Fair Enough.

It was Fair day on Monday; we went with the girls and a few of their friends. A good time was had by all, despite the fact that the Pig and Duck Races were NOT there this year. The weather was beautiful and it was all good.

Part of the fun of going to the fair is the rides...the Mister and I don't partake: too expensive for us. But the girls go on everything, at least once, and don't seem to suffer any consequences from having their brains rattled around like marbles in a jar. Thing 1's friend convinced her to go on one ride that was basically a roller coaster on a track that was one big circle standing on it's end, so that the people on the ride just kept going upside down. Thing 1 did it last year, and had some reservations, but her friend was very persuasive and got her on it. All we could hear was Thing 1 screaming the entire time, and not just occasional shrieks of terror, but a continuous wail like an air-raid siren. The guy running the ride liked it so much, he took everyone on it around a couple of more times. Thing 1 had no idea that was her voice she heard screaming....she thought it was other people, too. At least I could tell her her hair looked bitchin'.

The other attraction at the fair is the food. As my dad has said, "they'd deep-fry the coffee if they could". Fair food is all nutritionally bankrupt and morally dubious. That's what's good about it. They had a new offering at the fair this year: deep-fried butter. Thing 1 and Thing 2's friend and I were all game to try that, and guess what? It was delicious. I thought it would be, well, just what you are thinking deep-fried butter would be like, but it was fabulous. They take a lump of frozen butter, about a half a tablespoon, and batter it and fry it. Then they drizzle chocolate, vanilla, caramel and raspberry syrup on each one...when you bite into it, it's all melty and crispy and sweet and salty and hot and yummy. It reminded me of fresh pancakes with LOTS of melted butter. You can't eat too many of them, your arteries will stop up entirely, and you can't think too much about it when you're eating it, that way madness lies. I think the only thing you could deep-fry that would be worse for you is lard.

We petted goats and watched chicks hatch and saw a milking demonstration. We ate fries and rode on wagons. We saw some pretty interesting fashion choices and the Mister and I were so tired at one point we thought about playing bingo, just for the chance to sit down.

All done for next year.

Taken For Granted.

My aunt and uncle from Ireland are visiting Canada for a few weeks, and they are staying with my folks for a few days. They were in Vancouver and took a train through the Rockies and will be heading off to Toronto for a few days before they go back to Europe....a fine trip, if you ask me.

It's easy to think that the place you live is mundane and ordinary, until you get to see it through someone else's eyes. We took them to a pick-your-own apple orchard yesterday afternoon; totally a regular thing for us, but fascinating and exotic to them. You should have seen their eyes when they saw the pumpkin patch.

Over the years, we've had lots of visitors from overseas, and it always amazes me what they think is fabulous and we take for granted.

This particular aunt and uncle brought their three boys here many years ago, when they were 7, 9 and 11. We took them to see a baseball game, a Great Lake, a humungous playground and an honest-to-God, real, live Indian cheif. What did they talk about when they got home? The food court at the mall. They pronounced it "magical".

We've brought lots of people to Niagara Falls, which is pretty fabulous. They've always liked it, but were amazed at all the Tim Horton's along the highway on the way there. The fact that you could get a cup of coffee and a Boston Creme donut in Woodstock and it was exactly the same as the one you got in St. Catherine's was nothing short of miraculous.

I took some cousins to Montreal once, an 8 hour car trip. They couldn't get over that you got on the highway here, drove for 500 miles and got off in Montreal. One road, the whole way.

People from Europe find the amount of room here incredible. I had a party here in our backyard a few years ago, and some visitors from Germany could not believe how we had that whole yard for just our family. "You guys waste a LOT of space here", was how they put it. It is true, they use space a whole lot differently there than here.....except for some of the big cities, space is the one thing we have no shortage of in Canada. I have to remind myself that we are unusual in how big our houses are (basements!!) and how much land we have.

I heard a story many years ago, from when Poland was still under Communist rule. A collegue of my father's had his mother visiting from Warsaw one summer. They walked into a run-of-the-mill grocery store here and the poor woman burst into tears....she'd never seen so much food in one place in her life. We still have an abundance of food at incredibly cheap prices here, something we tend to forget.

I've seen other people from "away" be delighted by butter tarts (Americans), BBQ sauce (Germans), blueberries (Brits) and pumpkin pie and "the houses all look different" (Australians).
Imagine what I'd find exotic and noteworthy there....I'm sure they'd be amused.

How To Piss Off Mrs. Loudshoes At the Grocery Store.

• Don't bother parking your car in a parking spot which is all the way over in the parking lot. Pull right up to the front door and put on your four-way flashers and run in "for a few things". No one else is as busy as you, and they can just wait while your car blocks traffic.
• Wander aimlessly through the store, making sure you are everywhere I want to be. Don't pay any attention to anyone else in the store. Because you are the only one there!
• Be sure to wait until the lady at the deli comes to you before you even begin to think about what you want. Lots of "ummmming" and "I don't knows" go a long way to making Mrs. Loudshoes' head explode. Be sure to ask for thirteen different kinds of deli meat, all shaved, and make sure they have to show you how much 100 grams is every. single. time.
• Take this opportunity to have a long heart-to-heart talk with your neighbour. In the dairy aisle.
• Advise me, without provocation, on my purchases. "Don't buy that tuna, it's not as good as this tuna". Look at me like I'm crazy when I say "I don't care; it's for the cat."
• Abandon your cart cross-ways in the aisle. Go away to a whole other aisle for a half an hour or so. Be mad when someone has had the audacity to move your cart.
• Pretend you can't get around me and sigh loudly.
• Have a loud and heated arguement with your roommate about the moral, philosophical and far-reaching implications of buying low-sodium soy sauce vs. the fully leaded soy-sauce.
• Let your six-year old drive the cart. Because he is fabulous at that. Never mind that he can't see where he's going, he has the co-ordination of a drunken monkey and he's alarmingly aggressive, he's just so darling!
• Don't bother putting your cart away. Just leave it in the parking spot, where it can roll away into someone else's car.

If you do all of this, don't be surprised when I just happen to sneak in expensive, stinky cheese into your cart. Or maybe condoms. Or Depends. I have to have my fun somehow.

That Didn't Take Long

Aaaaand....we're back at it. School started today for both Thing 1 and Thing 2, and we are right back in the thick of it in less than 12 hours.

No dramas today. Thing 1 went to her third year of high school without batting an eyelash. She got her schedule last week, so knew where to go and what to do. Thing 2 started her last year of elementary school, Grade 8, and has all her friends in her class, as well as the teacher she wanted. So she gets to enjoy her one year as a big fish in a small pond.

Funnily enough, I was the one with the dodgy tummy this morning. As I was getting ready for work, I found myself getting all riled up, until I said "wait a minute, MY life doesn't change one little bit today, what am I all nervous about??". Hard to change some habits, I guess.

Both girls came home with a hemorrhage of paperwork for me to deal with this evening. I think I wrote out both of their health card numbers a bazillion times. I checked off dozens of boxes saying I'm okay with them having their pictures taken and I take full responsibility if they trash school property and I understand they are not allowed to dress like little prostitutes. I signed my name so many times it has lost all meaning for me. I stopped even reading what I was signing....I've joined them up to Al-Qaeda and donated their kidneys for all I know.

It's kind of remarkable that one day in, it's like we never left.

September

It's Labour Day weekend here, which means that the kids go back to school tomorrow. Thing 1 and Thing 2 are okay with that; they've had a fabulous summer, but are ready to start something else. There's only so much computer time and television a teenager can take.

I'm kind of sorry to see them go back; I've always liked having them around the house during the summer. Because they go to school during the week and the Mister and I work on Saturdays, we only have one day a week when we are all home together....Sundays are very precious around here. But during the summer, it's like we have 3 Sundays a week. I'll miss that.

As a kid, I always liked going back to school. (Although I was way too cool to say so.) Even now I feel like I've somehow been slacking for the past two months, and it's about time I bucked up and got back to work, even though I work at pretty much the same pace all year round. I don't think it matters how long you've actually been out of school, you tend to feel like the "real" year starts on the first Tuesday of September, no matter what.

I still like buying new pens and pencils and notepaper at the beginning of September. It feels like I should, even though I don't need them. And the smell of new denim reminds me of September every time I get a whiff of it. It's been a bit cool here the past few days, and waking up into a chilly room while I'm enveloped in a toasty cover cocoon makes it feel like summer is over and autumn is definitely on the way.

It's been a beautiful summer, and it's not over yet, we could still get plenty of hot weather for the next while. (The Mister's birthday is on the 19th, and there have been lots of years where it's been way too hot to make a birthday cake. Thank God for Dairy Queen.) But even if it's physically still summer, mentaly, it's fall.

Away and Back.

Thing 2 has been at camp the past week, and Thing 1 and I went and picked her up this afternoon.

The camp is an hour away, on Lake Huron. Thing 2 went there last year, and loved it, and couldn't wait to go again this year. I'm happy she likes it so much; I was never a kid who could contemplate even the idea of going away to camp for a week....terminal homesickness would have finished me off for sure. It thrills me that she does not suffer similarly. Thing 1 never went away to camp, not so much because of the homesickness, she's savvy enough to be able to deal with that. It was more because, in her words, "there's too much nature at camp." That particular apple has not fallen far from the tree.

It's a bit disconcerting to be away from your child for a few days and not recognize them when you are reunited. I walked up to Thing 2's cabin, where all the girls were hanging out outside waiting for their parents, and I nearly kept going because I was looking for much younger kids. When a young woman almost as tall as me launched herself at me and hugged me for all she was worth, I was momentarily offended. Then I realized it was my own offspring. I'm glad I hugged her back, and didn't flip her over my shoulder in a Jackie Chan moment.

As we drove home, in a gold-dipped afternoon through the rolling green of southwestern Ontario, we chatted about her week, and our week, and Toby's week. (Toby caught a chipmunk....Thing 1 managed to free it from it's peril by gently hitting Toby in the head with a broom. Toby was so surprised he let go of the chipmunk and gave Thing 1 a perfec "what the hell???" look. Chipmunk wisely hightailed it out of there, and now Toby goes back to the spot every time he goes outside, like it might be there again. ) She did some archery and ate French toast for the first time and told her friends about the songs I sing to the cat. We got a new tv for the kitchen, and worked and noticed how quiet it was without her around.

She's had a shower, and dinner (with all the milk she could drink, because, apparently, they don't serve milk at camp) and after going on Facebook and watching tv, will climb into her own bed with clean sheets and can sleep as long as she likes.
I don't think it gets any better than that.

All Worked Up

Thing 1 started her first job this summer...she's bussing tables at a roadhouse/diner sort of place nearby. She's finding her way through a whole new kind of world, and finding out that it's awfully nice to be making your own money, and that there are a whole lot of different grown-ups out there.

My first job was working at a catering company, around the late 70's when I was 15. I worked for the princely sum of $2.85 an hour, when minimum wage was only $2.15. We packed up a large van with potato salads, macaroni salads, fried chicken and bread and headed on out to a retirement party or an annual sportmans' dinner or a wedding, somewhere in a Legion hall in southwestern Ontario and unpacked the whole lot onto a buffet table. After smoking about 40 cigarettes while they ate, we served the coffee, THEN we were allowed to eat the leftovers. The food was pretty lousy; only the fried chicken and bread were in any demand. We often slipped fried chicken into our pockets while we were unpacking, so that we could be sure to get some at the end of the night. (So, if your 25th anniversary party was woefully short of drumsticks, I apologize.) We were not terribly good caterers..... many was the time where lukewarm food was served by indifferent staff to surly guests. I can't imagine how awful your wedding would have to have been to have us there.

But I learned a lot about dealing with other people, that even though this was a part-time gig for me for some pocket money, this was a real job to most of the people I worked with, and it was the first time I ever saw, close up and personal, how hard most single mothers had to bust their asses to keep their kids fed and clothed. I saw that lots of people didn't have the choices or opportunities that had, and took for granted. I learned that every job, no matter how piddly, was important to someone, and that I had a responsibility to do the best I could at that job. I found out the people you work with can make all the difference in how much you enjoy the work, and that a teenage girl can fit about 20 pieces of fried chicken in and around her person without showing any outward signs of having done so.

My next jobs were: working at cafeteria style restaurant with my friend Carolyn (where I learned that if your boss is an asshole, the job is never going to be worth it.), a kitchen at a fancy-schmancy French restaurant (where I learned how to make 10 pounds of pork liver pate at a go, which looks and smells just like baby poo.), working the counter at a dry cleaners (where I learned that the smell of skunk will NEVER be eradicated) a sales clerk at a classical record store (where I learned the difference between Bach and Beethoven) and a receptionist at a hair salon (where I learned that people will do just about anything to get their hair done, including show up for an appointement when they are in full-out labour.)

I've always liked my jobs, and I've always rather liked working. And I got something out of every job I've ever had, good and bad. But I've never eaten fried chicken again.