The Seated View

When I was little, one of my favourite things to do was mini vacations at my grandparents’. They still lived in the same small-town, in the same apartment where my mother grew up and more than anything else, this is where I connected to my family history. The relatives on my father's side were more distant, both geographically and emotionally, and besides, my mother's family told stories - stories of themselves and of the people who made up our family in the past and whether living or dead, they were all equally vivid. When I visited my mormor and morfar , my favourite thing to do within this favourite thing was go to the cemetery with my mormor to take care of the graves of the family members who were with us in spirit only. We'd clean up the gravesite, trim the little hedge around it, put water in the vases, neatly arrange the new flowers and through it all, my grandmother would tell me about my family and I loved hearing the stories over and over again. Afte...

There's a wee calendar over at the shop . Twelve of my favourite photos in a spiralbound wall calendar. Have a peek and feel free to tell me off in the comments for not selecting the ones you would have chosen! Putting the calendar together was a surprisingly lengthy process, although highly enjoyable. Only minor clumps of hair was torn out. There's something soothing about puttering around with images, fitting them into nifty pages, re-doing several over and over again until they're just right. Almost as much fun as running The Harlot's life , although with less upfront whining and gnashing of teeth and no requirement at all for pretending to let the subject have a modicum of input (for the curious, wrangling of The Schedule has begun - it's way too early to know whether there'll be time for it all, but I suspect Madame has overestimated things. As usual. Next year, we start in October). One note, though: due to a technical error, a redesign of January ...

Or rather, November Link-O-Rama. Time to goof off! But first, its time to yet again make fun of me. After decades on miscellaneous painkillers, NSAIDs and disease modifying agents, my stomach is fucked, so for years, I've supplemented my prescription stomach meds with Gaviscon, which is like putting a blanket on a fire. And now the bastards have changed the formula. Well, the label says 'new look', but they've also added a mysterious "cooling action" and when I tried it, my head exploded from the intense peppermint and I fell the burn all the way down through my esophagus into my stomach. Where it proceeded to burn some more for awhile. Sorta counter-productive, y'know? So I hunted through the neighbourhood stores to find the old formula, as I wasn't in the mood to spend a lot of money experimenting with other antacids. Finally found some at Loblaw's and cleaned them out. Got some cat food while I was there and went to the cashier. ...

Before I start rambling on, a heartfelt thank you go to the Blog/Tech God - a.k.a. Ken - for helping me with my template when I got hopelessly stuck attempting to decipher HTML (which was as easy as interpreting hieroglyphics without the Rosetta Stone) and moreover for having the patience to translate so I could understand and "make blog go" myself (with some heavy handholding). I even started to sort of get the code a little and am highly pleased. Anyway. To balance the darkness from last few weeks' forays into the Department of Traumatic Dentistry, Chicken Little, Inc. and Recalcitrant Technology, I decided it's time for fluffier fare. To match the snow we got yesterday. Which turns out to be good timing, because I’ve been so freakin’ busy the past few weeks that my wee brain conked out yesterday at 2:34pm - I know the exact time because that's when I put my keys in the refrigerator - and still has not seen fit to return. I suspect it’s gone on strike unti...

(attempting changes. Doing HTML. Hold on for dear life and please pardon the rough look in IE) It is too a word. It derives from the noun Techno-Twit. Also a word. I know this because I invented it myself. Hey, if Stephen Colbert can get Truthiness into Mirriam-Webster, I bet with the collective powers of our minds/blogs, we’d be able to do the same for my little word. Who’s with me?! Anyway, this past weekend was dedicated to a number of computer-related activities. To wit: - Finally update to new Blogger template - Select "decent photos", organize and edit same and upload to Flickr - Create storefront on CaféPress But before I move on to the likely boring tech stuff – feel free to ignore it if such things make your brain whimper, but if you know anything at all about computers, I would love some advice – I want to talk about the last item. A few people have asked me lately why I don’t do something with my photographs – y’know, to get them Out There (tha...

I live in a neighbourhood where a certain day of the year, you can be walking down the street, quietly minding your own business, having been to the store to buy cereal and bananas and see this And this And if that wasn’t plenty disturbing, there will also be children with alarmingly large and furry ears It’s a sign. Not that you’re going bonkers – although, you’d be forgiven for jumping to that conclusion – but that someone important is coming. Important enough to get a police escort And be accompanied with a cheerful, yet oddly stress-inducing, warning What else but the Santa Claus Parade? My favourite sighting from this year was watching a mother and her teenaged daughter. The daughter, being about 14 years old and at the height of that age where your parents are horribly embarrassing, stood far enough away from her mother to maintain her cool factor. When the sounds of cheering throngs started a bit down the street and the mother lifted up their aging Cocker Spaniel so it...

I ’ve talked about before about how when I was growing up, everyone I knew was raised to have a thorough understanding of etiquette and table manners. That our parents made sure that should we be invited to have dinner with the Queen, we could without embarrassing ourselves (and, by extension, save our entire family from nationwide infamy as the relatives of “that woman who slurped her coffee at the palace”). In our house, that meant not only did we learn the standards – how to use a knife and fork appropriately (fork in left hand, knife in right) the minute we had sufficient motorskills, elbows off the table, don’t eat until everyone’s seated and have food on their plate, keep yer gob closed while chewing, etc. – but also that a meal is a social event, a time for the family to connect. Breakfast and lunch were more casual affairs, but dinner was sacred, with all family members present and expected to contribute to the conversation. Once we’d finished, my sister and I would at ...

Whoever convinced us that water should be drunk not from the taps handily located in several places in our homes, but from plastic bottles bought in the supermarket deserves either a marketing metal or a special place in hell. It's been a while now since a few of the water brands were forced to come out with the truth: that the water they bottle and sell comes not from some fancy-arsed spring of pure water from the pristine innards of the Earth, complete with fluttering butterflies, rainbows and magic fairy dust, but from the regular municipal water supply , run through a purification process et voilà! delivered to our hot, gullible little hands for exorbitant amounts of money. Sure, there are places in the world where drinking bottled water is the safer approach, but in most of our industrialized world, the water that comes through the tap is perfectly fine, indeed governed by stricter regulations than the bottled kind. Yet, we schlep cases and cases of bottled water home, ...

Having rheumatoid arthritis isn’t just about having arthritis. Having arthritis has ripples. There are the ripples caused by medication – high blood pressure (courtesy of Vioxx), wrecked GI system (courtesy of every medication I’ve ever been on) – and then there’s things like teeth. The jaw being a joint, when it’s been partytime for the arthritis there, too, it affects how much you can open your mouth and for how long (not to mention affecting your diet by not being able to eat hard, crunchy things). Meaning it’s hard to take good care of your teeth. Fifteen years ago, my previous dentist prognosticated I’d have dentures by age 40. I didn’t and I don’t and take some pride in that. However, I am unable to handle the procedures involved in getting crowns, so when my teeth reach the point of no return, they get yanked. It’s been a while since the last such joyful experience, but one of my molars has been living on borrowed time for almost 4 years and last week, it gave up....

My feet are claustrophobic. Yesterday, I got up and decided that since it was no longer anything close to ‘warm’ outside (although, it could be argued that neither could it be defined as ‘cold’. Tepid’s more like it. The cool side of tepid), maybe it was finally the end of bare-foot weather and maybe I should relent and put on a pair of socks. Picked something fairly loose, as one should always start gradually with the encasing of one’s nethermost appendages in tubes of constriction. My attendant started putting one sock on my right foot and I swear to whatever divine being will receive it, said right foot recoiled and screamed in horror. At which point, I asked my attendant to not and wandered around for the rest of the day with slightly chilly (and very happy) toes. From the beginning, nausea accompanied my arthritis like they were conjoined twins. Never saw one without the other and the only medication that's ever dealt with the arthritis effectively enough that I...