Off to see the Wizard

I'll admit there have been times in my life that I wished my 'little' brother would move to Australia.

One of those times was when a very pretty and popular girl in high school befriended the awkward and badly permed me for a day or two and then dumped me like a hot potato when I told her I would not 'put in a good word' for her with my very handsome and popular class president of a brother.

I would also have seen him put on a boat for Oz pretty much every time someone would say, "You're Ian's sister? Oh, he's so awesome!". Yeah. I know.

I think so, too. We went to the same college after university, we were roommates for a year when we both lived in Toronto. I stood up with him at his wedding. I didn't have a maid of honour at my wedding; I had my brothers as my 'men of honour'. It's safe to say we've been pretty close over the years.

Thanks to his wife and kids, I'm healthier and happier, too, having been inspired by them to become a runner.

But my brother and his family spent their last night in their house last night, and are in a hotel for the next week and a half while they prepare for the big move down under. After the 11th, when we drive them to the airport for the flight to Brisbane, there will be no spontaneous trips to see the kids, no March Break with Gramma, no Easter dinner, no Birthday get-togethers, no watching the kids whip around the farm on the lawn tractor. No more four year old asking within seconds of seeing me, 'Can I play on your iPod?' She's getting really good at Cut the Rope.

I want to be excited for them. I am excited for them. Living on another continent, what an adventure! I'm also really proud that my sister in law is so good at what she does that she's been headhunted into the big job that takes them all the way around the world.

It's just...I'm sad for me. I'm going to miss them terribly.

I'm sad for my mom, too. These are the only grandkids she's going to get, and starting in 10 days, her only way to see them will be on a computer monitor. A computer she hasn't yet figured out how to use.
And speaking of adventures...

Why I Watch

With apologies to Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a waiflike actress in possession of a designer dress must be in need of a red carpet.

Oh, let's not kid ourselves; we watch the Oscars for the dresses. The dresses and the mocking, since most years, none of us has actually seen the movies that are up for honours at the Academy Awards.

My friends on facebook and twitter did so well this year, but they had it pretty easy when it came to thing to poke fun at, what with Angelina Jolie's odd leg-thrusting pose and Sandra Bullock's too-tight pony tail, It was a feast for the mockers. My favourite comment of the night was from my friend Jane who wondered whether anyone else noticed that Meryl Streep appeared to be the same outfit as she wore in Death Becomes Her. Zoikes!

However, none of my yearly Oscar giggles match one I have each year when I remember working in a newsroom in Toronto, the telecast came on and the young woman I was paired with at the time asked, without out kidding or irony, "These are the Academy Awards, right? So, when are the Oscars?" It makes me giggle every year, no matter who puts out their leg.

Farewell, You Salty Dog

Lent is a Catholic thing, and while our family would always go to the Anglican Church supper on Pancake Tuesday, Presbyterians, at least the ones I know, do not go for that sacrifice business during the 40 days between Shrove Tuesday and Good Friday. Too... papist? I don't know. We just didn't do it.

This year, though, I've decided to give up something for the next six weeks in the hope of breaking a bad habit that no longer works for me.

You see, I have a... thing... for potato chips.

I eat chips pretty much every day, at about fifty grams a serving, and usually two servings if there happen to be any of the devilishly delicious salty savoury treats in the pantry. It's a problem. And yes, I weighed my average pour from the shiny tempting bag.

What's even worse is that as far as I'm concerned, the crappy, greasy buck-a-bag storebrand chips are just as tempting as the boutique Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar variety (uh-oh, I'm salivating just thinking about Miss Vickies). I've been known to plow through a big, big bag of Sour Cream and Onion on the drive home from Costco. If they're in the house or near me in any way, I'm eating them, and things have simply gotten out of hand. I need to regain control. I'm pretty sure it's not healthy to eat that much junk nearly every day. It's good for neither my arteries nor my arse.

So, even though I'm not a believer, I'm using Lent to break my chip crutch. No S&V, no ketchup, no BBQ, no Sour Cream and Onion; none of it until Good Friday. (or is it Easter Sunday? I'll have to check the rules...) Maybe by then, the love will have died. Maybe I'll be over them. I'll just have to have faith.

Other People's Families

There's nothing like a family get-together to provide a reminder of where you come from. And there's nothing like someone else's family get-together to remind you that you're normal.

I sometimes worry that the relationships I have with my siblings are strange, weird, boring, not close enough, too close, somehow lacking in some way. Every time we get together, it's a different lack that strikes me. But no longer. I was recently at two occasions for other people's families, one sad, one happy, and watching the family dynamics was very instructive.

At a funeral a few weeks ago, there were siblings and cousins who were clearly barely acquainted with one another, others were very close and intimate, and a few were completely absent. At a baby shower not long ago, some relatives sat very very close together, some stayed in the kitchen and others sent a gift along with someone else.

It struck me, as I played Barbie with my four year old niece, there might actually be no weird and there likely is no normal, either. What a relief!
It's just a family.
I hope you got to spend Family Day with your family, and if not, then I hope you spent it with the family you choose.

Review: Best Laid Plans

It's no wonder to me Terry Fallis' self-published first book has been such a success. I'm only disappointed it took me so long to get to it, in the stack of stuff beside my bed.

Best Laid Plans is a delightful romp through the back halls of Canada's parliament, including infidelity, romance, a doomed election campaign, sexual shenanigans, engineers, chess and a hovercraft. It's especially fun to read in this true-blue Tory riding where I'm sure there are still a few Liberals who dream and hope for a similar story to play out here.

The story follows the departure from political life of a speechwriter and PhD, who agrees to do one last thing for the Liberal Party, and that is, mount a campaign in a riding that has voted Conservative for ever and is likely to continue to do so.

Just the description of the narrator discovering his beloved cheating on him is worth the cover price. I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, but I'm loving it so far.

V-Day Advice

A woman whose kids I used to look after gave me some terrific advice about picking a mate. Susan said successful couples laugh at the same things, want to do the same things with their money and love the way the other person smells, without colognes or perfumes.

Susan was twice divorced, so I give her some credit for having learned her lessons the hard way. I certainly knew she was onto something with the smell thing one day a few years ago when I was knocked off my feet by a fragrance in a store at the Eaton Centre. My sweetheart and I were high school sweethearts and took a long break before finding our way back to each other. I hadn't seen him in more than a year, but the cologne I was smelling might as well have been made from his skin. At that moment, in that store, he was there with me and all our good memories poured over me. We're happily married 8 years now. Well, mostly.

This Valentine's Day, I offer up two observations of couples I know who made their love last, because after all, whether you want to or don't, it's a day we're stuck thinking about love:

1) My grandparents were married more than 60 years. They still snuggled, cuddled and held hands. I'm told they could fight like cats and dogs, too, but what I remember about them was their physical affection. It wasn't cloying or obtrusive, they were too Presbyterian for that, but it was genuine and honest.

2) My parents were married more than 40 years, and remained interested in each other's inner lives the whole time. I'll never forget coming downstairs one Saturday morning when I was in university to hear my mother say to my dad, "I didn't know that about you!" at the breakfast table. In my 20 years of infinite wisdom, I was stopped in my tracks at the possibility these two ancient creatures who'd already been married for, like, forever, had not yet plumbed the depths of each other's identities. It gave me pause.

So, my tips for the day:

Be interested
Snuggle

Oh, and give him a sniff now and then, to appreciate how your knees still tingle.

Sad but not surprised

It's impossible to have missed out on Whitney Houston's remarkable career and equally remarkable demise, but it's no surprise that she died young.

I tuned in to the radio on my way home Saturday evening to hear the mega-star singer had been found dead in a hotel room in LA, and my only surprise was that she was still with us. Houston was a magnificent singer and massively talented but she fell down the rabbit hole of addiction and just couldn't get back out.

Like Amy Winehouse's death a few months ago, Houston's seemed inevitable. Sad, but inevitable.

Before we lament the fame and the money and other contributors, take a look around. Families everywhere cope with the heartbreak, failed parenting and hideous fallout of substance abuse. But for most of us, it's not quite so public. I would wager none of us knows even one family untouched in some way or another by addiction. It's a tragic failure of our species to want to alter our experience, whether we prefer to get high or low. Red wine for some of us, crack or tobacco for others, it's the nature of our beast. Some of us just get higher or lower before we're done.

Bizarre Culture

Have you ever seen an image of someone you don't recognise, only to figure out after a few milliseconds you're looking at a picture of yourself, just slightly out of context? It's rare, but it happens sometimes, and I always find it instructive to see myself as a stranger would, even just for a minute.

Today, on Groundhog Day, it happened again, not to me personally, but to me as a Canadian. I was thunderstruck by the sheer weirdness of Groundhog Day.

The whole thing is just a silly tradition and we don't actually set any stock by it. But imagine if you were new to the country and couldn't tell the people up early and out in the cold for the prediction were anything other than deadly serious. What if you couldn't tell it was all tongue in cheek? What would you think?

I would think these were a very silly people indeed, happy or not about a long-term weather forecast based on whether a furry, buck-toothed rodent (an albino one in the case of Wiarton) sees or fails to see sunshine on a particular morning.

From a distance, it's very odd, and we rarely acknowledge that it's not what it might appear to be. Which makes me think we might not really understand some of the practices we might ridicule in other cultures, because they may not be what they appear to be from the outside, either.

Although, with the trial of the Shafia family just concluded, when it comes to bizarre cultural practices, I'll take the groundhogs every time, thank you very much.