Denial Is A Beautiful River To Float Along

I acknowledge that stress is there
in much the way you would acknowledge 
a Grizzly bear in your campsite.  

You can see that the bear is rummaging through your cooler 
and you have made terrified, 
white-eyeballed eye contact with the bear.

So you know it knows you know it's there.  

And none of this means that you go over to the bear with a rolled up newspaper
to smack it on the snout and rip your weekend's supply of Doritos out of it's claws.  

No. 

While the Grizzly is snorting the last of your Aunt Jemima's Buttermilk Pancakes Mix, 
like a junkie in an interstate bathroom stall, 
you hunker down in your sleeping bag.

And pray that he doesn't detect the Snickers 
you have stashed in your pillowcase. 

Up until now this explains perfectly how I would normally deal with stress in my life.  As it turns out there is probably a better way. Is definitely a better way. I mean, it's just that after a week spent packing and pacing and wishing the worst kinds of genital rash on our mortgage providers who just wouldn't answer the phone, the innocent cardboard box I reduced to shreds with a snowshoe really shouldn't look so startled. 

As I stood, panting and shaken, over my vanquished toe-stubber I had an epiphany. I highly recommend them, and you should have one yourself sometime. My epiphany was this: I should probably let out the stress and anger and frustration a little more often than once a decade. It's certainly healthier from the perspective of packing material.

So.

On order: One heavy bag and one set of ladies boxing gloves, size medium. Husband may have a new plane, garage, yard, dog, province, trail system, parachute, and drop zone, but I plan to have a right hook that can crack lumber by next Christmas.

Meeker Ball

Equipment

• Meeker
• 2 balls, or sticks which will be referred to as balls
• Alberta

Players

• Meeker
• Husband
• Not-Husband (Namely, me)

The Play

Throw a ball. When Meeker brings it back, throw the other ball. Repeat.

Rules

1. Never stop throwing the ball.
2. Unless Meeker gets distracted by deer tracks or Saskatchewan.
3. In which case, nothing you do will matter. 
4. Ever.
5. So you may as well stop throwing the ball.

Winning The Game

If everyone gets back in the house at the same time and you don't have to post "Missing" posters around the neighbourhood, you win.  If not, Meeker wins.

That Others May Freeze

Husband is leaving for Orlando in 3 days time. He will be gone for 10 days. During this period the purchase of our new home will finalize, Meeker will likely run away, I will consume nothing but homemade soup and salad (what I like to refer to as the Loneliest Loser Diet), the Pacific plate will drift another 0.109 cm eastward and historical records for the season indicate an average of 5.75 cm of snow will fall on my driveway.

Obviously I am pissed about all of this.

Husband's job is important and his skills must be honed like a samurai blade in order for him to perform it safely and effectively. Which explanation he has stuck to for 10 years in defense of why he must go somewhere warm every January while I spend two weeks shoveling, staring at fog or listening to the howling of hurricanes. It's not as though he wants to go. His country demands it. It's a sacrifice. That others may live, etc. etc.

"It's my duty, honey."

I have learned to approach the annual training schedule with something close to equanimity, through the help of yoga and meditation and vodka. I understand the need for constant training which could save lives, not the least his own. I steel myself to the time the light of my day must be gone from me and trust that it is for the greater good.

It's just really hard to remember while I stand hip-deep in snow, screaming myself hoarse at Meeker as he disappears over the horizon, wondering how I am going to move all of our worldly possessions from the PMQ to the new house. With the Volvo.

The Mother Tong. Tongeru. Tungue. Whatever.

In order to work as an EA in Alberta, I was required to complete a university English class. It has left me feeling considerably less confident about my ability to use my mother tongue, let alone spell the word tongue. Does that look right to you? I don't know anymore. 

If I have a conceit, or at least one that I'll own, it is that I have a fairly decent grasp of the English language and how to bend it to my will. What I have learned, these past few weeks, is that I know more about the field of advanced calculus than I do about English.  For example, I know that advanced calculus is stupid. I know what you are thinking. Is not the truest lesson I could have learned the discovery that there is so very much I do not know, may never know?

Possibly. 

I could also have used more clarity on the adjectival function of a gerund.