Monthly Archives: October 2021

About Being Afraid of the Dark

Posted on by

As the days loom ever nearer to Halloween, the guide on my cable TV boasts a host of spooky and eerie offerings. Sometimes I will tune in to the Food Network’s Halloween Baking Championship, so I can scorn the ridiculous amounts of royal-icing-and-rice-crispy-treat sculptures that contestants try to pass off as “baking”. This kind of stuff is not scary, except for imagining how that much sugar would hurt my teeth. The real scary Halloween shows and movies? I limit it to an annual viewing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

When I was a kiddo there was no such thing as cable TV in our house, but around Halloween the usual suspects still showed up: reruns of Carrie, The Exorcist and The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane. I watched all of those – and others – at least once and they all gave me the heebie-jeebies. But it was a movie of a name I can’t remember that bamboozled me the most. Let’s call it: The One With The Scary Basement.

Although I can’t put an exact date stamp on it, I remember watching it situationally: we were still living on the home farm before moving to the new house my parents built in 1981 near town. The farmhouse was circa 1950 so the basement was the typical partly finished one. The innocuous finished part was where the boys’ bedroom was, a large-ish room populated with beds, bureaus and bookshelves. (And boys – there were four in our family.) The unfinished part of the basement was the one that gave me pause. In the light of day, it wasn’t that scary: the cement walls were lined with jars of pickles and peaches, the old woodstove gave off a pleasant warmth in the winter when my mom would stoke it so she could wash clothes or run the cream separator comfortably down there. But it was also the domain of spiders (you know how I feel about them) and a dirt cellar and where I remember a hog getting butchered on a bloody table. (Real or not real?)

At night, or in the hours of the wee morning, this part of the basement gave off a whole different vibe. Sometimes I had to go down there to fetch something or to use the only shower in the house. The problem was that dispelling the dark wasn’t a matter of flicking on a light switch located just inside the door. This part of the basement was lit up by a single incandescent bulb with a string hanging down from it that turned the light off and on by pulling on it. This meant I had to walk into the darkness, flailing around wildly, searching for the elusive string until I inevitably walked into it, thus conjuring up thoughts of spiders descending on my head.

So, it probably wasn’t the best idea to watch a movie about A Scary Basement. With tiny people who nabbed you when you went down there. (Stupid, stupid, stupid.) But who REALLY knows what you’re getting into when you’re 12 years old alone on a Saturday night and the only other thing to watch was the CTV National News with Lloyd Robertson.

I don’t really remember exactly when I watched this show, but it probably either confirmed or exacerbated what I believed about my basement for most of my growing up years or until we moved out of that house: that unless the situation was dire (like rescuing a forgotten toy or book) or just a dire matter of hygiene (starting with grade seven I HAD to shower every day), the basement was better avoided. Because: You. Just. Never. Know.

These days I’m not that afraid of the dark but I also have a well-lit basement (with conveniently located light switches) and if all else fails, a flashlight on my cell phone. And I now pretty much avoid most scary movies – because you never really know where it’s gonna take you. Even if it’s just to the basement.

About House Hunters International

Posted on by
Photo by Robin Ooode on Unsplash

So, not to put too fine of a point on it but we’re in Month Twenty of this global pandemic thing, at least, since our world here in Canada became strapped down, wings clipped, house arrested. While it doesn’t really substitute for the real thing, I have been watching House Hunters International with insatiable interest these days. And the question on my mind is: Where in the world do I really want to go? You know, when the viral cloud begins to lift a little?

I don’t really have any patience for the shenanigans on the regular House Hunters franchise where (ahem) CRAZY AMERICANS looking for a new home come armed with 1. Unreasonable Expectations 2. Unfettered Attachments to Barbeques and 3. Unbelievable Demands for Separate Bedrooms for their Pets. The ensuing problem of living in a place like, say, Texas, is that you expect everything to be BIG: big house, big kitchen, big backyard. The only thing that people don’t usually come with is a big budget. Hmmmm. How is this going to work exactly if everything on the list is non-negotiable?

Sometimes on House Hunters International, because the move comes with a cost of living allowance, the budget IS big. On an episode I watched recently, the folks “settled” for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in Zurich – to the tune of $7100 a month! Yowza! More often re-locators are working with a big wish list and a small budget, like on the domestic version, but cultural differences can really change that must-have list fast. In Europe or Asia, for instance, things we often take for granted are not a given, things like bathtubs, ovens and clothes dryers. I can understand that in a country where square footage comes at a premium, space-suckers like bathtubs aren’t a thing. And ovens aren’t necessary when you can go out to eat in the market for cheap. But I’ve been to Asia and it’s humid there. It takes days for clothing hanging around the house to dry. I don’t know why clothes dryers aren’t more of a thing. But it’s not my country or continent, so what do I know?

The thing about travelling is that it’s a chance to experience things that are different. Why would we get such a hankering to go to the other side of world if the view is the same? And why would I want to expect the same things as I find at home – staying home would be cheaper, non?

But moving someplace else is a whole different ballgame. Home, for some, is the repose when all else is different: city, workplace, grocery store, cafe, greenspace. So I can understand wanting it to be dependable and consistent. I think that’s why so many of us in this last twenty months have indulged in home renovations and HGTV – because HOME helps us to find our place in the larger world, gives us a place of courage to start our day and a place of rest to end it.

And hopefully is filled, at least sometimes, maybe just even virtually, with other people that you love. Home really can be Sweet Home.

About Tomatoes

Posted on by

It’s that time of year again – that sad time when I’m getting close to the bottom of the tomato bowl. OF COURSE, I’m not talking about imported/Costco/mealy/poor-substitute tomatoes. It’s mid-October and the last of my home grown tomatoes are about to ripen – and be eaten – with relish (the verb not the noun.)

I come from a family of tomato eaters and I married into a family of the same. You’d think we were Italians, the way we all cultivate and nurture our own tomato plots. Rick and I have moved several times and garden-spot or not, I have always found a place to plant my own personal crop of Beefsteaks, Tiny Tims and the like – even if it was in the front yard instead of the usual petunias. Overgrown zucchini and a glut of green beans are often abandoned on doorsteps of unsuspecting friends and relatives. But no one really likes sharing their tomatoes. Not even me.

I know that my mother canned plenty of ripe tomatoes for all the soups and stews we would inhale all winter long. But the gold standard of tomato use in our family was The Tomato Sandwich. There was no need to muck about with pumpernickel or Grey Poupon or even cheese. All that was necessary was white bread, Kraft Miracle Whip, salt and pepper and a generously sliced, ripe red tomato. The result was two triangles of ambrosial goodness. It was hard to get tired of such sustenance when we were in tomato season. And even though it got a little soggy, the tomato sandwich was still a favorite sandwich to find in my lunchbox at school.

During these last tomato days, Rick and I will indulge on the weekends with tomatoes on our morning toast. I keep it regular with good old mayonnaise and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Rick prefers to eat his toast and tomatoes – as his whole family does – with honey. And although I have been woo’d to taste and see the Donily side of many dishes, I can’t seem to cross the mayo to honey barrier. Tomato time is too short to take such a gamble.

Nowadays, if I have an overabundance of tomatoes, I throw them in the freezer whole for future butter chickens or hamburger soups. I take advantage of the green tomatoes and will bread them like they are chicken legs and fry them up at least once a season. And every supper is graced with a sliced tomato on the side in high season. Sometimes, we’ll fry up the bacon for some BLTs. But nothing – for me – will compare to the plain old humble tomato sandwich.

About Nerds

Posted on by
Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about it lately – kind of nerding out about it, really – that my obsession with reading and writing and words and this blog and books and ALL THAT can only be summed up as truly nerdy behavior. So, I admit it – I’m a nerd.

It’s not that bad of an association, really. After all, nerds seem to have unlocked a new level in this video game we call Life. All the usual opposites now apply: nerds are cool, nerds are the best people, nerds are what I want my children to grow up to be. (Hello? Remember: we homeschooled them. They now love to read, play D&D and wear flood pants. Mission complete.)

My first memory of the moniker “nerd” goes back to Happy Days, one of my favorite TV shows of the ’70s. Sure, Fonzie was The Coolest with his leather jacket and ability to snap a jukebox into obedience. But it was red-headed Richie I fell for, both onscreen and in real life. (It’s okay, Rick – deep down, you always knew you were a nerd.) Fonzie figured it out pretty quick, too: nerds make the best friends. They invite you into their families and are as loyal friends as golden retrievers.

And then in 1984, the gauntlet was REALLY thrown down with the movie Revenge of the Nerds. We all went to see it, like it was field research: where did we fit? Were we nerds or were we – what’s the opposite of nerd? – A cool kid? Popular? A jock? Good-looking?

The truth is that most of us fall somewhere in between. While it’s hard to “cross over” in that brouhaha we call high school – like Drew Barrymore’s character in another of my favorite Nerd-Wins-Big movies, Never Been Kissed – graduation lets you leave the crowd behind and find your real tribe: other people who are passionate about things like dressing up their dogs, making sourdough bread from scratch, playing video games (or watching other people play video games), collecting atlases or antiques or just cramming your head with knowledge about (fill in the blank).

As an adult, I myself have been obsessive (or still am) about reading (surprise!), geography (I’ve colored maps to help me memorize where countries are), scrapbooking (I will never be finished), ancient history, Biblical history, future history (Ha! I made that one up!), the cartoon Peanuts, the TV shows House Hunters International and Clean Sweep, art journaling, the Newbery list, the Caldecott list, my TBR list on my computer and many, many authors and podcasts of which I strive to be a completionist. I could probably go on. But then, so could you. AmIright?

All of this qualifies as Nerdy Behavior. One of the cool/nerdy things about the internet is that we no longer have to do our research on TV or at the movies anymore. The World Wide Web can help us make contact with actual people who are obsessive about the same things that we are. Or who are – at the very least -interested/fascinated/approving/admiring of the things that we shielded from the eyes of the cool kids and our older siblings.

One of the best side effects of suffering from Nerdism is that you learn not to care about what is “supposed” to be cool and just to follow your heart. Nerdity gives you the obstinacy to be the human God meant you to be in all your nerd glory. You can even nerd out about sports or fashion or cars – traditionally non-nerd subjects.

To nerd is human. So embrace it – your nerdiness is your gift to the world.