The Elves and The Weed-Whacker

I like to sit at my kitchen table while I write because there's a pretty view from my window, because the kettle is close for tea and because Fritti's litter box is in my office to prevent Tofino from getting her daily dose of Tootsie Rolls. 

From this spot I can see the neighbour's beautiful lawn, which is golf course perfect, draped by towering blue spruces and framed by rustic cedar rails.It's the sweetest corner on the street and is the stuff my dreams are made of. Seriously. It's like I live across from Capability Brown. Sadly, from Capability's point of view, he lives across from the Clampets.

Husband and I have started to make the place our own. Started being the operative word. We've ripped out the old swimming pool, but the sandy divot and the cookie cutter "deck to nowhere" still remain, because we're busy and fair weather doesn't get wasted on landscaping.

Our raised front flower beds already had decent enough greenery installed when we bought the place so they've been given the nod to carry on, which they've done marvellously, and while they're at it they also hide some random bike parts, my wetsuit booties and the snow scoop. 

The back garden at least, is a vast green sweep of grass. This gets mowed matter of factly and at speed, about once a week. Capability Across The Way comes out to watch me sometimes, as I whiz around the yard on our little second hand lawn tractor that pops and backfires, singing along to The Hip on my headphones and trying to beat last week's time. 

In short, we're coming up short in the category of fussing about the acreage. The neighbours don't seem to mind. I think they recognize that we are just weekend warriors of a different breed. They shake their heads at out bikes and canoes as they load up their 4-wheelers and speed boats. I know they tut at the lilac bushes that could use a trim and the indifference bordering on actual aggression with which I treat my hostas, but they also love to hear about our adventures, and leave bags of tomatoes on our front step while we are at work.

Of course, that could be the old reverse shoemaker ploy. Maybe they leave tomatoes in the hopes that I will someday grow my own.

Homeward Bound

Husband was the one who suggested a road trip, to any destination I chose. He barely got the words out before I yelled, "TO THE SEA!" and had the hated tent trailer hitched and packed with essentials: dog food, litter box, SUP and camera.

We decided ("We.") I decided that the closest access to the sea was through Quebec and so we headed for the Gaspe peninsula and Forillon National Park. Every time my beloved waves came into view I would point and say, "I can SEE THE SEA." 

It's all a blur of cheerful villages and houses painted every colour of the rainbow. Of fog and white caps and lighthouses. Of campfires and blown trailer fuses and a seemingly endless dog walk that lasted for five days. 

I took so many pictures of rocks and flotsom, none of which are interesting to anyone but me. We ate scrambled eggs and toast for breakfasts, seasoned with pine needles because a dropped egg is still a good egg when you're camping. We played ukulele and sang along to The Hip and because we were in Quebec, we even sang along to Rush.

It was short. It was sweet. It was perfect. 

Even though we tried unsuccessfully to lose Tofino. Twice.

Until my feet were wet,

Until my lips were salty, 

Until my skin was prickled with chill and red from the sun, 

Until my heartbeat steadied to match measured waves, 

And my breath became easy and slow,

I didn't know the thing that I was missing most was Home.

Thank you, Sweetie.

There's Also Isospin, Strangeness, Topness and Charm

Making advanced bookings for a road trip is like calling a paint-by-number poster a master piece. Sure, it looks fine but it has no soul, and you usually run out of Phthalo Blue long before the sky is done, which means another trip to the craft store and spending more time than is probably healthy rearranging the papier mache letters on the shelves to spell out all the flavours of quarks, and giggling when you get to "bottom".

We leave tomorrow, for an unexpected road trip that hopefully will result in at least one day of surfing. I don't know where we will be staying but Husband keeps saying things like, "Bah! We'll figure it out!" and "La Parc Provincial du Walmart Parking Lot."

Onward!

Thrown

Sometimes a writer will use a throwaway line to keep the attention of their audience. It can be a one-liner, something glib with no connection to the immediate plot; or it can be a set up for a much larger story that will pull the twisted pathways of anecdote straight again. And sometimes it's just used as a tension release, like when the Customs agent finally locates your vibrator in your luggage and turns it off.

Chaos Theory Does Look Pretty Neat On A T-Shirt

I am probably never going to grasp the fundamentals of physics. I should have that written on a calling card. 

"D.S.W. ~ Friendly, outgoing, will probably 

never grasp the fundamentals of physics."

I have been reading physics and studying maths and taking courses for the past 6 years, as a hobby, and I know that if someone were to ask me right now to explain the theory of quantum chaos I would likely panic, throw a handful of glitter at their face and run away while screaming "God Save the Queen". 

But that would be more for my benefit then theirs. 

I don't study because I feel as though I have some hidden proof buried inside my brain, waiting for my understanding to match the profundity of the expression that will shift Humanity's view of itself and it's place in the Universe.

Although that would be wicked cool. 

It's just that I am often confused by seemingly very simple things: rude people, why I have to stop wearing white after Labour Day, the notion of holding a fresh baby even though it was literally inside a good friend's vagina only yesterday. Regular life is beautiful and complicated and weird and I find it desperately bizarre that very few people are willing to freely admit they are as captivated and confused by it as I am.

So it's sort of refreshing to be utterly baffled by something as beautiful and weird as the Hubble Constant or the Drake Equation. I feel I'm on firmer ground if I'm shaky about calculating the age of the universe to the closest decimal. At least I know there is a reasonable answer to the question, and I have never silenced an entire pool party because I was unable to fully explain the Schrodinger wavefunction. 

But offer a cappuccino to one toddler...

The title for this piece, my admiration for science, my urge to know more about the many many many many many things I know nothing about, and the reason I enjoy being puzzled by all of the millions of things that puzzle me... are inspired, endlessly by THGTTG and Douglas Adams. 

Malice Most Delicious

A favourite author of mine once wrote that everyone should have about a dozen or so things they are allowed to find intolerable, without explanation or apology. I think that's a wonderful idea. How cathartic.  I'm generally a pretty positive person but I think we can all admit to having a secret list like this one. For this reason and without remorse, I absolutely hate the following...

1. Tights worn as pants.
2. Anyone who will smugly say "Spoilers!" without offering up a more interesting conversation topic, when what they really mean to say is "I haven't seen the movie yet but I'm too lazy and self interested to step away, so I'm going to stay here and force you to entertain me, just not about that one specific subject."
3. Beards.
4. Parents who give their children stupid names like "Mandolynne" or "Apoplexia". 
5. Rush.
6. Political correctness.
7. People who tell me every year that they love getting a Christmas card from me, who have never sent me one in return.
8. The phrase "No offense meant".
9. Plans on a Sunday afternoon.
10. Eowyn.
11. Literally every word ever written by E.L. James, from kindergarten through to the present day.
12. Having my beer or wine explained to me.

There. That felt wonderful. Many thanks to Bill Bryson for the inspiration.

Whisper Women

A woman has endless tools of communication at her disposal. To make her point, she might employ strength, guile, humour, wit, boobs...

I say tools of course but they can be weapons as well. Of these, none is more devastating than the whisper, especially when deployed against other women.

Whispering is the worst, most aggressively unfriendly thing women do to each other, and it's dangerous. Just ask the survivors in Carrie.

Forgive my ignorance, I'm certain men whisper. In fact, my secret crush has made a career of whispering on camera while gibbons procreate in the foreground. #davidattenborough #shinsofsteel 

It seems to me that women who whisper are choosing to do so because they want to draw a visible line between those whispered to and those whispered about. The act isn't subtle and the intention is for the excluded party to feel 14 years old again, sitting alone at the back of  Mr. Sherry's ENG OA4 class, hiding behind an ill-advised perm and over-sized glasses, trying to disappear into an Douglas Adams novel and not react to the twitters of the twits around her.

I've never liked whispering. I'm too loud, for one thing, so I'm acutally not very good at it. I also try my best never say something about a person that I wouldn't want them to hear.  Partly because that keeps life interesting but mostly because I have better manners than that and I am not a horrible human being. 

If you have whisper women around you, here is some advice: be kind to them. For two reasons. First, it's entirely possible that they haven't had many acts of kindness in their lives up until this point, so this is a good opportunity for you to show them what it looks like. In my experience, this alone will make a huge difference in their behaviour. 

The second reason to be kind is that in general, it also really pisses them off.