Up with front stoops; down with back decks

Do you know what’s wrong with the world today? Back decks.

I arrived at this conclusion a couple of nights ago after spending an evening on my brand new back deck with my friend. It was a christening of sorts, my first evening on the new deck and I was feeling quite pleased with myself.

“Isn’t it great to have a back deck of one’s own,” I pronounced from my eight-dollar camper chair with the bourbon-glass hole in the arm.

My friend kindly indulged my new-deck fixation. She probably thought I was little loco, but this friend is special. she has a soft spot for those of us who have been without decks.

It was a warm evening and there were no bugs, which was a good thing because the way I was feeling about my new deck that night, I would have made her sit out there in a blizzard. We had a great evening and it was well after dark when she got up to leave.

“Wasn’t it nice to sit out on the deck?” I said (probably for the thirtieth time) as I waved goodbye from the front door. I sat down on the front stoop and watched her go. When she was out of sight, I stayed out to enjoy the evening.

My front stoop isn’t big or fancy. It’s made of crumbling concrete. There no room for a camper chair, picnic table or barbeque. You have to move to one side whenever the screen door opens and after awhile, you get a sore butt from sitting on the hard concrete.

Yet, this is where I wanted to be, on the uncomfortable crumbling front stoop, not the back deck.

My street is fairly quiet, but there was plenty going on at 10:30 on a Friday evening. I could smell a barbeque and hear laughter wafting through the air.

A neighbour out walking her dog stopped for a little chat. We talked about this and that, nothing earth shattering, but it was nice to make the connection with someone in the ‘hood. Later, some junior high kids walked by. I’d seen them before and thought one might be a potential babysitter. I’d be looking into that.

A car sped by, a little too fast for my liking. Then, another neighbour stopped and remarked on the poor performance of my tulips. She’d seen my column on this subject and had noticed that I wasn’t telling lies. Had I planted the bulbs upside down, she asked.

“Upside down!” I shouted, perhaps with a little too much volume given the hour. It was almost 11. “No one told me there was a right way to plant a tulip bulb.”

And this leads me back to my opening point about the back deck. The reason I wanted to sit on the front stoop was to have the “company” of my ‘hood. On the back deck I’d just be sitting there by myself in the dark.

I’d be missing out on the comings and goings of my street. I wouldn’t get to connect with neighbours I barely know. I wouldn’t spot potential babysitters or notice speeding cars. And I wouldn’t find out that there is a right way up for tulip bulbs.

When did the back deck take over from the front veranda, anyway? Twenty-five years ago? Does that moment co-inside with the rise social isolation we keep hearing about in the news? There’s more to it than the back deck, of course, but it is an interesting indicator of community detachment.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my back deck for barbeques and evenings with friends, but when I want to go outside and sit down with a cup of tea after supper, I’ll be on the front stoop. The back deck should never be allowed to replace the front stoop.

Freelance front stoop sitter Gail Lethbridge thinks it’s good to have a front stoop of one’s own. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com

Re-gifting? Try me-gifting

Here’s a little gift-buying hint for the busy Christmas shopper: When shopping for someone special, ask not what you can buy for your special person - ask what you can buy for yourself.

We’ve all heard about re-gifting, the act of re-wrapping a present someone else gave to you and then passing it along as a gift to someone else.

Well, why not me-gifting? Buy that special person a special gift that you really wanted for yourself.

I don’t think I’m inventing anything new here. Men have been doing this sort of thing for years.

You’ve heard the one about the husband who buys his wife the pipe holder for Christmas? Or how about the guy who gets the snow blower for the live-in girlfriend? Nice, boys.

And then, there’s Mother of all Male-Purchased Me-Gifts: Lingerie. No self-interest in that, is there, men?

These are all examples of me-gifting, but they’re me-gifting in its most unsophisticated and transparent form.

What I’m talking about is a more refined type of me-gifting. You don’t want to be so transparently self-interested that your gift becomes a cliché, like the pipe holder?

No. So what you want to do is wrap your naked self-interest in a cloak of seasonal good will and magnanimity.

The trick, my friends, is to make them think you are thinking about them, when in fact what you’re really doing is thinking of yourself and coming up with a good ruse to make them think you are thinking of them. (Or at least, I think that is what I think.)

As you can see, this takes a bit of thought and forward planning. If I went out and bought my special person (who can’t be named in this column) a bottle of bourbon, he’d see straight through it right away.

And if he didn’t see through it right away, he’d know as soon as I grabbed it out of his hand and hid it from him. No, the bourbon is always going to be a dead giveaway where I’m concerned. And this makes the bourbon a bad me-gift.

So, what would be a more appropriate me-gift for the special person in my life?

Hmmmm, let’s see. Well, he adores cooking. He spends hours perusing cookery magazines. And he loves nothing more than sharing the food he cooks with me.

Well, that was easy, wasn’t it? I’ve bought him a one-year subscription to a beautiful, glossy cookery magazine.

It’s the perfect me-gift. He will think it’s a Christmas present for him, when in fact, what I’ve gone and done is buy myself one year’s worth of exquisite meals that he will cook from that magazine.

Hmmm. Maybe I should boost that present up a two-year subscription. Such is the bottomless pit of my generosity.

So remember, Christmas shoppers, t’is the season to kill two birds with one stone. Give the me-gift that they will love and you will treasure always.

Then everyone will be happy.

Freelance me-gifter Gail Lethbridge gave her special person an espresso machine last year and every morning she enjoys the benefits. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com

Gym-phobia

I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t made it to the gym this year.

I’m mentioning this now because I was silly enough to make the gym my new year’s resolution for 2008. And I was even sillier to make this resolution within in earshot of people who will not fail to ask about this resolution the next time I see them.

Great.

It’s so easy in the midst of new year’s revelry to issue forth with promises about change and new starts. It’s all Happy New Year! Things are going to change! I’ll be a new person. La la la!

And then cometh January. And it lands with a thud, crushing your all your good intentions.

For the first couple weeks I nimbly avoided the gym. You know, what with settling back into routine and being busy with “this and that”, well, I hardly had time for the gym, did I?

That worked for awhile, but by the third week of January, I was pushing it with the settling-back-into-routine line, and if I wasn’t careful people were going to start asking exactly what “this and that” meant and why I was so busy with it.

And here it is February 1^st and I still haven’t managed to drag my sorry old carcass through the door of a gym. And even worse, I’m running out of excuses.

I know it shouldn’t be that hard. It is just a gym for heaven’s sake. People go all the time and most of them come out trim, strong and fit as fiddles.

So what’s the problem?

Well, I don’t know exactly, but I will say this: Whenever I walk by a gym and peer through the window, it’s not a gym I see. I do not see weight machines, stationary bicycles, treadmills or IPod-festooned people exercising their way to health and fitness.

No. What I see is a dungeon full of 17^th-century instruments of torture.

I see flushed faces in various states of grimace. I see sweaty bodies grappling with clunky machines that are made from pulleys, wires and black brick weights that land with a jarring clank.

And I see people sitting on one-wheeled bicycles spinning and spinning and spinning and getting nowhere. I also see people rowing, rowing and rowing but not moving an inch, and worst of all I see people running on a treadmill.

I went on a treadmill once. It made me feel like a hamster.

I used a cross-trainer once. I fell off. Fell off a cross trainer. You aren’t supposed to fall off a cross trainer.

I tried a weight machine. I made me feel as though I were being punished for acts of witchcraft. Being thrown in the river with a heavy stone tied to my ankle would have brought more pleasure.

The machines and contortions I see in gyms are the things I see in my nightmares. I’m convinced that if you dropped some poor wretch from the 17^th century into a modern gym, they’d run for their lives. That’s what I want to do whenever I see a gym. Run. For my life. Because if you’re running for your life, at least you’re getting somewhere.

Clearly then, I am in need of an attitude adjustment if I’m ever going to live up to my resolution to go to the gym. Either that, or I will need new friends who were not present on the night I made this silly resolution to go to the gym.

Freelance anti-gymnast Gail Lethbridge is seeking new friends who did not witness her new year’s resolutions for 2008. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com

Him, me and the little Blackberry tart

I’m having some sympathy these days with the late Princess Diana who famously observed, “there were three of us in this relationship.”

In her case, the third one was Camilla. In my case, the third one is the Blackberry.

It’s been going on for years – this thing between He Who Can’t be Named and his Blackberry. And it’s been happening right under my nose.

If I had the luxury of choosing between Camilla and the Blackberry, I think I’d pick Camilla as the mistress.

She at least had the decency to stay more or less in the background while Diana and Charles were together. She also had the decency to be less good looking than the Diana.

Not so the Blackberry.

He Who Can’t calls it his “Pearl.” He’s always going on about its beautiful sleek lines, its compact body and its “intuitive functionality.” I guess his Pearl knows what he likes.

But I don’t call the thing Pearl. I call it the Little Tart.

And a brazen Little Tart it is, too. Unlike the more measured behaviour of Camilla, the Little Tart has no sense of moral or social decorum.

We could be in the middle of a family dinner, at a party, or asleep in the middle of the night and it thinks nothing of waltzing in and blurting out that sexy little ring tone. It always gets his attention.

Then you see the two of them skulking off to a quiet corner to commence their congress. I don’t even ask what goes on anymore. I don’t want to know.

But when he’s behind the wheel and can’t jump to its beck and call, do you know what he does? He asks me to answer it. Me! The long-suffering legitimate partner answering the sexy ring tone of the Little Tart!

I ask you.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Last week he had the nerve to bring the Little Tart into the bedroom. Apparently, it has quite the alarm clock functionality, and each morning at 4:30 am, I had the pleasure waking out of a dead sleep to hear that functionality. Charming.

And on Saturday morning, I had the further pleasure of hearing the 4:30 am functionality again because he forgot to turn off the alarm. I guess the Little Tart is always turned on.

But the worst slap in the face is the email functionality. You see, the Little Tart is set up to vibrate whenever an email comes in. You hear it going “buzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzz.”

This would be the Little Tart in passive aggressive mode. You know, it doesn’t come right out and ring, but it still wants his attention. So off he goes again to start pressing the Little Tart’s little buttons.

One night, he came to bed with Little Tart mistakenly attached to his pajamas. I awoke in the middle of the night to the bed vibrating with in-coming emails.

That’s when I issued the ultimatum: the Little Tart or me. I don’t think he was quite awake because the Little Tart hasn’t gone away.

I have considered dropping it in the garbage, you know, by mistake. But he’d only go out and find another. Nothing would be solved.

So what does a girl do when there’s three in her relationship? Well, she goes out and gets a Blackberry of her own, of course. I call it my Little Stud.

Freelance mobile phone user Gail Lethbridge likes the sleek lines of her Little Stud. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com

Oh - the Blackberry rings too

So, I get my new BlackBerry.

I get the holster that holds the phone and the hook that attaches to my belt. I get the @blackberry.net email address, the call-message number and the special password.

And most importantly, I get even with He Who Can’t be Named. His infatuation with his BlackBerry is the thing that drove me to get a BlackBerry in the first place.

So here I am. I’ve got the “cool” of person with a BlackBerry on the hip. How important am I? Oh yeah.

And then a funny thing happens. My BlackBerry rings.

“Oh.” I say, laughing nervously. “It rings.” I hadn’t anticipated this.

Now, you’re under the gun. You have to figure out how to answer this thing because this isn’t just any old phone ringing. This is your BlackBerry.

And that means there is someone very cool on the other end, probably calling on their BlackBerry. And they will be calling with some very important information. If you fail to answer correctly, you can say bye-bye to your new found cool.

Now, you’re sweating. In the few seconds it takes your BlackBerry to get through its ring cycle, you have to figure out:

a.) how to get the thing out of its holster without hanging up on the cool caller

b.) which button to press so that you don’t hang up before you’ve said hello.

c.) how to make your fat finger behave like a skinny finger so you can navigate the tiny buttons

d.) how not to swear at the person who designed the BlackBerry buttons for users with anorexic digits.

Talk about pressure. Your cool rating is on the line here. You cannot be a cool BlackBerry user if you cannot work out how to answer the thing. It says so in the manual.

Sadly, I believed the line about the BlackBerry being intuitive so I didn’t put in the time to learn it properly. This is what a man would do. He would play with it so that when it finally decided to ring, he would know what to do. He would then say it’s intuitive.

When my BlackBerry rings, I panic. Most of the time I end up hanging up by mistake. And if by some long shot I do manage to get through to the caller, I’m so frazzled from trying answer that I’m in no shape to communicate.

He Who Can’t be Named finds this all very amusing. He’s actually admitted to calling my BlackBerry just so he could visualize the flailing hands, muttering and general chaos on my end. (Is there a facility into which we can put people like this? Just wondering.)

It’s not that I don’t like my BlackBerry. I love it - when doesn’t ring.

So, do me a favour. Don’t call me on my BlackBerry. As long as it’s not ringing, I will be remain cool and important. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Freelance BlackBerry-ista Gail Lethbridge will pick up her messages as soon as she figures out how to do that. Visit her blog: giftedtypist.com

Labour unrest in the ranks

We’ve been having some labour unrest at our house lately.

One of our union locals is threatening to walk off the job, citing violations in the domestic collective agreement. The clause in question is the one that covers bathroom maintenance.

Our first indication of trouble came when a hand-made sign appeared on the bathroom door. It said – and I quote – Warning: this bathroom is quarantined due to repeat occurrences of TPRRS. Use at your own risk. There was a skull and crossbones drawn on the top of the note.

Curious as to the definition of TPRRS, I arranged a meeting with the individual I believed to be the author of the note. He cannot be named here as this would be a violation of his collective rights.

But he di reveal more about the outstanding issue. TPRRS is shorthand for “Toilet Paper Replacement Resistance Syndrome.” This means that the toilet paper roll is not being replaced when it runs out.

The union this individual represents is claiming that management and members of other unions in our house are actively practicing TPRRS. As a result, the burden of replacing the toilet paper roll is falling on his shoulders and his shoulders only.

The individual who can’t be named presented me with a copy of his collective agreement. It states – and I quote – All toilet paper replacement duties will be shared equally by management and all unions who make use of the bathroom.

The individual has filed a grievance and is working to rule. He will only replace the toilet paper one time in four as this is the formula identified in the collective agreement.

He has given management a period of time to consult with the other unions who also use the bathroom. If changes are not made, he will walk off the job.

As a member of management, I checked his collective agreement to be sure he is acting within his rights. He is. The agreement states – and I quote – if any clause in the collective agreement is broken, the membership has the right to strike.

I arranged a meeting with the two other unions in our house to discuss the situation. Toilet paper replacement is not stated in their collective agreements, but they have agreed to put more effort into this as a gesture of good will.

This concession is not without self interest. The other unions understand that the union that has filed the grievance is powerful. It handles the most of the cooking and when the smoke detector goes off by mistake, it is responsible for making the piercing alarm stop.

If this union withdraws services, management will have to take over cooking duties. This would not be good because when management cooks the smoke detector inevitably goes off. And management is too short to shut off the smoke detector.

So we’ve reached a deal. The toilet paper will be replaced “as and when” it runs out. The unions are happy. Management is happy. We all feel we’ve won.

Now, if management could just get someone to replace the bourbon when it runs out.

Freelance deal broker Gail Lethbridge is now in negotiations for leaf raking and removal. Visit her blog:http://giftedtypist.com

It's Them again

It’s Them again.

You know who I mean: Them, also known as They with the capital T, as in “They say this” or “They say that.”

We never quite know who They are or where They get their information. And what about their academic credentials?

Beats us. Yet we believe Them.

Oh yes. They just have to get out a little nugget of their so-called wisdom, dip it in something that looks like common sense, add a pinch of plausibility, season with righteousness (or something with bitter aftertaste), and serve it up.

And then they sit back and watch us swallow it whole without question or second thought.

And after we’ve digested one of these little morsels of truth, we burp it right back up again and share it with others.

“You should drink eight cups of water per day,” we say with lip-smacking confidence.

“You’ll ruin your eyes if you read in dim light,” we warn, with finger-wagging righteousness.

“You know, we only use ten-percent of our brains. Such a waste, isn’t it?” And we shake our under utilized little heads.

So sure are we.

And then what happens? Whoops. Well. Ha. Actually. It isn’t quite true about the eight cups of water, the dim light ruining your eyes and the only-using-ten-percent-of-your-brain thing.

They, apparently, are wrong. It turns out that these truths They have been spouting all these years are myths built on the flimsiest of evidence, if any evidence at all.

Another cup of water, anyone?

And do we get the satisfaction of seeing Them come forward to wring their hands in public, own up to their mistakes and beg us for forgiveness?

No. There are no apologies because They are nowhere to be found. Why? Because, there is no Them when They are wrong.

So that leaves you holding the bag because you have bought their line. And not only that, but you have also proselytized their line because you were so sure They had it right.

And you know what that means? That’s right. You are Them. (Cue gothic horror music now.)

In my case, being Them meant hectoring my poor children to death about those cursed eight cups of water. Day in, day out, before they went to school, after sports, before bed, in the middle of the night. The message was basically: “Drink eight cups of water or you will die!”

So complete was my faith in the eight-cups-of-water rule, I that I sent my little darlings to school with Nalgene bottles full of water. You know Nalgene, the sporty outdoor plastic bottles with the nasty chemicals that leach into your little darlings causing untold health damage? Yes, those.

So now I know better. And so do you. And we have only ourselves to blame because we swallowed their line and in so doing, we became Them. Great.

So where does that leave us. They have said so many things – things like eat lots of fruit and vegetables, take regular exercise and never swim alone.

What do we believe now? I’m sure some of things They said are correct. But if eight-cups-of-water rule isn’t quite right, then what is?

Say, didn’t They said something about taking eight cups of bourbon per day?

Freelance They-hater Gail Lethbridge is not one of Them. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com

Snow jobs

Just spent the early hours of the morning shoveling snow.

Snow shoveling in Nova Scotia is bit like going on a geological dig. That’s because our storms can never seem to make up their minds about what they’re going to do.

“Shall I go cold and blizzardy this time, or mild and slushy,” they seem to say, as they move in and envelop the province. So rather than make a firm decision, they dump a little bit of everything on us, you know, like politicians in a minority government.

And the poor wretch who ends up shoveling the stuff is left to dig through geological layers powder, frozen slush with a crusty ice on top. As you shovel, you can observe the exact moments when the temperature moved above the freezing point and then back down again.

Thus was my experience this morning. I’ve named this snow the Geological-Dig Snow. Because it’s still January and there are many more snowfalls yet to come, let me review some of the other types of snow.

1. Light-n-Fluffy Snow – often appears as the bottom layer which fell when temperatures were low. By the time you start shoveling, this layer has been buried under several layers of ice, frozen slush, wet snow and other vile forms of snow.

2. Put-Your-Lower-Back-Out Snow – looks pretty but don’t be fooled because it’s heavier than it looks, laden with water, soaks through your boots, makes your bones ache and it keeps orthopedic surgeons in business for winter months.

3. Marital-Disharmony Snow – always falls when Significant Other is not home. Too much of this is never welcome by the marriage-is-forever crowd. Divorce lawyers love it, however.

4. Groin-Injury Snow – can be pushed by placing the shovel in front of you and using body weight. Works wonders until you hit a crack in the pavement and the shovel stops suddenly but your forward momentum doesn’t. Ouch, in other words.

5. Boulders-at-End-of-Driveway Snow – big, rocks of harden snow piled up by the snowplow. Requires you to abandon shovel and pick up snow boulders with two hands. Also produces under-the-breath, off-colour language.

6. Boulders-at-the-end-of-Driveway Snow – Second Pass – big rocks of hardened snow that pile up after snowplow makes second pass on your street. Also requires you to abandon shovel and use two hands for pick-up. Produces off-colour language which is no longer held under breath.

7. Will-Break-your-Snow-Blower Snow – wet, slushy, heavy stuff that will break snow blower and the heart of snow blower owner who ran out to Canadian Tire in November to buy the silly thing that now sits unused in garage while its owner shovels slush. One of the cruelest forms of snow.

8. Must-Invite-My-Neighbour-With-the-Good-Snow-Blower-over-for-a-Drink Snow – usually arrives on the third or forth good storm of winter. Defining characteristic is neither amount or texture of snow but rather the desperation of the shoveller and the lengths she will go reduce her winter burden. Studies have shown that plying snow-blower-owning neighbours with bourbon is an excellent snow removal strategy.

So there you have it, fellow shovellers. Good luck. And if you know of other types of snow, please email them. I like to be well-informed about my winter snows.

Freelance snow expert Gail Lethbridge will not appear on David Letterman to give 10 reasons to shovel snow in Nova Scotia. Visit her blog:http://giftedtypist.com

Slobs rule

Slobs, take heed for I bring you glad tidings.

Just when you thought there was no escape from iron rule of the declutterers; just as you were about to surrender to the pressure and tidy up your desk; just as you were about to break down and pick up that copy of Homes and Gardens magazine at the grocery store check outs, I have urgent news.

Stop the presses. Stop the clocks. Stop the guilt. It turns out that the Neakniks and the Marthas of this world may not have been so right after all.

The good news comes in a new book called “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.”

See? Even the title is messy. You have to like a book with a messy title.

According to authors Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, obsessive neatness spells – are you ready for this, Slobs? – trouble! The theory is that that too much attention to neatness consumes time, stifles creativity and wastes valuable resources that could be used for other things.

Oh let me sip the sweet nectar from your cup, Mr. Abrahamson and Mr. Freedman,

Apparently – and this is them talking, not me, - North American society is far too focused on organization. Look at the multi-billion dollar industry that has sprung up around organizing - books, TV programs, mavens of gracious living. There’s even a National Association of Professional Organizers with its own acronym, NAPA.

If neatness is the new religion; then mess and clutter are the new evil. Have you ever heard someone talking in tones of spiritual transformation after a garage clean-out. They purge and cleanse and renew. Praise Martha.

But is a pile of newspapers on the coffee table really so bad? Is an empty cup here and there really going to hurt us? And what are garages for, if not to pile stuff we don’t know what to do with? Does a bit of mess really make us sinners and loser-faces? I say no. And the authors of A Perfect Mess say no too.

They argue that people with messy desks can in fact find things. They may not be able to recite chapter and verse what is in that pile of papers on the desk, but when they are looking for a certain piece of paper, it will more likely than not be in that pile. It is a system. That’s why messy people don’t like you to tidy up. You’re wrecking their system.

But here’s the real problem with obsessive organization: What about all the things you aren’t doing when you’re busy tidying? If you spend too much time and resources tidying up and feeling bad and guilty when you haven’t, then you aren’t thinking about other things, like work and coming up with new ways to solve problems.

How can you possibly think outside the box if you spend all your time trying to get the inside of the box cleaned, dusted and organized?

Here’s another way to think about it. Was Einstein a neat and tidy person? What if he’d spent his all his time decluttering and obsessing over gracious living instead of thinking about the space-time continuum? Well, we would have a theory of relativity, would we?

No, Slobs, it’s time we fought back. It’s time we seized the dusters from the Neatniks and put our feet up on the coffee table with newspapers strewn all over. It’s time we sipped that coffee and left the cup there for a day or two. It’s time to think about more important things than dust and decluttering.

The world needs more Slobs and few Marthas.

And do you want in a dirty little secret? That pile of newspapers on your coffee table? It actually catches the dust and keeps the table clean. You just chuck the papers out once a week and bingo, clean coffee table. No dusting.

So put that in your can of Pledge and spray it, Martha!

Freelance clutter maven Gail Lethbridge would not have finished this column in time had she been dusting and decluttering. Visit her blog: giftedtypist.com

glethbridge@herald.ca

I'm green and I'm not even a frog

Oh dear. I seem to be turning green again.

I know this because the other day He Who Can’t be Named said this: “Darling, have you been taking your vitamins lately?”

In my house “Darling, have you been taking your vitamins lately?” doesn’t actually mean “Darling, have you been taking your vitamins lately?”

No, in my house, the vitamin question is code for “Darling, you’re turning green again and shouldn’t you be doing something about it?”

Is that called passive aggression or self-preservation? I guess it depends on which side of the question you’re on.

There was a time when He Who Can’t was less tutored in the natural laws that govern successful relationships between men and women. In those days, he would have come straight out with the unvarnished truth.

He would have said my skin looked more pond-scum green than peaches and cream. He wouldn’t have meant it in a mean-spirited way - just in a truthful, concerned way. Bless him.

And if I’m honest about it, I can’t argue with the basic premise of his observation. Between the months of January and March, my skin colour really does turn a sort of pond-scummy green.

Depending on the time of day, this can cause me to look like a vampire or Alice Cooper. I don’t know which is worse, but there have been times when I’ve looked in the mirror and actually scared myself, such was my greenness.

I don’t know how to explain it. Is it a nutritional deficiency? Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)? A hitherto undiscovered branch of my family tree that started in Transylvania in the 1300s?

Whatever the reason, I can say this: I’ve learned to embrace my greenness. That is who I am in winter: A person with a green skin. Sometimes it’s just better to accept these things and move on.

In fact, I’m rather proud of the fact that I can manage be so green without actually being sick. If I were in a Miss America contest, I’d use that as my talent. “She’s so green,” the judges would gasp. “And she’s not even sick!”

And isn’t winter green a flavour of gum or household detergent or something? Someone obviously thinks it’s an attractive colour.

But – and this is a big but - there’s a difference between a girl accepting her inner vampire and a girl having someone point out that she’s looking like pond-scum. And this comes into sharp focus when an event like Valentines Day happens to fall in the middle of that girl’s green season.

After much tutoring in the natural laws of female-male harmony, He Who Can’t finally understands that honesty is not necessarily the best policy especially when you throw Valentines Day into the mix. When it comes to a sweetheart with a green complexion, you have to tread carefully through the pond scum.

So take my advice, men: say it with Vitamins. Trust me. Vitamins are your friends.

Freelance vampire Gail Lethbridge wishes everyone a Happy Vitamins Day. Visit her blog: giftedtypist.com

glethbridge@herald.ca

Hoover the fruit flies

The things you never knew about common domestic appliances.

Take the vacuum cleaner for instance. I always thought the vacuum cleaner was a machine to suck dust and dirt off the floor and furniture.

A reasonable assumption you may think, but it turns out that this suck-up-the-dirt mentality is a narrow worldview which limits the potential of a vacuum cleaner and its user.

Why would anyone settle for using a boring old vacuum cleaner to do the boring old job of dirt sucking, when it can be transformed into a weapon of mass destruction to be used in an epic battle of good verses evil?

I’m not making this up. I’m not even exaggerating. This epic battle actually occurred in my house the other night.

I was upstairs in my unheated garret pecking away on my keyboard when I first heard the noise. It was coming from the kitchen.

The Hoover, I thought. In the kitchen? At 10 o’clock at night? That can’t be right. So I went downstairs to investigate.

That’s when I saw spotted He Who Can’t Be Named waving the nozzle through the air like a knight would wield his sword.

“What on earth are you doing?” I shouted over the Hoover’s loud motor.

He looked over his shoulder and switched it off. “Solving a problem,” he replied, using that tone of purpose he sometimes gets when he thinks he’s doing something important.

Before I could ask what that meant, he switched it on again and began swooping and lunging at the air above the fruit bowl. He used to be a national-caliber fencer and had all the moves.

He managed to speak over the Hoover without shouting. “I’m dealing with the fruit flies.”

Huh? Was I to understand that this man was murdering fruit flies with the Hoover?

Yes, apparently. This is exactly what he was doing. He was sucking the fruit flies into the nozzle of the Hoover to make them disappear.

He’d heard a man on a radio phone-in explaining this method dealing with fruit flies. No doubt, the radio man was another aspiring domestic knight in shining amour.

As He Who Can’t be Named jousted and sparred with fruit flies, I looked at the small bowl of vinegar with the perforated plastic wrap spread over the top. My strategy.

Was this not good enough? Fast enough? Or was I just missing the point?

I mean, where was the fun and adventure in baiting fruit flies with a bowl of vinegar?

He Who Can’t be Named was doing much more than ridding the kitchen of a pest. This was a fight to the death, a man-verses-nature sort of battle. With the Hoover In the kitchen. At ten o’clock at night.

When he was finished, he put the nozzle down and asked me to scan for fruit flies. There wasn’t one left standing or flying. He looked pleased with himself. He’d won the epic battle.

“Well then,” he said. “My work here is done.” And then he but the Hoover away.

glethbridge@herald.ca

Freelance damsel Gail Letbridge appreciates the efforts of her knight and his deadly Hoover. Visit her blog: giftedtypist.com