The Seated View

We're having Danish relatives visiting these days. Above, from the left, is my mother ('mor' of the comments), Hanne, her niece/my cousin (via my mother's sister), Hanne's daughter Christina and the little guy in the stroller is Christina's son, Sebastian. Photo taken by Janne at Niagara Falls . And just because he's one of the cutest kids I've seen in a while, here's a close-up:

When I was a little girl, my uncle Poul used to call me Krudtirøv. It means – very literally translated – gunpowder-in-arse. I moved fast. Still do. For me, Instant gratification isn’t fast enough. I’ve often said that if there’s such a thing as karma and reincarnation, my task in this life is to learn patience. I’m not doing very well with the lesson. Recovery’s an odd thing. No, not that kind of recovery, by which I mean the addictive one, although I suspect that’s plenty odd, too. I’m talking about something as basic as a physical comeback. My life was eroded slowly, by bits and pieces and now I’m working at getting it back. It’s been slow going, often too slow for my taste. It goes in fits and starts and plateaus. I have to remember to slow down, be mindful of my damaged body, listen to it and work well within my limits. Because if I don’t, I injure myself. Seems like the injuries come in fits and starts, too. I’m starting to realize that there’s a ...

Yesterday, things were OK at first and then they went spectacularly in the crapper. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration – my grandfather used to say “it’s a bad storyteller who can’t improve upon the story”. More or less directly translated from the Danish, so pardon the slight inelegance of the saying. “Det er en daarlig fortaeller som ikke kan goere en historie bedre” sounds much better, but I suspect very few of you would understand it. Got my place cleaned with no incidents. Then I left the house. That was my first mistake. Clearly, I should have hermitted. Yes, it’s a verb. In my world, anyway. Go to get my shot, get in the elevator. Elevator gets stuck between ground and second floor. Did I mention I’m claustrophobic? I try to not hyperventilate (mostly unsuccessfully) as I’m stuck for what seems like days (in reality, more like 10 minutes). Wait at doctor’s for shot, she runs late, have to come back. Pop to grocery store to pick up jam – my favour...

I almost got run over by a car taking this shot. It was worth the danger, I think. Easily one of the coolest hood ornaments I've seen in a while.

Tonight is the finale of Big Brother 6 – arguably the best Big Brother of the bunch (and sure, if you consider the first season, really not a difficult feat to accomplish, but nonetheless, this one kicked arse). The Fiendship-Sovereignty battle, see-sawing every week, kept me on tenterhooks and thoroughly addicted. There was Kaysar (swoon), Cappy with his ‘roid rage and delusions of grandeur (and who “doesn’t regret anything he did – it’s just who he is”, despite being forcibly restrained from starting a fistfight. Great role model to your kids, dude), Janey – pretending to be a ditz, but one of the best reality show contestants I’ve seen in a while, targeted for eviction almost from the word ‘go’, but still managed to be in the final three (and author of the classic line ‘Bye Bye, Bitches!’). There was Yapril, gossipy, prone to weeping and owner of the worst cry-face I’ve ever seen, Beau… er… (I’ve got nutthin’)… Beau… um…winner of Best (and Most Frequent) Squeal Award, Mich...

On my birthday, I started the day being given a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers by my morning attendant. Maria’s a wonderfully sweet woman, originally from Mexico, and she accompanied the flowers with a Mexican birthday song. We put the bouquet in a vase and although flowers normally make me wheeze (damned asthma), these didn’t. What they did seem to do was make my sinuses… er… go into overproduction. Niagara Falls down the back of my throat. Love that post-nasal drip. So I asked my mother if they could come live with her and I’d visit them. I did take a picture of them before they left my house: Nice, eh? (please ignore the clutter. I'm thinking about cleaning) The next day, when I called my mother, she’d developed Niagara symptoms, along with a set of eyes that looked as if she’d been crying for weeks. After some discussion, we hit upon the flowers as likely culprits (neither of us had been up long, it took a while) and out they went. Later that day, I wondered ...

A recap of the weekend’s sillier moments… Friday evening, I was watching a movie and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a red dot dancing on the chair beside me. These are the thoughts that went through my head in rapid succession: 1. I’m having a stroke. 2. No, that looks like the red dot from a sniper’s rifle. 3. I’M GONNA BE SHOT BY A SNIPER! I have a bit of a vivid imagination… Turns out some idiot living in the building facing my livingroom had gotten himself one of those laser-pointing thingies and was amused by invading my privacy. Or so I rationalized. The next day after a fantastic dinner at my mother's, John and I attempted to re-create his halluc… er, idea that Janne’s wearing Homer Simpson’s head under her shirt: It's a work in progress... Although I was busy looking at her mid-section and can't say for sure, I believe Janne lived through this moment as a practise for having children. I'm pretty sure there was eye-roll...

In December of 2004, I looked into the abyss and the abyss looked back. It’s hard to write about this – doing so with any emotional truth means going back to a place I’d rather never feel again – but there’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time and it needs a bit of a back story. Pain is an oddly isolating thing. It can’t be shared with other people, can’t be described in any way that comes close to communicating what it feels like. It isolates geographically and socially – it hurts too much to go out, spending time with friends takes too much energy and when touching hurts, displays of affection do also. When it gets loud enough, you lose your ability to think and focus. Early on in 2004, when my arthritis was flaring, my rheumatologist and I decided it was time for the big guns. The biggest, in fact. Enbrel is new and expensive and costs about $23,000 a year, so I needed help from the Trillium Drug Program . When the government gives you tax payers’ money, t...

Holy growth spurt, TinkMama!

I’ve always had an affinity for New Orleans. Its history, its culture, its music, its food, its insistence that if we’d remember that life is for living, not just hard work, then maybe we’d all be enjoying the ride a bit more. For 20 years now, I’ve known that some day, I’d go there and immerse myself in it all. Laissez les bon temps rouler and I’d roll with it and be home. These days, I am heartbroken. I search out the news and get more and more angry and more and more sad. New Orleans, the city of my heart, is devastated. The Gulf Coast region is devastated. People are attempting to find meaning in the meaningless by blaming the victim: Katrina was god’s comment on the acceptance of gays or a cleansing of “sin city” and those stories make me angrier and sadder. Tales of divine vengeance don’t help in times like these, except to serve as a balm for our collective pain – if they brought it on themselves, I don’t have to feel so bad. I can wash my hands of ...

Yesterday, at the store, I saw a display of Hallowe'en candy. Hallowe'en candy , I ask you! I've just gotten my head around the back-to-school and the fall things and although it prompts some quietly desperate reaction (i.e., loud screaming), I'm OK. Mostly. But HALLOWE'EN??? On September 4?? Before Labour Day? I think there should be a rule. Like wearing white. Can't wear white and display Hallowe'en candy at the same time. Actually, I think it's a Public Health matter. You're not sure? Don't tell me you didn't wince and feel like crying when you read the first sentence.

In alphabetical order (and how cool is it that there's a sufficient number to do it alphabetically?), I'm pleased to give a more detailed introduction to my nephew Liam: and my niece Morgan: I think they have the Andersen cheekbones...

There are no words. Sitemeter offers a world view of my blog hits as dots on a map. I enjoy checking where readers are from and wonder who they are, where they live and what they're like. I've had dots along the Gulf coast and been thrilled - I always wanted to visit that area of the U.S. Please, when you can, let us know you and your loved ones are OK.

Well, that term started out years ago as “Birthday Slut”, but I changed it to reflect the obeisance owed The Haver of The Birthday. G’ahead… try it out… be relentlessly self-promoting, imperious and demanding on your birthday. Insist on adoration and acquiescence to all your wishes. It’s a grand feeling. And here’s a little known secret: the older you get, the longer you can milk it. I’m 43 and am having a Birthday Week. By the time I’m 80, it’ll be a month. I had a perfect birthday. Just perfect. The weather was lovely (which in Danish means you’ve been a good girl/boy the previous year – ah, the ways we impart a sense of responsibility in our children… “be good or the entire country will suffer!”), had lovely birthday wishes with English, Danish and Mexican birthday songs, plus a phonetic version of the Danish that should be made available to the public, and in general, was made a complete fuss of. In the afternoon, friends and I spent time at Buskerfest . W...

This is my mormor – my mother’s mother (the cute kid is my sister 20 years ago – she now looks like this ). Her name was Søster Karen Christensen and she was the perfect grandmother. She was funny and not afraid to use herself as the punch line. Once, in her mid-eighties, in a checkout line, she looked at some parsley and sighed, completely deadpan, “I once looked like that” and calmly continued stacking her groceries while everyone else fell about laughing. When I was a child and staying with her and morfar (grandpa), I’d sleep with mormor in their bed (morfar took the divan) and I’d be lying in bed, watching her get ready. Every night, after she took out her dentures, I’d pester her to say futtog (“choo-choo train” in Danish). You haven’t lived until you’ve heard how that sounds without teeth. She wouldn’t do it all the time for she understood that the special disappears when it is made routine. Those times I stayed with mormor and morfar wer...

I went to the park with a book. It was a gorgeous day – no longer hot as dragon’s breath, but nicely warm. Compared to most of this summer, 30 degrees Celcius (86F) is only warm. In a lot of countries that would be sveltering, but not in Toronto, not this year. I went to the middle of the field, an expanse of grass, left long-ish by the Parks people and I like it that way. The scent of it, the intensely green smell was all around me, enveloped me, carried me off to a place of leafy heaven. I closed my eyes, turned my face towards the sun and basked. There’s no other word for it: I basked. The light suffused the world, bathed me in its yellow warmth, flowed through my skin, into my body, all the way through to the bones, warming, relaxing, healing. I felt aglow with it. A drop of sweat trickled down the back of my neck, taking with it all my worries, leaving only sun. The wind was perfect, too. Enough to refresh and that was all. Lazy waves ...

I'd post, but they've changed something and taken away my wysiwyg view and I don't speak HTML and I don't know why they did this. More later when I've figured it out.

As all people who share their homes with cats know, they are in charge. The cats, I mean. I figure I just live here to serve Mojo’s every need, but even so, I sometimes get surprised at just how extensively she has trained me (at times foolishly believing that just because she responds to certain requests when it suits her, that I’ve trained her). Mojo doesn’t like drinking from a bowl. I’ve heard stories of cats that are all about running water and some that drink from various odd receptacles. Mojo likes glasses and cold water. A while back, when she’d walk around looking at me with the “find me some water, woman” look, I’d taken to tapping the side of the glass with my nail and she’d jump up and drink. A few days later, she called me (yes, she calls me and I respond, but I figure it’s only fair – she responds when I call her) and I came out into the living room and found her perched on the table, next to the glass, looking very expectantly at me. So I tapped ...

(ed.: it's been brought to my attention that people who are new might not know of my... er... tiny obsession with Big Brother 6 , could be confused by this post. So that's what I'm rabbiting on about) My Kaysar is gone. Well, I suspect there might be several million North American women (and gay men) who are willing to fight me for him, but it’s my blog, my world and here, he’s my Kaysar. And he's gone just because he’s a nice man and an honourable man and that just makes it all much worse (and him more swoon-worthy). I will admit that had it not been a member of the Fiendship who orchestrated this move, I might have chortled in glee. Instead, I want to… well, better not say what I want to do to Ms. Cartwheeling Cheerleader. I’m trying to lead with kindness, really I am, but when it comes to the Cult of Cappy, it’s not easy. They are so smug, so hypocritical, so lacking in any interesting personality traits whatsoever. Take Beau, for example. ...