Why my daughter won't play Scrabble with me.

"I hate this game more than anything in the world," says Rissa as we finish.

My heart sinks.  I've had such hopes.  She's an avid reader now - she knows so many words.  I only tried to guide her word choices a... uh... few... (okay 6) times.  She wanted to put down kinesis, but would have used up two s's and didn't get as many points as if she'd used her k in another place - which is where both Mor Mor and I (gently) suggested that she... ...  ... do.

And the Myopic Parent Award goes to...

I have obviously forgotten that Rissa plays most games ironically.  She doesn't care how many points there might be.  Mor Mor played a word and because Rissa could play the exact same word, she did, because it made her laugh, even though her placement of the word didn't get her as many points because Mor Mor had gone first and got a double word score.

"Why do you hate it?" I finally ask, realizing that my future may never include playing word games regularly with my daughter.

"Because you're like that Portuguese International student in first year university who says 'Hey, I know, let's all play Scrabble - it'll be so much fun!!'  And then he puts down all his letters making a 16 letter word joining three other small words, and he gets a GABAZILLION points and when you ask him what the word means he says, 'It's the act of grilling ducks under the Portuguese moonlight... in SPANISH.'  Mummy nobody likes that guy.  Nobody.  Asking me to play Scrabble with you is akin to me asking you to go out into the backyard and shoot all the bunnies."

How did the serpent get in the frother?!?

"GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  HOLY MOTHER OF...!!!" 
I flap the dish towel in my panic.

"What?  What is it?"  Rissa asks.

"Treacherous insect!!"

"What!?!"

"Okay, so you know how when you said that there was a cobra in the kitty litter?"

"I didn't say there was a cobra in the kitty litter," Rissa says, peeking around the corner from the stairwell.   "I said that it was very AMMONIA-Y.  Though that would be much worse than just the ammonia smell."

"So I had cobra on the brain.  And then in my peripheral vision at the sink, I see this red slitted eye in the frother - which was obviously from a red-eyed serpent..."

"...Obviously..." She continues to scoop litter.

"...although why a serpent would choose to crawl into a frother is beyond me - so it made me jump..."

"...and scream..."  She sprinkles the baking soda.

"...and scream.  But on second glance it was a ladybug on the rim of the askew frother lid just peeking out."

"How could you confuse...?"

"Some serpents have red eyes."

"Really...?"

I shrug.  "The tormenting serpents do."  I turn back to the sink to finish drying the--  "GAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

"Where is the ladybug now?"

"On the handle of the frother."

p.s.

So, when I went hunting for a picture of a red eyed serpent to prove my hypothesis - this movie poster came up right away... and I would just like to draw everyone's attention to the RED eyes of the sea serpent...

Plus... The tag line at the top is worth the price of admission my friends!

"FABULOUS!  SPECTACULAR! TERRIFYING!
The raw courage of women without men lost in a fantastic HELL-ON-EARTH!"

That there?  1950s pay dirt!

p.p.s.

And there IS SO at least one type of snake that has red eyes - the Ruby-Eyed Viper.



p.p.p.s.

Plus this one, which is pretty much the embodiment of the reason I was screaming in the first place.  And if there were more spots on its eye it could totally be mistaken for a ladybug. Or vice-versa.

How long has this been on my face?

It's a good morning.  I manage to wake up without whining about it.  David makes me delicious scrambled eggs.  I get dressed and throw a little makeup on, you know, just in case the really hot physiotherapist is at the clinic.  I even volunteer to move the cars around so that I can make it to my 7:30 appointment.

"Bye guys!  Love you!!"

And he's there - the Greek God (masquerading as a physiotherapist) rubbing shoulders with the plebes.   He shoots me a look with eyes clad in lashes so thick they probably distort his vision. My visceral reaction pinballs around my chest before it eventually centering in my groin.  And a GOOD MORNING to you too!  I smile winsomely at him, giving him the patented Heather dimple on my right side.  My own physiotherapist beckons me into the treatment room and we chit chat throughout my treatment.  For this early on a Friday, I am rocking the positivity and wakefulness.  I WIN at morning!

Appointment is done.  I have less limp and more saunter après treatment as I head back to the car.  Door opens, doesn't take me nearly as long to fold myself behind the wheel on account of the electrodes and ultrasound.  I start the car, Adele's Chasing Pavements is already playing on the sound system.  I ease my way into traffic.  There's a red light - this will be the most graceful braking - EVER.  Yep, totally landed that stop.  The judges give me 10s all around. 

I glance in the rear-view mirror and do a double take. I look like I have a cold sore the size of PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND on my top lip.  What the...?  Ketchup.  From this morning's breakfast.  That has been there for the past hour and 15 minutes.  Awesome.  My lovely lop-sided grin that I threw at the hot physiotherapist must have looked like a Syphilitic prostitute's come-on.  I scrub the ketchup off with my finger and then eat it, because... you know... ketchup.

 

Feline induced funk

"We need to kill all the cats."

"Huh?"

I am lying on my side in bed, eyebrows so low that I can feel them on my upper lip.

"WE. NEED. TO. KILL. ALL. THE. CATS."

"You don't mean that.  You love the cats."

"4:45!"

"Hmmm?"

"4 FUCKING 45 this morning Minuit with her fishy kibble cat breath and her petulant 'MEH' was in my face.  And then when I tried to ignore her she copped a feel and nipped at my nose."

"I'm sorry love."

"Why?  It's not your fault...  ...   ...  Wait, it IS your fault.  You closed the bedroom door last night and she was trapped inside with us which means that at 4 FUCKING 45 a.m. (because she is terrified of you) I was the only person she could wake up to let her out."  I open one glaring eye at David.  "And then... and THEN... fucking Lola comes in at 6:45 and breathes on me and fucking chirps at me."

"So this would have nothing to do with the fact that you didn't sleep well all weekend because you drank too much wine and it gave you hot flashes, and this just happened to be night three of poor sleep?"

"And what the fuck is THAT about?  All I want is to enjoy a good bottle of wine and by bottle, I don't even mean bottle, I mean two glasses.  Why am I being punished?"  I roll onto my stomach softly sobbing.  "I hate peri-menopause.  I hate cats."

"No, you don't.  You cross traffic to pet them."

"I hate cats this morning," I huff.   I think about what I've actually verbalized and reconsider my stance on cat euthanasia.    "We don't have to kill them all.  Minuit and Lola will be sent to Kitty Boarding School.  Steve can stay.  STEVE!  YOU CAN STAY, but your sisters are being shipped off to learn the error of their ways."

Knock knock. Who's there? DEATH.

In a parallel-dimension I must be Betazoid.  Holy fuck - my empathetic core is in hyper-drive tonight.

David's Dad died unexpectedly this past summer.  On our 17th wedding anniversary, as we made our way into Manhattan to make some dreams come true, we got a text from his brother telling us that his Dad, John, was on his way to Toronto General Hospital, in liver failure.  David flew back that night.  About 60 hours later, John was dead, the victim of accidental Tylenol poisoning.

While David was in Toronto with his brother, step-mother and step-siblings, I remained in Manhattan, prepping our show for a New York theatre festival.  The afternoon we got the news that John had fallen ill, we were heading into the city to start tech week.

A couple of times in my life I've experienced the "Show Must Go On" phenomenon.  In 1995, while on a Canadian National Fringe tour, one of my grandfathers died.  I was in the middle of the Prairies. On tour.  Unable to hold my Mom's hand.

This summer, when my husband needed me most in his life, I was a day's drive away, making sure the show would go on.  And John?  John would have been leading the "Show Must Go On" mantra.  He was a true theatre lover, with the heart of an impresario.  How he loved the stage.  He was so proud of the work that David did in theatre, the work that I did.  John would have been the first one to smack me upside the head if I'd abandoned our production... But still... my husband was holding his comatose father's hand in a sterile hospital room and I was...  in Manhattan, directing a vampire rock opera.

Tonight I'm thinking of my mother-in-law, John's widow.  Today, almost 6 months to the day since John died, she said goodbye to her own father who passed away from Alzheimer's. No, let's not sugar coat that.  He fucking died. Last summer, when John fell ill, they were in the midst of a basement renovation, so that her parents could have a suite where they'd have family close by.  Her father was only there about a month before his illness incapacitated him and he needed full-time care.  Today, he died.  So in the space of 6 months, she has had to say goodbye to two men in her life whom she loved unreservedly.

So I'm hear to say, DEATH - you suck.  Seriously.  You couldn't give her a break?  You couldn't have allowed her more time to breathe?  And here the rest of us are - offering bland platitudes - expressing our love and support and sorrow...  We will sign sympathy cards, make donations to his favourite charities, tamp down the true pain of it.  And it all fucking sucks.

And because I'm empathetic - when I stop to think of any of this, really THINK of it, I have chest pains.  Nausea churns in my stomach.  I didn't know her father all that well.  But I know her, and it fucking sucks that she has to deal with this shit.  Her husband died accidentally at the age of 68 and her father, who until recently had been in good health, had his mind and his life ripped from him by Alzheimer's.

And here I sit, scattering tissues beside the laptop, ineffectually wiping at tears.  And I don't have the right to this sorrow.  I didn't love those men the way that she did.   But I love her, and I want to vomit the pain of it out for her - so that she can move on.

So DEATH, if you've got any sense of balance, please cut her some slack.  Put your fucking scythe down and let her have a chance to regroup.  I can deal with the emotional shit for a bit.  Please.
 

Touchpad Rage

WARNING: THERE IS BAD LANGUAGE IN THIS POST

"Shit-Piss-Fuck-Mother-FUCKER!!"

"What?  What is it?" David asks, his interest now piqued.

"This fucking touchpad!"

"Okay, steady on there, my love."

"You fucking steady on - JUST LET ME FUCKING HIGHLIGHT THE FUCKING SENTENCE!!!"

"O...KAY... It's time to take your hand off the touchpad."

"I HATE IT.  I DESPISE IT."

"That's just because..."

"Don't you tell me that it's because I don't use one enough."

He pauses... opens his mouth and then closes it.

"I hate the double finger tip thingie..."

He quirks an eyebrow at me.

"Shut up."

"I didn't..."

"I hate that the default with everything I want to do with a fucking touchpad is opposite to what I would normally do.  I want to go DOWN the fucking page.  I shouldn't have to move my mother fucking fingers up!"

"Where's your wireless mouse?"

"It's broken.  It tried to commit suicide."  I spy a traditional mouse on the loveseat where all our audio visual equipment has been lying since we updated our TV and media player.  "That mouse.  Right there, with the long tail..."

"Cord?"

"Shut up."

"Can I have it?"

"Love, I'd be willing to supply you with 50 mouses if your true personality would come back."

"You just don't get it.  I don't like having to use my thumb..."

He raises his other eyebrow.

"Not cute."

He shrugs.

"To CLICK.  TO MOTHER-FUCKING CLICK!!!!"

"Ahhhhhh... that makes more sense.  I mean having the opposable thumb is a perk to being...  I'll shut up now."

The laser beams from my eyes  have silenced him.  That and my hefting the laptop in preparation for beating him to death.

Bad puns and tea

"So I tried tea the other day," says Rissa.

"Really?  How was it?" asks David.

"Bad."

"How so?"

"Well it held promise - it was cherry something berry something and it smelled delicious, but then it was all BLAH..."

Reading a book, I'm fairly distracticated and don't hear David's response.

"See she didn't even hear that."

"What did I not hear? " I ask.

"We were talking about how I tried tea..."

"I heard the tea part."

"And how the tea tasted like butt..."

"You didn't say that the tea tasted like butt - I know that for sure."

"No, but I did say it was very bland and disappointing - given what it smelled like. And then Daddy said... "

David is grinning ridiculously.  "It was TEA-SING you."

"Oh Jesus," I say, groaning.

"TEA-SUS," says David.

I groan again.  "If you had a happy pun dance what would it look like?"

He barely pauses before doing a mashup of the Locomotion combined with the gopher dance from Caddyshack.