I was hacking my way through the jungle of my perennial garden when I saw a horrifying thing. On the path below me,  a horde of ants was attacking a worm, rolling it over and over, and biting it as it wriggled frantically. I ran for the garden hose to gently wash the ants away and found myself singing along with a song from the musical, West Side Story. The New York 1960’s gang, the Jets, were attacking a lone Shark who’d wandered through their territory.

Was it my imagination that the ants were snapping their fingers? Do they even have fingers? Probably not, but there was some serious dancing going on, especially when I turned on the hose. The worm (ahem, the Shark) managed to escape down a crack in the dirt, and the disappointed Jets headed for home, once they’d dried off.

Next, I shoveled up their ant hill. The little buggers had been stealing the dirt from between my bricks, and I was tired of fighting them. Crossing the road, my wheelbarrow loaded with an entire ant kingdom, I realized I was the bad guy. Like the aliens in War of the Worlds and Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, I’d brought the dystopian reality of a world gone bad into the ant’s lives. I pictured them wringing their hands (do they have hands?) and weeping about the loss of their home. Honestly, gardening is difficult enough without all this guilt.

What with the singing and gang warfare, it’s hard to know where to start. The clover in the grass is a pain, but there’s a monster sized version lurking in the taller shrubs that’s so much worse.  I think my perennials are in partnership with many of the weeds, hiding them beneath their broad leaves. Tiny dandelion plants, little bits of chickweed. It’s like Romeo and Juliet out there. (The old version of West Side Story.) When I pull a weed up, the perennials seem to cry out in despair. I’m sure I heard one quoting Shakespeare.

“I defy you, stars!”

There might have been a song in there, too.  It’s our Community Choir’s set designer, Ken Pawlachuk’s, fault. He brought the lovely pier from the Mamma Mia musical into my front yard and now, everyone’s a diva. Even the hostas, and they’re usually so sensible.

So, if you see me at the store laughing maniacally in true bad guy style, realize that I’ve just decimated a whole village of ants and uprooted a few hundred weeds. They’re all busy singing ‘One More Day’ (from Les Miserable) while I’m trying to harden my heart. Sure, I’m not using pesticides anymore, but I’m still spraying the weeds with vinegar, baking soda and salt. I’m dousing them with boiling water. It’s just a different kind of torture. But that’s the way we are, us villains. It’s all about our tidy yards and the money we shelled out during the frenzy of spring plant buying.

‘It’s for your own good!’ I shout at the perennials. ‘Stop singing!’ I holler at the weeds. They barely listen anymore.
One more day, indeed. (Here’s the video, a human version. The plants haven’t quite nailed it yet.)

I woke up at two the other night and felt wide awake. To get sleepy, I turned to YouTube for a quick relaxation session. I like watching two things: a nice massage or a gentle hair brushing experience. I wrote a blog about the hairbrushing thing called, ‘Let Me Help You With That Kink.’ That’s how I felt in the beginning when scrolling through YouTube in search of something that would quiet my mind. Just a little kinky.

But now I’ve been introduced to a whole new level of strange. I clicked on what I thought was my video and the usual ASMR sign came up. But this time, there was no hairbrush or masseuse waiting for me. Instead, a gold sprayed mannequin head came into view, along with a woman holding a pair of Q tips. To my surprise and discomfort, she proceeded to insert the swabs in the ears of the mannequin. In, out, in out. Like some kind of ear masturbation. I exited out of that one and lo and behold, another mannequin appeared, wearing a set of headphones. A woman stroked the headphones over and over again and I found myself wondering how anyone on earth would find this relaxing. It was just so weird.

It turns out that the world of ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is a wide one, and what makes me feel like falling asleep just doesn’t do it for some people. There’s one where someone gets an eye exam. There’s different videos of people whispering. Some people tap on wood, or books, or balls. (The bouncing kind.) People hum, they whistle, or smoke in their cars.Maybe the last is meant for people who’ve quit and miss it. Truly, there’s something for everyone.

It’s left me wondering. If my videos relax me because it feels like someone is brushing my hair or giving me a massage, how did these other scenarios originate? What are people doing with mannequins, anyway? And who decided gold was the colour for the head, and that Q tips would be a hit? Who enjoys seeing headphones get a good rubdown? I wonder how the videographers figure these things out. Do they have a team? Are they taking requests? I have no idea. But to explain how people feel diving into the deep end of weird videos, I’ll quote the lyrics from Lady Gaga’s moving duet with Bradley Cooper in ‘A Star is Born.’

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now

Yes, we are, people. We’re waaaaaaay far from the shallows. But whatever makes you sleep at night, whatever has your body falling into a deep state of relaxation, remember this. Never put anything in your ear that’s small than your elbow. Now you stay safe. Good night. And here’s a little something for your resting pleasure.

My daughter, Hilary, is my alpha reader when I’m writing a novel. I recently sent her the first three chapters of my latest work in progress, and after all the required ego building; ‘Yes, nice, very good. I like the character and story,’ she proceeded to put me in my place.

“Mom, what’s with all the eating?”

I’m wondering how she can see through the phone to the coconut muffin I’m holding, but I hide it behind my back anyway. “Not you, mom. The girl in your story! She’s always cooking. It slows down the action. Remember that she’s terrified and alone.”

My first instinct was to feel defensive. “That’s why she eating so much. She needs provisions to help her handle the horror of her situation. You can stress eat in the apocalypse, you know.” Silence on the phone.

When I go to a movie where the characters are constantly running and hiding, all I can think is, when are they going to have a meal? Or go to the bathroom? I find it hard not to worry about their wellbeing. Never mind that the enemy soldier, alien or dinosaur may be closing in. When’s lunch?

I have five sisters and one brother and I swear I’m the only one who thinks this way. The sisters are like corset wearing Southerners from the 1800’s, who never have appetites. “I think I’m off my food right now,” they’ll say thoughtfully, pushing their half full plates away. I stare at them in bewilderment. I’ve never pushed a plate away in my life. And my brother seems to burn 1000 calories an hour, but not me, so that’s why I have to exercise so religiously. (Okay, maybe I’m not that diligent, but I try.) My inner tube threatens to become an outer tire, and I’m certainly not going to miss a meal or a snack on it’s behalf.

Do you ever wonder why those characters in movies or novels who never eat, sleep or go to the bathroom don’t discuss it with the other people on the run? “Oops, I just crapped myself. I should have hid out in that gas station bathroom.”

Dear reader, you’ve read my potty stories about the long road north. There is no bush, ditch or vacant lot that won’t do in a pinch. So I really don’t understand these characters. I see my daughter’s point of view that you can’t break the tension with mundane things, but let’s have some believability. Science fiction shows are particularly bad for this. A character goes days before finding a tiny, foil wrapped piece of thousand year old dried meat, makes a face eating it, then is back on the run. Really?

Okay, yes, perhaps my girl is cooking too much. But like me, she has food insecurity. Not the kind that actually exists in the world where real people starve every day, but the kind that’s in your head. My phone tells me its been two hours since breakfast. Time for a snack. Then its lunch. Then its snack time. Then it’s supper. I’m trying very hard not to snack after that because of my inner tube, but I always feel like it. I don’t care if my pants/corset are too tight. Thanks to Tracy’s weight class (the suffering! the joy!) they’re not.

If you have a book you’ve always wanted to write and it’s going to be action packed, let your characters have a moment or two. A bathroom break. A sandwich. Even a bag of chips snatched from a vendor as they whip by, two steps ahead of a giant robot. From all parts of the theater, people like me will exhale in relief, finally able to enjoy the rest of the movie.

If I was a character in a movie, caught by the enemy and facing a death squad, I know what my last words would be. Instead of requesting a cigarette, I’d say, ‘Do you have any bananas?’ And people like me watching the movie would mutter, ‘Good choice.’ People asking about the movie later might say, ‘Was it sad?’
“Yes, but they let her have a banana.’
‘Oh. Thank goodness.’

A little kindness goes a long way. I just hope the Rotten Tomatoes critics like my idea.

In light of my recent eight hour drive home, I’m revisiting the subject of peeing outdoors. I must write this because if I don’t, I’ll start discussing the relaxed standards of widowhood. It’s like living in a frat house with a population of one. It turns out that my husband was the prissy half of our duo, (he had one sibling, I had six…it makes a difference.) Between the hours of midnight and eight, our bedroom sounds like a herd of trumpet swans have moved in. There’s no one home but me, so who cares, right? But I’ve been told that the topic of farting is not fit for public consumption, so that’ll be enough of that.

Instead, let me regale you with my latest grievance. It says somewhere in the Talmud (I’m not Jewish…sorry for the cultural appropriation) that there’s a men’s morning prayer with the following words:

“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not created me a woman.”  

I say Amen and high five every man on the planet for being on the winning side of that prayer, solely because of the act of peeing. Men get to stand up for it. You can drive by at 110 klicks an hour and feel certain that the guy standing outside his car is just kicking the tires. But nobody buys it when you’re squatting with your pants down. And there are not enough bathrooms between Flin Flon and Winnipeg to avoid this situation, so the whole time I’m driving, I’m keeping an eye out for lonely roads exiting the main highway.

This is a bad idea for several reasons.

A. Serial killers lurking nearby
B. Bears

It’s still spring and every bear in Manitoba was traveling the number six highway on Friday. I’d pull over on a lonely stretch of road, not a car in sight, and barely (pun intended) get down to business when an actual bear would lumber into view. I broke speed records getting back into my car. So I entered one of those abandoned logging roads, first making sure there wasn’t a clown-faced axe-wielding murderer hiding nearby. In spite of the all clear, there were still several problems with the area.

First, it was disgusting. People, this is not your personal dump for your child’s diapers, your fast food containers and the last thousand water bottles you drank from and then abandoned. There was barely room to move, the place was so littered. And, there was a bear. A black one, smallish, but even so. I had already assumed the position, feeling grateful for the stretchiness of my Lulu Lemon pants and trying not to pee on my shoes. I thought I was going to faint, but fortunately I skedaddled instead.

In spite of the cold, it’s actually easier peeing out of doors in the winter. The bears are sleeping and the snow means no splashing, which is a plus. Men probably splash too, but I doubt they care because of the distance thing. I can’t explain it properly because I’m not good at geometry, or finding pi or longitude. Maybe its physics. I don’t know.

I started wondering about the plan for women. Like, what’s with all the squatting, dear Creator? But then, the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. Childbirth, gardening, picking up tiny toys like Lego pieces. There are many reasons for the act of squatting. With it comes a certain sense of resignation, of patience, and a calm acceptance of what is, at least in the moment. Squatting makes a person feel vulnerable, and maybe that’s why women are so open with their feelings, comparatively speaking.

That which doesn’t kill you (the bear, the axe wielding murderer) makes you stronger, according to Nietzsche.  At least in the thigh area. So I’m doing a 180 on my whining and will consider the squatting position a gift. I’m pretty sure the Dalai Lama squats. I’ve seen him do it in a magazine photo. Maybe he’s practicing yoga, or praying. Perhaps he’s getting in touch with his feminine side and allowing himself to be vulnerable. Whichever it is, I choose to believe that for those few moments of getting down to business, I’m also exercising and meditating.

It feels appropriate to end this blog post with the almost prayerful lyrics of Canadian female icon, Shania Twain:

Man! 
I feel like a woman!

Me too, Shania.

The musical is over. The props are put away, the actors returning to their regular lives. Teachers, students, miners, nurses, retired people and at least one writer will take a deep breath and enjoy the peace, quiet, and extra time on their hands. And yet.

I grew accustomed to the daily cries of the Greek Chorus, ie: the Flin Flon Community Choir, sequestered behind the scenery with the band. We were our own little family back there. ‘What’s happening now?’ we’d ask anyone with a view of the floor. Fortunately, there was lots of singing backstage so we didn’t have too much time on our hands to think about it. I missed being out in the hall with the actors, but we definitely paid better attention to our fearless conductor, Crystal Kolt.

As we sang our hearts out night after night, I realized that the music in Mamma Mia is perfect for every occasion. Feeling betrayed? Try the theme song.

 ‘I was cheated by you and I think you know when, so I made up my mind it must come to an end. Look at me now, will I ever learn, I don’t know how, but I suddenly lose control, there’s a fire within my soul.

These words are applicable to many situations. Got teenagers? A broken down clothes dryer? It’s handy having a theme song you can direct at the recalcitrant child or household appliance, especially when you enjoy singing and need to let off a little steam.

I wouldn’t mind if my friends met me on the street singing, ‘Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong…how it hurts to see you crying, how it hurts to see you sad.’ We all need sympathy from time to time, and it’s such a tender song. Who wouldn’t feel understood with these lyrics? In fact, there were many cathartic moments happening backstage during the whole of the musical. It was like a therapy session. But free.

Then, there’s many people’s favorite song, Dancing Queen.

‘You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!’  

Well, maybe you can’t dance or jive, but when you listen to Donna’s friends and all the back up singers belting this one out, you’ll feel like you can. This song epitomizes those moments when life can’t get any better. It’s a high five from the universe, the whole world dancing, singing, and pointing at you in a ‘you can do it’ vote of confidence. You find yourself squaring your shoulders and thinking, ‘Dammit, I think I can!’

Then, there’s the cast. Janelle Haucault is our choreographer, ( and that’s forever, Janelle. Don’t try to get out of it.) Unless you’ve been to a Flin Flon musical production, you’ll never see anything like our own Mamma Mia cast and their wild dance moves. After each energetic number, they’d drag themselves to their changing stations, stunned into silence by their extreme effort and looking like nothing more than colorfully dressed, sweaty zombies who got bit at studio 54 in 1979 and haven’t summoned the energy or brains to go home. Every year, the whole singing, dancing cast always seems to lose weight. It’s almost become an audition promise. Like some kind of fitness class from hell…(but not like our class, Tracy. We love our classes with you. 🙂 And yet somehow they gather the energy for the next number, and the next.

We, the choir, are squirming in the dark, frantically looking at our scores, the words written in some kind of comic sans, our book lights trying to sort out the music as we belt out what we hope is the right part. We’re like miners of a different sort seeking the notes and script and praying we strike it rich so we don’t have to see Crystal’s shoulders slump in defeat when we blow it.

Meanwhile, the band is playing like their assess are on fire. The drums, guitars, pianos and tambourines just don’t stop. Nothing short of amazing, and all this perfection for free. That’s right, non-Flinonians. Except for a few, everyone sings, dances, cartwheels and pours their heart and soul out for the sheer fun of it.

And it is fun. We’ve had twenty plus years of performing, and it never gets old. As Sophie sings, ‘It’s the name of the game. Do you feel it the way I do?’  Yes, Sophie. In fact, we all get that crazy high that comes from joining our voices with a bunch of others and letting it rip. Do things go wrong? Occasionally. I never noticed a single mistake with the cast, but I remember singing out too early on one part and then saying, ‘Well, shit. I blew that one,’ before remembering the microphones hovering over our heads. Thankfully, I don’t have a voice that carries.  Which is nothing to be proud of but helps in moments like these.

When the finale comes and the crowd surges to its feet to join us in singing Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen and Waterloo, there are no doubters in the room. There are no left or right wing nuts, no grudge holders, no sad people. The place rocks and every voice is raised in the kind of harmony that always comes with the celebration of music, art, and most importantly, community. It’s like a magical kind of glue, so that no matter what worries are trying to crowd our spirits, we all have this singing and dancing time together, and in those moments, joy takes over. Of course, the same thing can happen at a Bomber game, too. But that’s a whole other blog. See you in the fall, choristers. Now everyone get some rest.

When my daughter Michelle came into town, I roped her into helping saw the bottom off her bedroom door, which scraped against the flooring. YouTube had recommended using a reciprocating saw for the job but when we started it up, I realized we’d be safer wrestling alligators. We settled on the jigsaw as being easier to control.

Here is the problem with sawing the bottom of a door with a jigsaw but no dust mask. It takes forever, and all the sawdust flies up your nose.

“Mom, every time you look away to breathe, your line gets crooked.” She was right. The bottom of the door was as jagged as the teeth of a meth addict. (Or an apocalypse survivor. They say dental care is the first thing to go.) She took a turn with the jig saw, but it was exhausting. We gained an inch for every fifteen minutes of work. I took the last turn and promptly broke the blade, then foolishly touched the broken end and burned my finger. Those kids who lick poles when its 30 below never learn.

Someone told me how to change the blade in the drill. Since Michelle had to head back to her real life, I went out and fixed the door by myself. The sawed off bottom now looks more like the teeth of someone needing braces, but when the light in the bedroom is off, you can hardly tell.

My next project involved courage of a higher sort. My laundry room louvered doors needed some trim. Now that I’m no longer afraid of my mitre saw, I got the pieces cut and only had to nail them in place. The problem was that my clothes dryer sits six inches from the left door and I didn’t want to move it because then the vent hose falls off and I’ve never mastered the art of putting it back on.

So I placed a board across the top of the dryer, put my small kitchen stool beside it and carefully climbed up, making sure to point the nail gun away from my face. (This is not my first nail gun rodeo.) Now I had to contort my body, get behind the dryer and squeeze the gun in place to nail the trim. What with all the bending, the straining and the pushing, I felt like I was giving birth to the nail. I had to take a break just to sweat and curse. (Also happens when actually giving birth.) Finally, I did it. I was gold. Home free.

Or so I thought. Stepping down proved to be a bigger problem. Let me set the scene for you. You’ve already figured out that I’m not Mike Holmes with his ‘do it right the first time’ mantra. I’d love to do it right, but first I have to learn to do it. I’m a creative type, which means that I’m using the longest air hose possible on my compressor. It snakes thirty times around the laundry room, heads back toward the rumpus room and finally joins up with the compressor right beside the stairs. I’ve got boards lying around, hammers, measuring tape. It’s a zoo of wild tools and the zookeeper is not always on top of the wild game.

But the good thing is, I know this about myself. I know that having three pictures with the glass out and two broken mirrors does not happen to people who are really coordinated. So while I’m extremely disorganized in most things, I’m also wary. I work like I expect a horde of zombies to enter the room at any minute. I chant to myself, ‘don’t die doing this,’ and it seems to help. So when I leapt from the dryer to the low stool and it skated across the room, I held onto the nail gun and used my newly acquired gym muscles (thank you, Tracy!) to stay aboard.

This was one of those moments in life when you realize that two parts of your life are coming together: weight class and carpentry. Because I’ve learned to hold my position in a four hour squat (just kidding, kind of)  I skated that sucker right across the room until I bumped into the vanity and stopped abruptly. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “That was gymnastic!” Because if there’s anything that I’m not, its that.

I’m coming along in my weight class, but I have one remedial move where I have to hold onto a bar. It seems that the lunge, where you step backward onto one bended knee and then get up to do it 99 more times, is beneficial. My thigh muscles did not let me down. Ever since surfing the laundry room floor, I have begun calling myself Skater Girl, Avril Lavigne style.

I remain humble about my skills, and yet I have a certain sense of pride.

A. I got the job done.
B. I didn’t lose a hand, or die. Others might question my sanity, but I call my finished work while not dying on the job a success. Now, here’s a photo of my 45 degree upper corners on the louvered doors.

ps. I was missing a slat so I boiled a piece of wood in water and made it fit! It seems I’m turning into an older, more inept version of McGyver.

I love the TV show Project Runway. Maybe its the years I spent designing products, or because I learned to sew in my twenties and still remember the marvel of making my own clothes. These garments would not have passed grade nine Home EC – not if anyone had checked the seams, zippers or darts. But I’ll never forget the first couple things I made; white bell bottoms and a fabulous satin pantsuit. If I’d ever learned to disco, I had the right outfit. It pains me that I don’t have a photo of it to paste here. But that was back in the day when you had to use an actual camera.

I also made a number of semi-hideous matching Victorian dresses for my three daughters. “This is the last time I’m doing this,” my long suffering twelve-year-old told me at her cousin Leon’s wedding. There was also the blue velvet with white satin collar outfits they wore when they were too young to complain. Otherwise, their plea might have gone like this: “Judith Pettersen designed these hideous garments. Please save us.”

I watch Project Runway like an alien examining human beings. I don’t ‘get’ fashion, and lag years behind other people, especially those who appear in magazines wearing famous designers. Unlike my daughters, I’d be happy if the whole world wore matching jumpsuits and no one bothered expressing themselves with clothing, ever. Am I comfortable spilling my anxieties and secret wishes on this page for the whole world to read? Yes. Have I ever once figured out fashion trends? To quote the Donald: ‘Not.’

I’ve recently learned that the enormous white sneakers I wore in the nineties are making a comeback. This fear was confirmed by the Project Runway show I watched just the other night. Every model strutted down the runway in bizarre interpretations of puffy jackets, dresses designed for a dystopian world, and extra wide calf length pants. The last outfit was matched with a pair of sling-back shoes, and the designer was criticized for not accessorizing with supersized sneakers. The models are 5′ 11″ and110 pounds. They wear crazy with no problem at all. Then there’s the rest of us. Dressed like that, we’d all look homeless.

Back in the nineties I proudly wore those white sneakers, or, as we call them in my neck of the woods, runners. I was in love with that era’s combo of shapeless pants, wide sweaters and huge Minnie Mouse style shoes. But now my heart sinks at the thought of revisiting the Big Whites. ‘Do we have to?’ I ask myself, with the troubled certainty that I will never get things right. This also applies to your average North Americans vacationing in Europe. On the other side of the world, they’re always three years ahead, fashion wise. Every time I visit London, I feel like an Appalachian Hillbilly. (My apologies to all hill folk, but Hollywood has not been kind to your people.)

On the other hand, I live in Northern Canada, so jackets tend to be naturally puffy, and so does footwear. But that’s in the winter, mostly. Can’t I wear something more slimming in summer? May I not hold on to relatively form fitting clothes? Perhaps a T shirt or two? When you’re short, you don’t want to call a lot of attention to the fact, and the MC Hammer pants coming back into style do the vertically challenged no favours. Right, Joni Hanson?  Unfair of me to target a sister, but yes. In the nineties, she was in bad need of a makeover. When she put on a pair of jeans one day, people thought she’d lost fifty pounds. Such is the power of tailoring.

In conclusion, I fear the next decade. I’m in that awkward age group where I can’t dress young, but don’t find the elastic waist pants and loose tops of the elderly quite necessary yet. But, wait. That’s the answer. Old people clothes are finally in. (Or, back in. Remember the nineties.) Elastic waistbands, comfy shirts and pants. And yes. Big white shoes. The baby boomers are descending even as I write. Watch out, New York fashion week…you’re about to be ripped off.

If you don’t watch Project Runway, I have no evidence to prove any of this. Whenever I try to google pictures about it, all that comes up is ‘mature porn, very old naked people.’ Since that’s a fashion we’ll all be embracing soon enough, let’s just leave it at that.