once in love with amy (and jo)

Warning! Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't read Little Women or seen the 2019 movie version which is a delight; you should watch it first before you read this unless you like having things ruined for you.

via GIPHY

It is a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who has ever read Little Women that Amy is the Absolute Worst and that Jo should have married Laurie.

And, not only should Jo have married Laurie (who is a boy and extremely hot), she should NOT have married an old man who is not hot in any way, was prone to mansplaining, and was probably some kind of bear shapeshifter.*

Baby sister Amy spends the first half of the book being the most annoying brat to inflict herself on a long-suffering big sister, which is bad enough when you are a long-suffering big sister yourself and can relate. But then she commits the unforgivable sin of burning Jo's writing in a fit of pique.

The only copy of the words that Jo wrote. Burnt.

Words that flowed out of her like a deep river gliding effortlessly down to the sea. Words that wouldn't let her sleep at night, jangling in her head so loud she had to get out of bed, light a candle, and desperately scribble them down just so she could get them to shut up. Words she wrestled out of her brain and pinned to the paper. Words that would embarrass her later in life but for now seem like a work of staggering genius. Words that were good and worth saving. Words that she struggled to find and slaved over and could never reproduce no matter how hard she tried. Words she totally forgot to back up in the Cloud.

I couldn't have been more horrified if Amy had set fire to the family house and then put Marmee on a spit to roast over the coals.

Jo may have forgiven her but I have not.

Then Friggin' Amy who is the Absolute Worst gets to go on a trip to Europe instead of Jo just because Aunt March wants to actually enjoy herself by taking someone she actually gets along with.

And then, Friggin' Amy, the Destroyer of Words, actually MARRIES LAURIE despite the fact that everyone is still shipping him with Jo and will to the end of time.

Via Relevant Obscurity See also Tomato Nation.

Essentially, LMA has been on my shit-list for the past 40 years or so.

But other than that teeny, tiny, whopping great grudge which I was intending to take to my grave, I actually love Little Women.

I am Jo. Or I wanted to be. All she ever wanted to be was a writer. She was a tomboy whose best friend was a boy (I had no idea how to talk to boys) and a maverick who runs off to New York to actually be a writer in the great big world despite the patriarchal system that said there was no way she would make it. That was how I wanted my life to go.

I could even imagine that my sisters were Meg, Beth, and Amy, mostly because I have three sisters and I'm the second oldest, just like Jo, and mostly because I was best sister-friends with my next younger sister, my "Beth", and my baby sister, my "Amy" used to bug the shit out of me.**

I read the book several times back in the day and have seen most, if not all of the movie adaptations. The Katharine Hepburn one, the June Allyson one, the Winona Ryder one. The tv mini-series where Captain Kirk was Professor Bear Bhaer.***

I know the plot forwards and backwards and upside down. I almost didn't go to see the latest version because I know the plot forwards and backwards and upside down. But then I read that the director was Greta Gerwig and that she had done something to make it new.

Basically, she solves the problem of Amy. For that matter, she solves the problem of Jo.

Instead of following the timeline of the novel, starting with their childhood adventures/sins and working up to the happily ever after that is marriage and career fulfilment (for some), the movie starts with Jo arriving in New York, carrying her portfolio, pursuing the true romance she has always dreamed of - her love of words.

Meanwhile, Amy is in Paris, working on a painting, dreaming of being a great artist, when she meets up with Laurie. He is mourning the loss of the love of his life with the traditional European bacchanal of wine, women, and Eurail passes.  She calls him on his shit and helps him get past it all while being remarkably sensible about the realities of a poor woman's life in the 19th century, marriage being practically the only career that a woman without sufficient artistic talent can aspire to, marriage to a rich man the only way out of genteel poverty.

The grown-up, admirable Amy is there in the book too, but it's a lot easier to forgive the unforgiveable when you meet Good Amy first and the Book Burning is shown in flashback. You can't get too attached to LaurJo when the narrative gives you LaurAm first. Timing is everything.

Jo also meets a handsome young man (who is not old and not a bear) but the romance takes a backstage to her writing. Sure she dances with him at a hot New York dance club and takes his literary criticism to heart, but those scenes take up far less screen time than the scenes of her scratching out words with her pen, arranging her pages on the floor, talking to her sisters about whether a book about the domestic lives of young women is "important" or not (spoiler alert: it is!), and negotiating a copyright contract with her publisher.

A copyright contract. Someone was negotiating a copyright contract on a big screen right in front of me.

I got so excited, I almost shouted at the screen, "Don't sell him your copyright outright! Make sure you retain merchandising rights! Negotiate a clause about sharing it in a scholarly repository!"

I know it is not a normal response to get excited about a copyright negotiation but I did.****

The publisher actually has to negotiate Jo's romance/marriage into the climax of her book because apparently maintaining control of your work and ensuring that you make a living wage from it isn't sexy enough for some people.  Personally, I needed a cigarette after that scene and I don't even smoke.

In the LMA book, Jo's ursine boyfriend organizes the publication of Jo's work (I mean, he didn't even have the right to authorize publication because that is the exclusive right of the author!!!) and presents the printed book to her as a fait accompli.

How much more satisfying it is to see Jo in charge, brave enough to bring her book to the publisher herself, inexperienced enough to not know what copyright is but not afraid to ask, smart enough to know it's worth more than she's being offered.

This was also the Jo I always wanted to be and I didn't even know it.






*There is actually a sub-species of romance novel about women falling in love with bear shapeshifters and apparently they are quite good in bed (I mean, I've heard rumours about books like that) but I was unaware of said genre at the time I read LW, probably because LMA probably invented shapeshifting bear romance, and also because I hadn't gotten around to wondering how good anyone was in bed yet.
**But not now. Love you, D-Squared! Also I have an older brother who is technically the second oldest but he is temporarily omitted for the purposes of inserting myself into this particular fictional world.
***and Laurie Partridge was Jo!
****You can retire the girl out of the copyright office but you can't get the copyright officer out of the girl

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.

500 GBP and a room of my own

Some time during the last century, possibly while I was doing my masters degree in 1988, I read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.  Shortly thereafter, I started rereading Jane Eyre (the good bits) because I was trying to write my final paper for the Bloomsbury Group course I was taking (Virginia Woolf was part of the group) and I had no idea what the hell I was going to write my paper on so why not read Jane Eyre instead is generally my motto when faced with something I don't particularly want to do.

Anyway, in 1928, Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer a woman needed to have money (she reckoned about £500 per annum) and a room of her own.  This struck me so forcefully at the time that I have taken it at gospel ever since.

Her book was an answer to all those idiots who kept wondering why there was no female Shakespeare and so few women writers in the canon at all.  Back in her day and mine, the university bookstore shelves were stuffed full with the novels, plays, and poetry of dead white men, with a few above-the-sod white men thrown in for variety and the occasional bone tossed to Jane Austen or one of the Bronte sisters (but not Anne*). 

When I had started my masters, I had to drop a course on early women writers because none of the books were in print and I was faced with having to compete with 15 other students for the one or two copies to be found in one of the multitude of libraries scattered around the University of Toronto campus. This was back when the library's computerized catalogue could tell you where the book was but not that the book was already checked out until you had trudged all the way over there.

Of course, I didn't really need Virginia to tell me I needed money to support my writing habit.  Having reached the tender age of 26 with no clear career goals other than "be a writer" in my head and having rejected a journalism career after a stressful six months of learning that being a journalist meant you had no time to write anything other than news stories, I was casting about myself to see what else I could do to keep myself in lined paper. This was before personal computers and the internet could provide the opportunity for you to blog your guts out to the world for (mostly) free.

My year in Toronto made it clear to me that being an English professor was not for me either.

So I went back home to Newfoundland, working at the university library for a few years until sheer boredom led me on to working as a copyright officer for a lot of years until sheer boredom led me to retire as soon as the countdown on my days-to-retirement clock had reached zero plus a few extra weeks thrown in to get things in order for the winter semester.

Things weren't actually in quite the order I had hoped for but it's hard to concentrate on the daily grind when "why not read Jane Eyre or the internet or that e-book that I had on hold but is now on my phone" is generally my motto.**

Did you know that if you put an e-book on hold at the NL provincial library, it automatically downloads to your account the minute it becomes available?  Did the productivity of all former English majors in the province dramatically decrease when that became a thing?***

Getting back to Virginia's book, her thesis was that a writer needs financial security, space, and time to get any writing done but getting the money you need to get the space you need and to maintain the space you need and to feed and clothes the kids you end up having if you marry the money you need or you keep working but have to be a superwoman-who-has-it-all eats away at the time you need to actually do anything except work, eat, raise kid(s), drive kid(s) to all their activities, watch TV, read books (hah!), and sleep. 

And maybe Anthony Trollope could get up at 5:30 a.m. and write for three hours before going off to work and produce 47 novels in 35 years but I bet bloody Anthony Trollope never changed a diaper or had to deal with a half-day kindergarten schedule that changed every two weeks or lived during the Golden Age of Television. Given the reality of most women's lives especially before there were many ways for them to earn money outside of marriage, it's amazing that any of them got into print at all.

Despite what I said above, my career in copyright wasn't always boring.  It could be a real roller coaster ride sometimes, with periods of intense activity followed by great lulls while you wait for the next semester to ramp up.

I got to create presentations about copyright and stand up in front of people telling them things they didn't know about stuff I knew backwards and forwards because I'd been doing it for so long, which is quite cool if you are a bit of a show off.

So many interesting things to read came across my desk all needing copyright clearance.  I was supposed to be concerning myself with just the copyright but how can you not read something called "How to Display Data Badly" or a scholarly article on the awesomeness that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Did you know that the berries Newfoundlanders call Bake Apples got that name because the French who came here back in the early days called them "baie qu'appelle" meaning "I don't know what to call this berry but my god it's some tart" and the English who came here back in the day misheard.

On the other hand, books and articles about copyright law are usually a surefire cure for insomnia (except for my copyright article in the Gazette, of course).  It is amazing how thinking about the rules which protect the art works that inspire our imaginations can stamp out all signs of life in the prose concerning those rules.

Of course, copyright protects boring stuff too or I would never have gotten any work done.**

It was while I was writing my not-at-all-boring article (that I got loads of compliments on so you should read it, too, right after this post) that it suddenly hit me that in a few short years I could be doing this full time.  I could create copyright stuff just as boring and maybe just as entertaining as other people. I already had the room; I would soon have the £500.

And so here I am today in front of a computer writing this word. And this one, too. Hoping that someone will read them. Dreaming that someday someone might pay me for them. But mostly just hoping someone will read them.

Either way, this is my new job and so far I'm loving it.  

I am a woman, I am a writer, and I am in print.

*Anne Bronte is brilliant by the way and you should finally get around to reading her very soon and not leave her sitting on your shelf in your complete Bronte sisters collection like an idiot (aka me) for years on end

**Can you get fired retroactively after you retire?

***Could they dock your pension or something?  Asking for a friend...

piss and vinegar

I woke up this morning with a strong desire to write. Not my own pet project but this blog post, which is a review of a musical I saw last night for the first and hopefully not the last time.

The musical is called Impresario and I need to own the cast recording that doesn't exist of it yet. It's the true story of a young man from Newfoundland, John Murray Anderson, who dreamed of being a showman when he was running around St. John's without his rubber boots on, even though his mom said not to, and how he made those dreams come true on Broadway, and in Hollywood, back in the first half of the 20th century. You've never heard of him but he knew people like Bette Davis and Lucille Ball. He was kind of a big deal.

I'm not a very good reviewer so what I should say next is unclear to me. One thing I could say is that I judge most music based on whether I want to sing it or not.

I want to sing almost everything I heard last night and I'm not sure if I remember enough of the tunes yet, hence the need for a cast album. I had a similar experience last month after I left the Broadway performance of a new musical called Groundhog Day which has been nominated for a Tony for best musical.

I could add that last night I jumped to my feet and started the standing ovation in my section rather than rising to my feet only after the other people got up and blocked my view.

I am not the only reviewer of Impresario who thought that way.  The Telegram thought so too and, like Mikey, they don't like anything at least when it comes to musicals. The reviewer practically says that out right.

This may be all you really need to know but I can't ever leave well enough alone so here's the long version of what I just said.

Full disclosure, my niece, Erika Squires was in this show. I have been to many shows she has been in through the years and I confess I have often preferred to watch her rather than anyone else on stage. That is why if you want my attention focused on centre stage, it's probably just best to cast her as the lead. Quite a few people already have.

In this show, she was a supporting player and she provided excellent support. She played several different characters and they were in fact different characters and not just Erika wearing a different funny hat (she wore quite a few funny hats). I particularly liked the hat she wore while she was doing a pretty nifty accent (sorry, Erika, I forget who you were even though I won't forget the performance).

As tempting as it was to just watch Erika, I must admit that I kept getting distracted by all the other people wearing funny hats and beards and shower caps and plumage, too.

I kind of know most of the people who were wearing all this outlandish gear because I have had the privilege to work with them. I have been in the chorus of several shows where they have been the leads or filled the character roles so I knew going in they were talented. I recommend being in the chorus of a musical if ever you can manage it because you get to watch the show over and over again without paying a dime. You also get to see how the sausage gets made and it is worth every minute of your "real" life that you give up to be at all those rehearsals where you have to "wait" until it's your turn to sing. I am not a big fan of waiting and I hardly ever feel like I am waiting for anything when I am watching these people perform.

For this particular show, I could tell you about Jeff Simms who found his inner parrot as well as his hilarious old Newfoundland codger, while also finding time to dance and sing as a dog.

I could tell you about Emily Follett who became Hermione Gingold as she sang about testicles - I actually remember who Hermione Gingold is so I was pretty sure I was looking at her in that moment.

I could tell you about Dan Lasby who played Flatulent Frederick, The Felicitous Philatelist, a character and a song that are just as funny as they sound.

I could tell you about Andrew Preston who was a hopeful young man dreaming of being a showman and also an annoying paperboy, a hilarious thorn in a tetchy Florenz Ziegfeld's side. Philip Goodridge's Ziegfeld and his John Anderson Sr. are also worth mentioning in greater detail than I am giving him.

I could tell you about Kiersten Noel whose long hobble dragging a chair across stage was never not funny. She also made me cry real tears as Genevieve Lyon, a woman who died too soon, for her husband and the rest of us as well.

I absolutely should tell you about John Williams who played John Murray Anderson, the Impresario himself, who made me watch him despite all the amazingly talented people beside and behind him, who made me listen to him when there was so much else I could have been listening and looking at.

I could go on and on about everyone in the show but my husband thinks I should get to the point more often.

None of this would have been possible without the guys who wrote and staged the play, director/dramaturg Tim Matson and music director/orchestrator Kyle McDavid. Kyle is also given credit for graphic and set design as well as playing the impresario's brother and playing piano in the band, who performed onstage and were often an active part of the set.  I guess that made him the conductor too. I am tempted to add chief cook and bottle washer to Kyle's credits.

It would be pointless to single either of them out so I guess I will just have to mention that the staging was inventive and fun, the story moved along and was moving, the music was hilarious and sad and memorable.

I particularly want to mention Piss & Vinegar, In Colorado, If I Don't Get a Drink in the Next Five Minutes, and Anderson's Time.  I am tempted just to list all the songs.

I should also give a shout out to the choreography and the costuming and maybe even to my sister, Jane, who loaded the prop crates back into her truck at the end of the evening.

There are no small roles only small actors and small reviewers who can't take the time to thank all the people who are responsible for the success of a show.

All of the people I mentioned above, and all of those I didn't, are deserving of my thanks for giving me and everyone else in the audience a really good time on a Saturday night.

it only happens when i dance with you

Last Thursday, I was having a tough day at work for reasons. I was frustrated and needed a day off because as I near retirement, I have finally realized that I have a new job waiting for me as soon as I can get to it.  I am so impatient for it, I have already started to do the work, fitting it in whenever I have a spare moment.

I chose today because it meant I could manage to get through Thursday and Friday without pulling all my hair out.

I was supposed to be getting a whole day off to myself to do nothing except what I wanted, all by myself.

But before I could get to this wonderful day off all to myself, I did not realize that I had to jump through a few extra hoops that I had forgotten about:

1. I had to take my car to get the snow tires off, the oil changed, and see about a thing that may need to hammered back into place.
2. I had to take my husband to work because otherwise I wouldn't have a car while the above was being removed, replaced, changed, and hammered
3. I had to take my daughter to her job shadowing thing because she has a PD day and she didn't need to go to school and may in fact be back before I am ready for her to be back.
4. I had to do two loads of laundry for her because I am mindful of the fact that her life gets overwhelming from time to time and when she gets overwhelmed, I get overwhelmed and I need to help her learn to be mindful enough to not let her laundry get out of hand. She helped me put on the first load.
5. I had to do the laundry today because it is a beautiful day for drying laundry outside and she has a lot of stuff that needs to be hung to dry.
6. I had to pick up a lot of dog shit in and around the laundry rack in the backyard because it was a minefield out there and I wouldn't have been able to safely hang out the laundry otherwise. Judge me if you must but two dogs make a whole shit ton of crap and it's hard to find the time to get out there and clean it up.
7. I had to rescue the small plastic patio table from the shed and dump out the water that had gathered in it because it had been stored upside down under a lot of crap but there is no door on the shed.
8. I had to put the laundry basket on the small plastic table because my back isn't what it used to be and I hate to bend.
9. I had to figure out how to fit two loads of laundry onto one drying rack that is really only big enough for 1.5 loads.
10. I had to throw all the socks and underwear and everything else that wouldn't fit on the drying rack into the dryer and then remember to set the dryer going.
11. I had to scrub something with soap because stains don't come out in the wash if you don't scrub them.
12. I had to scrub some mystery substance off the deck because I was afraid if I walked past it one more time I was going to a) step in it and then I'd have to clean my shoe, or b) scream if I had to look at it one more time.
13. Then, I had to write this all down on my blog because writing is my new job, but writing this blog is only the beginning.

Thank God I have Fred Astaire on my iPhone to help me get through it.

I have been up for 5 hours and now I am finally ready to begin my day. *



*Still have to pick up the husband, the car, and the kid.

the owl roost

When I was a kid I always had trouble buying gifts for my dad.  Like most adults, if he needed or wanted anything he just bought it whenever he needed or wanted it.

My mom and he often disagreed on the definition of "need."

I didn't realize it at the time but everyone has trouble buying gifts for adults for the exact same reason. I think we have all fallen into the trap of latching on to the one or two things we know someone likes and beating that gift idea into the ground. It helps if the adult in question has started a collection or has had one foisted upon them.

My dad collected owls - how vigorously he would have pursued this interest if there hadn't been so many birthdays and Christmases and Father's Days to be shopped for is unclear.

My own frog obsession was started when my schoolfriend, Paula Lockyer, purchased an adorable stuffed frog (probably at a drug store) and gave her to me for my birthday sometime during junior high (probably at a sleepover in the Simmons family playroom).

The frog was most definitely a girl because her red lipstick was (and still is) fierce. Her name is Freddy Frig Frog and she decided to come with me on my first solo plane trip when I was 16. Afterwards she went on all my trips as a good luck charm.

She has since been retired as a travel companion because her bow was getting frayed and I didn't want her to lose those fantastic lips.

My father took this singular frog love to mean I needed more of them and he started bringing back frogs to me from every trip my parents took.

A frog collection was born.

I gave into the pressure and started buying my own, eventually becoming a bit of a snob, not giving as much love to the frog I received as a present if it was the same frog I already had wearing a different hat.

Buying a frog or an owl or a cat for a collector is usually a pretty safe bet because if you think it's cute, it probably is. And there are so many owl and frog and cat variations out there that you probably won't give an exact duplicate (except for when you do). The collector will most likely love it right up until she realizes she has run out of places to put it and by then the collection is a pain in the butt to dust. She will probably still secretly love it long after she has blown past that stage and has started to reduce the inventory.

So a long time ago, every April, June, and December, I dutifully went out looking for a gift for my dad. I tried to be original but too many times all I could find was the cutest owl I could find.

One time I was dismayed and delighted to find my dad had bought himself the exact same mirror shaped like the exact same white owl.

Both mirrors made their way down to our cabin, The Owl Roost, famous in ornithological circles for the hundreds of owl species that live there. There was even a popular contest to guess the number in residence. There was no real answer because no one could agree on a final tally or whether you should count the playing cards hidden in the drawer individually.

Everybody loved the owls so anyone who cared enough about my dad to buy him a gift eventually fell into the owl trap.  It was irresistible. It was inevitable.

I have even gotten owls as presents from friends who got my collecting obsession confused with my dad's.  I still have my favourites.

After my dad died far too young at 53, the owl collection at the Owl Roost ceased to grow at its previous pace.  Eventually, it started to contract as the dust and mildew of too many winters took their toll. It was often too much trouble to climb up and clean the high shelf encircling the main room of the cabin, a shelf built especially for owl display.

But the best and brightest remain, occasionally joined by the odd new owl someone couldn't resist.

It's still impossible to figure out how many owls live in the Owl Roost - still too many to get an accurate count.

Whenever someone on Facebook posts a memory of their dad who has passed away, I always feel a little pang for my own dad and little guilty too because I don't do something like that very often. I sometimes would rather forget a lot of dates: April 30th, Father's Day, February 8th.

And most especially February 3rd.  I really hate February 3rd.

I don't really forget them but sometimes it's just easier to remember that they're coming up or realize they are just past.

I woke up this morning (not really this morning - last month to tell the truth) and I was idly thinking that if there had been an internet when I was a kid, I would have been able to search the world for the perfect gift for my dad.

Then I thought, wouldn't it be nice if on my dad's birthday I made a short post in which I revealed that I went shopping online for my dad and found the perfect gift, no expense spared.  The gifting possibilities were endless.

Then I realized I already had the perfect gift.  I had actually gotten it a few years ago, back when I was in England.  A photograph I got my husband to take for me.

So here you go, Dad. I got you an owl.

what i did for love

A couple of months ago, we got a call from a friend about a good deal on tickets to New York and did we want to go there with her and her daughter, SWDNO's best friend.

Of course a seat sale to NYC is just an invitation to blow all the money you save on airfare on that city's wonders and delights. After convincing ourselves this was such a good deal we couldn't pass it up and pretending we had no idea how poor we would be afterwards, we agreed pretty readily.

The first time I went to New York, I was 18. In order to get there, I stuffed myself into a VW camper van with five other people, the majority of my family; my older sister had to be in Moncton. Our ultimate destination was Florida so we had only one day to spend in the Big Apple.

My brother was the only one brave (or foolhardy) enough to drive us into the heart of the beast. To a crowd of Newfoundlanders who hadn't even mastered the art of merging, the traffic in and around New York was like something out of Grand Theft Auto (a simile we wouldn't have used because it didn't exist back then).

It was a beautiful spring day which my brother and two younger sisters decided would be best spent navigating the NY subway system so they could visit a friend who worked at the Waldorf Astoria (!) but who lived in Brooklyn.

I was a weird teenager who actually liked hanging out with her parents, or at least would tolerate their presence because they wanted to see actual NYC - or more particularly Manhattan, and more specifically everything in walking distance of Times Square.

I remember walking around feeling like I had been there before, knowing the street names, having seen it all so many times in the movies and on TV. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. I bought a T-shirt declaring my undying love for NY.

Mostly, we just had time to wander around, jaws dropping, clutching our purses against the muggers.

I couldn't wait to get back.

It took me 32 years - I had to make Her Father take me there as a 50th birthday present because he was only interested in sunshine and beaches in the deep, dark winter of a Newfoundland spring. Technically, we went in the fall that time, but fall and spring are equally the best times to go to New York.

We saw Central Park, we went to the top of 30 Rock. We saw The Book of Mormon at highway robbery prices because of travel delays and poor planning, and because my husband didn't want to disappoint me.

Our next trip we took at Easter. We got to stroll on the Avenue, Fifth Avenue, with people in their Easter bonnets.

It was a blast. We saw Central Park, we went to the top of the Empire State, we saw Wicked and Beautiful. They were still pricey tickets but we didn't spend quite so much because we booked in advance.

For our most recent trip we were even smarter. I wanted to see everything so it didn't matter which show I went to, mostly. I was ready to take my chances at the half-price ticket booth in Times Square.

But after seeing a video of Jake Gyllenhaal sing "Finishing the Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George, I convinced Her Father that we absolutely needed to see it (it was a limited run). He gave me the tickets for my birthday.

We prudently booked it for the second night so there was no danger of Air Canada or United screwing us over (United and AC screwed us over the first time).

Sunday in the Park with George and Jake Gyllenhaal is about making art, putting it together. I am attempting to do that with this blog so it is really relevant to my life right now.  The production was first rate, the snacks were expensive.

The reason the snacks were so expensive is because they were all about art too.

I kept the Coke bottle/tin because I spent so much money on it I didn't feel I could buy any of the other cool art/souvenir t-shirts on sale (items in the background were not purchased at the theatre).

The sign over the bar was a quote from the play, the importance of balance between life and work.

George couldn't find room in his life for anyone unless they helped him with his art. He had room for a bare minimum of non-art (the sign says: More red, more blue, more beer). There is apparently always room for beer.

Art isn't easy but going to this play was because we pre-purchased the tickets.

I had to struggle to see art the first day we arrived, however. The day was cold and a bit damp; we were all exhausted and everyone wanted to have a nap. Our luggage had not arrived. I needed to figure out how to get discount tickets to whichever show was the best deal.

I finally decided that the only show I was willing to stay awake for was Groundhog Day. I loved the movie and I loved Tim Minchin, the man who wrote the music and lyrics.

Because my windbreaker/rain jacket was also refusing to come to America, I had to wrap myself up in my Tardis hoodie and brave the cold. It wasn't too bad while I was walking to Times Square but it was pretty bitter once I had to wait on line.  I got reasonably good seats at a good price, in a back row of the Orchestra section.

I also bought our friends tickets to see Cats; by some miracle, it was playing in the theatre right across the street from Groundhog Day so we made arrangements to meet on the street right before the shows.  Then I dragged my cold bones back for a two hour nap - had to set an alarm so we wouldn't sleep in.

We somehow managed to drag ourselves back out into the cold despite not having had enough sleep, an hour before showtime. Fortunately, I didn't have space in our checked bag for the thick cozy sweater I had packed in my carry-on so SWDNO had a warmer sweater than what she had worn on the plane.  Normally, I would not wear a Tardis to a Broadway show but I had no other options.

We arrived on 52nd street with 10 minutes to spare, gave our friends their tickets, and rushed to join the line filtering into the August Wilson Theatre across the way. I was just opening my purse to show I had no concealed fruit on my person when I noticed an impossible thing.

The tickets I held in my fist, the ones I had checked as per instruction before leaving the TKTS booth earlier that afternoon, were for Groundhog Day but not for April 7. They were for April 8!

This was impossible - first of all, the TKTS booth can only sell tickets for the day of the performance so they couldn't have sold me tickets for the following night. Secondly, I had tickets to see Jake in the Park on Saturday Night and I couldn't see Groundhog Day at the same time.

Panicking, I rushed to the ticket booth and gibbered at the guy behind the glass. He couldn't understand how it happened either so he went off to talk to the manager. When he finally came back, I waved my receipt at him to show further proof I wasn't scamming him.

He assured me that he would never distrust anyone in a Tardis so he took a big red Sharpie and wrote J105 and J106 on our tickets in big friendly letters.  When we got to our seats and saw that we were only 10 rows from the stage and right smack dab in the middle with two empty seats in front of us, we were in our glee.

At first I found it hard to pay attention we were so wound up in our good fortune at getting such good seats to such a good show. But the show was worth all the drama. It was clever, funny, musically interesting, full of creative staging, lightning fast costume changes, and delightful sleight of hand.

There was even a song all about me, Playing Nancy.

We laughed, we cried, it became a part of us.

Afterwards, we bought all the souvenirs we could afford. We will be twins in matching rodent shirts.

Later I tweeted the greatest compliment I could think of which was that I wanted to steal the ideas I was getting while watching the show.

Then a Broadway miracle occurred. Tim Minchin liked me. Twice.

I was verklempt.

After the reality of all this ticket and souvenir purchasing began to sink in, I started thinking about ways to economise. Plus my options for Sunday and Monday night Broadway shows were not as wide-ranging as I had hoped. None of the other shows I had high on my list were even on offer. Aladdin was too dear and practically sold out to boot.

So on Sunday, we rested. On Monday, Her Father decided to check out the musical rodent while SWDNO and I checked out a fantastic movie theatre showing Beauty and the Beast. I loved that musical as an animated film and enjoyed the live action almost as much. The theatre was worth the extra we paid for it too, with it's comfy reclining seats complete with foot rests, all adjusted with the touch of buttons; you wouldn't even know there was anyone in the seats in front of you because the tops of the seats in front were on level with the low wall at our feet.

At the end, I stood up to find my head was projected on the screen. We made hand puppets over the closing credits.

Afterwards, we went back to 52nd Street to hang out at the Groundhog Day stage door. My Cousin Debbie has a friend in the cast who had added us to the guest list or so we thought. But there was a miscommunication and the door guy didn't know who we were. He said he'd check but everyone else on the list were being let in and it looked like we weren't.

Someone else appeared who was there for Tari Kelly, our friend of a cousin friend. She came out to meet them and when someone called her by name, I grabbed my chance.

"I'm Cousin Debbie's cousin!" I cried. "We're not on the list."

She quickly sorted that out and we were in, standing on a Broadway stage looking out at the primo seats we had sat in only three nights before. Tari graciously took time away from her actual friends to show us around.

I have been in a few local productions at the Arts and Culture Centre so it was partly what I was expecting, but the compactness of it all was astounding. They have to get a lot of stuff into a very little space, a multitude of props and set pieces, on shelves, stuck in corners, hanging from the ceiling.

In my last show, I had trouble getting a couple of chairs on stage and a bar piece I had to maneuver was tricky to get locked on its mark. They have to wrangle so many moving pieces in that show and do it with such professionalism and grace I was in awe.

I couldn't have asked for a more fitting end to our stay in New York.

Although my bills have yet to come home to roost and I am wondering whether I will pay them with buttons or beach rocks, I don't think I have ever felt so satisfied with a trip in my life.

Art isn't easy and it sure ain't cheap, but it's worth it.