Slacker Archive

Men are like computers

2008-03-06T14:16:00.002-04:00

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that computers are like men.

Just when you think you’ve got them all figured out – wham! – they go and do something that makes no sense to you. And this makes you want to crown them.

I’m not thinking of any one thing in particular here, although a certain spontaneous purchase of a 1965 Mercedes Benz does spring to mind on the make-you-want-to-crown-a-man front.

And I’m not thinking of any one computer in particular although a certain catastrophic failure pops to mind on the make-you-want-to-take-a-pickaxe- to-a-computer front.

But this column isn’t for telling tales. And besides, I could be sued.

Anyway.

Things were going along swimmingly well for me and computer. There’d been no spats, no unexpected shutdowns, problems with .dll files, no 404 error messages. And with this cozy relationship developing, I installed a few new software applications.

The computer took this well and the applications performed to spec. It was at this point that started thinking I had my computer figured out. I was in a similar state of mind with a certain man (who can’t be named) just before the ’65 Merc purchase.

Anyway.

Emboldened by my successes with the computer, I decided to do a little maintenance on my file tree which was laden with obsolete files and programs.

Here again we can see similarities between men and computers. Men, I’ve noticed, don’t like it when other people go rummaging through their boxes in the basement. They don’t appreciate you throwing out their dusty stacks of magazines from 1972 or their rock collection from 1968.

And so it was with my computer. It kept bucking at my attempts to drag things into the recycling bin. Little windows popped to say there was a problem with this or a duplication with that. Was I sure I wanted to do this, they kept asking.

Computers, like men, can get so tetchy when you start tidying up.

Anyway, it was a bit of a battle but I was winning – winning the battle only to lose the war.

This occurred when I moved one of my new programs to another drive. That’s when my computer said enough was enough and gave me this message: “The licensing subsystsem has failed catastrophically. You must re-install or call customer support.”

And here’s what really put me over the top. The only reply button offered in the catastrophic failure message was “OK.”

Excuse me? OK? You’re telling me there’s been a catastrophic failure and you expect me to say OK? Why isn’t there a button that says #$&!!#*? Because that more accurately captures the mood when you’ve just had a catastrophic failure.

This is why I believe computers are so man-like. The computer tries to put a very logical spin on something that is in fact really, really bad. And you are given the option to say OK and nothing else.

Well no, Mr. Computer, I’m afraid that catastrophic failure is NOT OK. Catastrophic failure is bad. No. It’s worse that bad. It’s a disaster. I’m not going to say OK to a disaster. OK? Mr. Computer?

I re-installed the software and things seemed to work. But now my computer and I are going through a bit of a frosty patch. I don’t trust it, you see. And it doesn’t like me anymore.

Tell me, is there any such thing as relationship counseling for you and your computer?

Freelance computer disliker Gail Lethbridge spontaneously sold the ’65 Mercedes Benz when the owner was out of town. Visit her blog:http://giftedtypist.com

Up with front stoops; down with back decks

2008-03-06T14:10:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-06T14:07:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-06T14:04:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-06T13:45:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-05T13:48:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-04T14:20:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-03T13:59:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-03T13:56:00.001-04:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

2008-03-02T14:19:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-01T14:12:00.000-04:00

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

The one-eye pirate

2008-02-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

Is Christmas starting earlier these days, or is it just that fall’s going later?

I can never say for sure. It could be both. Or neither. I don’t know, but I did have to give my head a shake a couple of weeks ago when I walked into a store and found it heaving with fake trees, plastic elves and cheery holiday jingles.

The place was a veritable winter wonderland. Ho. Ho. Ho. The trouble was that Christmas was the last thing on my mind. It was the week before Halloween. I was shopping for ghosts and goblins. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be shopping for the week before Halloween? Halloween stuff?

But the only Halloween stuff left in the store was in a sale bin at the back.
They’d cleared away the rest to make room for Christmas stuff. Huh?

Luckily, I managed to snag the very last pirate-with-one-eyeball-gouged-out. But there was nary a ghost in sight and it was slim pickins’ for goblins too.

And here I thought I was being organized by doing my Halloween shopping a week before Halloween. Usually I’m there the day before. Silly me.

“Is it just me?” I politely asked the girl at check out. “Or is Christmas arriving unusually early this year?”

The girl rolled her eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was a “yes-Christmas-is-starting-earlier” roll of the eyes, or a “Lady-will-you-please-shut-up-and-get-out-of-my-face” roll. I suspected the latter, so I shut up, paid for the one-eyed pirate and got out of her face.

But here’s the thing that really messed me up: When I walked out of the Christmas wonderland, the parking lot was blazing in hot sunshine. By the time I got to the car, I was wilting. Ditto my one-eyed pirate. The outdoor temperature was a whooping 25 C according to the thermometer on my car.

So you tell me: Is that just me? Or is something askew? And if something is askew, what is it? Christmas or the weather? Or me?

I hate to think I’m turning into one of those old farts always blathering on about the way things used to be. But I’d just been whacked over the head by a rousing chorus of “Joy to the World” and two minutes later I’m overheating in my car and toying with the idea of turning on the air conditioning. (I didn’t.)

The early-arrival-of-Christmas thing, I can handle. I will simply ignore it until a time when it suits me to pay attention – like, say - the second week of December.

But the 25C-in-late-October business is harder to ignore. Sure, it’s pleasant, but I don’t recall that from my youth. And I’m not THAT old. The last few Christmases have been green. I don’t recall that from my youth either.

I don’t like to think that in the future we’ll have to make do with dreaming of a white Christmas because they’ll all be green. And I hate to think the day is coming when we’ll be doing our last-minute Halloween shopping in late July because the stores will be full of Christmas by August.

But when you’re wilting in the blazing hot sunshine with Joy to the World rattling around in your head and a Halloween one-eyed pirate at your side, you have to wonder what’s coming next.

Freelance one-eyed pirate owner Gail Lethbridge has finished her Christmas shopping and is now starting on Easter. Visit her blog: gifedtypist.com

Hang the clothes

2007-04-14T15:02:00.000-04:00

Ok, I admit it. I have a problem. I hang the clothes out and I hang them out maniacally.That’s right. In my never-ending quest to unburden the power utility of its profits, I’ve developed a rather serious habit of hanging out the laundry.

I cannot tell you how crazy it makes me to see my clothesline empty on a sunny, breezy day. You may as well set fire to money, as far as I’m concerned.

To me, the clothes line is a “free dryer.” When I wake up to a sunny, slightly windy day, it’s like finding a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk, only better because I know that the money does not belong to some poor slob who doesn’t have another cent to his name.

No, that money is coming straight out of the profits of the power utility and going straight into my pocket.

Using the “free dryer” gives me a cheap thrill. And that cheap thrill turns to joy when I saunter over to the power meter to see how slowly the disk is spinning as my clothes flap merrily on the line.

“Well, my precious,” I say to that meter, in my best Wicked-Witch-of-the-West voice. “I’m afraid you’re not going to eat my money today. And if it’s sunny tomorrow, you’ll be going hungry again. He-he-he.”

Those who are close to me will tell you that hanging out the clothes has long ceased to be habit. It’s an addiction. He Who Can’t be Named says it borders on the obsessive and the compulsive.

But since when is checking the five-day weather forecast and then organizing your weekly schedule around good drying days obsessive compulsive behaviour? It just makes sense.

I mean, why would you hand over your hard-earned money to the power utility when you can use the free dryer and keep the money for other things like bourbon, for example?

Between you and me, I think He Who Can’t is just saying these things because he’s recently been caught out using the other dryer, the one I call the kilowatt hour glutton.

Yes, sometimes at night he sneaks around the laundry room putting the wash in the dryer. Then he tries to hide the evidence. But I always know. I can smell it on the clothes.

And don’t go accusing me of having too much time on my hands either. I can assure you that I am as busy as the next laundry-doer. And because of this, other things suffer. When choices have to be made, the clothes line usually wins out.

Take the breakfast dishes for example. Sometimes they don’t get tidied up because I have to hang out the clothes. You can always clean up later, but you can’t manufacture sunshine and light wind.

If the forecast is promising, it isn’t unusual to find me hanging a laundry in the pitch black at 11 pm to get the jump on the morning sunshine. And if the weather is not fine, the laundry will just have to wait.

On some sunny days, I’ve actually contemplated zooming home at lunchtime to take the dry clothes off the line and put another load on. But this creates a conflict with my other unending quest which is depriving the oil companies of their profits. With the price of gas these days, you have to find the balance.

True, there are times when I’m caught out by my mean-spirited attitude towards the power utility. Believe me when I tell you that it hurts to arrive home to a clothes line sagging with drenched clothes.

But such is the risk of the “free dryer.” Most of the time you win, and sometimes you lose. You can always wring the clothes out by hand and hang them in the basement to dry.

And if you’re depriving the power utility of some small modicum of profits, you’re a winner in my books, wet clothes or dry.

The iPod and the refusnik ear

2007-04-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

You’ve heard of the square peg that doesn’t fit the round hole. And then there’s the round peg that doesn’t fit the square hole. I’ve often thought of myself as the polygonal peg crashing into square and round holes.

But what about this: the iPod bud that doesn’t fit the ear. Who in Christendom possesses an ear that can’t accommodate the iPod bud? Hint: someone who thinks of herself as polygonal peg. How ill-equipped for modern living is that?

I wouldn’t call myself a Luddite, but I must admit that I wasn’t in a huge rush to join the great army of Pod People who march this earth. My last piece of mobile music technology was the yellow Sony Sport Walkman. Remember that?

Back in the mid eighties, the Sony Sport was the business. I used mine long after it was trendy and would have continued if the cassette tape hadn’t followed the eight-track tape into musical oblivion.

Thus the polygonal peg became a Pod Person. The iPod was a gift from He Who Can’t be Named, a gentle nudge into the twenty first century. Naively, I assumed iPods were just digital Walkmans – a way to listen to music while you walk.

Ha! This iPod is to my Sony Walkman what the space shuttle is to the horse and buggy. Not only does its 80s GBs store a gazillion songs, they also store a gazillion pictures and allow you to watch movies.

I haven’t thoroughly read the user’s manual but I’m pretty sure that if you programmed it the right way, you could get it to do your dishes, laundry, spring cleaning, gardening and tax return.

Anyway, after I got the thing all loaded up with my music and pictures, I decided to take it on a little test walk to try it out. I put the two buds in my ears and set out, feeling terribly hip; cool, even. Not only was I now one of the Pod People, I was the Podmother.

Well, I don’t think I was more than three steps into Podhood, when one of the buds fell out of my ear. I put it back in, took a few more steps, and out popped the other bud.

As I tried to re-jig that one, the first bud popped out again. And so it went. Put bud in, other bud pops out, over and over, like a sick joke.

This was all the more frustrating because none of the Pod People I encountered on the street that day seemed to be having these problems. They all seemed at one with their ear buds.

Do these Pod People know something I don’t know? Is there a secret code? Or is this simply the way Pod People keep the uncool from joining their ranks? Maybe Pod People don’t want Polygonal Pegs with oddly shaped ears in their midst.

I don’t know, but I have come up with a workaround: If you don’t walk, don’t move your head or any part of your body and refrain from breathing, your ear buds will stay put. Trust me.

What is you FAQ

2007-04-14T14:35:00.000-04:00

There have been many questions in the years since this column started.

They have come by email from correspondents with names like Yard Ape Mom, Lost in Space, Modern Men for Speedos, Chocomom, Slob-o-phile, Dust Bunny Bunny and the Dalai Lama (I’m pretty sure this is not THE Dalai but you never know.)

They’ve asked about my Things, He Who Can’t be Named, my Dust Bunnies population, and my views on the space-time continuum. Some, bless them, have even asked after my bourbon supply.

Today’s column will be dedicated to these FAQs or frequently asked questions.

1. You’ve said you don’t read parenting books. Are you qualified to be a parent?

No. I did not take the course. I have not read the books. And my babies did not arrive with a User’s Manual or a Help menu. I possess few parental instincts. My knowledge comes through an apprenticeship program which has lasted ten years and will probably run another fifty. This practical approach is not always the easiest way, but I have found bourbon to be an effective learning tool.

2. Do you look like your picture?

No. In real life I look like Angelina Jolie. (I know this because every time I ask He Who Can’t Be Named if I look like Angelina Jolie, he says “Yes, darling.”)

3. Does He Who Can’t Be Named look like Brad Pitt?

Yes, darling.

4. How do you run your household?

I don’t. It runs me. Sometimes it runs over me. Occasionally it runs me into the ground.

5. Do you cook?

No. I burn. I also heat up. I’m not bad a heating up, especially a drop or two of bourbon is involved.

6. You’ve called yourself a slob. Do you not read home décor magazines?

I buy a lot of home décor magazines, actually. I find them useful. You can stack them up on the floor and sit on them like a stool. And they make lovely coasters so you don’t get coffee rings on the piles of newspapers underneath.

7. Where do you stand on the organization Slobs without Borders?

I’m in favour. In fact, not long ago I was contacted by a representative of SWB who advised me to hide my home décor magazines (HDMs). Apparently certain security agencies are confusing HDMs with WMDs and are presently scouring the land for them.

8. Have you redressed your fiscal imbalance?

Yes, I have re-dressed my fiscal imbalance time and time again, and always comes home with food stains on its shirt and mud all over its knees.

9. Do you think that the noun “parent” should be used as the verb “to parent”?

No, I do not, unless you accept the noun bourbon as a verb. I bourbon, you bourbon, he bourboned, we are bourboning…

10. You’ve talked a lot about bourbon. Are you a columnist with a bourbon problem?

No I’m bourbon drinker with a column problem.

11 . Have you changed your position on the male Speedo?

I have no objection to the male Speedo so long as it remains attached to a hanger in a sports store. Anything beyond that and we’re into public decency bylaw territory again.

12. Have you conquered the dust bunny problem?

It’s a standoff. The dust bunnies still exist. I still exist. I am currently writing a treatise called the Dust Bunny Suicides. And as far as I know, dust bunnies don’t type. So ask again next year.

13. Have you located the orphaned socks?

No, and until we break through the space-time continuum once and for all, it is highly unlikely.

14. Do your children appreciate unreservedly everything you’ve done for them over the years?

I’m sure they will some day, but that won’t happen until I’m pushing up the daisies. Isn’t that always the way?

15. Do your beastly felines appreciate unreservedly everything you’ve done for them over the years?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I clutter, therefore I am

2007-04-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

So, I see the de-cluttering Nazis are at it again.

For a while I thought there might be light at the end of the tunnel. I thought we were emerging from the Dark Age of Clean Freakery. The minimalists were on the way out. The slobs were in the ascendancy. Hooray!

And what lead me to this startling conclusion? Well, the articles in the paper, of course. They started popping up at the end of last year, innocent little pieces talking about the importance of keeping some of your personal stuff scattered around the house.

Some of these articles even mentioned the C-word. Clutter. Gasp! Apparently the unclean, sinful, verboten C-word was set to make a comeback. Well, break out bourbon and call the party to order. The Clean Freaks are going down! Tra-la-la.

Yes, it turned out that people – real people – didn’t actually want to live in those sterile, tidy, scrubbed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life rooms you see on the glossy pages of the home decorating magazines.

You know the type of rooms I mean. Everything is perfectly designed, beautifully styled, obsessively colour co-ordinated and void of personality. Even the “mess” is styled.

You can never win with these magazines. Home dec mags are like beauty mags. You look at the air-brushed faces and bodies and think, I don’t look like that. Similarly, when I look at the “entertainment centres” featured in home dec magazines, I think my rumpus room doesn’t look like that.

So when I saw the C-word, I saw hope. Finally, I thought, the home style dictators were offering an olive branch to the slobs who have the kids, cats, crumbs and clutter to contend with.

Suddenly there was the possibility that I would no longer be on the outside looking in at the pretty, pristine, petite bourgeois world of graceful living! Move over Martha, the slobs are back in town.

It’s lonely being a tasteless slob when the rest of the world seems so obsessed with style, design and window treatments? Forgive the ignorance but it was only recently that I discovered that a windows treatment did not mean opened or closed.

You have no idea how I’ve longed to see my house reflected on the glossy pages of a home dec magazine. Where are the magazines called Slobs and Gardens or Slovenly Living or House and Slob?

And the TV channels. Where is the Homes and Clutter channel? I’d tune in on Thursday nights and watch the latest episode of Slobs on Slobs. And what about a show with two saucy Scots coming into a house each week to criticize the cleanliness, lambaste stylishness and making mincemeat of tasteful makeovers.

We could call the show How Not To Be Stylish or How Not to Have Taste. They could offer tips on messing things up a bit, you know, making the place look like it’s actually inhabited by normal people with kids, cats, crumbs and clutter.

I was getting so excited about the possibilities and then it stopped. No more articles with the C-word. My friends, I fear the nascent Back-to-Clutter Movement has been crushed.

The Clean Freaks and the Taste Titans got to them and snuffed them out. I imagine they’ve burned those articles and destroyed their printing presses. That’s why we don’t see them anymore.

So, when you look at the home dec mags, it’s all neat and tidy and graceful, just like before.

Pity the poor slob.

Donna Hay: the other woman

2006-12-30T16:26:00.000-04:00

First published 12 May 2006

To paraphrase that infamous remark by Princess Diana, there were three of us in this marriage and it was getting a bit crowded.

I’m not in the habit of quoting the late royal, but her words do have a certain resonance with me these days. That’s because He Who Can’t be Named seems to have developed an obsession with another woman.

Her name is not Camilla, but I fear that I am at one with Diana in the crowded marriage department.

My own “trouble with three” started a week or so ago when He Who Can’t came home with a book written by the other woman. It’s a big classy publication with high-production values and explicit photographs, all in colour.

I knew we were in trouble when he sat down with his new book and started drooling over the breasts and thighs in the photographs. He kept muttering, things like “exquisite” and “mouth-watering.”

Whether he was referring to the artistry of the photography or the breasts and thighs, I do not know. It was probably better that way.

“Wow, look at that!” he trilled, as he happened upon a particularly fetching breast or thigh. “I’d really like to try that.”

Yes, I bet you would, Sunshine.

He was all over that book, dragging it around the house everywhere he went and sitting down with it in every spare moment. It was almost embarrassing.

“Is her book more amusing than my columns?” I asked one evening, hoping to snap him out of his spell. His absent-minded answer was “yes.” I suppose that could have been interpreted either way.

But then he piped up as if to continue the steam of his inner thoughts. “And do you know, it’s not just the content that amazes me. It’s the way she lays it all out. She’s a real stylist, you know.”

A stylist, too? What a little treasure this woman must be. Is there anything she doesn’t do?

And then things got worse. He started telling his male friends about his multi-talented other woman. And they, of course, responded as you might expect a male to respond to this sort of material. It was all ooohhs and ahhhs.

On one Sunday afternoon I caught him foisting the breast and thigh pictures on one of these male droolers who happened to drop in for a visit. If you could have seen the two of them cooing and salivating. There was no shame, so sense of impropriety, no attempt to hide their admiration for this woman from me. It was all drool. Honestly! Men!

That the woman obsessed over happens to be international cookery writer Donna Hay, and that the breasts and thighs in question at one time belonged to a chicken is of little significance.

As He Who Can’t put it: She’s a stylist. What this says to me is that I’m not a stylist. I guess that would be a reference to my exploding cup cakes in the oven. They aren’t good enough any more. And my overcooked chicken breasts and tough chicken thighs don’t go the distance.

My lack of – how shall we say it – interest in cooking has forced him into the recipes and pictures of Donna Hay and me into the role of jilted woman. We’re always the last to know, us women abandoned for the recipes, photos and food styling of cookery writers.

You know that expression hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Well I’m going to put it another way: Hell hath no chicken simmered with juniper berries like a woman whose man is obsessed with Donna Hay.

Long live the other woman. Long live Donna Hay.

glethbridge@herald.ca

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How can a swan be gay?

2006-12-05T13:05:00.000-04:00

It was one of those moments when you find yourself hopelessly straddled over the muddy ditch that separates then from now.

It happened one evening while I was reading to my Things. The book was The Trumpet of the Swan by EB White, famed writer of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.

First published in 1942, it’s the story Louis, the dysfunctional trumpeter swan who couldn’t trumpet like the other swans. It’s a sweet little tale packed with universal themes about fitting in, following your dreams and dealing with overachieving parents. (Apparently they existed in 40s-era swan communities too.)

All was going well with our story until we reached the troubling passage on page 74. It’s a quotation from Louis’s overachieving dad who’s responding to news that his son has been rebuffed by a girl swan. Louis’s dad is incensed. No son of his will be treated this way. Something will have to be done.

“I shall act,” Louis dad declares. “Louis is a Trumpeter Swan, noblest of all the waterfowl. He is gay, cheerful, strong, powerful …” The little speech continues, but my reading of is interrupted by my two gobsmacked Things.

“Excuse me?” exclaims Thing 1. “Did you say gay?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Thing 2 says. “You’re not telling me they had gay swans back then? When was this book written?”

“It was written in 1942,” I reply, using that old politician’s trick of answering only the question that suits me. With that, I continue the reading. “He is gay, cheerful, strong, powerful, lusty, good…”

But my Things aren’t about to let this one go. “Mummy!” Thing 1 insists. “The book just said the swan was gay. What’s this book about?” At nine years old, she’s old enough to know, but not quite old enough to know better.

And so I put the book down and have one of those talks a parent occasionally has with a child. I explain that there was a time when the word gay meant happy and cheerful, but that over the years it’s evolved a new meaning, one that isn’t quite what EB White meant in 1942 when he wrote The Trumpet of the Swan.

“You mean gay didn’t mean gay back then?” said Thing 2. “What’s up with that?”

Well, my darlings, what’s up with that is the English language, that’s what.
I then went on to explain that there was also a time when Madonna was a Christian icon, not an identity-morphing pop icon who will go down in history for her external presentation of conicals.

There was a time when a mouse was a little rodent that scurried about your house causing certain people to stand on chairs and scream.

A queer person was an odd or unusual individual. A queer might also have been gay, but not in the sense of today. A hard drive was a long journey on a sweltering day in a car full of cranky kids.

A web was the weapon Spiderman used to fight the baddies. A wireless was something the whole family gathered round in wartime to hear news bulletins on our boys Europe.

And imagine this: There was a time when a thong was a mere poolside flip flop, nothing more, nothing less.

My Things were fascinated, amused and surprised by these antiquarian meanings. But to their great disappointment, the next word I introduced to our little discussion hasn’t evolved one bit: bedtime.

glethbridge@herald.ca

Focus Dude!

2006-11-20T16:31:00.000-04:00

LAST WEEK I stumbled upon the most shocking piece of self-revelation. I’m normally too busy and shallow for this sort of introspection, but this one slapped me in the face so I had to take notice.

I was looking for my voter registration card. Actually, I wasn’t just looking, I was ransacking the house trying to find the stupid thing. I wanted it as backup on election day. I couldn’t stand the thought of being deprived my right to vote if I couldn’t produce it. And for the record, I never vote for, I vote against, to quote W.C. Fields.

What really got my goat was that I’d delilerately put the card in a safe place but couldn’t remember which safe place.

It’s bad enough to lose something important, but to lose it after making a special effort not to, well, this is a recipe for frustration and some fairly fruity language.
And this leads me to the shocking piece of self-revelation: I am actually a highly organized individual. The problem is that I appear to be a highly organized individual trapped in the body of a scatterbrain.

At my very core, I like order. When confronted by important bits of paper that arrive in the mail or from school, my organized inner self will always guide me to file them away in a coveted safe place.

My organized inner self has gone so far as to create a proper filing system, fully alphabetized and complete with a things-to-be-filed basket on top. This organized self even has designated special shelves and drawers for certain things.

For example, there is one drawer dedicated exclusively to the storage of vitamin bottles. That would be the organized inner self at work. But the scatterbrain conspires against this organizational inner self by causing me to forget to take the silly vitamins!

Likewise the alphabetized filing system. The organized inner self tells me to file things immediately and alphabetically. And I do. But the scatterbrain can’t remember into which slot I put the important item.

It’s like a civil war going on in my head. The two sides are constantly sniping and barking. "Don’t be so neurotic!" shouts the scatterbrain. "Don’t be such an airhead," retorts the organized inner self.

And there I am in the middle of this mess just trying to exercise my democratic right to vote. What gives? How can an organized person manage to lose things so predictably?

The answer arrived a few days after the voter registration card incident. It was a newspaper article that questioned the wisdom of multi-tasking. According to Wallace Immen in the Globe and Mail, people who do more than one thing at a time are less productive at work.

Immen quotes a study by Hewlett-Packard that suggested workers who check e-mail while doing something else suffer a temporary IQ drop of five to 15 per cent. Apparently, multi-tasking is bad for concentration and mental ability. Multi-tasking, in other words, is the enemy of the organized inner self.

So, if you’re filing your voter registration card at the same time as you’re feeding cats, wiping a dollop of ketchup off your shirt, ordering a kid to brush her teeth again, answering the phone, folding the laundry and listening to the 5 o’clock news, OK, point taken.

As my six-year-old Thing 2 says, Focus, Dude!

(glethbridge@herald.ca)

Melancholia: old word, new affliction

2006-11-14T16:12:00.000-04:00

First published 20 March 2006

I don’t know when we retired the word melancholia, but I’m thinking it’s time we drafted the old girl back into active service. I don’t mean melancholia at its severest “woe is me” moment. That’s clinical depression.

What I’m talking about is a melancholia of kinder, gentler persuasion, that “oh dear” type of malaise that visits us all at one time or another.

In this sense, melancholia is a nice compromise between the extremes of happiness, which we’re all supposed to be in pursuit of, and medical depression, which sometimes seems the only alternative.

I wouldn’t mind having melancholia. It’s melodramatic enough to be interesting without being threatening. Melancholia isn’t terminal, contagious or really serious at all, and it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t mind telling people about.

“My doctor says I have touch of the melancholia,” you might announce at a dinner party. “She’s prescribed a cure of two months in Italy or Greece with plenty of rest and fresh air.” Now, there is a cure I wouldn’t mind taking.

Melancholia would be that place just below normal. It’s not a condition, syndrome or illness. It’s just an umbrella under which to park those feelings we sometimes get in winter when the days are short, the nights long and everything is frozen solid.

Melancholia seems more natural than, say, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. OK yes, Seasonal and Affective make sense, but disorder? Since when is it “disordered” to feel a little weary and despondent in the middle of winter?

Hint: Since they started marketing SAD lamps? And, for the record I do have one of these SAD lamps. Does it work? Well, I don’t know if it does what it’s meant to do, but I will say that it’s worth the price if for no other reason than the fifteen minutes you get to sit under it and do nothing.

But back to melancholia. I like the word because sounds nicer than “the blahs.” You don’t need drugs or treatment for melancholia because it’s a perfectly normal part of the human condition.

Melancholia is a handy term for that thing you get when politicians decide to drag you through a Christmas and January election. Thanks guys. It was a real blast.

It’s also a good description for the general feeling you get when you hear experts issuing warnings of a global flu pandemic without telling you what you’re supposed to do about it.

I mean, should we be building underground bunkers and stocking them with a year’s supply of food and water? Or should we be coaching our local bird populations to stay away from feathered foreigners and cover their beaks when they sneeze? Any information would be appreciated.

Melancholia also strikes when you hear about the looming catastrophe of global warming. Depending on the expert, we’re either “done like dinner” now, or we’ll be “done like dinner” in 50 to 100 years if we don’t do something – and do something big - this very minute.

The trouble is that I believe these folks. I really do.

But back to melancholia. Melancholia is what you get when you’ve just had a trans-Atlantic phone call with news that a brief acquaintance from another time and place, about same age as you, with kids around the same age as yours, and a lovely, lovely wife, when you hear in the phone call that this brief acquaintance has just passed away.

That’s melancholia. It’s not SAD or clinical depression. It’s just something that happens occasionally. I think we need melancholia back in circulation again. It’s a good word.

glethbridge@herald.ca

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Nature abhores a vacuum; I abhore it more

2006-11-14T16:05:00.000-04:00

First published 3 November 2006

I’ve recently discovered that I will have to amend the epitaph I’ve planned for my tombstone.

It used to read: “Nature abhors a vacuum, but here lies a woman who abhorred it more.”

Now, it will have to read: “Nature abhors a vacuum, but here lies a woman who’s realized that a vacuum can be a beautiful thing.”

I know that re-branding your tombstone seems a radical thing to do, and believe me, I don’t take my epitaph changes lightly.

But you want to get these things right in the “proofing” stages because sending an engraved tombstone back for re-chiseling at the last minute is not going to be cheap. And if it gets lost in the shuffle, well you know, eternity is a long time to be laid out under the wrong epitaph.

I guess you could say I’m getting all my edits out of the way ahead well in advance.

So, what’s up with this change, anyway? Should the dust bunnies start quaking in their little dust bunny boots? Have I been struck by lightning and had my inner-slob fried to bits? Has hell frozen over?

Well, not exactly.

What’s happened is that I’ve discovered an exciting new application for the vacuum cleaner. And get this: It doesn’t involve hoovering up around the house!

Now you’re sitting up and listening, aren’t you?

What I’ve found is these bags for storing clothes. What you do is stuff all your clothes into one of these bags and then seal it up with a Ziploc-like tab.

Now you have a big monster bag that may as well be a dead body when you try to move it or store it. But it’s not the bag itself solves the problem. It’s the vacuum cleaner.

You see, the monster bag is air-tight so when you put the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner on the specially-designed insert on the bag, something magical begins to happen.

Your clothes shrink before your eyes. It’s true. I sat there and watched that monster bag-o-clothes compress and compress and compress until it was a quarter of its original size.

By the time it was finished the bag-o-clothes looked like a shrink-wrapped slab-o-frozen meat.

And as the bag shrank, my smile expanded. The possibilities are endless for things you may wish to shrink and store away: guest linens and pillows, towels, sleeping bags, beastly felines, children who behave badly. (Kidding about shrink-wrapping kids and cats, although there are moments when you’d like to.)

When you’re finished shrinking your stuff, you simply slide it under the bed or into the trunk. You can stand it up at the back of the closet or stuff it in a drawer.

Yes, a vacuum can be a beautiful thing, but shrink-wrappers beware because vacuums are not always your friend. Remember Newton what said? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

We can put this another way: for every vacuum, there is an equal and opposite leak waiting to happen.

I learned this lesson after retiring one of these shrink-wrapped bags to a drawer which was the correct size for the shrink-wrapped bag. Three days later, well, let’s just say there was skirmish involving a woman, a re-inflated shrink-wrapped bag-o-clothes and a drawer no longer big enough to accommodate its contents.

I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

glethbridge@herald.ca

Bertha bites the dust

2006-11-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

First published 29 September 2006

It was sunny and warm the day the men in uniform came to take Big Bertha away. You couldn’t have asked for better weather to see the old girl off after such a long and faithful tour of duty.

Big Bertha was our furnace or, if you want to use the correct home-heating terminology, our boiler. And this was her retirement day.

First installed in 1946, she had a sixty-year career of keeping people warm and comfortable through chilly springs and falls, brutal winters and damp, foggy Halifax summers.

She was an impressive sight, our Big Bertha, and every time you looked at her you couldn’t help but imagine what a high-stepper she must have been in her day.

Constructed of sturdy cast iron walls – her clothes, as the men in uniform called them – Big Bertha was a furnace not to be reckoned with. She went about her job with a professionalism and work ethic you’d expect from a furnace of her generation. There was never any whining or complaining with Bertha. She just got down to business.

True, at times, she could be a little louder than you liked but the noise was more than made up for by her reliability. Big Bertha never let you down. And when she was all fired up, she radiated the most lovely warmth which was hard to resist in a basement with no radiators.

Her design was simple, no bells and whistles, but that was a good thing because it meant fewer things to go wrong. And year in, year out our Big Bertha earned an efficiency score that would have made a boiler half her age proud.

Back in ’46 Bertha burned coal. She had little hinged door on the front that opened for manual re-fueling with a small shovel. It was probably some time in the mid-fifties that she was converted to oil. And Bertha adjusted well.

When I first moved in, I must admit to feeling a little intimidated by this scary looking old frump in the basement. Would she rise to the challenge of my young family?

The man in uniform certainly thought so. He showed me her sterling service history and assured me that while Bertha may not have been the prettiest boiler you ever saw, she was certainly dependable, hard working and in good form.

The only thing to watch, he warned, was the ceramic chamber which would eventually crack and collapse. And when this happened it would be game over for old Bertha.

Well, it was in August when we had the bad news. It was just an annual check-up and there was no indication of anything wrong. Bertha was having a nice summer break.

The man in uniform opened the little hinged door and took one look, and I knew by the expression on his face there was nothing he could do. Bertha’s chamber was cracked. If we left it, it would collapse and we’d be without heat.

And if that happened to happen during a cold snap in January, well, you know, frozen pipes and all that. Big Bertha’s time had come.

Retirement day crept up sooner than expected. That morning I went down to look at Big Bertha for one last time and realized just how much I was going to miss her steady presence in my house. It was the end of an era.

The men in uniform got to work straight away, loosening her bolts, stripping her of her cast-iron clothes and carrying her out in pieces small enough to fit through the doorframes. It wasn’t the dignified end I would have wanted for Bertha, but I guess endings are often undignified and unpleasant. It’s a fact of life.

It didn’t take long, not much more than an hour, to take apart sixty years of faithful, dutiful service.

Her replacement is one of these bright young things, half the size and probably a quarter the weight. She’s sexy, insulated and with an efficiency rating of 85%, as good as it gets, I’m told.

I’m sure we’ll have long and happy relationship with the new girl, but something tells me she’s not going to outlive Bertha’s sixty years. They don’t make ‘em like Big Bertha any more.

glethbridge@herald.ca