{It’s My Own Fault I Am the Way I Am}

by Camille Posted on May 7, 2008

I have always followed in my older sister’s footsteps. We aren’t really anything alike in personality (she’s organised, I’m a cluttered mess; she’s an exercise person, I’m a sleep-in type; she’s kind-hearted, I’m the crotchety neighbor who hates children), but nevertheless, we do a lot of things similarly. This is mostly because I copy her. I’m a copycat.


She was two grades ahead of me in school, and she joined orchestra in the 4th grade, which I did two years later. She got glasses when she was 8 or nine, and it wasn’t long before I got a pair of my own (I may or may not have lied on the eye exam just to score a pair–I’m not confessing anything. You’ll never make me talk.). She ran for student council in seventh grade (Grade 7, Canadians!), remaining in office for the next five years of her life, and I followed suit. She tried out for the volleyball team as a Freshman, and…you get the idea.


At this rate, I am due to have my first kid in about 18 months. Which means I would have to get pregnant next February. Horrors.


Anyway, being the copycat lame-o that I am, I also adopted her queasiness around blood and needles. And the strange thing? It was absolutely, 100% a conscious decision. Honestly. I remember the exact day I decided to loathe the idea of blood–it was when my sister passed out at our high school’s blood drive. I thought it was so cool–I have no idea why. At any rate, a few weeks later I had to get Tuberculosis test for some extracurricular activity, and I got myself all worked up about it for days in advance. Sure enough, when I arrived at the clinic and watched the needle seep under my skin (and the consequential puff of protein that bubbled all the way up my arm, which nobody warned me would happen during a TB shot), I heard a ringing in my ears.

And really, can you blame me?*


The nurse suddenly sounded light-years away, and before I knew it, I was having the most fantastical dream that I was in a fun-house at a carnival and there were crazy flashing lights all around me.

And I’ve had that same strange dream every time I’ve passed out since that day–which has been every time I’ve had to get blood work done, or immunizations completed, or plasma donated. (Okay, I didn’t pass out for the plasma, but only because the blood bank was paying me $200 for my plasma, and they told me if I passed out, they wouldn’t let me finish. [I told you: it’s totally mental.])

And evidently this mental illness of mine is only getting worse–evidently I now faint at even the thought of the sight of blood. I don’t even have to see it to drop unconscious.

Which is why I am so stressed out about the blood work I’m getting tomorrow (Tuesday) for my immunization papers. Oops! Not “immunization papers.” Does such paperwork even exist? I meant “my immigration papers.”

That’s how stressed I am.

*Photo from ethnomed.org.*

Posted in oh brother what next, what I'm about | 15 Comments

{Here and Home Are Not the Same}

by Camille Posted on May 6, 2008

I’m sitting up in bed with my back propped up against the wall by two plush pillows. It’s quiet in my house, except for the dishwasher that’s running a full cycle of dirty dishes–we had shrimp tacos for dinner tonight, in honour of Cinco de Mayo, and I dirtied a lot of dishes in preparation. [Nobody I know even mentioned the holiday today, but if I had been back home, it would have been a non-stop fiesta. Maybe Canadians are separated by one too many borders to recongnise Mexican holidays.]

It’s calm here–there are no kids screaming protests about bedtime, no yapping dogs or meowing cats. No attachments. Everything is just the way I like it.

In the background, I can hear the familiar sound of sirens–probably police officers on an important call. Probably they’ll save someone’s life tonight. Without realising what I’m doing, I begin to worry for their safety. A lot of people I care about work in law enforcement–I pray they are protected tonight, as they go about their duties protecting me.

Then suddenly it hits me: those sirens I hear, the ones that seem so familiar to me, can’t possibly be real. I live in Mayberry, after all–a tiny town of not quite 3,000 residents. There’s not even a stop light in Mayberry. Here, we have two police cars, and I don’t think either of them are equipped with sirens–no need for anything ostentatious like that. (My husband will probably dispute this claim. Probably he will feel insulted that I don’t think his town’s police cars come with sirens. But I don’t mean any indignities, Poor Kyle. I’m just trying to make a point.) At any rate, the noise must be coming from the basement, where Poor Kyle is playing some auto-wrecking blather of a game.

It is shocking to me, the realisation that sirens sound familiar in my ears. As a kid, I fell asleep to their steady humming. Up and down they went, occasionally harmonised by my dog’s impatient howls–Sampson hated sirens. Sirens didn’t scare me, though–I found them reassuring. The knowledge that help was on the way–on the way to someone who needed it–was comforting to me.

It seems like I could have lived and died and lived again in the time that has passed since I’ve heard a real siren. I don’t hear them here in Mayberry, because the only criminals are bored teenagers out looking for variety. [Oh, and evidently there are a lot of white-collar criminals in this town, too, who get put away on charges of fraud and embezzlement. But those are the kind of crimes that simply require a search warrant and a testimony–no sirens. And anyway, we don’t talk about them, except behind closed doors. Certainly not on the internet for all the world to read.] I like it here; don’t get me wrong. But I also like home. Here and home are not the same to me, and they might never be.

I’m really looking forward to my trip home this month; I will eat authentic Mexican-American food (not the rubbish I dish out in my kitchen), and once again be lulled to sleep by the sound of sirens, if even for a few short weeks.

Posted in Canada, the great state of AZ, what I'm about | 8 Comments

{I Self-Medicate With Cardboard Pizza}

by Camille Posted on May 5, 2008

When one’s husband accuses one of being addicted to one’s laptop, there is nothing to do but eat really cheap pizza.

I don’t know what it is about being in a bad mood that makes me crave crappy food, but it’s as real a symptom of my life as periods are a symptom of not being pregnant (and thank heavens). At any rate, I have a bag of 5 flavourless pepperoni pizzas that I bought at Wal-Mart Superstore™ for, like, $3.00, on hand for just such an occasion.


Ooh, individually wrapped!! Unnecessary packaging. And I call myself “green.”

So when I woke up from my Sunday nap at 9 p.m. (bad idea, taking a nap so late), and went straight to check my email, only to be told that I am addicted to the computer [an accusation which hurt, if you want to know the truth], it was in the kitchen that I sought my solace. I even put some extra shredded mozza on top of the “pizza” before baking, as if I honestly expected that to make it any better; it didn’t.

It barely even resembles food.

But that’s the joy of it, I think. Imagine: food so deliciously lousy that not even an extra inch of the world’s simplest and most delicious cheese can make it more palatable–well, to me that is comfort food at its finest. No pretenses. No putting on airs. No making me feel inadequate with fancy French words like blanché or soufflé or tartelette. And that’s what this pizza is all about–making people like me feel better about ourselves by sheer comparison.

Yes, I might be addicted to checking my email to see if anyone commented on my latest post, but at least I don’t taste like dirty socks. Perhaps it’s true that I care too much about my online life–but at least nobody bought me at Wal-Mart for $3.00 plus GST. And so what if I open my laptop every morning before I even get out of bed? Eating this sorry excuse for food makes me feel so much better about it.

Buy a bag. You won’t be sorry. Another bonus? Cardboard pizza therapy is so much cheaper than other kinds of retail therapy (i.e. shoes).

Posted in do what I say, kitchen failures, Married Life, mediocrity | 10 Comments

Marriage Warning: Side Effects May Occur

by Camille Posted on May 2, 2008

No, I don’t mean anything to do with eggs being fertilised.

I’ve already talked a lot about the lies married people feed soon-to-be-married people: That marriage is hard [when it’s actually impossible], the wedding night is magical [depends on who you are, I guess], and resolving arguments before bed is the only way to make a marriage last [there are lots of other ways], just to name a few.

I am now going to expound on my previous sentiments by shedding the light on another batch of lies. Well I suppose they can’t actually be called lies, per say…more like concealments of the truth. See, I heard a lot of garbage before I got married…garbage about being married [see above]. But there were a lot of things I didn’t hear–things I’ve had to learn the hard way, since nobody thought to clue me in.


Take my newfound sappiness, for example. Nobody told me that after I got married, my brain would become an emotional minefield, daring thoughts to cross, only to set off a land mine–no, a mind mine–with the slightest unpleasant notion. And the consequences are grave: I can explode into hysterical bouts of…feeling…at any given moment, now that I’m married.

It takes very little to set off one of my mind mines–very little. Suddenly now that I am married, the thought of going skydiving (which I have done pre-maritally) fills me with terror beyond reason; I can’t fathom jumping out of a plane anymore–not when I have so much to live for.

Nobody told me that watching movies–even [especially] immensely cheesy movies like P.S. I Love You–would send me into a dangerously depressing spiral of “What if that happens to me?” and “We’ve only been married six months but already I know that if Poor Kyle dies young, I will never be the same,” and “How can life be so hard?? Things are just…so…sad.” Nobody warned me that getting married would cause me to value life–my life, Poor Kyle’s life, our nonexistent children’s lives, my immediate family’s lives, even the little-one-legged-bird-at-Sonic’s life–more than I ever thought I could.

I lived 21 years sleeping in a lovely double bed all alone, but now that I’ve been married (for six months, only), the thought of Poor Kyle leaving me for a two-day road trip to Oregon gives me chills. He left this week (alone this time, so I could stay home and volunteer at the museum), and I stayed up ’till 4 a.m. every night he was gone, just so I could sleep in the next day and make the time go faster.

Pathetic. Not to mention the fact that I gave myself an ulcer worrying that he would die alone, young (dying young seems to be my latest obsessive fear these days), while he was on the road, leaving me to live my life in solitude. So consumed was I with the fear of my husband dying on his way to Oregon, that I could not even carry on a phone conversation without professing to him my infinite love, just in case it turned out to be our last conversation. Again…pathetic.

And now I’m mad (just another emotional mind mine blowing up…pay no attention), because I never agreed to be so sensitive. I didn’t sign up for this kind of co-dependent psycho-babble “I love you I love you I love you” nonsense. I never wanted to care this much.

But I do and it’s done and of course I can’t even bring myself to regret any of it, because that would mean I regret being married, which I do not. And the thought that Poor Kyle might be under the false impression that I regret my life how it is…well, it’s a thought that I cannot bear, in lieu of my recent uncontrollable sappiness.

Posted in change, Married Life, oh brother what next, what I'm about | 12 Comments

All I Really Need to Know I Learned From “Saved by the Bell”

by Camille Posted on May 1, 2008

Dadgummit. They got the ducks again.

Any child of the ’80s will recall that episode of Saved by the Bell–the episode that impacted young minds more powerfully than any other [save perhaps the one wherein Jessie had a drug-induced nervous breakdown]. It was the the time when Bayside struck oil and decided to hire an oil company to drill on the football field; the plan was to make Bayside High a first-rate prep school with the oil profits. Unfortunately, there was an oil spill that caused the deaths of the entire student population’s science projects: Becky the Duck, in particular.

*Photos from x-entertainment.com*

Even before I found these photos online, I could clearly envision the sight of that poor dead duck, black and slick with spilled oil that had invaded her home–the nearby pond. She was dead–dead…and all because of the greediness of humanity. I must have only been six or seven when I first saw that episode, yet the images were so real and urgent that I have remembered them vividly after 15 years.

And now it’s happened again, only in real life. Only this time it wasn’t an oil spill that was to blame–it was an oil wasteland. These wastelands are toxic ponds, which are the dump sites for Syncrude™, a northern Alberta oil sand company (there’s sand up there that is saturated with oil and people dedicate their lives to the extraction of this finite resource [hence “oil sands”]). In other words, there are specific designated areas for Syncrude™ to dump their toxic sludge. That’s all fine and well, except for the 500 migrating ducks which landed in the toxic waste on Monday, all but five of which became oil-logged and sank almost immediately. These designated toxic areas that are not new; they’ve been a part of the company since its beginnings. In fact, Syncrude™ spokespeople claim this is the first time the birds have landed in 30 years. They seem to consider this a positive point–I think they should be embarrassed. Shouldn’t they know by now that this is not okay?

It also begs the question, “If Syncrude™ has been dealing with migrating fowl for at least 30 years, what was the major oversight this season, that wiped out entire flocks of living animals?”

See, normally the oil company places sonic-wave noisemakers [pictured above, from aquaticeco.com] in the vicinity of the hazardous areas, which serve to deter flying animals from landing thereabouts. This season, it was snowing. Snowing. Evidently it was snowing a great deal–it would have to be, since that is Syncrude’s™ only excuse for their oversight. On the other hand, the ducks were still flying around up there; how bad a snowfall could it have been? And if it was, in fact, snowing too heavily for the ducks to fly, it has since stopped; surely there was enough time to prepare for the annual migration.

Anyway, I think it’s all a load of nonsense, and I hope Syncrude™ learns from their mistake (hopefully a lesson in the form of a mega-fine, which could amount to $1,000,000, according to the New York Times). It should not be happening. There is absolutely no excuse for such ignorance. A lot of people (my older sister, for sure) will be inclined to think, “Oh, Camille, it’s just 500 ducks. Canada has lots more where those came from. You’re overreacting.” But that is exactly the mentality we need to fight:

If you’re going to take a passive stand, you may as well just lay back down.

The future of our planet is at stake. Our ecosystem is fragile enough without these monstrous companies killing off hundreds of animals…even if it is only every 30 years.

Posted in Canada, change, failures, fiascos, mediocrity, sad things | 15 Comments

Ford™ Has Something Stuck in Its Teeth and I’m Not Breaking the News

by Camille Posted on April 30, 2008

Ford™ is claiming their vehicles are now equal to the quality of Toyota™.

Really?


I heard them say so in three of their own commercials tonight during intermissions of American Idol™. I’m no marketing executive or anything, but if I were, I certainly wouldn’t be equating my product’s quality with my toughest competitors’. After all, the point of paying for a commercial on national television is to influence consumers to buy a specific product–namely, your own product, if you’re happen to be the one creating the commercial. The point is not, I daresay, to confuse your target audience by telling them that your product is every bit as good as the other guy’s. All that does is make the brands blur together, when what Ford™ should be doing is making their cars stand out.

If I were creating these commercials, I would be telling the world that my crossover-hybrid-blah-blah-blah is not as good as Toyota’s™–it’s superior.


And what’s the deal with Ford™ claiming that their cars are now as good as Toyota’s™–you mean, Ford™, that they weren’t so great last year? You mean that only now are you getting your act in gear (excuse the pun)? You’re telling us that the past few years were a struggle for you, but in these “times of economic difficulty” [as George Dubbleya would say], you’ve finally made a comeback and are now–only now–starting to match the quality of your competitors? I’m pretty sure that’s a weakness I wouldn’t want to be proclaiming in commercials between segments of American Idol™.

Instead, I would highlight my company’s newest technology, thrilling innovations, five-star safety ratings, and extra cup holders. I would use our sleekest-looking vehicle driving down the street in the chicest of cities, and an unseen mystery narrator with a mesmerizing voice.

Then again, that’s what all the car commercials are looking like these days. Maybe Ford™ just wanted to do something different? Humble themselves? Sheepishly admit their past flaws, and convince us those days are long gone? I don’t know.

But I do know that I am more a Toyota™ fan now than ever before, because they are the company who doesn’t make excuses. They don’t acknowledge their flaws or failures, and that means I–as a modern-day consumer–don’t know of any. In my mind, Toyotas™ are an ideal choice of a mid-range vehicle: affordable, attainable, reliable, safe, fuel-conscious, and now are produced locally.

Poor Ford™; someone should really tell them.

*Photos from acfk.net and 4driversonly.com.

Posted in failures, mediocrity, watch out or I'll blog about you, what I'm about | 14 Comments

The Longer I Stay Married, The Less I Know About Marriage

by Camille Posted on April 29, 2008

Dear B,

Oh, B!


It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful beautiful I’ve ever seen.


It looks so perfect there on that hand of yours.

You’re getting married. I am excited for you, you know. And I’m immensely glad I nagged you for so long to tell me as soon as it was official–that phone call was one of my life’s most thrilling moments.

The fact you agreed to keep me on the line with your cell phone in your purse while you and Tanner went to tell your parents…well, that was just icing on the proverbial cake. I just closed my eyes and could picture the entire scene as it was unfolding, with you and Tanner narrating, and your family as the audience. It made me homesick; it made me happy.

When we were in Mr. Finn’s algebra class together, we bonded over our love of You’ve Got Mail and our disdain of boys in general–irony was the spice of our lives…remember?

We’re singing quite a different tune now that we’re in our twenties, huh? Even up to the day I got engaged, my mantra was “Guys, in general, are jerks.” You held out for a while more–longer than me by far; you did good. But times are a-changin’, and its time we commune over something other than our loathing of the fouler sex.


You’re getting married, and I have moved to Canada like I always said I would. Since I can’t be there this summer (at least, not the entire summer) to bond like we usually do when we aren’t in school, I won’t be able to pass along my six months of knowledge to you in person. So I’ll just have to do it on my blog:

The Lies Everybody Fed Me About Marriage, Which I Unquestioningly Swallowed

1. Marriage is hard. That’s bogus. The truth is, marriage is impossible. More than half of marriages end in divorce these days, and I can totally see why. Take two human beings–both of them too stubborn for their own good–and stick them together. Cramp them into the same tiny house, sharing the same bathroom, trying to agree on the same food for dinner and the same channel on T.V. Give the woman PMS and give her husband a logical sense about him. Give them college tuition (x2), air conditioning bills in Arizona summer, and ramen noodles. Give them work, and school, and the chaos of cramming a trailer full of wedding gifts into whatever starter home they can afford. And then give them a joint chequing account. It’s no wonder people get divorced all the time…no wonder at all. But you, my dear, are getting married in the temple, and that makes it really serious, which of course you know. So that means divorce is probably not going to be a consideration for you.

And without an escape from the impossible situations in which you will surely find yourself, you are going to need to get really creative in order to keep your sanity. But knowing you, it will be a barrel of laughs the entire time.

2. The consummation is magical. Talk to Jami about this. I can’t bring myself to do it on the internet for all the world to see. (Hi, B’s mom!)

3. Going to bed angry doesn’t solve anything. Another lie. I go to bed angry all the time, and then have nightmares that Poor Kyle is hooking up with his ex-girlfriend (one hussy in particular seems to pop into my dreams after the most unsettling of arguments). I wake up seething at Poor Kyle, who really didn’t do anything except disagree with me before bed (poor, poor Poor Kyle). But once I realise he didn’t do what I dreamed he did, nothing else–our argument from the night before; the toilet seat in the upright and locked position; the fact that the lawn still isn’t mowed–seems as bad. You know? So I say: go to bed angry all you want; your nightmares will be so horrible, everything else will look rosy.

I’m sure there’s more advice to be given, but what can I say? I’ve only been married six months, after all–I know nothing.

But anyway, congratulations! I’m so happy for your happiness.

~S~

*Photos unabashedly stolen from Brad Burnham photography. I’m not sorry, either.*

Posted in Married Life | 13 Comments