Diane Henders

Who’s On First?

/ Diane Henders / 37 Comments

Sometimes I wonder if Hubby and I are being secretly videotaped for someone’s sick amusement while they punk us over and over.  Fortunately nothing catastrophic has happened yet, but we feel like poster children for Murphy’s Law.

Here’s the latest:

When Hubby researched the process for bringing electricity to our building site, it seemed fairly simple:  Get a homeowner’s permit, put in a power pole with a breaker box and meter, and get an electrical inspection.

Instead, it’s been an exchange worthy of Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s On First” (although not quite as amusing to us):

Hubby:  *double-checking with the electrical inspector* “So, I can put in a pole and breaker box…”

Inspector:  “No.”

Hubby:  “But that’s what the National Electrical Code says.”

Inspector:  “This is BC.  That’s not acceptable here.”

Hubby:  “Ooookay.”  *spends a week researching alternatives, then calls back with questions and ends up talking to a different inspector*

Inspector #2:  “…well, yeah, you could do those alternatives, but why don’t you just put in a pole?  It’s cheaper.”

Hubby:  “Because Inspector #1 told me I couldn’t.”

Inspector #2:  “Oh, no, he’s wrong.  All you need is a Class 6 pole with a guy wire.  You can get that at Windsor Plywood.”

Hubby: *calling Windsor Plywood in foolish hope*  “Do you sell Class 6 poles?”

WP:  “No, we only have Class 5 poles.”

Hubby:  “The inspector said I needed a Class 6 pole.  Any idea where I can get one?”

WP:  “No.”

Hubby:  “Do you sell the guy-wire kit?”

WP:  “No.”

Hubby:  *spends days calling around before giving up and phoning an electrical contractor*  “How much would you charge to supply and install a Class 6 pole and guy wires?”

Contractor:  “We only install Class 5 poles, and they don’t need guy wires.”

Hubby: *calling Inspector #2* “Can I use a Class 5 pole without guy wires?”

Inspector #2:  “Sure, that’s better than a Class 6.”

Hubby:  *facepalm*

Hubby:  *calling electrical supply store* “Hi, do you sell retail to the public?”

Store:  “Sure.”

Hubby:  *walks into store*  “Hi, I’d like to buy a breaker box…”

Store owner:  “We don’t sell to the public.”

Hubby:  “But I called your head office and they said…”

Owner:  “I don’t care what they said, I won’t sell to you.  I have to protect my contractors.”

Hubby: *walks out muttering and calls the head office* “You said you’d sell to the public, but the guy in the Parksville store refuses to sell to me.”

Store:  “Oh.  Hold on…” *returns to the line*  “Yes, sorry; each store makes their own policy decisions.”

Hubby, speaking slowly and evenly:  “Do… you… have… a… store… that… will… sell… to… me?”

Store:  “I think the Courtenay store (an hour and a half in the opposite direction) will.  Here’s their number…

Hubby:  *calling the Courtenay store* “Do you sell retail to the public?”

Courtenay:  “Sure.”

Hubby hasn’t gone up there yet, but he’s braced to walk into the store and discover that:

  1. the guy he was talking to just got fired; and/or
  2. they changed their policy two days ago and now they don’t sell to the public; and/or
  3. the store sells to everybody except ex-Albertans who look like him; and/or
  4. they gave him the wrong number and he was in fact talking to the store in Victoria (3.5 hours in the opposite direction to Courtenay).

I’m waiting for the next chapter in the saga, but meanwhile… Who’s on first?

Flying Food

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

Last week’s post reminded me that I’m no stranger to flying food.  In fact, it may have contributed to my lifelong antipathy toward dressing up and attending formal functions.

First, a bit of background:  I grew up on a farm ‘way out in the sticks.  We dressed up for church, weddings, and funerals, and the rest of the time I ran wild outside.  So dress-up occasions came with considerable tension and discomfort: “Don’t do anything to get your good clothes dirty” meant ignoring my most fundamental personality traits.

When I was a teenager, my cousin’s wedding reception was held in the Fort Garry Hotel, the grandest historic hotel in Winnipeg.  There was a buffet, and I was on my best behaviour in my best dress.  We were working our way through the buffet line and my dad was ahead of me, chatting to whoever was ahead of him.

Remember the restaurant scene in Pretty Woman where the snail shoots off her plate only to be fielded by a deadpan waiter?

Yep, you guessed it.  Not versed in buffet etiquette, I had just taken a piece of pineapple with my fingers.  As I moved the slippery morsel toward my plate, my dad gestured animatedly.  (Apparently it runs in the family.)  His hand smacked mine, and the pineapple sailed across the fancy ballroom to disappear under one of the white-skirted tables.

I envied it at that moment.  I felt like vanishing under one of the tables, too.

Fast-forward to my first year of living in residence at the University of Manitoba.

Thanks to Chris K., a mature student who took this wide-eyed country bumpkin under his (platonic) wing, I finally learned some basic table manners such as holding my fork between my fingers instead of clenched in my fist like a weapon.  My image makeover continued while I observed and copied the fashion choices of my oh-so-sophisticated interior design classmates.

By the time I went on my first date (!) to a fancy restaurant (The Keg – hey, it was a whole lot fancier than anywhere I’d ever been), I was prepared.  I wore fashionable clothes; I knew how to hold my fork; I even successfully identified the bread-and-butter plate.  It was winter, so I was wearing my best (okay, my only) full-length coat.

Dinner went without a hitch and the bill was uneventfully paid.  When we finally rose from the table I turned to leave, swinging my coat dramatically over my shoulders… and it caught a full pitcher of ice water on a nearby ledge.

I didn’t look back to see whether it had landed on the floor or the neighbouring diners.  Head high, I swept out of the restaurant in my dramatic coat, the clattering of ice cubes and cries of dismay fading behind me.

It was a long time before I felt even remotely comfortable in a nice restaurant.  And I’m still VERY careful when donning my outerwear near other diners.

Anybody else have food-flinging tendencies?  (Remember the snail scene from Pretty Woman?  It runs from 1:50 to 2:35 in the video).

Training Cookies

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

I was chatting with my step-mom last week when she reminded me of a memory that made me smile:  the year I got my training cookies.

If you’re scratching your head right now, I don’t blame you.  Most people would agree that a bit of training is helpful before tackling some of the more complex foods, but everyone knows how to eat cookies.

Unless they’re me.

I can dismantle and gobble down a steamed lobster in record time.  Sushi?  No problem; I can handle chopsticks, and I’m such a food-geek that I actually know obscure sushi etiquette like never mixing the wasabi into the soya sauce and always eating nigiri so the fish contacts your tongue first.

But cookies?  Well… apparently they’re trickier.

It all started years ago when my dad and step-mom came to visit me in Calgary, bringing my step-mom’s famous ginger-molasses cookies.

We had been driving around enjoying the sights on a nice spring day, and we stopped at a convenience store to get some cold drinks.  Parked comfortably in the shade, we were sitting in the car with the windows open while enjoying our refreshments and some of the fateful cookies.  As usual, I was talking volubly with my hands.  I was also holding a cookie at the time.

I made one particularly emphatic gesture and the cookie flew out of my hand, out the open window to land with a plop on the asphalt beside the car.

Mouth gaping, eyes wide, I sat there in shocked silence.

I had wasted a cookie!  For a food-worshipper like me, it was sacrilege!  Worse, I had wasted a delicious cookie that had travelled 800 miles just to tickle my tastebuds!

The silence lasted only a second or two before my companions burst into uproarious laughter.  And sure enough, when next Christmas rolled around, guess what I found under the tree?

Remember the children’s mittens that were joined together with a cord that went up one sleeve, around the neck and down the other sleeve so the mittens never parted company with the jacket?  (And theoretically, with the child?)

Yep, I’d gotten training cookies:  Two tender and tasty ginger-molasses cookies, each with a neat hole in the middle.  A festive ribbon joined the two cookies at exactly the length required to fit around my neck while holding a cookie in each hand.

Ever since then, that recipe has been known as “Training Cookies” in our household.  The cookies themselves are yummy, but the memory is sweeter than any baked goods could ever be.

I’m probably the only person in the world who needs training cookies, but if you’re in the market for a chewy and delicious ginger-molasses cookie recipe, here it is:

Training Cookies

¾ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
4 tablespoons dark molasses
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy, then add the egg and molasses and beat.  Mix in dry ingredients.  Roll into balls, dip in sugar, and flatten with a fork.  Bake at 350 degrees approximately 10 – 12 minutes until just beginning to brown at the edges.  Happy memories can be baked in, or added later!

Anybody else have a family recipe with special memories?

Island Happy

/ Diane Henders / 28 Comments

This is just a short post since I’m having computer and internet problems, but I just wanted to check in and say… We made it to Vancouver Island, and we’re thrilled to finally be here!

There were some tense moments (okay, some tense hours), but after weeks of “everything that can go wrong will go wrong”, we finally got here despite Murphy’s best efforts.

One thing:  Driving the Coquihalla (Highway Thru Hell) in winter is off our Bucket List – we don’t need to do that EVER AGAIN!

Despite the fact that it “never snows” out here, we had four inches of the white stuff on Boxing Day, but at least it’s warm(ish) and the snow is mostly gone where we are.  The Island is putting on quite a show for us – we’ve seen everything from a peaceful happy Island:

island-happy

…to a cranky Island the very next day (yes, those are snowflakes fluttering down in the foreground):

But it’s all beautiful – I have to keep reminding myself that we don’t actually have to leave!

If the computer gods smile on me, I’ll be back to my regular programming next week, but in the meantime I’ll wish everyone a very happy New Year.  “Talk” to you again soon!

P.S. I’m on Pacific Standard Time now, so my posts will be showing up in your feeds an hour later.  It’s “Island Time”! 🙂

Squared Lasagna And Numeric Tea

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

It’s getting a little crazy around here…

Okay, fine; I’ll admit it:  We’ve zoomed past ‘a little crazy’ and are rapidly approaching chaos and madness.

The packers and movers arrive tomorrow, and we’re scrambling to get the last of our pre-packing done.  The house looks as if it’s occupied by hyperactive children with Attention Deficit Disorder:  There are little heaps everywhere because we rarely get a block of time uninterrupted by some crisis or another.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

  • Our ancient water heater wasn’t supplying enough hot water so we hired a plumber to replace it, only to find that all that was needed was a $2.00 part… but we had to pay $800 to replace the tank anyway because the old tank was already pulled out.

Time lost:  2.5 hours.
Equanimity lost:  98%

  • The furnace blower motor seized. Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Knuckle skin lost:  50%

  • The dishwasher died. (It’s the newest appliance in the house.)  Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Appreciation for irony lost:  92%

  • The builder needed an HVAC design for our new house, and we only had a half-assed sketch from the heating contractor. I figured out the heating and return air drops, modified the plan to accommodate them, and provided an annotated drawing.

Time lost:  5 hours.
Brainpower lost:  95%

  • We still can’t find insurance for our shipping container once it arrives on the Island.

Time lost:  Several days and counting.
Peace of mind lost:  89%

  • My brand-new Ford Escape refused to start… and then, just to make diagnosis virtually impossible, it started up and ran as though nothing had ever been wrong. It goes into the shop on Friday, and we want to hit the road in a week.

Time lost:  God only knows.
Sanity lost:  100%

At least we’ve still got a sense of humour.  (Yes, that’s one sense of humour between the two of us.)

To wit:  One evening I’d made a giant pan of lasagna.  We’d finished eating, but the pan was on the table and the cheese was still warm and melty.  Hubby and I each idly picked up a spatula and nudged the cut edges of the lasagna into a perfect square from opposite sides… and then burst out laughing at our anal-retentiveness.  At least our quirks are compatible.

And speaking of anal-retentive quirks, my sister and I had a good giggle, too.  She had sent me a yummy Christmas gift:  24 Days Of Tea, with the little samples randomly numbered.  So I did what any self-respecting geek would do:  I rearranged them in numeric order.

“They’re supposed to be like that,” she informed me through her laughter.  “If you turn the boxes around they make a picture.”

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

(I also didn’t realize I was supposed to wait until December 1 to start sampling the tea.  Who knew tea could be so complicated?  It should have come with instructions.)

Anyhow, I’m taking deep breaths and reminding myself that one way or another this move will happen.  It won’t be smooth or stress-free; but, hey, at least our lasagna is squared off and our tea is correctly numbered.

At this point, I’ll take any illusion of control I can get!

Pavlov Would Be Proud

/ Diane Henders / 60 Comments

We sold our house this week (hooray!) and now we’ve plunged into the bazillion details that go with closing down a household in one place and recreating it a thousand kilometres away.  That has left me with very little brainpower to spare, so my conditioned reflexes are taking over while my conscious mind is occupied.

That isn’t as helpful as you might think.

The strongest reflex is my reaction to the ring of my cell phone.  Before this all started I usually didn’t keep my cell phone with me, and the ringtone was silenced so I rarely noticed even if it did vibrate (much to the annoyance of my text-happy friends).

But for the past three months I’ve had an audible ringtone, and I’m so conditioned to answer it that I twitch even when I hear the same ringtone from someone else’s phone.  I’m afraid to speculate on how long it’ll take to overcome that, since habits tend to stay with me long after they’ve ceased to be relevant.

Take, for instance, my habit of looking into the oven before I turn it on.

‘Waaaaaay back in 1986, my apartment didn’t have a dishwasher.  I had cats and I didn’t always have time to do dishes; and I’d worked hard to train the cats to stay off the kitchen counter.  Part of that process was to never leave out anything tempting.  Dirty dishes are a kitty magnet, so if I was in a hurry I’d load the dishes into my dishpan and put it in the oven before leaving.  I never turned on the oven without first checking to make sure the dishpan wasn’t in it.

Fast-forward 30 years.  I’ve owned a home with a dishwasher since 1990, but I still open the oven before I turn it on.  A couple of years ago I caught myself doing that and resolved to not bother anymore.  After all, the habit had outlived its usefulness by a couple of decades.

But in spite of my new resolution, the next time I was baking I reflexively opened the oven before turning it on… only to discover that Hubby had left some parts in there (don’t ask me why).  That’s it; I’m doomed to open the oven before turning it on for the rest of my life.

I still think I’m seeing cats in my house, too.  Our last beloved cat died 12 years ago, but sometimes I’ll see an out-of-place object from the corner of my eye and think, “Cat!” before I realize what it actually is.  And when we visit cat-owning households, my foot automatically goes out to block feline access to the exterior door when coming and going.

But the worst is my Pavlovian response to the television.  The only times I ever watch TV are for major sporting events like the Grey Cup and Superbowl, or occasionally when Hubby and I watch a movie together.  The sports parties are giant junk-food-fests; and the movies always include hot buttered popcorn.  I start to salivate just walking by the TV.

Yep, Pavlov would be proud.

Anybody else have conditioned reflexes that won’t go away no matter how outdated they are?

Fanatics vs. Funlovers: It’s A Tie

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

This past weekend was the CFL Grey Cup, which is a tradition at our house (if by ‘tradition’ you mean ‘excuse to invite the gang over and consume far too much junk food and beer’).

We’re a mixed bag of sports fans, from serious to superficial.  Our living room is small, so we seat the Fanatics up front to give them an unobstructed view while the Funlovers sit behind to heckle enjoy the game in their own way.  Needless to say, the conversations vary quite a bit between the front row and the peanut gallery.

I’m in the midrange of the fandom scale so I get to eavesdrop on both the Fanatics and the Funlovers.  It’s almost as entertaining as the game itself.

It starts before our butts even hit the seats:  Hubby records the game on his PVR, and we start watching about half an hour later so he can fast-forward through the commercials.

But that means the Fanatics are twitching with the knowledge that the game has already started and they don’t know what’s happening!  Meanwhile, the Funlovers are just glad they don’t have to sit through a bunch of commercials.

Here’s how the game usually unfolds:

TV:  “…and that’s an offside pass…”

Fanatics:  *on the edges of their seats* “What the hell were they thinking?!?”

Funlovers:  *glancing up from the chip-and-dip bowl*  “Um… off the side of what…?”

 

TV:  “…that play has been challenged and will be reviewed by the Command Centre…”

Fanatics:  “It was as plain as day!  Are those refs blind?”

Funlovers: *tipping up their beer bottles*  “Oooh, the Command Centre.  What is this, Star Trek?  This must be the fifteenth time they’ve said ‘Command Centre’… hey, that could be a drinking game!  Whenever they say ‘Command Centre’, everybody take a drink…”

 

TV:  *zooms in on a 3,000-pound dogpile of struggling manflesh*

Fanatics:  *vibrating with tension*  “OMG!  Did they get it?  Did they get it?!?”

Funlovers:  “Bahahaha!!! Did you see that guy on the left?  He did a complete somersault!  Oh, man, more of them are piling on!  Wouldn’t it suck to be the bottom guy?”

 

TV:  “…there’s the slotback…”

Funlovers:  “Is that like the band ‘Nickelback’?”

Fanatics:  “No, a slotback is like the NFL’s tight end position.”

Funlovers:  *eyeing the posterior of a player or cheerleader*  “We like tight ends…”

 

Fanatics:  “Hey, that was a horse collar!”

TV:  “That’ll be a 15-yard penalty…”

Funlovers:  “They give penalties just because the caller was hoarse?”

 

TV:  “…and there’s the Cup!  Right here, these are your 104th Grey Cup champions!”

Funlovers:  “Look at them all kissing the cup!  They’re basically swapping spit with the whole team.  And think about how many dirty hands have been on that cup before their lips touch it.  Blech!  Penicillin, anyone?”

Fanatics: *falling back in their seats, limp with happiness or despair depending on the outcome*  “Wow, what a game!”

The Gang:  “That was fun!  Let’s do it again next year!”

* * *

Anybody else watch the Grey Cup this year?

Worshipping The Real Estate Gods

/ Diane Henders / 51 Comments

This is the first time I’ve used a real estate agent to sell a house and it’s been… interesting.  In fact, it’s startlingly similar to joining a religious cult.

First comes the proselytizing:  We can’t possibly achieve salvation (oops, ‘sale’) without the divine intervention of a home stager and real estate agent.

Chastened by our mortal interior-design sins, we allow the home stager to show us the Holy Way.  The most heinous of our furniture is banished to the outer darkness (the garage), while the remaining pieces are rearranged and sanctified by the addition of area rugs, cushions, throws, table lamps, and fresh flowers.

We are admonished to go forth and sin no more, and assured that if we adhere faithfully to the Holy Way we may merit admission to real estate heaven:  a profitable sale.

Accordingly, after the home stager departs we walk through the house snapping photos so we can correctly recreate each detail, in case (gods forbid) anything should get accidentally moved.

The beds must have brand new slightly off-white (not white) duvet covers, with so many pillows, cushions, and throws that the bed itself is mostly invisible and completely unusable.  Each time the house is shown, the giant heap of bedding must be reassembled precisely as shown in the Holy Photos.

There’s only one upholstered chair where I can sit, and I use an old cushion for back support.  Before showing the house, the cushion that has been defiled by my body is returned to the garage and replaced with a designer-consecrated one.  All other furniture is off limits, since using it would leave footprints on the area rug and/or disturb the designer’s arrangement of cushions and throws; which would then take half an hour to re-fluff and rearrange correctly.

The Articles of Faith (the designer’s tchotchkes) must be arranged just so.  The fruit bowl must contain oranges, green apples, and red apples.  Bananas are strictly verboten:  Only spherical brightly-coloured fruits are pleasing to the real estate gods.

We have to comply with dietary restrictions, too:  only bland odourless foods are allowed.

For each showing, the gods must be propitiated with music and delightful scents.  Since I can’t bear the smell of chemical air fresheners, I have to pop a couple of pieces of apple cinnamon cake in the oven half an hour before each showing.  Then the oven is opened to distribute the tasty aromas, while I walk around swinging the baking tin into all corners of the house like a censer.

We carefully check to be sure we’ve complied with each commandment, as though one misplaced pillow will cause all potential buyers to leave in disgust and cast our house into eternal ‘Days On Market’ damnation.

Finally, we turn on every light to welcome the gods, and humbly depart lest our presence offend them during the showing.

I’m doing my best in all this; but I suspect the gods can see into my sinful heart, where I’m secretly planning to reinstate all our tacky-but-comfortable furniture and indulge in a Bacchanalian orgy of roasting garlic as soon as the house is sold.

‘Scuse me; I have to go and remake the beds as penance now…

* * *

P.S. I’m poking fun at our situation, but I don’t mean to ridicule the home stager – she was great, and the results are amazing!  Her accessories make it look as though we actually have taste, and the new furniture arrangements make the interior look bigger and better.  And we aren’t really forbidden from using the furniture – it’s just that we’re too lazy to redo the designer stuff every time.  🙂

P.P.S. This may look normal to most people, but for us it’s the height of designer fashion!

living-room

The only things that are actually ours are the loveseat, dining table and chairs, and the painting. And, of course, the giant fern. We may have to sell that with the house…

Old Farmers And Garbage-Men

/ Diane Henders / 42 Comments

I was sitting at the breakfast table idly watching the garbage truck make its rounds when I felt suddenly wistful.  (That’s not quite as weird as it sounds – please let me explain.)

Here in Calgary we have bins that can be picked up, dumped, and replaced at the curb by trucks with mechanical arms.  Occasionally the operators have to pick up extra garbage bags by hand, but usually they just drive down the street and let the truck do the work.

It’s a far cry from the way they did it even a few years ago.  Each garbage truck used to have a ‘swamper’ who rode along on the rear bumper, jumping off to pick up garbage bags and sling them into the back, then hopping on again to ride to the next stop a few yards away.

Years ago one of my friends did that job, and his co-workers joked that you weren’t a true swamper until you’d vomited at least once at the sight and/or smell of the garbage.  It was a brutal job full of heavy repetitive lifting and vile stenches.

And here comes the ‘wistful’ part, because that made me think of my dad.

Not that he was a sanitation worker; although that was part of his job before we got flush toilets.  In the summer we used an outhouse, but in the winter there was a pail in the basement.  When it got full, he’d carry it out across the snowbanks and dump it far away from the house.  He said he only slipped and fell with it once, but that was more than enough.

No; what reminded me of him was the thought of tireless physical labour.

I remember him slinging sixty-pound bales up to the loft of the barn with a single jerk of his powerful arms.  Lift-toss, lift-toss; over and over like a machine in the oppressive heat and humidity of a Manitoba summer.  The only sign of his effort was the sweat soaking his shirt and dripping off the end of his nose.

He mucked out the barn with a shovel and his own muscle.  He worked the fields for endless days in the blazing sun on an old steel-seated FarmAll tractor, without a sunshade or even a backrest.

And when the machines broke down he got out the giant tools.  Two-inch sockets.  Wrenches as long as my arm and twice as heavy.  His days were a punishing round of physical chores.

Looking out at the automated garbage truck, I realized those days are mostly gone.  Farming, garbage collection, you name it; it’s machine power instead of manpower now.  Chores are accomplished with the press of a button from a comfortable seat in an air-conditioned cab.

I doubt if anybody mourns the change.  Those weren’t ‘the good old days’.  They were hard and dangerous; heartbreaking and backbreaking.  Many men were killed or terribly injured, and bent backs and swollen joints and missing fingers are the visible legacy of their labour.

But I have to wonder:  If the work of the future consists of pressing buttons, will the men of tomorrow feel the same fierce pride and sheer primeval triumph my dad’s generation experienced when they fell into bed at the end of a successful day?

And will I be able to give them the same respect and admiration?

I don’t think so.  Do you?