I’m terrible with gifts. I nearly always buy the person what I’d want to get, which is wrong and dangerous, especially if the present is for a lover. Or I get what they’ve hinted for and find some way to bollocks that up, like getting the wrong colour, size or cheap dangerous Chinese version of whatever they asked for. “Lead paint in the cutlery? Really?”

And I know you’re just like me. Of course you are. You read this blog!

So with less than 15 days until my birthday I thought I’d help you all out and get the ball rolling early and get my wish list of gifts you can get me.

Let’s start with the cheap stuff:
A box of gum
Some nice hotel soaps
Lint brushes
A plastic dollar store monkey
Q-tips
Socks and Underwear
A new pumice stone

A Little more Wallet Intensive:
Seasons One and Two Venture Brothers
Silent Hill for the PSP
Nice shirts for work
Kooky robot t-shirts
A nice gift certificate to HMV
A nice gift certificate to iTunes
Some lovely sketchbooks
French lessons
Better socks and underwear!

Welcome to Tiffany’s:
A Wii
4 or 5 Wii games
A new TV (flat screen, duh!)
Classes to Second City
A car lease
Insurance for car
Insurance for the apartment
Another kitten for George Hamilton to play with
Airfare to NYC for the weekend
A MacPro Duo Core with 8G of RAM
An iPhone (hello US readers!)
Some shoes

I’m glad I could help. Remember! Gift receipts!

Blacks Photography, 12:10pm. Lawrence and Yonge.

I bring my purchase of a battery charger up to the counter. The clerk scans the charger and then asks: “Your phone number?” His hands over over the keys in anticipation.

“I choose not to give it,” is my standard response. I don’t even give out my postal code if asked. If I’m challenged, I don’t give them my money. Plain and simple.

“We’ll need it for referencing your purchase if you need to return it,” he sputters upitty, as if I’ve just asked him to sodomize himself with his UPC scanner.

“You don’t keep records of the receipt numbers on your bills?”

“Oh all right,” he says and taps noisily into his cash keyboard.

I’m just as uppity, bitch, when it comes to dinner time and I’m interrupted by telemarketers.

Every household has it. The one seat that is the most coveted, most comfortable, most desirable seat in front of the TV. It may be directly head on to the tube or slightly offset near the armrest of the couch but it’s the one seat that is genetically inbred to us all to be the one seat we must sit in.

With that established, there are inevitably always rules to leaving this seat in a crowded room with the intention of returning to it. Especially if it involves de-chairing in front of family or close quarter room mates. In my experience there is almost always an oath you must utter before your ass leaves furniture to ensure your seat is yours upon your return. Usually it’s something obvious like “Savesies” or “Don’t take my seat” or “If you take my seat I will kill you in your sleep”. My sister-in-law has her kids say “Fives” meaning “Back in five minutes”. Simple.

SharkBoy’s family didn’t have this, but typical French reverse structuring, they had a saying after you lost your seat: “Un chien qui chasse perd sa place” which roughly translates to “A dog that hunts, loses its nuts”. Or something like that.

Growing up, my family (4 sibs, two exasperated parents), use to use the words “Splat and TV”. I have no clue where that came from. But it solved many rabid moments of fistacuffs.

You haven’t lived until you have stood in front of a casket, receiving family members you have never met, thanking them for coming and expressing their sorrow, in French. And personally don’t speak a word of it.

You haven’t lived until you get ignored completely by some of these people either, not accepted due to queerness or your Englishness, or whatever.

You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten some really good meals and off set them with grotty highway fast food.

You haven’t lived until you play cards with 4 Quebecois ladies (SharkBoy included). They raise swearing in French to new heights, creating a new art form that needs to be documented (much like Lambert Wilson’s lament in Matrix Reloaded: “It’s like wiping your ass with silk.”). They made it seem so effortless and matter of fact so I tested the water and muttered “sonofa BITCH” on a losing hand – the last part being a bit too loud. SharkBoy’s aunt took that to be directed to her. She howled! I was in!

You haven’t lived until you’ve ridden in a Dodge Caliber. What a fun little car!

You haven’t lived until you come back from a funeral to your below average small town Comfort Inn hotel room to the sounds of noisy English (broken) love making.

You haven’t lived until you’ve walked every single isle of a Christmas Tree Shop with your mother in law.

You haven’t lived until that same mother in law tells to you something that no other boyfriend’s (or husband’s!) parent has ever said to you, ever. On the way out the door after all this weekend, she stopped me and looked right at me and said: “Do. You. Understand. French?” Up until that moment it has been pigeon mumblings and polite phrases (except for the card game). It was her first real direct attempt to “speak” to me.

“Je comprend un peu.” I mangled.

She then started to tell me that she loved me tres tres boucoup. She was happy to call me family.

Yeah. I cried for about 15 minutes in the car after that.

…until you’ve spent 48 hours in a strapped-for-cash, small town hospital’s intensive care ward, experiencing someone’s death.

Early Friday morning, SharkBoy’s father left us. On Thursday, his sister and he were forced to make the most difficult decision in anyones life. I won’t go into personal details but it involved morphine and DNR (do not resuscitate). And waiting.

I was there only to offer emotional and physical support while this whole thing was happening. What made this difficult for me was that I could only understand every 10th word or so because I don’t speak French. Even if I did, I doubt that it would have been my place to offer anything other than a shoulder to cry on – it was an intensely private family affair played out in front of emotionless. yet somewhat sympathetic, hospital staff. At one point SharkBoy turned to me and said “How do they do it? How can they work here every day and not feel something?”

I watched this particular ward’s staff from that point on. They did show emotion but they kept it down, hidden from worried or distressed families. The male nurse attending SharkBoy’s dad had just finished documenting something and sat unmoving with his head down for a solid 2 minutes as if to lock something down. Two nurses shared a whispered joke and a stifled, short giggle so we could not hear. One night doctor, after his rounds through the ward, checked his email from a nearly-private monitor. So they were human too, they just kept it discreetly out of sight so that our own humanity came first. The ward’s staff were automatons who made the minor decisions and left us to the big ones, with big consequences.

The last couple days echoed back to when my step father died. When the doctor mentioned administering morphine to SharkBoy’s dad, I was reminded of when my step father was dying and my sister and mother had to make similar decisions. When the Quebec doctor launched into a long trail of French and I finally caught the word morphine it sent me from the room stifling tears. I knew what was coming.

Through it all, SharkBoy and family retained their sense of humour which punctuated the entire ordeal. Obviously I missed some of it in translation but it was there. They related a lot of stories in that short time, which made the good times come forth, shining chunks of life emerging out of the gloom of that hospital room. All part of being human.

Unseen images of SharkBoy!