sing low

I did something very unexpected and impulsive last week.

I joined a choir.

I am just that kind of a wild and crazy girl.

I haven't sung in a choir since high school, or was it junior high?

I don't remember high school singing, but I do remember being in Glee Club in junior high - sadly not in the least bit like the new tv show. I really liked being in the Glee Club, but there was one thing I could never come to terms with.

Mrs. Dawson made me sing alto.

I didn't like singing alto. Altos are the third class citizens of the all-girl choir, let me tell you.

Altos sing the same note over and over and over until suddenly they don't and where that next note is supposed to be was usually beyond me. I couldn't seem to anticipate it.

I absolutely love to sing but hated the struggle to figure out just what notes I was supposed to be singing. I have a pretty good memory for songs I like, for anything with a good hook, but we were usually given a few cursory runs through the alto line and then left to fend for ourselves while the sopranos and 2nd sopranos got to breeze through the melody lines.

The fun parts. The parts that made the songs so memorable. The parts that made you want to sing the songs in the first place.

When I was in the 9th grade, our school staged Oliver, one of my favourite musicals. So many of those songs are wonderfully singable - although some of the lyrics (Consider Yourself, Food Glorious Food, I'd Do Anything) are practically impossible to remember if you are a lazy 14-year-old trying to coast by on the memories of other 14-year-olds who were hoping you were going to memorize it.

On the other hand, if called upon, I could belt out every verse of Who Will Buy, including the introductory bits sung by the chorus. It is a lovely song with sopranos offering "ripe strawberries ripe" and 2nd sopranos plaintively calling for someone to "buy my sweet red roses". I could totally hit those notes too, but instead I was called upon to offer "knives, knives to grind" hitting mournful notes that still grind on my nerves.

I suppose the part is actually for bass voices, but while we had many boys in the production, we were in junior high after all - very few testicles had dropped sufficiently at that point to produce sounds low enough. The altos were probably the only ones man enough to do it.

To make matters worse, we had to come in a half beat behind everyone else, on an obscure note that none of us could recognize if it had jumped up and grabbed us by our non-existant balls. Our Nancy, the female lead, was recruited to bring us in somewhere in the approximate vicinity of the correct time.

If all these sour grapes lead you to believe that the part I really wanted to sing was that of the female lead, then you would be right. I did want that part and I tried out for it, but I was no match for the girl who rightfully got the lead. She had a strong, beautiful, mature voice with a terrific range that I never could have matched. She did us proud.

I think that I am a pretty good singer but my difficulties with singing alto convinced me that I was inappropriately placed. I was convinced that my music teacher had never listened to my voice long enough to know what I should be singing.

So when the opportunity to join this choir came along the other day, with the offer of placing you in a section based on a quick check of your range, I jumped at the chance.

I went to the class and eagerly stepped up for my turn to sing my scales.

So the guy listens to me strain for the highest notes and then comfortably sing the low and he pronounces my sentence: Alto 2.

In horror, I begged and was granted the small mercy of Alto 1, but my dreams of singing the goddamn tune already were finally and irrevocably dashed. My voice has betrayed me.

So now I am trying to make the best of it, dusting off my sight-reading skills (almost non-existant), and listening really hard to the ladies sitting around me who apparently know what the hell they are doing.

The first song we are singing is an excerpt from a larger piece. I don't know what it is called, the only thing identifying it is the handwritten word "Pink". I think this might be the composer, although I'm pretty sure it's not this Pink what with it being in Latin and all.

After a few classes, I was starting to think I'd never get anywhere, my memory of the chorus consisting of this:

Gloria in excelsis deo / something something SOMEthing /
some somethingy thing / thingy voluntatis

Also that there was something in there about a minibus.

But then by the fourth class, I suddenly had that, all two lines of it. I felt proud of myself for about two minutes until we got started on the verses and I quickly got in over my head again. By verse 3, we were singing about Chakotay in something or other. I'm still not sure how the tune goes, losing my place on the sheet music quite easily, so I continue to listen hard and try to fake the tougher bits until I have heard it sung correctly enough by my better trained compadres to follow suit.

I will try not to be discouraged. It helps that today the instructor mentioned that composers were not very imaginative when it came to writing alto parts and that they were hard to sing. So I guess it's not just me, then.

I am enjoying it at least even if I still feel the need to mutter under my breath from time to time.

I will go on singing about Chakotay on a minibus at least until the Christmas concert and then we shall see.

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.

the labs are revolting

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but in my defense it's not as bad as it looks. My last post was actually posted on August 2nd, not July 26th. I think that's when I started to write it, though.

I shall attempt to do better, if only to try a short entry. Although looking back on my posts, I don't think it's possible for me to write a short post.

The rampaging labs will probably keep me to my word this time.

I promise to tell you the origin story of the rampaging labs someday when I'm not supposed to be keeping it short. The short version is that we have two black lab crosses to our name who are called Hearts and Sylvie. They have just recently graduated from being in their kennels all night to being left loose in the kennel room, penned in only by a flimsy folding door.

When they were kenneled, they would usually stay quiet until our alarm went off, or until one of us could wait no longer to make an early morning trip to the potty or She Who Does Not Obey woke up early and pitter-patted down the hall.

As soon as Hearts heard the slightest sound of consciousness from any of us, he would commence with the whining and complaining until Her Father or I could stand it no longer and go down and release them both from our misery.

Now that they are thank God Almighty free at last, we get an early morning canine invader at any time, starting from 5:40 fucking a.m. onwards. We would close our bedroom door to keep them out, but our bedroom door sticks and since She Who Does Not Obey is a frequent late night caller, we always keep it open.

Her Father went away for a week this past Sunday, so I have been sharing my bed with She Who Does Not Obey. One 6 a.m. wakeup call was all the inspiration I needed to realize I didn't have to keep my door open anymore.

So every glorious morning this week, I have been awakened by my alarm and not by a cold nose in my face.

The very next sound I hear is the jingle of dog tags right outside my door. Each morning, though, the jingle has seemed more and more impatient.

This morning, the jingle was shortly followed by an indeterminate noise, a something not quite identifiable, but definitely the sound of labs up to no good.

They haven't chewed/destroyed anything in quite some time, but the night before last, I had found a torn Pooh Bear pillow minus stuffing on the floor and knew the situation required immediate attention.

I rushed downstairs to find the Pooh Bear pillow in tatters and a stuffed toy deer on the top of the stairs. The deer was not torn in any way, but clearly had spent some time in a lab's drooly maw.

I got the message loud and clear, however.

Either the labs get full access or Bambi gets it.

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.