Archive for Brother

Father’s Day

{ June 17, 2007 @ 7:25 am } · { Brother, Destiny, Fate, Father, Father's Day, Myself, Step-father }
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It is once again the international day designated to honoring fathers everywhere. 

My father has 3 boys and a girl – me.  I feel fortunate to be the only girl as it makes me feel special.  I have often wondered what it would have been like if he had had another daughter.  Of course he has a godchild who lives in China but I am completely unable to recall at this late hour if it is a boy or girl.  A horrible admission to be sure, but understandable since I have never met the child and only hear of him/her sporadically. 

It is on this day that I am thankful that I have a father who lives a decent life and allows his children to be who they are without fear of his disapproval.  Granted, a little disapproval now and then would have probably gone a long way in steering me in the proper direction in life but I believe that we create our own destinies and I am thankful to have created mine, such as it is.  As I see it things can only get better from now on, despite the blows life will continue to throw in my path.  Free will and destiny, a dichotomy one truly begins to understand as wisdom slowly seeps into our consiousness.

My step-father has been a guiding light in my life, a voice of reason when I have been unable to make reasonable decisions myself.  I appreciate his down-to-earth approach to life; his unassailable belief in all things scientific that helped me to understand much of the world around me – not to mention his invaluable help with my homework as a child!

And lastly, my brother, who is/was like a father to me.  His knowlege and thirst for learning and understanding is limitless and I would not be the person I am today without his influence.  His kind understanding has helped me through the most difficult times and I am completely indebted to him.

For these three important men in my life I am truly thankful, and I can only say that one day is not enough to express all that they mean to me.

And if that sounds schmaltzy so be it.  Sometimes a little shmaltziness is called for.

xoxo

Just One More Time…

{ May 25, 2007 @ 11:38 pm } · { Brother, Language }
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I swear if I hear the the word ‘amazing’ one more time I’m going to scream.  It’s just one more example of the linguistic laziness that is rampant in our society.  Other examples would be ‘cute’, ‘interesting’, and ‘awesome’. 

I remember years ago when my brother went on a similar rant about the overuse of the word ‘interesting’.  It really stuck with me.  To the point where nowadays when it’s on the tip of my tongue I flail around frantically in my mind for something more expressive.  Although I must admit that if I’m speaking to someone other than Doug I sometimes just let it slip out. 

Dear Deer

{ May 16, 2007 @ 1:36 pm } · { Adrenaline, Animal Control, Brother, California, Deer }
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I saved Bambi once.  One of the cooler things I’ve done in my life and one of the most memorable.

I was driving down the long, winding, wooded road to my job at the tennis club.  Coming around a bend I looked up to the top of a hill and noticed a deer standing up by a wrought iron fence that surrounded the yard of one of the neighbourhood’s wealthy occupants.  Nothing unusual there until I noticed the mini deer standing next to it.  The mini deer was just a baby.  Half the height and probably a third of the weight of its mother.  The baby deer’s haunches were wedged between two bars of the fence. 

I watched as a garbage truck (with two burly guys in it) drove by.  I watched again as a large pickup truck drove by.  I knew they had to have seen the deer but neither vehicle stopped.  Hmmph I thought, so much for men. 

My anxiety level was rising.  I am always completely overcome by desperate situations that involve animals.  I stopped my car, not even thinking what I would do, and looked up at the house.  I could see an older couple framed in the picture window with a phone in the hand of the gentleman.  They were looking at the deer.  I knew what that meant.  ANIMAL CONTROL.  I had had many encounters with animal control.  In my experience they would come out and take the animal away and that would be that.  For some reason they are reticent to just let animals go.  Anyways, I couldn’t let that happen.

I approached the deer and realized that deer are much bigger than one would think.  Especially when you are looking up at them.  Mama deer didn’t budge from her spot next to baby.  Baby’s haunches were scraped and bloody from trying desperately to free itself.  It struggled as I approached.  My brother later told me I was lucky that mama deer didn’t rip me a new one but to this day I think she sensed I was there to help. 

I looked at the bars and decided the only thing to do would be to widen them so the baby could slip through.  My heart was pumping like mad which probably accounts for the adrenaline.  I placed my hands on the bars, heard a noise and stopped.  It was the garbage truck coming back.  I suddenly flashed to the horrible sight of me freeing the deer and watching as they ran headlong into the path of the garbage truck.  So I waited.  Moments later I bent the bars apart (still QUITE amazed about that – seemed like nothing at the time, but today I try it on similar bars and they don’t budge), and sure enough the deer shot down the hill and across the road.  They didn’t even look both ways.

I ran back to my car before the owners of the fence could voice their opinions.  But thinking about it afterwards I realized that I could feel only good vibrations emanating from the house – concern.  They didn’t care about the fence (they were rich anyways) and I think I felt their relief as the deer was freed from its prison.  Anyways, everyone around there knew I was the manager of the tennis club so I’m sure I would have heard about it if the people had been upset and I never did.

I like to think about that deer, alive and well, living in California – with maybe a few scars from its brush with a humanity.

Lies My Mum Told Me…

{ May 6, 2007 @ 6:50 pm } · { Brother, California, Canada, Cats, Lillian, Mum, Myself }
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The Family Circa 1969The Family Circa 1969 

 I love my Mum.  She is unique to my eyes, and she’s a very smart cookie.  She had a lot to deal with while my two brothers and I were growing up and I think she did the best she knew how.  Some of her tactics however were quite intriguing as I look back.

For instance, as a child we would go shopping together in the department store in Los Altos, California where I spent the early part of my childhood.  One day we were riding the escalator and she told me not to stick my head over the railing.  I think I did so anyways, so the next time we were there she told me the story about the little girl who got her head cut off riding up the escalator (she didn’t even tell me to not stick my head over the railing again because I might have caught on that she was trying to teach me a lesson).  She said the little girl stuck her head out too far and it got chopped off by the plastic divider between floors.  Well I never forgot that.  I was completely fascinated and asked so many questions every time we rode an escalator from then on that I think she may have wished she had never mentioned it.  It did, however, keep me from sticking my head over the railing.

When we moved to Canada I was still quite young – about 7.  We lived in a small town in the countryside for the first two years.  My Mum liked visiting old graveyards and reading the tombstones.  It was on one of these trips that we passed an old barn and my mother told me the story of the little girl who ran into an old barn to chase down her ball.  She fell through the floor and died.  No doubt this has actually happened on occasion so it wasn’t a complete fabrication.  And once again I was fascinated.  Every time I looked at a barn from then on I would remember that story.

Mum’s coup de gras came when I was in highschool a few years later.  I had the terrible habit of leaving my curling iron plugged in after styling my ever-so-popular Farrah Fawcett hairstyle in the morning.  That was in the days before they had auto shut-offs.  My mother kept telling me to remember to shut off my curling iron, but I kept forgetting.  One day I got a call at the school.  My mother said in her iciest tone that she would be picking up me and my best friend, Lillian, from school that afternoon.  She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but I knew something was up.

She picked us up and drove towards Lillian’s house.  On the way she said there had been a fire.  She said it was from the curling iron and trust me my Mum could win an academy award for her performance.  I didn’t believe her at first but she didn’t cave and when I asked about my cat she said she didn’t make it out.  Well I burst into tears.  Lillian got out at her house and we drove home with me bawling in the back seat.  When we got home I ran upstairs (it was a rather large house so it didn’t surprise me that there was no evidence of fire in the foyer).  There had been no fire.  My cat was sleeping on my bed.  I called Lillian to tell her, and she said my Mum was ‘crazy’ or something to that effect but that she was glad everything was okay. 

You would think I might be a little scarred by that incident and perhaps I was because from then on I became paranoid I had left my curling iron on.  I remember calling from the payphone at school on many occasions to ask her to check.  Even to this day I double-check my hair straightener and stove burners are off before I leave for work.  And, thanks to my brother, I unplug anything that contains a heating element – like my toaster and portable heater.  So I guess you could say it’s a good thing…a few weeks ago a guy’s whole house burned down because he went out and left a battery charger plugged in.  I guess his mother never lied to him…  

Pet Peeve

{ April 21, 2007 @ 8:07 pm } · { Brother, Funny, Myself, Pet peeve, Uncategorized }
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Before I launch into the description of my pet peeve I must say a few things.  It struck me as I opened this page and thought about what I was going to write that all I ever seem to talk about is silly, mundane, day-to-day nonsense that is of no benefit or indeed consequence to the world at large.  When I combined this realization with the fact that I was about to compound my superficiality by bleating about my personal pet peeve, well, I was somewhat ashamed. 

It was at that point that I recalled that my brother is the author of one of the more intellectually stimulating, contemporary, and open-minded blogs on this site (Doug’s Darkworld).  With this in mind I decided (rationalized) that since he has all the important stuff covered, I should be free to babble on to my heart’s content.  There’s nothing I can say about the state of the world that he hasn’t said or won’t say in the future.  Plus, he is much more intelligent than I, so I’m not even going to embarrass myself by trying. 

I’m afraid to even leave a comment on his blog for fear of looking like an idiot.  For instance, I read his blog today about gun control, and what’s going on in the middle east, etc, etc.  But do you want to know what I found the most interesting thing about the blog?  He began a paragraph with the sentence ’snort’.  That was it – one word, ’snort’.  I laughed for five minutes over that one – puts ‘jesus wept’ to shame. 

Moving along I simply must expound upon my pet peeve.  Perhaps by exposing it to the light of day it will cease and desist its unending torture of me.  Picture this:  I’m in bed, I’m reading a novel, I become sleepy, I reach over and grab my bookmark to save my place for the next evening.  What bookmark?  There’s no bookmark.  It’s certainly not on the pillow next to me where I carefully placed it (in an attempt to foil the bookmark Gods), it’s not on my bedside table, it’s not on my chest, and it’s not on the blankets next to me.  I feel the sleepiness I had cultivated with a hour’s reading slowly dissolve into a fit of rage.  Up come the sheets, the blankets, the pillow is thrown thither, the book yon, and then suddenly the bookmark is there.  Innocently resting upon the bed as if it had been there all along.  This, dear friends, is my pet peeve.

A Canadian Living in an American’s Body

{ January 20, 2007 @ 10:36 pm } · { Brother, Canada, Myself, USA, Weather }
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I had a funny thought as I drove home from work yesterday.  I was thinking about my last blog entry (ice car) and I was looking at the snow blowing into my headlights and I started to laugh.  My brother, you see, who lives in California but who was born in Canada says that Canadians always talk about the weather.  So it struck me as funny that my very second blog entry ever (and my third) was the result of the weather.

Someone recently asked me if I feel like I am more of an American or more of a Canadian.  Ultimately I’d have to say that I feel like more of a Canadian.  For although I have lived fully one-third of my life in the US, I always felt like I was an outsider.  Perhaps that was due to the fact that I made very few friends the second time I was there.  But that’s another story.  I do feel the ‘mark’ of my American birthright at all times but it doesn’t mitigate the years I spent growing up in Canada.  Ultimately I’d have to say it’s nice being able to live and work in both great countries without hassle. 

If I do move back to the US it will be to a state that has no snow, and I’ll try not to mention the weather, eh.