Something up with Which I Will Not Put

This weekend, Dr. T took advantage of the beautiful, warm, sunny days and stayed locked up inside Chalet #1 at the Pierre Elliot Trudeau park in Cote-St-Luc, playing in the 24th annual Montreal Scrabble Tournament.
He won.
First place, first division. First time.
Those readers who have ever spent time in our home will recall the word lists on the bathroom door – they finally paid off (literally)!

Dr. T accepts his prize from Montreal club director Bernard Gotlieb
He gets a nice check for this feat, and he’s already hinted that he’ll use part of the prize money to get a bike so we can hit the bike paths en famille, so that kind of makes up for the weekend spent under fluorescent lights.
So, yay!

Whatever happened to little old ladies who aged gracefully?
A couple of my Lennoxville ladies came into Montreal yesterday, and we hit the bike paths, cycling to St. Lambert for lunch, back onto the island via Parc Jean Drapeau (we even got to bike on the Formula 1 track!), through the Old Port, and back to my place along the canal:
35 km.
For the metrically challenged, that’s about 22 miles.
The ladies in question are both retired, which is why they have time to drive into Montreal for a long bike ride on a Thursday. I’m pretty sure both of them could have ridden the same distance again, too. Meanwhile, I was puffing and panting and wondering if my thighs would ever forgive me.
Now, I’m no spring chicken myself, but retirement is not looming. These ladies have a few years on me. But they are both in phenomenal shape, and I am, well, not. I was able to go riding in the middle of the week because I am between semesters, and even when I’m not, I’m lucky to have a job that isn’t M-F,9-5 anyway. But I still find myself putting physical activity at the bottom of the list of things to do, concentrating instead on work, house, family, food, and so on- by the time I have time, I am more inclined to flop down on the couch for televised distraction or flop down on the bed for sleep.
Maybe I need to retire.
My mum, in her retirement, is as active as ever, if not more so – she is the reigning women’s tennis champion at the Knowlton club, both singles and doubles.
I’m not sure where my racket is.
Having said that, I had a great time yesterday – the weather cooperated, and I wasn’t puffing and panting anywhere near as much as I would have predicted. Yay for smoke-free lungs! Lunch was lovely – coquilles St-Jacques on a terrase with a lively conversation about male movie stars (we all agreed that George Clooney wouldn’t get kicked out of bed for eating crackers, while unfortunately Redford, Newman, Connery and Ford have lost their appeal).
When we got home, the ladies went downtown to meet another friend for coffee while I collected the kids, cleaned myself up a bit, and got supper underway. I convinced the ladies to stay for supper, so they had a chance to meet Dr. T and the boys.
So, great day, and I am already looking forward to our next expedition.
And, Mo, in case you’re wondering – just got back from today’s 10 km, to keep the muscles active 😉

We visited Mum & Dad this weekend, where we got a close-up look at the unbelievable accumulation of water that results when it rains for 12 straight days.
It’s been just as perpetually precipitous here in the big city, but due to what I assume is divine intervention, there’s been very little damage, other than psychological.

This mother raccoon has been raiding my parents’ birdfeeder, and you can see how damp she is.
The lawn at their place squishes when you walk across it. The rivers and streams are all overflowing their banks. People have been evacuated in Cowansville. The Foster golf course is one giant water hazard. Waves from Brome Lake are spraying on the ashphalt on Lakeside Road.
In short, it’s wet.
Thankfully, today was supposed to be rainy, too, but so far it seems pretty sunny… and the rest of the week looks more like the May we’ve come to kow and love. Keep your fingers crossed.

The Walrus is Canada’s answer to the Atlantic or Harper’s. It’s literate, arty, political, well-written, etc., etc.
I was very excited when The Walrus appeared, and in a show of patriotic support, I subscribed for two years. I was happy to receive a new issue almost every month, with pithy articles on Canadian politics, flash fiction from such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, and a neatly organized calendar of national and global happenings.
Then I remembered why I cancelled my subscriptions to the Atlantic and Harper’s. I don’t have time to read magazines, for goodness’ sake! I barely have energy and time to read what’s required for the classes I’m teaching, not to mention the classes I’m taking. Reading for leisure? Ha.
So when I received the penultimate issue of my subscription, with a large, easy-to-read warning label informing me that I only had one more issue coming, I sighed and let it ride. I also ignored the two or three letters The Walrus sent me, reminding me that my subscription was about to lapse and I had to hurry if I didn’t want to miss an issue.
I also turned a blind eye to the label affixed to last month’s last issue – “this is your LAST ISSUE!”
Imagine my surprise, then, when the mail arrived yesterday with another issue.
I was prepared to recount the tale up to this point, with the crux of the story being the continuing non-subscription, but then I got a call last night from a Walrus representative.
Now, I have dealt with telemarketers before. No newbie, me. I have politely but firmly told phone companies that I am not interested in switching plans. I have not so politely but equally firmly told credit card companies that I am not, really not, interested in paying a “reasonably monthly charge” to insure my card. I have even told various charitable organizations that unfortunately I’ve given all my money to my cult leader and until I give birth to his blessed offspring I won’t be donating to their cause.
So I was prepared for this call. I had rationale. I had reasons. I had, if it came to it, every intention of hanging up on this pushy broad who just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
What I was not prepared for was nice.
Seriously. She asked me if I would consider renewing my subscription, and I said that although I thought The Walrus was a great magazine, I had about six issues waiting to be read, and I did not want to renew.
She said “I understand – give us a call when you retire and have time to read again! No point paying for something you don’t get to read.”
I have never been so impressed with a company’s telemarketers. So, kudos to The Walrus, for conducting business with as much class as they have on the page.
If you haven’t read The Walrus, and you do have time, go read it. In fact, I have some issues here, if anyone wants to borrow one 😉

I went to a funeral today.
The funeral was for my friend P’s mum, who passed away last week. For all intents and purposes, let’s say she died of a broken heart; P’s dad died at the end of January, and I guess some part of her mum couldn’t go on without him.
A number of things struck me today. First of all, I called my own mum just after I got home, just to hear her voice. P’s mum got very sick very quickly, and toward the end of her life, she was unable to communicate. I guess there’s some comfort in the idea that she lingered on Death’s door long enough for her children to say goodbye, but I felt sorry that we spend so much of our family time not saying stuff. When I called my mum this evening, I wanted to tell her that I’m happy she’s my mum, and that she is an incredible inspiration to me, in many, many ways.
I chickened out; we had a nice chat, we made each other laugh, and we made plans to make plans later. Maybe that’s enough – if not, I know she’s reading this, so, Mum, thanks for being you.
It also struck me how ritual is business and business is ritual. We engage in ritual all the time. My kids, for instance, have a bedtime ritual: pyjamas, pee, hands and face, teeth, story, song. We began this bedtime tradition years ago, because Colin was a difficult sleeper and the ritual helped. Now, the ritual is so firmly established that if one step is missed or misordered, we’re all thrown off.
Is a funeral, then, our last bedtime ritual? We’re dressed appropriately, cleaned up, there’s a story and some songs, and if we’re lucky, there’s someone there to give us that last kiss goodnight.
I chauffered one of the grandchildren to the grave site; G is one of the first of my friends’ kids that I’ve watched grow up from infant to adult. He’s a great guy, even if he did try to change my radio station. We talked on the way about the funeral, and about his grandfather’s funeral five months ago. When the events are that close together, you really see just how pre-fab it all is. Same stories. Same songs. We also talked about his future (he’s starting college soon) and it just now occurred to me that it’s awesome, in the true sense of the word, that we can casually flow from a critique of a funeral to a discussion of the pros and cons of studying science (pro: great job opportunities con: um, wait, I’m sure I’ll think of something).
I’m rambling, I know, but there are so many impressions and thoughts… for instance:
~ It’s truly amazing how brothers and sisters can be so different, physically, philosophically.
~ When does one get to the stage where one makes definite plans for one’s burial/cremation/scattering/whathaveyou?
~ Do the officiants get bored? I mean, it’s bad enough that you can recognize the speech at a funeral as the one from a funeral a few months ago; imagine saying the same speech, probably more than once a day.
~ Why are urns square now? Aren’t they supposed to be, well, urn-shaped?
~ Just as a point of etiquette: if you work as a chauffeur for a funeral home, whose job it is to drive the grieving family to and from the grave site, it’s not OK to overhear the deceased’s children discussing the family home and offer to hook them up with a real estate agent.
Betty, I hardly knew you. But your daughter is one of my dearest friends, and she’s a very good person, no doubt thanks to you and Archie. That’s a pretty good legacy. Rest in peace.

My garden is coming back to life… I was about to write ‘slowly but surely,’ but honestly, it seems like things are turning green, budding and blooming overnight.
I ventured out in this afternoon’s drizzle to document the renaissance. Click on the photo to go to my flickr page for more.

I have, I fear, become a lady who lunches, at least if this week is any indication.
Sunday – lunch with Mum and two Lennoxville friends in Knowlton, prior to seeing ‘Lend me a Tenor’ (featuring my high school drama teacher and attended by my grade six teacher, who remembers me after 24 years);
Monday – impromptu lunch with Dina and Naomi on Monkland;
Tuesday – the aforementioned Lennoxville ladies joined me on a bike ride along the river into Lachine, lunch on a terasse, and the return bike ride along the canal;
Today – lunch with Sophia, my bestest buddy from the engineering company days.
And I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of Vanier colleagues about lunch tomorrow or Friday.
Next week, I have no lunch plans (so far), which means that I’ll end up scarfing down crackers and peanut butter instead. So really, this whole lunch date thing is much healthier.