February 2008 Archives

Practice makes perfect

Or so they say. But what if

You practice the wrong way?

As of right now, I am headed to a Real Wedding with Real People and Real Guests to accompany a professional photographer and act as a sort of apprentice/second shooter. And even though the pictures I take are completely superfluous I am Totally Freaked Out. I read my camera handbook this morning, as if it could somehow make me a pro in a morning. I think that's called cramming, and seeing as it didn't work all that well for me in college I'm rather amused to find I'm trying it now, as if all I really got out of my degree was how to cram ineffectually.

Kyna has managed to train Chris and I to either a) sing her a bedtime song, or b) tell her a made-up story before bedtime. This is often on top of some hour-long bedtime story from a book. At first it was fairly charming and we'd alternate, if Chris sang a song I'd tell a story and vice versa. But pretty soon I was running low on story ideas, and Kyna was starting to impose creative restrictions. For instance, all the characters had to be from Harry Potter, specifically Harry, Ron and Hermione. So buckling under the intense strain at the end of the day to come up with something original, I began to plagiarize shamelessly. A story about Harry, Ron, and Hermione who got trapped by a wicked which after happening upon her tasty gingerbread cottage while on a walk through the woods was obviously a thinly veiled Hansel and Gretel, and after one episode of Harry Potter and the Three Bears, Kyna told me that the story was remarkably similar to one she had heard at school about a little blonde girl.

Finally I admitted defeat and left all story telling to Chris, who was coming up with such brilliant sagas as The Terrible Day Without Coffee and How the Computer Guy Got the Girl and They All Had Pizza. With just a song to do I felt I was on easy street. Not for long. Kyna realized pretty quickly that the longer the song, the longer she got to stay up so pretty soon she was requesting epics, settling finally on a song called Five Little Ducks Go Out To Play. Well as you can imagine, we go from five, to four, to three, to two, to one, and then she tries to get me to go back up again. Thank heaven she doesn't yet know Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer.

So about a week ago I felt that I couldn't possibly sing Five Little Ducks again and told her that I'd just make up a song instead. My imagination hadn't necessarily flourished in the intervening story break, it was just as barren as ever, and nor do I have a commanding grasp of music composition, so I sort of just droned on about all the things she did that day. Like "hmmmm de dum, Kyna got up and went to school today and then she did some work, then I picked her up and we read for hours and hours and then I made her a pasta dinner and she had a bath, good night".  

She loved it.
 
Lesson to me: Don't fret about raising expectations, or about having to always demonstrate quality, appealing to ego works just as well.
 

Her green umbrella

Where could it be? Without it

Rain just ain't the same

Yes, I figured it out. Thank you, thank you. The reason it didn't work before was because I was an idiot. That's usually the way with code. It's right and you are an idiot. Plain and simple.

So the top navigation works thusly:

• 'Sharrock.net' will bring you to the main page of the site, which has all postings listed with respect to their time of publication
• 'Daily Musings', 'Daily Pictures', and 'Haikus' will all take you to the most recent posts in that particular category
• Selecting a particular category will alter the 'Monthly Archives' link on the right to display both the total number of posts per month as well as just that particular categories worth per month

All pretty self explanatory. Now, as the proverbial saying goes, we're cooking with fire.

Ok. This is the new site so far. There is only one outstanding issue that I am still grappling with, which is a top navigation bar. Currently the only way to view entries by category is to use the links under 'Category' over there on the right. Ideally links to these categories, the main index (which is hidden way, way, waaaaay down on the bottom right, hiding in a paragraph where there is no chance that anyone will ever find it), and the about-me page, will be up at the top, but right now where I exist, which is in a bizarre parallel non-working dimension, it is absolutely impossible. Which is totally ridiculous because every site I look at in the working-and-extraordinarily-happy-about-it dimension has somehow integrated a working version of this feature. So far I've posted for help on every geek forum I could find. By the end I was offering naked pictures of my sister.  I expect a reply any moment now.

I am very new to this particular blogware and as I get to know my way around I'll refine navigation. I realize it's a bit redundant and obscure at the moment. Truthfully, I wanted this to be a triumphant roar of a post. A post that rumbled out over the savanna with mastery and unquestionable supremacy, declaring the birth of a New and Improved site, a place of peace, creativity and comments under a benevolent dictator (that would be me). Instead it's a hesitant sort of small coughing birth announcement. Ahem we think we had a baby! And it might be a girl! Oh...,  hold on, it could be boy. Tell you what, send us something yellow.

Under bright gray skies

A vibrant stillness inhales

The drenched air and sighs

I don't want to dwell on the past too much or bring up terribly painful memories for myself, but Kyna finally did some serious processing about the loss of Seadog and the results are too heart wrenchingly wonderful not to share. First she decided that he must have left on his own accord and she spent a rainy afternoon hollering at the top of her lungs in the front yard for him. Then when that didn't miraculously bring him running she came inside and decided to get her pain out on paper. She drew a self portrait of how she felt and this is the result:

I've decoded a bit of it for you here, bear in mind that Kyna is a Fairy Cheetah Queen (she upgraded herself from princess last week when she realized that you have ever so much more clout if you are an adult, and queens are definitely Grown Up), hence the whiskers.

Are the beliefs of

The caterpillar the same

As the butterfly?

Ok, I meant to have a post ready for today but ended up thoroughly enjoying my four day vacation from doing not much and didn't prepare anything. So my plan for today is to dazzle you with cuteness while I work on a recent request and try to unhitch the back end of this site and restructure it to allow comments and any other nifty things my new hosting provider can offer.

On to their Royal Cutenesses, Duchesses Pico and Purrball:

Swirling gypsy rock

Rumbles the Bulgarian

Infested dance floor

"Not only is it seen by both Boswellist and Johnsonian interests as a crucial location for establishing territorial control in the kitchen-floor region, but it also makes a crumpling sound that both sides find irresistible."

When I am away

Her missing tooth smile

And infectious good nature

Kick me in the gut

It is Valentine's Day, which is always cause for thought. Those of us who are in relationships struggle to find a card or gift that adequately sums up our vast ocean of feelings for our significant other. A sea that contains fair, crystal clear tropical waters, warm and inviting, an immersion in bliss punctuated by giddy brightly colored fish, and also a sea that contains deep dark murky depths frequented by ominous shadows with long sharp teeth.

Chris and I have been together for nine years now. Or maybe ten. Like the ocean, the years ebb and flow, swirling into a cohesive whole made up of infinite distinct parts. Painful memories, like fights and extended periods of tension cool and sink into the black chasms, still and quiet, until a tremor in the earth brings the currents down to sweep them up to the surface as insecurities and fear. While the happy exhilarating times tumble onto the shore in a burst of froth and spray. I remember one time in particular when we were in a hopelessly in love phase and traveling in southern California. We spent the day driving through the palm tree laced boulevards of L.A., chatting of nothing and everything, my bare feet out the window and the wind in our hair. Winding our way through the streets we eventually met the sparkling Pacific. The sun was setting in streaks of deepest orange and we sank into the warm sand. It felt like a postcard. Then, as if L.A. decided that it wasn't quite perfect yet, and the producer's daughter had an idea that she thought would really bring it all to life and the producer pulled in a favor owed by Mother Nature, dolphins started jumping out of the waves. There we were, in love, on a beach, with dolphins frolicking silhouetted against the sunset. We laughed so hard it hurt to smile the next day. It was so Hollywood.

As in all relationships there are trying times. I remember spending my first Mother's Day with Chris and his four best buddies. He was probably feeling guilty that they didn't have children and wives of their own, and none of their mothers lived close by. Really this was a charity mission and I should feel saintly for my good deed. I'm sure Chris can recount many such sacrifices he has made on my behalf, but I can't think of any right now.

Those times, the trying ones, have shaped us as a couple as much as the positive experiences. They are the stories that garner the most laughs when we tell them to friends, the stories that make us human and flawed and vulnerable to each other. They provide the challenges that we face as a couple where the only real way to win is to surmount them together, because if we run from the conflict and each other, then we've ultimately run from ourselves.

So in this time of Chris working crazy hours, the demands of an almost six year old, and a massive project upon which all my self worth is riding, I use the positive memories and the challenges that we've successfully overcome so far to keep me strong and dedicated to our ultimate success. I relish the snippets of time that we spend together, whether in my office chatting about work, or sitting like zombies over take-out in front of a movie, both of us too exhausted to talk, or when I divulge my inner-most fears while cuddling under his arm and resting my head on his chest, even if he is asleep. It is these cherished moments in everyday life, these seemingly tiny droplets of time that add up to a deep and complex relationship, a relationship with ups and downs, with sharks and mermaids and kitties and Fairy Cheetah Princesses and a home and love, a relationship I want to swim in for ever and ever until death do us part.

Love,
Daisy

Swarming with children

Plastic standing still and strong

Nature's surrogate

Well, the vet claims that because the kittens are so young, they can be trained and I should forgo my slipper plan until I've tried the weapons in her arsenal. We put the kitties back in their carrier and drew up military diagrams on the stainless steel examination table. General Vet proposed a three pronged attack, a surge if you will, to ambush the unsuspecting slippers-to-be on multiple fronts and through sheer bombastic overkill solve the problem without ever actually having to figure out the root cause. Very sly, although it sounds somewhat familiar...

She barked orders and I scribbled them down on my pad furiously.

"FOR CLEANING, NATURE'S MIRACLE. FOR DESTRESSING, PET-EASE. FOR REINFORCEMENT, KITTY TREATS."

"MA'AM, YES MA'AM!"

"REPORT TO PETCO YESTERDAY PRIVATE AND GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!"

"MA'AM, YES MA'AM!" I started to scurry towards the door.

"Oh, and Private?" She dropped her voice low and confidential like, "if the smell still won't come out, put the fear of God into them. Get yourself a Steam Cleaner."

So at PetCo I bought:

   

And:

My new to me $19 reading chair for my office.

Nurdles are the small

Plastic memories of our

Economic growth

Floating in the sea

A patch the size of Texas

Expands silently

Last night I settled down and put a freshly washed duvet on my bed. Freshly washed because our two new kittens think that the litter box is for pooing in and the sparkling clean, washed daily duvet is for peeing on. Each time I think that they've gotten the message, the duvet seems to have escaped a kitten drenching all day so they must have gotten it through those little pea sized brains of theirs that the litter box is for both, they sneak up when I'm out of the room and find a spot right up by where my nose will be when I crawl into bed, exhausted and thankful to finally be done all the chores for the day, and they pee! Needless to say much cursing happens when I find out and yesterday I put them in their litterbox hourly. Feeling fairly confident, and further so when I snuggled down in bed and didn't meet any wet spots or offensive odors, I congratulated myself for being an amazing kitten mother. Then, right before my eyes, they both hop up onto the bed and promptly pee on the duvet over my feet. I am having them both euthanized and made into slippers today.

A cool morning breeze

Salty sun for lunch

Waves crashing on the night shore

Sand in the bathtub

I just read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and Oliver Relin for my book club. As a group we were pretty awesome. Only one of us had actually finished more than half the book and they had crammed all day to earn that honor. We take our literature pretty seriously around here. Or, maybe the fact that no one finished it speaks volumes about the readability of Three Cups of Tea, which will totally undermine my next point, but I'm hardly one to be swayed by overwhelming evidence, so let me tell you that I think everyone should read this book.

The plot is pretty straightforward. After a failed K2 attempt mountaineer Greg Mortenson wanders into a rustic little village high in the farthest reaches of Pakistan. The head of the village takes him in and spends a month nursing Greg back to health. On one of his constitutional walks Greg passes by a frozen windswept plateau where a group of the village children are scratching out their sums in the dirt with sticks. Overcome by their fierce desire to learn even in the remotest and harshest of climates Greg promises to come back and build the village a school.

We then follow Greg through a horrible year of trying to raise twelve thousand dollars. Half way through the book he accomplishes it and after completing his first school he is endowed a million dollars to build as many schools as possible in the poorest areas of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. While Greg is feverishly building schools and fighting off fatwas against him for failing to buy off local Mullahs, money is pouring in from oil rich neighbors and extremist Mudrassas, or religious schools, are springing up everywhere providing a fundamentalist brainwashing of hate for any youngster seeking a way out of their current poverty. An important point here is that the schools Greg built in no way trumpet the American way of life. The teachers are often the most educated individual in the village, and the accepted Pakistani curriculum stressing education and tolerance is taught.

The rest of the book unfolds against the backdrop of 9/11 and the failure of the American government to come through for the Afghanistan people, obliterating what infrastructure they had while creating cripples, widows and orphans, alternatively known as terrorist larva. Children were forced to flee their homes due to the heavy bombing and wound up in refugee camps where the conditions were abysmal. Often there was no water supply at all, let alone clean and drinkable. And that is where we end. Right smack dab in the middle. This is where we are today.

To summarize, the main points are:

• Provide a balanced and sane education for all your children.
• Girls are children too. Really. If you still don't believe me, look again.
• Children who have the opportunities that a balanced and sane education bring, do not turn to terrorism as a means for a happy and prosperous life.
• Bombing the crap out of a country does not actually build any new schools. In fact, it tends to remove the ones that are there.

You could argue that I have now removed all need to read Three Cups of Tea, but I beg to differ. Books are all about providing a full picture, a rich and detailed emotional connection to the events that take place, no summary such as this one, no matter how much you agree with the points in principle, can take the place of embarking on the journey with the hero. Of watching events unfold and letting your heart have a stake in the outcome. Greg Mortenson's incredible tale of courage, tenacity and love deserves our full attention, because it is nothing short of life itself, miraculously rich, heart wrenchingly raw and happening right now.

Very new, very economically crippling tires. And these are far, far from the top of the line.

The slick smell of grease

Rims clanging on the concrete

Men in overalls

There was a slow leak in my left rear tire that I couldn't ignore anymore. Especially since it had been joined by a pretty serious shimmy whenever I passed through 50 m/hr. Chris pulled out the receipt for the old tires and left it explicitly in my hands. "Give them a call and see if they can rebalance them for you."

So today I called up and asked if I needed to make an appointment to get my tires balanced.

"Don't sweat it. Just come on down."

"I also have a slow leak I need fixed."

"Girl, you just come on in and we'll sort you out."

Right. Ok. Very... um, friendly.

I drove down to the shop, a big lot at the end of a cul-de-sac and stepped apprehensively into the waiting room. Now, I don't know about you, but garages are definitely foreign territory to me. Even having gown up with four brothers who could refurbish a carburetor in under thirty seconds, I feel like garages are the Taliban strong holds of America, a Men's Only Club where I definitely don't belong, probably pretty close to how men feel in the 'feminine hygiene' aisle at Vons. Nevertheless I entered the waiting room and bravely approached the front desk. The guy manning the desk was in his early thirties and a multi-tasker extraordinaire. He processed my request for a leak fix and balancing while simultaneously accepting payment from the previous customer and radioing on his walkie-talkie back to the guys under the lifts. Sitting off to the left of him was an older gentleman whose job, from what I could tell, was to roll around in his chair and chat about people's cars.

"So, the ride's all gone eh?" He said looking in my direction. "They tend to wear that way, from the inside out. Really common problem with that make, cuz' of the suspension. The only way the tires are ever really flat is when you corner really hard."

Damn. This was what I was petrified of. Someone talking to me in Garagese.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, my brother had one of 'em and you could see the threads on the inside within eighteen months, but there was still plenty of rubber on the outside. Lot's of other makes wear that way too."

I was beginning to think I should ask to see the inside of my tires when they came off. And what on earth was a thread?

I nodded politely and made my way to the black leather couches underneath a wall of dazzling chrome. As seen here:

Within fifteen minutes the young guy came over rolling one of my tires.
"Got some news," he said. "Your treads are beginning to separate. See right here? If that continues the tire will blow and you could lose control of the car."

"Is it just this one?"

"No. They all look like this."

"Sooo you recommend new tires?"

"Yep. And an alignment."

"Which will run me...?"

"Lots and lots and lots."

Well he didn't actually say that, but since I was going to pay maybe a hundred bucks tops for what I came in for, four new tires and an alignment made me realize why I avoid garages in the first place.

However, the alternative was death on the freeway, so I agreed to four new tires. Then as an afterthought I realized I should let Chris know that I was about to spend eight times our agreed amount, which resulted in me passing the phone over to the young guy to placate 'the husband' for me. Interestingly, he looked like he did this every day so I tried not to be completely mortified.

Then about half an hour later he comes out again. This time I had to follow him. The wheels were bent. As the mechanic spun the wheel on the spinney thing the warped metal became very obvious. And I swear to Cheapy Smile that the young guy looked at me with such a stern expression that I felt like I should be arrested, his raised eyebrow seeming to imply that not only do I not understand my car, but apparently I abuse it too.

Mix fuzz, claws and teeth

Equal parts charm, bounce and speed

Hellfire on four paws

So as you can well imagine, with a name like Daisy, I am the progeny of the 60's generation. In fact, I narrowly escaped being called Moonflute Zubinubie Sharrock. Luckily a throaty Canadian folksinger happened to play at the island's community hall when my mother was young, pregnant and impressionable, and she became my namesake: Daisy Debolt. Which I'm quite pleased about. She is exactly the type of older woman I want to grow into. Eccentric, passionate about something creative, and still breathing. If I can achieve that I'll consider my life fairly well spent.

I was born on a boat, The Kelpie II, in Ford Cove on Hornby Island, British Columbia, and after a short stint as an only child I settled down into family life with my dad, stepmom, two step brothers and one half brother on a fifty acre piece of paradise. We owned cows and chickens and grew a significant portion of our own food, or at least my parents did. Now that I'm a mother I realize that there was no 'we'. There was 'them' who rototilled the massive garden, dug out the beds, seeded, weeded, harvested, went to work, cooked, canned, stored and did all the laundry, and then there was 'us' who played all day in the woods around the house. We may have occasionally helped out by clipping a lettuce or a tomato for a salad, but more likely we snuck into the garden and ate all the raspberries.

Our house was an old chicken coop that with a little fixing up looked a lot like a chicken coup with built in kitchen cabinets and a small loft. We all wore our gumboots inside, a wood stove kept us warm and I don't think we ever got running hot water or a TV.

One of my most vivid memories that sums up the cabin quite well, was when a small spider descended from the ceiling, which was rife with cobwebs, right in front of my dad.
"Hello spider," he said, "you'll be much happier over here, on the onions." And he moved the little guy over to the braided onions hanging from the rafters. One winter we even had a tree frog move in and whenever we got too loud it'd chirrup at us to 'Pipe down already!'

We did all our clothes shopping at the Goodwill and our family wagon was an old '67 VW bus with the split window, and with automotive skills that put McGuiver to shame, my dad kept it running with bits of shoelace and rocks. There was no heater and bundled in our four sweaters, three scarfs and two pairs of hand knitted wool socks each we could watch the road slip by through the rusted holes in the floor.

We also had the incredible beauty of the west coast, which was a gorgeous backdrop for a childhood, with warm summer lakes, forest trails and driftwood strewn beaches. After a long summer day exploring with my best friend, Anna, I would walk home in the warm dusky evening, the wide indigo sky above me flitting with bats and the cozy glow of the cabin's windows beckoning with the promise of stories, a delicious dinner, games, love and an amazing family life.

So I did have a post for yesterday but it got censored. Yep. Four posts in and already I'm blackballed. BY MY HUSBAND. That is the kind of supportive relationship we have. I write an insightful critique of his coworkers behavior and he irrationally completely freaks out and demands that I burn my site. Most of his protests were just incoherent ranting, something about getting fired, or living on the streets, jibberish really.

I promise I'll post something else soon. Maybe a scathing expose of my husband's coworkers' coworker.

Heaping piles of clothes

Endlessly growing higher

My purpose to fold

Full of vim and pride

He hops the curb skateboarding

Pants around his knees

As I was watching Harry Potter with my five year old, which is probably reason enough to call social services on me (what with all that drinking of unicorn blood), I noticed that there are all these great words that I really ought to incorporate into my daily vocabulary. 'Codswallop' being one of them. 'Codswallop' is just a distracting way to tell someone they are a liar. The recipient is so balled up that they can't bellyache about it. It's berries!