Learned behaviour

Do you ever catch yourself doing silly things that you laughed at your parents for doing?  I caught myself twice in the last little while, and both of them were strangenesses passed on from my mom.

First, I will NEVER (said Eve style) drink the end of the milk.  I will go out of my way to avoid using the last part of the carton / jug.  (as an aside, that last part should read carton stroke jug - not carton slash jug - sounds more posh that way).  I don't actually believe that inheriting this one is a bad thing - have you seen the nastiness on a milk jug at the end of its life?

The second one is definitely weird.

Kathryn was hogging the sink in the kitchen doing dishes or something, and I needed a cup of water for something (maybe a recipe?).  Anyway - I went in to the bathroom to get the water from the tap there.  Then I paused.  Could I possibly consider using bathroom water to cook with / (stroke) drink?

What you need to know is that my mom NEVER drank water from the bathroom tap.  NEVER!  It took me a long time to work up the courage to use that bathroom water for my urgent needs, even though I've seen the pipes in my basement and know that it all comes from the same place.


Makes me wonder what I'm passing down to my kids.

Childhood memories

The other day, I got to thinking about childhood memories and tried to think about the earliest memory that I had.  I came up with this one:

I have a hazy memory about driving in the car with my mom.  Pretty sure we were on the Whitemud, going down the hill to cross the bridge over Snow Valley (or Rainbow Valley, as we called it at our house, since none of us were Super-G aficionados).  Surprisingly (or really not, if you're in my family) - the car broke down.  I think it was the old Pontiac Acadian that my sister later retired by smashing in to a parked car (who does that? - sorry Colleen).  Anyway - it was raining, and I think my mom had to walk home, carrying me in the rain.  Remember, this was before cell phones - even those giant clunky ones that had a cord like in the movie Twins.

Whenever I think of this memory, I often wonder if I really remember it, or if I've been told the story so many times that I've fabricated the memory.  I think I was only 3 or 4 at the time, which makes me think that the whole thing is a fabrication of my imagination, or was embellished in the re-telling by my mom.  What probably really happened was that on a sunny afternoon, the car didn't start while sitting in our garage, and my mom had to hold my hand as we walked back to the house, instead of going to McDonald's for some Styrofoam-en-wrapped goodness.  Notice that the broken car thing was still there - that's the only detail that I'm sure is true, given our family's car history.

The other memory that comes to mind was the time my sisters got some Halloween-like face paint.  They all went off and painted their faces all girly-like, or maybe like some forgotten 80's gimmicky band - I dunno.  ANYWAY, I was probably 7 or so at the time, and I really wanted to have my face painted like the Hulk.  This was in the days before the god-awful CGI-generated hulk, when you had Lou Ferrigno looking like this:

Behold his awesomeness!

Anyway, dad got the face paint and got to work.  After a few minutes, which, in retrospect, must have been terrible to him, knowing what I know as a dad of girls who want makeup, nail polish, etc.  (I mean, I have absolutely no skills in this department - which I guess is a good thing), I was finished and ready to tear my shirt off and terrorize my sisters.

Except that the makeup was pretty pastel-shaded.  So I was less Incredible Hulk and more sea-sick Titanic victim.  I took one look in the mirror and then fled to my room to cry into my pillow (and cover it in sea-foam makeup).  I don't think I ever apologized to my dad.  He was just doing his best, and I had an Emily-style ingrate fit about it.

Why do I mention these memories?  Well, both of them were traumatic.  As a parent, I wonder what my kids' memories will be when they're my age.  Will they remember trips to England and Mexico, fun outings, Staycations?  Or will it be all about when I didn't let them have chocolate, or that our house is so boring because we don't have cable.

I think I'll stop bothering to create good memories - just make the bad ones extra-memorable.  Good idea?

Bracket busting

In honour of March Madness, I'd like to talk about a little bracket-busting of my own.

When I was little, our family used to take long road-trip vacations in our van, towing a trailer. Since my dad was a teacher, he had two months off in the summer, so we could take our time and drive to California or Florida. These trips were generally 6-8 hour days spent in the van, puncuated with quick stops at tourist attractions and KOAs. And, to get off topic, there's nothing like pulling up to a KOA when you're little and seeing both a swimming pool AND an arcade - HEAVEN!

ANYWAY, we had the full-sized dodge van - none of these puny little mini-vans for our family. In the 80s, long before the advent of car seats, baby helmets and the like, we were allowed to be out of our seats and lying down on the giant carpeted floor space between the middle seats and the back of the van. I think that my dad carpeted this himself - so it was an awesomly comfortable shag from time to time (depending on the van, and on what was cheap at the carpet store I guess).

One of my favourite passtimes whist relegated to the back of the van was to have smash-up derbies with my Hot Wheels cars. I usually had about 16-20 cars with me. The rules are pretty easy - take two cars, one in each hand - point them at eachother, then smash them together. If one car remains on its wheels while the other turns over, that car wins. The cars faced off in a best of 3 match.

So, off I would go, setting up the initial bracket for my derby championship. The cars would face off, and half would be eliminated. This would continue until there was one car left. The champion, you say? Not even close!

That would only waste about half an hour. When you're driving through Montana, you need to kill a lot more time than that. The winning car would be put aside, and the remaining cars would then face off in a renewed bracket. The losing finalist from the previous round would get a bye to future smash-up rounds. It was all very complicated.

Eventually, I'd be down to 2 cars left that hadn't managed to win. These were generally the ugly Motorhome, the Bubble Gunner (both pictured below), or the tractor part of a semi that had lost its trailer. This one lost all the time because it was so light and top-heavy. Also, I didn't like it all that much.

There were actually two motorhomes, but one of them had all the paint chipped off, so I repainted it in red - the tires, windows, body, etc and called it he Devil Mobile.  It fared a lot better - it must have been heavier due to all that extra paint - because I'm not really all that good at being light with a paintbrush.  Especially with my sausage fingers.

Back to the competition... it would go on and on for hours, until there was one definite winner - the champion of champions.  It was usually this awesome Ferrari Key Car.  I think it was a combination of the car's wedge shape and the fact that I always wanted it to win.  I think that I would press down on the car really hard in an effort to get that wedge-shaped hood under the wheels of the other cars.  In the 80s, the Ferrari Testarossa was the ultimate in coolness, especially if you like Magnum PI.  My dad still has the car at his house - I should maybe steal it and re-enact the derby championship.

Of course, if my kids tried to do that, I'm sure that I would yell at them to keep the noise down and go do something else.

Nicknames

For some reason, members of our family have a plethora of nicknames. I'm pretty sure that most of them are brought to you by Kathryn, who can't seem to call people by their real names. So, I thought it would be helpful to give you all a primer on the names in our family:

David: Deeds, D, DD, Pums, Pidge (for pidgeon, as in "Whatsa mattah pidge?"), DB (Tropical Breeze only)

Kathryn: K, Kate, Katie Lou (only for those expecting a punch), KB (again, Tropical Breeze only), Big Blue, Mrs. Bouvier, Bouves (or sometimes, Boobs)

Emily: Em, Emmie, Gem, Gemmie, Gemelina, The Jeet, Jeetsie, Em-Jeet, Brown-eyed girl, Big Brown, Gemelo, Bubble

Rebecca: Becca, Becs, Bean, Beanie, Beanbag, Blue-eyed girl, The Middle-est, Little Blue, Rebs, Rebsie, Becca-boo-bo, Eloise, Princess Eloise, Julia, Princess Julia (those last ones are self-named), Rebroccoli

Eve: Evie, Believe-y, Believes, Little Badness, Little Brown, Eves

And, for extended family members:

Georgina: Gina, Geenz, Jammy, Jamzinger, Geenz-Jammy, Francine, Jorgehina (said with a spanish accent).

Matthew: Faffu, Faffs, Le Faff

Suzie: Suze, Booze, Blues, Blues Clues, Boozy, Floozy, Boggus

Adam: Ponyboy, Jesus

Chris: Wristy (I think Kathryn's the only one that calls him this), Cheese

Janet: Juanita, Juanny, Nanny noona, Nick nacky noona, Nanny Juanny

Bill: Mr. Dressup, Gorbachev

James: Gorbachev (long story)

Janine: J9, Martha (maybe?)

Colleen: Hmm - I don't have one, other than Coh-leen

Ear Chud Champion

So, I'll bet that my Thanksgiving dinner wrapped up in a way that was completely different from any of you (barring those who were there of course).

First off - to set the stage - we had Thanksgiving dinner for Kathryn's family at her sister Georgina's house. This was the first big family dinner that Gina and Matthew hosted - so props to them. Special props to Jammy for doing things the way she wanted, and not just to please everyone else (Babies of families unite!)

Anyway, I'll be that after your boring dinners, you played some games, or watched sports, or *gasp* talked to each other. BORING! Not us.

We decided - at a suggestion from Kathryn's brother, who I shall call X-opher (think X-mas) that a good after dinner entertainment would be to flush eachoter's ears with a syringe.

Yes, you read that right.

Since Georgina's a nurse - we had access to a medical-grade syringe (no turkey basters for us - although, the syringe would have made a good baster...)

The end result is that I managed to have the biggest chunk of chud flushed from my ear. Go me!

Sibling rivalry

So, welcome to my very own blog. (woops, typed that as blob the first time).

I was reading my sister's blog, and decided that I needed to create one of my own. This decision is based 100% on the fact that I need to be better / funnier than my sister. Don't get me wrong - we get along really well now that we're all grown up - but I still can't get over 20+ years of fighting with her constantly.

I'm not sure why we fought so much growing up - I think it's probably because we were constantly struggling for the second place finish in the land of our mom's favour. We both knew that Colleen was the favourite, so any points earned towards that second-place status were highly cherished!

And it seems that the latest battlefield is going to be Guitar Hero III. Janine jumped the gun by ordering it before I could get my hands on it. She's got a week's lead on me - but I have a misspent youth of video game skillz that will definitely be a bonus. So Janine - GAME ON! (of course, I'm still waiting for mine to come in the mail).... hopefully I can be a real guitar hero before Easter.

One more thing Janine - do they have that great (read stupid) song that you used to play on your classical guitar? (Duh duh..... dinh, duh duh duh)

P.S. In case you're curious, Diids is my ace Mii at Wii sports.