Things that are most likely the devil:

Yup. The wood chipper. I am currently coveting a wood chipper. What guy wouldn't want one? Imagine the stress that could be alleviated with a good wood chipper session. First, I would begin with the traditional choice: wood in the form of trees and tree debris. I might follow this with random 2x4s in my shed. Followed by maybe a fence post or an old door then random plastic things like a laundry hamper. A pumpkin! A watermelon! An old bike! The neighbour's yappy dog! Okay. I apologize. I need to go calm down now.

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for the letter. I had a dream last night about your old farmhouse next to the Papikwan River. It felt exactly the same as it did when I was a kid except in the dream I wasn’t a kid anymore. I did not see you or Grandpa but you were both there. So was Tub, sniffing around, wagging. There was an old bus parked in your yard and I had to move it behind your garage. The little green shed next to the fuel tank was there too, tall summer grass surrounding it. Across from the shed was your garden with long rows of vegetables and one row of gladiolus, white and faded pink, standing there watching and waving.

I felt really proud of myself because I was going to show Grandpa that I could control that old relic of a vehicle. As soon as I pressed on the clutch it started to roll backward and I knew I had made some sort of mistake but Grandpa would know what to do and he wouldn’t mind. But I had done something wrong and suddenly afraid, I woke before I could see Grandpa alive again.

My eyes sting a bit as I recall this dream now. When I was a kid, I was always the happiest at your house. Lying there after the dream I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk through my memories right into your old farmhouse. I remember your kitchen cupboards, those designs I guess Grandpa used a router to create. I remember the cellar door under the kitchen table and the spot there where Grandpa used to sit and smoke, his bowl of green peppermints nearby. In the living room, next to the book shelf stocked with Readers Digest, sat the organ where I taught myself to play “Love me Tender” and in front of the couch rested that kidney shaped coffee table I always thought was so fancy. Back in the kitchen I think I remember exactly where you stashed the chocolate cupcakes.

So much time has passed since then, hasn’t it? So many changes too. Yet these memories are so tangible, like reaching out to touch a book cover. Isn’t it surprising just how much we all carry around in our hearts, all the people we’ve loved and the places we’ve loved and the touchstones that decorate those memories?

I have read that dreams are the brain’s attempt to organize emotional clutter or a safe place to work out emotional conflicts. I have read that dreams are fulfillments of unconscious wishes too. But I think this dream just means that I miss you. And I miss those sunny, windy, wavy-grass days of my youth when life was simpler and so much easier. And writing this now I wish I really was parked in an old bus outside your house waiting for you and Grandpa to just come outside and help me back up.

Yours,

david

20 Questions

I’m a curious guy and I need answers. These are my latest questions.

1.      Is there anyone else out there without a cell phone? If so, call me.

2.      Where can I get high speed metabolism?

3.      Where’s Waldo’s girlfriend Wilma?

4.      Will the world ever get out of debt?

5.      Why do we need rich bank executives?

6.      Why are there so many knuckleheads in charge?

7.      Why does so much last for so little anymore? For example, why is my laptop “obsolete” two weeks after I bought it?

8.      If it says on my box of compact fluorescent light bulbs that they last for nine years, how am I supposed to keep a record of how long I’ve had all my light bulbs and who would actually do that?

9.      When will girls get sick of vampires and start liking sporty guys again or better yet: humorous couch potato guys?

10.  If the can opener was invented after the can, what will inventors think of next?

11.  What will our children tell their grandchildren about growing up now?

12.  Why aren’t all drug dealers in jail?

13.  Why don’t investors invest in people?

14.  When will we run out of clean water?

15.  What comes after Facebook?

16.  If social networking is so great, why are so many people so lonely?

17.  Why don’t more people have segways?

18.  When exactly did I go from heartthrob to mall cop?

19.  Do some people actually feel it in their bones?

20.  Where did the swine flu go?

Memory Lane Meanderings

The one in which I recall 5 things that made me run like my butt was on fire:

1. one adorable orange fluffy and completely rabid fox that I had to fight off with snowballs in the parking lot of my workplace (just imagine the surveillance video footage).
2. one out-of-control snowboarder. (It's challenging running on skiis.)
3. one moose. (I was on a lawn tractor at the time which I thought would startle that moose a.k.a. small dinosaur, but that beast just scoffed at my dinky tractor and charged, so I pooped my pants and ran.)
4. Adelle Hardie after I spit a loogie in her hair on the first day of Grade 5. (Nope. Not proud.)
5. one vice-principal.

Things that are most likely the devil:

Did you know that the letters in Walmart can be rearranged into "we sell cheap plastic crap to hoarders?" Seriously.

Things that are most likely the devil:

     Each Cranberry Lemon Grand Cap Muffin is 480 calories and contains 26 grams of fat! 

     How is that possible? Are they made with lard? Shouldn't these weapons of mass confection be regulated by the government? Does Jillian Michaels know about this?

     Whoa.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday (The Bitter Sunday Version)

     Yeah I know. It's not Wednesday. I'm just having a bitter Sunday moment. It happens sometimes (the weekend is almost over). Anyway, the word is inane (adjective): lacking meaning, significance, or a point.
     For example, I don't like those useless igoogle fish. It's creepy the way they swim toward your mouse begging for food. They're anemic. And sad. And starving. And what's cute about that? Someone feed those damn things. Seriously, how long can a guy watch starving fish and call it entertainment?! Yeesh.
     Hey. Maybe there's an app for this? A piranah app perhaps? (fiendish smile) Suddenly I'm better, not bitter.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

mouse potato (noun): a person characterized by excessive and sustained computer time-wasting. May or may not include physical symptoms such as bleary eyes, soar neck/back and man-boobs; tends to live in hermit-like hovels where snack debris crumbs are commonly found inside keyboards; will bite if told to go to bed or work. (Yeesh. I better go to bed now.)

What motivates you?

     Being someone who loves to blather on, hoping I have a point of view about various things, sometimes it's the simplest question that can stump and silence me: "What motivates you?"

     My first thought: Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. I don’t know.

     My second thought: This is hard. I’m pathetic.
     Third thought: I’m unmotivated.
     Fourth thought: Think! Shouldn’t I know what motivates me? Shouldn’t we all?
     Then I realized it was much easier to determine what did not motivate me such as material things, competition, power, getting credit or (unlike most of the human race I think), coffee. Eventually though, after some quick-fire pondering, I determined that I am motivated in a variety of ways by the following things, in no particular order:

1. Fear of embarrassment.
2. Comfort.
3. Chocolate chips.
4. Humour.
5. Beauty.
6. Something within me I cannot explain, something curious, something at the core, something compelling, something I should listen to more carefully.
7. A need to express myself, especially through writing.
8. Creativity and the Arts.
9. Friendship, companionship and love.
10. Change: new places, new faces, new embraces.
11. Gratitude.
12. People who are inspiring, people who snort when they laugh, people who can laugh at themselves, people with vision.
13. A desire to provide something better for others.
14. Unexpected and undeserved kindness.
15. Being cheap.
16. The bills at the end of the month.
17. Selfishness, stupidity and anger.
18. Knowledge and learning.
19. Possibilities.
20. Cake.

     I recommend a list of motivations. An honest list, both positive and negative. Why? Consider Zig Ziglar's advice regarding achieving success in life: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

     Inbetweenies (noun): young people, especially teens, who interact, (some might argue even exist?) in the "nearly now," a.k.a. that social network stream or "time zone" in between texts, facebook updates, tweets, instant messages, etc. See my teenaged son and daughter.
     It simultaneously fascinates and worries me.