

Oliver Platt is brilliant as a drunken pal married to Charlie's ex-wife - his performance alone is worth the price of the rental; and Connie Neilsen (who I literally could not remember from any of a half-dozen other movies I've seen he in, including Gladiator) was delightfully steamy as la femme dangereuse.  Billy Bob was ... well, Billy Bob - I don't ever see much depth or variety in how he plays characters, once you take Sling Blade out of the equation.  And Cusack was ... well, Cusack.  Puppy dog looks, sardonic grin, bafflement, self-doubt - this movie certainly played to all his strong suits.

The Ice Harvest moves towards a fairly brutal and violent ending, so be forewarned.  As I say, if you love films noirs and join me in thinking they just don't make enough of them (of any real quality), you should probably give this one a run.  If you're lukewarm on the genre, or just looking for some straight comedy, don't be fooled by the packaging - this is not a yuk-a-minute chucklefest.  (Although, that particular phrase?  Is.)

Doing the REAL Dew

It was a lovely morning, considering the forecast called for rain beginning around 9.  I got out to the golf course around 5:30, figuring I'd get my 18 holes in and be home and cooled out before the first drops fell.

I took my camera along, and caught:

this fella, still flying low after a winter spent feasting on Florida's reknowned morbidly obese goldfish . 

And speaking of Florida, a little later on I came upon a sign you almost never see on the shores of a water hazard in the Gator State:

I did neither, by the way.