I can’t believe how hot it is here in St. Louis. I mean, it’s the end of September and we’re still hitting 89 degrees most afternoons. Not that I have any concept of what 89 degrees even means; I’m Canadian and I was in grade school between 1971 and 1985 when various governments proposed, debated, mandated, and then waffled about the exclusive use of the metric system. By the time they waffled in the 80s and allowed imperial to be used again in conjunction with metric, it was too late. We had learned to drive 100 km/hr on the highway and that it was 30 degrees Celsius on a pleasant summer day.
But, as a child of the waffling days, I still only know my weight in pounds and my height in feet and inches. In Belgium, I had to do what no compromise-seeking Canadian government had ever asked me to do: I had to commit to metric. All of Europe – well, most of the entire world actually – uses metric exclusively. So, for the past three years, my children walked a few hundred metres to school, grew in centimetres, gained weight in kilos, and learned to measure in litres.
Then, we got to Missouri. Now, what the heck is a gallon? I mean, I stand at that gas pump for a long, long time and the machine ticks and dings its way up to 22 bucks, but I only get nine gallons out of the deal. Is that okay? Will nine gallons get me home? It doesn’t sound like very much. I’ve been bragging about my little hybrid car getting over 40 miles to the gallon because that’s what the screen says, but the reality is that I have absolutely no idea what that means.
After filling up (or any other brief errand during which time your car will get hot enough to cook an egg), I get back in my car, where the handy-dandy little thermometer says that it’s 100 degrees. That must be really hot, I say to myself, as I wring out my shirt, wipe the steam off my windshield, and start punching air conditioning and ventilation buttons. But, is it hot? Come to think of it, I’m not really sure.
Recently, while sitting in the full sun at a Cardinals baseball game, I felt sweat dampen my hair, stain my shirt, and run in various places that are difficult to even reach. It had to have been well over 35 degrees Celsius, but I couldn’t confirm that fact with anyone around me. The other day, I was telling a story about working in beautiful northern Canada. It was so cold there in the winter that your cameras would freeze when you stepped off the plane and the pilots would rush to cover the propellers with special socks. It was so cold that you only ever saw children when they would slide down out of backs of their parents’ giant fur coats inside the one-room schoolhouse. It was so cold that this pampered city girl could hardly take a breath. It was – and I slowed down to relate this fact – minus 55 degrees once! My listener stared at me blankly.
It was the same blank stare I got when I told my neighbours that it can sometimes drop below zero on Hallowe’en in Toronto. No wonder they think we live in igloos.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Slow as Molasses
Grocery shopping here is both a pain and a pleasure. It’s a pain because it’s very slow. Well, at least it’s slow where I do my shopping. Some of that is my fault because I’m still having a bit of trouble finding things. Yesterday, I discovered that maple syrup is beside fruit rollups in the kosher aisle. Rice is not anywhere near the pasta. In fact, it’s not even with the Asian sauces. It’s across from the canned salmon, near the gift cards.
It would be so much easier if the store were organized into the food pyramid sections! Think about it! You’d have two rows called starch – yes, the rice and pasta would be near each other! Then, you could have a whole section with green balloons and bright lights celebrating fruits and veggies. It might make sense to have the toilet paper there too, because of all the fibre you’ll be getting. At the back, there would be a big, hale and hearty-looking butcher in a stained apron doling out the protein! Sometimes, when I’m really tired and not feeling inspired, I imagine grocery stores with sections labelled “Monday” or “Tuesday”, with the whole darn meal all set up for me to buy, but then I remember that’s called McDonald’s.
It’s actually not any slower than grocery shopping in Brussels. It’s just a different kind of slow. Over there, there are fresh cheese counters with hundreds of different kinds of cheese. There are soft ones and hard ones, young ones and old ones, cheese with deep blue veins or thin ash crusts. Usually, each customer asks for three or four cheeses. They never buy large quantities; most people have quite small fridges and they’re likely to serve it after dinner with fruit that very night anyway. It takes a long time for the server to unwrap each wheel or large block and then ask each and every time, with body poised for the difficult cut, “Like this?” with an enormous knife hovering over the cheese. There is a weird ritual there, where the serving person behind the counter will never look at you or even so much as acknowledge you until she has finished with the previous customer.
The same thing happens at the checkout in Belgium. The cashier will NEVER acknowledge you until she has finished with the previous client, who usually is steadily but not hurriedly placing everything into cardboard boxes and pull-carts. Over there, they don’t use plastic bags and customers pack up their own groceries after paying, while the cashier sits on her low chair, hands resting calmly on the slim metal cash box, meditating peacefully on the beauty of unionization and short work weeks. The second the previous client is finished, she’ll snap to attention, flash a brief smile, issue a polite hello madam, and begin scanning.
I have a pull-cart too. I bought it over there and I love to use it but, when I drag it out, I notice that my daughter pretends she’s just a friend of the family or a distant cousin from another state doing a school project on grocery prices in St. Louis. Oh well, I don’t care; I’m making a statement. I’m determined never to take a plastic bag again in my life. By the way, I am the only person on that mission in St. Louis. When you bring your own bag, the cashier offers you a pink raffle ticket that you fill out with your name and phone number. I have no idea why I have never won because I don’t think anyone else has entered the contest. Everyone else is trying as hard as they can to use as many plastic bags as possible, even doubling them up for heavy items, like one can of apple juice.
Here in St. Louis, the cashier faces you while scanning the food. This is the pleasant part of the grocery shopping. They are nearly always the nicest people in the world, who take time to say hello and even comment on your three-for-five-dollars frozen soy beans which, by the way, can be slipped right into a stew and the family won’t even know they’re not peas. I love it when I’m behind the local firefighters, who are well-known and loved, and they put up a good fight against the friendly ribbing and joking.
At least the firemen pay fast. They pay with cash. I pay by debit, which is an old habit formed in Canada, where bank customers were recognized long ago as being among the earliest adopters of this technology in the world. Hardly anyone pays by cash in Belgium either. Even the old folks in Brussels pay by debit card at the grocery store. Certainly no-one pays by cheque; they don't exist anymore in Belgium.
Ah, but in St. Louis, I think bank customers must get loyalty points for every cheque they write. I mean, come on! Who writes cheques anymore??? Young and old stand with chequebook and register in hand, waiting for the total so they can carefully write out the details, sign it and then dutifully record the amount in the little cheque register. They've got lots of time to do this because some part-timer is busy bagging their groceries for them. Sometimes, they write a higher amount and ask for cash back. Hey! Ever heard of a bank machine?!.
By this time, ice cream is melting, the kids are touching everything, and my left eye is twitching. Then the cashier meets my eyes, smiles, and asks, “How’re y’all doin’ today?” I carefully consider this question before answering because it sounds like she really wants to know. Yikes, time to make some friends, girl! Out of habit, I glance quickly at my kids, who have turned their attention to the automatic video rental and lottery ticket machines, giggling at some shared story whose plot I will never grasp. They’re fine. I guess I am too. “We’re doing great, thanks!” I say.
It would be so much easier if the store were organized into the food pyramid sections! Think about it! You’d have two rows called starch – yes, the rice and pasta would be near each other! Then, you could have a whole section with green balloons and bright lights celebrating fruits and veggies. It might make sense to have the toilet paper there too, because of all the fibre you’ll be getting. At the back, there would be a big, hale and hearty-looking butcher in a stained apron doling out the protein! Sometimes, when I’m really tired and not feeling inspired, I imagine grocery stores with sections labelled “Monday” or “Tuesday”, with the whole darn meal all set up for me to buy, but then I remember that’s called McDonald’s.
It’s actually not any slower than grocery shopping in Brussels. It’s just a different kind of slow. Over there, there are fresh cheese counters with hundreds of different kinds of cheese. There are soft ones and hard ones, young ones and old ones, cheese with deep blue veins or thin ash crusts. Usually, each customer asks for three or four cheeses. They never buy large quantities; most people have quite small fridges and they’re likely to serve it after dinner with fruit that very night anyway. It takes a long time for the server to unwrap each wheel or large block and then ask each and every time, with body poised for the difficult cut, “Like this?” with an enormous knife hovering over the cheese. There is a weird ritual there, where the serving person behind the counter will never look at you or even so much as acknowledge you until she has finished with the previous customer.
The same thing happens at the checkout in Belgium. The cashier will NEVER acknowledge you until she has finished with the previous client, who usually is steadily but not hurriedly placing everything into cardboard boxes and pull-carts. Over there, they don’t use plastic bags and customers pack up their own groceries after paying, while the cashier sits on her low chair, hands resting calmly on the slim metal cash box, meditating peacefully on the beauty of unionization and short work weeks. The second the previous client is finished, she’ll snap to attention, flash a brief smile, issue a polite hello madam, and begin scanning.
I have a pull-cart too. I bought it over there and I love to use it but, when I drag it out, I notice that my daughter pretends she’s just a friend of the family or a distant cousin from another state doing a school project on grocery prices in St. Louis. Oh well, I don’t care; I’m making a statement. I’m determined never to take a plastic bag again in my life. By the way, I am the only person on that mission in St. Louis. When you bring your own bag, the cashier offers you a pink raffle ticket that you fill out with your name and phone number. I have no idea why I have never won because I don’t think anyone else has entered the contest. Everyone else is trying as hard as they can to use as many plastic bags as possible, even doubling them up for heavy items, like one can of apple juice.
Here in St. Louis, the cashier faces you while scanning the food. This is the pleasant part of the grocery shopping. They are nearly always the nicest people in the world, who take time to say hello and even comment on your three-for-five-dollars frozen soy beans which, by the way, can be slipped right into a stew and the family won’t even know they’re not peas. I love it when I’m behind the local firefighters, who are well-known and loved, and they put up a good fight against the friendly ribbing and joking.
At least the firemen pay fast. They pay with cash. I pay by debit, which is an old habit formed in Canada, where bank customers were recognized long ago as being among the earliest adopters of this technology in the world. Hardly anyone pays by cash in Belgium either. Even the old folks in Brussels pay by debit card at the grocery store. Certainly no-one pays by cheque; they don't exist anymore in Belgium.
Ah, but in St. Louis, I think bank customers must get loyalty points for every cheque they write. I mean, come on! Who writes cheques anymore??? Young and old stand with chequebook and register in hand, waiting for the total so they can carefully write out the details, sign it and then dutifully record the amount in the little cheque register. They've got lots of time to do this because some part-timer is busy bagging their groceries for them. Sometimes, they write a higher amount and ask for cash back. Hey! Ever heard of a bank machine?!.
By this time, ice cream is melting, the kids are touching everything, and my left eye is twitching. Then the cashier meets my eyes, smiles, and asks, “How’re y’all doin’ today?” I carefully consider this question before answering because it sounds like she really wants to know. Yikes, time to make some friends, girl! Out of habit, I glance quickly at my kids, who have turned their attention to the automatic video rental and lottery ticket machines, giggling at some shared story whose plot I will never grasp. They’re fine. I guess I am too. “We’re doing great, thanks!” I say.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
A New Low
I have reached a new low. Yesterday, I ate a piece of a Ghirardelli’s 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar. I found it in the baking aisle at my local grocery store. It was with the unsweetened and semi-sweetened chocolate chips, bags of pecans, and vials of sprinkles. I didn’t buy it to use for baking. I bought it to eat. You see, it turns out that I’m completely and utterly addicted to dark Belgian chocolate and it’s really hard to find here!
Well, perhaps addiction is a strong word – let’s use LOVE. I love chocolate. I know, I know ... lots of people love chocolate! Here in St. Louis, I see lots of T-shirts and mugs in stores dedicated to this not-so-secret passion. When I lived in Belgium, however, I didn’t ever see chocoholic merchandise. There were no T-shirts, or mugs, or pens, or scarves declaring the wearer to be dysfunctional without chocolate! Instead, there were retro-style boxes and tins that reminisced of simpler times and of the long history of chocolate making in that region.
Chocolate was brought to Europe as a drink in the 16th century by the Spanish, who imported it from South America. In the 17th century, it was an expensive commodity only enjoyed at “court” and by the very wealthy, but later, higher production and new inventions for roasting and grinding cacao beans and for solidifying chocolate into bars made it more accessible to lower class Europeans.
My favourite chocolate purveyor in Brussels was Neuhaus, although there are several really good names there. Apparently, Jean Neuhaus and his pharmacist brother-in-law founded their pharmaceutical and confections company in the middle of the 19th century right down by the Grand Place in the Galeries de la Reine. About 50 years later, one of the Neuhaus kids put a new spin on things, by discovering a way to fill chocolates. Yum! If you’ve never had one of these filled chocolates, called “praline”, you haven’t lived!
Chocolate is a serious business in Europe and there are regulations stipulating the proportion of cocoa solids relative to cocoa butter and sugar for my favourite type, which is the dark chocolate. At lunch, my friends and I never argued about which one of us took the dark, milk, or truffle mignonette of chocolate that always came with our after-lunch coffees. There was just a quiet shuffle as we each reached for the one we liked.
It’s a nice custom, that little sliver of chocolate at the end of a meal. It tells your body that you’re finished eating and it can begin to digest. In fact, isn’t there some property to chocolate that aids in digestion? Wait, no, it lowers cholesterol, or blood pressure or something. I can’t remember. I just know it makes me happy!
I miss the shelves and shelves of Belgian chocolate at the grocery stores! There was always a huge selection. I did find a store in St. Louis that sells Belgian chocolate. The experience is similar to a high-end Belgium store in that you can choose from several types of hand-made chocolates that are displayed importantly beneath glass, like jewels. I invited the kids to choose one chocolate each. Our carefully selected gems were weighed and packaged in a tiny gold box. In Belgium, those three chocolates would have cost a handful of Euros, but here those three little beauties cost twenty dollars.
I told them to eat slowly.
Well, perhaps addiction is a strong word – let’s use LOVE. I love chocolate. I know, I know ... lots of people love chocolate! Here in St. Louis, I see lots of T-shirts and mugs in stores dedicated to this not-so-secret passion. When I lived in Belgium, however, I didn’t ever see chocoholic merchandise. There were no T-shirts, or mugs, or pens, or scarves declaring the wearer to be dysfunctional without chocolate! Instead, there were retro-style boxes and tins that reminisced of simpler times and of the long history of chocolate making in that region.
Chocolate was brought to Europe as a drink in the 16th century by the Spanish, who imported it from South America. In the 17th century, it was an expensive commodity only enjoyed at “court” and by the very wealthy, but later, higher production and new inventions for roasting and grinding cacao beans and for solidifying chocolate into bars made it more accessible to lower class Europeans.
My favourite chocolate purveyor in Brussels was Neuhaus, although there are several really good names there. Apparently, Jean Neuhaus and his pharmacist brother-in-law founded their pharmaceutical and confections company in the middle of the 19th century right down by the Grand Place in the Galeries de la Reine. About 50 years later, one of the Neuhaus kids put a new spin on things, by discovering a way to fill chocolates. Yum! If you’ve never had one of these filled chocolates, called “praline”, you haven’t lived!
Chocolate is a serious business in Europe and there are regulations stipulating the proportion of cocoa solids relative to cocoa butter and sugar for my favourite type, which is the dark chocolate. At lunch, my friends and I never argued about which one of us took the dark, milk, or truffle mignonette of chocolate that always came with our after-lunch coffees. There was just a quiet shuffle as we each reached for the one we liked.
It’s a nice custom, that little sliver of chocolate at the end of a meal. It tells your body that you’re finished eating and it can begin to digest. In fact, isn’t there some property to chocolate that aids in digestion? Wait, no, it lowers cholesterol, or blood pressure or something. I can’t remember. I just know it makes me happy!
I miss the shelves and shelves of Belgian chocolate at the grocery stores! There was always a huge selection. I did find a store in St. Louis that sells Belgian chocolate. The experience is similar to a high-end Belgium store in that you can choose from several types of hand-made chocolates that are displayed importantly beneath glass, like jewels. I invited the kids to choose one chocolate each. Our carefully selected gems were weighed and packaged in a tiny gold box. In Belgium, those three chocolates would have cost a handful of Euros, but here those three little beauties cost twenty dollars.
I told them to eat slowly.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Ride the Wave!
I have been ripping off the nice people of St. Louis. Yes, that’s right ... ripping them off. I have not been waving the right way. It hit me today when I let a driver make a left turn in front of me and she waved. It was not just a quick rise and fall of the hand. No, it was a full wave and a smile. The wave was long. It was committed. It married me.
Everyone waves like that here. The wave is happy and long and vigorous. It’s got meaning. It comes with eye contact. It says, “hi, how are you ... it’s nice to see you ... are you doing ok ... that’s a nice car you’re driving ... can I borrow a cup of sugar ... did we go to high school together?” The wave has to be long because it has a lot to say. And, long it is. Picture a side-to-side motion with a wide open hand, repeated at least eight times.
And, everyone waves. They wave if they recognize you. Come to think of it, they wave if they don’t recognize you. My neighbours wave to me on the street. They wave to me from their cars when they can’t possibly know who I am. There is a lot of waving here. I don’t know why lawmakers in this state banned texting for drivers under 21; this waving business takes your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road for minutes at a time!
I’m rather fascinated by non-verbal communication. I love how it can cross great distances and even languages. Picture the signalman waving flags on a ship, or a conductor leading his orchestra, or the batting coach in baseball calling for a bunt. Baseball -- now those are crazy signs! It’s like trying to work out a logic puzzle to guess what the waves, shirt brushing, ear tugs and hat adjustments mean in that game! To complicate it, those guys are always adjusting their own equipment too, if you know what I mean!
Sign language is a great example of non-verbal communication. When we were younger, my sister and I taught ourselves some basic sign language and then got thrown out of math class when the Neanderthal teacher caught us “talking” to each other. He would have been even madder if he’d known what we were saying...! Oh well, lesson learned! Some hand gestures are not safe.
Another one that’s unsafe in some places is the thumb, as we discovered once in Venice. My husband and son were giving vigorous “thumbs up” approval signs to all the slick taxi boats they saw while we were speeding along in our own wood-paneled craft. I was in the front, so I didn’t see them and it took me awhile to turn around and see that the cause of the other drivers yelling and gesturing very rudely at us was my little family. You see, in some places, a quick thumb up is equivalent to our middle finger (“stick it up your...!”). Lovely.
Anyway, I think we’re safe with the good old-fashioned wave. I’m trying hard to wave, much to my daughter’s deep embarrassment. She says I wave back at people who were not actually waving at me. She’s trying to help me, though. When you’re eleven, you want to fit in and conform. That means not wanting to wear a paper bag over your head when your mother is with you! So, she wants me to stop waving at complete strangers and stop giving the peace sign, which I was not aware I was doing. Apparently, I wave with just two fingers: the pointer and the middle one, held in a quick but definite “V” – the universal peace sign. She thinks that’s just plain weird.
Wow, it’s going to be hard to fit in here! My noncommittal flick of the hand must go! I need to use all digits on my hand to prove my full engagement. And, I need to make the wave last a long time to show my earnestness. I must linger. I must engage. I must wave with feeling!
Everyone waves like that here. The wave is happy and long and vigorous. It’s got meaning. It comes with eye contact. It says, “hi, how are you ... it’s nice to see you ... are you doing ok ... that’s a nice car you’re driving ... can I borrow a cup of sugar ... did we go to high school together?” The wave has to be long because it has a lot to say. And, long it is. Picture a side-to-side motion with a wide open hand, repeated at least eight times.
And, everyone waves. They wave if they recognize you. Come to think of it, they wave if they don’t recognize you. My neighbours wave to me on the street. They wave to me from their cars when they can’t possibly know who I am. There is a lot of waving here. I don’t know why lawmakers in this state banned texting for drivers under 21; this waving business takes your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road for minutes at a time!
I’m rather fascinated by non-verbal communication. I love how it can cross great distances and even languages. Picture the signalman waving flags on a ship, or a conductor leading his orchestra, or the batting coach in baseball calling for a bunt. Baseball -- now those are crazy signs! It’s like trying to work out a logic puzzle to guess what the waves, shirt brushing, ear tugs and hat adjustments mean in that game! To complicate it, those guys are always adjusting their own equipment too, if you know what I mean!
Sign language is a great example of non-verbal communication. When we were younger, my sister and I taught ourselves some basic sign language and then got thrown out of math class when the Neanderthal teacher caught us “talking” to each other. He would have been even madder if he’d known what we were saying...! Oh well, lesson learned! Some hand gestures are not safe.
Another one that’s unsafe in some places is the thumb, as we discovered once in Venice. My husband and son were giving vigorous “thumbs up” approval signs to all the slick taxi boats they saw while we were speeding along in our own wood-paneled craft. I was in the front, so I didn’t see them and it took me awhile to turn around and see that the cause of the other drivers yelling and gesturing very rudely at us was my little family. You see, in some places, a quick thumb up is equivalent to our middle finger (“stick it up your...!”). Lovely.
Anyway, I think we’re safe with the good old-fashioned wave. I’m trying hard to wave, much to my daughter’s deep embarrassment. She says I wave back at people who were not actually waving at me. She’s trying to help me, though. When you’re eleven, you want to fit in and conform. That means not wanting to wear a paper bag over your head when your mother is with you! So, she wants me to stop waving at complete strangers and stop giving the peace sign, which I was not aware I was doing. Apparently, I wave with just two fingers: the pointer and the middle one, held in a quick but definite “V” – the universal peace sign. She thinks that’s just plain weird.
Wow, it’s going to be hard to fit in here! My noncommittal flick of the hand must go! I need to use all digits on my hand to prove my full engagement. And, I need to make the wave last a long time to show my earnestness. I must linger. I must engage. I must wave with feeling!
Friday, September 18, 2009
Another Roadside Attraction
I saw something so weird today! I saw a woman at the side of the road on a blanket reading a book. “So what?” you ask, right? Well, it wasn’t just any road; it was Highway 270, which is about 90 lanes wide. It is a major highway. It cuts north and south through Missouri and at every entrance and exit, announces with big, important, green signs that it will take you to big, important places like CHICAGO to the north and MEMPHIS to the south.
The lady’s car was parked at the side of the highway. I passed quickly – it is a highway after all – but she looked like she was kind of enjoying herself. I’m sure her car was broken down, or something, but she looked pretty happy. You know how people usually look upset when they’re beside their dead lemon of a car? Normally, they’re running their hands through their hair, madly calling on a cell phone, and rubber-necking left and right looking for the tow truck. Well, this lady was enjoying the sun, sitting on a pretty picnic blanket with a good book in her lap.
And, you know what? It made me really miss Belgium. Yup, it made me miss the kooky side of Belgium – the roads, where people pull over ALL THE TIME. If you did a survey among drivers and asked them to name the reasons they are most likely to stop and pull to the shoulder on a highway, Belgian men will say, “To pee”. I’m not joking; they do it all the time. They pull over absolutely anywhere, whip it out and go right there on the side of the road. They’re not at all discrete. They don’t hide behind the car or jog down into the bush. They just do their business, often facing traffic, and get right back in the car.
I’m guessing the survey would also show other top reasons, such as: “Thirsty. I needed to get a beer out of the trunk.” and “Fresh cheese or berries or [insert any food] for sale” or “I was tired. I like a little nap after lunch.” Car breakdown would be about 109th on the list. There are now big billboards on the highways educating drivers about how dangerous it is to stop, but they’re quite cryptic and you have to look at it 60 times before you get the message.
Besides, I’m too busy looking at the other stuff on the roads to read those messages. It’s not unusual to see horses on the roads, especially on Sundays when everyone is out riding. I’ll admit I never saw one ambling along a highway but I frequently saw them crossing “the ring” road at a very busy, crazy intersection not far from where I lived. In fact, there was a tiny stable in my little neighbourhood with ponies, which I regularly spotted pooping up a storm all along the main avenue.
Once, when I was on Avenue Louise, which is a really busy road, I saw a guy riding bareback on a white horse. The traffic was so bad that we were pretty much neck-and-neck (excuse the pun...) all the way up the street. My friends think I just imagined that, but every once in awhile, I ask my daughter if she remembers it too, to reassure myself that it was real! My friend, Debbie, recently saw a lady walking a donkey on a leash on the main drag of her neighbourhood. Can you believe it? Weird!
Anyway, I loved all that stuff and I kind of missed it when I saw that lady happily reading her book at the side of the highway. You just don’t see that here in good old St. Louis!
The lady’s car was parked at the side of the highway. I passed quickly – it is a highway after all – but she looked like she was kind of enjoying herself. I’m sure her car was broken down, or something, but she looked pretty happy. You know how people usually look upset when they’re beside their dead lemon of a car? Normally, they’re running their hands through their hair, madly calling on a cell phone, and rubber-necking left and right looking for the tow truck. Well, this lady was enjoying the sun, sitting on a pretty picnic blanket with a good book in her lap.
And, you know what? It made me really miss Belgium. Yup, it made me miss the kooky side of Belgium – the roads, where people pull over ALL THE TIME. If you did a survey among drivers and asked them to name the reasons they are most likely to stop and pull to the shoulder on a highway, Belgian men will say, “To pee”. I’m not joking; they do it all the time. They pull over absolutely anywhere, whip it out and go right there on the side of the road. They’re not at all discrete. They don’t hide behind the car or jog down into the bush. They just do their business, often facing traffic, and get right back in the car.
I’m guessing the survey would also show other top reasons, such as: “Thirsty. I needed to get a beer out of the trunk.” and “Fresh cheese or berries or [insert any food] for sale” or “I was tired. I like a little nap after lunch.” Car breakdown would be about 109th on the list. There are now big billboards on the highways educating drivers about how dangerous it is to stop, but they’re quite cryptic and you have to look at it 60 times before you get the message.
Besides, I’m too busy looking at the other stuff on the roads to read those messages. It’s not unusual to see horses on the roads, especially on Sundays when everyone is out riding. I’ll admit I never saw one ambling along a highway but I frequently saw them crossing “the ring” road at a very busy, crazy intersection not far from where I lived. In fact, there was a tiny stable in my little neighbourhood with ponies, which I regularly spotted pooping up a storm all along the main avenue.
Once, when I was on Avenue Louise, which is a really busy road, I saw a guy riding bareback on a white horse. The traffic was so bad that we were pretty much neck-and-neck (excuse the pun...) all the way up the street. My friends think I just imagined that, but every once in awhile, I ask my daughter if she remembers it too, to reassure myself that it was real! My friend, Debbie, recently saw a lady walking a donkey on a leash on the main drag of her neighbourhood. Can you believe it? Weird!
Anyway, I loved all that stuff and I kind of missed it when I saw that lady happily reading her book at the side of the highway. You just don’t see that here in good old St. Louis!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Adjustable Shower Caps
I love my new pharmacy in St. Louis. Well, it’s not new; in fact, we are the ones who are new. I loved my pharmacy in Brussels too, but it was really, really different from this one. The one in Belgium had a green neon cross hanging out front, as do all pharmacies in Belgium. There, the walls were lined with every imaginable skin care product in the world. That’s it, just skin care products and the pharmacist.
Okay, okay, to be fair, there was a tiny corner with a few toothbrushes for babies and a display holding tiny, colourful, boxes of homeopathic and naturopathic remedies for urinary tract infections, respiratory ailments, and all manner of skin rashes. Most pharmacies had one or two old-fashioned dispensing jars high up on dusty shelves, as well. Other than that, it was all skin care products. There were crèmes for dry skin and oily skin, and special crèmes for eyelids, and double chins, and witches’ warts. There were skin products for absolutely everything.
But, the pharmacist near our place in Brussels was lovely and she always asked about the kids and the school. With a son who is diabetic, we are what you’d call “heavy users” of pharmacies. We’re always buying test strips for the glucose meter, or syringes or insulin. When you’re a heavy user, you spend lots of time waiting for prescriptions to be filled, so you examine every product on every shelf over and over again. In Belgium, I was nearly a beautician, by the time Ieft...!
But, in St. Louis, it means heaven for the kids. This pharmacy is not a chain, like Walgreen’s where I discovered you can buy mouse traps, granola bars, and household bleach at the same time, day or night. No, this is a rather old-fashioned pharmacy. Aside from the youngish professional-looking pharmacists bustling in the back mixing potions and concoctions, there are mostly older people serving at the counters. I suspect they’ve been there a very long time. They always address customers by name and have lengthy, relaxed discussions about grandchildren, favourite restaurants and painkillers.
But, it’s not the people who work there that my kids love; it’s the STUFF. The store originally may have been smaller, because there seems to be a natural divide halfway through it, as if a wall had once stood there. In the older part, at the far end, is the pharmacy. Its three windows look like bank teller stations and they’re lined with doodads and trinkets, like lip balms, throat lozenges and miniature locks. Then, of course, there are the usual shelves filled with cold remedies, bandages, nasal sprays, and feminine hygiene products.
We secretly hope the pharmacist will take longer to fill the order, so we have more time to explore the other parts of the store. Every shelf is a surprise. Every corner you turn amuses you. Yesterday, I saw adjustable shower caps in all different colours, underarm sweat shields in discrete skin tones, and emergency lace “crack covers” to wear at the top of pants that sit too low on the fanny!
My kids love the one end aisle display that is full of silly pet toys and big magnets that say, “Border collies are the best!” and “Never trust a dog to watch your food!” I was thrilled to buy an early Christmas present—it’s a “Life is Crap” t-shirt showing a stick figure in a golf cart throwing his bent clubs into a pond. I love it!
There are too many things to describe! There are things you need and things you didn’t know you needed. My daughter has a new addiction: Japanese erasers. There is a whole wall of these crazy things, shaped like miniature hamburgers or balls or dogs. The eraser wall is the transition part of the store. It is right in front of the main cash desk and, if you walk past there, you’re in the other half of the store. That side is jammed with puzzles, stuffed animals and baby toys.
This pharmacy also smells good, like lavender and hardware store mixed together. What makes that smell? Is it the shelves and shelves of powders and perfumes whose names I don’t recognise? Is it the thin layer of dust on the shelves? Is it the bubblegum and jars of candy up front? Is it the toffee? Is it the little, slightly hunched, lady with jet black hair and thick glasses who runs the cash register?
Oh darn, our medicine is ready for pick-up...!
Okay, okay, to be fair, there was a tiny corner with a few toothbrushes for babies and a display holding tiny, colourful, boxes of homeopathic and naturopathic remedies for urinary tract infections, respiratory ailments, and all manner of skin rashes. Most pharmacies had one or two old-fashioned dispensing jars high up on dusty shelves, as well. Other than that, it was all skin care products. There were crèmes for dry skin and oily skin, and special crèmes for eyelids, and double chins, and witches’ warts. There were skin products for absolutely everything.
But, the pharmacist near our place in Brussels was lovely and she always asked about the kids and the school. With a son who is diabetic, we are what you’d call “heavy users” of pharmacies. We’re always buying test strips for the glucose meter, or syringes or insulin. When you’re a heavy user, you spend lots of time waiting for prescriptions to be filled, so you examine every product on every shelf over and over again. In Belgium, I was nearly a beautician, by the time Ieft...!
But, in St. Louis, it means heaven for the kids. This pharmacy is not a chain, like Walgreen’s where I discovered you can buy mouse traps, granola bars, and household bleach at the same time, day or night. No, this is a rather old-fashioned pharmacy. Aside from the youngish professional-looking pharmacists bustling in the back mixing potions and concoctions, there are mostly older people serving at the counters. I suspect they’ve been there a very long time. They always address customers by name and have lengthy, relaxed discussions about grandchildren, favourite restaurants and painkillers.
But, it’s not the people who work there that my kids love; it’s the STUFF. The store originally may have been smaller, because there seems to be a natural divide halfway through it, as if a wall had once stood there. In the older part, at the far end, is the pharmacy. Its three windows look like bank teller stations and they’re lined with doodads and trinkets, like lip balms, throat lozenges and miniature locks. Then, of course, there are the usual shelves filled with cold remedies, bandages, nasal sprays, and feminine hygiene products.
We secretly hope the pharmacist will take longer to fill the order, so we have more time to explore the other parts of the store. Every shelf is a surprise. Every corner you turn amuses you. Yesterday, I saw adjustable shower caps in all different colours, underarm sweat shields in discrete skin tones, and emergency lace “crack covers” to wear at the top of pants that sit too low on the fanny!
My kids love the one end aisle display that is full of silly pet toys and big magnets that say, “Border collies are the best!” and “Never trust a dog to watch your food!” I was thrilled to buy an early Christmas present—it’s a “Life is Crap” t-shirt showing a stick figure in a golf cart throwing his bent clubs into a pond. I love it!
There are too many things to describe! There are things you need and things you didn’t know you needed. My daughter has a new addiction: Japanese erasers. There is a whole wall of these crazy things, shaped like miniature hamburgers or balls or dogs. The eraser wall is the transition part of the store. It is right in front of the main cash desk and, if you walk past there, you’re in the other half of the store. That side is jammed with puzzles, stuffed animals and baby toys.
This pharmacy also smells good, like lavender and hardware store mixed together. What makes that smell? Is it the shelves and shelves of powders and perfumes whose names I don’t recognise? Is it the thin layer of dust on the shelves? Is it the bubblegum and jars of candy up front? Is it the toffee? Is it the little, slightly hunched, lady with jet black hair and thick glasses who runs the cash register?
Oh darn, our medicine is ready for pick-up...!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Would you like fries with that?
Today, I got up the nerve to go to a drive-through bank machine. I know you’re wondering why that’s such a big deal, but I had never banked from my car before. I actually tried a few times before, but there are several lanes behind the bank, only one of which has an automatic teller. The others just have funny plastic tubes, a speaker and a few buttons. I’m still not sure how to use those, but I’ve mastered the drive-through bank machine!
I recall the first time I used a bank machine. I was about 16 years old and thought I knew everything. I already had worked part-time for a couple of years, so I was used to depositing my pay in person on Saturdays, when the bank opened for a couple of precious hours. That was the day that everyone in my home town, who hadn’t been able to bank between the convenient hours of 10am and 3pm on weekdays, lined up to do their banking.
You’d sigh with frustration and roll your eyes silently at the ancient people with canes, who’d shuffle to the counter ahead of you, cursing them for using up precious Saturday time, when they could have come during the week! You’d use the time spent in line to fill out the deposit form correctly with account information, dates, the value of the deposit and the amount requested back in cash.
How the bank machine liberated us! How I loved the privacy, the flexibility, the power of my Green Machine card from the TD Bank! The one I have now from my St. Louis bank is a combined Visa and debit card, which is a novelty here in town and throws all merchants into confusion. Mostly, I can’t use the debit option at the counter as the cash registers automatically treat it as a credit card. Oh well, same pocket, I guess.
You get used to bank machines. Likely, you use your writing hand to enter the number and take the money, clutching your wallet with the other and shielding your transaction from prying eyes with your whole body. You enter your PIN code quickly, out of habit. It’s a number you’ll recall years later when you no longer use that bank card but cannot remember the code for the one you’re trying to use at the moment. Now, I want you to try to do your banking with your left hand (if you’re right handed). Also, crouch down so you can’t read the screen very well. That was my first drive-through banking experience.
First of all, I stopped way too far from the machine, so the whole concept of “drive” was spoilt, when I had to put my car in park and open the door in order to reach the damn buttons. I was determined to stay in the car, though, so I just sort of half got out. Now the banking was also uncomfortable because my legs started to shake from holding a crouch throughout the transaction. The wait was longer because I’ve never entered my PIN with my left hand. It’s hard. Plus, I could only remember the PIN code for the Green Machine card that I owned nearly 30 years ago. I’m sure the nice people behind me were trying to help but the honking was not making it any easier.
Then, you get your money and your whole routine is wrecked. I’m a creature of habit. I always put away the card, then the money, then the receipt. But, at the drive-through bank machine, you’re supposed to be fast. You’re supposed to DRIVE. I mean, that’s the whole point. So, I clutched my money in one hand, threw the bank card on the passenger seat, ate the receipt and peeled out of there.
I wonder if I’ll get up enough nerve to try again....
I recall the first time I used a bank machine. I was about 16 years old and thought I knew everything. I already had worked part-time for a couple of years, so I was used to depositing my pay in person on Saturdays, when the bank opened for a couple of precious hours. That was the day that everyone in my home town, who hadn’t been able to bank between the convenient hours of 10am and 3pm on weekdays, lined up to do their banking.
You’d sigh with frustration and roll your eyes silently at the ancient people with canes, who’d shuffle to the counter ahead of you, cursing them for using up precious Saturday time, when they could have come during the week! You’d use the time spent in line to fill out the deposit form correctly with account information, dates, the value of the deposit and the amount requested back in cash.
How the bank machine liberated us! How I loved the privacy, the flexibility, the power of my Green Machine card from the TD Bank! The one I have now from my St. Louis bank is a combined Visa and debit card, which is a novelty here in town and throws all merchants into confusion. Mostly, I can’t use the debit option at the counter as the cash registers automatically treat it as a credit card. Oh well, same pocket, I guess.
You get used to bank machines. Likely, you use your writing hand to enter the number and take the money, clutching your wallet with the other and shielding your transaction from prying eyes with your whole body. You enter your PIN code quickly, out of habit. It’s a number you’ll recall years later when you no longer use that bank card but cannot remember the code for the one you’re trying to use at the moment. Now, I want you to try to do your banking with your left hand (if you’re right handed). Also, crouch down so you can’t read the screen very well. That was my first drive-through banking experience.
First of all, I stopped way too far from the machine, so the whole concept of “drive” was spoilt, when I had to put my car in park and open the door in order to reach the damn buttons. I was determined to stay in the car, though, so I just sort of half got out. Now the banking was also uncomfortable because my legs started to shake from holding a crouch throughout the transaction. The wait was longer because I’ve never entered my PIN with my left hand. It’s hard. Plus, I could only remember the PIN code for the Green Machine card that I owned nearly 30 years ago. I’m sure the nice people behind me were trying to help but the honking was not making it any easier.
Then, you get your money and your whole routine is wrecked. I’m a creature of habit. I always put away the card, then the money, then the receipt. But, at the drive-through bank machine, you’re supposed to be fast. You’re supposed to DRIVE. I mean, that’s the whole point. So, I clutched my money in one hand, threw the bank card on the passenger seat, ate the receipt and peeled out of there.
I wonder if I’ll get up enough nerve to try again....
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
You lie!
What’s with the bumper stickers in St. Louis? There are hundreds of cars in St. Louis with “OBAMA BIDEN” stickers jauntily displayed across the rear end. I have not, however, seen one single MCCAIN PALIN sticker! Help me out. I’m from Canada, where we’ve got different names for our political parties, so I’m not always clear on how things work here. Actually, I’m not always clear on how things work up there either! There are secret alliances and lots posturing in the Great White North, too!
Also, I’ve been living in Belgium, where there are multiple levels of government for which a myriad of parties with cryptic names jostle for their chance to reign at the federal, regional, local, language, and European parliament level. Those tired election signs get posted over and over again. Last round, someone who couldn’t take it any more stuck fluffy red clown noses on every single poster boy and girl on Avenue Louise! My kids loved that!
So, is it not Republican to use bumper stickers? Or is it more subtle than that? I have seen a few “NO-BAMA” stickers. Are those Hilary fans, or McCain supporters? Apparently the latest bumper sticker to hit the streets is, “You lie!” echoing US Congressman Joe Wilson’s accusation during President Obama’s health-care speech to a joint session of Congress. I guess “You lie!” stickers sort of indicate your political affiliation, don’t they?
But bumper stickers don’t have to be political. My father had several consecutive years of Canadian Automobile Association (like AAA) stickers neatly lined up across the back window of his wood-paneled station wagon when I was a kid. If you had car trouble, that sticker proved to the tow truck driver that you, in fact, had paid the insurance and could have a free tow or battery boost. Those bumper stickers said to the world: “Look at me. I planned ahead.” Looking back, I wonder if they were a bit smug. I mean, they all but taunted those other drivers who would see those stickers and silently chastise themselves for forgetting to buy roadside insurance. What if the other driver got a big of envy-style road rage?
Road rage is the reason I’d never put a bumper sticker on my car. Right now, the only thing I’d even want to put on is, “Ha! I’m getting 40 miles to the gallon”. You see, I’m driving this fabulous little Honda hybrid that gets incredible mileage. But the fear of road rage stops me. I figure the SUV drivers (including my husband) would mow me down for my smugness. With the mood of the nation being what it is right now, they’d back up and mow me down again for not buying a domestic car. Then they’d back up and mow me down again for good measure. I saw a “Stop Road Rage” sticker the other day – maybe that’s the one I need.
Rage at publicly stated opinion is not just expressed on the road. I recently learned that one of my neighbours is famous for fighting the local city for the right to post an anti-war sign in the front yard during a recent war. That was illegal here until this neighbour won in the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling that the city’s ordinance against clutter violated the resident’s right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution!
As far as I know, we can post signs in Canada. In fact, my husband’s mother was an avid politician in a small, Canadian, rural town where if you lean right, you’re called blue and if you lean left, you’re called red. Well, she was caught trying to steal an opposition sign from a neighbour’s front yard in the small town where they lived. Not realizing that his mother was the culprit, my husband – then ten years old – and his best friend (whose parents’ signs were being stolen) had rigged a trap with criss-crossed lines of Christmas lights and a jack-in-the-box.
Well, what about funny bumper stickers that do not cause road rage? I like the encouraging ones that say, “Have a great day!” and happy ones that announce, “Baby on Board!” My daughter loves the one that says, “Never trust a dog with your food”. I like the ones advertising that the driver is a sponsoring friend of penguins or whales or eagles, although I daresay that’s political too. I mean, I’ve never seen one that says, “Keep drilling, there are other planets in the universe!”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about peace and whether hatred is bred or learned. So, I think I’d vote for a bumper sticker that says “One World”. How about you?
Also, I’ve been living in Belgium, where there are multiple levels of government for which a myriad of parties with cryptic names jostle for their chance to reign at the federal, regional, local, language, and European parliament level. Those tired election signs get posted over and over again. Last round, someone who couldn’t take it any more stuck fluffy red clown noses on every single poster boy and girl on Avenue Louise! My kids loved that!
So, is it not Republican to use bumper stickers? Or is it more subtle than that? I have seen a few “NO-BAMA” stickers. Are those Hilary fans, or McCain supporters? Apparently the latest bumper sticker to hit the streets is, “You lie!” echoing US Congressman Joe Wilson’s accusation during President Obama’s health-care speech to a joint session of Congress. I guess “You lie!” stickers sort of indicate your political affiliation, don’t they?
But bumper stickers don’t have to be political. My father had several consecutive years of Canadian Automobile Association (like AAA) stickers neatly lined up across the back window of his wood-paneled station wagon when I was a kid. If you had car trouble, that sticker proved to the tow truck driver that you, in fact, had paid the insurance and could have a free tow or battery boost. Those bumper stickers said to the world: “Look at me. I planned ahead.” Looking back, I wonder if they were a bit smug. I mean, they all but taunted those other drivers who would see those stickers and silently chastise themselves for forgetting to buy roadside insurance. What if the other driver got a big of envy-style road rage?
Road rage is the reason I’d never put a bumper sticker on my car. Right now, the only thing I’d even want to put on is, “Ha! I’m getting 40 miles to the gallon”. You see, I’m driving this fabulous little Honda hybrid that gets incredible mileage. But the fear of road rage stops me. I figure the SUV drivers (including my husband) would mow me down for my smugness. With the mood of the nation being what it is right now, they’d back up and mow me down again for not buying a domestic car. Then they’d back up and mow me down again for good measure. I saw a “Stop Road Rage” sticker the other day – maybe that’s the one I need.
Rage at publicly stated opinion is not just expressed on the road. I recently learned that one of my neighbours is famous for fighting the local city for the right to post an anti-war sign in the front yard during a recent war. That was illegal here until this neighbour won in the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling that the city’s ordinance against clutter violated the resident’s right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution!
As far as I know, we can post signs in Canada. In fact, my husband’s mother was an avid politician in a small, Canadian, rural town where if you lean right, you’re called blue and if you lean left, you’re called red. Well, she was caught trying to steal an opposition sign from a neighbour’s front yard in the small town where they lived. Not realizing that his mother was the culprit, my husband – then ten years old – and his best friend (whose parents’ signs were being stolen) had rigged a trap with criss-crossed lines of Christmas lights and a jack-in-the-box.
Well, what about funny bumper stickers that do not cause road rage? I like the encouraging ones that say, “Have a great day!” and happy ones that announce, “Baby on Board!” My daughter loves the one that says, “Never trust a dog with your food”. I like the ones advertising that the driver is a sponsoring friend of penguins or whales or eagles, although I daresay that’s political too. I mean, I’ve never seen one that says, “Keep drilling, there are other planets in the universe!”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about peace and whether hatred is bred or learned. So, I think I’d vote for a bumper sticker that says “One World”. How about you?
Monday, September 14, 2009
We love Canada!
“What high school did you go to?” That’s the question the people of St. Louis ask when they first meet each other. But, I don’t get asked that question. They can tell I didn’t go to high school here. I have an accent. Apparently it’s CUTE. I can’t hear it, of course. That’s the cool thing about accents; it sounds like everyone else has one but you!
Well that accent means that I get asked a different question. I get asked where I’m from. You might think that’s not very nice and I have to admit that I don’t recall ever asking someone that question in Toronto. But, here, it is never offensive. St. Louis is a small town at heart. People all seem to know each other or, at least, to have gone to school with a distant cousin three times removed.
But southern charm abounds here! When I say Canada, my interrogators always nod encouragingly and try to say something really nice about their northern neighbours. I’m paying close attention to this because I have noticed that my really southern friends won’t say anything bad about a person unless they first say, “Well, bless his soul but...” So far nobody has preceded a Canada comment with a blessing, so I think we’re alright!
In fact, the people of St. Louis are SO nice that they try to say something GOOD about Canada. The problem is that it is a real reach for some. I mean, we don’t exactly make the evening news here. And, to be fair, they think I’m going to say Minnesota, so they already have cleverly thought of its state flower, or an isolated cottage to which they’d once been invited in that state.
So, when I answer, “Canada”, there’s an admirably short pause before the friendly, welcoming mid-Westerner will smile and quickly reel off a fact about Canada. Lately, we’re in dangerous territory, with Obama holding up our healthcare system as an example of an alternative for the wealthiest country in the world! Of late, I get, “So, you think you live longer than us, do you?” and “Tell me about your socialized healthcare”. I’ve figured out that “socialized” is a polite synonym for communism.
When my husband arrived here, he was asked if loons make “good eating” and was complimented on the pretty tunnel between Windsor and Detroit. I’ll admit to being just as bad; I mean, I’ve often wondered if bald eagles made “good eating” and I would have been hard pressed to point to the state of Missouri on a map before moving here.
My favourite encounter was with a sweet but rather dotty saleslady at Dillard’s who told me very kindly that she’d once seen the lights of Vancouver from the southern shores of Lake Ontario in upper New York when she was visiting a friend there.
Long live the great friendship along the longest unarmed border in the world!
Well that accent means that I get asked a different question. I get asked where I’m from. You might think that’s not very nice and I have to admit that I don’t recall ever asking someone that question in Toronto. But, here, it is never offensive. St. Louis is a small town at heart. People all seem to know each other or, at least, to have gone to school with a distant cousin three times removed.
But southern charm abounds here! When I say Canada, my interrogators always nod encouragingly and try to say something really nice about their northern neighbours. I’m paying close attention to this because I have noticed that my really southern friends won’t say anything bad about a person unless they first say, “Well, bless his soul but...” So far nobody has preceded a Canada comment with a blessing, so I think we’re alright!
In fact, the people of St. Louis are SO nice that they try to say something GOOD about Canada. The problem is that it is a real reach for some. I mean, we don’t exactly make the evening news here. And, to be fair, they think I’m going to say Minnesota, so they already have cleverly thought of its state flower, or an isolated cottage to which they’d once been invited in that state.
So, when I answer, “Canada”, there’s an admirably short pause before the friendly, welcoming mid-Westerner will smile and quickly reel off a fact about Canada. Lately, we’re in dangerous territory, with Obama holding up our healthcare system as an example of an alternative for the wealthiest country in the world! Of late, I get, “So, you think you live longer than us, do you?” and “Tell me about your socialized healthcare”. I’ve figured out that “socialized” is a polite synonym for communism.
When my husband arrived here, he was asked if loons make “good eating” and was complimented on the pretty tunnel between Windsor and Detroit. I’ll admit to being just as bad; I mean, I’ve often wondered if bald eagles made “good eating” and I would have been hard pressed to point to the state of Missouri on a map before moving here.
My favourite encounter was with a sweet but rather dotty saleslady at Dillard’s who told me very kindly that she’d once seen the lights of Vancouver from the southern shores of Lake Ontario in upper New York when she was visiting a friend there.
Long live the great friendship along the longest unarmed border in the world!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Moles
I’m so excited! At our “neighbourhood picnic” last Saturday, I heard several neighbours complaining profusely about moles and the destruction they cause to the well-manicured lawns of this area. Now, I know you’re wondering why I’m happy about this, but I have no moles. So, you’re thinking that I’m not very empathetic or something, right? Well, there’s an element of that, too. Mostly, though, I’m happy because my lawn looks really, really bad even without moles, but the path to neighbourly respectability is clear again, for I now have a phantom culprit at whose door I can lay blame! Hurray for the innocent (and destructive) mole!
If you’re like me and grew up in Toronto, where the racoons are the size of dogs and breed like rabbits in every garage, attic and backyard, you will know the constant battle against wildlife destruction and the endless days of inventing clever ways to tie up, lock and even hang your garbage to prevent it being tipped over and sorted through each night. I have, however, been living for a few years in Europe, where all traces of native species were long ago eaten. The worst threat to your garbage there is that your neighbour will go through it to see what you’re throwing away to either report you to the Finance Department for being richer than your income statement indicated or to report you to another level of government for failing to follow some obscure and ancient garbage disposal law!
So, please understand that I have not had “wild” animals to deal with for quite some time. Even in Collingwood, where we have our little vacation apartment, there are real “wild” animals like wolves and foxes so, needless to say, we don’t have a racoon problem there either! So, forgive me if I tell you that I had to look up MOLE on the internet to see what the heck it is!
Well, I began with a very basic search: “mole + animal + USA”. This landed me on a long list of sites dedicated to the removal of this small, furry beast: “getridofmoles.com”; “247wildlife.com” and “pest control-products.com”. (Yikes.)
I tried another search for “what is a mole?” with more success. Wikipedia even had a photo. Yeesh, moles are ugly! In addition to a small feral face covered in fur with no visible eyes or ears, it has long fingers that end in dangerous looking chisels called nails! It apparently catches stores and eats earthworms but will also go after mice.
Hmmm, now there’s a thought: a mole instead of a cat to catch the mice! The mice, you ask? That’s another story!
If you’re like me and grew up in Toronto, where the racoons are the size of dogs and breed like rabbits in every garage, attic and backyard, you will know the constant battle against wildlife destruction and the endless days of inventing clever ways to tie up, lock and even hang your garbage to prevent it being tipped over and sorted through each night. I have, however, been living for a few years in Europe, where all traces of native species were long ago eaten. The worst threat to your garbage there is that your neighbour will go through it to see what you’re throwing away to either report you to the Finance Department for being richer than your income statement indicated or to report you to another level of government for failing to follow some obscure and ancient garbage disposal law!
So, please understand that I have not had “wild” animals to deal with for quite some time. Even in Collingwood, where we have our little vacation apartment, there are real “wild” animals like wolves and foxes so, needless to say, we don’t have a racoon problem there either! So, forgive me if I tell you that I had to look up MOLE on the internet to see what the heck it is!
Well, I began with a very basic search: “mole + animal + USA”. This landed me on a long list of sites dedicated to the removal of this small, furry beast: “getridofmoles.com”; “247wildlife.com” and “pest control-products.com”. (Yikes.)
I tried another search for “what is a mole?” with more success. Wikipedia even had a photo. Yeesh, moles are ugly! In addition to a small feral face covered in fur with no visible eyes or ears, it has long fingers that end in dangerous looking chisels called nails! It apparently catches stores and eats earthworms but will also go after mice.
Hmmm, now there’s a thought: a mole instead of a cat to catch the mice! The mice, you ask? That’s another story!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Kinder, gentler GPS
I just read that the new generation of global positioning systems will be kinder, gentler, and more flexible. Why? I think they are already very kind. They usually have nice (albeit somewhat robotic) voices and, with some systems, you get to choose the gender and accent of the voice. If I were a GPS, I think I’d be meaner to people. I think I’d say things like, “You stupid moron! You miss that left turn every time!” or, “No! Third exit! I said the third exit!” That way, it would more closely resemble the conversations married couples used to have before GP systems saved a lot of marriages.
They are handy, I’ll admit. If you’re on a long road trip, it’s nice to watch the scenery rather than the map. If you’re in the city, it’s nice not to miss every intersection because you have to keep switching from map-reading glasses to scenery-seeing glasses. When I lived in Belgium, I didn’t use a GPS, although most drivers do. This is because the roads change names every five feet and have strange long, bilingual names based on some famous general or age-old battle. It can be frustrating finding your way there, but I loved getting lost and nearly always found something interesting whenever I did!
Here in St. Louis, you don’t really need a GPS. The streets are laid out nicely in a grid, with the occasional bent road where a river must have been long ago. Here, it’s kind of a luxury to own a GPS – think of it as a formal invitation for your car to be robbed. My husband has one that is portable, so I have used it a few times since being here. We talk about her like she’s another kid: “Are you taking the GPS today?” Pretty soon we’ll be asking each other which one of us is dropping her at school.
I say HER because it’s a female voice. Actually, I’ve never heard a GPS with a male voice, but I guess I wouldn’t mind if he had a lovely little French accent, addressed me by name, and complimented me on my incredible driving prowess. I would have to name him; maybe I’d call him Jean-Francois or Henri-Pierre. I didn’t know you were supposed to name them, but all of my very funny friends in Brussels had cute names for theirs, reflecting their eternal gratitude at its capacity for getting them to the school on time from far-flung places where abbey beers are produced, or a special pottery is made, or the hairdresser is now working.
Our kids call the GPS lady in St. Louis, “PITRA” which is an acronym for Pain In The Rear End. That’s because she is VERY LOUD. James doesn’t know how to turn down the volume so she DOMINATES THE CONVERSATION WHEN SHE IS TALKING! We don’t like her much here, but we all agree that she would have been very useful in Ireland, which we discovered by car (without a GPS) a few years ago.
Now, you want to talk about strain on a marriage ... all engaged couples should be forced to rent a car together in Ireland with just a map, their fragile self-esteems, and a good dose of self-preservation. Forget marriage classes. Drive around Ireland without a GPS. Make sure you have destinations in mind, tickets booked in advance, and deadlines to meet at various locations. That’ll weed out the worst of the doomed marriages!
While we were driving around Ireland, my teen-aged nephew and I imagined all kinds of abuse an Irish GPS could heap on a driver on the Emerald Isle. For example, rental cars could have confidence-destroying tirades like, “Yes, you bleedin’ idiot, the pedal on the right is the gas!” or “C’mon you’re a human being: adapt!” or “Good job, you’re on the left side of the road, now get your wheels out of the ditch!”
Not one of the twisted old shepherd routes, which Ireland now generously calls highways, has enough room for a pedestrian. Yet, lots of people amble along those roads and drivers faithfully stick to the posted 100 km/hour signed speed limit, even around blind corners and in sight of overloaded horse-drawn hay wagons. Here’s an idea for the new, more flexible (but meaner), GPS: dole out points for all the pedestrians you hit along the way.
According to the article I read, the flexibility of new global positioning systems is in their ability to adopt a preferred route by memorizing your frequently-used routes. Now, this is bad news for the sneaky lout who is using his GPS to get to his lover’s home, and for your daughter who uses it repeatedly to get to the bar that you forbade her to attend. Think about it – it’s dangerous! Besides, I don’t want flexibility. What’s next, a GPS that worries and nags like your mother? “Now, now, maybe you’d better slow down a bit, dear...” How about a back-seat driver? Give me a break!!!
They are handy, I’ll admit. If you’re on a long road trip, it’s nice to watch the scenery rather than the map. If you’re in the city, it’s nice not to miss every intersection because you have to keep switching from map-reading glasses to scenery-seeing glasses. When I lived in Belgium, I didn’t use a GPS, although most drivers do. This is because the roads change names every five feet and have strange long, bilingual names based on some famous general or age-old battle. It can be frustrating finding your way there, but I loved getting lost and nearly always found something interesting whenever I did!
Here in St. Louis, you don’t really need a GPS. The streets are laid out nicely in a grid, with the occasional bent road where a river must have been long ago. Here, it’s kind of a luxury to own a GPS – think of it as a formal invitation for your car to be robbed. My husband has one that is portable, so I have used it a few times since being here. We talk about her like she’s another kid: “Are you taking the GPS today?” Pretty soon we’ll be asking each other which one of us is dropping her at school.
I say HER because it’s a female voice. Actually, I’ve never heard a GPS with a male voice, but I guess I wouldn’t mind if he had a lovely little French accent, addressed me by name, and complimented me on my incredible driving prowess. I would have to name him; maybe I’d call him Jean-Francois or Henri-Pierre. I didn’t know you were supposed to name them, but all of my very funny friends in Brussels had cute names for theirs, reflecting their eternal gratitude at its capacity for getting them to the school on time from far-flung places where abbey beers are produced, or a special pottery is made, or the hairdresser is now working.
Our kids call the GPS lady in St. Louis, “PITRA” which is an acronym for Pain In The Rear End. That’s because she is VERY LOUD. James doesn’t know how to turn down the volume so she DOMINATES THE CONVERSATION WHEN SHE IS TALKING! We don’t like her much here, but we all agree that she would have been very useful in Ireland, which we discovered by car (without a GPS) a few years ago.
Now, you want to talk about strain on a marriage ... all engaged couples should be forced to rent a car together in Ireland with just a map, their fragile self-esteems, and a good dose of self-preservation. Forget marriage classes. Drive around Ireland without a GPS. Make sure you have destinations in mind, tickets booked in advance, and deadlines to meet at various locations. That’ll weed out the worst of the doomed marriages!
While we were driving around Ireland, my teen-aged nephew and I imagined all kinds of abuse an Irish GPS could heap on a driver on the Emerald Isle. For example, rental cars could have confidence-destroying tirades like, “Yes, you bleedin’ idiot, the pedal on the right is the gas!” or “C’mon you’re a human being: adapt!” or “Good job, you’re on the left side of the road, now get your wheels out of the ditch!”
Not one of the twisted old shepherd routes, which Ireland now generously calls highways, has enough room for a pedestrian. Yet, lots of people amble along those roads and drivers faithfully stick to the posted 100 km/hour signed speed limit, even around blind corners and in sight of overloaded horse-drawn hay wagons. Here’s an idea for the new, more flexible (but meaner), GPS: dole out points for all the pedestrians you hit along the way.
According to the article I read, the flexibility of new global positioning systems is in their ability to adopt a preferred route by memorizing your frequently-used routes. Now, this is bad news for the sneaky lout who is using his GPS to get to his lover’s home, and for your daughter who uses it repeatedly to get to the bar that you forbade her to attend. Think about it – it’s dangerous! Besides, I don’t want flexibility. What’s next, a GPS that worries and nags like your mother? “Now, now, maybe you’d better slow down a bit, dear...” How about a back-seat driver? Give me a break!!!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Let's play ball!
Let’s play ball!
The Greens. People just call them, “The Greens”. They are the coveted 15 rows of seats stretching from dugout to dugout, behind home plate, at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. From any seat in The Greens, you have an incredible view of the batter, as he steps into the box and the pitcher as he sizes up the batter and shakes or nods his head in response to fleeting hand signals issued from between the legs of the catcher.
Each batter has his ritual. Like superstitious old women, they carefully repeat the same motions each time they approach the plate and prepare to receive the pitch. For some, it’s the way they step into the box: always the left foot first, carefully lined up on an imaginary trajectory from the plate, followed by the right foot, perhaps at a perfect two-foot distance from its mate. For others, it’s touching a talisman hung on a heavy chain about their neck, or swinging precisely three times as they enter the box, or spitting exactly two sunflower seed shells each time.
From The Greens, you can hear the umpire’s call. You can see the incredulous look on the batter’s face when he disagrees with the call. You see youthfulness, age, joy, anger, pain, and disappointment in players’ faces. You can even, from certain seats in The Greens, see into the dugout, where there is always a fascinating and sometimes childish passing of the time with drinking water, swapping stories, and telling jokes.
Actually, in The Greens there is always a fascinating and sometimes childish passing of the time too! Watching the Cardinals from The Greens is a social experience. People know each other and often shout greetings across several rows. I sometimes lose track of the game, as I strain to hear responses to enquiries about recent divorces, bowel surgery, deaths in the family, and other important details shared by friends in The Greens.
Listening in on these conversations distracts me, so I don’t always realize that I’m the roadblock in the ritualistic two-way stream of food and money that goes back-and-forth between servers and seated customers during the entire game. Well, not so much the money, for food and beer are FREE in The Greens. There is nothing like free food and beer to make people REALLY hungry and thirsty. It makes them so hungry and thirsty that they forget they paid four times the general ticket price for the free food and beer.
What’s really annoying is that they don’t get hungry and thirsty at the same time! I mean, I’m still a novice, so I try to place an order for the whole family at the same time, which earns me patronizing looks from my husband, who then feigns great interest in the game and pretends he’s not associated with us. He waits, like everyone else, for the server to return with nachos for the guy two seats down before he asks for another Bud. By the time she returns, he’s hungry and asks for a burger. Now the guy who got the nachos is thirsty, so he asks for a Bud for himself and a lemonade for his son, who will remember in a couple of minutes that he wants some popcorn.
Now I know why they sell out the Cardinal games ... I mean, the food is pretty good! The popcorn is like movie theatre popcorn; it is so salty, your body starts to wither as you eat it but so addictive that you can’t stop eating it until you’re just sucking on unpopped kernels. The burgers are delicious and the boxes are designed so that the lettuce, tomatoes and pickles are “on the side” and, therefore, are not wilted in the heat and grease of the meat. And the beer ... well, it’s about 110 degrees in the shade in St. Louis during the summer, so ice-cold beer makes a welcome treat on that kind of a day!
Oh and did I mention the winning team? Let’s play ball!
The Greens. People just call them, “The Greens”. They are the coveted 15 rows of seats stretching from dugout to dugout, behind home plate, at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. From any seat in The Greens, you have an incredible view of the batter, as he steps into the box and the pitcher as he sizes up the batter and shakes or nods his head in response to fleeting hand signals issued from between the legs of the catcher.
Each batter has his ritual. Like superstitious old women, they carefully repeat the same motions each time they approach the plate and prepare to receive the pitch. For some, it’s the way they step into the box: always the left foot first, carefully lined up on an imaginary trajectory from the plate, followed by the right foot, perhaps at a perfect two-foot distance from its mate. For others, it’s touching a talisman hung on a heavy chain about their neck, or swinging precisely three times as they enter the box, or spitting exactly two sunflower seed shells each time.
From The Greens, you can hear the umpire’s call. You can see the incredulous look on the batter’s face when he disagrees with the call. You see youthfulness, age, joy, anger, pain, and disappointment in players’ faces. You can even, from certain seats in The Greens, see into the dugout, where there is always a fascinating and sometimes childish passing of the time with drinking water, swapping stories, and telling jokes.
Actually, in The Greens there is always a fascinating and sometimes childish passing of the time too! Watching the Cardinals from The Greens is a social experience. People know each other and often shout greetings across several rows. I sometimes lose track of the game, as I strain to hear responses to enquiries about recent divorces, bowel surgery, deaths in the family, and other important details shared by friends in The Greens.
Listening in on these conversations distracts me, so I don’t always realize that I’m the roadblock in the ritualistic two-way stream of food and money that goes back-and-forth between servers and seated customers during the entire game. Well, not so much the money, for food and beer are FREE in The Greens. There is nothing like free food and beer to make people REALLY hungry and thirsty. It makes them so hungry and thirsty that they forget they paid four times the general ticket price for the free food and beer.
What’s really annoying is that they don’t get hungry and thirsty at the same time! I mean, I’m still a novice, so I try to place an order for the whole family at the same time, which earns me patronizing looks from my husband, who then feigns great interest in the game and pretends he’s not associated with us. He waits, like everyone else, for the server to return with nachos for the guy two seats down before he asks for another Bud. By the time she returns, he’s hungry and asks for a burger. Now the guy who got the nachos is thirsty, so he asks for a Bud for himself and a lemonade for his son, who will remember in a couple of minutes that he wants some popcorn.
Now I know why they sell out the Cardinal games ... I mean, the food is pretty good! The popcorn is like movie theatre popcorn; it is so salty, your body starts to wither as you eat it but so addictive that you can’t stop eating it until you’re just sucking on unpopped kernels. The burgers are delicious and the boxes are designed so that the lettuce, tomatoes and pickles are “on the side” and, therefore, are not wilted in the heat and grease of the meat. And the beer ... well, it’s about 110 degrees in the shade in St. Louis during the summer, so ice-cold beer makes a welcome treat on that kind of a day!
Oh and did I mention the winning team? Let’s play ball!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Being Blond
I have had various shades of blond hair my whole life. Although born with dark hair, most photos from childhood prove that it was replaced by a headful of very light blond hair. Now, it was ratty as all get-out, because it was fine like a silk thread and, though my mother did everything in her power to make it neat, it regularly resembled an overgrown haystack.
But, it was blond. As I got older, my hair darkened and I had fun in my early twenties having light highlights put in my hair to brighten it up. After having children, it reverted to my birth colour: dark. In fact, I’d call it ... BROWN! Well now, that changed things a bit. The fun highlighting became a rather expensive game of staying blond in a way that looked natural – like I was really blond. (Honestly, I was blond as a kid...)
Now, there’s a new mission: hide the grey hair. Darn it, where do they all keep coming from? In Belgium, the challenge of staying blond and, well, younger, was a difficult one. You see, hair colouring is different there. My hair has a tendency to go red if the colour is not left on long enough but you can’t tell a Belgian how to do their job, so despite continued efforts to explain how I wanted it done and trying different salons, I was – for all intents and purposes – a strawberry blond for two years.
Then, it happened. I saw her. I saw a woman with highlights – my highlights! I asked her, with baited breath, if she’d had her hair done in Belgium. Glory be, she had! The key, she told me, was to ask for “an American”. Go figure. Apparently, “an American” means hair highlighted with streaks of blond. Well, for the next six months, until I moved to St. Louis, I and my wonderful friends would trip off to the salon together for colours, cuts and a late lunch (I know, I know, I had a charmed life there...). Obediently, I always asked for “an American” and got exactly the colour I wanted.
Then, it happened. I saw her. I saw a middle-aged woman with naturally brown hair highlighted blond with ends bleached by the summer sun. She was long overdue for a colour, cut and a late lunch. That woman had recently moved to St. Louis from Brussels. She has wrinkles around her eyes, but she doesn’t mind because she laughed a lot to earn them. She is not wearing makeup but she should, for her skin is uneven in colour and showing signs of aging. She squints to see herself in the mirror because she left her glasses downstairs when she ran down to fetch something but forgot what she needed. She is a bit sad, because she misses her friends terribly.
She procrastinates getting her hair done. There are lots of excuses: the boxes needed to be unpacked, her son was sick for a week, the laundry never seemed to stop. But, really, she has delayed it because she knows it won’t be as much fun without the girls. She knows there won’t be a late lunch. She knows she’ll have to start all over again explaining the tendency to go red.
Finally, the ribbon of regrowth at the roots of her hair is as wide as the eight-lane highway near her new house. She enters the salon apprehensively and quietly reads a magazine while waiting her turn. “Blond”, she says, “but natural looking, please.” Then, she laughs with relief when the colourist says, “Honey, you’re in the Mid-West now. If you’re not blond, you might as well just go home! What kind of blond do you want?” Well, there was no late lunch and no friends but, darn it, I am blond again!
But, it was blond. As I got older, my hair darkened and I had fun in my early twenties having light highlights put in my hair to brighten it up. After having children, it reverted to my birth colour: dark. In fact, I’d call it ... BROWN! Well now, that changed things a bit. The fun highlighting became a rather expensive game of staying blond in a way that looked natural – like I was really blond. (Honestly, I was blond as a kid...)
Now, there’s a new mission: hide the grey hair. Darn it, where do they all keep coming from? In Belgium, the challenge of staying blond and, well, younger, was a difficult one. You see, hair colouring is different there. My hair has a tendency to go red if the colour is not left on long enough but you can’t tell a Belgian how to do their job, so despite continued efforts to explain how I wanted it done and trying different salons, I was – for all intents and purposes – a strawberry blond for two years.
Then, it happened. I saw her. I saw a woman with highlights – my highlights! I asked her, with baited breath, if she’d had her hair done in Belgium. Glory be, she had! The key, she told me, was to ask for “an American”. Go figure. Apparently, “an American” means hair highlighted with streaks of blond. Well, for the next six months, until I moved to St. Louis, I and my wonderful friends would trip off to the salon together for colours, cuts and a late lunch (I know, I know, I had a charmed life there...). Obediently, I always asked for “an American” and got exactly the colour I wanted.
Then, it happened. I saw her. I saw a middle-aged woman with naturally brown hair highlighted blond with ends bleached by the summer sun. She was long overdue for a colour, cut and a late lunch. That woman had recently moved to St. Louis from Brussels. She has wrinkles around her eyes, but she doesn’t mind because she laughed a lot to earn them. She is not wearing makeup but she should, for her skin is uneven in colour and showing signs of aging. She squints to see herself in the mirror because she left her glasses downstairs when she ran down to fetch something but forgot what she needed. She is a bit sad, because she misses her friends terribly.
She procrastinates getting her hair done. There are lots of excuses: the boxes needed to be unpacked, her son was sick for a week, the laundry never seemed to stop. But, really, she has delayed it because she knows it won’t be as much fun without the girls. She knows there won’t be a late lunch. She knows she’ll have to start all over again explaining the tendency to go red.
Finally, the ribbon of regrowth at the roots of her hair is as wide as the eight-lane highway near her new house. She enters the salon apprehensively and quietly reads a magazine while waiting her turn. “Blond”, she says, “but natural looking, please.” Then, she laughs with relief when the colourist says, “Honey, you’re in the Mid-West now. If you’re not blond, you might as well just go home! What kind of blond do you want?” Well, there was no late lunch and no friends but, darn it, I am blond again!
Welcome Home
It’s Tuesday. You know, the Tuesday after Labour Day, when kids go back to school. Mine are at school right now. The difference is that they started in mid-August like most other students in St. Louis. So the Labour Day weekend – rather than having the feeling of being the last weekend of summer – felt like a well-deserved break in an already busy routine!
In Canada, where I come from, Labour Day is truly the last weekend of what is a relatively short, intense summer. At least, that’s the case in central Canada. When I lived in Vancouver, it felt like summer all year round, even when we skied every weekend! But, for those who live in Toronto and are lucky enough to own a cottage or to have an invitation to someone else’s place, Labour Day is special; it is the last long, warm weekend of summer.
Labour Day weekend always makes me feel slightly melancholy but oddly excited, as if I’m about to turn a corner. For me, it’s not about the shorter days. It’s not about there being less light. It’s not about the yellowing of the colours around me. For me, it’s the tide of change. It’s knowing that the long, lazy days of summer are over and the stricter routines of school are about to begin. Even though I haven’t been a student for many years – can I count in decades? – the feeling still grips me.
This year, those sentiments are a bit confused. In Belgium as in the rest of Europe, workers celebrate May 1st as Labour Day, so it’s been three years since I’ve even been in North America for an autumnal Labour Day. Also, since my children already had started school, they felt none of the curious anticipation that always defined my Labour Day weekends as a student. I hadn’t bought them a special new back-to-school outfit, nor did I fit them with a sturdy pair of practical leather shoes, as my parents always did.
When I was a kid, my family did not dash off to a summer cottage every weekend, but I still remember Labour Day weekend being special. It always was (and still is) the last day of the Toronto’s “Ex”, a three-week long carnival on the western edge of the city. I remember playing long, long games of street hockey. I remember kids hanging out, chatting on the streets, long past the streetlights coming on. I remember the days were warm but the nights were cold. The autumn chill would leave a thick layer of dew on the grass out front. Fat geese would circle overhead, endlessly honking out instructions to each other as they practised their V-formations in anticipation of the upcoming migration.
This time of year used to mean something. It meant the end of summer and the beginning of school – a mixture of sadness and sleepless anticipation. For this reason, I was anxious for the family to head up to Canada to our “cottage”, which is actually a condo on Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, just north of Toronto. I wanted to feel like we were escaping the city one last time before the end of summer. We were not disappointed: the geese were noisy and a heavy orange harvest moon rose lazily out of the cold, clear horizon each night, trailing long caramel ribbons of light across the water.
With a full heart, I closed up the “cottage” yesterday morning. As I packed our bags, I glanced out the window one more time and said a quiet goodbye. Later at the airport, I felt strangely detached as we re-entered the USA through the same customs office in Toronto that had affixed visas in our passports six weeks earlier. I wasn’t sure if I’d just left my home, or if I was going home. I wasn’t sure, in fact, if my home was still in Brussels, from which I’d moved less than 10 weeks ago. Then, the Customs Officer smiled, stamped my passport, and said, “Welcome home, folks” and I knew he was right.
In Canada, where I come from, Labour Day is truly the last weekend of what is a relatively short, intense summer. At least, that’s the case in central Canada. When I lived in Vancouver, it felt like summer all year round, even when we skied every weekend! But, for those who live in Toronto and are lucky enough to own a cottage or to have an invitation to someone else’s place, Labour Day is special; it is the last long, warm weekend of summer.
Labour Day weekend always makes me feel slightly melancholy but oddly excited, as if I’m about to turn a corner. For me, it’s not about the shorter days. It’s not about there being less light. It’s not about the yellowing of the colours around me. For me, it’s the tide of change. It’s knowing that the long, lazy days of summer are over and the stricter routines of school are about to begin. Even though I haven’t been a student for many years – can I count in decades? – the feeling still grips me.
This year, those sentiments are a bit confused. In Belgium as in the rest of Europe, workers celebrate May 1st as Labour Day, so it’s been three years since I’ve even been in North America for an autumnal Labour Day. Also, since my children already had started school, they felt none of the curious anticipation that always defined my Labour Day weekends as a student. I hadn’t bought them a special new back-to-school outfit, nor did I fit them with a sturdy pair of practical leather shoes, as my parents always did.
When I was a kid, my family did not dash off to a summer cottage every weekend, but I still remember Labour Day weekend being special. It always was (and still is) the last day of the Toronto’s “Ex”, a three-week long carnival on the western edge of the city. I remember playing long, long games of street hockey. I remember kids hanging out, chatting on the streets, long past the streetlights coming on. I remember the days were warm but the nights were cold. The autumn chill would leave a thick layer of dew on the grass out front. Fat geese would circle overhead, endlessly honking out instructions to each other as they practised their V-formations in anticipation of the upcoming migration.
This time of year used to mean something. It meant the end of summer and the beginning of school – a mixture of sadness and sleepless anticipation. For this reason, I was anxious for the family to head up to Canada to our “cottage”, which is actually a condo on Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, just north of Toronto. I wanted to feel like we were escaping the city one last time before the end of summer. We were not disappointed: the geese were noisy and a heavy orange harvest moon rose lazily out of the cold, clear horizon each night, trailing long caramel ribbons of light across the water.
With a full heart, I closed up the “cottage” yesterday morning. As I packed our bags, I glanced out the window one more time and said a quiet goodbye. Later at the airport, I felt strangely detached as we re-entered the USA through the same customs office in Toronto that had affixed visas in our passports six weeks earlier. I wasn’t sure if I’d just left my home, or if I was going home. I wasn’t sure, in fact, if my home was still in Brussels, from which I’d moved less than 10 weeks ago. Then, the Customs Officer smiled, stamped my passport, and said, “Welcome home, folks” and I knew he was right.
Meeting the Neighbours
Hello everyone! I am trying to do a better job at staying in touch with my friends, so I thought I’d write a little note every few weeks to let you know how we’re doing. If you don’t want to receive this email, just let me know. Otherwise, I hope you will indulge me because I’ve decided to write about how it feels to be an alien here in St. Louis.
By alien, I don’t mean the kind that arrives by UFO. I mean alien the way the Oxford English Dictionary defines it: “foreign, foreign-born resident who is not naturalized, a being from another world”. Don’t get me wrong; I love moving. I love being “alien” somewhere because I have always enjoyed discovering new things. So, when I talk about feeling “alien”, I say it affectionately and with pleasure! I state it as a fact, like Sting when he sings “I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York.”
When we moved to Belgium a few years ago, we also were aliens! In that case, there were added complications of speaking French and Dutch, as well as the adherence to Napoleonic laws to help us feel completely upended! We rented a home across from the international school so that we could walk to school. It turned out to be a wonderful neighbourhood for shops, restaurants and the proximity to a lovely forest with walking and biking trails. However, it was not such a good place for neighbours.
As we were right in the city of Brussels, the houses were very close together – joined, in fact, in a long row – with small yards backing onto more humanity in the form of tall, close brick homes (and a small stable...!). Yet, we did not get to know any locals. Our neighbours would nod politely and offer a mumbled greeting before looking away quickly so as to avoid any prolonged contact or – heaven forbid – a real conversation! As a result, we turned to school and work, making deep and wonderful friendships among the international community, where being expatriated from our own countries seemed like an easy starting point for a relationship.
It is different here in St. Louis. It is instantly warm and friendly. At first, I didn’t know people were speaking to me and would frequently check behind to see where the “Y’all okay?” had been directed! We moved into the home we bought in a beautiful subdivision just west of the downtown core, where we’re technically in the city but feel like we’re out in the ‘burbs. On the very first day in the house, my doorbell rang and a friendly neighbour offered cookies and a list of the rest of the residents. This was the start of a beautiful thing.
For the rest of the week, every time the doorbell rang, my tummy would rumble in Pavlovian anticipation of yet another treat! I had to start freezing the gifts, as we couldn’t possibly get through all of the loaves, banana breads, cookies and care packets that were left on our doorsteps or offered by confident little darlings on the behalf of their parents! My favourite part is the line of boys who keep coming by to ask Andrew to join in pick-up tag and football games; I thought he’d cry with joy the first time they came by!
So, after a couple of crazy weeks unpacking and fun weekends hosting some friends and family from Canada, I finally got around to popping a thank you card into the mailboxes of everyone who’d dropped off welcome gifts and notes. I included the following article in the card and thanked everyone for following instructions! A bit risky, but it paid off; it got some laughs and broke the ice at last Saturday’s neighbourhood picnic!
________________________________
UFO Sighting in Ladue
St. Louis Post Dispatch, Special Report
Typically, the residents of Ladue, a well-established, small community just west of downtown St. Louis, are more likely to be bird-watching than UFO spotting. For this reason, on a long and hot summer night in July, few people saw a small, well-lit, disc drop unobtrusively into a local neighbourhood. However, officials at Missouri’s Green Eggs and Ham Institute were scanning the night skies, as they do every night, protecting citizens from rats, bats, Canadians and other potential problems. Residents of Willow Hill Road are warned that, in fact, a UFO landing was confirmed on that street and that the craft was occupied. Officials are unsure of the present whereabouts of the aliens, but anecdotal reports in the area of human-like beings who say “sorry” a lot and finish sentences with “eh” would seem to indicate that the aliens are indeed Canadians. If you are in contact with these strange beings, be sure to smile and offer baked goods. They are not considered dangerous.
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By alien, I don’t mean the kind that arrives by UFO. I mean alien the way the Oxford English Dictionary defines it: “foreign, foreign-born resident who is not naturalized, a being from another world”. Don’t get me wrong; I love moving. I love being “alien” somewhere because I have always enjoyed discovering new things. So, when I talk about feeling “alien”, I say it affectionately and with pleasure! I state it as a fact, like Sting when he sings “I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York.”
When we moved to Belgium a few years ago, we also were aliens! In that case, there were added complications of speaking French and Dutch, as well as the adherence to Napoleonic laws to help us feel completely upended! We rented a home across from the international school so that we could walk to school. It turned out to be a wonderful neighbourhood for shops, restaurants and the proximity to a lovely forest with walking and biking trails. However, it was not such a good place for neighbours.
As we were right in the city of Brussels, the houses were very close together – joined, in fact, in a long row – with small yards backing onto more humanity in the form of tall, close brick homes (and a small stable...!). Yet, we did not get to know any locals. Our neighbours would nod politely and offer a mumbled greeting before looking away quickly so as to avoid any prolonged contact or – heaven forbid – a real conversation! As a result, we turned to school and work, making deep and wonderful friendships among the international community, where being expatriated from our own countries seemed like an easy starting point for a relationship.
It is different here in St. Louis. It is instantly warm and friendly. At first, I didn’t know people were speaking to me and would frequently check behind to see where the “Y’all okay?” had been directed! We moved into the home we bought in a beautiful subdivision just west of the downtown core, where we’re technically in the city but feel like we’re out in the ‘burbs. On the very first day in the house, my doorbell rang and a friendly neighbour offered cookies and a list of the rest of the residents. This was the start of a beautiful thing.
For the rest of the week, every time the doorbell rang, my tummy would rumble in Pavlovian anticipation of yet another treat! I had to start freezing the gifts, as we couldn’t possibly get through all of the loaves, banana breads, cookies and care packets that were left on our doorsteps or offered by confident little darlings on the behalf of their parents! My favourite part is the line of boys who keep coming by to ask Andrew to join in pick-up tag and football games; I thought he’d cry with joy the first time they came by!
So, after a couple of crazy weeks unpacking and fun weekends hosting some friends and family from Canada, I finally got around to popping a thank you card into the mailboxes of everyone who’d dropped off welcome gifts and notes. I included the following article in the card and thanked everyone for following instructions! A bit risky, but it paid off; it got some laughs and broke the ice at last Saturday’s neighbourhood picnic!
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UFO Sighting in Ladue
St. Louis Post Dispatch, Special Report
Typically, the residents of Ladue, a well-established, small community just west of downtown St. Louis, are more likely to be bird-watching than UFO spotting. For this reason, on a long and hot summer night in July, few people saw a small, well-lit, disc drop unobtrusively into a local neighbourhood. However, officials at Missouri’s Green Eggs and Ham Institute were scanning the night skies, as they do every night, protecting citizens from rats, bats, Canadians and other potential problems. Residents of Willow Hill Road are warned that, in fact, a UFO landing was confirmed on that street and that the craft was occupied. Officials are unsure of the present whereabouts of the aliens, but anecdotal reports in the area of human-like beings who say “sorry” a lot and finish sentences with “eh” would seem to indicate that the aliens are indeed Canadians. If you are in contact with these strange beings, be sure to smile and offer baked goods. They are not considered dangerous.
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