I Heart Cheese

Hence my adoration of Fred Dryer and his body of work.* Bring on the cheese: spray cheese, string cheese, cheese toast, cheese fairies. Cheese cheese cheese.

I am under some strain right now. I have not posted here in millenia. Mo called me today to say: type a post, you lazy halfwit. Make it about cheese.**

Cheese! I love it. As a vaguely male north american of largely northern european extraction this should be no surprise. In the same category of things I love: I also love tits. Cheese covered tits are even better. Bring me your tired, your homeless, your weary, and I will offer them well-thumbed Victorian era lithographs of cheese smut. Smut and cheese. Although I am unashamed of my fondue fetish I will not share this form cheese worship with anyone but you, internet friends, for I love cheese too well to allow social mores to interfere with my pursuit of it.

Cheese, as you will not know, is the substance which binds me to my wife. Not in the "slather your wife with melted cheese and engage in lewd milk-fat encrusted sexual acts" manner that you read about on the hip parenting sites. No. When I met my wife while travelling in the UK, we ate cheese. Not any cheese, but many cheeses. Regional cheeses. Our early travels are marked in my arteries. (Note to self: devise and insert clever heart reference here.)


I have been with Mo since 1990 and our wherewithal can also be marked in cheese. The early mad weeks of sage darby and double huntsman. The attempted early adulthood of gorgonzola, brie, and bocconcini. The lean student years of squeaky storebought cheddar in the extruded bricks, to the even leaner, meaner years of excessive drinking, occasional spreadable cream cheese and KD. (What can I say? I am such a catch.)

Today, we are blessed with many cheeses both sacred and profane. Our larder, not to mention our ventricles, are filthy with cheeses for us and for the little brutes who are at this moment planning some type of insurrection whereby the ruling class (us) is supplanted and its (vaguely) organized systems are replaced by an anarchic, non-sharing, pen on the wall, eating nothing but honey, bread, and cheese toast collective which will be governed by the individual wills of its members and Dora. Only the weird little cheeses in the red wax are keeping us in power.

But until the revolution comes to pass Mo and I are rich with love, family, and cheese. We shall have some visitors from Portland and Fredericton in the next week and Mo says this will prove that bloggers actually exist! I am excited! Exclamation! (I am also to mention we have delivered cheese and bras to someone because we are thinking of her, her tits, and of course, how CHEESE may help.)

Meltingly,

p-man

* Cheese, but not schmaltz. Fuck you, Mr. Spielberg.
** Or about us. I wasn't paying attention. I blame usopen.org.

The first image has been stolen from "Axis of Aevil" which appears to be a blog from a small cold place where sheep are sheep and bloggers are funny.

Lucky 13

"Terry Zoolander** and the Princess* might even get married."
"And, what does it mean to get married?" Mommy inquires.
"You get a husband." Girl Friday.
"And, what does that mean." Mama asks curiously
Big smile. "You know like a friend."
"Yes", Mommy replies. "You're right"

-- From a nearly four year old girl on her parents 13th Wedding Anniversary.

** Terry Zoolander is a stuffed bear
* Princess, as in the puppet

52 reasons: Due Diligence

It was a dreary rainy Sunday here nearly fall in Vancouver. A perfect cloister it makes for spending extra time with kids or a latte or ... Often a good day to do some extra hours at work. Peace and quiet at work to catch up and get extra prepared for my busiest time of year that starts in about 10 days.

This afternoon as my kids rested I went into the office. But, not to work. Sure I shuffled a few emails and cursed the boot up time needed for my ailing workstation but I was really there to cop some photocopying power for our coming Block Party next weekend. Zoinks!

And, as I made my way up abandoned Sunday afternoon stairs to my office I was sad. Again. Like I have been so many times -- at times -- to not be doing the work. This return to work has not been simple for me, for a few reasons. Some were expected, many commonplace but others blindsided me. Like this one.

Such a sad lonely craving to be my former self in the employee department was not something I would have predicted. I have at times a profound yearning for the days of overtime. I tremble in the fear of regular hours, undertaking decisions with a hesitance characteristic of ill-preparedness. I worry constantly about the risks I take with directions or commitments because I don't have my old suit of armor. Hours and hours of overtime, overkill?, professional preening, contingency after contingency. Leadership borne of haggardness was my feeble mantle then. Now what?

One of the reasons I thought I could never be a SAHM is that I love my work too much. But in the rain of today it is tricky for me. I am torn between all my babies, including the one this job represents. I peer through the ages of work hoping to find, and wondering how, mothers manage(d). Catching a whiff of shit in all my machinations. Plucking myself up to find that it must be a crock of something. Picturing my Baba planting potatoes while her second youngest of five rocked the baby's basket. God help me.

The work experiment continues.

Cry it Out a Librarian's Lament

When my son was born we lived in the little house next door. The older folks who lived in this house were as gleeful about this little neighbour as they had been about his sister before him. They clucked and fawned over him. More dear or loving neighbours could not be found. I always held some reverence for their commentary on certain things, namely, gardening, good sausage vendors and raising kids. They raised 3 from this vantage point 40 some years ago.

How different things must have been for them. Some moms won't drink at all when their breastfeeding and well they would simply swab the brandy right on the babies gums at teething time. Crazy old timers. And, babies were noisy it seems. They made quite a deal about how my son could be heard from their house. It was music to their ears.

????

Believe it or not they never praised me for keeping Girl Friday cooped up in a closet or head stuffed with a boob. They were sort of creeped out by the silence. Like I would not let her out of some soundproof booth. They just kept saying it never sounded like we had a baby 'over there'. But boy-o? They heard him. Of course they did. I had the big one to chase at that time. I couldn't hover over every need for him like I did for her. He had to wait like she never did. He cried out a heck of a lot more. He had to make himself heard. The neighbours were happy. Bless 'em.

When we were traveling last week I was worried about the kids sitting so long in the car. My fear lay with the noise mostly. But why? Why do I fear the squawking? Aren't they entitled to make some noise? Is it the librarian in me?

I know I do a lot of shushing and managing and more often than not it is the name of silencing my kids. Let's not make a ruckus or attracting attention. But at 2 and 4 I am really losing the battle and remembering what those neighbours found so delightful the sing song tones of childish noise. Perhaps now is the time I need to tap their nostalgia.

I thought of this too last week as I watched a girl burning the midnight oil of summer vacation. She was maybe??? 8 (I suck at judging age). Standing in a Starbucks line up, innocuous, noiseless, stuck to some game device tapping and quiet. Well managed and shushed but in some way to me a bit lonely. When I think of all the appliances we have that could shut our kids up, and how little I like them all, I better come to terms with the marathon of discipline and tolerance on a road ahead... a long noisy road ahead with them. Let it be.

Travelogue Three: Steal this Tire. Please!

We told everyone, it just happened. But we must tell someone the truth. We'd been driving on that pimpled front right radial for months and months and months.

But we didn't say that those 10 times we had to address the topic last Tuesday, the day it blew. Blew on our road trip home from holiday. In the midst of our nap hours planned return trip home whilst it was 31 degrees....

But blew whilst parked in the Starbucks parking lot. Yes, we shit horseshoes.

So there we were chuffed and thanking the Lord that we were safe and in good proximity to a.) endless coffee supplies, b.) fresh tires and c.) the car loving good Samaritans. 'Cept one thing.

The average pasty, sloven urban van piloting couple seems, even from the comforts of the Starbucks parking lot, to have a snowballs chance in hell of putting on a spare whence said tire might blow, for:

1.) though the tire is tantalizingly visible on the undercarriage the bolt to release it is like finding the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb. Though I tried I just simply never played quite enough Tomb Raider to deduce that sort of shit.

2.) Should you locate and release said tire -- how do you get the jack out, factory tight as it is?

3.) Should you procure the jack and release the tire then there is the key. You know the key?? The special bolt ombot that is shaped not like a regular lug nut but like a pea pod, or nicole ritchies head or a flea track in a windstorm or fucking whatever... the special nut you need the key for of which there are only 25 world wide. The one assigned to you with your vehicle that you are sure to put your hands on in two seconds by sifting it simply from the chaff of a four day family of four road trip holiday full of tents and sleeping bags and people and diapers and shit and three coolers, count em three coolers?????

The key you have because someone might steal your hubcab/rim otherwise. My opinion... STEAL THIS TIRE! Just let us change a flat in the traditional seven steps. . Roll out spare. Jack. Nut-Nut-Nut-Nut. New Tire! Nut-Nut-Nut-Nut. Roll away naughty tire. Unjack it. Drive drive away.

I thank in order of importance for our sanity through the ordeal
The Good Samaritan
Lollipops
The dudes from Kal-Tire
Pingu and the laptop
Three -- count 'em -- three food coolers. Don't ever say I overpack again! I am preparation incarnate!!!
Starbucks, cause even preparation incarnate needs caffine and a cookie or two
The van even though it was the root cause of all the trouble it was also our salvation. Who knew? Vans as duplicitous in their blessings as the Catholic church.
The old woman who said I was so lucky to have two good kids (can she send a memo to their grandmother who we had just spent four days visiting?)

*****

The Good Samaritans Refrain

I wanted his card just so I could post the following on craigslist
I'd never hire
that lawyer.
That Ron Myer
Can't even change a tire.
What a liar.
I mean lawyer.

******




SheVANigans

Travelogue Two: By Mistake

We went to my mother in law's farm in the Okanagan, the lake country. Last year I learned that the invitation is not one of visiting but an invitation to holiday in proximity. Odd. I attempted to accommodate. Why do people even go on holiday is something I ask nearly every time I go somewhere with p-man. Who knew our Withnail moments would stay with us up to this point?

There were many highlights, no doubt. We went to the beach learning to swim in the easy waters of Kalamalka; so much simpler, safer, than our regular trips towards water's edge along neighbourhood sections of the Pacific. Fun. At the farm feeding the ponies a couple times was fun, sure. Tromping the woods nearby a couple times fun, sure.

But 3 nights, 4 days... I think it was too long.

Do you think? There is no right number right? It is simply inevitable. About two-thirds through the jumping on the bed will becomes abhorrent and a parent will ask, I will ask, why do people even go on holiday?

P-man suggests it is to remind themselves of the comforts of home.

Travelogue One: Road Trippy won't leave me

There is an stretch of road between the Coquihalla toll booth south to Hope BC that is the penultimate of beautiful.

The mountains mix rock and treed slope in a proportion so sublime as to remove any manner of annoyance to the provincial tourism slogan, Super, Natural British Columbia. Winding the road downhill towards the comforts of journey's end; a whirring effortless glide into the valley and over the bend to where the Fraser River will symbolize home. We saw 8pm on the clock. Two spent travelers nestled in car seats; at last silent was the slumbering. The light lay low there as the peaks grew shorter and slighter round each corner. Leaving something behind to be home again.

Blue skies of summer day dying in to the coral kiss of a seaside sunset more familiar from the shore than the mountain tops. Light soft yellow, a darkening of each trunk of every tree in the thousands. Giving dimension to the smallest features in the broadest landscape it seems imaginable.

***

We're back after a pleasant holiday. More to come.

Hello, Portland!!!

Hi all.

By which of course and especially I mean Portlanders. A charge to inform, please.

My near dear friend is going to your environs Sunday. She will be breaking her back for some sort of camp, drive, family love-in plus friends wedding tour with her two boys, 2 and 4 and her dear whatever may care spouse.

It is required on this trip for her sanity, and perhaps the safety of the boys, that she get two good hours shopping in Portland. Where can she go??

The query is: A great and interesting shopping area with a sideshow for the men-boys close by? Where do you do that?

You need not be a Portlander to apply for this offer. Any and all intel is highly sought after. Thanks!

ps.. she is a beautiful statuesque blond who always needs clothes yes, but she also loves to garden shop and select nice things for her stylish home.