Where are the talking blankets of yesteryear?

Here's another story from the vault of memory. I actually meant to blog this at the time, but never got around to it, and now, what do you know, it's two or three years later. (Actually, it must be more than two years, because this was in our old house in Seattle. How can that be? Three years? But I guess it must be so)

So, about three years ago, so that would've been when the Mermaid Girl was about six, we had this game we used to play. She'd lie on the couch, completely covered in a blanket, and talk. If I'd blogged this back then like I meant to, I'd remember what she used to say. But I think it was something like, "Hi, I'm a talking blanket. See? I'm talking! And I'm a blanket!"

Then I'd get all excited and go, "Wow, a talking blanket! Oh my gosh!"

And she'd say, "Yes! I'm the only one in the world!"

I'd say, "I can't believe it! I've never seen a talking blanket before. It's too bad my daughter isn't here-- she'd love this!"

And she'd go, "Yes, go get your daughter! I think she's in her room!"

So off I'd rush to MG's room, calling "MG! MG, come quick! You've gotta see this!" And then, since of course she wasn't there, I'd return to the living room, still calling, "MG! MG! MG, where are you?"

And then there she'd be in the living room, prim as you please, and she'd say, "Mommy? Mommy, I'm right here. What is it?"

"Oh!" I'd say. "Oh, you have to see this! MG, there's a talking blanket, right on our couch! See? See? There it is! Talk, blanket, talk!"

And she'd pick up the blanket and say kindly, "Mommy, there's no such thing as a talking blanket. See? It's just a blanket. It doesn't talk at all."

Then I'd get all red-faced and insistent and she'd shake her head pityingly at the depths of my delusion. Sometimes she'd say, "Mommy, I think you've been reading too many children's books."

We'd continue like this until I walked away, scratching my head and muttering, ""I'm SURE it talked! Maybe I was imagining things? ["You were imagining things, Mommy."] But it seemed so real!" etc. etc.

There is no real point to this story. Except that it was a really excellent game, and we haven't played it for a while. We still play the peas game sometime--and, astonishingly, she still delights in cheating me out of the peas--but we haven't played the Talking Blanket game for, oh, years and years. I wonder if she'd still want to play it, at the advanced age of nine?

My Ukulele: A Love Story

I've mentioned the ukulele here and there in posts over the past year, but I don't think I've ever actually devoted a post to the topic. So here it is:

My family is full of musicians: both my parents play the piano, my dad professionally since his retirement, and my mom has sung in high-level choirs; my brother plays a bunch of instruments and sang professionally as a kid; my spouse was a music major in college and has a closet full of various instruments from recorder to viola da gamba. I'm the non-musician in both my adult family and my family of origin: I love to sing, and sing a lot, but I don't read music and I've never really mastered an instrument.

That's not to say that I've never tried, albeit halfheartedly. As a kid I played piano for a few years, but dropped it when the theory got too hard (which was very early). I played viola for a year or two in elementary school (we got to pick our instruments, and I picked viola because the name of the instrument sounded pretty and romantic) but never practiced. As a teenager, I tried to learn guitar, briefly, but the metal strings hurt my fingers and my hands were too small. When I first got together with the Renaissance Woman, back in the mid 1990's, I was inspired to teach myself recorder with her help and encouragement; I learned some notes and some tunes and then plateaued because there wasn't much I could do with it, and stopped playing. What I really wanted to do, after all, was sing and play, and you can't sing and play the recorder at the same time.

So, for a long time, that was that. I sang songs at library story times, and I sang to the Mermaid Girl at bedtime, and I sang for fun by myself and with friends, and I just figured I was the sort of person who was not going to play an instrument, either because I was too lazy to learn or because there was no instrument that was quite right for me.

Then, a little over a year ago, I went to a library storytime workshop. The format was very simple: each of us was to bring two songs or rhymes. We sat in a circle, and went around the room, each in turn teaching our songs and rhymes to all the other participants. About halfway through the workshop, a librarian stood up with a tiny little guitar-like instrument which was, she explained briefly, her ukulele. She taught us her two songs, accompanying herself on the ukulele, and sat down, and we moved on to the next presenter.

So, that was it. But it was...I don't know how to put this without being cliched and corny. It was like a lightning bolt had hit right in front of me! It was like a spiritual experience! It was like the proverbial light bulb went off! I stared and stared at that little ukulele and knew I had finally, after 42 years, found my instrument.

Well, not that particular one; that one was the other librarian's, and I resisted the urge to run across the room and wrest it out of her hands. But, you know.

So I went home and told RW that I had found my instrument and that it was the ukulele and that if, you know, anyone was trying to figure out what to give me for Chanukah, a ukulele would not go amiss. And, lo and behold, a ukulele was what I got. (Oh-- I did write about this part, I guess.)

So off I set to learn how to play it. I found a ukulele book in the library, and renewed it several times and then just let it go overdue because I needed the chord chart so that I could play songs I liked in Rise Up Singing with ukulele chords. I learned three chords, then four and five and six. I learned how to play "Clementine" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" which are very easy and have very few chords, and then "Angel from Montgomery" and "Desperado," which are more fun and sound more impressive and have more than three chords but are miraculously not actually that hard.

Then I really needed to return the ukulele book, so I turned to the Internet to print out a chord chart. And that was when I discovered that, once again, I had been an unwitting pawn of the zeitgeist. Because! Ukuleles are everywhere! Especially on the Internets! While I'd been blissfully bonding at home with my new little orange ukulele, believing that it was pure providential luck that I'd finally found my instrument, thousands and thousands of other people were simultaneously-- or actually a little ahead of me-- discovering that the ukulele was also THEIR instrument, and were busily posting Youtube videos of themselves in their room playing ukulele. There are online ukulele stores, and online video ukulele reviews (so you can see and hear what various models are like before ordering them online), and online video ukulele tutorials, and magazine articles heralding all the above and talking like the ukulele was the biggest thing to hit since grunge.

Just like when I'd suddenly inexplicably gotten the urge to buy a brown zip-up hoodie, I had once again stumbled blindly into trendiness. Dammit.

But by then, it was too late. I was bonded to my ukulele, and I was practicing, and I was getting better. I was even learning a little music theory-- first, I just played the chords the way the chord chart said. Then, RW taught me about the 1-4-5 chord progression and how you could apply it all up and down the scale. Then, this summer, I wanted to learn "Uncle John's Band" but the version I found was full of hard B chords (I hate B chords; they are devilish hard) and also the wrong key for me to sing, and I realized that I could transpose it-- if I changed the B's to G's, I could change the A's to F's, and etc. etc. And it worked!

I spent a lot of the summer playing, on our porch when we were home and at various campgrounds and in the passenger seat of the van when we were not. I learned more chords, and chord changes that seemed way too hard at the beginning of the summer were somehow not so hard by the end. When we met up with our friends on the Washington coast I got to play with other people, and that was fun and I didn't totally suck and drag them down.

By the time summer ended, I figured I was finally good enough to go out and play among strangers. So I started going to the monthly ukulele circle in the city. At first it was overwhelming: there were 40 or 50 people there, most of them better than me and with better, more expensive, better tuned ukuleles. For the first half of the meeting everyone played together out of a songbook, and even though I knew way more than three chords, I didn't know nearly enough to play along with most of the songs.

But everyone there was friendly and warm and encouraging, and told me to just play and not worry about getting it right, so I've kept going. Playing with the group has gotten me to finally tackle the B chord family, plus it is good for my soul. One thing about not reading music and not playing an instrument is that music for me has been mostly a solitary, or at most fleetingly social, experience. This is about the least original observation in the universe (aside from the one about time flying and babies getting older) but there really is something powerful about singing and playing music together with a group of people. The group meets on a weekday evening and every time I have to drag myself out the door rather than staying home and hanging out with MG and RW. And every time I am glad I went and feel lifted up and happy.

So, that is the story of a girl and her uke. I'm still not very good. But I can accompany myself on a bunch of my favorite songs, and I keep learning more. Even though I love my little orange ukulele, I can hear now that it's sort of a beginner one and I'm thinking about buying myself another one that has a richer tone and stays in tune better. When I start my new schedule in January, I might take some group lessons that someone from the ukulele circle runs. And these days, when I am feeling sad or low or frustrated or like the rain it raineth every day and it is dark all the time, I try to remember that the ukulele works better than Tetris or even the Internet for reminding me that there are good things and maybe even joy in the universe.

And if it's all trendy and whatnot, too-- oh, well; nothing's perfect.

Hear Me Complaining, Fates!

Hello hello hello! It is the next day and I am blogging again!

Well. I will not make the mistake again of blogging about how non-depressed I am. Right after I wrote this fate-tempting post, things went all what the Brits call pear-shaped, and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I will draw a veil over it.

Instead I will say: Today I got home from work at 2:30 (I work 9-2 on Mondays) and I was telling myself how I should be feeling lucky and grateful because back in my old life in Seattle I used to work 8-5 on Mondays, and then drive through horrendous traffic for another hour or two (Monday was our staff meeting day). But instead of feeling lucky I was feeling exhausted, due to a combination of hormonal cycle and the Beastly Rainy Weather and RW and me staying up too late talking the night before. So I went home and said hi to everyone--RW didn't have work today, and seems to be having a semi-relapse of exhaustion, and MG had concocted just enough sneeziness and stomachache-complaints that she got to stay home. Probably if we'd both been working we would've just made her go to school. But, you know.

So there they were, all cuddled up on the couch in their pajamas, and I went and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. And next thing I knew, it was 5:00, it was dark, it was still raining, and MG and RW had made strawberry muffins while I'd been asleep and were about to start making pizza for dinner. So, that was really nice.

Of course, now it is past 10:30, they are both sound asleep, and I am bright-eyed and wakey with no one to talk to or watch DVDs with. And I know there is a big meteor shower tonight, but trust me, it is way too rainy to see anything in the sky.

So here I am! Complaining! About the rain! And the wakeful aloneness!

Not because I am ungrateful for loving family or strawberry muffins or pizza or 5-hour workdays. No. But because it will KEEP AWAY THE EVIL EYE.

Canada: A Few Tips

oh, man, I can't even keep track on how behind I am on NaBlowhatever. But! Onward!

Someone emailed me a little bit ago to say they might be moving to Canada and did I have any advice? I started to compile a list and made myself stop after just a few items because I was having too much fun. So here is the rest of it:

1. Don't lose the piece of paper that comes with your stamped visa. They don't like that.
2. Spell everything with a "u".
3. Canadian drivers are not as polite as you might think.
4. Don't bother looking for a post office as such. Just go to the Shoppers Drug Mart. You will be amazed to find a complete post office in there.
4a. But don't buy anything else at Shoppers. They suck.
4b. Oh, and there is no Saturday postal delivery. The mail carrier didn't just skip you last weekend; s/he didn't come at all.
5. If you are a U.S. Citizen, and you have a child, don't open an RESP for them no matter how much your regular bank tells you it's a great deal. There are terrible tax implications that will hit either you or your child later. Plus you could be arrested or something for having a foreign trust. Rachel said something about this and I didn't quite believe it, but then the guy who did our taxes last year confirmed it.
5a. However, someone else who is not a U.S. citizen can open an RESP for your child, even if they're not related. Just saying. And if you were to quietly funnel them the money to do so, I wouldn't tell anyone.
6. And speaking of taxes: even if you have always prided yourself on doing them yourself, the first year you live in Canada might be a good time to pack it in and go to an accountant. After that, you can consider returning to your old self-sufficient ways.
7. Cream cheese costs $4.00 a package. You aren't reading the label wrong; it really does.
8. Be prepared for lots of Christmas. There is separation of Church and State in Canada, but it doesn't mean exactly the same thing that it does in the U.S.
9. Bring your own screws, or else just buy a new screwdriver. Seriously. The screw-heads are all different here and you won't be able to buy any new screws to fit your Phillips or flathead screwdriver.
10. If you are planning to apply for citizenship later, keep a record of all the time you spend outside Canada, including weekend trips down to the States; you'll need it for calculating your total residency. If you are like me, you will not think to do this for the first couple of years, and then you will wish that you had.
11. There are no public holidays (in BC, anyway) between New Year's and Easter. This makes for a long, dark, work-filled first few months of the year. It's a good time to plan for a short vacation. Or perhaps a short drunken spree.
12. When people ask you why you moved to Canada, don't say "For the health care" (even if it's true, or partly true).
12a. However, "It's just better here" is a perfectly acceptable response.

Murray, Who Invented Thumb-Twiddling

Yeah, hmm, I really shouldn't have written that post yesterday. It was just tempting fate.

But this afternoon I was pulled out of my doldrums by this interview. I grew up listening to the 2,000 Year Old Man, so reading this was like old home week for me. Plus, I just get a kick out of how much Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner obviously enjoy each other's company after 60 years of friendship. I hope I have such good friends when I'm in my 80's.

Nothing to see here, Universe; just move along.

You know, I don't want to jinx it....so I won't say it. I'll just say that we had an incredible summer, hot and sunny and full of leisure and song and water. And then we had a gorgeous, gorgeous October, without too much rain and with really truly glorious leaves all over the place.

And now it is true, the leaves are all falling, and the sun sets nearly at 4:00 exactly what I'm dreading, etc.

And RW was sick for a week, and that did kind of suck. (Though more for her than for me.)

But, well, if I said I was less knocked over than usual this year by Teh November Gloom, that would be just a great big engraved invitation to the universe to send me something truly rotten, wouldn't it? So I won't say that.

Instead, I will note that last week had several extremely crummy days in it. Remember that, Universe? Remember when I burned the corn muffins and messed something up at work? Huh?

Yep. Just keep that in mind, and we'll say no more.

An Amazing Drawing

Right! So, then I folded some laundry, and then I went to work, and then I came back, and RW took MG to her piano lesson instead of me doing it so I could get something done from my list, and then I made dinner (roast vegetables, mmmm), and then things were better although really should I be this sleepy when I just slept 10 hours last night?

Well, tomorrow is a Day Off so we can Remember, and maybe in addition to remembering I will take a nap.

In the meantime, here is an amazing drawing from K. Beaton, who is the author/cartoonist behind Hark! A Vagrant. She was commissioned to create this huge picture of famous people in Canadian history. And I even know who a bunch--maybe a quarterof them--are! (There's a list underneath the picture if you want to match likenesses to names.) I am becoming more Canadian by the minute.

Okay, I only know about Louis Riel because kids keep coming to the library to ask for information on him for reports. Apparently he is a popular report topic. I'm not sure if he would've approved.