I should be grateful that Moderately Large University has offered me a job. I should be thrilled to take their money in exchange for the most fun job in the world, ever.
And yet, I feel trapped. It's as though we've gone from that easy-breezy sort of relationship where we're close and maybe there's a future but nobody ever talks about it...you know, like living together, to full-on married. Suddenly I have a commitment, I have to tell where I am all the time, I have to make sure I put my hours in, and damnit all to hell I used a week of vacation when I went to Cuba. Did I know I was using a week of vacation? Shouldn't I have been aware of that? Sure, except that I wasn't clear enough about the "I'm not here don't pay me" part of the instruction. So they paid me. So I took five days out of my precious 15 days.
This is bugging the hell out of me. I am squeamish about this new arrangement, one where we're tied together and I can't just sneak off for a day or two without checking in with the powers that be. Instead of having control over my time, I have to report my time. I take a day off, I lose one of those vacation days.
I realize that most people operate this way, but for the last 12 years I haven't had to tell anyone how I was spending my time, because most of the time I was working like a dog. I still work a lot (hello? fatigue? you can suck it.) but now I don't have autonomy. I'm not the independent entity I was before.
I liked it better when I wasn't reporting to anyone. Staying home doesn't pay as well as working though, so hi ho hi ho....and get used to it and quit complaining already. I get it. I have a job that I love, I'm lucky. Trapped and lucky.
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Monday, November 10, 2008
I'm a Philistine
Man. I am slayed by postmodernism. I get it, but I don't get it, it's there but it isn't. It has a definition, but it deconstructs it. It flies in the face of reality. It is Naked Lunch and Catch-22 and Kiss of the Spiderwoman all in one go. It is Monty Python on acid, and it is making me mental.
I cannot wait for this course to be over. It is nearly over, truth be told, only another month or so to go. I have to write a big major paper and I suspect it will do me in...I can't quite even find a way to write an outline for the thing, although I know full well what a paradigm shift is and how the birth control pill affected one. Sure, I was going to write about something easy like quantum mechanics or heliocentricity, but noooooooo.....let's write about something that has all the crazy postmodern feminist crazy, did I mention crazy? in it.
When my instructor said that she just didn't buy the whole notion of straightforward lectures and a building-up approach to learning, little did she know how little I bought into the whole hands-off, "learning is a shared experience" sort of approach. I think we could do with a little buying into both types of approaches, but I am not teaching this course. I feel, on the other hand, that I'm barely taking this course. It's very weird to me.
As I said to BF1 today, "I don't think I'm much of an arts student." It's easy enough stuff (well, except for trying to grasp postmodernism, which, come to think of it, doesn't want to be grasped, so maybe I should just quit trying to do that and let it come to me. Ah. There. I get it now.) but it makes me nuts. I have never wanted to throw so many books across the room as I have over the last three months. I rant. I make deals with myself: just one more page, and you can have a cookie, or one of those little chocolate bars. Ahhhh. The little chocolate bars. Halloween is a good thing.
Besides the crazy ranting on arts and social sciences theoretical perspectives, there's not a lot going on here. That is a complete lie. There is so much going on here that if I were a weaker person my head would explode. As it is, I'm just happy to catch a breath here and there, like we did on Saturday when we went for lunch with a winemaker in Niagara. Well worth the trip for a four-course lunch and four wines to try and then other wines to try after that. Wine wine wine. Added to the wine stash (oh all right, cellar) and then came home in the rain, not pleasant. Kiddies were next door with Zio in the dark, as the power had been out for almost two hours on our street. No explanation why this occurred, but it came back on in time for their bedtime, which was good, otherwise Big One would have been riding the nightmare roller coaster, and that is such a drag.
I would have expected the little darling to be up a few times tonight, come to think of it, because tomorrow she has to read a big part in the Remembrance Day pageant at school, but that's one (rare) thing that doesn't bother her at all. Read in front of 300 people? No problem. Watch Scooby Doo and the Ghost of Kingdom Come? Yeah, not so much, or at least, not without getting up crying because she can't sleep and she keeps thinking about the monsters. The Little One has nightmares sometimes too, but he just gets Hub up to take him back to bed.
And all this talk of sleep is helping me to wind down. The morning rolls around quickly when you go to bed too late, maybe I'll try getting to sleep a bit earlier tonight....
I cannot wait for this course to be over. It is nearly over, truth be told, only another month or so to go. I have to write a big major paper and I suspect it will do me in...I can't quite even find a way to write an outline for the thing, although I know full well what a paradigm shift is and how the birth control pill affected one. Sure, I was going to write about something easy like quantum mechanics or heliocentricity, but noooooooo.....let's write about something that has all the crazy postmodern feminist crazy, did I mention crazy? in it.
When my instructor said that she just didn't buy the whole notion of straightforward lectures and a building-up approach to learning, little did she know how little I bought into the whole hands-off, "learning is a shared experience" sort of approach. I think we could do with a little buying into both types of approaches, but I am not teaching this course. I feel, on the other hand, that I'm barely taking this course. It's very weird to me.
As I said to BF1 today, "I don't think I'm much of an arts student." It's easy enough stuff (well, except for trying to grasp postmodernism, which, come to think of it, doesn't want to be grasped, so maybe I should just quit trying to do that and let it come to me. Ah. There. I get it now.) but it makes me nuts. I have never wanted to throw so many books across the room as I have over the last three months. I rant. I make deals with myself: just one more page, and you can have a cookie, or one of those little chocolate bars. Ahhhh. The little chocolate bars. Halloween is a good thing.
Besides the crazy ranting on arts and social sciences theoretical perspectives, there's not a lot going on here. That is a complete lie. There is so much going on here that if I were a weaker person my head would explode. As it is, I'm just happy to catch a breath here and there, like we did on Saturday when we went for lunch with a winemaker in Niagara. Well worth the trip for a four-course lunch and four wines to try and then other wines to try after that. Wine wine wine. Added to the wine stash (oh all right, cellar) and then came home in the rain, not pleasant. Kiddies were next door with Zio in the dark, as the power had been out for almost two hours on our street. No explanation why this occurred, but it came back on in time for their bedtime, which was good, otherwise Big One would have been riding the nightmare roller coaster, and that is such a drag.
I would have expected the little darling to be up a few times tonight, come to think of it, because tomorrow she has to read a big part in the Remembrance Day pageant at school, but that's one (rare) thing that doesn't bother her at all. Read in front of 300 people? No problem. Watch Scooby Doo and the Ghost of Kingdom Come? Yeah, not so much, or at least, not without getting up crying because she can't sleep and she keeps thinking about the monsters. The Little One has nightmares sometimes too, but he just gets Hub up to take him back to bed.
And all this talk of sleep is helping me to wind down. The morning rolls around quickly when you go to bed too late, maybe I'll try getting to sleep a bit earlier tonight....
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
What the Neighbours Think
Last night I was at a school council event; I'm on the executive and we had a last social evening at a roadhouse sort of restaurant. It was half price margarita night (and don't think I don't have the urge to write "nite"... it was that kind of place) and there were all these different flavours like mango and strawberry and raspberry and who knows what else. Made from powdered sugar and bright colouring and flavouring, the mix is added to ice cubes and tequila and put into a blender, then poured into a water glass rimmed with salt or sugar, as appropriate. I had a regular lime one because I like lime and tequila. Everyone else said that mine was the only kind of margarita they didn't like, and I guess this is because it isn't sweet enough? I didn't comment, thinking it was rude to pass judgement so early in the evening.
The menu was full of deep-fried, fat-filled goodness: potato skins (ordered), supreme nachos with lots of cheese and ground beef (ordered), bruschetta (ordered x 2), chicken wings (ordered, and luckily they come with carrots and celery sticks) and the like. No one asked if anyone was vegetarian, I guess because only weirdos don't eat meat. (Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, I just don't eat a lot of it, especially in the summer. For dinner at home last night we had had red rice, lentils, soybeans and a vegetable medley, including some swiss chard that I had to thin out from the garden. No meat, and luckily, everyone at home seems to have survived the night.) At one council meeting where we had to decide on fundraising strategies, we chose to continue selling chicken from a local poultry company, because after all, "Who doesn't like chicken?" I did point out that perhaps the people who don't eat meat don't like chicken, but that elicited the response: There are so few of those people. In my head I responded, "And clearly they should be eliminated from the population," but didn't say it, because I am discussing alternative eating strategies with a Brick Wall. A loud Brick Wall, and one with perhaps less brainpower than the average Brick Wall, but a Brick Wall nonetheless.
I do realize that the previous set of words is not a sentence, thank you.
Anyway. We are drinking margaritas, eating high-fat "food" (don't for a second think that I turned my nose up at it. I ate everything, and as yet another 14%m.f. sour cream- and orangey-cheddar cheese-coated potato skin passed my lips, I considered that I might be shortening my life span considerably.) and discussing various aspects of children and schooling and merits of the teachers, and whether or not we're actually going to get the money from the provincial government to build a new school, and then the Brick Wall starts asking about the transition from grade eight to high school.
"What kind of track will B choose? Does he have to know what he wants to be? How does he know that? I can't imagine having to choose a track (either academic or applied) in grade nine. We never had to do that."
I would have argued that you definitely had to do that, because I had to do that and I am >10 years older than you. At this point the brick wall status of this person had sunk into my head, and I knew that resistance was futile. You aim high, you either succeed or you take another path. Always aim high. Learn to push yourself into thinking beyond what's right in front of you. Take the high road. Don't be so stupid.
"I just cannot understand people who go to university and who spend eight years there and then don't do any work that is related to what they studied in university. This doesn't make sense, why would they go? About 90% of the people I went to high school with went to university, and spent all this time there, and then did nothing with it. At least if they went to college they got a job." This person, despite the fact that she's known me for a couple of years, has no idea what my former position was or what I do now, or how many years I attended university wasting my precious time.
(In Canada, college is technical school/trade school, where university is ... well, university. In the U.S., college is the undergraduate portion of university. We don't normally split up undergrad as college and grad school as grad school, it's all university. Law, dentistry and medicine are also undergraduate programs, but they fall under "professional programs" within the university system. I think in the U.S. these are considered graduate programs.)
The principal of the school was with us, so she tried, very patiently, to explain the difference between university and college, especially because each of her sons has chosen a different path. I was becoming quite tired of trying to explain anything.
"And another thing I don't get. I can't figure out people who don't get married until they're 35, or don't have kids until they're 40. I got married at 23, had my first kid at 24, and then had three more. I don't get this 'waiting' stuff. What's to wait for?"
I couldn't stop myself here, so I said, "Well, sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to marry until later. I had a child when I was 38, and another one six weeks before I turned 40." No comment, although the brain seems to be trying to incorporate this information. Here is someone who did not have a child until she was 38. Here is someone who .... oh darn, I can't understand this. Have I embarrassed myself? No, I'm sure I haven't. I'll just say something else here to cover for the fact that I might have said something out of line. "It worked for you then. You had two kids."
I will give BW the benefit of the doubt. Here is a woman who was brought up in a well-off Italian family, who left home when she got married, who has never had to look for a job because she and her husband work for her father, who is in a panic because she is supposed to go to Italy for 10 days with her mother, grandmother, sisters and cousins, and can't imagine going. Then again, if my husband said something like, "It'll be okay honey, ten days isn't long. I won't even have to do laundry in the course of ten days..." Four Boys at Home,
I should point out that the evening wasn't entirely like this, but mostly it was. I was terribly bored for most of it, and while that might make you ask why I stayed, it made me ask what I was doing on a committee with people who couldn't see past their own faces. Honestly, I was waiting for the next topic of conversation: Why Isn't Everyone Catholic? but I left before that happened. It was very interesting from a backwards perspective, but not that interesting...
The menu was full of deep-fried, fat-filled goodness: potato skins (ordered), supreme nachos with lots of cheese and ground beef (ordered), bruschetta (ordered x 2), chicken wings (ordered, and luckily they come with carrots and celery sticks) and the like. No one asked if anyone was vegetarian, I guess because only weirdos don't eat meat. (Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, I just don't eat a lot of it, especially in the summer. For dinner at home last night we had had red rice, lentils, soybeans and a vegetable medley, including some swiss chard that I had to thin out from the garden. No meat, and luckily, everyone at home seems to have survived the night.) At one council meeting where we had to decide on fundraising strategies, we chose to continue selling chicken from a local poultry company, because after all, "Who doesn't like chicken?" I did point out that perhaps the people who don't eat meat don't like chicken, but that elicited the response: There are so few of those people. In my head I responded, "And clearly they should be eliminated from the population," but didn't say it, because I am discussing alternative eating strategies with a Brick Wall. A loud Brick Wall, and one with perhaps less brainpower than the average Brick Wall, but a Brick Wall nonetheless.
I do realize that the previous set of words is not a sentence, thank you.
Anyway. We are drinking margaritas, eating high-fat "food" (don't for a second think that I turned my nose up at it. I ate everything, and as yet another 14%m.f. sour cream- and orangey-cheddar cheese-coated potato skin passed my lips, I considered that I might be shortening my life span considerably.) and discussing various aspects of children and schooling and merits of the teachers, and whether or not we're actually going to get the money from the provincial government to build a new school, and then the Brick Wall starts asking about the transition from grade eight to high school.
"What kind of track will B choose? Does he have to know what he wants to be? How does he know that? I can't imagine having to choose a track (either academic or applied) in grade nine. We never had to do that."
I would have argued that you definitely had to do that, because I had to do that and I am >10 years older than you. At this point the brick wall status of this person had sunk into my head, and I knew that resistance was futile. You aim high, you either succeed or you take another path. Always aim high. Learn to push yourself into thinking beyond what's right in front of you. Take the high road. Don't be so stupid.
"I just cannot understand people who go to university and who spend eight years there and then don't do any work that is related to what they studied in university. This doesn't make sense, why would they go? About 90% of the people I went to high school with went to university, and spent all this time there, and then did nothing with it. At least if they went to college they got a job." This person, despite the fact that she's known me for a couple of years, has no idea what my former position was or what I do now, or how many years I attended university wasting my precious time.
(In Canada, college is technical school/trade school, where university is ... well, university. In the U.S., college is the undergraduate portion of university. We don't normally split up undergrad as college and grad school as grad school, it's all university. Law, dentistry and medicine are also undergraduate programs, but they fall under "professional programs" within the university system. I think in the U.S. these are considered graduate programs.)
The principal of the school was with us, so she tried, very patiently, to explain the difference between university and college, especially because each of her sons has chosen a different path. I was becoming quite tired of trying to explain anything.
"And another thing I don't get. I can't figure out people who don't get married until they're 35, or don't have kids until they're 40. I got married at 23, had my first kid at 24, and then had three more. I don't get this 'waiting' stuff. What's to wait for?"
I couldn't stop myself here, so I said, "Well, sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to marry until later. I had a child when I was 38, and another one six weeks before I turned 40." No comment, although the brain seems to be trying to incorporate this information. Here is someone who did not have a child until she was 38. Here is someone who .... oh darn, I can't understand this. Have I embarrassed myself? No, I'm sure I haven't. I'll just say something else here to cover for the fact that I might have said something out of line. "It worked for you then. You had two kids."
I will give BW the benefit of the doubt. Here is a woman who was brought up in a well-off Italian family, who left home when she got married, who has never had to look for a job because she and her husband work for her father, who is in a panic because she is supposed to go to Italy for 10 days with her mother, grandmother, sisters and cousins, and can't imagine going. Then again, if my husband said something like, "It'll be okay honey, ten days isn't long. I won't even have to do laundry in the course of ten days..." Four Boys at Home,
I should point out that the evening wasn't entirely like this, but mostly it was. I was terribly bored for most of it, and while that might make you ask why I stayed, it made me ask what I was doing on a committee with people who couldn't see past their own faces. Honestly, I was waiting for the next topic of conversation: Why Isn't Everyone Catholic? but I left before that happened. It was very interesting from a backwards perspective, but not that interesting...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
We Only Talk about the Weather Anymore
I don’t like that title sentence, not because all we do is talk about the weather, because that’s quite true, but because of the use of “anymore” at the end of it. I have heard people speak this way, and it always annoys me and wants me to rewind the Tape of Life and get them to say the sentence correctly.
Sadly, there is no rewind button, otherwise I might have corrected a few other things.
Last weekend we got wacked by snow, and even though it’s been four days since it all fell, it wasn’t the first or the last storm of the season, and today it was supposed to snow and rain and that just makes your skin crawl, you know? There might be more snow. Or if it rains, then the eight foot (2.4384m) snowbanks at the end of the driveways might slither off down the storm drains….if the storm drains aren’t covered by eight foot snowbanks. If they are then we’ll just have a nice flood and comment that maybe we should grab the children on their way by. Good thing they’re strong swimmers.
It’s March Break and today I’m home with the Darlings. Hub has been home with them the rest of the week, but today he’s got a course in project management to take, so I’m home instead. Just as well because work is beginning to make my head explode. I realize that I said that I would do a lot of the things that people normally don’t want to do, but I couldn’t have predicted the mind-numbing boredom that awaited me. Let’s just say that by about 3:00 every afternoon I start to pray that the clocks stop their evil tricks and start to move a little more quickly, lest I end up face-planted on the keyboard, snoring. Naturally I would wake up with the alphabet in qwerty all imprinted on my pretty face and then I’d have to stop all the raging nerds I work (and live) with from plugging my head into their computers because really, wouldn’t it be so totally cool to have a human keyboard? Really? While this might make for more exciting times in my temporary job, I’d be happier with maybe getting to puzzle out some data once in a while, or hey, maybe it would be good if I just got to actually collect some data. Or maybe if I was allowed to finish a calibration, and figure out why it went the way it did without having some NMR jockster hang over me and say, “Oh, use the Magic Shim file that D- wrote, because it always works for him,” even though he knows full well it doesn’t. And if I show up in the X-ray lab one more time and get told, “The structure is finished, you just have to clean up the disorder and the solvent and the……..” in other words, the crap part. I don’t get to tell the student/prof what the structure is because they already know that. I get to make it pretty and number the atoms and deconvolute the messy bits. While this is important, it isn’t the part of the story that gets the pat on the back.
Here, look at Katie in the snow. It's a nice diversion.
On the other hand, yesterday I did have an interesting conversation about a Pd(0)-catalyzed reaction that resulted in a Zwitterionic ligand. That was cool.
Okay, you see that? That was the coolest part of the last two weeks. Now I know that Hub reads this thing and that he’s sitting there thinking of things for me to do where I don’t have to interact with/be told what to do by the other boys in the lab. I don’t mind the other boys, and they don’t mind me. We get along fine, as long as they get to do their little things, and I get to do…..well, whatever it is that girls do. Maybe instead of doing anything that has to do with spectrometers tomorrow I can write a manual instead, and hang out in the X-ray lab because that boss is off to get some synchrotron beamtime and I can pretend I run the place, which mostly means that I get to tell everyone who comes in there that no, J- isn’t here and he won’t be here.
I know that I’m blaming work for the ennui. If I figure out the real problem I’ll let you know. Or maybe these guys know what's bugging me:
In an interesting twist of fate, the following is the Dictionary.com word of the day:
rodomontade \rod-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-; -TAHD\, noun: Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Stop the world, I need to get off and get a drink
So you know, if I write a bunch of garbage about completing structural analyses and tuning probes and whatever else it was I wrote about in that last post (except the kids, because they were cute) then you know that life is going faster than I'd like it to go, and I don't exactly have the words to explain what the devil is going on. Plus it's February, the cruellest month, even if it had a most excellent lunar eclipse. That is not enough to pull one out of the giant blue funkorama that February is. I am positive that I am not the only person to talk about this, so I'm going to leave it be, although I had a rather down day and I'm sort of half-drunk now so if this turns into a blathering self-indulgent fest feel free to leave your computer for the mindlessness of HNIC. If it's still Saturday night and you're in Canada. If not, then the CBC is not in your reach and the internet will have to do you and I'm sorry because you won't be able to listen to the song, and the song is the thing that rings in Saturday night. If you're young, then it's sort of time to get ready once you hear the song, and if you're older then it's either time to put the kids to bed or else it's time to get some beer or it's time for tea or it's time for bed.....or it's time for that Saturday night thang, because by the way, you're older.
Okay, so this week bit those brass monkey balls. This week my dad almost died, but not quite, because he's my dad who's been cheating death for years now, and he's done it again. By Sunday, he'd not peed for three days.
That's sunk in, right? Three days? If it had been even 24 hours, would you not be begging everyone around you to take you to the hospital absolutely right now because something somewhere is not working and all the liquid in your body is pooling...in your body? Of course you would. But if you're my dad then you deny that this is happening. "I'm fine, this will clear itself up." Never mind that you only have one kidney. 72 hours and one kidney and no pee? Panic, and maybe a tiny bit of frustration. Perhaps you're feeling bloated? Oh no, not my dad, who says that he's seeing his own GP on Monday anyway, let's just wait and see what she says. Can I just remind you that my dad is a trained EMT? this helps everyone else, except him, because he will ignore every symptom in the book and then lie about the rest of them. Anyway, when he did see his doc on Monday, she sent him off to Emerg, and he went there, barely with the world.
He has apparently cheated Death again as I said, in that they've figured out that heart failure, not kidney failure, is his problem, but that the fluid that would have normally gone to his lungs and drowned him has instead just sat in his body, because he takes drugs to clear his lungs. Drugs that are apparently no good for the kidneys. Or kidney, as in his case. So now he's in the hospital still, and things are clearing up a bit, but he's confused and saying unusual things, which is new, and his body is mad because it's all screwed up, and my sister the ICU nurse is mad because his nurses are useless in her estimation, and my stepmother is doing what she does, which is coping.
We'll go and visit when he's home, March break I think, and with luck he'll last another six months or so before this entire mortal coil gives up its fight and we have to go for a funeral. I just want the kids to see him when he's up and available for a conversation.....they've lost two family members already in the last six months, they're getting used to the fact that people die. Still, they should see him.
Speaking of my dad and his one kidney, I have a new audiologist who is totally awesome and who is fitting me with hearing aids that are going to break the bank (real cost, $3100 each...but with extended health and OHIP, we cut that total number by $2K, i.e. $4200 for the pair.) but with luck I will be able to hear way more clearly. It turns out that the embryonic tissue that makes the heart and kidneys and the like also make the auditory bits. It turns out that it is very possibly an hereditary problem. Yea. Or yuck, since there's nothing I can do about it. I did surprise the audiologist, however, because during my tympanic test my results were not normal. I can take noise with masking into an ear, but the same noise blasted into the opposite ear is very bad and I get angry and rip the earphone out of my head. Same thing on both sides, which is apparently not normal and she'd never seen it before. I make no claim on normalcy and in fact, perhaps this indicates that my problem is not my hearing but my brain. This is no consolation by the way, because knowing that your brain is wacky just isn't a source of comfort, you know? Another weird thing is, and I have asked several people about this, and it turns out that being able to unfocus your hearing is not in the normal realm. What I mean is that I can be half-listening to something and let my brain shift it a bit, so that it sounds sort of like a foreign language even if it's English. I thought everyone could do this, like unfocussing their eyes. Apparently no, people do not "unfocus" their ears. Well, people don't. I do.
On top of the (full cost) $6200 ear things, I also will pick up my new glasses on Monday. These have "progressive" lenses.....those unlined bifocals. I don't really really need glasses, but I've been having a slight problem with seeing lately. Very slight. I can see in the distance, but I have an astigmatism and so I sort of don't focus well on anything in the distance, and then of course I have those "old eyes" that would prefer to have reading glasses, thank you very much. Progressive lenses are the two in one kind that take care of the distance and the reading in one. Oh happy day. Cost prior to extended health benefit: $500.
Welcome to my $6700 head, not counting dental benefits, which if I'd had braces as a kid would of course up the ante, but we will just not go there. As an adult, I should not need to spend so much money just to function day to day like a regular person.
Okay? We're up to speed now? My dad didn't die and I need all this expensive headgear. Other things too, spiritual and religious things did and didn't happen, but these are things I need to keep to myself for now. Regular life is a bag of dirt.
Oh, and I went to work too and people are saying remarkably good things about me. I mean, amazing things, where experts in their fields are coming to me in the hallways and introducing themselves and saying how pleased they are that I've joined the staff, that they're happy we'll finally get some real work done now. Yeesh. Guess I'd better figure out what it is that I do.
Okay, so this week bit those brass monkey balls. This week my dad almost died, but not quite, because he's my dad who's been cheating death for years now, and he's done it again. By Sunday, he'd not peed for three days.
That's sunk in, right? Three days? If it had been even 24 hours, would you not be begging everyone around you to take you to the hospital absolutely right now because something somewhere is not working and all the liquid in your body is pooling...in your body? Of course you would. But if you're my dad then you deny that this is happening. "I'm fine, this will clear itself up." Never mind that you only have one kidney. 72 hours and one kidney and no pee? Panic, and maybe a tiny bit of frustration. Perhaps you're feeling bloated? Oh no, not my dad, who says that he's seeing his own GP on Monday anyway, let's just wait and see what she says. Can I just remind you that my dad is a trained EMT? this helps everyone else, except him, because he will ignore every symptom in the book and then lie about the rest of them. Anyway, when he did see his doc on Monday, she sent him off to Emerg, and he went there, barely with the world.
He has apparently cheated Death again as I said, in that they've figured out that heart failure, not kidney failure, is his problem, but that the fluid that would have normally gone to his lungs and drowned him has instead just sat in his body, because he takes drugs to clear his lungs. Drugs that are apparently no good for the kidneys. Or kidney, as in his case. So now he's in the hospital still, and things are clearing up a bit, but he's confused and saying unusual things, which is new, and his body is mad because it's all screwed up, and my sister the ICU nurse is mad because his nurses are useless in her estimation, and my stepmother is doing what she does, which is coping.
We'll go and visit when he's home, March break I think, and with luck he'll last another six months or so before this entire mortal coil gives up its fight and we have to go for a funeral. I just want the kids to see him when he's up and available for a conversation.....they've lost two family members already in the last six months, they're getting used to the fact that people die. Still, they should see him.
Speaking of my dad and his one kidney, I have a new audiologist who is totally awesome and who is fitting me with hearing aids that are going to break the bank (real cost, $3100 each...but with extended health and OHIP, we cut that total number by $2K, i.e. $4200 for the pair.) but with luck I will be able to hear way more clearly. It turns out that the embryonic tissue that makes the heart and kidneys and the like also make the auditory bits. It turns out that it is very possibly an hereditary problem. Yea. Or yuck, since there's nothing I can do about it. I did surprise the audiologist, however, because during my tympanic test my results were not normal. I can take noise with masking into an ear, but the same noise blasted into the opposite ear is very bad and I get angry and rip the earphone out of my head. Same thing on both sides, which is apparently not normal and she'd never seen it before. I make no claim on normalcy and in fact, perhaps this indicates that my problem is not my hearing but my brain. This is no consolation by the way, because knowing that your brain is wacky just isn't a source of comfort, you know? Another weird thing is, and I have asked several people about this, and it turns out that being able to unfocus your hearing is not in the normal realm. What I mean is that I can be half-listening to something and let my brain shift it a bit, so that it sounds sort of like a foreign language even if it's English. I thought everyone could do this, like unfocussing their eyes. Apparently no, people do not "unfocus" their ears. Well, people don't. I do.
On top of the (full cost) $6200 ear things, I also will pick up my new glasses on Monday. These have "progressive" lenses.....those unlined bifocals. I don't really really need glasses, but I've been having a slight problem with seeing lately. Very slight. I can see in the distance, but I have an astigmatism and so I sort of don't focus well on anything in the distance, and then of course I have those "old eyes" that would prefer to have reading glasses, thank you very much. Progressive lenses are the two in one kind that take care of the distance and the reading in one. Oh happy day. Cost prior to extended health benefit: $500.
Welcome to my $6700 head, not counting dental benefits, which if I'd had braces as a kid would of course up the ante, but we will just not go there. As an adult, I should not need to spend so much money just to function day to day like a regular person.
Okay? We're up to speed now? My dad didn't die and I need all this expensive headgear. Other things too, spiritual and religious things did and didn't happen, but these are things I need to keep to myself for now. Regular life is a bag of dirt.
Oh, and I went to work too and people are saying remarkably good things about me. I mean, amazing things, where experts in their fields are coming to me in the hallways and introducing themselves and saying how pleased they are that I've joined the staff, that they're happy we'll finally get some real work done now. Yeesh. Guess I'd better figure out what it is that I do.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
You're Not the Boss of Me
On Monday morning while Hub and I were walking along to work, it occurred to me, and I made the observation, “I am not the boss.”
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Last night I attended yet another CWL meeting. The meetings are starting to grate on my nerves, because they are interminably long and quite dull. We sit in plastic chairs and they are uncomfortable, so after 2+ hours of sitting, a raging headache is lodged at the temples. We were treated to the thank-yous and the Does anyone need a get-well card and the seemingly monthly reading of the little girl who chatted with the police officer who was pretending to be a stalker so he could tell her parents that she was stupid. Not that I think that child stalkers and internet predators are not serious business, because I definitely think they are serious business, I just think that rather than being all shocked about What Goes On In The Internet, that people should move along to finding out what kids are doing and helping them to see that not everyone out there has their best interests at heart.
Despite the fact that this is a very connected household as far as electronics and high-end knowledge of same, and the fact that both Hub and I know a great deal about some ridiculously specialized scientific equipment as well as computers and all the rest of it, we are in no hurry to show our children how to use the computer or the power of the internets. Right now we're working with books, because books are good, you can hold them, they are weighty. The internet is, by definition, ethereal and intangible. The children know where treehouse.ca is and they go there sometimes to check out their show characters, and that's what they use the computer for right now. I hope that at some point in their learning careers they are taught How to Look Things Up, because with that skill, the usefulness of the internet expands exponentially. I am still defeated by second- and third-year students who cannot find information on the computer. Google is always your friend.
At the meeting I set up Laptop to show the slideshow of the pictures that I took at the church bazaar this past weekend. You would think that I'd waved a wand and used black magic to do this, because truly, many of the women were spellbound. Not that I burst the bubble by showing them that it was a point and click moment; why do that, after all?
It's sad and strange that in a room full of people I'm a supergeek. I'm so used to being the CoolGirl....except I'm also used to hanging out with people who out-geek me by miles and miles. Suddenly here I am with real, regular people and I'm a freak....well, that is, if by "real and regular" I mean women who on average are 20 years older than me at least, and who have never really worked and who are still those nasty conniving girls from high school who whispered behind your back.
I suppose that in all that, I don't mind being a freak.
Despite the fact that this is a very connected household as far as electronics and high-end knowledge of same, and the fact that both Hub and I know a great deal about some ridiculously specialized scientific equipment as well as computers and all the rest of it, we are in no hurry to show our children how to use the computer or the power of the internets. Right now we're working with books, because books are good, you can hold them, they are weighty. The internet is, by definition, ethereal and intangible. The children know where treehouse.ca is and they go there sometimes to check out their show characters, and that's what they use the computer for right now. I hope that at some point in their learning careers they are taught How to Look Things Up, because with that skill, the usefulness of the internet expands exponentially. I am still defeated by second- and third-year students who cannot find information on the computer. Google is always your friend.
At the meeting I set up Laptop to show the slideshow of the pictures that I took at the church bazaar this past weekend. You would think that I'd waved a wand and used black magic to do this, because truly, many of the women were spellbound. Not that I burst the bubble by showing them that it was a point and click moment; why do that, after all?
It's sad and strange that in a room full of people I'm a supergeek. I'm so used to being the CoolGirl....except I'm also used to hanging out with people who out-geek me by miles and miles. Suddenly here I am with real, regular people and I'm a freak....well, that is, if by "real and regular" I mean women who on average are 20 years older than me at least, and who have never really worked and who are still those nasty conniving girls from high school who whispered behind your back.
I suppose that in all that, I don't mind being a freak.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I don't save the best for last
I could save the pretty flower to the end, but the pretty flower, a dahlia actually, is helping me realize that I don't have to get upset about the fact that the week hasn't gone exactly as it should. What should be happening, is that we should have beautiful crisp fall days, and the dahlia should not be blooming because it should have bloomed a month ago. (We had a summer of drought and the flowers are a month behind. They are beautiful though.)
I should be enjoying my children's company, and the house should magically clean itself. I should wake up every morning with a song in my heart and a spring in my step, my neighbours should be smiling and they should have fixed the starter on their stupid van so they don't have to smash it with a wrench every morning at 6:03 bang bang bang varrrrooohm and while they're getting their vehicles fixed maybe the broken window on the driver's side could be replaced before the snow flies. Maybe I shouldn't be so preoccupied with my neighbours and their appearances...and oh, I would, but I'm really a petty person, ungrateful for life and my relatively good health.
A couple of days ago The Big One really really wanted a tiara for her Halloween costume, and so after school on a day that was raining, we went to The Mall. I don't go there very often, but I'd already exhausted other tiara possibilities. Even The Little One didn't mind going to the mall, what with its sparkly lights and pretty girls and bump and grind music everywhere. The children were groovin' and slidin' all the way along the long mallhallway to the store with the tiaras, and The Little One, true to form, was making eye contact with every female over the age of three. When asked if she liked being there, the Big One said breathlessly, "Oh yes Mumma. I love it."
I've taught you well then.
We picked the biggest tiara, suitable not only for Halloween but also for everyday wear, because you just never know when you will need to be a princess.
It turns out that the need to be a princess happened about five minutes later, because on the way home, within sight of the house in fact, we got clipped and the mirror flew off the car. It can't get fixed until next week. Single parenting and having to take care of everything bites ass.
Below are the pieces of a sweater that I made for The Big One. They are made from a really pretty purple heather wool from Briggs & Little Mills in Harvey Station, New Brunswick. I had to stand up on the edge of the bed to take this picture but the lighting is still uneven and crooked. The pieces are beautiful, and they fit together really nicely into a little sweater. Too little for Big One. Agh. Luckily, I have a church bazaar to donate to in the next couple of weeks, so I'll give it to them to sell. When I thought of this I was reminded of my grandmother and her sister, who would start knitting for the Christmas Cheer Board in Winnipeg every fall, and race to see who could make the most sweaters. "Damn," Grandma would say after hanging up the phone, "Louise is up to 17 sweaters already." Then she'd knit like a fiend, nonstop for three days and make 20 to surpass her sister. Usually Grandma won, because Louise's arthritis was bad and she wouldn't be able to hold the needles.
Really then, making a sweater that's too small wasn't a waste of effort at all.
Finally, here you see the shit machines that have taken up residence in the soccer field across the street. They strut around stupidly and drop loads of guano into the grass. I guess that's good for the grass, and maybe that's good for the mushrooms that grow in the field, but the place is a goose-poop land mine field.
In all, the week has been interesting as opposed to overwhelming. It was nothing like my weeks when Hub was in Southern ON and I was still back on the East Coast, managing a huge job and kids and daycare and feeding and eating and drinking...ye gods the drinking. I hardly drank anything alcoholic this week, but then I also had a raging flu (and I wasn't going to post a picture of phlegm, because really, this isn't a medical forum) and fever. Forgot to mention that part of the week. Hmph. Funny how these little details escape you.
I should be enjoying my children's company, and the house should magically clean itself. I should wake up every morning with a song in my heart and a spring in my step, my neighbours should be smiling and they should have fixed the starter on their stupid van so they don't have to smash it with a wrench every morning at 6:03 bang bang bang varrrrooohm and while they're getting their vehicles fixed maybe the broken window on the driver's side could be replaced before the snow flies. Maybe I shouldn't be so preoccupied with my neighbours and their appearances...and oh, I would, but I'm really a petty person, ungrateful for life and my relatively good health.
A couple of days ago The Big One really really wanted a tiara for her Halloween costume, and so after school on a day that was raining, we went to The Mall. I don't go there very often, but I'd already exhausted other tiara possibilities. Even The Little One didn't mind going to the mall, what with its sparkly lights and pretty girls and bump and grind music everywhere. The children were groovin' and slidin' all the way along the long mallhallway to the store with the tiaras, and The Little One, true to form, was making eye contact with every female over the age of three. When asked if she liked being there, the Big One said breathlessly, "Oh yes Mumma. I love it."
I've taught you well then.
We picked the biggest tiara, suitable not only for Halloween but also for everyday wear, because you just never know when you will need to be a princess.
It turns out that the need to be a princess happened about five minutes later, because on the way home, within sight of the house in fact, we got clipped and the mirror flew off the car. It can't get fixed until next week. Single parenting and having to take care of everything bites ass.
Below are the pieces of a sweater that I made for The Big One. They are made from a really pretty purple heather wool from Briggs & Little Mills in Harvey Station, New Brunswick. I had to stand up on the edge of the bed to take this picture but the lighting is still uneven and crooked. The pieces are beautiful, and they fit together really nicely into a little sweater. Too little for Big One. Agh. Luckily, I have a church bazaar to donate to in the next couple of weeks, so I'll give it to them to sell. When I thought of this I was reminded of my grandmother and her sister, who would start knitting for the Christmas Cheer Board in Winnipeg every fall, and race to see who could make the most sweaters. "Damn," Grandma would say after hanging up the phone, "Louise is up to 17 sweaters already." Then she'd knit like a fiend, nonstop for three days and make 20 to surpass her sister. Usually Grandma won, because Louise's arthritis was bad and she wouldn't be able to hold the needles.
Really then, making a sweater that's too small wasn't a waste of effort at all.
Finally, here you see the shit machines that have taken up residence in the soccer field across the street. They strut around stupidly and drop loads of guano into the grass. I guess that's good for the grass, and maybe that's good for the mushrooms that grow in the field, but the place is a goose-poop land mine field.
In all, the week has been interesting as opposed to overwhelming. It was nothing like my weeks when Hub was in Southern ON and I was still back on the East Coast, managing a huge job and kids and daycare and feeding and eating and drinking...ye gods the drinking. I hardly drank anything alcoholic this week, but then I also had a raging flu (and I wasn't going to post a picture of phlegm, because really, this isn't a medical forum) and fever. Forgot to mention that part of the week. Hmph. Funny how these little details escape you.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Slight Panic
Interview tomorrow, which means that I am in full-on procrastination mode. It's akin to labour, except less painful and you can drink, and rather than think about when, dear God when, the parasite in your uterus will finally be expelled so that you can worry about your belly fat again and whether your ass is fat because now you can turn around and actually see your ass, and it's a lot bigger than the last time you saw it...no, rather than that, it's WOW red wine and chocolate pretzels are really really good at 4:30 in the morning, I can't sleep anyway might as well surf the web because what I don't want to do is look up whether or not you can just switch out your moly source for copper but really? really, I want to watch The Shopping Network. Yes, procrastination is a lot like that. One minute you're reminiscing about having a baby and the next you're scarfing down forbidden food in the wee dark hours of the morning accompanied by The New Lukastyle Fashions, because there is no way in hell that you're actually going to prepare for an interview. Which reminds me, I have to hem those pants I bought...or really, why bother? Why not just fold them up underneath and tape them up with packing tape?Better yet, the Handyman's Helper: Duct Tape.
In my wanderings through the web-o-sphere of delaying the inevitable, I looked at Dooce's site, to find a reference to a family with 17 children. Perhaps you have heard of them, seen an article about them in the news. It reminded me that every once in a while Hub and I say that we could have had more children, and indeed that is true. Even though I am not a big person, pregnancy was a cakewalk, and labour and delivery were much easier than, say, my PhD comprehensive exam, where I had to talk for two full hours about a research proposal that I'd made up all by myself to five men who thought my scientific merit ranked near to that of the common ground squirrel, despite the fact that I proved them wrong. So sure, there could have been a few more kids in this family, and it would have been fine, because all of the children would have been perfect like the two we have now, and they all would have been beautiful and intelligent like the two we have now, and they all would have changed the world every day by their very existence, yes, like the two we have now. Naturally it would be perfect. Sadly, we will never find this out because I refused to have children after a certain age, and that age has passed. Let the drinking begin in earnest!
Back to the Duggars and their 17 babies. Not all babies, since the first was born in 1988, but really people, maybe it's time to stop bringing forth new faces into the world. Or at least, if you're still motivated to procreate, and clearly you are because when a woman is totally made up and beaming after giving birth to her 17th child, she isn't quite ready to call it quits, is she? then for the love of all that is holy, could you possibly try switching up the names? Each and every one of those 17 children has a name that starts with the letter "J", you can double-check that on their site because I am not listing them. Imagine breakfast in your 4700 square foot house (for this is what Jim Bob built for his family, without ending up owing a cent at the end, because he and Michelle are Real Estate Agents ..... wait a minute, where does she find the time? Pregnancy might be easy enough but what? does she go to work 10 minutes after giving birth?) where you want one of the 17 Darlings to pass the butter. It probably doesn't matter which J name you call out, because one of them is going to leap up and place the butter in front of you. I think that personally, I'd just call out "Jedidiah! Butter!" at every meal because I like a multisyllabic name with lots of the same letters. It's no wonder they're all caught up with God...oh, sorry, Jesus (because you only think of the earthly embodiment of God, and you don't address the Big Guy, you petition Jesus to be your messenger instead. That way, if God decides that the request is a particularly stupid one, he'll smite Jesus and not you.) and not drinking, they'd never remember who any of their kids are. Besides, once they start drinking they probably won't stop.
What killed me about their site is the birth control story and the "fine print" that a Christian medical doctor pointed out to them, that if one becomes pregnant while on the pill, that the probability of miscarriage is high. I think that it's imperative that I point out that if your physician doesn't point out that if you get pregnant while on the pill, that you will likely miscarry. Why is it that women take the pill without a full understanding of what it does? If you want to maintain your ignorance then fine, don't take the thing. On the other hand, if you take a pill and you don't know what it's doing to your body, then you are stupid and deserve a good smiting. So here are Jim Bob and Michelle, and they've lost a baby due to ignorance of their own making, and they're begging God's forgiveness, and I'm thinking, "How did they know that he forgave them? Did he tell them? He sent a sign?" and then I'm thinking, "Really. You should not concern yourself with these stupid people. You have to be somewhere in 24h and what will not be on the question list is, "What do you think of the Duggar family?"
And we're back to eating crunchy chip things that Hub bought, bags of them in fact so even if I finish this bag there are four more in the cupboard, and we're ranting in our heads but still reading the job description again (they want me to what??) and what I wrote when I applied for this job three months ago (I said that?!) and what everyone does as their research and where I'd fit in, or whether I would and can't I just have one more bag of those crunchy chip things (barbecue flavour, not plain)?
It is hot as fuck here today, and tomorrow it's not going to be quite as warm (23C) so we are now leaning away from the turtleneck because even though it's September 26 tomorrow it is definitely not Fall and we may wear a totally different outfit that has nothing to do with hemming anything.........but I digress, yet again.
In my wanderings through the web-o-sphere of delaying the inevitable, I looked at Dooce's site, to find a reference to a family with 17 children. Perhaps you have heard of them, seen an article about them in the news. It reminded me that every once in a while Hub and I say that we could have had more children, and indeed that is true. Even though I am not a big person, pregnancy was a cakewalk, and labour and delivery were much easier than, say, my PhD comprehensive exam, where I had to talk for two full hours about a research proposal that I'd made up all by myself to five men who thought my scientific merit ranked near to that of the common ground squirrel, despite the fact that I proved them wrong. So sure, there could have been a few more kids in this family, and it would have been fine, because all of the children would have been perfect like the two we have now, and they all would have been beautiful and intelligent like the two we have now, and they all would have changed the world every day by their very existence, yes, like the two we have now. Naturally it would be perfect. Sadly, we will never find this out because I refused to have children after a certain age, and that age has passed. Let the drinking begin in earnest!
Back to the Duggars and their 17 babies. Not all babies, since the first was born in 1988, but really people, maybe it's time to stop bringing forth new faces into the world. Or at least, if you're still motivated to procreate, and clearly you are because when a woman is totally made up and beaming after giving birth to her 17th child, she isn't quite ready to call it quits, is she? then for the love of all that is holy, could you possibly try switching up the names? Each and every one of those 17 children has a name that starts with the letter "J", you can double-check that on their site because I am not listing them. Imagine breakfast in your 4700 square foot house (for this is what Jim Bob built for his family, without ending up owing a cent at the end, because he and Michelle are Real Estate Agents ..... wait a minute, where does she find the time? Pregnancy might be easy enough but what? does she go to work 10 minutes after giving birth?) where you want one of the 17 Darlings to pass the butter. It probably doesn't matter which J name you call out, because one of them is going to leap up and place the butter in front of you. I think that personally, I'd just call out "Jedidiah! Butter!" at every meal because I like a multisyllabic name with lots of the same letters. It's no wonder they're all caught up with God...oh, sorry, Jesus (because you only think of the earthly embodiment of God, and you don't address the Big Guy, you petition Jesus to be your messenger instead. That way, if God decides that the request is a particularly stupid one, he'll smite Jesus and not you.) and not drinking, they'd never remember who any of their kids are. Besides, once they start drinking they probably won't stop.
What killed me about their site is the birth control story and the "fine print" that a Christian medical doctor pointed out to them, that if one becomes pregnant while on the pill, that the probability of miscarriage is high. I think that it's imperative that I point out that if your physician doesn't point out that if you get pregnant while on the pill, that you will likely miscarry. Why is it that women take the pill without a full understanding of what it does? If you want to maintain your ignorance then fine, don't take the thing. On the other hand, if you take a pill and you don't know what it's doing to your body, then you are stupid and deserve a good smiting. So here are Jim Bob and Michelle, and they've lost a baby due to ignorance of their own making, and they're begging God's forgiveness, and I'm thinking, "How did they know that he forgave them? Did he tell them? He sent a sign?" and then I'm thinking, "Really. You should not concern yourself with these stupid people. You have to be somewhere in 24h and what will not be on the question list is, "What do you think of the Duggar family?"
And we're back to eating crunchy chip things that Hub bought, bags of them in fact so even if I finish this bag there are four more in the cupboard, and we're ranting in our heads but still reading the job description again (they want me to what??) and what I wrote when I applied for this job three months ago (I said that?!) and what everyone does as their research and where I'd fit in, or whether I would and can't I just have one more bag of those crunchy chip things (barbecue flavour, not plain)?
It is hot as fuck here today, and tomorrow it's not going to be quite as warm (23C) so we are now leaning away from the turtleneck because even though it's September 26 tomorrow it is definitely not Fall and we may wear a totally different outfit that has nothing to do with hemming anything.........but I digress, yet again.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
-ites, -ers and -gonians
I was just browsing the Geist new, shiny website, and came upon a review for a book by Katherine Barber called Only in Canada. In some respects I don't care about keeping a written record of Canadian catchphrases, because they change all the time and what was in common use when I was a kid (jambusters and canned drinks) may not be in use to any great extent now. Geist keeps a Canadian Phrasebook going (although I can't locate it on the website right now) and it's cute, being made up of things "we used to say".
What I thought of though, was what often is said to me when I tell people I'm from Winnipeg. I don't go around proclaiming that I'm from Winnipeg, don't get me wrong, but if asked, I indicate. "Oh! Winterpeg! I've been there!" it's always Winterpeg. You know, I would like to take the person who first coined that little moniker and slap them upside the head (it might have been Don Percy (scroll down a bit to find him) but I suspect it didn't really happen in my lifetime.) because after 10,000 times it's just not funny any more. It wasn't funny in the first place. Yes, it's cold there in the winter, but it's Winter! the temperature drops that time of year, sometimes to -40C, but not for the entire season. It's not like it's winter all the time, and it's not even as cold as Edmonton or Regina, but still, the pun is the play on words, and whenever I hear someone say, "Winterpeg!" my first thought is that they are particularly stupid and uninventive. Next thing I expect is, "And the mosquitoes in the summer....!!" and they can be particularly nasty, I'll admit, but at least there isn't a special way of saying "Winnipeg!" when people say, "The provincial bird is the mosquito, right?"
That wasn't my rant for today though. I was looking at the Geist site, like I said, and glancing at the book review, when it was pointed out near the end of the review that people from various locales indicate their home base via different suffixes. People from Winnipeg are Winnipeggers (whatever connotation that brings to mind) and when I've told those who've asked me that, they're usually, thankfully, stumped for a snappy comeback. Those from Halifax are Haligonians. Those from Guelph are Guelphites. I don't know why Haweaters live on Manitoulin Island, but I expect that is explained somewhere here.
It's not like this suffix business is a special Canadian thing, it's just that the one sentence in the review caught my eye, and I was reminded of a former colleague who used to go around saying "Winterpeg!" as though it was the funniest thing ever heard or said, ever. Then again, he used to refer to me as an "Upper Canadian" or say that I had no idea how poor (as in monetarily poor) some of our students would be, seeing as I'd never been around poverty. Two things come into play here, the first is that I am the furthest thing from Upper Canadian as one can be, and that it is almost a direct insult to refer to someone from The West as being from Southern Ontario. I take the liberty here of defining Winnipeg as The Gateway to the West, although Albertans don't consider Manitoba to be The West. It's a tricky clique. Like a fool, I take the bait on these issues and will attempt to correct the misinformed (Oh, you're all the same to us, anyone not from here is an Upper Canadian), even when they are just trying to rile me up. Sadly, I am easily riled, but equally sadly, while my former colleague used to eventually break down and say that he was just pulling my chain, I knew full well that he was ignorant of the differences between The West and "Down East", which is the Toronto/Southern Ontario area, and not to be confused with The Maritimes, which to most people from The West might as well be another planet. Even there I'm being inaccurate, because the of the recent -- last 15 years -- of migration from The Rock to Fort MacMurray, so The East Coast is not so much another planet as just not Down East.
My second issue was of course that I'd never seen poverty before. Without going into details, I'd say that Southern Ontario isn't devoid of poverty, and that I'm otherwise pretty familiar with it.
What I thought of though, was what often is said to me when I tell people I'm from Winnipeg. I don't go around proclaiming that I'm from Winnipeg, don't get me wrong, but if asked, I indicate. "Oh! Winterpeg! I've been there!" it's always Winterpeg. You know, I would like to take the person who first coined that little moniker and slap them upside the head (it might have been Don Percy (scroll down a bit to find him) but I suspect it didn't really happen in my lifetime.) because after 10,000 times it's just not funny any more. It wasn't funny in the first place. Yes, it's cold there in the winter, but it's Winter! the temperature drops that time of year, sometimes to -40C, but not for the entire season. It's not like it's winter all the time, and it's not even as cold as Edmonton or Regina, but still, the pun is the play on words, and whenever I hear someone say, "Winterpeg!" my first thought is that they are particularly stupid and uninventive. Next thing I expect is, "And the mosquitoes in the summer....!!" and they can be particularly nasty, I'll admit, but at least there isn't a special way of saying "Winnipeg!" when people say, "The provincial bird is the mosquito, right?"
That wasn't my rant for today though. I was looking at the Geist site, like I said, and glancing at the book review, when it was pointed out near the end of the review that people from various locales indicate their home base via different suffixes. People from Winnipeg are Winnipeggers (whatever connotation that brings to mind) and when I've told those who've asked me that, they're usually, thankfully, stumped for a snappy comeback. Those from Halifax are Haligonians. Those from Guelph are Guelphites. I don't know why Haweaters live on Manitoulin Island, but I expect that is explained somewhere here.
It's not like this suffix business is a special Canadian thing, it's just that the one sentence in the review caught my eye, and I was reminded of a former colleague who used to go around saying "Winterpeg!" as though it was the funniest thing ever heard or said, ever. Then again, he used to refer to me as an "Upper Canadian" or say that I had no idea how poor (as in monetarily poor) some of our students would be, seeing as I'd never been around poverty. Two things come into play here, the first is that I am the furthest thing from Upper Canadian as one can be, and that it is almost a direct insult to refer to someone from The West as being from Southern Ontario. I take the liberty here of defining Winnipeg as The Gateway to the West, although Albertans don't consider Manitoba to be The West. It's a tricky clique. Like a fool, I take the bait on these issues and will attempt to correct the misinformed (Oh, you're all the same to us, anyone not from here is an Upper Canadian), even when they are just trying to rile me up. Sadly, I am easily riled, but equally sadly, while my former colleague used to eventually break down and say that he was just pulling my chain, I knew full well that he was ignorant of the differences between The West and "Down East", which is the Toronto/Southern Ontario area, and not to be confused with The Maritimes, which to most people from The West might as well be another planet. Even there I'm being inaccurate, because the of the recent -- last 15 years -- of migration from The Rock to Fort MacMurray, so The East Coast is not so much another planet as just not Down East.
My second issue was of course that I'd never seen poverty before. Without going into details, I'd say that Southern Ontario isn't devoid of poverty, and that I'm otherwise pretty familiar with it.
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