Holiday Antics

I am purposely titling this specific blog "Holiday Antics" because of an unkind (yet poignant and thought provoking) gesture that was posted on my Facebook account a couple of days ago. Let me explain....I am a document-er. I like to record my world visually and the holiday season is a delightful reason to pull out the well-worn camera. So, slowly, through the days of the holiday I have been posting the different events that have been occurring in my and my son's little world on Facebook. The title of the album is "Christmas 2009" with a sub-title that reads, "and so it begins.....another holiday season". One of my so-called (but no longer) friends added the following small, yet profound, statement. He said, "It's called Christmas."

It's called Christmas.

First of all, this person obviously can't read, because if he had checked the bold title of the album, it does make a strong reference to Christmas, hence the title "Christmas 2009". But that three word statement is uncomfortably scary for me because if I swayed with that philosophy I would be excluding a whole hell of a lot of people from joining in on celebrating the holiday season with me. And I would be excluding a whole hell of a lot of celebration and joy during the holiday season as well. How can three words be so close minded? How can three words be so biased and exclusive? To me, that statement is full of assumptions that I should only be enjoying that specific day, Christmas day, with only like-minded individuals that believe in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Hey, all the power to him for having such a strong faith in his religion. I grew up in a religious home believing in that same ideal, but that doesn't mean that it's just about mangers, and sheep, and shepherds, and Mary and stars and frankincense. Because I'm not a religious person now, and Christmas still is a special day steeped in tradition and culture and family and friends and magic and beauty. The whole holiday is, with Christmas day being just one of those days and I want to enjoy that day with everyone, even with like minded Pagans like myself. (haha)

And talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket. If I had just focused solely on Christmas day, then I would have to dismiss all of the fun that Alexander and I had the other day, sliding down the Kinsmen beach hill with our buddies (even though there's not enough snow and we're picking pebbles off our butt from the experience). I would have to dismiss the concert that was put on at the school, where my son got on stage and sang a really cool song in the local Ojibway language. I would have to dismiss the late night gift wrapping and beer drinking fiascoes which made for some very creative wrapping designs. I would have to dismiss the funny jiggling Wal-mart Santa hats. I would have to dismiss snuggling in bed with my son and singing Christmas songs, both traditional and contemporary. I would have to dismiss the magic of Santa bringing a stocking on Christmas eve instead of Christmas day "just because he happened to be in the neighbourhood". I would have to dismiss my son singing carols to the senior citizens at Northwood's Lodge. I would have to dismiss eggnog. No, that's just not right. You simply cannot dismiss eggnog just because Mary didn't happen to lactate eggnog on December 25th how many thousands of years ago.

So I figure this guy needs to stop worrying that his Jesus is being taken out of his Christmas because of statements such as "the holiday season". As long as he believes that to be his Christmas, nobody can take that away from him because it's a truth and a thought and a belief in his own mind. It becomes scary when he thinks that he has the power to control my truth, and thoughts and beliefs.  If I believe that Santa and Jesus are kickin' it old school back in a hay-filled room at the North Pole, that is my prerogative and in no way should alter his beliefs of  Christmas day. I simply believe in enjoying every day, and encompassing all of the small, simply, joyful pleasures of life and putting them in an album on Facebook referring to the holiday season. Life's too short to get caught up in semantics.

And I hope that all of you are given enough rest and tranquility to have that in your world too. Merry Christmas to you, regardless of your personal interpretation of that. I wish you peace.

Christmas Tradition

Ah, Christmas is coming so quickly, and I am seeing a lot of haggard people desperately, frantically pulling out their wallets in the hopes that this year will be "the perfect Christmas". It certainly isn't my favourite season as everyone, including myself, gets swept up in the commercialism, and expectations, and expenses. Now I'm sure that you're probably thinking to yourself, "Oh, here comes righteous Rhonda to tell us that Christmas is about spirit, and giving, and loving and blah, blah, blah", so I don't have to bother you with drivel. I can cut right to the chase. Christmas equates to indulgence. Christmas sorts out the haves and the have nots, in the most horrible of ways. I would hate to be that "have not" kid that has to go back to school after the holidays and listen to one of the "have" kids talk about allllll of the stuff they got for Christmas. You know, growing up, we certainly weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we still got gifts. Some are even very memorable....(Grade 4, my "satin steel" drum kit; I would put my Joan Jett "I Love Rock n' Roll" album on with my head phones plugged in, and whack away at those drums like a real rock star.) And at the time, I probably didn't think to NOT brag about getting that drum kit, and I don't recall my teacher saying anything to us about just keeping our newly acquired treats to ourselves, but in retrospect, we definitely should have had that discussion. Almost 30 years later, I am ashamed of my blatant disrespect for others with my innocent chatter of Christmas cheer.

Christmas time also makes me think about the child who lives in a separated home, as my child does. Some children actually have to make the decision on their own, as to whether they are going to have Christmas with their mom or their dad. Some times they have to actually leave their primary home and leave their friends for the holidays to go and see the other parent in a different town or province. I don't know about you, but I think if I was that kid, there might be a little bit of resentment that my parents couldn't get their shit together and help with that decision making. My own child is lucky in the sense that he has two separated parents that don't hate each other, and have an amicable set up for the holidays. It doesn't make it easy though. It really sucks that I don't get to wake my son up every Christmas morning and share that experience with him immediately. I have to wait my turn every second year. But I'm not pouting about it, because I think the alternative would be worse. It just makes me upset to think that parents can be excruciatingly selfish during the Christmas season instead of thinking about how much stress they could be putting onto their own child.

And then there is the gift stress.....are they going to like the gifts? (Yes, I purposely pluralized gifts, because we live in a one-isn't-enough-anymore society). Is this gift educational? Is this gift functional? Is this gift expressive of my feelings for this person, rendering it special and personal? Is this gift going to collect dust in their closet after I spent "x" amount of hours working on it, or "x" amount of dollars on it? It becomes a judgment call in the end, and that is excruciatingly painful and frustrating to have to do sometimes. Sometimes I think that I'm just going to stop buying gifts for everyone and instead, start buying sheep and chickens and cows for families around the world  in my friend's and family's' name, but (I'll admit it) I'm still buying in to the pressure of tradition. As I type this, there is a decorated Christmas tree to my left, and  blinky lights flashing to my right, mistletoe hanging in my dining area and glittery goop, et al adorning every nook and cranny of my house. I like the schmulk yet I'm torn between reveling in it and feeling guilty that not all can.

*Sigh* I guess that I have made some small changes though. I have started to tell friends that I'm just not doing the Christmas gift thing anymore and for the most part, they're OK with that. I don't send out Christmas cards anymore; instead I send out a Christmas email which I think is the same thing, it's just electronic. As a family, we have decided that next year we will draw names for gifts, which will alleviate a lot of stress as well. So perhaps with that extra money, next year, I can buy a couple herds of cows for a family somewhere. That would make me happy.

Yeesh. I sound pretty bitter. Really, Christmas isn't complete drudgery for me. I get to raid my mom's cold storage room and eat her yummy homemade perogies and cabbage rolls. My son and I sing Christmas carols together every night for a couple weeks before the big day, and now that Alexander can play the guitar it's an even more exciting adventure. We're rocking that Rudolph song. (Singing Christmas carols will always remind me of my childhood with my sister, sitting in our big flannel pajamas, singing together, for what seemed like hours some times.) And we always have a craft day, where we make something laden with glue and glitter. This year my adorable nephew joined in on the tradition. Cookies are always baked...(this year I'm going to try to make something with tofu). We check out the parade and get pretty excited when we see Santa (except if Alexander's friends are around because that would be "TOTALLY EMBARRASSING, MOM!!!!") We hang out with our dear friends and have sliding parties and eat goodies. Like I said, it's indulgent. But I hope it's indulgent in love, and sharing, family and friendship.

I hope that you too are privileged to enjoy that bit of indulgence, and remember those that aren't as fortunate to have those opportunities.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

The Gift of the Magi (as sung by the Squirrel Nut Zippers) 

My heart is sad, my soul is weary

Though Christmas day is fast appear'n.

I have no silver, I have no gold
To buy my wife a gift this year.
To see her sad on Christmas morning
Is a thing I cannot bear
I'll pawn the watch my father gave me
To buy a comb for her hair

Oh mother, mother what shall I do?
Though Christmas day is fast appear'n.
I have no silver, I have no gold
To buy my love a gift this year.
For I am poor and I'm a beggar
Not a cent have I, no dime I claim
I'll trade the golden hair that is our pleasure
'Buy for your watch a golden chain

Darling, darling today is christmas
What has become of your golden hair?
For I've traded our only treasure
These silver combs for you to wear.

Darling, darling we've lost our treasure
My gift to you is a golden chain.
Though we've pawned away our only pleasures,
These gifts we give are not in vain.

The wise men came on Christmas morning
Their gifts of love they came to bear
From that day on always remembered
Our own true love forever share"

Spider Babies

I have made an online, blogger friend through this site, and like to check out Chad's photos taken way over in Japan. He has a tendency to look up a lot (even though I have seen photos of his feet as well) and has taken incredible photos of the sky in different forms and trees in a plethora of hues. Today when I was looking at his sight, I let out a shudder that immediately sent me back to nine years ago, when I came upon his photo of a spider silhouette.

The story I am about to tell you is completely true and one of my favourite stories to tell my students to totally gross them out. This story has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas and won't drive you to the Kleenex box.

It was the early summer of 2000 and I was well into my second trimester of pregnancy. Thanks to my Polish and Ukrainian genetics, I was not one of those cute little basketball belly pregnancies that I see so many ladies fashionably and luckily carry. (Maternity clothes was made for these ladies....not me.)I was the full, spread hips, big ol' Mama-boobs pregnant lady and probably started retaining water hours after conception. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in summer dresses and soaking my feet in a kiddie pool.

As you may know, I am also a gardener, and really prided myself on the lima bean shaped rock garden that I had created a couple of summers before. It was full of fresh green veggies that would soon create prolific amounts of yumminess. Because of my cumbersome belly, I had a tendency to walk through the aisles of my garden on my hands and knees, weeding along the way. I found out soon after that this was a big mistake. I was close to the rocks, and rocks (along with other dark, cool, moist places) are wonderful places for brown recluse spiders to hide. By the time I noticed I was bit by one, I had the typical round, red ring around the back of my calf. It is interesting to note, I did not feel the bite. It was not until probably that evening or the next day that it was noticed. So, I monitored it for a couple of days, and then the bite started to get a bit bigger and a little itchy. I figured I might want to go to the doctor.

You may be reading this right now saying, Jesus! I'd have been in that hospital immediately!!! But please note that I live in a small remote community that is pretty low on doctors, and so we tend to take our health into our own hands a lot. The doctors we do have are absolutely spent from working the incredible hours that they do, dealing with every facet of medicine and health. The overall mentality around here is, if it's not that bad, then let it be. Take an ibuprofen. Rest for a day. Check it out on the internet (or not). We have a bit of a survivalist mentality in this neck of the woods. But I was pregnant and a bit worried. I started thinking, what if there is spider poison in my leg? What if I'm poisoning my little baby? So, up I went to the doctor and he confirmed that I definitely had a spider bite. Now what? Well, because I was pregnant he really couldn't give me any heavy duty antibiotic (the bite had a weird bacteria on it called acinetobacter which is usually connected to hospital environments!!!) As if that wasn't creepy enough. When the doctor told me that, I demanded that he just cut the whole chunk out of my leg and be done with it. I was willing to do that, but he didn't feel the need to be so extreme. Sometimes I have been known to be a little extreme. Ahem.....

So I went back home and noticed that my bite was starting to protrude with a bump, and continued to do so for about a week. Things were getting freaky.  I went back to the doctor demanding to get this bite cut out of my leg again, and he continued to tell me to just "monitor" the bite. Monitor my ass, buddy. (Well, I never said that, but I sure wanted to.) So, I sat down in my bathroom, and did what any pregnant, slightly insane woman would do. I squeezed it. Yep, just like a big ol' pimple. I squeezed the bite, and out popped a small white pearl sized ball. Holy shit. What the hell is that? I took a pin to it and inside this ball/pod was what looked like thousands of tiny little white eggs. My freakin' leg was full of spider eggs.

I was not just pregnant with one; at this point in my life, I was pregnant with thousands.

After I had a complete wiggy and did the freaky coo-coo dance all over my bathroom and screamed bloody murder, I flushed the egg(s) and it's creepy little pod down the toilet and got on with my life. To this day, I still have a little divot in the back of my leg, and it's still sensitive to the touch. Every time I see a spider walking around carrying their sack of eggs on their back, I have a mixture of feelings. In a strange way, it takes me back to my days of being pregnant and regardless of how bulbous I was, it was still beautiful to have my little baby growing inside of me. And I feel for the poor spider mama who unknowingly lost her thousands of babies. How the hell those eggs got in there in the first place, I'll never know. It seems like a science fiction story. So, I don't squash spiders, even if I really despise them. And I feel nervous when I put on a pair of boots that have been in storage all winter (one of their favourite places to "sleep") and shake the crap out of them before I put them on. Oh, and don't bother buying me a pair of work or garden gloves. I won't wear them because they're practically spider houses.

As a side story, a few summers ago, my mother and son and I were driving down the 105 very early in the morning; around 6am. There had been a low fog in the area, and it was just starting to clear up. Along the side of the highway, I kept on seeing these strange white blobs in the bush. By the time we got to Ear Falls, I just had to get out of the truck and see what the heck all of these blobs were. They were everywhere. Know what they were? Spider webs. Thousands of spider webs. It made me realize how many I walk through when I'm tromping through the bushes. The webs were only visible because the moisture had attached to the delicate silky threads. So, take note. You can't escape spiders; you have to accept them. (Keep in mind that they are actually very good to have in your yard) and just try your best not to get bit.

To this day, I wonder if that spider bite had an effect on my son. When he had colic, I secretly thought perhaps it might have been because of the spider bite. And when he demands flies for supper, I get a bit weirded out, but comply so I don't get bit again..................haha

PS: Thank you Chad, for the inspiration!
Chad's blog
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Bad Eggs, Sick Beds and New Songs

I am seriously starting to think that there is a psychosomatic connection in my house between eating omelets for supper and getting sick in the middle of the night. This is the second time in the last two months that this has happened. Perhaps it's coincidental. Perhaps I have actually bought two batches of bad eggs. Perhaps we just caught the flu and I have a tendency to want to cook eggs when I am feeling under the weather. Perhaps it's all in my head, but regardless of those coincidences, Alexander and I are at home today, feeling very below the weather.

If you recall a blog I wrote in September called "Hallucinogenic Artistry" I discussed the connection between illness and creativity. Here I am writing, and my son is creating some kind of duct tape wizardry magic in his studio. We should be in bed, but we're compelled to do other things. (I think we're just both very defiant people and refuse to succumb to the illness wholeheartedly. We just take "breaks" and spontaneously nap or barf, then get back to as we were......)

But it made me think about the quintessential "sick bed". Do you remember where you used to be when you were sick as a child? I remember one woman telling me that she had chronic asthma as a young girl, and her mother used to keep her in bed for exorbitant amounts of time. Her mom would give her a shot of whiskey to keep her in a bit of a mind muddle, so that she remained idle and didn't want to be too active, triggering an asthmatic attack. She also said that she borrowed a whole set of encyclopedias from somebody, and read them all in her mildly drunken stupor. Amazing. To this day, the woman is an avid reader, and has managed to outgrow her asthma and drinking habits.

I was always allowed to crawl in to my parent's bed when I was sick. My dad would be gone to work, and my mom would be doing something or another around the house, and would pop in on me to see how I was doing. This made me feel exceptionally special. I always got sick around Valentine's Day, practically every year. Annually, my sister had to take my hand written Valentines to school to give to the teacher to give to my classmates, and at the end of the day, my sister would come home with my carefully, creatively decorated envelope (that was usually made in art class the week before Valentine's day....we have really come leaps and bounds with the art curriculum in school) stuffed full of Valentines. I missed out on the excitement of seeing the guy I had a crush on putting a Valentine in the envelope that was taped to my desk. One year I even missed out on being the lead character of a Valentine's Day play that my Grade 3 teacher had arranged. We were going to invite parents in to watch the play and share snacks with us afterward. Instead, I was at home coughing and barfing and someone else got the limelight. But I will always remember that my Dad would come home for lunch, and sneak into the room with a Valentine's card and a treat of some kind for me....chocolates or a cute little trinket. Being in the sick bed on Valentine's Day wasn't so bad after all.

And my son is in on a "sick bed tradition" now too. Usually I bring all of the blankets from the house to my bedroom and lay them out on the floor like a big mattress and we all sleep on the floor together; including Sandy the Wonder Dog, a ton of books and a bucket. I do this for a couple of reasons; 1) Alexander is closer to the bathroom in case he has to get up quickly and he won't fall out of a bed because he's at ground level, 2) I am right beside him so I can hear him if he does happen to get sick and 3) there's nothing better than knowing that you're surrounded by family and that someone is there to take genuine care of you when you're not feeling well. I truly think the extra TLC is what helps a person heal.

And I can't help but yet again think of artists, cooped up in their homes, fighting their own health demons, like Frida Kahlo, trapped in a broken body in bed. She asked her father for some art supplies which triggered a life long creative connection between art and health. She may have gone in a completely different direction had she not been "stuck" with her own thoughts for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time. She taped a mirror to the ceiling of her bed's canopy and painted portraits of herself. She too defied her health and in between illness, created beauty.

So maybe that's why today, my son and I sat down and finally wrote a song that we've been talking about for some time now. It's a song about being lucky, and I guess that's how I am feeling regardless of the nausea. I am grateful that I have a job that compensates for sick children in its sick day plan and allows me to stay at home and coddle my son. I am grateful that I don't have to pretend I'm feeling well in front of a group of teenagers that are sometimes not as understanding as I wish they could be (even though most times, they really are) and I'm lucky that my son was well enough to strum on his guitar while we came up with this little ditty.  Enjoy.


Feelin' Lucky

Feelin' lucky
All around
Go back in the bush
Blueberries on the ground

Can't wait to get home
Eat 'em fresh with cream
So delicious
Is this all a dream?

Feelin' lucky
Goin' down the 105
Long windin' road
So glad to be alive

Runs past Ear Falls
To Vermilion Bay
Dodgin' moose and skunks
A-long the way

Bears at the dump
Fish that jump
Lakeview pancakes
Ice roads on lakes
Soccer at the park
Fires at dark
Lucky to live here
Any time of year

Feelin' lucky
On my bike
Headin' down the hill
Get a treat I like

Lemon lime slushie
Sour, icy treat
So cool and tasty
It can't be beat

Feelin' lucky
Shooting star went by
Almost missed it
Flashed right through the sky

So full of stars
Miles and miles up high
Twinklin' in the deep blue
I'm such a lucky guy


Bears at the dump
Fish that jump
Lakeview pancakes
Ice roads on lakes
Soccer at the park
Fires at dark
Lucky to live here
Any time of year

Feelin' lucky
Slidin' down the slope
At Kinsmen Beach
No wipe outs I hope

'Cause that hill is huge
Slippery and steep
Children at the bottom
Piled in a heap

Feelin' lucky
Livin' where we do
Surrounded by trees
And furry critters too

We know our neighbours
Know 'em all by name
Lucky to live here
I hope you feel the same

Bears at the dump
Fish that jump
Lakeview pancakes
Ice roads on lakes
Soccer at the park
Fires at dark
Lucky to live here
Any time of year

By Alexander Laevens and Rhonda Bobinski