Great Big Tree

It always takes a full Saturday. We break for lunch and laundry, but from start to finish, putting up the big tree takes between six and eight hours. It depends on how fussy we are about stringing the lights and draping the beads—this year, the lights took about an hour, the beads about half, but getting the star in place and securing Bart the Bear in his perch brought us perilously close to losing our minds completely.

Okay, maybe that steamed eggnog for breakfast was stupid, but fatigue is definitely a factor. Once again, fitting the holidays into a hectic work life will be a challenge; no matter how early we begin, it’s always a mad dash to December 25 … or at least until we start our Christmas vacation.

Enough whining. Back to the point.

Ter and I have built a significant collection of cool ornaments over the years. It’s so significant that we often forget the ones most recently acquired until we pull them from their bubble wrap. Then eyes go wide and one of us will gasp, “I forgot about that!” before some frantic rearranging happens to make frontal space for the shiny new(ish) piece. I’m still unaccustomed to the typewriter Nic sent me two years ago, but I anticipate my talking Hoops and Yoyo from our last year at Rockland because it’s had time to set in my memory. I’d also forgotten the Lannister lion that Ter stuffed into my sock in 2014, and the jester stocking she bought the year before—you’d think that three trees would be enough to hold everything we have, but a Bean tree to handle all the trinkets from Nicole may be on the horizon. I realized with a pleasant start that she and I have been shipping things from coast to coast for almost twenty years, so it looks like this friendship is in it for the long haul.

Then there are the “WTF?” ornaments – Darth Vader and James T. Kirk, Captain Jack Sparrow and Daffy Duck, wizards and rock stars, unicorns and stilettos mix among church bells and sleigh bells and snowmen galore, you name it, the big tree has it. We’ve got winter solstice covered, too: stars and moons and polar bears, and the resident foodie’s fruit collection to represent the season’s bounty. Every branch tells a story from our history, collective and individual—the ornament Ter contributed to her third grade class tree is present, as is the circa-1967 ornament that I pinched from the Greig family tree when I left home. The big tree has it all, including its own guardian: Grizz, the bear who hibernates from January to November and stands guard throughout December.

He worried me a bit, yesterday, though. After welcoming him from his nap, I told him that Moon Pie is eager to see him again and, rather than being pleased, he looked bewildered. “Who is Moon Pie?” he asked.

My heart broke for the puffball, who was at that moment telling his buddies that he’d be hanging with the Grizz tonight. How could he not know Moon Pie????

Dismay rendered me speechless, so Ter took over and the gods be thanked for it. When she explained about the baby polar bear, the light went on. “Oh, the little white guy! Yeah, I know him!”

What a relief, but a larger question resulted from that exchange. We have names for every bear … but what do they call each other?

The Tree Bears

It’s a ratty little tree, but the bears love it.

Every Christmas, Ter and I struggle to recall how a string of fifty lights the previous year was enough to light up a two-footer when we need six feet of beads to effect the appropriately effortless drape. Answer: string the lights in a zigzag pattern from top to bottom instead of winding them around the circumference.

It helps that this tree is missing a lower branch. The “tannenbum”, as it’s called, faces the corner, so all that really needs decorating is the part that can be seen. Fifty lights will do the trick if you’re crafty about it, and Ter is an expert light-stringer.

The second of our three Christmas trees to go up each year, this one is known as the little bears’ tree because most of the ornaments are—you guessed it—bears. Crystal clear bears, coloured glass bears, tiny polar bears, and painted wood bears dominate, though a few other critters adorn its scrawny branches. Red and silver balls shine in the shadowed spaces, and we always hang one or two on the very lowest branch because Burl likes to look at his reflection. He thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

The smallest bears vie for seats in the wicker sleigh. Last year, Elliot decided to hog the leopard chaise by reclining like a glamour queen atop its black velvet cushion. That won’t hold this year; as soon as the gang saw their tree on Sunday night, there was a stampede to see who reached the settee first. Now we have a schedule to give everyone a turn.

The big bears don’t care so much, being too large to fit comfortably (or at all) either in the sleigh or on the settee; and though Moon Pie sits in during the day, he sleeps with Bobo and Jarkko in my TV watching chair at night. Once the big tree goes up and Grizz comes out of hibernation for the holidays, Moonie might stick with him in the living room. They’re buddies from the puffball’s first Christmas with us, and the annual reunion is a joy to behold.

We let the gang sleep around the tree (lights out, both literally and figuratively) on the first night, but they won’t get to do it again until Christmas Eve. Honestly, you’ve got to have some rules.

Down and (Shut)Out

“Hey, Ruthie,” a co-worker says, “how’s your team doing?”

I reply, “They got back-to-back shutouts on the weekend.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Oops; sorry. I meant that they were shut out in back-to-back games on the weekend.”

I must have downloaded the wrong app. I wanted the one that notified me when the Flyers win. The one I have tells me when they lose.

They have all the offensive talent in the world, yet my guy Giroux and the kid Jakub Voracek, the same pair who racked up the most points in the league last season, have a combined total of twenty-seven after twenty-one games—and the Flyers have now officially scored the fewest goals of all thirty teams so far this year.

When you’re this far down, the only way out is up … or next year.

I saw the game against Ottawa last Saturday. End result: 4 – 0 for the Sens. Absolutely no offense, and Steve Mason was left to flail in the net. The one pool point I got came from Ottawa’s Kyle Turris in the third period, when he scored the fourth goal against them. There’s no heart in their play, no motivation, no enthusiasm, no cohesion. Basher was beyond inconsolable. He’s become resigned, and I fear he may refuse to watch the next game because no matter who the opponent is …

No, I won’t go there. I’ll admit, they’re pretty well hooped as far as the post-season goes, but I will always watch them on TV. I get few enough viewings, and I just laughed when a sympathetic friend suggested that I might want to try another team. Besides, who knows? They beat Carolina in overtime last night. A winning streak may be imminent!

Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants

Decorating for Christmas is almost as much fun as Christmas itself. Pulling the Rubbermaid bins from the closet and unwrapping the crumpled tissue within can unleash a joy that obliterates anything imagined by the Big Eastern Syndicate.

The best part is reconnecting with the memories. Almost every item in our holiday collection inspires laughter and a gleeful, “Do you remember …?”

Case in point: Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants. Photos printed off the internet and slipped into frames from the dollar store, it just ain’t Christmas without them.

Truly, I don’t recall exactly when Naughty Santa was conceived, though the shot of John Taylor wearing a Santa hat and tilting that eyebrow the way only he can was a goofball sock stuffer, one of those off-the-cuff trinkets designed to get a giggle on Christmas morning. I put it together for Ter near the end of our tenure at Rockland, and while she loved it on sight, she retaliated with a vengeance a few years later.

2011 was the worst Christmas of my entire life. What had begun as a fresh start in a new residence had blown up three months into our lease and suddenly our treasured Yuletide celebration became an ordeal to be endured. We did the best we could, but by the morning of December 25, we were going through the motions. The only gift I remember from that darkest of holidays was the helpless laughter that erupted when I ripped off the wrapping to reveal a photo of my hormonal hockey crush, posing proudly in his Calvins. I screamed, I laughed, I cried, and I will love Ter forever for giving me that moment of unbridled joy when I had thought I’d never laugh again.

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

By Any Other Name

A boy is named “John” by his parents. His little brother calls him “Johnny”, and his friends call him “Jack”. His first girlfriend calls him “Jonathan”, even though that’s not what he was christened. She just likes it better because it sounds more highbrow.

On a tour of Europe in his twenties, the locals call him “Juan” in Madrid, “Jean” in Paris, “Giovanni” in Rome, “Sean” in Ireland, “Jan” in Stockholm and “Ivan” in St Petersburg.

When he returns home and marries his third girlfriend (the second called him—gasp!—“John”), she wants to name their son for him but chooses another variation: “Zane”. John would have preferred “Shane”, but isn’t so invested that he wants to start a war.

A co-worker who passed away in 2009 said two things to me that I have always remembered. One, that he hated the Philadelphia Flyers and couldn’t believe I’m a fan, and two, by passing along the quote at the top of this post. Six years later, the argument continues, yet I believe that all sides are raging over the same individual: a singular creator who is known by a dozen different names.

But it’s not about God at all, is it?

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace” – Jimi Hendrix

Take the Day

The cough medicine commercial is right: a sick day is misnamed. It’s actually a “getting well” day—and I’m taking one. Admitting this may cost me a day’s pay should my boss happen upon this post (a billion to one shot, I’m sure) but it’s worth it to point out that I am not physically ill. I needed a mental health day; a day for self-care and to nurture a spirit that’s been flaring hard against a smothering global darkness and finally conceded defeat last night.

I’m down, but not out.

I may be a little drained from the daily lineup of coworkers who stop by my office to tell me their woes, but on a deeper level, I think I am royally pissed. Not with my colleagues, not with my family, not at home, and not even at life. Life is good. It’s a challenge in contrast, but life is a gift. No one has the right to rob someone else of it.

I digress.

I think that I’m pissed at the folks who sit online and berate the good intentions of others. When Paris happened, I witnessed an explosion of French flags popping up in social media as horrified humans rose to their higher natures and rallied in solidarity with France. Shortly after this surge of collective compassion, a second explosion occurred—of outraged reproach for this show of “selective support”. Beirut had been similarly assaulted on the same day. The same number of deaths and equal amount of terror were suffered there, only few in the western world had risen in that country’s support, hence those who had done so for Paris were called out as hypocrites.

They are not hypocrites. They are uninformed. Is it their fault that the western news outlets did not report the attack on Beirut? I knew nothing of it. I was still reeling from the stupidity of the Starbucks Red Cup Controversy, which got more airtime on my newsfeed than anything out of the Middle East, when I stumbled onto CNN’s coverage of Paris.

The public doesn’t decide what makes the news. Advertisers and programmers decide what we are told and, to some extent, what we’re to do about it. Then they sit back and watch the masses squabble about it all.

So I crashed. The negativity has been overwhelming, and while I believe implicitly in the power of one solitary candle, I also believe that the flame requires tending, else it will burn out completely.

Balance. Contrast. Achieving and maintaining one in the face of the other requires an awareness of your own needs as well as the needs of others. If I am guilty of anything, it’s of assuming that I have superpowers of endurance, resistance, and acceptance. Actually, I do have them, but they are not limitless. A single day should get me back on my feet. A day of green tea, quiet meditation, and gratitude.

A “get well” day.

With love,

IntroSPECTRE

The best Bond ever?

Take Diamonds Are Forever off the table and I might agree with you.

Hey, whatever the title, it’s James Bond, the gentleman spy extraordinaire, played to the 21^st century hilt with steely-eyed panache by the best actor to play our hero since Sean Connery. Light on plot, heavy on action, sardonic dialogue peppered with witticisms, it’s a guaranteed win no matter how hi-tech the projector.

SPECTRE in IMAX would have had me vomiting from motion sickness before the opening credits (which I think rank among the best in the entire series. Sam Smith did a super job with the theme, too!), so the gods be thanked that the film also opened in the old-fashioned regular format to accommodate vintage era fans. Ter and I were planning to wait a few weeks, but couldn’t stand it once we discovered it wasn’t exclusive to the hi-def, 3-D, über-size, holographic, king’s-ransom-admission theatre at the local Cineplex when it was released. We got our tickets online and happily ate popcorn and chocolate for lunch.

As plots go, this one continues from Skyfall and referenced both Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale, threading together the most recent four in the 007 series quite nicely. There were a few “Really??” moments, as are customary in a Bond movie, and the girl fell in love a little too quickly after  insisting that he stay-the-hell-away from her—but that’s picking nits. Overall, it’s a cool continuation of the franchise that got a potent shot in the butt when Daniel Craig signed on in 2006. Less a spy than an assassin, he owns the role simply by standing still. Put him in the field and watch him save the world without employing alien superpowers or stripping down to a blue Spandex onesie.

I do wish he’d quit destroying those Aston Martins, though. I can sit unmoved through a bloody brawl or a screaming torture scene, but I want to weep when the car meets its inevitable demise.

RIP DB10

War (What Is It Good For?)

This post was inappropriate for Remembrance Day, though it was prompted by the occasion. Every year, I see the poppies come out. I pin one on my own coat from respect from the fallen, but I don’t believe in war.

I wonder how many of the soldiers who fight them do believe in it.

I tried to write an appropriately respectful piece about conflict on a global scale, the horrors of two World Wars, the trauma of Afghanistan and the massive damage of ongoing unrest in the Middle East, but it’s too easy to pontificate from my comfy chair in western Canada. I can’t speak from experience (for which I am eternally grateful). None of my loved ones have been sacrificed in service to their country.

So I watch the faces of the veterans during Remembrance Day ceremonies and wonder how they must feel, knowing that the world they fought to improve is spiralling deeper into despair in spite of their heroic efforts. And now that those who survived WWII are dwindling in number, we are reminded of the men and women who fought in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, and those on assignment as peacekeepers in hotbeds of civil conflict everywhere else but here. I’m glad I’m not a soldier, or that none of my sibs or nieces or nephews chose a military career. Of course I believe in reverence for those who perish in battle … but on a day when thousands of refugees are flooding out of Syria because of yet another war (or is it part of a big, long, never ending one?), I’m starting to think more about the victims of war than of the heroes who fight them.

It isn’t working, people. Can’t we just stop?

The Fandom Menace

Let’s recap:

VAN 4 – PHI 1

EDM 4 – PHI 1

CGY 2 – PHI 1 (OT)

PHI 3 – WPG 0

Of a possible eight points, the Flyers earned three during their recent Canadian road trip.

&*^$%

The good news (?) is that three of the four games were on TV, so I was able to get familiar with the new faces … and continue to lament the Hartnell trade from two years ago. My guy Giroux is sorta kinda averaging a point per game, but as of this writing, Jake Voracek has yet to score a goal despite fifty-plus shots on net, thus proving that the release of his bobble-head hero action figure earlier this year may have been premature.

Oh, I’m too hard on the kid. Top the league in points just once and there’s only one way to go. Regrettably, fan expectations remain high, and likely he’s feeling the pressure from management, too, though in my opinion, foisting a new coach on the team was patently unfair. Sure, they missed the playoffs in 14/15, but that’s ’cause they dug themselves a hella hole in October and spent the rest of the year playing catchup. They were—here we go again—getting used to a new coach and had—here we go again—goaltender issues.

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over while expecting to gain a different result. After years of watching pro hockey, season after season after season, I have deduced that I, along with every other fan of a sports team, must be crazy.

The Lighthouse

“It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next person or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment—the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away.” – Louise Glück

***

This is why I cannot be married: I am always more in love with my next project than I am with the one to which I am committed. I may have longed to write what I’m writing now, and while I love it love it love it (mostly), the romance fades pretty quickly once the work begins.

Nothing beats the airbrushed imagining of a story in the mist. An incandescent dream takes shape on the horizon: distant voices whisper of intrigue, shadowy figures become new characters—lovers, rivals, blood brothers and blood relatives. I get glimpses of a time or a place: a cobbled street, a four-poster bed, a fragrant forest redolent of sap in a sharp wintry frost. Every glimmer is enticing because it lacks context. Who is it? What is it? Where, when, why? Sometimes an errant detail will derail me, like a sunbeam blazing in the rearview mirror. I make notes in desperate moments, and return to the work at hand.

Eventually, I complete my ponderous project, the very same project that I longed to begin while in the throes of birthing its predecessor. I spend a few days recovering in the trough between the waves. It feels so good to finish.

It feels better to start something new.

I start toward the lighthouse, drawn by the beacon and full of good intention. Halfway there, I am struggling. It seems no closer despite my best effort.

I look behind … and there is the lighthouse that came before it. I was so relieved to be done with that story that I forgot how passionately I had wanted to write it. Now that it’s over—and almost exactly the same distance away as the one ahead of me—it looks different. Perhaps it did not end up the way I had anticipated in the initial dreaming, but it exists for all to see where it once resided only in my imagination. It’s a different colour and a different design, but it still bears the mark of its creator:

Me.

I go forward.

The Singing Sword

Three novels ago, I wrote a scene wherein Lucius is test driving a new sword. I’m no expert, but you needn’t be one to know that a soldier will have specific preferences when it comes to weaponry, and that he’ll likely own more than one example of his favourite make/model. Being an outlaw, however, my hero left most of his gear behind when he escaped Imperial justice in Treason. One broadsword returned with him to Castasia, and though this part is not recorded anywhere in the story, he immediately proceeded to drive the local craftsmen crazy with his quest to replicate its equal. By the time the aforementioned scene was written, he had resorted to the black market to obtain the rare crucible steel, and recruited a foreign smith familiar with the material to forge him a new sword. His requirements were, in his mind, simple, but even as I wrote the scene, I questioned whether such an elite weapon was believable given the technology of his time.

A decade later, I have the answer: a resounding YES!

Lucius’s sword of choice is my fantasy equivalent of the Ulfberht—a high-end broadsword that was forged in northern Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The Vikings didn’t make them, but more than a few Scandinavian warriors managed to get their hands on one during the lifetime of the Volga trade route. It was the Rolls Royce of weapons, and also appears to be a fine example of medieval branding: if it wasn’t marked “Ulfberht”, it wasn’t the real deal. Production spanned two centuries, so it a single smith wasn’t responsible for the line; it seems that a Frankish monastery owned the copyright. There were even knockoffs, easily identified nowadays by a misspelled name and a blade of inferior steel, though they must have sold for as much as the genuine article. The high carbon content made the blade both strong and flexible, and a groove known as the fuller enabled the larger weapon to retain the lighter weight of a smaller sword. It’s the perfect sword for Lucius, and now I know I wasn’t dreaming when I wrote it.

Phew. I write fantasy because I want to rule my world, but some details demand a basis in this reality, else the reader—and I have done it myself—will hitch up and go, Huh? It’s especially gratifying to know that something as vital as the brand of sword my hero wields in battle actually did exist … though I do wonder how I “knew” about it beforehand!

&%^#$*

Let’s get the excuses over with, first:

The time change.

Jet lag.

The time zone change.

The post-Halloween sugar down.

A new coach with a strategy no one understands.

The still pitifully thin blue line.

But, come on. The Canucks are rebuilding and, despite all of the above, the Flyers should have won last night’s game. My guy Giroux scored a beauty goal to tie it at one apiece in the second period; they looked like they were coming on, and then … the wheels fell off.

^&%$#

I am always grateful to watch my team, even if half of the faces are different from last year. And I’m kind of glad that Voracek isn’t racking up the points he had last season, since my nemesis, the wire-and-fake-fur-Flyer-fan, nabbed him in the pool, but after Bo Horvat put the ’Nucks back in the lead, I didn’t care which Flyer scored so long as one of them did.

Turned out none of them did. We lost 4 to 1, and while it appeared for a brief moment as if Vancouver’s third goal would look to the uninitiated observer like an empty-netter, Mason was actually pulled before their fourth. The third goal was a gift for rookie Jake Virtanen—it warms my black-and-orange heart that Philadelphia, once the scariest team in the league, now breaks the other team’s losing streak and gives candy to the kiddies.

Have I said, *%#$&^?

On the bright side, the Vancouver broadcaster mentioned that the Philly broadcaster called last night’s game the best the team has played so far, so perhaps the boys are getting it together. I remain unconvinced that firing Craig Berube was a smart move (though I had no problem with ejecting, I mean, promoting Paul Holmgren from the GM’s seat); however, maybe the new guy is starting to get his message across. I wish they would quit playing defence when they’re obvious strength is in offense, but I’m just a lowly fan who is beginning to sympathize with Leaf fans everywhere.

Tonight’s stop: Edmonton. The Oilers are currently twenty-fifth in the standings. I wonder what treats the Flyers will hand to their little ones?

Halloween Hangover

It’s November first and the world is choked. Mother Nature is throwing fits worthy of a screaming toddler: heavy wind, pounding surf, sporadic bouts of pouring rain—and then a rainbow appears as if to apologize for the tantrum.

Ter comes home from the grocery store. “Boy, is everyone out there cra-bee!” She’s been a little grouchy herself, on the heels of bolting a Bucky’s “Frappula” yesterday. It tastes like a Viva Puff mallow cookie and drops you like a drained corpse when the sugar high wears off. I suspect that a few folks have indulged in the seasonal specialty this weekend, and if they haven’t, the honking horns and crashing carts at the store today must be the result of those “one for you, two for me” trips to the candy bowl last night.

Then there’s the time change. Spring forward, fall back. I got the saying right, this time, but it hasn’t stopped me from feeling disoriented and easily annoyed … though the latter may be attributed to the bowl of caramel/cheese popcorn I devoured with my chocolate tea yesterday afternoon.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Because it’s fun, silly.

Last week, the office held a cake walk that turned into a charity bake sale when no one else in the building turned up to play. I looked at a table piled high with cake, cookies, muffins and more, and was truly grateful that the only gluten-free item was the pineapple upside down cake I’d contributed and had no desire to reclaim. Oops, but there were the mountainous meringues donated by someone who had promised to bake but ran out of time—I’m not a huge meringue fan, but these babies came with blueberry whipped cream and one of my evil office fairies coerced me into splitting one with her (for a good cause), hence the buzz in my ears that began last Thursday.

As Nic would say, Blerg.

Tomorrow, everyone at work will be sick of candy and bakery treats. This will not stop me from refilling the Vader bucket with the last of the Rockets, treacle kisses, lollipops, jelly beans, tiny Mars and Snickers bars that I bought to get us into the Halloween spirit. Neither will it stop me from indulging if I get too stressed—it is the workplace, after all.

I am advised that the Red Cups are back at Starbucks, launched at opening time this morning to get us all into the holiday spirit and onto insulin drips after New Year.

Buckle up, folks. ’Tis the season!