Category: Certainties

Christmas Crinkle II

This is better than Lesley Stowe.  What’s become of you, Lesley?  Lesley Stowe  There you are.  Crinkles come in these long, slender packages 25 to a box.  You know.  The forest green box with the cellophane cover so you can look in there and see what’s going on with these round, cracker-looking things.

They’re like crackers but they’re not crackers.  They’re “Crinkles”.  Christmas crinkles.  Mostly they’re pretty good but occasionally they’ll snap back and make you wonder why you ever dreamed of buying another package of these darn things. You always do.

December 20.  “I don’t know what it reminds me of, but it reminds me of something.  Do you have it?  Its green.”

December 21.  News Item.  “I didn’t want to talk to him and he didn’t want to talk to me.  Fair enough.  Both busy as all.  Putin’s like a child that you just can’t hate.  Is he a bad fit for his electorate?  Of course, but he’s your child and you have to take care.  So that’s a good thing.  Here’s the flashlight.  And here’s the batteries, Mr. Putin.”

DSCN0557 Going strong into the Christmas crinkles and you realize.  Still a guilty pleasure if you have the patience.  Understanding.  Patience.  Resolve.  Staying power.  Patience.  You can do it.  How long has Charlie Sheen been wearing a wig?  It’s re-runs.  Here it is again for another year.

I never thought of this before.  One of my dearest friends was born on the shortest day of the year.  Suddenly, like about two minutes ago, this hits me like a hammer-blow.  It must explain everything.  But it doesn’t unlock the mystery of friendship.  We can live with that.IMAG1493

I love these cards.  It’s like when you’re a kid.  We got this one Friday.  Getting cards isn’t what it used to be.  It looks like people are sending them less.  They’ve moved on now to using social media as a substitute for communication, so there’s been that change.

“I found everything I wanted,” I said to the sales associate at the point-of-sale this afternoon.  I didn’t have to say anything, but this just blurted out.  If you have the time to take your time it can put a smile on the face of the person processing your method of payment.

I haven’t shopped here for a while but the selection is better than ever.  I was impressed by that last week which is why I came back.

 

 

Christmas Crinkle

December 16, 2015. 5:10 pm.

Dark. Black dark.  Dropped by my girlfriend’s to help him with his gigantic, 12 year old, tank-sized “Toshiba” TV which has just been replaced by a light-as-air 48 inch “Samsung” “flat-screen” purchased at “London Drugs”. This is product placement on a massive scale.

The Toshiba is the heaviest TV I’ve ever encountered.  I mean it weighed a ton.  It had made it to the front porch at the house up there in old Point Grey.  My girlfriend’s daughter’s boyfriend, somehow, all by himself, got it that far a few days ago.  But he’s a mover.

My girlfriend and I struggled to get it down the front stairs. Then he had the brilliant idea of getting the wheelbarrow. We did it. He was taking the TV to the car to take it to London Drugs who recycle old TVs (and old Christmas lights) as well as sell new ones.  True.  We maneuvered it onto the back deck of the hatchback and pushed it in.  It just fit, like it belonged in there.

The Same Old Bubble Lights Year After Year
The Same Old Bubble Lights Year After Year

December 17, 2015. 4:25 pm.

Back up into old Point Grey this morning to the house to organize “Finnegan” for his journey to his new home. It goes well in the cold, slashing rain and sleet.

We’ve perfected the method of getting him into the travel/cat cage carrier.
You’ve got to put the thing up on end, your assistant steadies it and you pick Finnegan up behind his front legs so his massive body is hanging down vertical and lower him into the cage like a big hairy sausage. Then you gently close the cage door and lay the cage back down flat on the living-room carpet.

As he really doesn’t get what’s going on he puts up no resistance.  The first time we tried the carrier we couldn’t get him to go in head-first.  He wasn’t willing to go in there and he’s a strong Coon Cat.  No means no.  He never gets aggressive or tries to scratch. He just wasn’t going in that way.

So we fooled him. And it’s worked well on the few trips to the vet recently where Finnegan had a little dental work and got his nails clipped.  And now this.  A drive to Burnaby ten or so blocks in along Rumble Avenue then south a bit. That area. His new home.

The lady has been in cat re-home and rescue 27 years.  It’s hard to say goodbye to a cat you’ve really only gotten to know well the last little while. But not that hard.  Finnegan’s gone to a fine, large Burnaby-style home with modern, up-to-date kind of bourgeois furnishings and wall-to-wall.  And he’ll have friends.

He quieted right down when we got there, because on the way out he was protesting occasionally.  Yeah, he was crying out as traveling cats do. But he was observing from the open door of the travel cage now and he was staying in there for the time being as we were talking things over in the lady’s living room.

His owner has gone to a new home and now so has he.  That’s how it works.  The best solution is the one you come up with.  It’s tough though.  Poignancy might not be the right word, but but but….  …. ….  some people….

But But But
But But But

Boredom

It comes out of the night. Especially the night before it’s December 10, 2015 and you’re due to buy a Christmas tree.  And you wonder. Hopefully, it’ll go okay.

Remember when scholars of the Queen’s English derided “hopefully”? As a way of vocalizing and expressing the idea of hope?  That it wasn’t good enough?  It wasn’t British?  That the proper way of speaking is, “It is to be hoped”?  Remember?  Let’s forget it then.  But “hopefully” has made huge strides in the last several decades.  It means what it says.

DSCN3570Nobody’s tried to contact us about this.  We’re here.  Go ahead.  It’s when ‘you’re struggling in the moment’ that clichés ‘come home to roost’.

4:25 pm.  Lord Byng’s not a bad lord.  From what we see from the “Staff Parking Lot Do Not Enter”.  We ignore that forbidding sign and drive right in.  All you teachers, we don’t much care about your rules.  We’re here to obtain a Christmas tree.  Hopefully.

I was looking up at the great edifice of Lord Byng high school.  It’s been here a long time.  A fine gentleman, a couple of them, actually, that I had the pleasure and privilege of knowing and who have died, but they were very old, attended Lord Byng in the 1930s.  Exact same school in the exact same place.DSCN3573Their lives are forfeit and their skins are stuffed but if that was your sailing ship and if that was your grizzly bear you might revise your opinion of taxidermy, mister.

The taxidermy shop is gone and so is the taxidermist.  For years, years ago, I remember driving past the place.  It used to be right across the street from “Central Park”.  I never knew either why they called it “Central Park”.  Central to what?  The park’s on the extreme keening edge of the western extremity of the City of Burnaby.  A lot of things make no sense.

The students attending the Christmas tree lot were friendly and helpful.  They were professional, but not professional students.  They were the real thing.  One fine young gentleman packed our preferred, usual, semi-scrawny selection to the trunk of our vehicle.  Big trunk and with one of the back seats down it disappeared right in there and we dropped the trunk-lid with a satisfying ka-thunk.

DSCN3578Don’t just walk away, Renée.  It’s taxidermy time.  Lost Sunday.  It’s dead.  Not interested.  Or something poignant, something out of Satie.  Mystery moments.