The Night Visitor

 

 We have always collected things, and decoys were a part of our collections. We haven’t seriously collected them for years, even though we love them, in that we ran out of room and the market up scaled to a very high degree.

We pay no attention to them usually, and haven’t bought one in years. We live with 27 duck and goose decoys in our bedroom and bath. It seems perfectly normal to us, but not to everyone. When eventually the house is to be sold, we will clearly have to erase all traces of decoy fever in order to present a sanitized image.

Saying all this, I was in the Dollar Store the other day and in a pre-Halloween display, they had amazing plastic bird decoys, probably ravens or crows, and when displayed in a group, it looked like Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. I bought one for two dollars, the new one dollar at the dollar store, a true misnomer.

I brought it home and loved it, and put it on the dining room table where it sat for two weeks.

In cleaning up the other day, my wife moved the bird to the most logical place she could, it entered our bedroom menagerie. She did not, however, tell me. I was lying down, and as I woke up and opened my eyes, within my bird sanctuary there was a new member of the family, and I was not expecting it. As congruous as it was, it was incongruous to my eidetic mind, and I freaked! My immediate response was to assume it was a real visitor in my bedroom and I knew, instinctively, one of us had to get the hell out of there quick!

As I sprung from the bed, my sleep induced brain clicked into place and I realized it was my plastic raven moved to a new home. As soon as my heart slowed down I laughed!

A Simple Mind...

This is not my daughters costume, the photo is noted as to its origin.

I don’t even know how to start to explain this one, as it begins to detail my decline I guess. Not that I haven‘t been doing that anyway, but this one was bad!

We were sitting at the Hamilton Philharmonic concert last night, and in between pieces my wife said in passing how great it has been that our oldest daughter is being successful in her newly enrolled Costume Design class. This is not her major, but she was very interested in the area and was interviewed to be able to take the class which includes design and construction of period costume pieces to be used for produced plays in Montreal.

I thought about it and said how interesting that is, and how she would be horrified if I had suggested that she had an influence from the woman she never liked, who we car pooled with to elementary school. The woman was the head of the Costume Design program at the university and the kids never liked the car pooling nor the woman.

My wife looked at me in a funny way and asked what car pool I was talking about, and I quietly explained who it was and where she lived and how we developed the car pool. As I spoke I came to the realization that while all that was true, it took place in Baltimore in the 1970’s, and my wife was in high school at that time and clearly, our daughter never went to that school in that place and never really attended  school until Calgary….

Right story, wrong children….30 years earlier. None of those children were influenced to become costume designers.

The City Mouse and the Country Mouse

In the original tale, a proud town mouse visits his cousin in the country. The country mouse offers the city mouse a meal of simple country cuisine, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the country mouse back to the city for a taste of the "fine life" and the two cousins dine like emperors. But their rich and delicious metropolitan feast is interrupted by a couple of dogs which force the rodent cousins to abandon their meal and scurry to safety. After this, the country mouse decides to return home, preferring security to opulence or, as the 13th-century preacher phrased it, "I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear".

This story has brought forth many variations, and I have mine.

My wife and I went to Toronto last weekend to visit my daughter in her new dorm apartment, bring her a couple of items, take her out to dinner and in the end, bring her home for a day.

She has been living there for a few weeks, and has become more and more sophisticated by living in the “big smoke”, at the "centre of the universe".

After spending time delivering a few things, we went off to dinner at the restaurant of her choosing, a Schezwan Chinese restaurant in the Younge and Dundas Square area. We wandered for a while on a Saturday evening, and I was amazed by the number of people out and about, and I will admit that I hadn’t seen that many people in one place since being in Times Square a few years ago. A whole host of humanity wandered by, and I was looking around. I noticed my daughter’s unhappiness, as usual, at my behavior. Clearly, my wife and I were the country mice and she was the city mouse, all slick and sophisticated.

Not sophisticated enough however to pick up the check, and therefore, of limited credibility.

Larceny in my heart, I guess.......

Larceny, embezzlement and downright petty thievery; all of these seem to be a part of my confession.

This confession, no, this crime, was forgotten until this morning when it hit me, and I started to laugh as I walked Max my dog around the neighbourhood.

In the 60’s, I worked for four years for a large Baltimore Department Store now long gone. I have written many stories about my exploits at the store, and this was a long forgotten incident. I lost my innocence at that store, as I had previously written. I knew about sex of course, and had practiced it, but it was all innocence and light. I learned about “adult sex” at the store, secret meetings and people’s affairs, and I learned way too much about the “real world” that I didn’t need to learn.

When I was at the store for a while, I was moved from the Stationary, Books and Notions Sections to the Record Department, where I most wanted to be. I stayed there for a few years and it included Luggage as well, a subject I learned way too much about.

Records ended up being purchased through one supplier, a job shop I guess, where we could order anything and they would deliver. They also filled the 45 racks with the “latest and greatest” top 10 hits, selling for I think $.99. We started selling albums and I was there through mono and stereo, sold at different prices. The mono albums I believe were $2.79 and the stereo were $3.79, except in rare cases.

We picked up a salesman along the way who did the orders, and along the same way I became the manager of the departments. Usually, before the end of June, the store would fire the manager and make me manager until the fall when I went back to school and they made someone else manager.

The salesman, Bill, I believe, would give me a gift every now and then, which made me very happy. He would bring me a popular album, inscribed on the back as gift from him to me, which allowed me to take it home without any questions from security. I simply showed it to security as I was leaving.

It took a while for me to catch on, or it took a while for it to work this way because I think he used to take the records from his briefcase, but Bill was taking one of our records (our company stock) and writing it off as a gift to me. He “allowed” me to steal our own records.

Once I found this out there were perhaps many things I could do, all of which I never did. I smiled, thanked Bill, and went off happily with my record in hand. He never said he was doing this, so I only know because I was smarter than he was and saw him stealing it. I suppose I made up some lame excuse for our thievery, such as he would replace the stock from his own stock, but knowing full well it would never happen.

I was never told he was doing this and could plead innocence were I ever caught.  However, we all now know. Maybe I contributed to the store’s demise…….

A hot shower awaits……

While we have three bathrooms in our house, in reality we only have one full bath, one with a shower/bathtub.  This is not much of a problem, but has again surfaced one of the better parts of “empty nest” syndrome.

Over the years we have adjusted to our unique ways of being, and my wife and I shower in the morning and the girls usually shower at night. It all works and so with the girls gone it is fine as our schedules mesh so that we are not in each other’s way. The problem was, my youngest daughter would sometimes take a luxurious bath. She would often spend evening hours in the tub, with an assortment of potions and lotions, beyond my expectation and pocket book.

After these events, she would go to sleep, and in the morning I was the first one in the shower. Even after her meticulous cleaning up, she would leave a thin layer of smooth sweet oil on the surface of the tub, beyond the capabilities of any cleaners, which would make the surface of the tub similar to a hockey rink!

There are no such things as shower blades for your feet, and a simple step into the tub could send one flying with legs akimbo, into the waiting vessel. The only thing to grab was the shower curtain or shower bar which is not really attached, but spring held so it covered your nakedness when you hit the ground and screamed, and people came running.

There is some good in this empty nest; I no longer approach the shower with morning trepidation. It will be the normal smooth surface, with no chance of morning collapse. A hot shower awaits……

 

I'm mad as hell and I ain't gonna' take this any more!

There were some Fashion Week in New York tickets, and two girls in Montreal wanted to go. One of them had been a design intern in Germany this summer. My daughter’s friend had a friend in a band playing a big gig in New York and she wanted to go and asked my daughter.

In order to get to the event, they had to leave Montreal at 4 a.m. and drive straight through to Manhattan so they rented a car and were going to leave this morning.

They invited my daughter and her friend to go last night and how happy they were. My daughter packed, and they both decided to go to a party rather than to sleep because they could never wake up so early to leave at 4 a.m. but could stay up all night.

At about 2:30 a.m. they went back to the apartment and my daughter realized she couldn't find her US passport and her Canadian citizenship card; both required to enter and leave to get to New York for these events that were so very important.

After many panicked moments of non-finding, rather than give up, she called home as if by some miracle we would, of course, know where it all was.

At 3:00 a.m. my wife woke me up to ask, in a non- congenial way, if I knew where they were. Even if I did, what the hell could I do about it. So after some shouting we told her to stick it up her butt and leave us alone. She had no choice but to stay home and we had to argue for a while until I couldn’t stand it anymore and went to sleep again.

I was awake at 5:30 a.m. but just mad.

As about 11:00 a.m. I actually looked for them and they were in my desk, where we had left them when we crossed the border in August coming back from the Buffalo airport. The border guard must have handed them back to me with mine and I put it away and forgot to return them to her.

Good on me! The last thing she needed to do, the second week of school, was to drive all weekend to see some band she didn’t know in New York! I’m paying for school, not continual vacations!

Barbeque Days

Every year, about the beginning of the spring, usually during a dinner party, I run out of propane for the grill. In the beginning of the fall, right after a vigorous barbeque season, I run out again usually during a dinner party. To insure this won’t happen I have two propane canisters, so one is always ready, or so I planned. I didn’t plan, however, on my laziness.

 

Usually I forget to fill the second one until it’s too late.

Two days ago I felt the tank and it felt OK, but I thought maybe I’d better get some because we were having company over for dinner. I went out and got the tank filled, just in case. As I started to barbeque last night with a patio full of guests, everything seemed fine. About five minutes into it I looked at the temperature to see if I had reached my desired four hundred degrees when I realized I had nothing!

My horror was complete, I was out. However, for one of the only times it has happened, I was prepared!

A quick change over and we were back in business. The whole process may have lasted ten minutes, and we were on our way to a perfect evening.

Next spring, I will remember, I hope.

Empty nesting lasted two days!

Empty nesting lasted two days!

My wife was in Montreal until Wednesday, and she arrived home. My daughter really wanted her to stay and help out, and she was happy to be needed, plus she was able to sightsee and shop in Montreal.

My youngest daughter had a great week at school, and as all her roommates went home for Labour Day, she decided to do the same. My wife went up yesterday, and they lunched and shopped before coming home together. We will be bringing her back on Sunday.

Maybe empty nester will begin next week.

Who knows?

Max, our dog, was ecstatic when my wife arrived and he played and barked and smiled I believe. When my daughter walked in he went ballistic! He hugged her and made an assortment of happy animal noises. He never was happier.

Eventually he will be hardest hit by empty nester syndrome, if it ever comes……