What Not to Wear, Muslim-Style

I cut myself shaving this morning.

Then I thanked Jesus that I am not a hemophiliac (because: while wearing a Spongebob Squarepants band-aid might raise a few eyebrows, rivulets of blood petulantly refusing to coagulate running down my leg would raise a couple more). My clothes were thrown on while they were still damp because my affinity for a black wardrobe and my long torso that turns everything into a belly shirt requires that laundry be done in cold and hung to dry and because I was too lazy to laundry until I was totally out of clothes, so it was damp clothes or my housecoat.

Finally, I raced off to the bus stop hungry because I chose blow-drying over breakfast, and had just enough time to put make-up on in the car (note: while stopped) before my bus came.

In other words: a pretty typical PM morning.

Later, less discombobulated and more expansively possessed of free time, I strolled down Nicollet enjoying the farmer's market. And, as is not uncommon in a city with the highest population of Somalis in North America, I saw a woman wearing a burka.

And, as is also not uncommon when I see women wearing hajibs or burkas, I was insanely jealous.

Now I get that to some they are symbols of male and/or state and/or religious oppression. I wouldn't want someone to force me to cover up so as to keep my male betters surrounding me from being corrupted by something so impure as my skin. But I can't help but see them as being tremendously liberating all the same.

Because how much of my morning was similarly dictated by oppressive sartorial standards? I spend at least half an hour every day doing something about my appearance for other people. I replace perfectly serviceable clothing with more fashion-forward items (well, slightly more fashion-forward - I shop at consignment stores, so I'm a season behind at best) just so I'll fit in. I shave my legs because, well, it's kind of ew.

(Aside: this is why I love Mennonites. They - well, the die-hard MCCers - totally don't care. They wear whatever is in their closet, and when it wears out, they replace it with whatever's at the thrift store that day.)

Imagine the freedom: no worrying about hair colour or length, no sighing because your skirt doesn't fit due to being a little heavy on the Old Dutch, no Spongebob Squarepants bandaids because you never have to shave your legs.

Laundry? A breeze - there's so much cloth there, shrinkage isn't an issue. You'd need, what, seven outfits max?

Now I suppose I could experience somewhat of the same effect with a nun's habit. Or army fatigues. Or a mechanic's jumpsuit. Or a school uniform. Complaining bitterly to a professor once, I lamented that we should all just wear brown jumpsuits. Truly, brown jumpsuits would be my dream. Step in, zip up, and wash-rinse-repeat the next day.

She laughed at me and observed, "nothing is stopping you from wearing brown jumpsuits, you know."

I guess. But I'm far too shallow and proud and fearful to do something like that. I could never announce to the world "I DON'T CARE!" (because, of course, that would be a lie). Instead I just muddle along, limping and squishing my way through a world of shaving cuts and damp clothes because being uncomfortable is better than being different.

But - oh - to have an acceptable reason to wear what is essentially a tent with a peephole. Then life would be easy, right?

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It Ain't Over Till the Fire Engines Ring

Been awhile since I've put up any kidlet pics. You're probably starting to worry that I'm getting crazy ideas that this blog is all about me or something.

We had a family outing to the aquatennial fireworks on Saturday. I have no idea what the "aquatennial" is other than it's some sort of annual celebration and I imagine it has to do with water. But we'd heard the fireworks were good, and since the kids missed the July 4th ones because they were sleepyheads, we decided to check it out.

Waiting for the bus. Riding the bus was pretty much the best part of the evening for the under nine set. The Girl is still talking about how awesome it was.

Carefully recording the highlights of the trip (number of times the bus stopped, number of Caribou Coffee stores passed, etc.)

Hanging out while waiting for it to get dark, eating ice cream containing dreadful amounts of Blue Number 5, reading about historical figures on the St. Paul side of the river.

Watching the show (finally - I took the kids for a stroll that ended up being twice as long as it was supposed to be because they closed off one of the bridges and then we had to try to find The Husband in the dark).

The blinkey lights. Twenty minutes straight of constant explosions and lit-up sky. So, essentially the same as the Steinbach Canada Day extravaganza.

Trying to stay awake on the ride home.

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Vendredi V - Guess Who Doesn't Need Packing Tape This Year! Edition

Observant readers of my little home sweet home on the Internets are no doubt wondering where The Announcement is. Every year at this time, we give everyone a heads up that they're going to have to get out their wee address books and update our entry.

Again.

We (well, at least one of us - it hasn't always been a simultaneous thing) have moved every summer for the past six years. When most people are enjoying the cooler evenings of August and feeling summer ripen into its last glorious days, we're slogging through real estate ads and trying on prospective neighbourhoods for size.

BUT!!

Not.

This.

Year.

Nope, the PM clan has decided to remain exactly where it is. The housing market being what it is (steals of deals, to be sure, but once bought, you won't resell it for 25 years) and our bank account being what it is (that is, not conducive to a house downpayment in this brave new world of actually needing to have a good chunk of cash down), we've elected to stay put.

[Cue thunderous applause from those Canucks who head down to visit us and are tired of having to print out a different Google map again.]

This? Excites me very much. For many reasons, including:

Top 5 Reasons I Am Glad We Are Not Moving

1. No address changes. It gets very annoying to have to call the customer service department for every credit card, alumni association, magazine subscription, bank, friend, student loan office, former employer, Canada Revenue Association, insurance company, utility, etc. every summer. Even worse are the infrequently-used bits of red tape, where you don't realize for a few months that you haven't seen any documentation come through and then you have to call them and they're all chipper and say, "and if you could just provide me with the phone number we have on file" and then you can't remember which house you were living in over the past four years when you opened the account and then they get extremely suspicious that you're Identity Theft.

2. Same school. The Girl has been to a new school for every single grade. Every fall I have to figure out new lunch and absentee policies and find the office where I have to drop off the forms. Every year we all have to make new friends, and I have to introduce myself a hundred times to the Other Moms. This year? I even know their school bus number! (38, whoop!)

3. No NGSTSD. "New grocery store traumatic stress disorder" that is. I hate trying a new grocery store. Even if it's just a different location of the same chain. I need to know where everything is because I write my grocery list grouped by category and location and if I don't know if the health food aisle comes before or after the snack food aisle, I won't know in which order to put organic sour cream, onion soup mix, and Old Dutch Ripple Chips.

4. Blissful ignorance about dust bunnies. Oh, you can think your house is clean. You can even do spring cleaning or clear out in anticipation of a garage sale. But until you actually pick up and remove every sweater, every book, every piece of lego, every dish, and every piece of very-heavy-because-we-can-only-afford-MDF furniture, you don't realize how much crud is in your house. Most houses (even the most well-kept) have at least 40 garbage bags of crap in them. And, every summer before this one, I've had to fill every one of them. Not this year!

5. My oven can remain crusty. And, the real reason why I don't want to move. I hate cleaning ovens with my whole heart. And the only time I do it is for the annual move. No Easy-Off for this girl in 2009, hooray!

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Resistance Is Futile

Life in high school tends to be very public. With everyone your age still living at home, the closest any of you ever comes to "my own place" is a decent-sized basement and parents who let you and your friends hang out uninterrupted. Although, I think my friends and I mostly hung out in my parents' room watching Days of Our Lives, now that I think about it.

(Aside: Whenever I am in Target and I pass the small appliance aisle and I see the deep fat fryers, all I ever want to do is put on horn-rimmed glasses, buck out my teeth, and wear a fake purple pregnancy pillow so I can pretend that I'm my own doppelganger who is carrying my father-in-law's baby so that I can pretend I wasn't really taking birth control pills even though my husband - who is actually pretending to be blind but he is a Demira and you should have known you can't ever trust a Demira - totally saw me and knows I was on the pill but is not saying anything for fear of driving me further into the arms of John Black who may or may not be Roman Brady. Sigh - those were the golden years of that show.)

Without licenses or, when those are obtained, cars to drive, you tend to travel in packs, chauffeured about by whoever managed to beg the family Pontiac 6000 for the evening. One of your compatriots is usually working the close shift at McDonald's or A&W, so you often end up hanging out in restaurants.

Of course, if you grow up in Steinbach, you also tend to go to church youth group for fun, so when you're not dipping french fries in mayonnaise and ketchup, you're singing endless rounds of Love - The- Lordyourgod - Withallyour - Heart -and - Allyoursoul - Andallyour - Mind -And - Luvalluvmankind...

Everything goes on in front of everybody else. Had a fight with your locker partner? The whole school knows. Snark someone for wearing nail polish in music class? One hour and it's all over the place. Break up with your girlfriend in the aforementioned McDonald's (because heaven forbid you'd ever end your two-month relationship in private, Ben W., and give your girlfriend the dignity of shrieking her "nooo - NOOOO!!!" without an audience)? It's the talk o' the cafeteria.

Is it just me or is Facebook high school all over again?

Because! I now have 15 friends. This is a 1500% increase in the number of FB friends I had at this time last week. It's like every time I open my email now, somebody wants to be my friend.

(You like me - you REALLY like me!)

But pretty much all I've done FB-wise this week is accept all these requests. Because as gratifying as all this attention is, I'm still struggling a bit with this newfangled soh-shul net-werking thing.

So I knew there was this "wall" and that people could write on it. And I knew about the status thing. But riddle me this, FB-ers - why do other people's comments on my FRIENDS' (15!!) pages show up on MY page? Does everyone who looks at my page know that someone who is a total stranger to me is laughing about one of my friend's foibles?

And does this mean that if I respond to someone whom I DO know, and who is my fur-real friend, my response actually gets plastered onto the page of all of THEIR friends (whom I probably do NOT know)?

I feel like Cary Grant in Rear Window or like The Husband's neighbours back when he was still on a party line and they always listened in on our teenage-romantical phone calls. I get updates about the stuff people I know like and what they're doing and what their friends are saying to them and who added whom as friends and is it just me or is that a whole lot of information I shouldn't know?!

Also: I have tried to tell FB I am a girl 10 times and it refuses to listen to me. I applaud gender-specificity as a response to the grim spectre of plural pronoun use for a single subject, but it has to actually work, you know?

Sigh. I am clearly too old for this. I should've joined FB back when life was all cheeseburger courtship rituals, communal pots of Carmex, and reading out the names of people with three lateslips over the PA every morning. Maybe it would have made more sense.

But I'll soldier on. Next week's task: figuring out how to update my profile so I'm not some anonymous silhouette. Which activity will then be noted on 1,000 pages of people I don't actually know, right?

(/ Seven of Nine)

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Vendredi V - Big Brother is Watching Edition

I have a grand total of one Facebook friend. This is astonishing to me.

Not that I am astonished that I have only one friend. But that I have a friend at all.

See, I've been suspicious of The Facebook since I first heard about it. Initially dismissing it as a flash in the pan, I then determined to wait it (along with its MySpace and Twitter ilk) out, only to discover that I've been left behind and now must disguise my fear-of-change and inability-to-recognize-important/cool-things-until-its-too-late as an intentional eschewing of this clear and present danger.

What little I've seen of it actually looks okay. I say "little" because, having ignored pretty much all the invitations I've received to friend someone [aside: "friend" as a verb? Seriously?], I think I can't see anyone's site. I tried to look at my mom's, but I think I was barred. Besides, I'm pretty sure hers is solely for the purpose of chatting with her friends (hi Margaret!) and bragging about her grandchildren.

So, only one friend, and this was because I was trying to track down someone in Australia. (Who, I must add, has a lovely Facebook site and was reason enough to get an account, even though I've never been back to update my own page since I found her.)

Since then, no participation. Which is why I was somewhat surprised to get an email from Facebook last week advising me that I had a message.

Overcome by curiosity, I checked out said message, only to discover it was an old one from last summer - someone whom we shall call "Floral F" - no wait, too obvious - "F. Fern" - mocking me for having only one friend. Not sure why FB decided I needed reminding of this message's existence at this point.

But while I was there, I was shocked (SHOCKED!) by the little Suggestions section. There, on my bare-bones, no real info page was a list of people that FB thought I might want to add as friends. And know who was on there? PEOPLE I KNOW!

Now I love it when I get suggestions based on feedback I've given. Netflix rocks because it's got us pegged in terms of movies (apparently, we like "Quirky Foreign Thrillers" - who knew that was a category?). But this is because we've carefully rated everything we've watched, and it suggests things based on our preferences.

But how does Facebook know? I've never rated my friends. From where is it obtaining, through nefarious measures, no doubt, the type of people I would like and cross-referencing it - somehow - with people I actually know?

And all this gets added to my pre-existing list of:

Top 5 Reasons Why I Don't Do Facebook:

1. I like my privacy. Every day, it seems, FB gets in trouble with someone over the information it collects and - worse - hangs onto. I'm pretty terrible with fine print, and so like most people, I would assume that my information was my own, only to find out someday that some Nigerian prince obtained my address and driver's license which led to my bank account and an EFT faster than you can say "I have legitimate bank holding that which cannot access but if it would be you could provide a cheque for entirely legal transaction, I would be most pleased to submit to you a cheque to recompense your services, thank you and God bless."

2. I want to keep my job. Stories of Facebook Firings are also rampant. One of the reasons I blog anonymously (ish) is that I don't want my coworkers to find me. Not that there's posts detailing drunken escapades or talking trash about my work here on PGT. But I like a neater divide between personal and public. (Yeah, I know there's ways to limit access to parts of your FB page. But there's that "can't read the fine print" stuff - I'd mess it up and give everybody access to everything.)

3. I am cripplingly polite. Given a tendency towards conflict-avoidance and a not-insubstantial dose of hesitancy in the self-esteem area, I tend to be nice to everyone for fear of reprisal. Add to this a ripe guilt complex that leads to agonized moments of "what if something I said offended them?!" and you have someone who could not possibly say no to a friend request. And what if I don't want to be their friend? What if we fell out of touch after high school and I'm of the opinion that's a good thing?

4. I am lazy. As you have possibly noticed, I have enough trouble keeping up with this blog. If I had to keep up some sort of status, it would probably still read something like "Moving to Mpls - Excited and Scared - Hope it Works Out!!!!" and my profile picture would still have the blond highlights circa 2004.

5. I am scared my page will suck. And, here we have the real reason why I don't join FB. This corner of the blogosphere is anonymous, and the people who know it's me are more likely to look upon its deficiencies with a kind eye. Facebook? You're out there...anyone who finds you knows it's you and that you have a sucky page. Also - what if no one wants to be my friend because my page is so sucky? Also again - what if some of my friends take pity on me and friend me, but then their friends find out they're friends with me and say, "ewww - you're friends with the girl with the suckiest page that ever sucked?" and then they (my friends) get de-friended (by their friends) and then it's all "oh PM, your stupid sucky page screwed up Facebook."

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Vendredi V - I Like to Ride My Bicycle, I Like to Ride My Bike Edition

I wore spandex today. In public. On purpose.

I'm as shocked as you are, honestly. I must protest, though, that the reason for this sartorial sin is a pretty good one: last week, I started to ride my bike to work.

(Aside: commence self-stroking of ego. I am obscenely proud that I have become a cycling commuter - 9 miles each way! I walk into work extremely smug and very self-righteous as I contemplate what I've done to reduce my carbon footprint that day. Plus, it saves money - I save three whole dollars each day that I don't take the bus. So yeah, I'm totally awesome.)

To facilitate said commute, The Husband ordered me a bunch of cycling gear. There's all sorts of strange tubes and Co2 tanks and little tools that apparently work together to be some sort of flat tire kit. (I'm told there is a "how to change a flat tire" lesson scheduled for this weekend. My real plan for a flat tire is to call The Husband at work and make him figure it out, so I'd say I'm already covered as long as my cell phone is charged. But I'll humour him.) I also got a bike computer that will log just how sloooooowly I go (it's still a cruiser, after all).

Aaaand, I got bike shorts. These were actually my idea; I'm a little low on workout gear, and all those people who pass me everyday seem to be enjoying theirs, so I thought I needed a pair.

But I was not aware that they came with a little something extra. They've got all this padding in the *ahem* sensitive region! It's like trying to ride a loaf of bread. Which is probably much appreciated if you have one of those skinny, hard plastic sporty seats. Me? I drive a crooooooser - my seat already has WIDE LOAD written all over it. Superfluous padding simply leads to uncomfortable bunching.

It also reminds me of that fateful day in junior high when I was wearing my awesomest neon bicycle shorts (plus oversized neon T-shirt!) and it was track and field day and the cramps that I thought were due to too much running were actually the harbinger of my First Day as a Woman...

(Entering TMI-land here....sorry.)

Now those bicycle shorts, I loved. Grade eight was allll about the spandex. I looked sixteen ways to awesome in those shorts.

And thinking about them got me reminiscing about:

Top 5 Clothing Items That I Loved Because They Made Me Look Awesome:

1. Grade One - Jelly Shoes - I was always a little late to the party when it came to clothing trends. Extra coinage for frivolous apparel purchases was not easy to come by, so I tended to get Version 3.0 of everything (i.e. once it hit Saan). But -oh!- my jelly shoes were awesome. Everyone else had the hole-y ones that were more like plastic chicken wire than anything. Mine? Solid clear plastic. With black lace lining them. Oh yes.

2. Grades Four-Six - Stirrup Pants - I loved stirrup pants with my entire pre-adolescent heart. For some reason (I think it had to do with a winter outing while wearing denim and having some fairly serious thigh-chafing issues), I declared war on jeans for about three years and wore only stirrup pants. Pants that stayed exactly where they were supposed to at both waist and ankle level? That looked awesome when tucked into boots and topped with a thigh-length oversized men's button-up shirt? Yes please!

3. Grade Six - Harem Pants - Cousins to stirrup pants, harem pants were amazing because they a) were essentially pajamas that you could wear to school and b) let you pretend you were I Dream of Jeannie. Too expensive for me, at first, particularly since my closet was already filled with the aforementioned stirrup pants. BUT! Mama PM was listening to Trading Post one morning and heard about a contest and called in to CHSM and she was the Eighth Caller and SHE WON A PAIR OF FREE HAREM PANTS FROM WAREHOUSE ONE!! Aaaaand, she let me buy a rhinestone patch of my first initial to iron onto them. Those pants were fan-freaking-tastic.

4. Grade Nine - Overalls - Whoever decided that overalls on adults were attractive? They're essentially the clothes that little children wear because they don't ride up when you walk, they give you room for your Buddha-belly, and they allow for easy access to diapers. Nevertheless, they were fashion-forward apparel when I was in junior high. Or maybe I just thought they were. Anyway, my favourite outfit to wear into Mr. Gandhi's English class was my big ol' Alice headband (a la Deelite), my Esprit t-shirt, and my men's large, striped farmer's overalls from Stylerite. No waistline, roomy thighs, and ready for chicken-catching action?* Sign me up!

5. Grade Twelve - My Grad Dress - I loved my grad dress. 1994 was the year of the off-the-shoulder-jewel-toned-fitted-ankle-length-skirt-with-slit-up-the-side. They were a dime a dozen (although, when I think about it, none of my classmates that I know who read this actually wore one like that. Seemed like everyone else did, though). I was in my Victoria phase at the time, and wanted something a little softer. And I found the loveliest floral pattern in lavender and green at Laura Ashley. It had a flouncy ruffle around the wide neck, it was fitted at the waist and flared out to the ever-flattering mid-calf length. It rustled softly when I moved, and I felt like one the prettiest girls in the room.

* Note: I have actually been chicken-catching (that is, running around a chicken barn, eyes streaming from the ammonia, grabbing a panicky, squawking chicken by its ankles, and running as fast as you can to deliver the chicken to its cage destined for the slaughterhouse, all the while trying to avoid being pecked to death). It is exactly as fun as it sounds.

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I Was Hungry...And You Gave Me Something to Eat

What signifies, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco.

'And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? It is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths.'

(Samuel Johnson, as recorded in Piozzi's Anecdotes)

Moral quandry time.

Downtown where I work, as in many large cities, the rising temperatures of spring and summer bring a proportional rise in panhandlers. When I'm sprinting down Nicollet Mall to catch my bus in the dead of winter, I pass no outstretched hands or tattered signs. But come springtime, the Down and Out return from wherever it is they shivered through the winter, and once again sit hunched over their cardboard tales of woe and supplication.

This is only my second summer in the Twin Cities, but it definitely seems as though there are more homeless people on the streets than last year. I don't know if it's the recession or what, but the requests have increased and the situations seem to be more dire.

There's all kinds. Some people seem to be really plucky. There's the man who sits in the skyway by Macy's, singing spirituals and praises to Jesus at the top of his lungs, slapping his knees to the beat and shouting out cheerful "Good Morning!"s to everyone who passes. There's the trumpet player who finds the best acoustics in the tunnel by the used bookstore and who plays the most beautiful Stardust. There's the artist who labours over his charcoal drawings, ensuring the smudges are just so before he lays them out in hopes of selling them.

Then there are the weary. The Vietnam Vets. The ones who have lost jobs. The wanderers. The ones whose minds have clearly turned on them. They don't even bother loooking up, but stare down at the cement, just putting in the time.

The worst are the ones with kids. There was a single mom out there every afternoon for months last year, reading stories and playing with her little daughter in between holding her sign detailing destitution in the face of domestic abuse. I would get so very, very angry at her for subjecting her child to a life on the street, but then berate myself for judging where I didn't know the situation.

I never know what to do when I pass someone who is down on their luck. (Aside: is there a politically correct term here? Beggar? Homeless person? Street person?)

If I avert my eyes to avoid staring, I worry that it looks like I'm trying to pretend they don't exist. But if I meet their eyes to demonstrate my belief in their dignity as a person, I feel as though I'm objectifying. I feel guilty walking past with a Target bag, as though I'm flaunting my possession of disposable income.

In the face of so many never-ending requests, it's so much easier to ignore than to be drawn in every time. When I am drawn in, I remember that I rarely carry cash, and if I do it's way in the bottom of my purse (God forbid I have to actually stop and dig for it and embarrass us both). Plus there's always memories of admonitions like "don't give them money - they'll only spend it on drink" or "don't think they're poor - beggars actually make hundreds of dollars a day - I read it in the Reader's Digest" competing with my more generous impulses.

I was discussing my quandry with a church acquaintance on Sunday. She pointed me to a book she'd read detailing one man's six-month experience as a homeless man.

(I haven't read it yet, so I'm going to categorize as preliminary my inital reaction that I can't imagine anything more objectifying than playing at homelessness for six months just to see what it's like. We shall see.)

She suggested I try something mentioned in the book: a soft granola bar and a bottle of water. There's decent nutrition there in a usable form (homelessness tends to come with a pretty paltry dental plan), it speaks to an immediate hunger while (hopefully) being representative of a different type of fulfillment. Plus, if you're the cynical type, it can't be spent on booze and if the person's only faking it (seriously: why would anyone pretend to be homeless?), you're only out a few cents.

So I tried it today.

(Aside: please don't think that I'm sititng here pleased as punch with myself, thinking I am all that and a barrel of monkeys. I've walked disdainfully past many fellow citizens of this world and I'm not proud of it. Simply relating that I've done this has ensured that I will receive no heavenly reward. But there's nevertheless a point here.)

On my way to Target to make the totally unnecessary purchase of a second yoga mat (because I am so spoiled I don't want to have to lug mine back and forth for my class on Wednesdays), I passed a man whose sign said he was a single father of 6 kids and was out of work.

Now I can't imagine being homeless or hungry or having no support network. But I do know what it feels like to feel like I'm not doing well by my kids. Now multiply that times a million and maybe that's what it's like to not have food for your kids. To bring them to shelters at night. To pawn them off for the day so you can sit at the feet of the fortunate and wealty, enduring their scornful glances, to scrape together something for the evening's supper.

So along with my yoga mat, I bought granola bars. A whole box. Soft ones, just in case. And Kashi - the healthy ones, full of protein and real fruit.

My heart got all fluttery as I approached him. The most I've ever done is chucked some coins at someone in an attempt to assuage my guilty conscience. You can chuck coins and keep walking, pretending that it didn't happen. But you can't just chuck granola bars at someone. To give someone a granola bar is to acknowledge their hunger and acknowledge your own intention. It is to acknowledge connectedness and invite intimacy and mutual vulnerability, however brief or disguised.

And so I walked up to him, Kashi box in hand. I looked him in the eye, mumbled, "These are for you and your kids" and handed them to him. He said, "thank you," and immediately turned his attention toward the other woman who came up to him (at exactly the same time! my moment of not-so-spontaneous philanthropy ruined by someone else!) and gave him a cigarette.

I expected to feel humbled. I expected to feel exultant that I Had Helped. I expected a rush.

I didn't expect to feel normal. Like it was just part of a day's work. Or, later, when another guy came up to me and asked to show me a magic trick, that I would do my usual polite refusal and pretend my bus was imminent. (Although I did fish out a dollar when he came around the second time and caught me in my half-truth.)

But maybe it should be just part of my normal day. Maybe I'm going at this backwards. Maybe this isn't about me. Maybe this isn't about him. Maybe it was just God seeing someone who was hungry and then seeing a girl who was walking to Target and reminding her where the granola bar aisle is.

I don't know if anything's changed. They'll all still be there tomorrow. I'm sure I'll want to walk by, and even if I don't, I won't be able to stop for every person, every time. The sheer magnitude of the task is really, really daunting.

But maybe there'll be a Kashi bar or two in an easy-to-reach place in my purse. And maybe that'll be enough for now.

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Happy Belated ... Stuff!

Yep, still here. But, holy smokes, is it seriously July already? Could've sworn it was still June. Which is probably why I missed the following:

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!

Shouldn't've missed it - we had actual Canucks on the premises. My brother and fam were here all last week (hence the slacker blogging) and we had a rocking time showing them the sights and watching the cousins hang out. Given the downturn, I'm a bit reticent to broadcast that I'm a Canadian these days for fear of someone wondering and then failing to come up with a good reason why a local can't do my job, so we had a muted celebration. But my coworkers gave my kind wishes, and I was only slightly belligerent when I reminded them that we whupped their butts in 1812 after they made snarky comments about us signing ourselves politely into existence.

Also:

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!

We actually got some 4th'in in this year and were invited to spend the day with some friends. You guys - those bandstands you see on TV? With flags? And bands? Playing songs from the American Songbook? They totally exist. There were pony rides. And races. Streamers and family picnics and neighbours loving on each other. I thought I was in a Norman Rockwell painting. We got rained out and came home early, so the kids were in bed before fireworks time. But wouldn't you know it, we could see the local display perfectly through a hole in the trees, so The Husband and I got a personal show on the driveway.

Aaaand:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

I'm a leetle bit late, but if you knew how guilty I feel, you'd know that my blackened conscience is heavy out of love for you.

Whew - all caught up! Now I can get back to normal - moaning about how time is going too fast, herding my children, procrastinating tasks that I end up doing hurriedly and poorly at the last minute, and worrying about Sarah Palin. The usual.

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