things you never expect to have to say…

…but do because you’re a parent now:

“DO NOT put meat on your feet! NO meat on feet!”

camping in the asteroid belt

Today we made a trip to Edmonton’s asteroid belt — one of those outlying areas full of big box stores. We needed the usual post-moving items: a mop, garbage bags, new coffee maker, etc. We headed for the retail cluster, not expecting it to be any different than those in Ontario. These areas are so cookie-cutter that, once inside the big parking lot, dwarfed by inflated storefronts, you could easily forget what city you’re in. However, much to our amusement, Alberta did have something unique to offer.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I really wouldn’t believe it: RV camping in the Walmart parking lot! It was a site to behold. These were not just people parked and shopping. Around the outer rim of the lot, the RVs were extended and the lawn chairs were perched in front. At 10 in the morning, it was already 25 degrees out and these people were “camping” in a sea of black asphalt.
At yesterday’s last couple restaurant and gas stops, we noted signs like “ABSOLUTELY NO RV CAMPING”, so this is perhaps the way of the RV camper, the scourge of the TransCanada Highway area. But why? Where’s the outdoor experience? Why leave your driveway only to squat in a store parking lot?

we’re home

We made it to Edmonton ahead of schedule this evening! With another 4am departure, we crossed the border from North Dakota to Saskatchwan this morning around 7. From there, it was flat and speedy travelling under sunny skies. The girls travelled fabulously today . We made one nice long rest stop at a big forested park in Regina and then a few short stops to pee and jump around with the prairie dogs along the Yellow Head Highway. During one long nap, we decided to push the limits of their tolerance and push on through. Pulling a 13-hour day, we made it here for supper. So now, we’re camped out in our place until the truck arrives with our things on Wednesday. We’ll be passing the time making home improvement lists, learning where all the amenities are and shopping at ikea (Mark needs to have an office up and going this week). Once we figure out how to light the hot water heater, we very much look forward to showering.

big country

Hi All from Bismarck, North Dakota!
Another long day but we made good use of it — another 1000 km closer to Edmonton. We started early and took lots of rest stops. We discovered that the American interstate rest stops have playgrounds, so we made those stops longer and ate meals on the road — the kids liked this better. The weather was kind to us, with the sun shining most of the way. We briefly ran into freakishly large hail in Minneapolis and, fearing for the windshield, we parked under a highway bridge for a few minutes. This only occurred to us after passing several other bridges that were packed tight with cars. Aside from that, we ate lunch outside Fargo, saw a giant statues of both a Prairie Chicken and a Buffalo and landed here in Bismarck around 4pm. We had a swim and then ate at a close by “Chinese and American” buffet filled with gigantic Americans (I sense a theme). My quote of the night comes from an extremely large fellow, buffet-side, telling his small son “Yeeeah boy! Nothing beats chocolate pie except chocolate pie buried in chocolate pudding! That’s how we do it.” Our ladies needed no such fuel as they were already climbing the walls after being set free from the car. They have now crashed hard and I’m off to prepare for tomorrow. Saskatoon or bust.

westward and still onward

We write from Madison, Wisconsin, our planned first stop after leaving Grand Bend this morning. The day went well but we already want to “just get there already”. Today started inauspiciously with a so-called “random” car search at the US border. It was 4:30 am and they knew it meant waking our sleeping kids and they did it anyways. Grumble. However, eventually everyone went back to sleep for an hour or so. The rain was heavy and relentless through the first couple hours in the States, and the interstate was under construction — but the navigation was easy so all it did was slow us down. We made a full stop for breaksfast in Kalamazoo — how could we resist? At that point, the sky cleared and stayed sunny (smog notwithstanding) for a trip through Chicago, which was pretty cool — there was a great view from the really tall skyway bridge. And the outlying towns were a bit creepy to see too, with lots of derelict houses and other such signs of collapsed industry. We made it here (the end of an 8.5-hour drive) at about 2 o’clock and spent the afternoon swimming and playing playdough in the room. Dinner was early (for this time zone) and despite the early hour, everyone looks ready for bed already. As the Winnie the Pooh movie progresses on the computer, the two little ladies are moving decisively toward horizontal on the couch. So, I’d best sign off and get ready for tomorrow … to Fargo (or thereabouts) if all goes well.

Notes from a TransCanada summer: whale watching

Minke whale, Halifax harbour

On July 14, I managed to snap this glimpse of a Minke whale’s dorsal fin while holding up my daughter to see (and feeding her a snack too). Not shown: the several other boats out on harbour waters honing in on the sporadically surfacing cetacean.

Off-Topic Notes from NASSR

At my professional blog, I’ve posted some notes and impressions on this year’s conference for NASSR (North American Society for Studies in Romanticism). But I ended up taking maybe more notes in general on the trip to North Carolina and the Duke U campus.

21 May 2009, 3 pm: The Al Buehler Cross Country Trail just showed me how out of shape I am: its 3.1 miles of unpaved, hilly forest trail required a few walking breaks; and before I finished its circuit, I got lapped by some speedster Olympian type. (I think I ate a few gnats as well.) Not that all the walking breaks were due to exhaustion. The trail steers through pretty pine and oak woodlands: carpets of dry red needles fragrant underfoot; a snapping turtle nosing the surface of a pond; a thumb-long black beetle; the unreconstructed remains of ancient iron aqueduct; unfamiliar birdsong in the canopy, sometimes nearly as voluble as Point Pelee last weekend, amply competing with the ambient surf of the adjacent highway. It’s the birdsong more than anything else so far (except maybe the “First in Flight” license plates) that tell you you’re somewhere different.

I’ll make time for this trail again, with a camera. To hype it for NASSR delegates, you might think of it as a “suggestive conjunction of the pictureseque and the technological sublime.” (There, now the entry’s topical.)

22 May 2009, 2:30-3:15 pm: Back to the trail for another run with some snaps, as promised.

 
Here’s a snippet of birdsong in the Carolinian forest:

But wow, is today ever hotter than it was yesterday. Maybe these aqueducts pipe water to the drinking fountains along the trail.

 
I thought this would get easier, not harder, the second time around. (Yeah, I got lapped again, by a different runner.)

 
23 May 2009, 2:30 pm: I went sightseeing on the Duke U west campus, dressed in my tourist best: hawaiian shirt, camera in hand, and still I got asked twice for directions. Maybe a game was on, definitely another conference was. I found the central green and the big ol’ Gothic cathedral everybody’s mentioned. A wedding was starting; the white dots going in are soldiers in dress uniform.

And singing its tame little heart out in a tree nearby was one of these ubiquitous birds that it occurred to me must be a mockingbird.

Listen to the variety of its singing — or is it sampling? — in just this short clip.

I found the Duke U centre and stocked up on souvenirs, including two postcards (which seem a bit moot as I write this). Amidst all the original and nouveau Gothic buildings on campus (even the parking garage stayed true to the weirdly unified style), there are also apparently spectular gardens I didn’t have time to see. As well as this artistic oddity, which I did.

Don't blink

And this:

signed by George W and Jay-Z, apparently

And, gardens aside, there were plenty of botanical oddities to see from the sidewalks:

 Okay, am I at a literature conference or a biology one? A brown thrush escorted me back to the hotel.

3 pm: I had separated my recycling and trash but the housekeeper told me they don’t recycle. Come on.

11 pm: The banquet was thankfully free of the line-up for drinks that had congested the Thursday reception. Ended up having a micro-conference with a UWO colleague and his partner on kids, traveling with kids, and other adventures in parenting. Maybe the most important thing I learned while here was this — to keep the lines open with your kids, be sure to ask them these three questions every day:

1. Who did you play with today?
2. What was the best thing that happened to you today?
3. What was the worst thing that happened to you today?

I normally like to keep the personal and the professional distinct, but as we talked, I had to remark it was no coincidence I got interested in Frankenstein while expecting to become a parent.

“Pending” is a particular plane of Hell

[logged by Reality Mom]

Last week we flew to Edmonton to look at houses. After two full days of looking at low-end bungalows, including one genuine druggie flophouse, we were a little deflated. The only great house we had seen was just out of our price limit. With just hours left in the city, we decided to re-visit that house. Our second look confirmed how well this house would work for us and we decided to make a rather low offer. And low and behold, it came back at a price we could pay! So pending financing and inspection, we flew home feeling like we almost owned a new home.

A few days went by and we realized that “pre-approved” isn’t really the safe place we had thought. Suddenly, the mysterious forces at one particular bank decided that the mortgage they had dangled in front of us could only be had one week before Mark’s new job start date. This date  would have been an acceptable challenge, had we been told before we went out house hunting. But the offer on the table closes two months before this. Having sunk money into flights and cashed in four days of babysitting with the folks, it was a minor outrage.

Our mortgage broker’s flippant email tone didn’t help: “Good news is you got the mortgage. Bad news is that it isn’t until July 24.” No apology. No follow-up plan. And it was Friday evening.

Between Mark and I, we kept our panic in check. First thing Saturday morning we went to the bank to talk to a person face-to-face and hopefully get a better application together. That went well; the kind and sympathetic woman there told us she’d call us Monday afternoon to let us know — none of the insurers were open on weekends, so it would have to wait. That said, she said she saw no reason for the late possession date condition and left us feeling confident that it would all work out.

Then Sunday morning, with Mark already gone for a full-day conference, I checked my email to discover yet another late night email from our Edmonton broker. A different application was now all approved — no issues. Fine, uh,  but…. why on earth is this news coming in at almost midnight on a weekend? How does this all work? Arrrrrrrrgh! When did she find this out? Why does this approval still leave me feeling angry and distrustful? 

So, no big “Yay!” for now. I am still checking over my shoulder for the next issue I never suspected.

Inspection’s on Wednesday.

big tree, little tree

[logged by reality mom]

Yesterday, in a search for things to keep the kiddo entertained during March Break, A-dot and I took up the neighbour’s invitation to join him and his daughter for a family yoga class. It was taking place at the city’s market building, so it was an exciting venture into downtown for us, as well as some rare mommy and big girl time. 

It’s been a while since I went to a yoga class and A-Dot has never been; for all that it was a perfect class. The space was a sunny second-floor clearing, overlooking the busy market, surrounded by the lunch crowd – no room for the self-conscious here. The teacher was young and bubbly. She made sure to emphasize the “animal” poses for the kids and she occasionally played a little guitar (songs about strength and potential). A-dot enjoyed being there, seeing what it felt like to bend her body in half and smiling at her fellow “tree” – her best buddy next door.

And now that we’re all chilled out and serene, we can get back to our week of unstructured nattering and chaos. (M)OMmmmmmmm

A Part y

Last week we all went to a going-away/birthday party for one of adot’s school friends. (This is a high-turnover neighbourhood.) The hosts are a Muslim family but what we didn’t find out until the day of the party was that, because some of their highly orthodox friends would be attending, the party would be segregated: men upstairs, women and children downstairs.

At first I was a bit put off (mostly because Heather was already beat and would have to manage the kids solo at someone else’s house), but then I realized that here was a facet of multiculturalism entirely new to me – and one I had no right to judge. In any case we agreed to call it an evening in an hour, or once the cake was served. When we showed up, I was whisked upstairs to the makeshift men’s room, where we sat and talked as the din of kids downstairs steadily increased. The talk started out okay – we tried to figure out an immigrant colleague’s tax situation as a postdoc, which is vexing enough for non-immigrant postdocs like Yours Truly. And once more had showed up, the talk turned to other finer points of immigration, the neighbourly quality of Western family housing, and whose cars were superior: those from the USA, Europe, or Asia. All solidly manly topics.

But things started going wobbly when somebody in the room of largely middle eastern and south asian men made a Jewish joke. As the only white guy in the room I was asked (more embarrassedly than apologetically) if I was Jewish. After it became clear I wasn’t but I still hadn’t found it funny (no more than I’d find a middle eastern or south asian joke funny), I was then treated to one of the middle eastern guest’s interpretation of an obscure passage from Mein Kampf. Oy vay, how to change the subject? Here was a Palestinian explicating Hitler, and the Pakistani guy who’d cracked the Jewish joke backing him up. I said I sympathized with Palestine’s cause, and I have no qualms criticizing Israeli state policy, but that’s different from anti-Semitism and racism in general. (At this point, I asked them both why their people weren’t ganging up on Britain instead, since the UK’s postwar impositions had structured their respective regional conflicts.)

The arrival of a familiar face, a Serbian dad whose kids are in adot’s class, gave me an out: we talked about why hip hop doesn’t suck, and what music do you like, then, anyway? And I guess the cake showed up an hour after our agreed-upon parachute time: adot popped in the door at 9 pm, to tell me it was time to go home. Okay, I quickly said. All the men laughed and joked that she must be the boss of me. If she’s the boss, I thought, then who got to sit in a room of grown-ups, effectively relieved of parenting duties for two hours?

Still in all, despite the awkward moments, this was an interesting and instructive experience in the wages of multiculturalism.