H is for Hazel

Hurricane Hazel, they called her, but my grandma was nothing like the 1954 killer storm that commuted from the tropics all the way up the eastern seaboard to Toronto. It was the worst storm that city ever had, and even though it happened 60 years ago, folks round those parts still recall the devastation.

I guess the thing that storm had in common with Grandma was its sheer velocity. Hazel Hooper never did anything slow. She drove like a lunatic. She cooked and cleaned like a tornado. Her hands moved quick, as she talked, a trait my mom used to say I shared with her. The older I get, though, the slower I get, but as far as I can remember, Hazel never did slow down, not until the very end, not until she lay in a coma in a hospital bed.

Anybody who knows me knows that an important part of my novel, Green Eggs & Weezie, takes part at my grandparents' farm in Buttonville, Ontario. It was a magical place, when I was growing up. That big house. Those open fields, just begging to be explored. My grandpa, sitting back on the fainting couch in the kitchen, listening to CFRB and watching Grandma cook.

Both my grandparents are long dead and their farm is now part of an industrial park, the house torn down and replaced by an ugly office building.

In Weezie, the farmhouse is still standing – decrepit but still there – and my title character stays there for a while, licking her wounds and beginning to heal with the help of memories and the "ghost" of her Grandma Bean.

Grandma Bean is a homage to my real grandma, a woman as sturdy and smart as she needed to be, raising five kids, cooking for a house full of hired farmhands, and smiling pretty as she had to do, being the wife of a local politician.

Grandma Bean, to me, is the best and the sweetest part of my book, because she was just like Hurricane Hazel, one of the best and sweetest women I ever had the great honour to know.

Here's a quick excerpt, one of my favourite bits. My grandma used to take mid-morning coffee and snacks to the men working in the fields. She'd fill old corn syrup cans with coffee, tea and water, and she'd pack egg salad and roast beef sandwiches in Tupperware containers, and she'd rush it all out to the fields in her Chrysler New Yorker, a car the size of a small ocean liner.

"Weezie never forgot the sound of the bottom of that New Yorker, scraping against the sharp tops of freshly cut straw. It was a huge rushing noise, like a waterfall if you were standing right next to it. It was so loud she could barely carry on a conversation with Grandma Bean, who was basically yelling at Weezie about mundane matters like what the weather was going to be the next day or what kind of pie Weezie liked best. They didn’t have seat belts back in those days and Weezie bounced around on the front seat, holding on to whatever she could while she kept her eye on Grandma Bean wheeling that big old boat of a car around with her heavy arms poking out of her housedress. She had an apron on, too, she always had an apron, Weezie had forgotten about that, and the apron strings were flapping in the breeze from the open windows and Grandma Bean’s home permanent was all askew, sticking to her sweaty forehead in the front and flying around at the back."

Grandma holds my cousin Debi
(I'm pretty sure that's her), while my Uncle Charles goofs around
in the background. Notice the crystal doorknob? It's mentioned
in my book, too.

G is for God

I grew up going to the United Church of Canada and I never minded – as a matter of fact, I still enjoy it – but I always felt like a hypocrite. I was surrounded by people who seemed to sincerely believe in what was being said, and I was always a little apprehensive, irrationally afraid that someone was going to see through me and I was going to be kicked out, or struck by lightning, for not believing the way I should.

As many of you know, I've been wrestling with religion this past year. Having a friend who is a minister, moving to an area that is strongly fundamentalist Christian, being appalled by the way members of marginalized society are treated by the Christian right, I have never spent so much time thinking, reading and talking about religion.

I have finally decided I don't believe in God. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. I believe we live our lives and then we die, so we'd best make the most of whatever time we're lucky enough to have on this planet.

You have no idea how exhilarating it is to admit that to yourself. It's like I'd been shackled my whole life and suddenly I'm free.

At the same time, I'm also afraid to say this publicly. Most people, I would say, believe in some kind of religion, and non-believers are either looked down upon or targeted as people to "save." There's also a fear of repercussion – after all, it wasn't long ago that heretics were burned at the stake.

I sort of feel like I'm coming out of the closet, and it's scary but wonderful all at the same time.

I used to wish that I could believe. I was jealous of those who looked towards death with nothing but confidence, but I don't worry about it anymore. The older I get, the less afraid I am of dying and the more I believe in honesty and humanism.

Still, I always wonder, what is it that makes you believe (or not believe)? I sincerely want to know, and hope you tell me in your comment. Nothing too long, and please don't quote scripture at me. I don't care what the Bible or any other religious book says, I want to know what's in your heart – and what happened in your life that shapes your relationship with God. 

Maybe I'll write a book about it some day.

People always say we shouldn't talk about politics or religion, but I think if we're not talking about the things that really matter, there's no point talking.

F is for Frozen

When my kids were young I watched enough kids' shows to forever cure me of ever watching them again. So when my adult friends suggest seeing a kids movie,  I smile and shake my head and say I'd rather poke both my eyes out with burning sticks.

I was curious about Frozen, however, because of the controversy surrounding it. Apparently there are a bunch of right-wing Christian dough-heads who think Disney's Oscar-winning movie is pushing a homosexual agenda. Among them is a frothing-at-the-mouth fearmonger named Kevin Swanson who also thinks Kermit the Frog needs the death penalty (people are so weird).

Here's what Swanson had to say to his radio cohost Steve Vaughan on the topic:

Swanson: Man, how many children are taken into these things and how many Christians are taking their kids off to see the movie Frozen, produced by an organization that is probably one of the most pro-homosexual organizations in the country? You wonder sometimes, I’m not a tinfoil hat conspiratorialist, but you wonder sometimes if maybe there’s something very evil happening here. If I was the Devil, what would I do to really foul up an entire social system and do something really, really, really evil to 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds in Christian families around America?

Vaughn: I would make a movie.

Swanson: I would buy Disney. If I was the Devil, I would buy Disney in 1984, that’s what I would have done.

Vaughn: Then you would start making all these nice little movies that throw little things in there that make sin look enticing, in fact some of the worst of sins, make it look enticing or at least to start to indoctrinate slowly, turn the heat up on the frog in the pan.

Swanson: Friends, this is evil, just evil. I wonder if people are thinking: “You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way.” I wonder if the average parent going to see Frozen is thinking that way. I wonder if they are just walking in and saying, “Yeah, let’s get my five-year-old and seven-year-old indoctrinated early.” You know they’re not, I think for the most part they’re oblivious. Maybe they do pick up on pieces of it but they just don’t get up and walk out.

Swanson also criticized Disney for its opposition to the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on openly gay troop leaders, saying that parents should know that the company, along with public schools, is aiming to have “their children indoctrinated” into “the lifestyle of sodomy.”

He added that it would be the “worst nightmare” of parents to have their child “turn into a sodomite.”

Kevin Swanson: Asshat.

What a complete load of hooey. I mean, seriously? Are these guys completely deluded or are they just heroin addicts? Or maybe too many drugs aren't the problem – maybe they're just off their meds? I'm thinking the world might be a better place if they signed themselves into the nearest mental hospital ASAP.

I saw Frozen last night and I LOOKED for anything that remotely "pushed the homosexual agenda," and there was NOTHING. Nothing! The only thing I can possibly think of is when the two sisters, who are sisters, SISTERS for crying out loud, hug each other and declare that the true love of a prince isn't what helps them, it's the true love between SISTERS. Between FAMILY MEMBERS. So does Mr. Swanson think it's not OK for siblings to love each other? What happened to family values? Is the world such a twisted mess that it's not OK to love your own family members?

Kudos to Disney, by the way, for showing that a girl doesn't need a prince to rescue her.

What a fecking frozen-dinnered meatball Swanson is.

Anyway, Frozen wasn't all that bad - you know, for a kids movie. I actually liked it. The reindeer was funny. And there was a lot of (gak) singing. But there wasn't any lesbian pornography to speak of. No sodomy. No bestiality. Nobody did anything to the reindeer (although the snowman did have a weird gleam in his eye – kidding).

I think if you're going to see anything unwholesome in Frozen, ya gotta be slurping Swanson's Kool-Aid.

E is for Ear Holes

I know those big ear holes kids are getting today are a fad, just like bell bottoms in the 1970s and big hair in the '80s, and kids should be kids and express themselves any way they want (as long as it doesn't hurt anybody), but geez, those are BIG holes.

Everyone knows your ears get bigger as you get older. My ear lobes, right now, are the size of Smart Cars. They dangle lower than what's left of my boobs, for crying out loud.

Can you imagine if I had one of those giant holes put in my ears when I was a kid? They'd be big enough by now to run a four-lane highway through. The thought of those ginormous holes flopping around on some geezer-in-a-nursing-home gives me the willies.

They don't just look funny – those holes also stink. Anybody with pierced ears knows what I'm talking about. As time goes by the holes get full of dead skin cells, body oil, old shampoo and stuff from the recycling bin, and eventually it stinks. If your ears are pierced, run your finger behind your ear, kinda digging it into the back of the hole, yes, like that ... Now. Smell your finger. (If you're in a coffee shop reading this you might want to do it surreptitiously, so people don't think you're some kind of cheesebox.)

Stinks, eh? Told ya. Bet you'll think twice before you let Mr. Romeo snuffle sweet nothings in your ear.

So if one regular-sized ear piercing stinks and grows, can you IMAGINE the size and STENCH of a giant hole on an old person? I mean, think of it – 60 years from now, all the teenagers who have ginormous studs in their ears are going to be living in nursing homes where health care aides will be forced to clean all those repulsively large and stinky ear holes flapping in the breeze.

Just now I went to find a picture of some numb-nut with an ass-sized ear hole and everything on Google Images was so repulsive that I couldn't bear to look. So I'll spare you the photo. Now go on and enjoy your Saturday, go out for breakfast, maybe order some cottage cheese or something. See ya on Monday!

D is for Door

Ladies, I have to tell you, it's pretty sweet having a back door man.

When your husband has another one of his headaches and he hasn't shaved his legs since summer solstice; when it's that time of the month and he's ragging about the correlation between your hair dryer and the electricity bill; when he's asking you if his work pants make him look fat and you have to say, honey, it's time to meet either Jenny Craig or Omar the Tentmaker and he's bawling and his eyes are all puffy and ugly, and you can't help but roll yours 'cause men are just so darned sensitive – that's when you really appreciate your back door man.

Mine's a redhead. Oh yeah. Hairy from top to toe, just the way I like 'em. A big guy, strong, but not in a smelly way. He doesn't coat himself with frilly fragrance, he smells the way a guy should smell, masculine, dusty, musky like goat with a hint of beef and a top note of kitty litter.

He comes to me every night, creeping up the stairs when my husband is drowsy and almost asleep. He's a ninja, like Kung Fu Panda ninja, like Fred Flintstone twinkle-toeing down the bowling lane, except he doesn't make that high-pitched piano noise that Fred's toes are famous for. He's a stealth bomber, a break-in artist, a thief in the night, and he comes to my bed so quietly that I don't even know he's there. Until I turn over and there he is, watching me in the darkness, his hairy nakedness soft in the gleam from a neighbourhood streetlight.

My husband knows he's there, but he doesn't complain. The back door man fills a void in my life that my husband can't, and so the three of us lie there, every night in our bed, always in the same order: Dave is closest to the door, I'm in the middle, and beside me is Dodge, who could sleep anywhere in the house but believes it's his absolute right to share one full-third of our king-size bed. He comes and goes throughout the night, but I rarely hear him. Always, though, I fall asleep to the sound of his purring and I wake up with my face coated in cat hair.

He's my back door man, ladies, and I think every hot blooded woman should have one.