Banishing Blues

Here are a few random things that have helped me today as we struggle with the Coldest. February. Ever.

1. Chicadees have warm feet. I know this because I fed several of them from my hand on Saturday at the Wye Marsh and all their little feet were just a teeny bit warmer than my hands.

2. Scotland's National Animal is a unicorn. Seriously. It seems like a giant FU to the world, honestly, which would be typical Scots now, wouldn't it?

3. There are still more public libraries in the world than McDonald's restaurants. (Whew!)

4. A group of flamingoes is called a FLAMBOYANCE! (Now, to get somewhere where I can see one...)

5. Most of the dust in your house is actually stardust mixed with little pieces of you. Remember this from the famous book by Robert Fulghum: "The majority of Stuff comes from just two sources: people—exfoliated skin and hair; and meteorites—disintegrated as they hit the earth’s atmosphere. (No kidding—it’s true—tons of it fall every day.) In other words, what’s behind my bed and bookcase and dresser and chest is mostly me AND STARDUST."

Holding Fast

My family motto is "hold fast", which is what I am attempting to do during this month of self-imposed sobriety.

19 days in, I have learned a lot about myself and also about our society's love of 'the drink'.

Like many families, my family's relationship with alcohol is a jumbled one. Three of my uncles have had a very tough time with booze: one's an admitted recovering alcoholic who told me when I was younger that he was "interrupted by God' as he used an axe to chop down the door of his own house during a booze-fuelled fight with his wife. He hasn't had a drop ever since that day. Another uncle died of drinking and smoking; he had cancer of the esophagus, stomach and lungs. Still another is estranged from the family, living off the grid in a single-wide in the woods somewhere in BC. We haven't seen him in decades, but I'm told he has struggled with the bottle since his teens.

On the other side, my father's parents had a bottle of something or other in the house, somewhere deep in a closet, and it lasted at least 20 years, since they weren't sick all that often. It was for medicinal purposes only, and I don't know what was in it. Rye, probably.

We don't have get-togethers with one side of my first family, and we don't serve alcohol at gatherings on the other side. One of my cousins says the lack of 'truth serum' is why we still manage to have those family parties, and she might be right. Although, I think there might be a secret beer or two swilled near the fire at the corn roast some years.

With my in-laws, Sweetie's mother is banned from making my drinks at his family functions, because, as she puts it, she, "doesn't like wasting the mix". I make my own, to prevent, as I put it, 'being shitfaced at Thanksgiving dinner." I'll never forget being offered 'moose milk' at Christmas when I was 17 as Sweetie and I had just started dating. There were certainly no drinks offered to underage girls at our weeknight dinners at the farm.

Over the years, my relationship with alcohol has become quite close. A cocktail before dinner. Wine with dinner. Port or something afterwards. Prosecco and OJ in the tub, Bailey's in coffee on weekends. Two drinks after curling four nights a week, boozy dancing at a bar, membership in a Scotch Society for Sweetie. Thinking it over, it's... a lot.

Which is why this month of sobriety proposed by the Health Unit was so intriguing to me. Somewhere, I was wondering if I was really in charge.

It turns out, I am cut from the bolt of my Dad's teetotalling parents. This not-drinking thing has actually been a bit of a breeze. I'm 19 days in and have had exactly one time when oh, boy, I really, really wanted that drink. Pizza Friday and Moosehead are simply made for each other, and the desire was very strong that first Friday of the month. But, just like when I have quit other habits, I acknowledged my craving and watched as it passed by.

What I have discovered is that I use booze as a treat. I know because I am replacing my glasses of wine and my vodka/Frescas with extra food and food-type treats. I'm downing chocolate bars at work, making chelsea buns at home, taking an extra portion of last night's pasta and some afternoons, I'm having chips while watching Netflix even though I just munched through a big bowl of butter-laced popcorn. So far, the switch from booze to food has shown up as three unwanted pounds on the scale. Three pounds in two weeks is about the amount of weight a 4-H beef calf is supposed to gain. Silly me for thinking I might actually lose some weight during this exercise!

Speaking of exercise, there is clearly more of it in my future, plus a bit more of that McLeod-style, jaw-clenched motto. I'll hold fast, just not to the martini, wine or beer glass. And I should definitely let go of the fork, too.

An Ounce at a Time

"Daddy always says an ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure." - Julia Roberts as Shelby in Steel Magnolias

I'm can't wait to hear the first 'born-again' reference from my family during my upcoming month of alcohol abstinence. It will definitely be a clue to shut the hell up about it.

The born-again reference is the code my family uses to describe someone who's taken up something new and just. can't. stop. talking. about. it.

It happened for me with running, and don't even get me started on my farm-fresh food. (Seriously, don't. You'll be stuck with me for hours and I'll send you home with several soups and stews and we'll end up talking about terroir and nuances of grass-fed versus corn and you'll want to poke your eyes out with a stick rather than hear me blather on...)

Have you noticed it's the very rare person who has simply stopped eating gluten, saying nothing about it? It can be very entertaining to observe; if you ask even one or two casual questions, you can sometimes get a full 20 mintues out of them, especially if it's a very new discovery, their allergy or sensitivity. No one seems to just... go on a Paleo diet and quietly make the Paleo-appropriate choice at the restaurant without any discussion of their improved sleep and strength. The Crossfitters are the most entertaining of all in their very own special circle of born-againness, far more prepared to talk at length about their choices than even an organic, gluten-free vegan with a multi-level marketing scheme they're hoping to drag you into.

I'm not criticizing (OK, maybe a little...) - I do love the passion people exhibit for new habits and discoveries, even if I somehow suspect the passion is not going to last.

And now, I get to join them all!

I'll be booze-free for the month of February as part of the Simcoe County Health Unit's Ready to be Thirsty Campaign.

Hopefully. I do love to party and play, and alcohol is such a big part of that in our society.

If I'm successful, you'll be so tired of hearing about it, you're going to want to buy me a drink and shove it down my sanctimonious throat. If I fail, you're off the hook!

Challenges

I don't talk about challenges in the mealy-mouthed PR way, which is code for screwups.

I mean an actual challenge; a goal, an event, a tough thing I'm doing. I started my first one yesterday after much hemming and hawing, and I'll start the second one on Super Bowl Sunday.

The Super Bowl one, I'm expecting, will be the easier of the two.

I accepted a challenge from the Health Unit to quit drinking for a month. Yup. An entire month. Albeit a short one.

I am not alcoholic, and I don't think I drink too much, but I suspect I will find out that I drink a whole lot more than I think I do. The challenge is more about being aware of the role alcohol plays in my life. I'm interested because there are/were some alcoholics in my family, and also, having gotten into shape a few years ago, I'm kind of loving that feeling of being in control.

That said, I'm already staring down a tough weekend when a group of my friends is slated to visit for a ski weekend. Apres ski, I will nurse lemon water while they whoop it up. It should be ... interesting.

My other challenge is within the four walls of my American Foursquare home.

A few years ago, I discovered that if I make a look-ahead to-do list, I can find a way to stick to it. But, if my goals are hazy and nebulous, I'll sit on the couch and watch Archer on Netflix.

Like the booze thing, I don't have a problem; I can get from room to room and there are no stalactites of mould nor dog poop on the floor or anything. My house is tidy, and I can usually find what I'm looking for, but I've noticed in the last few months that I am seeing a wee layer of what can only be called grime, pretty much everywhere. At my Christmas party, I was aghast to see a large cobweb dangling over one of my guests.

While I have been noticing, I have not found the motivation or the plan that might work, short of hiring someone to clean for me, which I would love but the Presbyterian in me won't let me. At least, not yet.

One of the magazines I read suggested a 15 minutes a day cleaning routine, right down to how many seconds should be allotted to wipe down a bathroom sink veers a kitchen sink. That article spurred something in me, and I came up with my own, home grown challenge: 30 cleaning minutes a day, one room or zone in the house. Yes, I even created a chart. Yes, there are spaces on that chart for dates and check marks. (Have I ever mentioned I'm a Virgo?)

Yesterday was Day One. I figured I'd start in the kitchen. I set a timer for 30 minutes and put on an interesting podcast, and settled in to make the grime, go. Three hours later when my sweetheart came home, I had worked my way through two pairs of rubber gloves, three kettles of boiling water, killed an old toothbrush and nearly an entire bottle of Murphy's oil soap, and I wasn't even close to done.

I was shocked to find I can actually move the fridge. There was some gross crap under there, man! Also, did you know it's possible to pull that 'warming' drawer out from under the oven? Lots of gross crap there, too.

Although my nails are a mess and my wrists and hands are sore, when I left for work this morning, I took an enormous amount of satisfaction from the faint whiff of Murphy's lingering in the kitchen in spite of the curry we had for dinner last night.

All I need for today, when I tackle the home office, is new gloves and more downloads.

Confused Thinking

They call it cognitive dissonance.

It's when the things you see and hear and experience don't match what you believe is possible or real.

For example, if more than 20 women were to publicly claim the same man had drugged and raped them, it wouldn't be possible for that man to receive a standing ovation at a public performance.

If someone put their name on a social media post outlining the illegal and brutal things they'd like to do to their fellow dentistry students, it's not possible the university would protect their name.

But there is nothing to be confused about in yesterday's terrorist attack in France. It was entirely expected that Muslim fundamentalists would attack the writers and artists who have been saying out loud and for a long time that religion does not trump freedom in France.

There were police guarding the doors of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, because there had already been an attack over the magazine's publications. Those officers didn't prevent the deadly shootings, but everyone knew this could happen.

And yet, the cartoonists kept drawing, right up until they were murdered by the people who couldn't agree with them. The cartoonists were not confused about what they were doing, and the shooters weren't either. Each was completely convinced they are correct, and were in the business of righting a wrong.
There is no cognitive dissonance in this case.

The question is, are you still confused?

Mother McLeod

Anyone who has had a friend or relative living at Sunset Manor in Collingwood has had contact with a firm and funny, sometimes brusque and business-like nurse who has tenderly cared for thousands of people over the last 40 or so years.

Her fellow nurses call her Mother McLeod.
I call her Mom.

Maureen Herrington graduated as a nurse from Royal Victoria Hospital, class of 1962.
This week, 52 years later, Maureen McLeod, RN, will work her final shift.

Mom started her nursing career looking after babies.Later, she worked on a surgical floor at Collingwood's hospital and after a few years off to have babies of her own, she went back to nursing when I was about 6 years old.

As a kid, I thought it was normal to come home from school to a sleepy-eyed mommy in a dressing gown and bare feet. She worked nights for the most part, so she could sleep during the day when we kids were at school, and be home to ferry us to our lessons and practices, 4-H, choirs and hockey in the evenings.

Mom credits working part-time for being able to afford the figure skates and the lessons, the piano, and the hockey leagues my brothers played in, since there were years that the income from a 250-acre mixed farm in Ontario couldn't cover all the bills. She also says since she was 'only' working part-time, she has been able to continue to enjoy her job for 50 years, never feeling too burned-out or resentful.

Working nights sometimes meant a sleepy 25 minute commute home (Oh, who am I kidding, she's a speed demon and made it door-to-door in 15...), and more than once, she fell asleep somewhere between Duntroon and Glen Huron. One time, she ditched the car just a few hundred feet from our driveway.

Most Christmas mornings, when our friends were swimming through a sea of discarded wrapping paper, we were still waiting for Mom to come home. Our Christmas morning waited because she would be at work until 7 am, and, after giving report and handing off her duties, usually wouldn't be home until 7:30 or even 8am. It was torture for a kid at Christmas, having to wait until 8 o'clock to rip into the gifts. Mom knew, as a part-timer, she would be working either Christmas or New Year's Eve, and she generally chose Christmas, not only to be sure other people's families had their fun, but also, so she could get a night of dancing with my dad.

In the winter, Mom had a partner on the job, since my father would often have to pull out the tractor and snowblower in howling winds at 10:30 at night to clear the quarter-mile to the road so she could make it in to work. There were times he was back out with the tractor at 7:30 the next morning to clear her a way back in. Once, he used the tractor to blow snow all the way from our farm to what was then Highway 24, more than 2.5 miles away, because there was no one else to come in to work on such a snowy night.

My mom turned 72 in May. Her dedication to her job is legendary at Sunset Manor, and for at least the last 10 years, a near-majority of her patients have been her age or younger. For the last several years, we've been teasing her that on her last day, we're sending her to work with a suitcase, so she can just move right in. She has spent the last few years working mostly the evening shift, the one she loathed when she was younger. "You miss EVERYTHING on afternoons," she used to say, but she has found overnights too tough, and she says she wanted to spare other nursing mothers from having to 'miss everything'.

I can't tell you how many of her fellow nurses and Manor workers have come up to me at public functions to sing her praises.

I'm a little concerned about her, frankly, since so much of her identity is tied up in her career, and she will grieve its loss.

She was the kind of nurse you want at your bedside. The kind who wants to be providing actual, hands-on care to people. She didn't care to escape "the floor" to work on the scheduling or in management. She was in it for the patients and I'm told, spends much training time with new recruits explaining to them that the patient is their focus.

Over the years, my mom has also seen many of her friends' and neighbors' family members come through the doors at The Manor, and most of them leave feet-first, obviously, since it's a home for the aged. I can promise you, she has never betrayed your confidence by telling tales about your family members' declining health or behavioral difficulties, no matter how much she was pressed for a tidbit of gossip. She would sometimes tell about an incident involving a patient, but never with a name. It was very frustrating to certain classmates who may have been, shall we say, somewhat less than circumspect when it came to confidentiality.

She saw a lot of changes in nursing in 50 years. She's an RN, but in the 60s, Registered Nurse was the only nursing designation, a two-year program, most of it hands-on learning and the nurses-in-training lived, dined, learned and partied together at a residence attached to the hospital where they worked 12- and 15-hour days. These women bonded in a way most of us can't understand. They still get together twice a year to talk and reminisce. They were at each other's weddings, and in some cases, caused those weddings with fixups at country dances 'back in the day'. Their friendships are deep and their phone calls are frequent and lengthy. I often tell the story of being told to, "bleed over the sink, I'm on the 'phone!", although I wonder if it's somewhat apocryphal.

What really did happen, though, is that in the 60s, if a nurse, even a fully-qualified one, was on an elevator and the doors opened to a doctor, the nurse had to exit to to let the doctor on.

These days, most patient care is given by Registered Practical Nurses, who also have two years of training, plus there are Health Care Aides and Personal Service Workers, all with their own roles within any health care facilty. The RNs are the ones with a four-year degree, and to hear Mom tell it, the 'degree nurses' often think their extra education gives them a free pass on things like midnight shifts, bedside care, lifts and pesky things like talking with patients.

Of her disappointments at work, I will offer that her biggest is with relatives who show up only rarely and seem to feel they have to show a year's worth of caring for their loved one in that time, making sure the caregivers get a lot of bossing around and instructions in a few short hours. She is also disappointed by the family members who appear to think nurses take up their careers for the sheer pleasure of ignoring or torturing their particular family member.

I note the compassion in Mom's voice any time she tells the story of a patient who is no longer themselves; people who, through the ravages of age or dementia, become violent or who forget where food is supposed to go or how to use utensils. There are far more of the violent ones than you might think, and no one wants to admit their dear, sweet, loving auntie just punched a pregnant nurse, but it happens. The patients who beg my mother to kill them are very tough on her, too since she doesn't like to see her people in pain, whether it's physical or in the heart. She also notes that nasty people don't suddenly become sweet little old men as they age. Generally, she says, awful people are worse and more demanding in their dotage.

That being said, there is a particular trait I've noticed among nurses, which is that they don't like to think of their own family members as a possible patient. I came home from figure skating one night in the mid-80s with a broken wrist. I was convinced it was broken by the shooting pain whenever I moved it. Mom The Nurse grabbed my arm, put her ear next to the injured limb, and started moving my hand up and down while I nearly passed out. She declared that she couldn't hear any 'crepsis' whatever the hell that is, and that with some Tylenol and time, I would be fine.
My brother took me to the doctor the next day and sure enough, I came home with a cast. She was dumbfounded to think her child could possibly be truly hurt.

I've said that I'm concerned about my mother, considering how large her identity as a nurse has loomed in her life, but I'm also confident she'll find ways to fill her time.

She's an avid traveler, having now been to every English-speaking country in the world, plus Scotland. She has toured every legislature in Canada, although she has not yet made it to the territories.

With retirement, she can turn her attentions full-time to her job at the Collingwood Fair Board, the church she faithfully attends each Sunday, the endless array of community dinners she goes to with her circle of widow-friends and of course, her three beloved grandchildren, who nearly broke her heart when they moved to Australia. They're back and they're wonderful and I think they're decorating a spare room for her frequent stays at their home.

She may also do a little bit of sewing. I say that tongue in cheek since her sewing room is so full, I could lock her in there for the next five straight years and she still would not run out of fabric that needs to go into just the right quilt block.

So, I don't worry she'll have a lack of things to do in her retirement. I just hope she can find the time to take her dear darling daughter out for lunch once in a while.

Guess who's not coming to dinner

When was the last time you watched the clock, counting down the hours until your something wonderful happened?
That's where I'm at right now, counting the hours to a week off work. I need the week so I can get some important stuff done. Important stuff like lounging with a novel, taking off my watch and leaving the news feeds behind for seven blissful sleeps.

I know how badly I need the time off after I scared a lovely couple out of my house a few weeks ago with a rant about male entitlement which became a slanging match about women's safety.

It has been a long year in strained gender relations for me. It started with the #yesallwomen hashtag movement in May after yet another mass shooting, then Ray Rice the NFL wife puncher, which morphed into a non-stop series of upsetting news items before the Jian Ghomeshi revelations in September and now the Bill Cosby allegations. I'm finding it exhausting. I feel like I have only one nerve left and it's raw.

The dinner-party squabble started when I told my friends about an incident that had happened when I was out with my dog on the trails that week. I had been asked for my take on the latest from 'The Jian Ghomeshi thing,' and I said, "Here's the thing: Ghomeshi isn't a surprise to most women. We deal with jerks all the time. Maybe we haven't been actually punched, but the actions of men curtail women's lives every day, and men, even nice ones like you, have no idea that you basically live in a whole different country from women, even the women who live under the very same roof as you do."

I then told the story of my encounter on the trail, to illustrate my point.

It was a Thursday. The guy with the dog and the bicycle had been going east and I was walking west. Our dogs stopped to greet each other. While the dogs romped, the man and I spoke a bit about the weather, and I commented that it had been a lovely fall as the leaves changed colour on the 10k out-and-back I run on these very trails. The conversation was maybe 35 seconds, likely less. The dogs appeared done with their play and I resumed my walk. Rather than continuing his walk, the man fell in beside me, even though he had a bicycle and had been walking the opposite direction when we encountered one another. I had not invited him to join me. After a fairly short distance, I said, "This is as far as I'm going today. Have a nice day," and I turned around and went home. This guy seemed to think that he gets to walk with me simply because he wants to. He did not ask if I wanted company, this guy seemed to think that he was entitled to my time, kind of like the men on the street who seem to think they have a right to demand a smile from any woman passing by. Because of this man's sense of entitlement, I curtailed my outdoor activity and fled home to exercise indoors.

Rather than hearing my story and saying what I had hoped to hear, something like, "Wow, that really does suck," my male dining companions told me in serious, concerned tones that I had made what might be a grave mistake in telling this guy where I run, and that henceforth I should likely run elsewhere, as a matter of safety. Rather than saying it's terrible that we women have to change our behaviour because of men, they suggested I change my behaviour some more.

I like that my friends are concerned for my safety, but in one breath, both men, both my friends, had turned the story of male entitlement into a story about women's victimization, placing the blame for any possible future trouble squarely on the shoulders of the victim. I was flabbergasted (but not speechless) and demanded to know from the men at my table whether they were truly of the opinion that if I were to be assaulted by this guy at some future date, they would deem it my fault for having been forthcoming in a random, 30 second conversation. "Well..." they demurred, "Not really, but, well, kinda..." Things quickly devolved to yelling, with me shouting, "So, I'm in the hospital, having been attacked and you're going to come to my bedside and tell me that I can expect no sympathy from you because the mere act of talking to a stranger on a trail makes it my fault that the guy attacked me? I guess if I'd been wearing shorts, I'd be asking for it! Are you f*&^$#g kidding me?! What you're suggesting is that assaults on women are somehow the woman's fault because the guy who's doing the assaulting is unstoppable and that assaults are inevitable and it's the woman's job to prevent them, to send the predator on to some other, less clever woman. Should it be your daughter to whom he is sent?"

The guests left shortly thereafter, not surprisingly, after making comments about realism and reality and naivete and that the world is the way the world is and we have to adapt to it and while it wouldn't be my fault, per se, it would, well, yeah, kinda be my fault if I were attacked, because I hadn't been careful enough. Because - and let this sink in- while out for a walk with my dog on a sunny Thursday afternoon, I hadn't been careful enough in a random conversation with a man.

It's 2014 and even the best men I know believe it's a woman's actions that lead to assaults, not the actions of the men who do the assaulting. Sadly, the reaction of my friends proves my point about women living in a different country from men, doesn't it, although not quite in the way I had intended.

Yup, I really need a week off. Now, if only all women, even in this great and enlightened country, could get a week off from being put upon, hit on and disbelieved. We're all so bloody tired of being told the cruel and unexplainable things men do are our own bloody fault.