The Helena Bonham Carter style of gardening

The young lady who lived here before me, bless her psychedelic heart (I bless her because it's more effective than wishing a pox on her) was fond of colours - the wilder and more mismatched the better, it seems. Some of you already know this from reading my Facebook page when I first moved in here. Eighteen different colours overall, nary an inch of neutral to be seen, and this month I was reminded that her singular tastes extended to the outdoors, as well.

I knew there were three species of something in the yard, but I'd forgotten what shades they are. Until a week ago, when they started blooming. So it was with resignation that I noted that of all colours she might have chosen to plant, she chose to emphasize the one you see here. The same purple that "adorns" the upstairs hallway.

You might say, Hey! These aren't so bad. In small numbers, mixed in with other hues, perhaps they wouldn't be. But I've got clumps and clumps of this, standing like... moldering blobs of flesh on stalks. Trust me, it's not attractive. The girl had NO EYE AT ALL.

It was only a few weeks ago, when the landlord was showing this place yet again to potential new renters, that he admitted the error of his ways. He said he should have forced her to restore everything she'd painted to its original white. I wish he had, and I wish I'd have felt in a position to push the issue. But, as usual, I was afraid to be assertive; I just wanted to sign the lease and take possession, paint scheme be damned.

Ah, well! In about two weeks it will all be water under the bridge. I will schlep my dozen gallons of powdery pastels to Laval, and hope that we're not in the middle of a heat wave so that I can make my new environment more to my liking. At least I will have built-in help (in the form of Alex) this time around.

It's turning into a ghost town

I get a ton of spam comments, for some reason, on one or two old posts on this blog. It's almost as though once the spam portal has been opened to a specific URL, those posts become instant highways for incoming crap, some of which is (literally) written in Greek and gibberish. One such post is a rather nice one I wrote back in 2010, in which I was already musing about leaving Lachute. I'd forgotten about that. The job at "The House" dried up shortly after I moved to be closer to work, and Lachute hasn't changed, so naturally I am moving again. (Side note: I had to mentally double-check the 2010 date; it doesn't seem possible that as recently as early last year I was still living next door to Emphysema Man and the noisy gang on Bethany, and have since moved house twice; it feels like an eon ago. Then again, this past winter felt like an eternity, so my concept of time is skewed.)

When I say Lachute hasn't changed, that's not true; it's gone downhill. I've counted three restaurants that have closed in the last year (I hear a rumour about a fourth, but haven't confirmed it yet). Something like seven retailers have gone out of business, too, all along Main Street, and even two churches have gone bust. The thrift shops never seem to thrive, but neither do the more upscale boutiques. If I had to guess, I'd say that the two Tim Horton's and two McDonalds do a consistently roaring business. Some others seem to manage, year after year, but a few are backed by generations of local family money; still, I'd wager they're feeling the same pinch as everyone else.

Since making up my mind to move, I've come to terms with the idea that I am apparently not made to stay in any one place too long. It's possible I was a gypsy or a member of some ancient nomadic tribe in previous lives. Who knows? It seems that change is the only constant in my life. Maybe because I started out bohemian and somewhat wild the instant I left the family home, the pattern was set early on. If I'd married and had a brood of (or even two-three) kids, maybe I would have felt obliged to stay put. Or maybe, as one wag friend of mine said, "I'll stop when I'm dead."

I am steeling myself for big changes in the new place. For one, I'll be back in an apartment building where I can hear neighbours through walls. God help me. For two, there's a major bridge down below our back windows. No more tranquil morning wakeups to the sight of leafy trees outside my window and starlings hopping about in the upper branches. On the other hand, most likely fewer power tools. Here in the semi-country of single-family homes and property, there always seems to be something with a motor running: leaf blowers, sanders, power saws, drills, lawn mowers, edge trimmers. I won't miss those. But I'll have traffic sounds instead.

All in a good cause, though -- the chance to economize and to reprise my role as Mom. And no predictions, except that I trust that my son and I will live in that apartment until he finishes school -- since the school is conveniently located a two-minute walk away. While we're there, I'll become acquainted with yet another city -- unlike Lachute, a big one, with public transit, movie theatres, and a vast choice of recreational activities.

It'll be a good change.

My spring birds

The spring birds seemed to arrive literally overnight.

Yesterday, the morning after the "Supermoon," I heard white-throated sparrows (which always remind me of summer in Ayer's Cliff) and spotted the first robin; then, this morning, a horde of starlings were hopping around the tree outside my kitchen window, being the first smarties to feast on the pile of bread crusts and leftover cooked rice that I had piled on the ground a few days ago. I'm glad someone finally got around to eating that rather unsightly mess.

Finally,  I was inordinately pleased to see this little fellow, the red-capped woodpecker, clinging to my feeder.

Throughout the winter I had mostly chickadees and a regular pair of blue jays, so this influx of new "faces" is nice to see.

And now, having written about spring, a light snow has just started to fall.

Girly nails

1. Did I mention my new, temporary housemate?

L. was coming out of a relationship, at last waking up to realize that she needed some time to herself. To make matters worse, both she and her b/f had lost their respective jobs within a short time period. Long story short, she needed a place to breathe, recoup, get her finances in order.

Enter the unused spare bedroom chez moi, which was the repository for unpacked boxes and odds & ends.

We painted that bedroom first (which was two shades of sickly blue and a vile yellow-green) and got her installed, and have since tackled the dining room and downstairs hall with primer. It’s slow going because both of us would much prefer to do other things than paint; but once one person gets started, the other usually joins in.

Her aim is to get her finances back on track and rebuild a clientele in her field. She travels a good deal for her work and so is not home a lot.

L. is a nail technician, which is a technological step up from mere manicurist. As she is currently studying to become a certified rep for an American company, she has to take a series of tests, both theoretical and practical. Yesterday I was the guinea pig for the practical portion.

A fairly new way to do nails is to “build” them with a gel product, which is painted on and dried under UV lights. It’s a pretty complex process and one L. is good at; but yesterday’s test was the older acrylic-tip nail job, which she likes less. You’ve probably seen the nails on women on TV – square-cut, seemingly coated with Liquid Paper. I despise the look. But that’s what I’ve got, albeit without the blinding white tips (mine are a soft white). They look nice, I guess, but I would never willingly sit for three hours every 2-3 weeks for this procedure.

She took pictures of the best three nails, as required by the test, and emailed them last night. Meanwhile, I’m looking at the square corners and itching to file them into a more rounded shape.

Critiquing commercials

If there was any easy money in it, and if I could stomach the task, it would be interesting to be a stay-at-home Commercial Advertising Critic.

To say most TV advertising is vile and obnoxious is an understatement and certainly not an original observation. And, with only basic cable and just a few channels from which to choose to watch my mere handful of favourite shows, I am subjected to the same commercials over and over again. I hit “mute” regularly and will even look away in order to avoid certain nauseating and repetitive visuals.

Here are a few of my longtime or recent “favourites” – some of which just happen to feature human and animal posteriors.

1)      Disney. Surprise the kids with a trip to Disney! One little girl needed better direction; her look of “delight” as she spots magical Disney characters through her window makes me think she’s just seen Mickey Mouse being torn to shreds by zombies on the street below. I wonder how many times the director yelled “Cut” before giving up? Seriously – he couldn’t get the child to smile?

2)      Depend “In Colour” adult diapers. An attractive middle-aged woman tosses her hair in a carefree fashion and smiles as she strides along a busy sidewalk. She’s wearing Depends! She’s attractive and confident! Then, the rear shot reveals a shapeless, flat rear (bad) with unsightly panty lines (worse). Sheesh! Anybody who watches “What Not To Wear” knows that panty lines are the devil’s work. The next actor, a handsome older black man (giving “Depends in ‘Colour’” a new meaning), winks at the camera and walks away, but we get no butt shot. Foul!

3)      Charmin. Years of Charmin ursine idiocy have not inured me to the repulsiveness of these commercials. The emphasis is partly on the need to use fewer squares (agreed – use too much Charmin and it will plug up your toilet) but the companion message is… a cleaner bum. “No messy pieces left behind!” The question begs to be asked: Who examines their own or someone else’s rear end for clingy pieces of tissue paper? Wouldn’t this concern, in fact, apply only to animals with fur? Or porn stars? And how to explain “you can enjoy going more while using less” as incentive? Is pooping aplenty so attractive?

4)      McDonalds. I rarely eat junk food or fast food, so these ads don’t influence me. They do occasionally make my jaw drop, though, and not in awe. More like in disbelief at their unmitigated gall. It must truly be a challenge to be persuasively creative when purveying food loaded with fat and salt. Recent shining examples of McDonalds hubris were the Christmas “Dad” ads – in which the ideal Christmas gift for the Dad-who-has-everything is some “quality time” over chicken McNuggets. Or the newest spot, which really does beat them all; it shows a pregnant woman, presumably easing some weird cravings, dipping her chicken McNugget into her caramel sundae. Nothing but the best for this fetus!

I was encouraged recently by a friend’s teenager’s remark that she doubts very much that Olympic athletes eat at Mickey D’s. The franchise’s sponsorship of sporting events would be laughable, if it weren’t so fundamentally dishonest.

Dido's Lament

I could listen to this over and over. Composed by Purcell, it is sung here by Brit pop star Alison Moyet. It would be absolutely guaranteed to reduce a congregation to heaps of sobbing mush at a funeral. (No, I am not particularly bent on talking about death lately, it just seems to pop up on its own.)

In other news, I am waging a small war against house centipedes. It might be hard, if not impossible to win, but I shall do my best.

I found one of these on a wall one morning... better there than underfoot, but still!

On disappearing

Lately I've read a couple of works of fiction that just happened to include ghosts, although it must be said that I will often pick up a ghost story over something more edifying. I imagine that the concept of ghosts or spirits must be pretty interesting to most human beings, because we are know that we are finite and some of wonder what comes after this.

In less than four months, two of Alex's old schoolmates have committed suicide. They were both 20 or 21. The first was shocking enough; the second, which I just heard about a few days ago, was accompanied with more of a feeling of unreality. Both boys (because I knew them as boys and teens) were difficult, insofar as the first was a serious bully who made Alex's life hellish for several years and held my son with a simmering resentment even though the two had long been out of contact; the second was a troublemaker of the most typical kind for his age, a handsome kid with obvious smarts but definitely one to keep an eye on if he were in your house (which he was, often).

Well, we all know what motivates bullies. The bottom line is fear, which branches out into low self-esteem and manifests as arrogance and cruelty. I came close to truly hating that kid many times, poor thing. But he grew from a chubby, short kid into a strong, handsome young man and he'd bought himself a big ole honker of a car and had pictures of himself grinning with friends on Facebook. The troublemaker, for his part, just struck me as bored and looking for kicks. Not unusual for his age. I figured he'd grow out of it.

As a mother, I cannot fathom the idea of a child taking his own life. And I knew the mother of the bully quite well; she'd had her own rather severe troubles back in the day. There were painkillers and rehab and an unhappy marriage in there, but she fought through everything and came out on top.

I have, I guess, all the usual feelings and questions about the boys... the first one being why? What was so wrong that they couldn't go on? Was it drugs? I know how they can plunge someone into such depression that suicidal thoughts can emerge, can take over. Was it that? Was there absolutely no glimmer of hope for the years ahead? No girlfriend who mattered enough, no thought for family members? I guess not. I've been there, and only the thought of Alex made me get up and trudge back into my daily existence. And even Alex was just a tenuous thread. My decision to go on living was almost a grudging one.

Thankfully, I got over that, because there was much good to come and I experienced it.

I watched a scientific show about different ways our Earth could be destroyed. This planet is so fragile, it's almost laughable. Big meteor, black hole, Yellowstone Park... so many ways we'd wink out of existence in no time. The black hole is possibly the quickest; the planet would get sucked in, torn apart, vaporized.

Vaporization seems infinitely preferable to most forms of death. It's instant and there's no mess left behind: no body, no autopsy, no funeral with all the expensive and ridiculous trappings. It would be nice to know that you might just be considered "AWOL" for the rest of all time and maybe the government wouldn't be allowed to impose death taxes (which infuriates me).

And just so's you know, none of this is like morbid thinking... it's really just musing.

I'd have to say that overall, life is pretty good right now. Kinda quiet, but you won't hear me complaining about that!

Shut up and make a decision!

(title courtesy of "House")

Unfortunately, the moments of peace in the last post are not as frequent as I’d like them to be. The young couple upstairs generate enough noise for a small family. Then again, as my dad said, neighbours are everywhere, not always next door or across the hall or upstairs, you just have to accept it.

Or not. I still can’t decide if I want to make this place liveable or not. The before-last tenant, an older woman who lived here 14 years (most of them under a different landlord) dropped by unexpectedly on Saturday and warned me about mold. She said to look at the back and side exterior walls (I did; there’s mold) and that the smell inside was noticeable. TOO BAD I CAN’T SMELL. She moved out of here sometime last year and into a residence.

Now there are two ways to look at this. Either the place isn’t that bad or she just couldn’t bear to pack up and move at her age, or maybe couldn’t afford to. On the other hand, a residence for the elderly costs a bundle. On the third hand, she didn’t have the brats upstairs. I will inquire if I see her again.

The brats are really something, I try not to let them occupy my thoughts but it’s hard not to when they’re so in your face. Yesterday I was hanging laundry out and the dude came partway down the stairs with his dog, then stopped when he saw me. I told him about the four piles of dog crap I’d just picked up. He grunted. About an hour later, the girlfriend came down with the dog and allowed him to pee on the lawn. It’s just… unreal. I told her about the crap, too. She launched into her usual story about how careful they try to be.

So I really need to decide. Give the landlord three months notice and get the hell out before the fall? Or continue to put up? Overall, I’m not happy here. I guess that’s the bottom line. The cons outweigh the pros.

I kept all my boxes.

These days

My fleeting moments of absolute peace are found very early in the morning, on my back porch, which looks over other backyards but which lies sideways to the other residential constructions so that there are no actual windows from other houses looking back at me in my housecoat, uncombed, with coffee mug and smoke.

Most mornings start between 5 and 6 a.m. The sky is still dark then, with only the faintest hint of less-than-black to indicate that day is about to begin.

All the birds I learned to identify in Gore are here. The white-throated sparrow doesn’t compete for attention, it sings pure and high as a soprano over the strident tootle of the blue jay, the thrilled burble of the wakening robin, the redneck caw of the crow. Through it all is the chipper dee-dee of the chickadee. Together, as the sky pales, they make a joyful and sweet sound in the air. The dull rush of the river is like a nearby air-conditioner.

Green lies in front, on the ground and in the trees of neighbouring yards. Someone before me planted a lilac in the yard, and verdant leaves are sprouting along the rotting fence. A single yellow tulip defies the black squirrels which slink here and there. I watch them go up and down trees, across the road, through yards, over branches and electrical wires, and pray they leave my tulip be. So far, so good.

Evenings, I go down to the riverside, but not often enough. The riverbanks, sloping down from the road which is thankfully much less busy than where I lived before, are an instant cure for whatever urban ails one might have. I pick my way down the beaten dirt path, using a long stick to scoop manmade refuse into my garbage bag: sodden plastic grocery bags with a few mouldy dog turds in the bottom, flattened plastic bottles, bits of Styrofoam. The water laps unceasingly at the rocky shoreline, reminding me of the lake in Ayer’s Cliff.

I sit above the river, which runs swift and cold toward the violent dam gates a few hundred yards further, and hope I never fall or jump in. Small scuttling sounds signal woodland life behind my back.

The sun is long gone when I walk back up the path, reluctantly.

It's better - it has to be, right?

Quick one... the new place is cool. I love the high ceilings and tall windows, the abundant light. It's nice to have 4 rooms instead of two. Mind you, all of them are piled with boxes and large garbage bags, with just thin trails to allow me to get to the fridge, the sink, the bathroom, the bed (which itself is completely surrounded by stuff. I can't see the floor.)

It's also nice not to have neighbours across a wall or across the hall. But now I have people overhead, which is a whole new ball 'o wax. Thump thump thump they go! Up and down their outdoor stairs (to the side of the house) like a small herd of elephants 50 times each day, with large dog in tow. And the horking! OK... it's only one guy, not four as it was before... Just one, but he seems to have a very bad cold or lung condition. I sure hope it clears up soon. I do plan to inquire solicitously about it. Because it's pretty bad, and I can hear it very clearly. And it's extremely stomach-turning.

But now my TV is reconnected so I can play music or something to cover up the sound of---HEY! Didn't I move from the last place so I wouldn't have to resort to these sorts of tactics?

Sigh.

Really, though -- happy to be here.