Cheeseburger Birds

Hooligans! We robbed a bank just after we took this selfie.

This week in musings:

1. The battle with the can opener continues, and you might even say it's gotten worse. Jordie brought up a pretty good point yesterday, which was Why don't we buy a new can opener?...or something. I forget. I wasn't really listening.

2. A few years ago, Jordie intoduced me to what he calls 'Cheeseburger Birds.' These are the birds that start singing this time of year-I don't know for sure, but maybe they're sparrows. Or starlings-I'm just throwing out names of birds I know. Jordie says it sounds like they're singing 'Cheeeeese-bur-ger! Cheeeeese-bur-ger!' I don't know why he thinks they're saying 'cheeseburger,' and not any other 3-syllable word. 'Leeeeeeaf-blow-er!' 'Jellllll-o-mold!' My theory is that Jordie came up with this whole 'cheeseburger bird' thing when he was walking down the street, heard a bird singing, and then at that same moment realized he really wanted a cheeseburger. By the way, have you ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds? It's terrifying. Who knew a movie about birds could be terrifying? You do have to psych yourself up for Hitchcock movies, I think, because it's hard to ignore how old-timey they are. My favourite is Dial M For Murder. You couldn't even get away with a title like that nowadays. It sounds like an R.L. Stine novel.

3. Do you ever look forward to your morning coffee when you're going to bed the night before? Me too. Coffee with skim milk is the worst kind of coffee. It's kind of like taking coffee with cream, pouring half down the sink, then topping it up with puddle water.

4. A lot of people these days are trying to think of unique names for their kids. I have a really easy solution for this: name your kid something like 'Bob' or 'Al.' Or if it's a girl, what about 'Sharon' or 'Nancy?' Instead of the classic old lady/old man names everyone's going for right now, I suggest that you delve deep into the 1980's. Haha...it's hard to imagine a BABY named 'Al.'

5. Have you ever been told to 'mind your own business?' It's harsh, especially if you're an adult. I can't decide what's worse-being told something is 'none of your business' or being instructed to 'mind your own business.' I think they're both pretty bad.

6. Yoga talk is really funny. And by funny, I mean annoying and ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, though...I do love yoga. But all the talk about 'third eyes' and 'chakras' and 'sending your breath to your sacrum' is getting a little out of hand. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde, but I just want to get a good stretch in, and I don't know what that really has to do with anything. Also, when I'm laying on my side, I do know how to get back up into a sitting position. I don't need my left hand to 'guide' my right side-body or whatever.

*Side note: I need to look up 'sit bones' to see if that's a real part of the human body, or one of those made-up yoga anatomy words.

7. In my last post, I suggested stopping paper mail and getting things emailed to you, but I need to clarify! I meant stopping all that junky, straight-into-the-recycling-bin mail, like flyers and notices from your bank. Not letters, parcels, and postcards. Those are part of the world I want to live in. In fact, few things are more joyful than a real-life PARCEL in the mail. Not from Amazon.

8. I'm not trying to be rude or judgemental, but my heart tells me that being a billionaire is a pretty unhappy life. I don't know. I used to play Monopoly all the time with my family, and if I was rolling in cash and then one of my brothers landed on Boardwalk and had to mortgage their properties to pay me the rent, it was a terrible feeling. The idea of being a billionaire kind of reminds me of that. I wonder if billionaires still appreciate a really good cup of coffee, or a handmade card. And do they give their kids a normal allowance, like ten bucks? Another thing that's strange is a lot of billionaires seem to want to keep investing in stuff. If you don't have enough by the time you're a multi-billionaire, I don't think taking 10% of someone's valet parking company on Shark Tank is going to make you happy. I guess it would just be nice if everyone was happy with what they have, especially if they already have quite a lot.

9. I have this recurring dream about flying, but the funny thing is, I'm never able to get very far off the ground. It's like swimming-I just kind of move my arms over my head and I take off, no problems. But then I'll get like ten feet off the ground and I can't get up any higher. What's the deal with our abilities in dreams being limited? There seems to be no reading, and definitely no running. Have you ever tried to run in a dream? It's infuriating.

The conversation I usually have with Jordan first thing in the morning:

Me: I had this dream last night that you and I were at our house on Napier Street, only it wasn't our house...it was a bowling alley, and you weren't really you...you were Lionel Messi, but with the face of a peacock.

Jordie: Uh-huh.

Me: Yeah, and then all of a sudden I realized I was late for work, but I was at the top of Grouse Mountain, and my college roommate was mad at me because I was supposed to paint her dad's old boat.

Jordie: Hmm.

10. Jordie and I have both been sick this week (we missed skiing on Thursday AGAIN...ultimate FOMO). So, we've been watching loads of movies. I really liked The Irishman, but then again, I like all of Martin Scorsese's movies. I like listening to him in interviews, too. He always calls movies 'pictures.' I can't tell you how much I love a good movie with a bowl of buttery popcorn, but I guess everyone loves that. I was chatting with my 5-year-old niece Anna the other day about movie snacks, and she said: "When I watch a film, I like chips." A film. Ah, the little nuances in language that you only realize when kids are explaining something. Like, for me, a 'film' might be something like 'Gone With the Wind' or 'Terms of Endearment,' but probably not 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.' I also had a conversation about tubing with my 8-year-old niece, and she asked me if I liked to go 'rippin fast.' I guess for a kid, there IS a difference between going 'really fast' and 'rippin fast.' Another thing that is so funny about kids is they will just tell you EXACTLY what they think, like, "Auntie Leah, I really don't like that drawing you did." Or, "Grandma, you've got a snaggletooth." Kids absolutely kill me!

11. When someone asks, "If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?," are they asking what kind of animal you would like to be? Or are they asking what kind of animal you are already kind of similar to?

Our niece Lucia gave Jordie his new nickname: Uncle Bean Face. Brilliant!

My oldest brother, Darren, came to visit over the Family Day weekend with my niece Paige, her boyfriend Jeremy, and two pups-Stanley and Oscar. It was a great weekend for visitors, because on Saturday there was the snow-baseball game (the Fire and Rescue Department against the regular summer baseball players). I wondered if 'snow baseball' meant that instead of the baseball being a real baseball, they might play with a snowball. But I guess that doesn't really make any sense. It was a beautiful, bluebird day for a baseball game, and I got a real kick out of how nobody could really run fast at all through the deep snow. Jeremy got a hot dog from the ladies selling hot dogs (not the Ladies Auxiliary for once, surprisingly), and we sipped tea and had a great time. One of the players had some kind of gun thing that shot coloured chalk, which was also quite funny. The cop was on one of the teams, and didn't seem to mind people announcing how many beers they'd had already that afternoon. I love living in a town where nobody cares about laws that kind of seem pointless anyways, like No Drinking in Public. I mean, come on. We're all adults, here. Can't we just have a couple beers at the park? In Japan, there are beer vending machines, and they're everywhere.

I have a hat just like this.

Another thing we did when Darren was here was we went to the Winter Festival. This was at the airport. It was free (classic Kaslo). There was live music all day (about five different bands), cross-country skiing, human dogsled racing, maple taffy made in the snow, a big snow sculpture, sledding, and some kind of wood-chopping competition. Also, soup. In Kaslo, there's always soup. At the Winter Festival, there was 2 soup stations, and at least 10 different types of soup. And it was all free, and you could get refills as many times as you wanted! Beef barley! Turkey noodle! Borscht! There was also hot chocolate with marshmallows, and homemade apple cider, and hot dogs and chili and cookies. Can you tell I like free food? The human dogsled racing was quite interesting. I thought it would be human adults pulling other human adults in sleds, but in fact it was human adults pulling human children in sleds, which ended up kind of badly. I did see one kid that wasn't crying as a result of doing a faceplant out of the sled, though. The kid that won. I have to say, the highlight of the Winter Festival for me (and maybe the highlight of 2020 so far) was the cross-country skiing. Jeremy's gusto for going down the hill on his skis combined with his constant launching into the snow drifts, sometimes face-first, was truly a gift. Plus, he was a really good sport about it, so I didn't feel like I was laughing at him. People use the word 'hilarious' all the time when things are really only a little bit funny, but this was genuinely HILARIOUS. I do not remember a time that I have laughed so hard (OK, that's a lie...the last time I laughed this hard was last summer when my friend Jesse was running across a slackline, and was about as graceful as a bag of bricks, whatever that means).

Me and my brother Darren. We'd just finished rooting around in Jer and Sher's house. They weren't home.

Family at the Angry Hen Brewery on Front Street.

Jordie and me at the baseball game in the snow.

Stanley-just look at that face!

This week I went cross-country skiing with the kids and their school-about 20 or so kids altogether, up to Kaslo's Nordic Ski Area (just a few minutes out of town). We rode there on the exact same schoolbus I rode everyday when I was a kid. Same brown plastic seats. For some reason, bus drivers never appreciate it when you throw things out the window, keep changing your seat, or 'roll' down the aisles. We skiied from about 9:30 until about 1:45, which is actually quite a long time to ski with kids, I think. At least, I was exhausted at the end of it. We played a game where we had to ski around in a circle or something, and then the 'loser' was pelted with snowballs. I thought that this game could use a little tweaking. I don't think the 8-year-old girl who lost was too thrilled with being attacked with snowballs. But she was a trooper!

Eating soup and looking uneasy.

Jordie and I babysat Jeremy and Sheree's four kids overnight this weekend because they had a show near Salmon Arm. It was quite fun. We had delicious spaghetti for dinner with salad and homemade bread, watched a film (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), went sledding at the golf course, and took a snowy walk to the school to play on the playground. The littlest one, who is one and a half, did quite well! He only did a moderate amount of screaming, which I appreciated, and even though I kept feeding him frozen blueberries, he did me a favour and did not poop on anything. I discovered a couple of tricks to use when little ones are upset: 1. Show them the magic of light switches; 2. Give them a box of spaghetti to shake; 3. Turn up the music!

I've been feeling really grateful these days. I don't know why-maybe it's because Mercury is in retrograde. This morning, I called my parents at 7:20 for a little chin wag, because ever since Fido disconnected my phone service up here, my mom's been saying she misses my morning calls. I love these chats with them on the phone. I always forget that they put me on speaker phone. Dad and I gabbed about signpainting and the Interurban train line, and when I talked about the idea of buying a place in Kaslo, Mom reminded me that I should listen to my gut. She didn't say it in those exact words, but I know that's what she meant. I have always been a big fan of chatting on the phone with loved ones, and being quite far from my parents up here, I'd like to give a shoutout to Alexander Graham Bell for making these little chats possible. They really fill my cup. Thanks Mom and Dad!

The 6 months we've spent in Kaslo has really made me start to think about buying a place here. I love it for so many reasons-probably the biggest one is the sense of community that I have always felt is missing for me in Vancouver. But the biggest drawback is how far away it is from my family and friends, especially in the winter when the roads are bad and the trip is longer and more sketchy. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from my mom (among many-she's full of great mottoes, quotes and philosophies!) was to listen to my gut. But when your gut keeps changing its mind, does that mean it's a 'no?' I guess if a friend was dating someone and they kept humming and hawing about whether they were with the right person, my instinct would be that they weren't listening to their gut.

Jordie and I went to see a piece of property up on top of a hill this week. A 1.26 acre piece of land with no buildings on it, just up the road from town. We dreamed about building a tiny house (or a small house) there and some gardens. There were animal tracks everywhere...and animal poop. Deer poop, elk poop. There's a beautiful view of town, and an even more beautiful view of the mountains. The view was disgustingly nice up there. But I don't know. My gut keeps flip-flopping. You know, for a part of the body that kind of exists but also kind of doesn't exist, the gut can sure be fickle sometimes.

Side note: When someone says you should listen to your gut, is that the same 'gut' that likes it when you eat probiotic yogurt? Maybe that's 'guts.'

This week in green tips:

1. Buy single bananas

I read in the New York Times it's estimated that about half of the average North American's fruits and veggies are imported these days. And the produce from overseas travels, on average, approximately, about a zillion miles to get to your plate. I've been thinking about this when I buy bananas and avocados, because they don't grow anywhere near here. But I read that if you must buy bananas, it's better to buy the single ones, because lots of grocery stores just throw them away at the end of the day anyways. I asked about this at the Front Street Market, and they said they donate all their soon-destined-to-be-garbage produce to a local pig. Oh, Kaslo!

2. Let it mellow!

OK, I know I've kind of mentioned this before. But I just read on WWF's website (World Wildlife Fund, not World Wrestling Federation) that if you have a toilet that was produced before 1992, it probably uses between 3.5-7 gallons of water per flush. Gallons!! So anyways, that's a shitload of water, right? If you can handle it, when you pee, just let it mellow. Especially if you live alone and nobody else is looking at your pee. Or if you're someone who drinks loads of water, and your pee is basically water anyways.

3. Share your shower, share your bath

I don't mean that you should share with strangers. I don't advise this. But if you're having a nice bubble bath (approx. 70 gallons of water), why not share with your partner? A nice, relaxing soak with a couple glasses of wine and a foot in your ribs. Sounds romantic, no? If this isn't up your alley, what about showering with your partner? Not every time. That would probably be overkill. I'm just saying it has its time and place! On the topic of showering, I think we could all shower a little bit less. I mean, do we really need to be in the shower for 20 minutes every day? How long does it really take to wash? How dirty are we getting during a regular day? Maybe this is something we could sync with our FitBits. We could make a little rule, like...if you've only taken 35 steps today, you're probably still clean from yesterday's shower.

That's all from me this week, dear readers. And Donald, if you're reading this, I really didn't mean to be judgemental about billionaires. I just think there's something missing there.