Last weekend, sis-in-law Syl had her 50th birthday and surprised me with a gift of my own: money towards my own iPad. She said it was for all the work I did on her note card/photography site.

Without a word of a lie, she knocked my socks off. I had no real schedule for getting one, I just knew I was going to get one. Someday. She had just upped the inevitable.

For her birthday she looked amazing – a hot red Cuban themed dress and her hair was perfect.

Right Now I’m sitting on my bed typing into my WordPress app making this post, thinking of her and what a special person she is.

Dad took this from his bed in emergency:

The last couple days the web has really killed my “high on life, I’m an uncle twice over” attitude.

SharkBoy’s uncle died last week. One solitary call from his mom out of the blue – but apparently he had been ill for some time. I wish we had the time and money to go to the service.

Last weekend, Mixmutt died. He was someone I never met but had followed on Twitter and on Flickr for just under a year. He had an unassuming, no bullshit attitude and anything he posted (some of which are pure NSFW, something I envied of him) I enjoyed. One of his average tweets:

I hate when people make a big deal about babies walking. I walk all day every day and nobody throws me a party. Babies are stupid.

A lot of other people enjoyed him too. Most of my contacts on a lot of social networks seem to have some sort of memorial moment for him. I wish he had known the amount of people who were listening to him before shuffling off this mortal coil. Maybe he did. I feel for his boyfriend who was there for him when he died.

Tomato Transplants, one of the best bloggers I know (digitally) wrote about his wife’s miscarriage yet was able to put a positive spin on it. Again, I feel for his loss yet admire his perseverance.

Yesterday I scanned my blogroll feeds and came across StudioYVR’s post of the end credits of Six Feet Under, featuring the music of Sia (creepily, SharkBoy had posted one of her songs a couple days earlier too). SYVR’s post is a dandy, In-Your-Cubicle-Weeping kind of music video, thank you very much.

Needless to say these events have dropped me in a funk. Subsequently I’ve been thinking a lot about death and how I will end. Ideally I’d like to go in my sleep. Most likely I will die in a freak accident where my cats will be forced to eat me. I hope they go for the kidneys first.

Last night I think I came out on the other side of this black cloud. This morning I had a dream that I was in a square in some European village with SharkBoy. Typical old buildings surrounding a fountain and cafes and pigeons sort of thing. I take his hand and we jump into the air and effortlessly fly circles around the square. We spy a hole in the side of one building, some 30 or so stories up, and fly to it’s ledge. It’s a funky artist style cafe for other people who can fly. We’re greeted warmly and served tart lemonade. I smile at SharkBoy. And woefully wake up from such a fun dream.

This all said, I remind myself (and you too dear readers) that it’s not how you go, it’s how you got to the going.

I woke to gobs of weird plastic orange wrapped presents! I got well over 400 hours in DVDs and BluRays:

• Kiki’s Delivery Service (I gave this one to Emma when she was 6. Never had it for myself)
• My Neighbour Totoro
• Castle in the Sky
• Ponyo
• Spirited Away
• Star Wars the Clone Wars Complete Series on Blu Ray
• Battlestar Galactica – all of it on BluRay

Looks like our winter is full up with TEE VEE Viewin’!

Best Husband EVAR!

Just after 4 am my phone buzzes, letting me know I have an email, and it wakes me up. Again, I forgot to turn off the ringer.

My brother and his beautiful (yet exhausted) wife had twin girls: August and Sastolina. Healthy, no webbed toes and everyone is fine!

Wait… Sastolina? Sassy! I like it!

According to Google Book Search, sastolina is found within the tome: Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum By John Claudius Loudon. It is a plant known as Lavender Cotton (otherwise known as Santolina), popularly used against round worm in Scotland.

I like August because, well just because. She’s not born in August, it sort of sounds like my grandmother’s name Asunta, and “Auggie” rocks. So there!

I promised my brother that I would babysit but only after the whole diaper thing has passed. I can barely shovel out the cat box, let alone discover the contents of a diaper.

I’ve just come off two weeks of working 9am to 5pm, 5pm to 9pm, with a weekend of obligations in between, so my time with SharkBoy had seriously taken a hit. I believe that these last two weeks have been the most time we’ve been “apart” since we got married. I airquote apart because I would see him for the couple waking hours we had during the weeknights.

To celebrate, SharkBoy dragged us out of the house at 8:30am this morning. He scolded me for wearing a tee shirt while he put on a nice pink golf shirt – which I thought was a bit dressy for a Sunday morning without any hope of going to church – I would later learn why my manner of dress would come into play, but at the time I thought nothing of it. We grabbed a tea, some breakfast and a nice long walk. We hit the AMC at Dundas Square for an early showing of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

We have certain Disney movie obligations, being superfans.

It was ok. Very Bruckheimer. The Fantasia homage in the middle of it was a bit lacking, but it ran along in a great summer movie kind of way. Nice to see the Borg Queen getting work so long after Star Trek. I’d give it a 3 out of 5 wands.

At the end of the show, SharkBoy says “Come on! We have 30 minutes to get to the other theatre for Inception!” and we take off for the next theatre.

As we’re walking past the Opera House, he suddenly announces: “I gotta pee. Do you think they’ll let me in to use their washroom?”

The front of the Opera house has people milling about and I assume there’s a matinee performance.

“I doubt they’re going to let you…”

“Are you coming in too?” he asks as he mounts the stairs.

“I’ll… I um…” I’m a bit stunned at SharkBoy’s pipe dream of getting past the ticket takers with a lame excuse of needing to pee. Does he really think they’re going to let him in?

“What if I gave you this?” and he produces two tickets to Miss Saigon.

The past couple weeks I’ve been focused on my extra job – money for our vacation in the winter. I had forgotten completely that I wanted to surprise him with tickets to this show. I go a bit lumpy throat and laugh. He wanted me to be dressed up a bit so I wouldn’t feel out of place – everyone was in nice clothes and I was ratty Sunday bomb abouts.

He is the master of surprises.

“Consider it a great start to your birthday week.”

“So… no Inception?” I joke.

The show was very good. I’ve never seen it, but had heard some songs from it. I really enjoyed it – despite there being what we jokingly call a “PEW PEW” moment. Backstory: During Toronto’s last showing of Phantom of the Opera from a travelling company, the “falling” chandelier took forever to go from roof to stage and the Phantom’s flaming pyrotechnics were lame (hence the ‘pew pew’). We had a giggle while the full sized chopper in Miss Saigon descended to the stage and the rotor blades were no bigger than a ceiling fan’s. Other than that, it was a fantastic show.

As we left the theatre we looked at each other and decided that being decadent and going to see Inception was still on the books. We ran to the 5pm showing and I LOVED IT. One of my top 10 movies for sure. I can’t say anything more than what Roger Ebert wrote about it a couple days ago. A smart movie in the middle of dumb summer stuff. Yay!

So here we are back at home over 12 hours from when we left after a day of laughter, song and adventure escapism. What a day.

I can’t tell you how much I love my husband. He made the stress and fatigue of the last two weeks dissolve away.

Ah summer. Remember when you got out of school and came home to a scowling parent who demanded to know what you were going to do for the summer?

No? That never happened to you?

I got shipped off to a summer camp from age 8 to a remote place called Gryphon Grippen Lake Camp. While the camp is long gone and no mention of it exists online, I can fiercely remember the “main street” that went from waterfront to the open field where 5-6 cabins ringed the perimeter. The Main Street housed the crafts cabin, the spider den (the washrooms, ugh), the food hall, the older camper’s cabins and the Counselors. For the life of me I can’t say why they were called “counselors”. Like it was therapy camp or something…

…maybe…

Never mind.

Anyway, the camp had some bizarre rituals: chants before dinner, hand gestures to identify which cabin you occupied and the prayers – we would pray to a sun god in the morning and at the end of the day we were asked to thank a forest spirit for not attacking the camp. Seriously, we did. This was performed right after dinner with all of us in a circle around the nightly campfire, chanting like some cult, bellowing our gratitude into the trees. The younger kids (read: the ones shitting themselves every night after this gruesome ritual was performed. Read again: me) would drill the counselors for more concrete facts regarding this spirit: did it come in the night? Was anyone attacked? Did it have big talons?

I look back now and realize it was a disciplinary ploy to keep us in our cabins after lights out. Of course the older kids weren’t fooled and would pretend to be the wood spirit and bang on our cabin walls in an attempt to make us wet our beds. Some nights they were successful. Thankfully I grew a strong bladder.

They taught us swimming during the day in a carefully cordoned off “beach” area that had colour coded buoys to mark off where more accomplished swimmers could go. After an initial test of skill, you were given a blue, red or white poker chip that stayed around your neck when you entered the water. I never made it past Blue – the kiddie pool, really. I struggled daily to learn to swim but I never could (even to this day) coordinate my kicking with my flailing arms. My lack of skill however, allowed me to stay with the best looking counselor who oversaw the Blue zone. He was my hero. He was a god. He didn’t mind me tagging along like a fart in a grocery store. I think I wasn’t trying too hard to leave the Blue zone because Red was patrolled by a Rubenesque blond girl who was clearly more interested in the Blue area(s) as well. Cow. During horseplay in the shallow end, I experienced my first gleaning of homosexuality too: an innocent game of tackle resulted in Blue boy’s bulgy speedo pressing up against the small of my back. What the what?!

There were other sexualized moments like this throughout the summer. Glimpses of teen horniness telegraphed between the counselors (hetero-based, of course) that fascinated me to watch. Snatches of conversation between the male guides about after-hour connections behind the food hall, in the craft hut, in the white swim zone. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, I just knew that it was a club I wasn’t part of.

Near the end of the summer we had to complete a scavenger hunt with compass and crude map that lead us into the forest. After weeks of the forest spirit story we were a bit desensitized and only slightly nervous. I remember setting off with my companion, who did the map reading while I held the compass. We got 9 out of 10 points correctly and returned to the camp to discover everyone sitting “injun’ style” in the field. Two counselors had gone missing and we were asked to stay put for a head count. The urgency of the situation went on right up to dinner. After dinner we congregated around the communal fire pit and were lead into night prayers for the spirit to return the two counselors.

You can guess where this is going. Soon noises were heard off beyond the light of the campfire.

To a 8 year old kid, this was horror brought to life. If you’ve ever seen a National Geographic video of a frightened deer pack then you have a good idea of how big the campers eyes were: bulging orbs that tried to pierce the darkness just past the fire as their heads whipped around to each new sound. In hindsight, I don’t think the counselors thought this prank through, entirely. The counselors around the fire kept up the faux surprise to the noises and feigned worry as to what the disturbance could be.

One counselor stood and yelled into the forest: “SPIRIT! RETURN US OUR FRIENDS!!”

Crashing from the brush came a guy dressed in strips of trash bags and rags, his head covered in feathers and grease paint. “FRAAAAAAGGGGHH!!!” he shouted.

The young ones started to scream. Imagine 20-25 little Jamie Lee Curtises, open mouthed and howling at this vision. They (we) shot off into the opposite direction towards the cabins. The fear spread like wildfire into the older kids who were cool but not cool at the same time, resulting in some of them running blindly, trampling slower kids, some of them seeing through the rouse immediately.

After all the kids who had run into the forest had been collected and accounted for, we were told that maybe not telling our parents about the last night’s “show” wasn’t a good idea.

I went back a few times over the years and it was pretty much the same – I never learned to swim; I followed my favorite counselor like a baby duck; I would continue to excel in crap crafts. The only exception was there were no more wood spirits.

Update: Yes Cas, you are correct. Funny how time can bastardize ones memory…