July 19th, 2007

Eleanor and the Horizontal Learning Curve

If you’ve spent time with the senior Rosenblums, or listened to protracted periods of my own nattering, you’ve probably encountered tales of Eleanor. Eleanor is the kitten I begged my parents to adopt shortly before I moved out of the house (it was an almost identical conversation to the one we had when I was five). Of course I abandoned the kitten, as reckless youth will, but she really only ever had eyes for my father and the dog, anyway, so it’s just as well she stayed there. (5000 points if you can get the literary cat for whom she is named–this is a hard one.)

As an adult, Eleanor’s central hobbies are sprinting around and killing stuff in the fields around the house. Apparently there is especially good stuff to kill in the wheat field over the road, for she is consistently tempted by it, despite the fast-moving automobiles and transport trucks that patrol that road. In 2005, she encountered one of those, shattering her tiny pelvis, but leaving her vital organs (heart, lungs, [negligible] brain) intact.

In case you don’t know, you can’t immobilize a cat’s pelvis in a cast. Instead, you must put the entire cat in a very small box so she can’t move. For six weeks. Poor cat. My poor parents: they put the box in their front foyer for six weeks. Unsightly and noisy (Eleanor was well enough to protest her confinement), they thought it too mean to put her in a more out-of-the-way spot. When they were nearby, they turned the box so she could see them. This cheered her only somewhat–it was a depressing six weeks, and on a visit I once found Ellie asleep facedown in her food bowl. Still she emerged intact, sprinting immediately away to go kill stuff.

Having learned, apparently, nothing. For yesterday she got run over by another car. This one hit her head, dislocating her tiny jaw, slashing up her face and (oh god) possibly destroying one eye. The worst part, if you are my folks, is that of course they weren’t around at the point of collision and Ellie was wandering around injured for some time. The driver apparently called animal control (this is a rural agency that deals with, well, animals) who sent out a man to catch and kill our cat!! The first my folks heard of the situation was when they noticed the guy in the driveway, crawling around under their car with a net. When my father enquired, he was told that someone had hit a white cat (Eleanor is mainly orange!) and she had to be caught and put down because there wasn’t “much left in her.”

Lovely. Ellie, of course, bolted (wouldn’t you?) and managed to hide out for over four hours until a neighbour found her in her garden and returned her in a laundry basket. This was late yesterday. Ellie is now in hospital, my parents hopeful, me as well.

What a dumbass cat! I mean, really, cars aren’t subtle, you can see and hear them coming. And she’s such a pretty kitty, and would be considerably less so with only one eye. Of course, I would be grateful if it were only that and nothing worse. Eleanor! I am thinking of you!

Groom’s still waiting at the alter
RR

July 4th, 2007

On family

The brief lull in posting at Rose-coloured this weekend can be attributed to a visit to my family, which proved far too distracting for any internet interaction (also: I am lazy). It was Canada Day, of course, and since June has been a busy month, we were also catching up on Father’s Day and my brother’s birthday. With that amount of celebration, of course it was going to be a good time. Really, though, the weekend was made for me in the single moment when my erudite father dubiously pronounced the word “celebutante.” In fact, I think from now on, whenever I feel down, I will call him and ask him to say it again. Hilarious.

Is my family weird? Of course they are. “My family is strange” is one of those facts that I think people should really stop presenting as interesting and intimate secrets–along with, “Hospitals make me nervous” and “I get so impatient waiting in lines.” These are truths, if not universally acknowledged, at least nearly universally felt (well, I like hospitals, but I know most don’t). So is the bit about strange families.

In truth, every *person* is fairly strange–it is only the constant friction of decades of sharing bathrooms and cereal boxes, coupled with the legal certainty that these people can never get rid of you, that allows our strangeness to emerge completely. This is an especially great boon if you, like me, are slightly obnoxious. It is only the binding of blood and law that forces my family continue to tolerate me despite the fact that I constantly try to peck them in public. No, not a timid petite bise, like a schoolgirl, but with the nose, comme un oiseau. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it, except run away. But then I chase them. And criticize their clothes and eat food off their plates. Hooray for blood bonds!

Someday, my brother is going to have to invite me to his *wedding*, despite the fact, that, when last we met, I was attempting to brush my teeth whilst walking down the stairs. When he made me laugh, I choked, collapsed into the fetal position and dribbled toothpaste all over my dress slacks. You, gentle reader, will never have to deal with such behaviour from me, unless you should be so foolish as to marry or adopt me. But my family gets nonstop nonsense.

And while we might be united in our communal dislike of lines and medical establishments, I guess we are pretty much stuck in our respective familial strangenesses. I adore my family, as I’m sure you do yours. However, when I say some of my most rose-coloured memories of us include trying to tie various items to the roof of a car, you probably can’t imagine why. And to me, that’s just strange.

I want a photo opportunity / I want a shot at redemeption
RR

May 14th, 2007

Maternality

I had occasion to hear my own singing voice this weekend, which is pretty rare. Normally I won’t sing unless the radio, karaeoke machine, or other voices are loud enough to drown me out. Friday night, however, I was babysitting for the divine Miss M., and she was sort of flipping out. Literally, actually–apparently she likes to flip back and forth in her crib to tire herself out at bedtime, but I didn’t know that and thought it meant she was angry. So I pinned her in my lap and sang, in my offkey warble, what I could remember of the good old multiverse lullabies. Sadly, I was only able to remember up until “cow” for “When I First Came to This Land” and only up to the band of angels for “Sweet Chariot.” And yet Miss M. was a wonderfully receptive audience, considering that she was a cranky baby, and I am a tuneless singer. Her head actually started to go heavy on my chest at one point, but when I tried to look to see if her eyes were closed, of course I woke her. Argh. Eventually I put her back in her crib and she fell asleep on her own.

A fun way to kick off the weekend of maternality, especially for one as unmaternal as myself. Those were, after all, the songs my mominator used to sing to me. In return, I made my mom some brunch (my dad, too). The food turned out pretty good, I think, but the housekeeping standards around my place have gotten pretty lax. I allocated only an hour pre-brunch to clean and, wouldn’t you know it, the phone rang just as I was contemplating getting out the mop. I only just managed to absorb the phone call and get food on the table. The nice thing about my mom is that she will always insist that she doesn’t notice any flaws in my person, personality or property, but after they left, I realized there were toothpaste spatters on the bathroom mirror. I’m pretty sure she noticed. But probably didn’t judge. Moms are nice. Really, it’d probably be only her and Miss M. who would ever enjoy my singing.

It was a band of angels / comin’ after me / Comin’ for to carry me home
RR

April 28th, 2007

Better Daze

Aside from an hour-long migraine that zonked me at lunch-time (who gets a migraine for an hour?) yesterday was pretty productive, and capped off with a delightful dining/book-searching experience with Mister Scott, who took time from writing stories upon stories (productivity all around!) to buy me hwae dop bop at Hosu and help me search for books! That was a really long sentence. Everything I write is really long, these days. The novella project is stalled while I try to complete a “short” story that currently stands at an utterly point 10 000 words. I’ll have to cut it nearly in half to make it make sense, which I knew from the get go–why can’t I write efficiently the first time? This is a question for another time, or likely the rest of my life.

For now, a short leftover anecdote from Thursday: my brother was eating a popsicle and he gave me half as we walked down the street. I dropped behind him for a minute, and when I caught up, he said, “Oh…no!” I had somehow covered my entire face in pink popsicle in 60 seconds, including my nose. As I wiped my face (with the back of my hand, because I am suave), he muttered, “I am so glad I gave you that!”

Somebody showed me a picture and I just laughed
RR

April 27th, 2007

Poor day

Yesterday was hard, as days go. I had a nonspecific plan to go get bloodwork done, which is hardly traumatic, but I wasn’t looking forward to it, so I dillydallied around the house writing a letter and other stuff that I don’t even really remember, until it was late enough for the clinic to be *really* crowded, and then I finally set off.

When I got inside the medical complex, a middle-aged lady with, I think, a serious developmental delay, asked me for help. I was confused at first, but she said she had hurt her knee and needed to go upstairs. So we had to wait for the elevator, which was semi-out-of-order, for about five minutes, her clutching my arm and pointing me out to strangers the whole time, instead of me just scrambling up to my second-floor clinic like always. When finally we reached the office she specified, it was vacant.

“Do you think they moved? Do you have an appointment?” I asked her.

“We’ll go up to the fifth floor, ask the nurse,” she said confidently. We examined the stairwell, but she said she couldn’t manage even one floor with her bad knee. So we went back to the elevator for another long wait.

When the doors open, a man stepped forward and said, “Got away from me, did ya?” Turns out, her appointment was on the first floor where I met her, and he’d just gone to park the car. I apologized profusely, miserably, and ran away downstairs.

I wonder why she did that? Maybe I can see it as being like a kid, is that comparable? As a kid, I was scared of strangers, but if I hadn’t been I would’ve certainly thought it more interesting to set off with one of them, rather than my boring parents. And, well, I don’t want you to think I was a dishonest child, but before I I really understood the concepts of truth and lie and story, I occasionally changed the truth to make a better story. Once, I remember, I fabricated a mouse infestation in the sandbox, because I figured my mother’s reaction would be interesting. And it was, until I embroidered just a bit too much and she figured it out. I don’t think that many mice could’ve really hidden in the sandbox.

Downstairs in the clinic, it was of course packed. I waited about a half hour with the blood-test-ee ahead of me, a six-month-old baby who was already fussy before he was taken into a small cubicle, restrained and stabbed multiple times with needles. The kid totally lost it. His parents were great, the nurses were great, but you just can’t explain to a baby that they aren’t being grievously tortured when all evidence suggests that they are. He was wailing so hard he lost his breath, and you could hear him gasping for air to muster sound, all a desperate cry for someone to intervene and make the needles stop.

The waiting room was like death-row. I got really nauseated and realized I’d been unconsciously mirroring my breath to his, the beginnings of sympathy hyperventilation. I stopped it. The kid left with his stoic folks…you could hear him wailing some more at the elevators. My own needle barely hurt at all.

And then I went to Scarborough.

Did I mention I was carrying 30 pounds of exams through all this? And yet such is the weather funhouse that I was blown off course by the wind as I walked from RT to bus, and I’m hardly a wisp even without that weight’o’knowledge. A positive light is how terribly nice everyone in the office is at the campus there, even though I was handing stuff in late and asked a million questions and my lunch tupperware leaked on the exams. Also, when I took the remaining lunch to eat in the cafeteria there, it was a really nice space.

The day brightened considerably after that, partly due to the fact that I no longer had unpleasant things to do, and partly because I took a nap on the subway. Eventually, my charming family arrived, bearing soda, tomato sauce and potting soil, and bound to take me out for Italian food to celebrate my successful defense. It’s been a week, but when I remember that I actually did it I am still sorta elated. Ok, no sorta about it. Elated.

The food at Grazie is always splendid, and the crowd makes you feel like you are at a giant party, not just a table for four. And well, hell, it is always nice to celebrate. So we did, and then I went home and wrote, and considered the day really a success, not worthy of the subject line, but I’ll leave it for now.

He’s not here but / he’ll be round
RR

April 10th, 2007

Long weekend

Kicked off the long weekend with a stellar meeting of the Free Biscuit-reers, which would be the theatre group I’m helping out with. They’re a group of actors committed to innovation, inclusion and ingestion of biscuits, and they graciously allow me to play along and help with scripts and stuff. Ever fun. They’ got a blog, and to kill two birds with one stone, you could surf on over and find not only what the group is like but read a film review I wrote of “Reign Over Me” at Free Biscuit Theatre. If you haven’t the time, the short version is that Free Biscuit is awesome and so is Adam Sandler.

Anyway, that film plus a peck of writing is what I did Friday, and then more work of the teaching variety plus a delightful trip to see my family on Saturday. Over cocktails I flew into an inexplicable rage (not really, but I was snarky) because my father told a delightful story about a horse he encountered as a child that I had never heard before. I somehow felt, having known my dad for nigh on thirty years, I would only be hearing breaking news and I was alarmed to know that he was sitting on such good material. As a result of my snark, over the course of the weekend got two more brand new stories, also delightful. I am on the verge of demanding my parents and everyone else I know get a blog (that will never happen). Really, you might think this blog is very boring, but this is exactly the sort of information I want to know about you. Yes, you. Go on, tell me what *you* did Thursday night, or the last time you were on a horse. If you don’t, I’ll accuse you of holding out on me.

Hard rock radio
RR