Like Father, Like Scotch

It has been almost 3 years since TroubleMaker appeared on the scene. It has been an interesting time full of surprises. I had never changed a diaper before TroubleMaker. Not one! I knew nothing about them and I liked it that way.

Since TroubleMaker came into our lives things I have changed an estimated 2,400 diapers. It was really only a few dozen because we cloth diapered, so we reused a few of them. That means I washed about 800 loads of diapers.

These are only estimates and don’t take into account what my wife did in the baby sanitary department. So why am I suddenly so preoccupied with diapers? It isn’t because there is any sort of monetary reward, although if there were I believe, based on the numbers presented here, $1.5 million would be a fair amount. Just saying.

The point of the diaper story is to show things have changed in my life. I got married, acquired TWO mothers-in-law, became a father and have not had a decent scotch since TroubleMaker was born. Two mothers-in-law and no scotch; I have become a stronger person than I realized.

But this morning I found something else. I heard TroubleMaker talking to my wife about breakfast and he told her “I want cornflakes with my daddy.” He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. His daddy! That’s me. Unexpectedly I found my reward.

It's snowing today....

It snowed today. Actually it snowed yesterday afternoon, last night, this morning and this afternoon. It is supposed to snow more tonight and tomorrow. It has dumped about 15 cm. of snow on us, a fair amount but not enough to trap us in our homes and businesses. Too bad. We’re prepared. We have lots of hot chocolate, ginger cookies, pizza fixings, a couple of sleighs, a toboggan, and a couple of Jeeps. That doesn’t even include the shovels and other implements of wintery destruction.

With a population of approximately 782,439 warm souls in Edmonton, it seems like 782,000 are complaining about the snow. That seems odd you consider it has snowed here for probably the last 20,000 years. We should be at least a little prepared for it. I know we, as a species, are not great for planning ahead. Heck, morning always takes me by surprise, but collectively we have known about the coming snow since last summer. The snow tire ads on television should have been enough to alert us to the coming catastrophe. And we did have a several hours warning of this latest snow fall.

Maybe it is because I have come under the preternatural influence of a gregarious 2 year old, but I am finding snow to be a lot of fun. A small pile of snow in the back yard and away we go, sliding for the morning. Then after the morning of shoveling and playing it is time for hot chocolate and a snack. Now that our naps are done, it is time to consider the pizza party for tonight.

Tomorrow morning, it will be back outside to clear more snow, play with some cheap sleds, and then run and fall in the snow. TroubleMaker likes winter, and I can understand why. He makes it fun.

Now if someone would just dig the car out of the snow bank, I would be grateful. There is a steaming cup of hot chocolate as a reward! Any takers?

The dreaded Monster-In-Law

The other day it came to light that one of my mother’s-in-law was reading my blog.

I know what you are thinking, “Multiple mothers-in-law? How did you manage to get more than one woman to marry you? Why haven’t you been arrested?”

This is not the utopian fantasy of multiple wives to serve my every whim and want. It is one of the outcomes of the changing nature of the family. Marriage, divorce, remarriage, re-divorce, drunken indiscretions have all combined to create a new family structure. In my case, it has resulted in two mothers-in-law, and I now know that at least one of them has been reading this blog. Now I have to watch what I say.

I did a bit of research about the concept of the mother-in-law. There appears to be only 10 clean jokes about them. There are lots of other jokes but they aren’t nice. The clean jokes aren’t funny.

Most of the axioms, aphorisms and proverbs about mothers-in-law are not nice, except maybe the biblical ones, but it is hard to tell if those are about mothers-in-law or sin. Surprisingly mothers-in-law are not universally respected. I don’t understand why. About the only ones who didn’t have anything bad to say about mothers-in-law were Adam and Oscar Wilde. Neither of my mothers-in-law seems overtly evil.

In fact they can be quite nice. One mother-in-law is always grateful when I carry her bags to her car after one of her stays with us. I guess the question is: What son-in-law wouldn’t assist his mother-in-law with getting her baggage to the curb?

The phenomenon of the mother-in-law is closely associated with interference. That means my mothers-in-law should be interfering with my family. I know, from my research, that this can be an insidious process that makes itself known within weeks of the wedding. While I haven’t seen anything like this in the four years of our marriage I know what to look for now.

One of the other hallmarks of the typical mother-in-law is the ‘imposition’. We all know the types of impositions. Invitations to dinner! Babysitting TroubleMaker so we can go out! Help with household chores when they visit! The list is endless! Okay, so it is not a great list, still, you get the idea!

Through all of this trial and turmoil I have learned that the grandchild is the great equalizer. He is no longer just my son. He will be my pawn. I can ransom his time with his grandparents, my mothers-in-law, for what ever I desire; a new car, a new motorhome, even a roof for the house (just to show I am not completely selfish). And as soon as I can get him and his mother, my wife, in line with my scheme to combat the mother-in-law problem we will start to see positive results. Someday they will come around to my way of thinking

So while it may look to the casual observer that I am pretty lucky to have the mothers-in-law I do have, I also know looks can be deceiving. I am just not sure how that applies to this case. Remember, you can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

A Year in Review, sorta

A new year is approaching; a chance to change calendars. It seems the most popular parts of the rolling over of the year are resolutions, nonsensical lists reviewing the past year and drinking.

People also spend a lot of time reviewing the waning year looking to see if can tell us something significant about ourselves or our peers. The success of the exercise seems to depend on the talents of the analyst and the honesty applied to the analysis.

That is why so many of us don’t make New Years Resolutions, we don’t look at our lives with a great deal of honesty. If we truly did how many of us would smoke, drink or be Conservatives?

So before I begin tonight’s round of smoking and drinking I would like to do a little review of my own year. There are even points where I will apply a little truthfulness to the process.

I spent part of this year battling my own strange little demons. I would like to lay the blame for their existence squarely on my parent’s shoulders but I have to take responsibility for my own life at some point. I will make note of this for next year.

With the support of my lovely wife and our dog Max I have been able wrestle my black cloud of emotional turmoil into something that resembles submission. It isn’t gone, but neither does it control my life like it once did. And now I have ways to deal with it.

The biggest change I saw for myself this year was my son. As much as I loved him before, it is nothing like what I feel now. Sure, at times he can still make me crazy. The logic a two year old uses resembles nothing I have ever encountered before. The lessons he has learned from me, good and bad, have taught me how incredibly important my wife and I are to his development and well being. This is the point where I would like to babble on endlessly about how great he is and what he has taught me, but I hate it when people do that. Instead I will save it for when we have company and I want something to talk about. Nothing like discussing the emotional upheaval brought on by fatherhood to bore the snot out of everyone you encounter.

I would just like to say I have the greatest son in the world but that would then require so many others to rise up and defend their sons, so rather than start all that I just won’t say it. I will think it however.

I still have a lot to work on, like learning to compromise on piles of stuff. It seems I am not easiest person to live with, although I cannot imagine where that idea came from, though I do promise in the future to ………. Who are we kidding? I am not going to radically change, but hopefully I will change a little bit time, like letting my wife know how much I really do appreciate her and how much of a difference she makes to my life.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Penguins

Over the years Christmas traditions have changed. Santa Claus has gown into a jolly cross cultural icon with a wonderfully soft white beard and a belly like a bowl full of jelly. Donder became Donner, don’t ask about Blixem. We stand by as the corporate world turns Christmas into an orgy of packaging and spending.

In the face of all this my family is carving out a version of Christmas with our own symbols of peace, love, harmony and magic. And this is good.

But really, penguins?

When did penguins become a symbol of good will? How did they manage to infiltrate Christmas? Who is on their public relations team? Who are their stylists?

Did it start with Coca Cola and their advertisements showing polar bears and penguins frolicking together? Whose genius idea was that? Has climate changed pushed the North Pole right into the South Pole?

The whole Christmas experience is a northern one. Reindeer are a northern animal. There are no magical elves in the southern hemisphere. Santa Clause lives at the North Pole although there is debate around whether it is the geographic or magnetic North Pole. Recent evidence showing the magnetic North Pole is slipping from the top of the globe will present some logistical problems for Santa, but if you can get eight reindeer to fly you should be able to handle the inconvenience of polar relocation.

The thing is, no matter how much the North Pole has moved it is still not the South Pole and there are no penguins at the North Pole. They have not migrated, emigrated or otherwise been displaced.

Penguins have never made it into our popular mythology. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, while seemingly anatomically unlikely, did not join in the Reindeer Games. There is no mention of penguin games. Cupid and the Easter Bunny have completely shunned the lowly penguin.

They are not even the right colours. Christmas is about green and red. Penguins are black and white. True, they are both dichromatic, but Christmas incorporates so many more colours to underscore its meaning. Penguins ultimately do not. Sure there is some shading and highlights, but penguins are still black and white.

Look at who they are displacing. When was the last time you heard anything about the Christmas seal? It has been a while! Seals are cute, at least when they are babies and before they are clubbed. The arctic fox is beautiful, all white and sly. Sure they have the carnivore thing to overcome but penguins aren’t strictly vegetarian either. The polar bears that the penguins are supposedly cavorting with have more than a little gristle stuck in their teeth. And who ever considers the walrus.

I don’t want it to seem like I have an anti-penguin bias. They have their place in the world; it is just not here, at Christmas. I am sure there is some strange holiday that incorporates penguins although I cannot image what a flightless waddling bird might symbolize.

So please, let’s set aside the nasty penguin and keep the mammal in Christmas!

Compare

Another time frame I am pretending approximates a week and another word.

It‘s like comparing apples to oranges. It does seem pretty obvious but in the cliché lives the definition. In composing the image it became necessary to editorialize. Trying to find objects I could use as props was a bit of a challenge. Symbolism can be a challenge. And there are no Beaver Nuts.

Canadiana

This flyer was recently delivered to our mailbox. I commented on it on my Facebook page but it is just too funny to leave it alone. In my obsession to promote this particular piece I have been accused of being a bit childish. I do like the Three Stooges and there are days when this type of humour works for me. It is true that had someone else found it I might not find it nearly as funny, but I found it and I do think it is funny. So for all those who missed it the first time, here it is again (and I promise I won’t use it too many more times).