School's Out for Summer

Today was the last full day of classes. (For some reason (probably some loophole) students come on the bus on Thursday, pick up their report cards, and then get back on the bus to go home.)

I have two days of teacher work days, but it will be hard to find enough to do for more than a morning, so I'm hoping to get some reading done. Maybe even some at-work-blogging! They can't fire me now after all.

Today also marked the great credit card payoff. The hold was lifted on my house cheque and with a few clicks of a mouse, I spent thousands of dollars climbing up to my dream of being debt free. I have a car payment, and student loans still as well as a no interest loan for a washer and dryer, but that's it. No Visa, no Mastercard, no Bay bill, no Home Depot. Those bastards.

It feels fantastic let me tell you. I really do believe that my credit card debt was making me unhappy and irrational. The next step is calling the companies up later this week and lowering my credit limits. That will be the greatest conversation:

Them: "Visa Credit Services. May I help you?"

Me: "Yes, I'd like to reduce my credit limit, please."

Them: "You'd like to raise your credit limit? Sure I can do that for you."

Me: "No. I'd like to lower it please."

Them: "Raise it?"

Me: "Lower it. Please"

Them: "I'm not sure that I'm authorized to do that, sir, let me check with my manager for authorization. Hold please."

I won't even mind being put on hold, even if it is unreasonably long, because I know that their heads will be exploding, bright red flashing lights will be going off, and a voice will blast through their offices, "Code Yellow. Code Yellow. Code Yellow."

So a fine day and, as with most days lately, both devastatingly sad and powerfully happy.

According to the Humours

This post owes some of its ideas to a blog written by Montana_Gal. The post was removed for some reason, but I'd like to posit a theory about relationships that is due in some part to her.

Romantic relationships can be split into parts. MG chose the following divisions: romance, home, children and work. I expect that you can add other categories such as friends, family, or recreation as your particular relationship dictates. MG believes that you need only invest in one division if another area is lacking. This, according to her will balance matters. For example if children are causing problems, invest more time in romance in order to keep the relationship strong.

I pointed out my criticism of her theory (I hope that isn't the reason why the entry has now disappeared). It draws heavily on the humours.

Hippocrates believed that the body was made up of four liquids (humours): blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. He linked them to medicine and believe that if the body's liquids were out of balance then disease would result. Galen added/adapted this theory to include the human temperments: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic.

It is important, accroding to the thinkers, to keep the humours in balance. If they are unbalanced then the body reacts by either getting sick (according to Hippocrates) or behaving irrationally (a la Galen).

Would it not be possible that for a relationship to work the couple must ensure that all aspects of the relationship are in balance? If a couple spends all of their time renovating their house and fail to attend to the romance then the relationship may struggle and die out (or may just become choleric). Maintaining a balance of the divisions of a relationship hardly seems ground breaking, but isn't always an easy task.

What furthers this theory is the timeline of a relationship. New romantic relations are intensely personal and passionate: new lovers can't keep their hands off each other. In time, the passion (unfortunately) cools. Why might that be? Perhaps it is the divisions of the realtionship; we add more parts. It is easy to keep a strong realtionship when it's just the two of you. Throw in a house, kids, and work and it's tougher to keep everything in balance.

How many times do we wish we could stop working so hard and just spend the evening with our partner, a bottle of wine, and no reason to get up early the next morning? How often do we try to fill our communication problems with home repair? These are not healthy relationships, because the parts of the relationship are not balanced. Like a load of clothes in the machine, pile too much on one side and the machine creates quite a racket.

So what good does this do anyone? I'm not entirely sure. Keep it simple? Don't have kids? Don't buy a house? I'm guilty of not balancing the scales as much as anyone. Perhaps a new Wikipedia entry needs to include my theory. That chart would look great with Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Nugget on there, wouldn't it?

Atypical Monday.

So another Monday, but it happened to be the last day of classes. The students were insane and school really was babysitting for the day. Fortunately I'm all caught up on my work and my stress levels were low enough that there were no freak outs.

Maybe that's due in part to the fact that I broke a ten year old girl's nose this weekend. I've been coaching a softball team for the past few months, and we had our last tournament on Saturday. I was hitting fly balls between games and one of my players caught the ball with her face instead of her glove. She fell down screaming, blood squirted out everywhere, and I ran to help her. Her mother took her to the hospital and indeed it was nicely broken. She has an appointment with a plastic surgeon tomorrow.

So the students gave me a rough time about it. One of the more clever exchanges was:

Me: Take out your duotangs, please.

Student: I left my books at home. Please don't break my nose, sir.

Hardy har har. With that hilarity who needs school; just take that act on the road now.

It was also the day of tying up loose ends before exams and to feel sad about leaving all my students. That is definately the hardest part about leaving. One more week and exams are finissihed, three professional days, and then I'm done. Hazzah!

Going, Going, Gone.

I am officially no longer a homeowner.

The house closed today. I've been thinking about this day for a long time for a couple of reasons, both of them fairly obvious.

This is payday! I have been living under the shroud of credit card debt for such a long time and I've been looking forward to paying all my cards off and getting that weight off of my shoulders. I can't wait to call the companies and ask them to reduce my limits. I'd like to hear what they say and the kind of "perks" they'll offer if I decide not to. With those paid off, I can really begin again, but this time I won't be so foolish about my spending.

Today also closes another chapter of my life in Saskatchewan. One of these years, I'll be back in the area and I'll drive by. Things will look different, but navigating the streets will come back quickly. I'll knock on the door and take a tour. I'll tell the owners about the renovations we made and show them pictures of what it used to look like. It will be an exercise in nostalgia, and I'll be a very different person then. It will be nice to visit. (Now if I can coin a term for nostalgia based on looking forward to thinking back onto the present, I may have something)

The 15th has arrived and the house is gone. I forgot about it until about 2:00 this afternoon, and then I realized that looking forward to today was all moot. The lawyer will have a cheque for me and since I've been so swamped with work there was no way I would be able to drive into Saskatoon for a cheque. I won't be able to get it until Friday and so I will have to absorb the extra two days of interest. Isn't that always the way it goes?

Unexplained Spike

I woke up this morning and checked out my blog traffic and was stunned to find a huge spike. For some as yet unexplainable reason I had a big jump in hits shortly after I posted my entry about Land of the Dead.

My blog has been completely unadvertised. I haven't sent out massive group emails, and my blog doesn't come up on any search engine (to my knowledge). Nevertheless from 9:49pm to 10:53pm last night there were 23 new people who visited my blog.

Now I know that this really isn't a lot of people. Most people would say, "Big deal, 23 visitors is nothing" but for my blog it represents about 8% of the total visitors. That number is even higher when you consider that most of my total has been the same people checking the posts a number of times. I would estimate that that 23 represents more than 50% of the unique visitors to my blog.

It's sad, but I'm just starting out. I'm actually quite stunned that anyone is reading this thing at all. The spike in visits is perplexing, but probably easily explainable. I am too new at this to suggest why the spike happened, but I suppose that with visitors from Singapore, Australia, and somewhere in the "Japan Standard Time/Russian Federation Zone 8" time zones I should be happy that my blog is global.

Land of the Dead

So who's looking forward to the latest in George A. Romero's zombie series?

I will always have a special place in my heart for Mr. Romero, despite the idiotic dialogue and the plots that make abosolutely no sense. If you haven't seen the gore fest Dawn of the Dead, get ye to a video store. Be warned thought that the sequel, Day of the Dead is a big let down.

I drove to Chicago in the summer of 2000 to attend a George A. Romero movie festival. They played all his films in 35mm and screened his, then, latest film, Bruiser. Needless to say it never saw wide release, and I doubt that it is even available on DVD. Chicago is one of the hottest cities in the world. I stayed in a youth hostel in a university residence, and was the victim of attempted robbery as I slept (they took my Videotron Video card, so all those late fees aren't mine). Running down the hall, down stairs, and into the street in boxers at 5:30 in the morning never leaves you with fond impressions of a city.

I've also visited the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania. Romero shot the mall scenes from Dawn in the mall, but when I was there the only freak show was the gaggles of 11 year old girls screaming for a visit from Hanson. It sounds made up, but it's actually true: I saw Hanson at the mall from Dawn of the Dead. The mall had, unfortunately, all been remodelled and updated, so it really wasn't the same place, but I ran around and groaned like a zombie anyway.

Land of the Dead is the latest in the series. I can hardly blame Romero for trying to capitalize on the zombie since he popularized them in Night of the Living Dead. The poor guy lost the copyright to the film and he doesn't make a cent for any airplay, or video sales. (You can download it legally here.)

I really hope that this film hits the big time. I met Romero and his wife in Chicago. They are regular normal people just trying to work hard and make a go of things. If he wasn't built like a refrigerator you would think him very plain. You can tell that he was uncomfortable with all the gore geeks, but was so nice about it. He took time to sign my copy of Night and pose for a photo.

Here's hoping that the zombies are blue and that the dialogue is vintage Romero.

Finally A Little Sunshine!

Though most of my readership has been suffering from intense heat over the past few weeks, the weather in Saskatchewan has been nasty. Today was the first day in almost two weeks without clouds. The temperature actually broke 20 degrees, too! There were frost warnings overnight last week, so all you smog-smothered Torontonians can actually feel jealous of Saskatchewan.

So on this beautiful day I had a garage sale to get rid of all the junk that remains in our old house. Note to all homebuyers: Quiet streets are great when you want peace but are terrible for garage sale turnout. If you want a rocking garage sale live on a main street, if you want to sit in the sun all day and doze live on a side street.

I basked in the sunshine, caked in far too much 45 SPF sunscreen, and lemonaded with Bert's Bees. At one point I rested my head back on the couch cushion and looked straight up. The sky was so crisp and blue, there was an elm tree branch, and a plane cutting a white scar. The sun warmed my face. I felt happy. There are a lot of things that I will miss about Saskatchewan.

It was a quiet garage sale, but it was a nice day. I had a great dinner with friends and I've got an fresh-air exhausted kind of sleepiness. I've given away my key and the house sale closes on Wednesday. Things are finishing up quickly, and I'm wondering how I can slow them down.

Why is that? I'm sinking now into the fear of Hamlet's "undiscovered country". I suppose that that's more of an afterlife reference, but the future is what's creeping up and it's becoming more tangibly exciting and scary. With today's dose of Vitamin D I feel as though I can handle the upcoming unknowns. That's a nice feeling.

Another Week Come And Gone

I'm in a sour mood this afternoon for some reason. Actually, the reason is a certain last period Grade 6/7 class. I had to be an actor in the classroom and play the role of Mr. Grump, and unfortunately it stuck longer than I intended.

So the fastest month in history is one-third finished. I've got a ton of tests and assignments due next week so I'll be busy marking and getting report cards ready. There's also a school golf tournament, and I expect when things are at their very busiest I'll have a job interview (even though I've heard nothing for many weeks).

Classes end on the 20th and then exams finish on 27th there are a couple of teacher work days and then the year is finished on the 30th. I'm heading to Regina to work for the Department of Learning to mark Provincial English examinations. I'll lose my long weekend, but when you have the whole summer off a long weekend means nothing. The pay is good, and I might learn something. It ends on July 5th.

Then my new life begins. The drive to Toronto begins on the 6th. I'm stopping for a day at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I have made no plans for the summer but expect that most of it will be spent at the cottage. And with that thought, I've magically been shocked out of my grumpiness!

Great Lake Swimmers And The Post Of Links

I must first give my most sincerest shout out to CBC Radio. In a perfect day I listen to at least 6 hours of CBC radio. My Saturdays consist of Go! and Definately Not the Opera. I don't even mind Quirks and Quarks (makes my geek chic feel more chic than actual geek). Saturday evenings are spent with Lorna Jackson and my new favourite: WireTap.

Saturday nights are all about Grant Lawrence and CBC Radio 3. They mostly play new Canadian tunes that can be found at New Music Canada. They have thousands of songs from new bands, most of whom kick ass. I've been busy for hours listening to live shows and studio sessions at Just Concerts.

And through all my listening to good ole CanCon, I've hooked up with Great Lake Swimmers. I am by now means a music critic. Most of my recommendations are as sophisticated as "totally awesome" or "rockin'". GLS is likely quite well known in other parts of the country, and I expect that he/they sellout Toronto gigs regularly. Nevertheless you can't buy his discs Self Titled (2003) and Bodies and Minds(2005) in Saskatoon.

Though my music purchasing has been sparce over the past few years, I have already spoken about my recent Arcade Fire purchase. I went online to Maple Music and placed an order for both discs on the 29th Of May. They arrived on June 3rd in perfect condition. I've really forgotten the joy of opening a new cd. Maple Music was great because credit cards are charged in Canadian dollars, and are shipped from Canada so that there aren't any nasty customs surprises.

As for the music itself: totally awesome. It's quiet and reflective, brooding and thoughtful. It's the kind of music that won't get your heart pumping on the dance floor which is always fine with me. Head on over to the CBC's family of websites and give the Great Lake Swimmers a listen. The only downside is that you'll have to deal with RealPlayer. If anyone from the CBC ever reads this, please offer other options other than RealPlayer!

Let's Make This Trip Longer!

The documentation of the journey of my junk has grown a little tiresome, but it just won't ever end.

My Mom arrived at our cottage this afternoon. She got a clean bill of health from the doctor, so nothing to worry about. She has decided that after she drops of my stuff she is going to load it with my sister's junk and take that stuff back to our farm in Perth, Ontario, thus adding another 4 hours of driving. I guess she has realized that her driving days may be numbered after this trip and maybe she's getting it out of her system before the final cutoff.

Anyway, my stuff will be unloaded and my Mom will spend tomorrow night in her own bed safe and sound. I can then dust off my hands and relax again.

Almost There.

My Mom is in Sault Ste. Marie. She has been crawling across Northern Ontario, but wisely so. After Portage-La-Prairie, she had a short day and made it as far as Kenora, then she Spent some time with her friends in Thunder Bay on Sunday.

I didn't sleep very well last night because I was thinking about her and why I hadn't heard from her since Friday. That being said, I'm sure that 90% of the population would kill to sleep like I did last night. What I consider not sleeping very well is probably better than most people ever sleep.

She is heading to the hospital this morning. She woke up with a lot of dizziness and after her visit last week to the hospital, they suggested that she see a doctor if she had any ill effects later on in the week. They said that dizziness could happen many dyas later, and as if on cue, it has. At least if she's in Sault Ste. Marie, my father is close enough to be able to get her if she is unable to drive herself.

Actually, when I talked to her this morning, she said that the dizziness had passed. She was only going to the hospital as a precaution. She didn't want to be on the road in the middle of nowhere unable to drive. It didn't make sense to not get checked up before moving on. She is only about 5 hours from our cottage, and will spend the night there. Then tomorrow she'll head the remaining 2 hours to Toronto.

It will be interesting to see how she will be able to unload all of my junk. It's all going into a basement apartment and since my sister is pregnant she won't be too much help, so it will be just my Mom and my brother-in-law. I expect that it won't be an easy task. It's times like this when I really hate being 3000kms away.

Every Time You Close Your Eyes (Lies, Lies!)

My Mom arrived at 9:40 and by the time we got to the house it was 10:15. We began loading the cube van with my stuff: washer and dryer, mattress and box spring, couch, desk, chair, dresser, barbeque, and skis. Did you notice no "etc"? That's because that was it. I have so little stuff that I really doubt that it was worthwhile to move it at all.

Since the bed and couch were packed we had nowhere to stay, we hit the road for Humboldt at 11:30. You might wonder how it took us 90 minutes to move so little. An obvious question, but one easily answered when considered my mother's age, weight, and the fact that she is two months away from having both knees replaced. I'm surprised that she was able to do it; I could tell that she was in a lot of pain. Naturally, she didn't complain.

I awoke the next morning and loaded a few boxes from my apartment: microwave, vacuum cleaner, table, and a box of cookbooks and junk. I left for work and my Mom went back to bed for a few hours. She made it as far as Portage-La-Prairie, MB that day.

The biggest problem and one that strengthens my believe that my parents are now my children is that my Mom had not told my father about her accident. When she left she told me that I wasn't supposed to tell him, because he would start to worry and she didn't want him to panic. So in order to avoid hard questions, my Mom decided to avoid speaking to my Dad altogether. There was a message on my machine from him asking me if I had heard from her and where she was since he hadn't talked to her in two days. I knew that my father's patented irregular-heartbeat-inducing panic had already taken firm hold.

On Friday night, at 11:30 my time (so 1:30am in Ontario), my sister phoned me. There was no hello, no how are you, just a rapid fire of questions:

"Is Mom there?"

Me: "Uhh. She was but then she left."

"Where did she go?"

Me: "On her way to Winnipeg."

"That's impossible she was at the Manitoba/Sasaktchewan border three hours ago, and it's almost midnight! When did she leave?"

Me: "Uhh. It's been such a crazy...uh...day that I'm not sure what time it was. I don't even know what day it is. That's how crazy it's been. Report cards and the moving, plus all the paperwork, not to mention that whole Stephen Harper thing, too."

You don't know when she left?

Me: "What's with the third degree? Why are you asking all these questions?"

You better speak to Dad.

So my Dad gets on the phone and I cracked like a blue-tongued candy thief.

I was in an awkward position. I had to either lie to my father or betray my mother's trust. It wasn't a fair position to be put in, so I did the best I could. It felt more like a schoolyard love triangle, or covering for someone in the principal's office.

My sister called me yesterday to laugh at me. This time there was a hello and how are you followed by a big laugh and "you are the worst liar in the world, you know."

That's true. I am the worst liar in the world. I have never been able to lie with any success. The only people the lies work on are those people who actually know that I'm lying and either are too kind to call me on it or are setting me up in order to get a good laugh or as some sick integrity test (a la Star Trek's The Next Generation's Starfleet Academy). I wonder if being able to lie is a skill or a flaw.

I'm hoping that my inability to successfully lie continues to provide laughter to my suspecting victims. I figure that when people stop laughing at my expense I need to be worried. As long as people are comfortable ribbing me then I'm okay.

The Junk Journey Continues

My Mom called at 7am, but, sadly, did not wake me up. She, in typical telephone conversation fashion, had no new news to report, but that she would call me at work later in the day after hearing from the claims adjuster.

The call came right in the middle of a reading of The Glass Menagerie. It turns out that the claims adjuster would need a couple of days to evaluate the truck. My Mom had, by that point already booked a flight from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg via Air Canada. I only hope she was able to use her Air Miles card since I can't imagine how much a flight booked the day of must cost.

At lunch I got on the case of the Uhaul truck, and managed to find one available (actually there were probably many available, but when I found one I took it). The job became more of a debate when presented with the option of a 14 foot cube van for the price of a 10 foot cube, or an extended cargo van. I expect that since the cargo van is a V6 that it will be better on gasoline, but for a higher price. I conferred with my the gearheads in my Grade 12 English class and I took the chance that the gas savings would not equal the price difference of $188.00.

I called at 2:15 during recess to book the cube van only to find out that they closed at 4:00. After sorting out payment, I spoke to my principal and she covered my last period class. The only problem was how I was going to get there before it closed. It was pouring rain (actually there were tornado warnings in much of the province), and at one point I looked at the spedometer which marked a whopping 158. I had a quick thought, "it would be just a perfect cherry-on-top if now I hydroplaned on a puddle lost control and totalled my car too." With that I tapped the brake and resumed sane driving. I picked up the truck, had to wander the city trying to find the repair shop to fix the defective rear door, but with a bit of tinkering I was on my way.

So my Mom arrives at 9:25 tonight. We will load my junk and then head to Humboldt for the night. She can continue on in the morning at her leisure and I will go to work.

I've found the whole thing quite stressful. I tried to relax with dinner at a vietnamese restaurant (a food option Humboldt lacks needless to say). I had three hours to kill so I went to the casino, and won $110 playing roulette (alright red 23!). Now I sit in the JS Wood branch of the Saskatoon Public Library typing this while under the careful eye of a Commissionaires security guard. (Why does a library need a security guard, though?)

I will be heading over to the house to haul the washer and dryer up the stairs and then it's over to the airport. I'm not sure if I'm going to hug my Mom or kick her when I see her, but I will just have to wait and see.

Keep Them Doggies Rollin'

So, my Mom is very excited about my moving back home. Though I will not be living with them, she does consider home to be anywhere within the province since at least then she'll see me more than twice in 22 months. She's so excited that she even made plans to drive to Saskatchewan with her pick-up truck so that she could help me take my junk back home.

Though I did find this to be a strange request, I did recognize the fact that things are often very strange within my family, and the things that we do are not necessarily the things that other families do. My Mom had planned to stay with long-time friends of hers in Thunder Bay and in Winnipeg. I figured, "Makes sense, then, to drive out to help me. She can have some fun at two convenient stops along the way."

And so my 64 year old mother began her journey across three provinces and over 3000 kms (one way).

Until she reached Nipigon where she fell asleep at the wheel, drove into the ditch, and rolled the truck numerous times.

Don't worry, she's fine. She has a few cuts and some friction burns from the seatbelt. I spoke to her tonight and she's as talkative as usual. She had that sound in her voice which is the vocal expression of a feeling that I know all too well: how to deal with the shit situation once you're already knee deep.

She's got to deal with insurance and rentals, and some totally twisted notion that she's got in her head that she still has to make it to Saskatchewan to move my pine desk and overpriced couch. She also has to figure out the best way to tell my father what has happened. He's used to hearing about his daughter trashing his car, but not his wife. (The truck is a complete write off, needless to say but that is neither here nor there.)

I would just like to say, for the record, that I was extremely hesitant to have my mother attempt the drive. She's my mother after all, and my mother should not be driving for 4 days to help me move a few boxes, period. I am, however, right smack dab in the middle of a changing mindset: I am now the one that worries about my parents.

It is something that I've been thinking about for a few months now, but until today I failed to fully realize that my parents are now my responsibility. In exactly the same way that they believed that I am/was their responsibility. Now I have to help them be happy for the remaining years of their lives. I am the one who will worry when they don't call on Sunday. I am the one who will have to speak to rude salespeople. I am the one who has to be there to make sure that the contractor doesn't rip them off. I am the one who will patch up cuts, with a kiss to make it better. I am the adult now.

That is a frightening thought. Can I really do this? When did all of this happen? How in the hell am I going to "parent" my own parents? I figured that this was something that happened later, but I'm afraid that it's already happened to me and I really have to come to grips with this new, and unwelcomed, responsibilty.

My parents are not perfect. They are my parents and they raised me into the person I am today. I'll be damned if I'm going to shirk my role as the appreciative son. It's the least that I can do, but I just didn't want it to happen quite so soon. Despite the appearance of maturity, I don't feel like a grown-up yet. Certainly not one that has to take care of his two parents.

As for my Mom, she's calling the insurance company, and will likely get some song and dance that I may have to sort out. I will wait for an update sometime tomorrow. I did end the phone conversation with a parental type speech about being careful, but I did manage a heartfelt I love you.