Vicky

Yesterday – and today, too – I washed and waxed the floors. I remember my mother doing this. I remember her answering the telephone and saying to a friend who, presumably, was asking what she did that day. “Oh, not too much,” she would say. “I washed and waxed the floors”.  How long can it take, I used to ask myself, to wash and wax the floors?

When I grew up, cleaning floors went like this: you sweep them, run a mop over them, squeeze on them some floor shining stuff from a plastic bottle, let them dry. You occasionally get down on your hands and knees to scrub a stubborn spot. You then go and check your email or have a little espresso with left-over Christmas cake.

But now I own a Viking ’77 floor polisher. Remembering my mother’s floors which gleamed like glass, I decided to wash and wax my floors in an attempt to achieve the same result. And I did. It took about four hours, taking to account the drying times between mopping, waxing and polishing. And buffing, the icing on the hardwood.

Recently, during an evening of wine sampling and chit chat with my middle sister, we discussed floor polishing. She, too, has a polisher. Her’s is a 50s greyish pink, and mine is a muted green, just like Mum’s.

She nabbed it on Big Garbage Eve. She doesn’t really have the scavenging gene, but Big Garbage Eve is when the truck will take anything from washing machines to mascot costumes, including the oversized head. One can see some wild sights curbside. Ever the style maven, the pink caught her eye. One man’s trash is another gal’s floor polisher.

My sister, now very social and easy to be with, was timid as a child. She had what we thought were amusing fears: Santa Claus, our next-door neighbour Cliff, an unwillingness to spend an overnighter with my grandparents. In writing this, I realize it sounds dark and weird, but she has assured me there was nothing at play but her little-girl imagination.

She also had an imaginary friend, Christine. My sister has described her to me, but the description is so detailed that it would take too long to type it here. I can say only that Christine was African Canadian – or African American, for I don’t know from which country Christine came.  I’m not sure my sister ever asked her.  I once asked her how real Christine seemed to her. She paused, leaned in toward me, lowered her voice and said “it was as real as you are sitting here in front of me”. It gave me pause, and a shudder, I’ll admit.

But on that night of sampling and chit chat, I learned something new about my sister vis a vis a floor polisher. My mother kept hers stored in a small alcove-ish space at the top of our stairs. Turns out, that in addition to Christine, the floor polisher was also a part of my sister’s social circle. It was her “tall, skinny friend”.  I don’t know the tall, skinny friend’s name. Perhaps it was Viking ’77  - Vicky for short, I’m figuring. According to my sister, she and Christine would sit on the top stair visiting their tall, skinny friend.

Now – smart, practical, funny – I wonder what she thinks when she polishes her floor. I’m pretty sure she gives a wry little laugh and gets on with the job.

But me. I can’t help look at my muted green polisher  - just like my mother’s – and think: are you Vicky, if that in fact is you name?

It gives me pause, and a shudder, I’ll admit.

I scrub on my hands and knees because I don’t think one can really clean a floor with a mop, unless one is not wearing their glasses. Without glasses, the kitchen floor looks pure and holy, like the only weight it has borne is dappled sunlight at 4:00 in the afternoon. Like no cat has ever walked on it let along coughed up a mole-sized hair ball. Like the fridge, stove and dishwasher are holding their breath lest they sully its bright broadness with a crumb or a drop of water.

Some things are better without glasses. Sleeping – better without glasses. Early morning glances in the mirror – better without glasses.

A year or so ago, while on stage with Cindy and Raylene and in a state of dreamy repose (forgetting, momentarily why I was there) I noticed neither of them were wearing glasses. It came to me in a shocking instant that they were wearing contact lenses! It was a hard moment. They were clear, bright, beautiful. There was nothing between them and the audience. Well, except for the microphone, several cords, little  pedals, monitors, the lip of the stage and approximately 15 feet.

There I sat, stunned with the self awareness that I was wearing glasses on stage. Glasses. Sweaty , smudged, back and forth slipping up and down glasses. It occurred to me that I had wasted a lot of make-up that night – and many nights before – because  no one could actually see me. It was in that invisible state that I decided I would get contact lenses. I, too, would be clear, bright and beautiful. There would no longer be anything between me and my audience. Except for: see above.

My helpful optometrist fitted me out with handfuls of little gel packs, some labeled R, some L.  In each, there was a lens. After repeated scoops of a pudgy finger in a little gel pack, I retrieved a tiny sliver of something that seemed like a cross between teardrop and a tiny blob of egg white. I balanced it on my right index finger, used my middle finger to pull down my lower lid and popped the little thing on to my right eyeball. Like wise the left eyeball. Miraculously, immediately, I could see quite a distance. I left the office thrilled with a new reality.

When I entered the car, I realized that I could not read the instrumentation panel. I was able to drive home despite the blur, still chuffed with my new status-  a person unburdened by glasses.

I denied the little nuisances that forced me to go out and buy drugstore reading glasses so that I could read, work at the computer and recognize whether I had an orange or a yellow pepper on my plate. I thought it was kind of fun that I had to get new non-prescription sunglasses because my prescription sunglasses were useless – dangerous even – when I wore the lenses.

It all went to hell the first time I played guitar. Lo and not behold, I could not see the frets. I needed my drugstore readers to see where my fingers were landing, thereby defeating the original purpose for getting the lenses in the first place.

I now own: prescription glasses, prescription readers, prescription sunglasses, non-prescription readers, non-prescription sunglasses and a little box full of R and L contact lenses.

So I wear my glasses on stage and take them off when perspiration causes them to slide down my…er…rather insignificant…nose. Sometimes I see, sometimes I don’t.

But for a day or so after I scrub the floor, I never wear them. Better without glasses.

Second:

The blogs are sporadic, I know. But look outside. Grass. Flowers. Intermittent sun. Blogging or being outside. Which would you choose?

Neighbours have appeared beyond the fence wearing dirty clothes, the inexplicably popular Crocs, broad-brimmed hats or ball caps or devil-may-care bandanas. They’re  eager to share chunks of Hosta and tips about when to fertilize and when not to prune. Grocery store parking lots have given over a quarter of their real estate to hastily erected, and entirely temporary, gardening centres. My brother calls from the west coast and idly muses as to whether this will be the year when he finally succeeds in growing a Clematis. Even my own backyard looks promising (alas, I’m usually the one who causes that promise to be broken – not without a few tears of guilt and remorse).

Other signs of the seasonal shift:

The winter toys that dotted the front yard of my neighbour – tiny shovels, little sleds, home-made slides that would allow a child to enjoy the exhilaration of sliding for approximately an eighth of a second, etc – have all been swept away and replaced by tiny rakes, little bikes with training wheels, a clownishly large red plastic baseball bat, etc. I find these toys cheery, no matter what the season.

When people walk by the house they look thinner to me. This is because of the magical spring jacket which, in contrast to the winter coat, looks sleek, like it might almost allow one to fly. Paradoxically, and somewhat regrettably, inside the house – when the jacket is removed – it loses its magic because winter pounds do show, don’t they?

One tries on last years clothes. This has the capacity to delight or depress, but that depends on whether one likes or dislikes shopping for new clothes in a larger size.

One thinks about exercise.

One’s toenails look strange.

The house seems dirtier and less tidy than ever. The reason for this? The house actually is dirty and untidy but one is outdoors so often and for so long that it’s a new shock every time one returns home. And because one is outdoors so much, there simply isn’t time to clean and tidy.

The grass becomes a little too confident. Cocky, even. It acts as if it could mow itself.

And this, too, could be seasonal, but I have doubt:

While writing, one shifts from “one” to “I” regularly without knowing how remain consistent, and/or too lazy to go back and rewrite. One embarrasses myself, or I embarrass one’s self.

All to say that the year is rolling in the right direction. The branches of Shad Blow hang with tissuey white blossoms. Males finches are yellow again. Two turtles have appeared in my pond, and thousands of tadpoles are losing their tails and dragging themselves into adolescence.  Summer will come. And fall and winter. Another year. My wish for this one is that it is not much unlike the last, and that continuing life is all we know and want.

These are some of the heated disputes that occurred on our recent trip – and I’m not saying it was me who had these disputes.

1. How on earth do I program my destination? Why are you so mysterious, and what are *POIs?
2. Stay where I stick you, Serena. Stay, I say. Stay.
3. Oh, shut up, Serena. Your voice is irritating, dispassionate and you have trouble with your “r”s. Anyway, I know where I’m going and do not need you.
4. You’re going the long way, Serena. The map is showing a different route which I’ll bet the farm is faster.
5. You’re going the wrong way, Serena. I’ve been here before and I have no memory of this particular strip mall.
6. That’s it. You’re going in the glove compartment. After all, I have  someone in the  navigator’s seat who reads very well when she puts on reading glasses which seem always to be tucked away in the bottom of her purse.
7. Well, and I say this begrudgingly, you may be allowed to return temporarily. The glasses cannot be found (to be fair, this particular heated dispute is with the party in the navigator’s seat).
8. You may be in a small snit, Serena, but please allow yourself to be stuck on the windshield again. Please I say. Please
9. Don’t make me stop this van to reprogram you for Rossland, BC and not Rossland, AB.
10. It is your fault that I have to stop this van to reprogram you for Rossland, BC and not Rossland, AB.
11. I don’t have time to mess around with your high-handed directions. Now I’ll have to turn this rig around.
12. I don’t have time for my high-handed directions. Now, I’ll have to turn this rig around. It’s your fault.

I say this to everyone else in the van: I’m sorry for the anxious outburst that caused me to scream a four letter word and demand we do a U turn on an unfamiliar road. I blame Serena. I’m sorry that the little talks I had with myself every night to come to some reconciliation with Serena did not bear fruit. I’m sorry I missed the turn off to Sherwood Park. I’m sorry you had to witness all this.

Were I Serena, I might be a tad thin skinned about the heaped abuse she bore during that last trip. But I am…well, me.

Not the appropriately named Serena.

*Points of interest. Unlike this blog.

The middle finger has been the persistent offender. Just when it reaches a useable length, it softens and tears, requiring me to file it down to the finger tip. That’s not good. I can’t get a good go at the string and plucking with the fleshy part of the tip usually results in: ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.

Yesterday, I faced the reality that I would need to have fake nails applied on these two fingers. Not stick-ons, mind, but full blown acrylics nails. As some of you may know, this involves snipping the existing nail back to the very limit of how short a nail can be clipped. The nails are then roughened up with something akin to a Dremel sanding tool, the cuticle is pushed back, and the flesh on the sides of the nail is forced as far from the nail as possible. A clear liquid is applied, and the technician then mixes up a concoction of powder and acrylic. A false nail is pressed onto the tip of remaining natural nail and the concoction is then applied over the the entire nail. The nail is clipped, shaped buffed and polished.

Here’s my issue: I only need two nails done, and I need them to be exactly the right length – not too long, but enough to pluck the string without causing a paralyzing blister on the finger. Try explaining that to a gal who is accustomed to affixing fashionably long and sometimes decorated nails. My request was met with a uncomfortably long stare. I might not have been regarded as being from Mars, but I was certainly placed firmly in the Land of Sensible Shoes. And in that of the fashion impaired, decidedly.

To my surprise, and I’ll bet yours, too, the technician to whom I was led, was a young man wearing baggy jeans and a grey hoodie with a sports team logo on it. He looked as though he would have preferred to be watching Oylmpic hockey. Turns out he was the assembly man only. He clipped, roughed up the nails, slapped on primer, positioned the artificial nails (which involved much pressing and pushing and jamming them under the flesh on the side of the finger, finally lacquered them with acrylic, shoved a light over then to dry, and clipped them again to the desired length. Frankly, the look of them frightened me.

Then re-appeared the previously puzzled gal who met me when I first entered. The young man slouched away wordlessly, and she sat down at the manicure table. She wielded an enormous block of emory and looked at my fingers with the intensity of a crow at a corncob. That’s when terror hit me.

She grabbed my finger and twisted it – I said: ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. She paused, lifted her eyes to mine and said “Relax your finger”. I said “It is relaxed”.

She again said “Relax your finger” I replied “It is relaxed”.

I could sense her growing impatience. She began to file with zeal and real intent. To get to the edges effectively, she twisted my finger again. “Ow, ow, ow, etc. said I. “Relax your finger” said she, in none too friendly terms, I might add. “It was relaxed,” I replied “until you started twisting it”.

She dropped my hand and looked deep into my eyes. Firmly, quietly, and through her teeth, she said “Relax your finger”.

Things never improved. She twisted and filed, filed and twisted until both fingernails were cemented to my fingers. The looked good. Better than my real nails, which are ridged and what I would call almost clean most of the time. I was happy with the result.

The technician looked at me and said “You want pink”. “No”, I replied “I want nothing”.

“You want pink” she persisted. “No…” said I.

On and on this went until she gave up and said “You want clear”. “Ok”, I said. But when she pulled out the clear polish, I had a sudden change of heart (my right, I feel) and said, “No, I want nothing”.

She threw my hand down on the table and said, brushing her hand vaguely toward the back of the shop, “Go wash”. I did.

I paid her, and as I was about to leave she beckoned me back and offered me a squirt of hand lotion. I accepted, feeling that is was some gesture of begrudging acceptance and that she had finally realized that “Ow” means “Ow”, and will, in the future, respect it. And that not all women want long fingernails with tiny flowers painted on them.

Now that the task is done and I have the two acrylic nails, I find one of them slightly short. Of course, it’s the one which most offended in the first place, the middle finger. Would that I had relaxed it and used it to its best purpose.

Here’s an incomplete list of bad decisions:

• Took the advice of an aspiring make-up artist and ended up looking like a Geisha girl wearing a lipstick that was wrong. Very wrong.
• Once, on a whim in Montreal, had my hair cut and spent the rest of the trip eating take-out in my room and watching the real estate channel.
• As a child, wondering if my arm would flatten out, I put it in a washing machine wringer. This was a common childhood injury, but I remember – clearly – thinking “Uh-oh. If I don’t do something, my head’s going to flatten out”.
• Said no to a request for a Morningside* interview. Why? Peter Gwsoski was away on vacation, I would have been interviewed by someone else, and I wanted to wait until he returned. Of course, by the time he did return, the moment was gone, as was the the request.
• Being gullible, spent far too much money in hiring people who “just want to get the music out there” only to have them be unreliable, incompetent, of the vanishing variety, nagging or just too darn nice. Of course, I was the problem, or so they told me.
• Didn’t wear my suit jacket at a recent public event thereby revealing a waist so short that I looked like a bowling ball on stilts. To be fair, it was 95 degrees in the room. Also, my stilts aren’t bad for my age.
• Once, when opening for someone at the Chan Centre in Vancouver, (only after I sang the first song) discovered my guitar was unplugged, so I plugged it back in and did the whole song over again. This looked stupid which is not surprising because it actually was stupid.
• Didn’t turn on the individual translator at an opera and spent the whole evening wondering how so many people in the same room could understand Italian because they all seemed to laugh at the same time.
• Loaned my car to a neighbour who ran red light, wrecked three cars and destroyed my insurance rating.
• Let the same neighbour make it up to me by doing the repair work on my car.
• Out of courtesy, did not mention to him that he had wrecked my car twice: once the crash, again in the repair. And it wasn’t just the duct tape.
• Worked with a person who talked to animals and saw ghosts.  Yet, although I did not believe this to be true, I believed what the animals had said.
• Called a music industry type an idiot to his face. Well, who’s the idiot now! Hah!
• Wore rubber boots in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Bought something in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Had someone else return the something I bought in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Did not take medication on time and paid the consequences, as mother might say – and in italics, too. As she might also say, I had no one to blame but myself.
• ….and too, too often, slept on the wrong side of the bed. On purpose.

But, I made no mistakes. Because (and here’s the Oprah moment!) I learned so much from these experiences. Here is what I learned from each of these experiences:

• You can aspire all you want but it won’t make you a make-up artist nor a Geisha girl.
• The real estate channel can be fun, especially in French.
• You arm will not flatten out in a wringer but it will hurt like hell for a long time and if you’re four years old you will need help in the bathroom.
• Say yes to CBC. It might not come again. It may not come again because it’s gone.
• When someone says it’s your fault, don’t always believe it. Unless you’re me. Then you’ll always believe it.
• Wear something long if you have a short waist. You may not think you have a short waist. But, try this. Sit on the floor with your legs extended out in front of you. Place your hands, palms down, on the floor at your sides. If your arms are bent at a 90 degree angle, you have a short waist. However, you may not, after this exercise, have to wear a longish top because you will be stuck there forever. Or, you can call a good yoga instructor to help get you off the floor.
• Make sure your guitar is plugged in. This goes for most electric appliances, but apparently some of us need to be reminded.
• If everyone suddenly understands Italian, you are at an opera,  and you too can understand Italian of you just read the program you’re twisting in ignorant frustration.
• Don’t loan your car to a loud-mouth neighbour.
• Don’t let him fix your car.
• Blackmail him.
• Don’t believe that someone can talk to animals unless the animals themselves confirm this.
• Lie.
• Wear rubber boots to Canadian Tire, not Holt Renfrew.
• Buy something at Canadian Tire, of only for nostalgia’s sake. Remember that they once had good service and knowledgeable staff, and sigh.
• Return something to Canadian Tire, just to p*** them off.
• Take your pills and shut up about it. No one cares.
• Don’t sleep.

Oh, and this just in…I drive a Prius. Too early to determine what the lesson in this, except perhaps that smugness has a shelf life.

Well, that’s about it for today. Unless I’m mistaken.

Why? I forgot a password. One of 60 passwords, it turns out. I know the exact number because I opened my “Keychain Access” and counted them. All my passwords evolved from the same word or words and are varied as needed when one or another is rejected by a site because it belongs to someone else. This in itself can cause a quiet harrumph because I must face the shocking reality that I’m not as unique and special as previously believed. So, the addition of a number or sequence of letters, preceding or following said (or unsaid) word usually does the trick. Some combinations I know well, and have no trouble slipping on to the site in mere seconds. Some elude me and frequent attempts with different variations often cause the great wall of security to fall, requiring me to (and I choke at the thought) speak to a person and ask for help. This, for me, is an act of desperation.

Sometimes I forget the password to the password, the secret question, and the hint to the secret question. Is it: my mother’s maiden name; my first pet; my high school; grandfather’s occupation; best friend’s shoe size; date of all-time favourite sneeze; average rainfall of my backyard; my neighbour’s unspoken opinion of me (in one word or less); birth weight of Agnes de Mille?  Sometimes, after these episodes (hours in duration), I forget what site I was trying to enter, and go downstairs to make myself a sandwich. I can do this in about five minutes, unless it’s toasted.

Wading through the purgatory of passwords and pin numbers takes more of my time than should be necessary to do a little banking, book a flight, or check my wireless usage for any given month. Sometimes the password has been saved automatically, sometimes not. Likewise, clicking on the little “remember me” square is sometimes successful, sometimes not. For instance, logging in to write this, I must always enter my password despite having clicked that little “remember me” square every time I want to post something. The site does not remember me. This is insulting – I think my own site should remember me.

Coming back to my chat with the pleasant man from across the seas, I’m please to say that he solved my problem. He re-set my password in approximately five minutes.

About the time it takes to make a sandwich. Unless it’s toasted.

Now, I’m left to mourn a graveyard of obsolete digital technology. First, a machine – about the size of the pillow on which I sleep – with lots of knobs and sliders (not the local bar variety) that I never quite mastered, never quite understood. I used it, but only utilized a fraction of its potential. Looked fantastic, though – slick and modern.

Then followed the mini-disc recorders that used…well….mini-discs. They came in beautiful translucent colours. I used it, but the little buttons are so small that its compact nature was lost on me. I now use the mini-discs as shims to hold cupboard doors shut and to level light objects that seem, to my eye, to be tilting.

Another beautiful porta-studio joined the group. Necessary, of course, because it had MIDI capabilities. Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI allows electronic instruments communicate and synchronize with computers, thereby enabling all sorts of things that, like the aforementioned knobs and sliders (you know the kind I mean) I don’t understand. I used it, but never connected it to a computer.  Not to mention that I don’t play an electric instrument, save for an old electric piano over which I agonize to write little melodies – that is to say that I can barely play it. That didn’t stop me from buying a sound synthesizer that helped me create the sounds of waves crashing over sand dunes or tinkly wind chimes. I used it, but the sound of waves crashing over wind chimes began to irritate me. It’s sad that I ‘ll never again be able to go to the beach with a wind chime in my tote.

A Micro Track hand held recorder move in to replace the porta-studio. This was meant to be it. Loved it for about three weeks. Realized that the lack of a speaker made it useless for easy playback. The cute little LED screen was not backlit, therefore impossible in dimly lit rooms.

Interwoven with this assortment were several dicta-phones, the kind that slips in a jacket pocket. For rehearsal purposes, I loaned my favourite to an erstwhile – very erstwhile – colleague.  She took it reluctantly, swearing her steel trap memory rendered it useless to her. She forgot to return it to me.

I like doing things by hand – pastry-making, sock-darning, cat-patting, but I’m a pushover for shiny objects that seem to promise a new and better way of recording. Or taking pictures. Or watching movies. Or making expresso.

The beauty of these objects, I regret to say, is often polished chrome and/or fiberglass deep, and I am often too shallow to get beyond the attractive housings. Oh, I do use them – like a magpie does a dime.

Thanks for tuning in.

The hope of owning that book is lost to me now – I forget the title, the writer and have no guess as to how to search for it, even in this age of the search engine.  I remember its charm and whimsey, the delicate nature of the records, the tiny observations that verged on precious, but I can’t find it.

I have my own lists now – not obsessive, not orderly, but I have them.

On-paper, I refer to these: to-do; grocery; travel; wine; birthday cards. Off-paper, there are: likes; dislikes; fears; loves; hates; grudges; things I should have said; things I should not have said; things I should have taken back after I said them (impossible); bad shows; good shows; no-shows; performance invitations I declined that I should have accepted and vice versa; secret material wishes; things I would change physically – character flaws, too; huge gaffes both professional and personal; long harboured bad deed guilts; lies I wish I hadn’t told; truths I wish I hadn’t told; animal names for when I again have a dog; letters I didn’t answer; favourite chip flavours in descending order; regrets.

These come off the top of my head at the moment, of course – there are many other lists I have missed. Of the above, however, regret stands out. It’s the one I least regret.

I could list many bad decisions, but given the richness of my life right now, I feel that I’ve made only a few mistakes. Others might disagree. If necessary, they could make a list of the dozens of stumbles and almost purposeful missteps that turned me away from opportunity, took me down the path of stupid.

For now, I’m sticking to my own list of lists. A fellow songwriter once wrote “my face is a map of my time here”.  My face is not so poetic. My lists are a map of my life. So far.

Here’s a tune. Hope you like it.

06 Boy on a Bicycle