rosencrantz and guildenstern may not be dead

Amazing artwork ©2021 noplot, badly adapted from one of my favourite t-shirts

I went to see Hamlet one Sunday evening in August. Again.

The first time for this latest production at the Perchance Theatre in Cupids, but for the umpteenth time in my life.

Why do I keep going to see this play, other than the fact that my talented niece, Erika Squires, aka Drama Queen (DQ), was playing Horatio extremely well in it?

It feels like I know all the lines, felt like I knew them the first time I read or heard them; this play is so quotable, its words and phrases live on in common parlance, even for people who wouldn't be caught dead at a Shakespeare performance (and almost everybody gets caught dead in Hamlet, after all).

To be or not to be...

To sleep perchance to dream...

The play's the thing...

Methinks she doth protest too much (misquote, I know, but we all like to rewrite the masters)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy

I expect this sense of recognition may not be as prevalent for people born since the turn of the century, but I think even the girl who served me ice cream the other day and was surprised to hear that Shakespeare also wrote comedies! has heard of that first quote.*

I read it first in second year university, and afterwards I saw it, can't remember when. Was it onstage? Was Mel's version (1990) really the first time I saw it, the first time I realized what a truly funny play it is, funnier than some of his comedies, in fact? Did I see the Shakespeare by the Sea production? Did I see Olivier's or just stills and clips? I know I saw Kenneth Branagh's and liked it, but can't recall much about it.

I will never forget buying a beautiful-deep-blue-OMG-it-has-pockets dress in a shop at Stratford-Not-on-Avon in the hopes that Paul Gross would notice me, a beacon of loveliness in the melancholy dark of the theatre.** 

But my favourite Hamlet so far has to be David Tennant. He brings the emotional depth, the humour and the madness that served him so well as the tenth Doctor, also my favourite Doctor. With Jean Luc Picard so amazingly good as his bad uncle Claudius, it is no surprise that a Shakespeare junky with a predilection for sci fi like me was in her glee.

DQ suggested that the evening performance was the best time to see the Perchance production, which made sense to me because Hamlet is essentially a horror story, the shades of the past haunting all the characters and driving them on to their deaths with DQ playing the only surviving blonde girl.

Since this is an outdoor theatre and the show started at 7 pm in broad daylight (plus Covid rules necessitated shortening the run time), the dark and spooky opening scene was cut, replaced by the appearance of a silent figure, a woman walking slowly, measuredly, unnaturally into the foreground before the stage. I knew Hamlet was being played by a woman but was this Hamlet Sr.'s ghost?

It turns out to be Hamlet, using new pronouns, haunting her own play like a poltergeist as she goes on to cause trouble and annoy everyone around her. It was odd to hear her addressed as "my liege" instead of "my lord", but it turns out that, Errol Flynn movies notwithstanding, "liege" does not refer only to a king and is not as definitively a male term, although I had never heard a woman addressed like that. Perhaps because it's so rare to find a woman in a position of authority back in the olden days.  Am I the only one who had to google that during the performance?

My pedantry aside, Allison Moira Kelly does a fine job as Hamlet. I was particularly startled by the intensity of her grief as she speaks her first monologue, wishing her too solid flesh would melt with her tears, which flowed freely in a bout of ugly crying which I feel compelled to call feminine, having so rarely seen that kind of emotional outpouring from a man. I cannot recall any other Hamlet of my acquaintance letting more than a few drops of moisture fall on his manly cheek, no matter the reference to Niobe's endless tears. 

It was in that moment, I made the realization that Hamlet and I were both fatherless children, and the emotional connection between us rang more clearly than it ever had before. 

Was it the idea that royalty feel differently about these things which kept me at a distance (The king is dead, long live the king! seems to remove human feelings from the equation) or just the masculine experience of grief, which seems to favour expressing overwhelming anger instead of tears, that felt foreign to me?

I have had have plenty of anger over losing my father to lung cancer when I was only 20-years old but I don't remember voicing it much. But thinking about it now, if I stumbled upon a tobacco company executive cold-bloodedly calculating the profits of ensnaring young people with their noxious death weed, denying them the chance to meet their future grandchildren, I might find it in me to stab that bastard right in the arras.

But, you know, women are taught to swallow our anger. 

However, there is no societal restraint on womanly tears, inconvenient and uncomfortable to watch as they may be. Hamlet, the character, although usually a man, is quite womanly (in the traditional sense) in this play. He/she makes everyone else squirm, insisting on displaying natural human emotions when everyone else just wants to pretend those pesky things should have run their course by now, three weeks being plenty of time to mourn a Dead Dad. Claudius, aka the Dad Slayer, has a vested interest in squashing natural emotion of course, as does his former sister-in-law, Gertrude, aka Hamlet's Mom, aka Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial, who should have been grieving a dead husband, not getting on with the business of living happily ever after with a new king.

Even if it's not very manly (in the traditional sense), Hamlet has good reason to be sad and angry since her father was murdered and her mom doesn't seem to care. If that weren't bad enough, the villain looks exactly like Dad, in this and many other productions. Jody Richardson is so good in both roles, auto-tuned and scary as the ghost, desperate and malevolently plotting as Claudius.

In fact the whole cast is excellent.

Marthe Bernard is an affecting Ophelia, her mad scene heartrending. Whether Hamlet is actually in love with her is another question, but that is a question the play fails to answer whatever gender Hamlet may be. Ophelia's father, Polonius, is convinced that Hamlet does love his daughter but he is hardly any judge of emotional truth, ignoring the painful situation he is putting Ophelia in by asking her to spy on someone she truly loves.

When Hamlet kills Polonius, it is no wonder that Ophelia is driven mad by the conflicting demands of love for both of them, which leads to her death by drowning. Grief and the natural anger arising from her death brings everything to head when her brother Laertes (a passionate Owen Van Houten) agrees to murder Hamlet to get his revenge but then everyone gets accidentally-on-purpose murdered. The End.

It's kind of a bummer. 

But unlike anyone in Hamlet, I have access to the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and two-and-a-half English degrees so I'll deal.***

After DQ relieved my fears that the genderbending would ruin Horatio's elegiac farewell to her best friend ("Good night, sweet princess" wouldn't have had quite the same ring to it) and the play was over, perchance to let CSI do its work with all the corpses laying about since Fortinbras was nowhere in evidence, I realized that Gertrude neglected to announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. They are friends of Hamlet's who unwittingly become the weapon Claudius uses to rid himself of his irritating niece; sent off to England with Hamlet, they carry a letter asking the English king to kill Hamlet upon receipt of same. Hamlet has a lucky escape when their ship encounters pirates but sends R & G on without her, a new letter in their hands directing the English king to kill them instead, because apparently, the British take homicidal direction well?

It cheered me up to no end to think that these perennially interchangeable patsies may in fact have survived the play. Their unquestioning willingness to do whatever they are told suggests they were unlikely to open the letter sealing their doom, thereby actively saving themselves, but one can at least hope they misplaced it.

So to sum up, it was a really good production of Hamlet, made me think lots of interesting (to me) thoughts, and I would recommend that you jump in your tardises (tardisi?) and go back in time to see it. Or go see any and all productions at Perchance Theatre next year because they are worth the trip.

*call me a cranky old lady telling kids to get off my lawn, which is what SWDNO essentially did at the time, but that particular encounter as we were on our way to see the delightful As You Like It got my granny knickers in a twist at the educational system, deplorable state of!

**I wore it the other day for a background role in a tv show filming locally and nearly lost it (talk about your Shakespearean tragedies!) to the wardrobe mistress when I carelessly left it lying about and then made a holy show of myself dragging everything out of my bag in the middle of New Gower Street when it suddenly occurred to me to check that I had everything. There was an overly dramatic last minute rescue as I spotted the deep blue edge peaking out of a pile of neatly-packed costumes through the open door of the van, dragging my precious out, heedless of those lesser items who had never had the privilege of viewing Paul Gross nor considered tossing themselves on stage in tribute...

***aka I'll achieve catharsis and purify and purge my negative emotions and stuff through art.

it's not time yet, go lie down

One morning back in June, the day I started writing this post, I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating peanut butter toast and working on a killer sudoku, enjoying the cool summer breeze wafting in through the screened patio door, listening to the birdsong outside, trying not to cry.

 

The novelty of having the patio door open in June was not lost on me on this not-exactly-tropical island where summer usually only deigns to occur on the occasional weekday in July. Plus I haven't had a patio screen door in about 15 years. 

The problem with having rampaging labs is that they are really hard on screens, especially if one of those labs is in fact a 100-pound Newfoundland and Labrador with ginormous paws who is not afraid to use them, and when you are taking too long to find the pause button on the remote so you can go let him inside.

Hearts ©2016 no plot

If you were able to resist that sweet face (I certainly couldn't), you would not be able to resist the power of that tremendous paw, shredding metal screens like they were tissue paper or simply demanding the pats that you were legally obligated to provide him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Hearts amendment, 2007).*

Pwning this couch since 2007.** ©2020 no plot

Hearts came into our lives by stealth.  We would never have taken on a dog of his size at that point in time*** given that we were in canine recovery, having endured an entire year of crazy in the form of Shadow, the lab-husky mix who made us understand why some people abandon their children on doorsteps. 

Shadow contemplates his prey, an evil gleam in his eye. The shoe was never seen again.
©2005 Mike who probably didn't know what he was getting us into.**** 

Shadow was approximately four months old when we got him, having spent most of that time living on the parish up in Natuashish. One day, he decided to run into Mike's house and used his powers of cuteness to enthrall Mike who in turn convinced us that all this adorable pup needed was a good home (to trash) and some unsuspecting people to love (traumatize).  He was a sweet dog but he had no off-switch, which was problematic in a family that is constantly misplacing its on-switch. He tore a terrible path of mastication through our lives, shredding dog toys, child's toys, slippers, shoes, boots, window screens, screen doors, coffee tables, etc. He dug under every fence, slipped every backyard tie. He was a very difficult dog to live with until one day, he got very, very sick, very, very fast, and then he up and died. We were devastated (but also relieved).

It was a while before we could muster up any enthusiasm for getting another dog. But after 5 months of not knowing when he was well off, Her Father started visiting the SPCA websites again, convinced that if he avoided puppies, he could find an older dog whose personality and behaviour would be more readily apparent, easier to assess; a calm dog who would fit into our lives with less disruption and decidedly less carnage.

Which is why we decided to adopt Sylvie, a stray who had been found wandering the streets of Mount Pearl.

Sylvie, aka the Trojan Horse. ©2007ish no plot

She was quiet, she was calm, she was approximately one year old. She was everything we were looking for.

She was also not spayed but they didn't think she was pregnant...

.... ©2007 no plot

HF came back from the vet's in early May to announce that Sylvie was about to become an unwed mother at any minute - any minute turned out to be 9 p.m. that night. I desperately googled birth plans for dogs and was horrified to see that it involved a lot more than hot water and towels.

I looked at Sylvie and wondered how dogs managed to give birth before they could read about it on the internet. I decided to let her get on with it, since she probably knew more about it than I did, but I left the webpage open just in case. She gave birth in this very room not five feet away from the computer. I expect she checked it once or twice when we weren't looking.

The first pup to arrive was named Special by SWDNO who, at 5-almost-6 years old, was given leave to stay up past her bedtime to see the puppies being born. She named the second pup Hearts.  We have no idea if the first two pups were in fact the ones who ended up with those names because it was at least two weeks before we were able to tell them apart. They were all ninja black, or so it appeared at first.

The third puppy arrived after we had convinced SWDNO to go to bed, informing her that Sylvie was done having babies when clearly she wasn't. Four and five arrived sometime in the night after HF used the same ruse on me.

The next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. and jumped out of bed like it was Christmas morning and Santa had finally brought me exactly what I wanted.  Up to this point, I hadn't really felt that connected to Sylvie, particularly since she made it clear from the start that HF was her one true love, but we finally proceeded to bond over our joint love of adorable puppies; all was finally forgiven regarding the birthday lamb chop stolen off my plate one month before.*****

My mother was amazed that I was willing to take on the hassle of caring for puppies, but it wasn't really any more surprising than my willingness to care for SWDNO. It was a bit overwhelming at times but at least Sylvie was more helpful in cleaning up poop than certain other co-parents I could name, even if her method was unexpected and rather disturbing.******

Even though we couldn't tell them apart or even determine their sex (we checked - it seriously could have gone either way), we decided on names for the other three pups; I called one Third of Five. HF named one Jasper and Drama Queen named one Princess.

Puppy pinwheel, ©2007 no plot

As the days passed, it became clear that a) they were all boys but Hearts, Special, and Princess were totally man enough to deal, and b) the pup who we were constantly finding several feet from the puppy pen in the dining room had brown leggings. We decided that this was Third of Five. 

Then one morning we came down to discover The Great Escape in progress.

Great escaping is exhausting, ©2007 no plot.

It then became clear that Third of Five was in reality the reincarnation of Steve McQueen, tasked with reconnoitring the mysterious world outside the prison camp puppy pen to prepare the way for his brothers' ill-fated escape attempt.

Eventually, we noticed that two pups had white toes on their hind feet. They became Hearts and Special. You could only tell them apart by picking them up because Special had two white hearts on his chest and Hearts had only one.*******

The SPCA said they would help us find homes for the pups when they were old enough - they would have taken the whole family back if we wanted but I just laughed in their faces, or I would have if I had been speaking to them, because MY PUPPIES!

HF said we should find homes for all the pups but he was clearly delusional, because MY PUPPIES! I knew we couldn't keep them all, especially when we noticed the size of their paws and realized they were going to be Big Boys!, but giving all of them up was unthinkable. I ended up having to bribe HF by finally agreeing to buy a gas-guzzling SUV, global warming be damned, so we could transport twice as many dogs as we had originally intended.********

I thought choosing which one to keep was going to be hard, but in the end I didn't have to make the choice.  Hearts and SWDNO made the choice for me.

Every time SWDNO entered the puppy pen, she would sit down on a low stool and there would be a mad puppy rush towards her. She would then pick up the one who got to her first; nine times out of ten, that puppy was Hearts. 

Then SWDNO told us we were keeping Hearts so we just agreed.

It broke my heart to give up the others but I have never regretted our choice.

Having two labs seemed to have saved us no end of trouble with inappropriate chewing. Steve McQueen's adoptive mother regaled me with a long list of the things he destroyed, including a cell phone, but Hearts and Sylvie were mostly happy to chew on each other, only occasionally doing the naughty by chewing pencils, pens, tissues, but not much else.

Little girls make excellent chew toys, ©2007 no plot

Also we had to keep the kitchen doors closed or Hearts, aka Jean Valjean, would steal some bread from the-not-so-safe-after-all furthest corner of the counter or raid the garbage can. Then he would sneakily hide around the corner by the patio door to snack on his booty out of sight of the casual passerby. He would never steal anything off the table or counter while you were watching but if you were foolish enough to leave him alone, all bets were off.

Hearts was also a chocoholic, starting with his first Christmas when he found and demolished an entire bag of Laura Secord chocolate balls that had been buried in a bag of Christmas presents. Then there was the time he found the Easy Bake Oven cake mixes that had been stashed in a bedroom closet and he decided to test them out. And the two children I still owe new hoodies after he gnawed a hole in their pockets to get at the tasty sweets inside.  If chocolate had been a controlled substance, Hearts would have had a great career as a sniffer dog at the airport.

For the first year or so, the dogs would stalk us in the mornings, waiting for the first sign of life to start pestering us to give them breakfast. Hearts would stick his big, old nose in your face if you merely cracked an eyelid at him. Because we are expert dog trainers, we eventually cured them of that habit with the simple command "It's not time yet, go lie down!" (patent pending). Rolling over became permissable once more until a more reasonable hour, but once your feet hit the floor, it was "no time to pee, give me my Dentastix!"

We had to walk them every day or there would be wrassling, wrassling that would rearrange the furniture.  Sylvie revealed that she was not exactly as calm as we thought, turning into a psycho-killer every time we ran into another dog when we had her on leash.  All other dogs must die! she'd snarl, also, pickups, vans, and SUVs (irony) because she's a committed environmentalist.

Hearts, on the other hand, loved every dog he ever met. So much so that several times he pulled me off my feet in his eagerness to get to them. He was always so disappointed whenever the other dog refused to be BFFs.  Although why anyone would get nervous about 100 lbs of muscle heading straight for them dragging a middle-aged woman in his wake, I'll never know. 

Once we switched to a Gentle Leader, a leash which went around his nose instead of his thickly impervious neck, I was able to walk him without incurring further road rash.

It was also highly inadvisable to let him know that you had any notion of taking him for a Chinese cooking pot (wok) or an opposite of cow (woc), or make any sudden moves towards the stairs or breathe in his general direction after supper, or it was Hammer Time. Navigating down the multitudinous stairs in a split-level is no easy chore with a wooly mammoth dancing at your heels like he's trying out for Soul Train.

When Hearts felt joy, the very ground trembled.

Fortunately for us, if it wasn't breakfast or walk time, Hearts was the chillest dog I have ever met.  He loved to just hang with the fam; weekend mornings usually found the no plot family gathered in the living room, both dogs sprawled on the floor, Hearts soaking up all the available rays.

A furry sundial, ©2020 no plot

His favourite position was horizontal but this did not mean he would not bestir himself to demand the attention that was his due. Sylvie might lie idly by, waiting for someone to notice her, but Hearts would accost you for love as you lay hove off on the love seat, obediently sitting beside you and smiting you with his mighty paw until you complied. But before too long he would slump to the floor, all the while expecting you to contort yourself to continue with the pats (op cit. Charter of Rights and Freedom).

I'm not sure when SWDNO got the brilliant idea that Hearts would make a good Therapy Dog with St. John Ambulance but when she did, I agreed wholeheartedly. A little halfheartedly, when I realized she was too young to do it and I would have to be his handler. I was all for her working on her social anxiety by talking to absolute strangers but not quite as keen on working on my own.

I like people a whole lot better when I don't have to rack my brains for words and...sentences and...stuff... Whatever. The point is, Hearts was always up for meeting other dogs and being worshipped by humans. In fact he insisted on it.

I decided that since I was always willing to talk to anyone who was willing to admire my dog, I could somehow manage. 

Hearts passed the Therapy Dog test with flying colours. He had no problem with walking into a roomful of dogs and letting them live (unlike Sylvie). He accepted that he couldn't be their BFF, for now, and allowed me to keep him from sniffing their butts (but secretly plotted to do so at his first opportunity). 

Tremendous bangs and crashes from dropped metal objects fazed him not a bit. When the examiner put a blanket over his head and made weird noises at him to simulate unexpected behaviour a dog might encounter, Hearts just stuck his head under the blanket and licked him on the nose.

I love a man in uniform, ©2018 no plot

We started off visiting a nursing home but I quickly learned that parallel parking an enormous canine next to a hospital bed was not easy to do, especially when the dog in question was more keen to give into the lure of gravity when the pats were light and tentative. We started visiting a dementia ward because the women there were ambulatory and more likely to pat hard enough to keep him happy. Even those who weren't interested in patting him would smile delightedly and ask questions, usually the same ones, over and over.

SWDNO's high school and university were a little more to his liking, teenagers and young adults being more likely to worship him on their knees, sometimes 5 and 6 at a time. There was plenty of dog to go around. 

No matter where we ended up, Hearts always got excited when he saw me wearing the St. John's Ambulance t-shirt that meant we were about to go get some pats.

But even when the pats were not up to scratch, I think he still liked to go and just be with people. He had a knack for showing up when I needed him, in any case. Whenever I begrudgingly got around to doing the melon-farming dishes, he was usually there lying on the kitchen floor behind me, giving me moral support.

Helping with dishes and mopping the floor with his tongue which was too big for his mouth anyway, ©2018 no plot

When Hearts turned 13 back in May and Sylvie probably turned 14, I worried he wouldn't be with us much longer. Thirteen has been an unlucky age for too many of my dogs, Jason, Mugsy, Becky, probably Snuffy.

Birthday boy and girl in hand crafted hats by SWDNO. ©2020 no plot

It still didn't make it easier when HF came home from the vet's with the news. Hearts had started to slow down on our walks again - we thought his arthritis was paining him but it was cancer. There wasn't anything to be done that wouldn't put him through needless pain that wasn't likely to do much good anyway.

We hoped for more time but less than a week later, I was standing with him at the end of the driveway, waiting for the mobile vet to come. I had shown him his leash each day since we got the diagnosis; he got excited every time, but each day our walk was a little bit shorter. Today, the driveway was as far as he would go.

Two little blonde girls from two doors over were riding their bikes past us, as they had done many times before, but suddenly, one of them stopped in front of us and hopped off her bike.

"Can I pat your dog?" she asked for the first time ever.

He lay down at my feet and soon there were two blonde heads leaning over him, giving him pats. I don't know why they felt the urge to pat him that day and not any other day they had seen us walking him. It may have been because they had lost their own dog not long before.

Whatever it was, it was some kind of therapy for me to stand there in the warm sun, watching him do the job he was born for one last time. It made us all feel a little better.

He must have pats. All the pats. © no plot, HF, SWDNO

*To tell the truth, the old screen door was shredded by Shadow, the dog we owned before Hearts came into our lives. But since Hearts's favourite way of summoning his staff was to whack the window or door he saw you through with enough force that you feared the glass would shatter, it didn't seem prudent to install the new screen when we got a new patio door

**Note the paws which are almost as big as the head

***absolute lie, see sweet face op cit., photos above, also we are idiots

****or did he? Hmmmmmmmm

*****since she never repeated the offence, she was able to plead her belly and the charges were dropped

******mama dogs eat puppy poop, gross but also extremely efficient

*******Princess had a white "V" on his chest and Jasper was completely black. Since Hearts had two hearts (one inside, one out), that makes him a Time Lord

********Three-times as much dog as it turned out since Hearts fully grown was almost twice as heavy as Sylvie. The vet thought the pups were part Newf, confirmed by a DNA test later on. Sylvie is mostly Labrador; Hearts was a genuine Newfoundland and Labrador.

i'd rather eat johnson, sir

If you live in St. John's, you may have noticed there is a bit of snow around. If you live anywhere in the world you may have just discovered there is a place called St. John's, or rather used to be because it's currently buried under enough snow to prompt Ozymandias to send us a message from beyond saying "welcome to the club."

The irony that Snowmageddon occurred only two weeks into my retirement is not lost on me. I could have had six whole days of fully paid leave without using a single vacation day and without once having to set the alarm just in case, my pyjamas on inside out and backwards, an ice cube flushed down the toilet, spoon under my pillow. If the university ever opens up again, I think I'll put in for the time. 

It's the least they could do - I minds a time when they used to make us show up for work even when classes were cancelled, stay open just long enough for the snowstorm to get itself really organized, and then send us out into the blasting wind without benefit of dogsled or a clear view of the other buildings on campus.

But that was back in the days when blizzards were less motivated; there were plenty of days they'd give up after a few hours, content with giving us a measly hour or two to shovel out before it turned to rain and the snow got too jeezly heavy so forget about that nice little lie in you had banked on the night before, the three worse words to hear the morning after a snowstorm being "update at 11."

A whole week off without once having to play Snowstorm Roulette. Luxury!

Of course this type of snowcation comes at a cost.

It took us three hours, two cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, and one tank of oxygen just to get the snowblower out of the garage...

It took us two days and one case of carbon monoxide poisoning to determine that we couldn't just clear the front tires and drive my car out of this...

Then the snowblower and two shovels broke, leaving us with three hobbit-sized shovels and a snow scoop that was only useful for pushing the snow from one side of the driveway to the other.

Clearly it was time to draw straws to see who we would eat first.

And then it snowed again because God hates us.

We snowblew* and shovelled again, i.e. Her Father fixed the snowblower and then snowblew* and SWDNO shovelled while I, a veritable Sisyphus in snowpants, flailed despairingly at the towering peaks about me as half of each teaspoon of snow I managed to get onto Frodo's spade came sliding back down the precipitous slopes.

The army showed up and dug out an elderly couple who lived across the street.  I somehow restrained myself from mentioning I was recently retired and my arms were tired.

Finally after much labour (them), some labour and needless sooking (me), the driveway was clear to the one cut in the road. Our cars were finally free to not go anywhere at all because the State of Emergency was still on and there was nowhere to go.

Our world shrank down to our house and our neighbourhood. The day after we shovelled out, we walked the dogs around the block in the late afternoon, all the snowblowers and shovellers having retreated inside for the day. The quiet embraced us, no distant traffic sounds, no sirens, no planes overhead. We were where we were. We needed to be nowhere else.

The sun shone in through our front windows, gently warming us but not fooling us into venturing outside where the wind would cut you in two. We read books in the living room, glancing up from time to time to watch the dogs basking in the heat, moving as the patches of window-shaped light crept across the floor. We read more books, we binge watched Netflix, we played boardgames and I trounced all comers because I am the Queen of Sorry, bitches!

This is not really all that different from a normal day in the no plot home, really, except we all got to do it all day, everyday, and not just the retiree. It was like a week of Sundays but before Sundays became like every other day in the week.

It's kind of strange (and just a bit guilt inducing) to keep hearing about a State of Emergency when the power is on, your income doesn't rely on hours logged, the cable and internet work, there's peanut butter in the cupboard, and stacks of unread books as far as the eye can see. It was more like a State of No Plot Nirvana.

But all good things must come to an end, including the world, so before the next storm hits, I'll be stocking up on dragonglass, Valyrian steel, and storm chips.




*that's probably a dirty word but I'm afraid to look it up in the Urban Dictionary. Speaking of dirty words, the title of this post is from Monty Python and I didn't realize it was so dirty until I put it up there all on its own. So thanks to Terry Jones (RIP) et al, here's another post I can't tell my mother about.

she who does not obey

A while back, She Who Does Not Obey expressed a wish that her pseudonym be changed, offended by its accurate description no doubt. I started to consider it, despite my fondness for the name, but in the meantime a friend of mine had read about her on my blog and commented "she's my kind of girl."

I met this particular friend while working on my English degree at university so I immediately knew what she meant.

The Obedient Female is a literary figure that has annoyed and frustrated me for quite some time. The ideal woman in the White Male dominated world of English lit was an angelic figure who did what she was told, passing meekly and compliantly from father to husband. When blessed with decent parents, or at least one parent of that variety, obedience can work out reasonably well for a heroine. But when she is cursed with a greedy, selfish and capricious family, she becomes a doormat, a vulnerable creature in need of assistance and rescue.

I certainly don't want to raise She Who Marries the Jerk Her Family Foisted Upon Her or She Who Forsakes Her True Love Because Her Family Does Not Approve.

And definitely not She Who Sat in the Cinders because she never had the ovaries to demand the respect she deserved and reclaim her rightful place in her own family. If we all waited for some twit to show up with an uncomfortable piece of footwear, where would we be?

Clarissa who has drawn my scorn on this blog before was very much the obedient ideal, passively acquiescing to every demand of her despicable brother except in one thing - she refuses to marry the Jerk Her Family Foists Upon Her. She also refuses to marry the guy who rescues her from her family and then rapes her, even though that would restore her good name. If she hadn't been so insufferable about it all, I could actually admire her.

One day while I was driving SWDNO to school, she saw a woman wearing a burka for the first time in her life. I tried to explain it in as neutral a way as I could, despite my discomfort with the practice, to say it was a cultural thing and that a woman can choose to wear a burka if she wants.

"That's unfair," she said.

At that point I was forced to agree. I have read finely worded arguments from highly educated Muslim women arguing for their right to wear a head scarf or a burka if they choose, but I can't help wondering how much choice is involved when a woman is subject to a strongly patriarchal society and accepts that a man should have the final say over what she does and how she dresses. Works great as long as you don't end up with a crappy family or a violent husband. Or if you should happen to disagree with the person who has power over you.

Meanwhile, my own culture can hardly be highly praised when there are still so many obstacles for the uppity woman to face. She is still apparently doing most of the housework and the childcare even when she is not a stay-at-home mom. She is still not paid as much as a man. She is still subject to misogyny and violence both in abusive homes and in society at large.

She has never been the President of the United States and has only managed to be Prime Minister of Canada for 30 seconds or so.

I want my girl to grow up to be a strong, independent young woman who will make a way for herself in this world whether she finds her handsome prince or not.

Philosophically, I am as anti-obedience as the rest of my oppressed sisters, but as a mother I can't help wishing from time to time that my little proto-feminist would just once put her damn shoes on the first time I ask.

But she knows how to say "No!" and mean it. That is progress.

bimonthly?

Can someone tell me where March went?

I actually had a post percolating in my head all last month but somehow it never found the way to the great egress.

But at least I can say I posted in April.

And just so I can say there was actual content in this post, here's a quick story:

She Who Does Not Obey was telling me about a nightmare she had the other night. We were at a funeral for three women (?) and suddenly everyone started turning into Evil Lobsters!

Even Her Father and me.

I started to smile despite myself, because Evil Lobsters! How cool is that?

She started to smile too. I didn't want her to think I didn't get that her dream was still scary despite the presence of diabolical crustaceans, pointing out that laughing at a scary dream was the best way to deal with it.

"If you have the dream again, you could throw hot water at them," I suggested.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Mom, they were already cooked."

Oh.

wmd

A while back, She Who Does Not Obey got a snow day but I did not. The school board gets very trigger-happy sometimes, closing the schools at the least suggestion of bad weather. My work is less easily panicked, unfortunately.

I usually go with taking her to my work's daycare which is open as long as work's open, but this time I decided to see what her two friends down the street were up to. To SWDNO's delight, friends' mom was more than willing to take her on as there was already one other girl from up the street coming by and even numbers are always better in those situation.

Normally getting SWDNO out of the house on such a day is like trying to pry a lid off a reluctant pickle jar, but this was the perfect carrot. She is always ready to run down the street whenever the chance arises.

After I told her the good news, we were both hurrying to get ready for a change when the phone rang and friend's mom spoke to Her Father, asking if we might have a bit of peanut butter we could spare. It seems they had gotten themselves an unwanted boarder and needed to serve an eviction notice.

SWDNO was overjoyed with the notion of a mouse in the house and tickled at the idea of peanut butter being a mouse's favourite food.

Until it suddenly occurred to her that the peanut butter was going to be used lure the mouse to his doom. It was ammunition for a weapon of mouse destruction!

All of sudden, her moral campass kicked in and she became a conscientious objector - a conscientious objector who decided to hide in her bed and refused to put any more clothes on.

I did my best to rationalize the mouse's death sentence with tales of mouse poop and general untidiness, but could make no headway, all while the clock ticked away inexorably toward 9 a.m. Why couldn't they just trap the mouse? she asked and I could think of no other reason than that people usually went for the cheapest and easiest method of mouse disposal, a philosophical position that she would hardly find defensible in her current state of mind.

Fortunately for me, she hit upon a scheme which many had tried before her - she would just have to build a better mousetrap. She hunted around (clock still ticking!) until she found a shoe box and after some consideration, she demonstrated some methods by which she would lie in wait for the mouse with peanut butter on the lid, and then quickly slam the box down, trapping him as easy as can be.

I quickly agreed that this was an excellent plan -what with mice being so slow and easily fooled -and hustled her out the door.

As it happened, all the trouble was for naught - friends' mom was going to use a humane trap after all. Mickey would be caught and released into the wild to continue his unsanitary marauding somewhere else (or make his way back to their hospitable home once again).

I should have known friend's mom would have planned to use such a trap. One time, she made a foolhardy comment about actually liking our unruly dogs and being quite willing to adopt them should the need ever arise. Lucky for her, Her Father wasn't there to immediately take her up on such a unwise offer.

As for the mouse, he managed to elude capture on that day, despite the ingenious deployment of shoe boxes and other trapping devices. His fate is still a mystery to me.

But if he ever makes his way up to this end of the street, I have a feeling we will soon be the proud owners a yet another pesky pet.

i can haz blog post

When I started this blog I had visions of posting several times a week, encouraged by my favourite blogs which I checked every day - even when I knew the blogger was more sporadic than that.

These plans were quickly downsized to dreams of a weekly post, followed by bi-weekly plans and then monthly.

That was clearly an unreachable goal as well (see December posts, lack thereof).

I shall blame Her Father and his insistance that we trek into the wilds of New Brunswick last week to visit his family instead of staying home and lying idly around on soft cushions, hove off like oriental potentates and stuffing ourselves with Hershey's Kisses. I still have two unopened bags of the things - by this time in the Christmas season, Her Father and I are usually scrounging under sofa cushions for any strays that might have eluded our cavernous maws.

I did start a blog post in a hotel room in Halifax, but sadly there was no time to lollygag around and finish the damn thing. There was breakfast to be bought and the hotel dog to pat. BTW, if you're ever in Halifax and missing your favourite pooch, I would recommend the Best Western Chocolate Lake as a reasonably priced way to assuage your craving for dog-petting. That's Coco the Chocolate Lab in the masthead and she was a real sweetie.

She Who Does Not Obey gives it four stars.

I do love going to Halifax where I also got to see my sister TR and her husband where we can also revel in wild cat abandon as well. My sister is a Cat Person and has just upgraded once again to a three-cat family with the arrival of two cute little fuzzballs named Sonny and Ben. I would enthrall you with Cute Kitteh Photos at this point if I hadn't misplaced my digital camera the day before our trip and not realized this fact until two minutes before the arrival of our ride to the airport.

There were 27 photos on the disposible camera I bought at Shoppers the first day of our arrival. I believe that SWDNO and a few other humans may have managed to get into some of them, but I doubt that they were ever without feline companionship. I'm sure the photos will all turn out something like this, with which you can amuse yourself until I get around to bringing the camera in to be processed.

New Brunswick was nice too, but I could have done without the snow covered drive back to almost-Halifax, watching vans doing pirouettes in the lanes ahead. We intended to go all the way back to Halifax that day but bailed at the airport hotels.

It was probably the most restful part of the whole trip and involved a lot of sitting around and reading an entire newspaper from end to end - which I haven't done in about 8.5 years - while occasionally looking out the window at a storm that I was extremely glad I was no longer in the midst of.

So now I am back home and actually finding the time to post while patting a slightly different shade of lab.

I shall endeavor not to turn it an annual event.

not gone, just probably forgotten

So, hello there. How've you been? Good, good. Having managed to drag yourself from your sick bed to read this, I'm glad to hear you're still alive although possibly not well.

I have been gone, lo these many days, not because of illness, unless it was African sleeping sickness. It would appear I slept October completely away.

But lest you think I was completely slothful last month, I spent a good deal of my waking hours trying to acquire a costume for She Who Does Not Obey who had decided to be a black cat this year.

Last year I helped my mother make SWDNO a Jasmine costume, which took several weeks to do, what with the trip to the fabric store scrounging for just the right shade of aqua silk amongst the fabric ends, the cutting of many oddly-shaped pieces, and the tricky sewing. My mother did all the tricky sewing, however. I did manage to jerry-rig a matching costume for SWDNO's Webkinz chihuahua, Ruffer, though.

Unfortunately, the Jasmine pattern came with an Ariel pattern as well, so SWDNO had declared that she was going to be Ariel next. I felt guilty that my mother had done the lion's share of the work, so I was determined to do more of the work on Ariel even though I had no idea when I would find the time. Ruffer was sure to demand her matching outfit as well.

So when SWDNO declared at the end of September that Ariel's services were no longer required, I was delighted. Black cat was going to be a slam dunk. Black clothes we've got, all we needed were some pointy ears and a tail.

That of course was before the two of us spent three weekends at three different stores trying to find said items. And when we couldn't find what we came for, she still managed to talk me into spending ridiculous amounts of money on spooky Halloween props for a "Tunnel of Doom" she wanted to set up in our foyer - only to have the Tunnel cancelled because several of the things we bought gave her the willies.

Our third store was sure to be the charm, I thought, given that it's the most popular one in town for cheap costumes. Still we were forced to wander aimlessly through the store for ages, like zombies in a vegetable patch, unable to uncover a single feline accessory until we devoured, I mean, engaged the help of a staff member who actually worked in the Halloween section.

Then, when we got it home, the dog ate the cat costume.

Finally we arrived on the all-sainted day, new costume purchased albeit briefly misplaced, only to have a new concern on the horizon. One of her friends down the street had come down with the H1N1 virus.

Everyone in town had been in a mad panic to get the vaccination the day before Halloween after those two kids died up in Ontario, causing the provincial government to crack down and enforce restrictions on who was to be vaccinated. My kid was too damn healthy and too damn old, at the tender age of eight, so she was out of luck.

The news agencies reported that people were considering not going out this year, trying to limit contact with possible sources of contagion, aka candy givers. Most of my acquaintances reported a reduction in the number of kids who came to their doors.

We went trick-or-treating despite it all and survived the experience - even while accompanied by the younger sister of her afflicted friend.

Now we are waiting for our turn at vaccination to come, attempting to fortify ourselves with the large candy stash SWDNO has hidden away in a Secret Box in her bedroom - the location of which is no secret to anyone, the dog included.

Half my choir is missing in action this week, which wasn't that disturbing until today when some of the previously absent reappeared, coughing vigourously throughout the session.

I had the urge to shout "Stop spraying your filthy germs on me you plague-infested swine!" but somehow managed to restrain myself.

Not that I'm getting paranoid or anything.

Still if you would kindly coat yourself in Purell before your next visit, it would be greatly appreciated.

down on the labrador

Looking back at it now, I would say that Her Father married me under false pretenses.

When I met him 14 years ago, one of the things that convinced me that he was a nice guy was the fact that he had a dog, a beautiful blonde collie-cross named Becky.

Becky was one of the nicest dogs I have ever met. She had the sweetest disposition, gentle and calm, and to top it off was incredibly obedient. You could let her off-leash on any trail and she always came running with her tail wagging when you called her back. She was welcome at all of our friend's houses at any time because she could always be counted on to behave.

She absolutely adored Her Father, to the point that she would follow him to the bathroom when we were visiting anywhere and whine outside the door.

Since she was such an outstanding canine, I guess I took it for granted that Her Father had great judgment and taste when it came to choosing dogs, not to mention some mad training skillz.

I really should have considered the implications of how she came into his life a little more closely, however.

Her Father had gone to the SPCA to pick out a dog, still unsure whether he really wanted to take on the responsibility. After looking at all the dogs, he decided on a black dog but still couldn't commit so he went away to have a coffee and think about it some more.

When he got back, having decided to go for it, the black dog had already been adopted so he chose Becky instead. It was an incredible stroke of luck that we all appreciated for the next 13 years.

When Becky was 14, she died. We spent far too much on an operation that gave her only six extra weeks, but although it gave us some time to prepare She Who Does Not Obey for the inevitable, we were all devastated when it happened.

It wasn't long before Her Father started thinking about getting another dog, but instead of looking at blondes, he returned to his original plans of getting a black dog.

Two months later, he received an email from a friend in Labrador offering him a black labrador-cross puppy, by name of Shadow. Her Father had been to Labrador for work during that time and had coveted many stray puppies he'd seen down there*, so we decided it was a sign that Shadow was meant for us.

Shadow was a sweet dog and a pretty dog too. But he was what they call in the dog training trade "batshit crazy."

He was all go all the time, ready to play with whatever came to mouth, chewing every toy he could find including many of those belonging to She Who Does Not Obey, who was only 4-years old at the time. Many tears were shed, hers over favourite playthings, mine in frustration at trying to explain yet another senseless stuffed toy death.

We tried to keep him in dog toys, but he destroyed every one, pieces of rubber balls and chewtoys decorating the poop we picked up after him. The only toy he couldn't manage to decimate was a Kong.

He also had a great fondness for footwear, especially Her Father's slippers which had to be replaced every other week. He chewed great chunks out of my winter boots and ate the entire leather upper of my walking sandals, leaving behind only the rubber sole. We had to hide our shoes behind a folding door which he was quite capable of opening with a nudge of his nose. We were constantly thinking up new ways to wedge the door shut as he figured out how to get around all our defenses.

We were forced to buy him a kennel for him to sleep in at night and stay in while we were gone because he could get bored at any time or the day or night and something had to pay for that.

When he wasn't laying waste to our footwear and toys, he was trying to hoist his 70 pounds into Her Father's lap trying to get him to play with him. If he came to me, he would nudge me for attention but if I made the mistake of patting him, he would be all over me demanding I play with him as well. He didn't have an off switch.

Walks were more like drags, with him pulling us around the block. One winter's day, he pulled extra hard while I was on a patch of ice on a hill and I fell backwards, smacking my head on the pavement.

Unfortunately we were low energy owners with a high energy dog and we were tearing our hair out trying to deal with him. Our dog trainer looked at us with disdain for our lack of enthusiasm for what was required to give our dog the time and attention he needed/demanded if we wished to keep any of the consumer goods we dared to bring into the house.

This went on for a year until one November day, suddenly, Shadow got sick. He wouldn't eat, he could hardly stand. We rushed him to the vet and found out he had low hemoglobin. Steroids and a transfusion provided no help, so we were forced to make a terrible decision.

We stood by his side, Her Father and I, as he breathed his last. It broke our hearts all over again. As much as we despaired of ever turning him into a well-behaved dog, it turned out we loved the troublemaking mutt.

We decided to take a break at that point, no more dogs until after our long-planned spring trip to Disney World.

But had Her Father learned his lesson about the dangers of brunettes (BTW guess what colour my hair is)? The answer to that question will have to wait for another post.

*In Newfoundland, you go "down north" to Labrador, hence the expression "down on the labrador" meaning to be there.

undead update

She Who Does Not Obey announced the other day that she is totally over the zombie thing.

She demonstrated her resolve by walking unconcerned into a graveyard in Trinity and looking with some interest at a bunch of really old gravestones.

There is a new fear on the horizon, however.

The new Number One Threat? Bears.

No, she hasn't joined the Colbert Nation, she just spent some time in Terra Nova National Park where the bears make free with the local garbage dumps and occasionally visit the camp sites.

Not that we actually saw a single bear while we were there. But her cousin Destructo counted 16 bears at the dump, although he said there were actually 20 there (the new math?)

At least I am not responsible for the bears in her head.

Also, she's not too keen on the spiders who enjoy hanging out in blueberry patches.

whistling past the graveyard

Her Father was not very impressed with my decision to allow our daughter to watch the dreaded Michael Jackson video, dismissing my argument that she had chosen to watch even though she had been warned against it. He was especially not impressed two weeks ago when She Who Does Not Obey requested that we take a different route to soccer.

Unfortunately, the most direct route goes right past a graveyard.

The zombies had been beaten back, but were regrouping and making yet another assault.

We recommended that she close her eyes until we were past and afterwards attempted a rerouting but found it impractical. This became particularly clear when we drove down to our cabin the following weekend and she discovered two cemeteries on our route, one of which is right at the beginning of the dirt road leading to the cabin itself.

I had long ceased to see these cemeteries, but they lunged right out at her at every turn.

I tried to think of things she could do to make her feel safe again so I thought back to my own first defenses.

My first memorable childhood monsters were formed through an act of willfulness as well. We were at a screening of The Jungle Book and my big sister warned me not to watch the trailers at the beginning. I ignored her of course, my curiosity piqued beyond any sense of self preservation.

I have no idea what the movies were called, but one was about man with no face, or more acurately a man with the shape of a face but no eyes or orifices to speak of. I can still see scenes from it in my mind to this day.

The other movie was about trees that for some inexplicable reason turned into monsters as soon as it got dark.

There was no possible way to avoid trees no matter how circuitous a route I planned, so I remember many times going home in the dark, walking a tightrope at the farthest edge of the sidewalk, trying to stay out of the reach of the saplings on the neighbourhood lawns. If our neighbours had sprung for more imposing trees, who knows how I would have ever gotten home.

But at night in bed, I built my defenses based on what I had seen in the trailer. A man had been badly hurt by the trees and I noticed that he was bleeding out of the right side of his mouth, a large white bandage wrapped around his stomach.

Therefore as long as I slept on my stomach with the right side of my face touching my pillow, I would obviously be safe.

I also pulled the blanket tight up under my chin to protect against the vampires I noted in a coming attraction poster in the theatre lobby on the way out (didn't I mention already that I am a wuss?). The faceless men, monster trees, and vampires could never get past my defenses, perhaps meeting each other below my window and warning latecomers off with a defeated shake of the head.

How I thought these things would keep me safe, I don't know, but I believed in them so strongly that I was able to go to sleep at night despite all the monsters lying in wait for me. I believed in them because I needed to believe in them.

It occurs to me now that most of the defenses against the dark arts are just as ridiculous. Were my little rituals really any different from garlic, crosses, holy water? Circles in the sand. Salt at the door.

The common thread with all these protections is belief. If we can convince ourselves that a blanket tucked under the chin will keep us safe, then we are safe.

For every imaginary monster that preys on our minds, we create the corresponding silver bullet.
But since the only way to defeat zombies in the movies involves a lot of head bashing and decapitation, I found myself at a loss to find a talisman that would work for She Who Does Not Obey. She is not very handy with a baseball bat, she can't always be on the 2nd or 3rd floor, and there will always be another graveyard to pass.

So I have tried to arm her now with the most powerful weapon I could find - a true story.

But the truth is a slow acting agent when dealing with creatures of imagination; we need practice to make it strong enough to fight the monsters on their own ground.

The other day as we drove to the cabin I told SWDNO about how I had fought off a terrible fear of my own and how I did it with a simple little chant, "Planes like turbulence." It was a comforting tidbit I had found on a fear of flying website and I latched on to it like a cricket bat at a zombie banquet. The fear didn't vanish overnight (more like over several years), but every time we hit turbulence, I'd close my eyes and repeat those words to myself until I finally started to believe them.

Maybe it would work for her too. All she had to do was say these words to herself as we passed the cemetery, "There's no such thing as zombies. There's no such thing as zombies."

I wasn't sure if she had tried it when we passed the first one, but by the time we got to the second one, she cried out, "It's working already!"

She is obviously a much quicker study than her mother.

So now we can drive past graveyards again, but the zombie alert status is still in flux. At least it hasn't returned to critical levels. For now, we will keep surrounding ourselves with circles made of words that will someday be true.

subject

While I was tweaking my last post for publication the other day I had a sudden crisis of conscience. I knew She Who Does Not Obey was embarrassed about her zombiephobia and didn't want anyone to know about it. She wouldn't even let me tell her camp counselor to take the proper precautions, i.e. locate the nearest weapons cache and practice bashing heads with them.

Although I am maintaining a secret identity, so that I might fight internet crime more effectively, the only readers I have know who I am (that is as far as I know - does anyone know how to install a site meter?).

Ny niece Drama Queen knows I have a blog and I knew she had probably read at least one post. SWDNO was going to hear about it if I didn't tell her first.

As good as the story was, it was not a story wholly my own. I had only partial ownership.

And if that wasn't enough, I also knew what it was like to be the subject of someone else's tale.

My father was a newspaper columnist who wrote about the outdoors, but from time to time, he peopled his column with characters who he claimed to be his actual family. We shared the same names and birth order, but there were times when we found it difficult to recognize ourselves.

Once we hit puberty, it became especially embarrassing to face our friends the morning after the column appeared. My sister TR gained the horrifying (to her) nickname of "Nature Girl" after one such column declared her absolute devotion to the great outdoors, although my father was apparently the only one who had observed said devotion.

Our avatars were often called upon to express a childlike wonder at some aspect of nature according to the demands of the topic of the day. I expect we actually did say such things once upon a time, but as teenagers we would rather eat dirt than make such uncool utterings.

As for me, it seemed that he saw me as a pig-tailed innocent and not the badass teen I truly was. But since my badassery consisted solely of watching my friends smoke, and watching my friends drink, and learning to identify the sickly sweet scent of a joint without ever trying one myself, he probably had me down better than I was willing to admit at the time.

However, to my dying day I will always deny ever having said "The plot thickens."

A girl has to maintain some dignity, after all.

But whether I agreed or disagreed with how I was portrayed, my father was a writer and his topic was his life. My four siblings and I were inextricably part of his life and so many of his experiences of the outdoors. There was no way for him to take us out of his writing without leaving out something that he felt was important and true.

He had his share of hunting and fishing trips with the boys, but I think that he spent far more time taking his children out into the wilds of Newfoundland and sharing his love of this wonderful island with us. We spent most of our summers travelling around the island, first sleeping in a tent when our baby snowsuits served as sleeping bags, then later in a trailer that somehow managed to sleep seven.

When I was ten or so, my parents sold our trailer and built a cabin just a short 20 minute drive from our home, but to this day it still feels like you are as far removed from the city as anyone could wish. We spent all our summers there from that point on, my father loved it so. And despite our adolescent posing to the contrary, we loved it too. We still love it and still share it.

Given all of that, I can see no way for him to remove us from his story when he took such trouble to make us a part of it.

But he must have made some decisions about what he would and wouldn't write, some boundaries he wouldn't cross.

While I was writing my zombie post, I felt like I was dangerously close to a boundary I shouldn't cross at least not without a letter of transit.

This was brought home to me quite obviously while I was editing my work. She was hanging off of me, clambering over the couch I was on, sitting on my shoulders as I typed. She could hardly fail to catch the occasional word on my screen.

It was then that I confessed all, allowing her to read selected passages, but not all - there being certain details of zombie behaviour I wished to convey to you but not share with her. When fighting off the undead, discretion can be the better part of valour.

In the end, I got her blessing, her desire to be an internet celebrity outweighing her self-consciousness I guess.

So I expect you will see She Who Does Not Obey appearing on these pages for some time to come, but I will try to weigh my need to tell a tale against her need to protect her own story as she sees fit.

She is so much a part of me, that I'm afraid I cannot tell you about me without telling you about her. It's the price you pay for proximity.

i blame michael jackson

Last night, She Who Does Not Obey told me she couldn’t go to sleep because she was afraid of zombies. (Freakin' zombies!)

In the end it turned out she could. It was later than I had been hoping for but that is often the case for many non-zombie related reasons I shall not go into at this time.

She had hinted at a zombie-phobia before, but it had never really caused a problem.

Then, this morning, she was shuffling slowly along, getting ready for summer camp, when a horrified cry rang out from the bathroom. I raced to her side, after putting the last few items into her lunchbag, picking up a dirty sock, and hiding the toast scraps from the rampaging black labs.

It was a Catastrophe of Monumental Proportions!

She had accidentally scraped something off her teeth with her fingers right after wiping herself but before washing her hands!

She was unclear as to where the something went after she got it off her teeth. She had immediately washed her hands and then brushed her teeth, but she had still PUT HER FINGERS IN HER MOUTH WITHOUT WASHING HER HANDS AND DIDN’T KNOW WHERE THE SOMETHING WENT. She may have swallowed it!

I told her that this was okay and that a one-time failure in the bathroom hygiene department wasn’t going to make her sick/kill her/turn her into a zombie (I don't believe I actually mentioned zombies at this point). But she refused to listen to my logic and positively refused to shuffle along any further.

Then she suddenly developed a bad belly as she is wont to do. So I called her bluff and called Grandma to look after her (Grandma, alas, was not available). She positively refused to go to Grandma's anyway.

Then she finally revealed to me that the problem was actually three-pronged.

First it was the NOT WASHING HER HANDS thing.

Then it was her Slight Belly Ache.

Third and most important of all was the T-Word!
(which is our current code for the Michael Jackson Thriller video)

Curse you Michael Jackson!

It’s all his fault really.

If only SWDNO's dance school had not presciently decided to do a medley of MJ songs at the year-end recital, including Thriller and zombie dancers who recreated moves from the video. Then Drama Queen (SWDNO's 11-year-old cousin) wouldn't have seen it and been intrigued, prompting me to tell her about the video.

Drama Queen wanted to watch the video but she didn’t want to watch it alone - she tried once but couldn't make it all the way through. Her 8-year-old brother Destructo and SWDNO were curious as well and refused to leave the room for the viewing.

It was then I lost my mind, thinking it would be okay because I remembered the video as being really funny. I had completely forgotten about how it’s really not so funny until the zombies start to dance. Plus I forgot that 8-year olds have a very underdeveloped sense of black humour at least where horror movies are concerned.

SWDNO claimed it was okay and I thought I had dodged a bullet. In any case, I didn’t hear any more about it until last week when Michael Jackson decided to up and die on me. His sense of black humour was apparently quite developed.

When that happened, it seemed to have unleashed a zombie horde into the world at large. She could not go to camp because she was afraid of the them.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but she wasn’t buying it.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but if they did exist they only come out at night, but she insisted they come out in the day. I felt bad about that because that is in fact a lie – zombies do not have a problem with daylight.

(She is now very suspicious about the nocturnal habits of werewolves as well)

I told her that zombies are very stupid and slow and that if the idiots in Shaun of the Dead can defeat them, anyone can. I did not mention that the majority of the cast of Shaun of the Dead end up dead or zombies or dead zombies.

I described the scene where Shaun and his friend Ed go through Shaun's record collection and have oodles of time to debate the merits of various albums before deciding which ones to throw at the advancing zombies. She thought that was funny.

After she had determined that there were still things to laugh at in this zombie-plagued world, I was finally able to convince her to go down the stairs, put on her sandals, pick up her cricket bat and start beating her way to the car.

I was 45-minutes late for work.

rabbit

When I was a child, my family had a tradition.

On the first day of every month, we each had to say the word "rabbit" as soon as we awoke and realized the date.

"Rabbit!" mommy no plot would call out and five little no plots eagerly sang out "Rabbit" in reply.

To me, it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but as I got out into the world and learned its many ways and customs, I found that the no plots were the only family I could find who indulged in this behaviour.

And everyone I told about it thought it a little on the strange side. No one had ever heard of such a thing.

I began to think my father had invented this tradition, along with tales of the Headless Axeman of Middle Three Island Pond and various other stories of questionable provenance.

In time, I learned to live with the family eccentricity and even embraced the tradition. I felt that more people should celebrate all things Leporidae on a monthly basis.

I cried "Rabbit!" to all my friends as each first day came and they replied in kind, but only when I insisted.

The Rabbit Revolution made little headway. It failed to spread with the alacrity I had envisioned.

Then one day, I met with resistance. My friend who didn't know... refused to say the R-word or any of its many synonyms, despite my repeated attempts to recruit her into the movement. As time passed and my frustration with her position grew, I stooped to trickery, asking leading questions whose answers naturally led down a rabbit hole and posting bunny display pictures on my msn to pry that word past her lips.

To my knowledge, she has not let the rabbit out of the hat on the first day of any month for the past 20 years.

Some years ago, I read an item in a university newspaper in which a folklore professor spoke of the practice as a means of bringing luck, but it had become very obscure.

Then I discovered one first day that one of my favourite bloggers, jonny b of private secret diary fame, was a fellow Leperidoptrist. But I could not be sure he was passing this tradition on to his child or if he would have enough children to ensure its survival (sadly the Toddler (aka Servalan) is an only child.)

In desperation, I fixed on a new plan - I myself would have to marry and produce offspring so that Leperidoptry would not die with me. New generations would keep this tradition alive.

Fortunately, my husband has been true to his wedding vows and can always be counted on to give the correct response to my cry.

But lately, She Who Does Not Obey has been forming her own resistance movement. My rabbity cries are more often met with silence and rebellion.

This morning, I said "Rabbit." She needed a bit of prompting but finally said "Ra-" raising my hopes skyward.

Then she smirked and followed with a "-bish" of defiance.

Rabish.

Alas, I am too old to produce more obedient children so I fear this tradition is doomed to extinction.

father knows best

Eight years ago yesterday, She Who Does Not Obey came into this world, refusing to use the usual exit I might add. She was a breech baby and, having determined early on which way was up, wasn't about to change her position on the matter.

I was three weeks from my due date and when my doctor heard the result of my latest ultrasound, she sent me off to hospital to spend my last few weeks within arms reach of medical attention in case She Who Does Not Obey decided to send an exploratory limb out into the world first.

Her Father decided this would be a perfect opportunity for him to kick into action and make the final preparations for SWDNO's arrival. He went home that first night full of plans and schemes.

About 3:30 that morning, I called him up and told him he was out of time. That bit of gas that woke me in the middle of the night turned out to be minor contractions and the doctor was recommending a C-section.

Her Father was dismayed and complained of losing his three weeks, but She Who Does Not Obey is also She Who Will Not Be Denied and just over two hours later - 5:46 a.m. on a Midsummer's Eve - I saw her for the first time in Her Father's arms.

I was still splayed out on the operating table, shivering and puking from the spinal and generally feeling miserable, so she was briefly placed on my chest and then given to Her Father. He got to hold her first while I admired her from afar.

He also hogged her for ages afterwards while I tried to get warm again under the heated blankets. Anaethesia turns me into a popsicle.

It wasn't the first time I had seen him hold a child of ours. Just over a year before, I had seen him hold our son. Our stillborn son. Our son who never had a chance to find out what an incredible father he had.

I can't tell you what it meant to him to be holding our precious daughter after losing our son, but I can tell you how amazing it was to see the two of them together and hear her grunting away in his arms.*

Eight years later, it is still amazing to watch him with her, watch him make her laugh, watch them butt heads, watch her snuggle in to him on a Saturday morning while she watches cartoons and he tries to snooze just a little bit longer.

He packs her school lunch bag every day, he makes her favourite food even when he doesn't particularly feel like it. They carve Halloween pumpkins together and bake muffins and the odd birthday cake. He buys her yet more Webkinz against his better judgment.

He gives her his time, which is the most precious thing anyone can give.

SWDNO's birthday has a way of shagging up Father's Day celebrations and he is not fond of the sloppy sentiment of a Hallmark card, so each year I find myself wondering how I can make this day special for him.

I know I couldn't have gotten this far without him.

I hope this will show him how much I appreciate that he is Her Father.

She is a very lucky girl.

*C-section babies often have fluid in their lungs which is normally ejected during the normal birth process. The fluid causes them to grunt. The cure is pissing them off enough to have a good bawl.

15, er, 5 books i read last

Many people (or perhaps it's just one, I forget) felt a bit intimidated by my 15 books.

Actually it kind of scared me too.

A lot of the books are from my university days and since I did an MA in English, they are not surprisingly Classics with a capital Cluh. But I was forced to read those really, so it hardly does me that much credit.

Before I hit university, I led a sad and wasted youth, reading mystery novels and well, mystery novels. When I suddenly had to read Literature which required me to have a background in Classics written in dead languages or English old enough to be on life support, I was at a loss.

But even with my limited pre-education, I was able to appreciate the books on my list because they were the fun ones. The ones that did not require quite so much erudition, but simply required a sense of humour and a delight in finding that humour in a surprising turn of phrase or a ridiculous character described with masterstrokes.*

After university, you will be relieved to hear that I returned to a life of dissipation, only occasionally raising myself from my indolence to read another classic for the cheap thrills of impressing/depressing my friends.

I herewith give you the last, um, however many books I have read (that I can remember):

1. Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence
(ok, this is scholarly, but really an easy read and it inspired me to actually start my blog already - also interesting tidbits about who inspired Elizabeth Bennett and who was actually like Mr. Darcy, etc.)

2. Hero Worship by Dawn Calvert
(this is a trashy romance I bought sight unseen because the plot reminded me of the miniseries Lost in Austen, until I actually read it - it's not horrible, but it annoyed me after awhile and THERE WAS NO SEX)**

3. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
(funny and trashy although a little hard to warm up to at first)

4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
(obligatory classic which took me ages to read, although there are some hilarious characters - I actually took this to Cuba as a Beach Read because I am a bit tetched)

5. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
(this is a true crime book set in the 1860s about a gifted detective who inspired a lot of writers, including Dickens, to create detectives based on him - inspiring me to read Bleak House for an example)

6. ????? Lord, do you know how long it takes me to read a whole book what with She Who Does Not Obey and my pesky job and my husband who thinks I should turn off the light already and my inability to stay awake for 10 minutes all together? Plus TV isn't going to watch itself after all. Number 6 was last year sometime and my brain seems to have misplaced the cell with that information.

Stupid brain.

*Please note CLARISSA IS NOT ONE OF THE FUN ONES!!!!!! However, if you've never tried Tom Jones, it really is funny and very accessible. That may have been compared to the incomprehensible ones I was trying to plow through in my postmodern course, however. If you like Tom Jones, you should also like The Sotweed Factor which is a postmodern novel in a similar style and also hilarious.
**find some way to watch Lost in Austin instead of reading this book.