The Tipping Point in Gift Giving

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

I had my first video chat with my husband at noon on Sunday.

It cost me 50 bucks to get set up for the premier event with the purchase of a camera the size of a doughnut hole, embedded with a microphone.

Due to the procrastination virus, I had a small window of about eight minutes from the time I installed the gizmo’s hardware in my computer and the moment of truth when Pete and I would see each other for the first time in 43 days.

All this amid chewing large pieces of my chocolate bar in Olympic record time, washed down with a glass of cold milk.

I smiled and shifted my gaze back and forth between looking into the camera lens and checking out my own reflected image in the little window in the bottom left hand corner of the computer screen, smoothing out the beginnings of the chicken neck that I see has sprouted at Year 48 under my chin.

Startled, I also wiped away the white milk moustache that stared back at me.

And then suddenly, ‘ding,’ and there he was.

I haven’t seen Pete since March 9^th, and he looked like a million bucks smiling at me through that little webcam from halfway around the world.

Gone are the scraggly and wiry dreadlocks of a northern backcountry miner. Pete now sports a wonderfully buzzed head of peach fuzz.

He has a golden tan that also looks like a million bucks right about now, given that Mother Nature is having technical trouble keeping the temperature above cold around here.

But the best treat of all wasn’t the eye candy. It was the first three words that came out of his mouth when he saw me staring at him through the camera lens like a google-eyed deer as I hoped to high heaven the video connection hadn’t been made until after I’d picked my nose.

And no, the three wonderful words he said were not “I love you.”

It was even better than that.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said. “I can see it in your face. It looks skinnier.”

I swallowed the last chunk of ‘Twix’ chocolate bar I’d been hauling on and choked out a "really" and then coughed and laughed almost hysterically as I realized how thankful I was that he couldn’t see anything below my neck, because that’s where everything had gravitated, sagged, and settled when I sat down at the computer and was undoubtedly the reason why my face appeared thin.

“Thanks honey!” I replied, sucking in my Buddha, as the ceiling opened up and poured sunshine on the moment. “You made my day!”

We had 29 minutes before the system at his end would shut us down--and thus, time flew. We are never guaranteed a good Internet connection or one at all so we made the most of it.

I moved the webcam to pan around the kitchen (sweeping over the carcasses of two resting inmates in military dog school) to show off the big box ready for the mail, of the items Pete forgot to pack for his seven-month stint in Afghanistan that included his housecoat, leather slippers, a gym towel, and another blanket.

He then proceeded to tell me about the box of presents he had just put in the mail for me, purchased from an Afghan marketplace. I smiled at the thought of perhaps a beaded hair comb and maybe a necklace or two.

Nope.

How about a camel spider encased in acrylic and a fake scorpion that hisses and jumps out the box when you open it?

And he seriously thought this was cool.

Didn’t this sort of thing happen before? Pete’s genuine and enthusiastic announcement of “I have a present for you!” followed by me expecting gifts of shining trinkets.

I’d tagged along, following him with a curious eye to the back of his truck (at long last, I’d thought to myself, he finally bought me a jewellery box). My anticipation had been high as a kite.

He’d heaved on the door hatch and there it was . . . a buffalo skull?
It just lay there with empty eye sockets looking at me, still in the process of being “cleaned” by the bugs. One molar, embedded with brown stuff, had popped out, leaving a gross cavern in the jaw.
And it smelled bad.

“Well, what do you think?” he’d said, clearly proud.

 I didn’t have it in me to turn him to stone.

And now, here I was with a strange sense of déjà vu and a tracking number for a box being mailed to me with spiders and scorpions in it and oh yes, a tablecloth, a ball cap for my dad, and a package of cheap cigarettes for Cohort #1.

I looked straight into the webcam with my poker face, fetched a big smile from my reserves and said “I love you too, honey” all the while thinking about the box I was about to re-pack for him as soon as the Internet connection was turned off.

Yep, my pink bathrobe, my pink towel, my bunny slippers, and my pink blanket.

 

Something is better than nothing

April 15, 2009

Here’s the thing.

I could tell you that the fact that I don’t write a column anymore is because I’ve been so busy with other things that I have no time for plunking out my chronicles on a keyboard.

But if I took that stance, my nose would grow like Pinocchio’s.

Truth be told, I have loads of time to write and more ideas and dreams and aspirations to write about than anyone can imagine.

Yet, I admit that on a daily basis I readily find countless other things to fill my time so that there is none left in which to write.

I’m a chronic procrastinator who blatantly denies and fights a clear-cut opportunity.

Why is that?

The last time I put one of these columns out was nearly three months ago. How can I expect anyone to rely on that kind of hiccupped continuity?

In the January 18^th column I was professing my belief and confidence in the Universal plan.

And here’s the kicker. I could be a poster child for it these days. I can’t tell you how thick as thieves the Universal plan is around here, waving its green flag and leaving the days wide open for me the writer, even as I continue to put up roadblocks at nearly every turn.

Why is that?

Heaven knows there remains enough comedy and drama in my neck of the woods to fill the word count even though the main catalyst for my creativity, my husband, is working in Kandahar, Afghanistan for the next seven months.

Yet maybe that is the very reason why my writing in stooped in a vat of literary molasses. Yet again, this faltering began long before Pete took up his next big career adventure.

No matter how I look at, I am my own worst enemy, second-guessing my ability and believing the dream-stealing ego that resides in me, while everyone else around me knows better.

For some reason I am convinced by the misconception that everything I write about has to be funny and roundabout romantic. There goes the pathologically positive me again, cutting my own throat to save myself.

Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, and Tom Russell wouldn’t be the songwriters and musicians they are if they thought like that. Any good author in the entire world wouldn’t be one if they thought and wrote like that all the time. 

Quite honestly, of late I am sad. Among other reasons, I feel a tad misplaced, unsure of this recessed future on the horizon, and where I fit in. I thought I knew.

In the song “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” Elton John sings about whether there are people out there like you. I know there are and I’m with them. Here I sit two shots shy of 50, and my chance at retirement is a trash can dream too.

And then, the other me snaps back in place. I am grateful for many things. I have love in my life though it be long distance love these days.

And albeit old and in desperate need of a facelift yesterday, I have the home of my dreams. And I have my people.

I go back and re-read what I’ve typed here so far and roll my eyes. Ridiculous, poppycock.

And yet, something is better than nothing and this is the chapter of thought that, so far, has been on my mind.

Perhaps all this mind muddle is a product of the infinite winter slump that’s had us under a grip of relentless cold and snow, now thankfully, replaced daily by the glimmer of green grass and temperatures above zero.

Though the smell is never friendly, the job of cleaning up a winter’s worth of dog poop is looking pretty good to me. It means there’s hope for summer after all.

And then there’s the new military school for dogs now being attended daily by Dot and Cash, who unbeknownst to me had done enough barking while I was away from the yard to make their debut on the “Most Wanted” list of area neighbors.

My apologies to all parties.

On my “Most Wanted” list are the magpies currently building their summer homes in the cedar and evergreen trees surrounding my yard. I am reminded at this very moment--by the piece of an old alternator belt the dogs had been playing with that just flew by the front window in the beak of a magpie for the family nest—my slingshot lesson is at sunset.

It is my hope that the days to come will bring me back to this place where I plunk out my chronicles on a keyboard. My life is different than it was even three months ago, and not without some very serious challenges and changes to come, but it’s never boring.

If nothing else, I can write about the strange dreams I have at night, like in the one that played out in my mind a couple of sleeps ago.

 

Copious amounts of honey ham and smoked turkey breast lunchmeat were being passed around from out of my fridge to people sitting outside of my house.

NDP leader Jack Layton, clean-shaven with a bit of 24-hour shadow, was sitting on a lawn tractor in my yard talking to me and eating his campaign office memos and then listening to what the election campaign office had to say through the food. 

 

Fortunately, I usually have more interesting and stirring dreams and most of them include my husband in a bath towel, but those details are best left to the imagination.