Where Has All the Love Gone?

by Camille Posted on November 25, 2008

My life has changed monumentally within the past few weeks.

I’ve become one of those people who hates people.

Okay, not really.  That is, I don’t hate all people.  And “hate” might be too powerful of a word to describe my feelings; it’s more like I’ve become disillusioned as of late.

The point is that I’ve changed, and I’m not sure that it’s been a change for the better.  See, Poor Kyle has taken on weekend job in which I play absolutely no part because that would be illegal since I can’t work in Canada, and I am nothing if not straight-laced and if you are the immigration people and you’re reading this: I never lie.

That said, I do, on occasion, accompany Poor Kyle to his job and provide him with support of the moral persuasion.  {After all, he did take the job so we could pay for my college tuition–offering him moral support is the least I could do.}  At any rate, the job is this: wake up on Friday and Saturday in the wee hours of the morning, commute 30 minutes, and clean a movie theatre which takes oh…about nine hours.  Nine.  Hours.  As in nine.

It’s wretched, truly, but the price is right for Poor Kyle (who is the only one working and the only one getting paid and the only one who really matters in this story [ahem]).

It hurts my heart to watch Poor Kyle work himself to misery on the weekends, after already putting in a full week of driving to and from Oregon.  But he doesn’t seem to mind too much, and it will help us get out of debt faster, so for now it will do.

But it hasn’t come without a price.  It’s made me hate the world.

Okay, okay…not the entire world.  Just the movie theatre world.  That’s right–I’ve become the kind of person who doesn’t like going to movies. Poor Kyle gets so sad when he hears this; he really enjoys a good flick on a giant screen with a soda only inches away.  Me?  I used to, definitely.  But…after not spending nine hours every Friday and Saturday night working up a constant flow of sweat, and not picking up fifty bags of garbage, and not finding used contraceptive paraphernalia, and not getting filthy popcorn-y mop water backsplash in my mouth, and not cleaning 30 toilets and urinals with nothing but rubber gloves and a sponge…

Photo (and interesting article) from here.

…let’s just say that my eyes have seen the ways of the world, and I don’t like it.  Not one bit.  All my illusions have been dissed. With every bag of popcorn spilled that I don’t clean up, I feel my thoughts turn increasingly bitter.  I imagine the scenario in which the mess was made—whether it was a 500 pound man who couldn’t reach around his front to transfer the bag from one hand to the other, or a five year-old kid who insisted she needed the biggest bag of popcorn and then threw it down when she was finished…

…I hate ’em all.  And I normally don’t like using the word “hate.”  I don’t like the malice in my soul, but I can’t seem to make it leave.  The filth, the gluttony, the willy-nilly scattering of popcorn kernels—it’s all worked its way into my once-(fairly) compassionate heart, and I want nothing to do with it.

Only now Twilight has come out, and I might sort of wish my gung-ho cold turkey attitude could have waited a few weeks.

Posted in change, failures, I hate change, self-actualisation, woe is me | 24 Comments

Thanks, Dear.

by Camille Posted on November 24, 2008

Generally speaking, obsessions are not good.  My dictionary widget defines “obsess” as: to fill the mind (of someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.  Normally when I hear that a person is saddled with an obsession, I feel uneasy for him or her.  My sister, for example, is obsessed with never slowing down–even when she’s on vacation, she obsesses over packing, or tidying, or preparing food.  She never stops.

See?  Don’t you feel uneasy for her?

My husband, Poor Kyle, is obsessed.  And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel unsettled about a person’s problem, because his obsession benefits me.

Poor Kyle is the most die-hard dedicated person I have ever known–he’s obsessed with obsessing.  What I mean to say is…he doesn’t quit.  Anything.  Ever.

What’s that you say?  That’s just normal adult behaviour?  Not if you’re me, it’s not.  My normal adult behaviour is to look at something difficult, see that there’s an easier way about it (i.e. simply giving up), and generally take that route.  Of course if a thing is important enough, I usually stick it out–unless I can just talk myself into believing it was never all that important anyway.  Then I quit.  Think less of me if you like; I consider it working smarter, not harder.

But we’re talking about Poor Kyle, not me.  The man is obsessed with getting jobs finished.  Sure, it might take awhile (like 12 months) to get him motivated to take down the Christmas lights (which, of course, becomes completely irrelevant by the time Thanksgiving rolls around again.  Better just to leave them up. {Which proves that I have arrived at the lowest white-trash point in my life, but whatever}).

Once he decides that something needs to be done, however...watch out world. It’s getting done.  Sometimes it means I don’t see him all Saturday, if he’s put his mind to some task in the yard or garden.  Other times–like on road trips–it means I contract some sort of horrible bladder infection because he wants to get where he’s going by a certain time, and can’t be bothered with a wife’s need to…go. (Just kidding about the bladder infection.  Mostly.)

So how does this benefit me?  Well, bladder infections don’t–not at all.  But look around.  See this blog?  It’s beautiful.  It’s much better than it was last week, and I like it better than the old blogspot blog, too.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but the overall feel of the new Archives of Our Lives is quite how I intended it.

That’s because Poor Kyle became obsessed with my website.  Last week, he read all the comments that people made about the aspects they didn’t like (words too small, colours too ugly, the entire thing sucks), and set out to remedy each and every issue.

He decided he wanted to learn HTML, XHTML, and CSS (which I can only simply explain as the languages blogs are written in [that’s how it was explained to me, and that was the last I cared to learn of it]), and so…he just…did.  He learned all that computer mumbo jumbo so that I could have a self-hosted website and he could be my tech guy, just like Jon and Heather Armstrong.  He’s living his dream.  [Sort of.  If only I made enough (or any) money to allow us to both quit our jobs and just run a website…]

Back when I first wanted to have a website that was all on its own (i.e. no “blogspot” or “wordpress” connected to it), I priced out how much it would cost for my graphic designer e-friend, Angela Hardison, to design one for me.  It sounded like a great deal, and I absolutely adore every single thing–picture, image, sketch–she posts on her blog, My Little Corner of the World. I knew I could trust her to do it.  I was ready to take the plunge.

But when I told Poor Kyle about my discovery, I was met with a long face and big blue eyes full of sad.

“Okay…” he drawled.

Sensing something was wrong, I pressed to find out the matter.

“Hesitation?” I asked, implying that I knew there was more he wanted to say.

“It’s just…” he started, “I thought that was going to be my job?  You know…when we talked about it a few months ago…”

I realised I had cut him off of his part of my blog.  He wanted to learn HTML, to be a part of this venture, so in a sense it would be our blog–something we accomplished together.  I realised he cared.

Either that, or he wanted to feel super genius smart about himself (which he should, because I’ve seen computer code, and it is positively terrifying.  It looks like this:

<html ::bandwidth sidebar newsidebar layer,,,blah blah blah can life really be so dull xhtml css I hate technology>

Atrocious, right?)

Anyway, the point is that my husband’s current obsession is making this blog better.  See the little red square up by my address bar?  The one with a black “A” in it?  It’s called a favicon, and Poor Kyle made it.  He also increased the font size, figured out how to make the sides of my blog red, while keeping the middle white (and therefore more readable).  He put a box of grey at the bottom of each post, making it easier to distinguish between a whole slew of posts while scrolling down through the archives.  He helped me get all my pictures centered.  He made the top image of snow become a direct link to the homepage of this blog.

He’s done a host of other things, but most of all…

…he’s gained enough brownie points to last him a lifetime of forgotten anniversaries.  Smart man.

Posted in It's All Good, Married Life, Poor Kyle | 19 Comments

{Everyone’s Martha to Someone}

by Camille Posted on November 20, 2008

A few posts ago, I got a sweet comment from a reader named Molly.  She wrote:

“…I just read on Whitney’s blog that you already have your tree decorated, and I want to see pictures!! I am so excited to do Christmas decorations at my house, but for that I think I have to wait until after Thanksgiving, when I have some dollars. (I would love to see yours for inspiration… you are my Martha Stewart :)”

And later, after I replied how flattering (albeit ridiculous) it was to be compared to The Big M Little Artha, she confirmed…

“You’re my real life Martha Stewart. See, I don’t think of Martha as a real person, because she can pay people to give her ideas and take credit for them, you are the real thing, and a whole lot less pretentious.”

Well, I was dashed.  Me?  Martha?  Huh? Nevertheless, Molly had a point: Martha can pay people to give her ideas.  I, on the other hand, cannot.  I can, however, unabashedly steal any idea I see on the internet and claim it as my own.

I’m going to show some pictures of our Christmas Joy, but first I want you to know there is good news and bad news.  Good: All of my Christmas Joy was received as either a gift, loan, or hand-me-down.  The things I did purchase were bought after Christmas last year, at 60-75% off.  Bad: If you don’t have your Christmas Joy yet, you will probably want to wait until after the holidays this year to get it–better deal.  But that means it won’t be as joyful.  Sorry.

So now, with no further ado, I give you…

…I’m quite nervous now with all this talk of M-diggity…

…I hope you’re not disappointed….

The Christmas Joy of Camille and Poor Kyle

I know the real Martha could come up with much better, but looking at these pictures brings me good tidings of great joy anyway. Let’s take a closer look…

The tree.  Special thanks to Poor Kyle’s poor mother, who donated this to us last year and bought herself a new one.  This year, she came to see the decorations and forgot she’d given us her tree…and she didn’t even reclaim it!  Sweet.


Most of my ornaments came cheaply in packages of many (i.e. the red glittered to the right), but I purchased some fancier, buy-one-at-a-time ornaments last year after Christmas (i.e. red striped one to the left).  It makes my whole tree look more expensive than it really was.  Score.

Ahh…the tree topper.  We always had an angel on ours growing up, and I almost felt like a criminal when I bought a star instead…but I simply could not find an angel that didn’t look like a psychopath with beady glass eyeballs.  And this star was five bucks in January.

One tradition I didn’t forsake, however, is arranging a nativity on my piano.  Kyle’s dear granny donated this…I’m not sure if she even knows that.  Thanks, Granny!

She also donated the lamp post there under the “Christ” sign.  Word on the street is that she made it with her own two hands.  Lucky me...


Everything looks better in a glass container.

And wrought iron.

And lastly, the berries I got at Michael’s (again) after Christmas.  They were regularly $40.  I got three of them for $12 and walked away happy.

Merry Christmas. Oh!  But first, Happy Thanksgiving next week.

p.s.  Another special thanks to Poor Kyle who fixed my blog layout (the kid’s a genius) and snapped these pictures.  What a catch.

p.p.s.  It’s Thursday–ask me a question if you’ve got one!

Posted in It's All Good, Overall Good Things, photos | Tagged | 26 Comments

He Had Just Teased Me for Scratching Under My Arm Like a Monkey…

by Camille Posted on November 19, 2008

Poor Kyle: Good night, I love you.

Me: You stink.

Poor Kyle: Where? My backside or my mouth?

Me: Gee, I dunno…it’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes.

It’s also hard to stay mad at him for very long.

Posted in Married Life, mediocrity, oh brother what next, Poor Kyle | 7 Comments

Be Glad I Didn’t Post Pictures.

by Camille Posted on November 17, 2008

It was ninth grade (grade nine, Canadians).  I was a member of the volleyball team at my local junior high school in Mesa, Arizona.  As freshmen at junior high, we were at the top of the social ladder, though I was by no means one of the most popular kids.  I was on student council, played in the band, and participated in lots of sports, but I wasn’t passionate about any of my extracurricular nonsense…not really.

But now I’ve gotten ahead of myself.  The setting of this sordid tale is the junior high school gym, mid-July, a few weeks before classes started.  The volleyball team was required to meet early to begin practising, since game season commenced right along with classes.

That summer, the school had miraculously received extra funding and decided to put it towards refinishing the hardwood floor in our gym.  The smell was horrific–all those chemicals laid to rest on a floor of a building that had zero air circulation and a paltry excuse for a cooling system.  In the summer heat, it smelled like the principal was attempting to bake some sort of nuclear missile, but our coach swore it was nothing lethal, and we went on to practise in the gym that week despite the offensive stench.

Now, Mesa is a city that thrives on heat.  People embrace the desert lifestyle, removing grass in their front yards and instead planting cacti and millions of tiny pebbles, so they don’t have to mow the lawn during the summer.  It is hot, hot, hot, and mid-July, the heat is reaching its peak.  The only non-human (read: non-air conditioned) creatures that can survive are well-adapted desert animals like geckos and cactus wren and scorpions…and cockroaches, which can live through anything as long as it’s warm enough.

Our gym had always been a giant playboy mansion for said roaches, but when we saw them, they were usually dead on their backs, having killed themselves from straining too hard to squeeze through the drain covers and into the ladies’ locker room [little perverts].  Rarely did we encounter live ones, and if we did, our screaming scared them away as naturally as a Colt .44 does a common criminal.

That year, however, the cockroaches fed off the nuclear chemicals in our junior high gym.  Instead of the stench killing them off like it practically did to us humans (albeit teenage girls), it actually made them…well…stronger.  They had the ability to survive the fumes, and their new found super strength made them even mightier.  They worked out, training in an underground weight room of their own, plotting for the day that they could overtake our school and eventually…the world.  They had morphed into creatures of power, no longer afraid of our silly screams, or even the bright lights of the gymnasium, for that matter.  They were brave.

On the first day of practise, when our coach realised the unusually high number of roaches in our gym, she mildly warned us of the danger…that the roaches were out in droves greater than usual this year, but we should not panic.  They would be gone soon, the principal had promised.  So downplayed was the extent of the problem, we girls thought nothing of it.  The next day at practise, we all brought our duffel bags into the gym, sat down to change from street shoes to volleyball shoes, and went on our merry ways.

At the end of practise that day, as we waited for our coach to unlock the ladies’ changing room, a scream erupted from the group of us.  I, having not seen the terror-inducing miscreant, nevertheless screamed along with my teammates.  If they were scared, I was scared.

But then I realised they were backing away…and screaming…at me.

I knew.  With no further investigation, I knew the cockroaches had gotten me.  In an instant, I saw the scene play out in my head: While I was practising my bumps, sets and spikes minutes before, my duffel bag had fallen from the table with the other girls’ bags, and landed unceremoniously on the floor of the gym.  The roaches swooped in for the kill, hiding in the folds and pockets of my bag, waiting for the great moment of their power to come forth.

It was then, standing outside the locker room door, that I saw death. Running in maniacal circles, I swatted, flailed, screamed, yelped, gagged, clawed, and very nearly cried, in an attempt to save myself.  A dear friend finally came to my aid, which was noble indeed, because…well, isn’t it obvious. The plan of the mega-morphed roaches was foiled, and we watched as they scurried away from the group of crazies, but I still couldn’t sleep that night.

Black and shiny, with giant antennae and wings (yes, wings), they’d flown and swooped and creepity-crawled all over my body.  I’ve never been the same since that day. Luckily, I was given a fair amount of pity, and though the other girls were surely disgusted with my plight, at least I didn’t have to live out my days at school being known as “Cockroach Girl” or something else ridiculously painful for my 13 year-old ego.

The Cockroach Incident of the year 2000 is partially to credit for my marrying Poor Kyle–he has never seen one in real life; they don’t live here in Alberta, Canada–too cold or something.  Anywhere the roaches won’t live, I most surely will.

Thank you, Poor Kyle, for saving my life.

Now who feels itchy?

Posted in Canada, fiascos, looking back, oh brother what next | 18 Comments

A Dollop in My Honour

by Camille Posted on November 14, 2008

I live in Canada; I live in snow.  After a decent snowfall, when people leave their driveways to head off to work, the roads which have not yet been plowed get packed in with snow.  This causes slick driving conditions; slick driving conditions lead to accidents.

To allay this problem, Canadian transportation engineers have come up with a solution: sand the streets.

Now, imagine if you will, a young lady who was born and raised in Mesa, Arizona.  She had never seen snow until she was 12, and never saw it actually fall from honest-to-goodness snow clouds until her 20s.  To her, snow was the stuff of childhood Christmas movies–the stuff of dreams.  It was as real to her as fairy princesses or tax refunds.

Next, import the young Arizonan into Southern Alberta, Canada, where the only reason snow doesn’t last long is because hurricane-force winds come from the west and blow it all away.  When someone mentions “sanding the streets,” the first image that comes to her mind are the handheld orbital sanders she used to refinish her parents’ bathroom cupboards back when she was 13 and ambitious.  To her, “sanding the streets” involves some sort of giant rotating sander attached to the back of a government-issued tractor, slowly roughing up the top layer of ice just enough to provide friction for drivers.

That girl is me, and yes…I used to think they literally took sanders to the icy roads.

Imagine how embarrassed I was to find out it’s a bit simpler than that–all they do is sprinkle a sand/salt/calcium/secret agent chemical on the streets which simultaneously melts the ice and generates traction. {It’s good news that I’m majoring in English and not any sort of engineering whatsoever…}

Here in Canada, people not only sand the streets and salt the sidewalks (I pictured walking around outside with a salt grinder, crushing sea salt and sprinkling it around like the tooth fairy does with her pixie dust), but they plug in their cars.  Their cars!  It’s true–they plug in their cars at home on cold nights, and at little outlets provided by most parking lots.  In Arizona, that sort of extra heat added to a car’s battery would send it on the fritz in no time at all.

Learning to shovel snow has been a perilous lesson indeed.

The differences between my birthplace and my married place are vast, to be sure.  How do I survive the culture shock, some might ask?

Simple: I’ve learned that wool is not itchy when it’s 20 below, and hot cocoa tastes better with a giant dollop of whipped cream on top.

Have a dollop or two for me this weekend.

Posted in Canada, do what I say, It's All Good, snow | 16 Comments

Change {the Second}

by Camille Posted on November 13, 2008

Here at the new-and-digressed [as was so gleefully pointed out by many readers yesterday] Archives of Our Lives, a lot of things have changed {for the worse, evidently}.  One thing that has not changed is the fact that every Thursday almost like clockwork, I will be posting an answer to one question from one reader, asked previously {by email or comment}.

If you are new to this website [that would include everyone, inasmuch as even I am new to this website] and have been able to stomach the hideous colours, insufferable font, tiny print, annoying comment features, and everything else that makes you hate me (indirectly, via my blog), then…welcome.

This is the first question I will answer on the new-and-reduced Archives of Our Lives.  Enjoy [though you probably won’t, all things considered].

Q [from Anonymous]:  Why, oh why, are you going into the field of museum whatever when you are so obviously talented in writing. It makes absolutely no sense at all to me. I am baffled, seriously baffled. I mean how can you even get a job in museum whatever where you live? You can write anywhere.

A [from me]:  Hi, Anonymous!  Who are you?  That’s a good question, and one I’ve taken pause to ask myself over the past month.  Well, good news: I’m not.  Not anymore, that is.  I have forsaken the one subject in college which actually appealed to me (art history) and changed over to English.  It’s almost official–I’m just waiting on word from Satan Admissions that the deal is done.

All my life I have heard “Don’t choose a career based on money–do what you love, and the money will follow…or else it won’t, but at least you’ll love your life.”

And today, I am taking that advice and shoving it down the toilet, along with all my dreams of being a curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Sewage, all of it.

Fact: I live in rural-ish Canada now.  Fact: My neighbors are farmers.  Fact: They hate museums.  (Okay, the last two may have been generalisations, but it got the point across.)  There is one decent museum within the range that I would be willing to commute every day, and there are only a handful of paid positions available there.  Who knows when one of those positions will become available?  Not I.  Furthermore, in these times of economic difficulty that are supposedly taking over the world, museums and culture will be the first to go.

With a degree in English, I will be the one writing about how sad it is to see them go.

Quite frankly, if I ever intend to become a working member of society, I would rather do it from the comfort of my own home with my laptop, than flipping burgers at the A&W™, which is where a degree in Museum Studies would get me now {though burger flippers make $15.00 an hour up here}. With a degree in English, my options are more on the broad side of unemployed.

Do I feel like I’m selling out?  Yes.  Absolutely I do.  Do I feel empty–hollow–inside?  Ummm…yes.  Did I vomit in my mouth, swallow it, and gag again on the taste when I looked at the course list I’ll be enduring for the next infinitismal (infinitely dismal, see) semesters?  All that Shakespeare?  All those research papers?  All the poems? Yes, I vomit.  Am I doing it anyway?  Yes.

Happy?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 29 Comments