Good Fortunes...

I was born July 30, 1969, just after 6:30 in the morning. There isn't enough Leo in the word Leo to explain how Leo I am.

Perhaps as part and parcel of the ego I bear, I rarely look at horoscopes. I think I don't believe they can capture all that needs to be said, or explained, or forecast.

Every once in a while, one catches my eye. Or, maybe it's just a wire that trips my ego - but there it is. A finger pointing right at me - flaming shrubbery, as it were.

There are two that I've carried around with me, in my old wallet. I rarely read them, but I knew they were there.

Steve found the most darling new wallet for me in the neighbourhood (after I drew a picture of it on the back of a business card and stapled it to my letter to Santa). Tonight I'm transferring the contents of my old one that barfs change and loses cards in the lining (whomever gets it next from the thrift store should know this, because one of the questions I ask myself when I buy things at thrift stores is "Why is this here?"), unclutterering as I go. The two horoscopes are so tattered that I may just wave them over the top of the new wallet, letting some shreds and dust fall in so that the essence is there. But I'm committing them here, because I love them every time I see them.

The first, originally published August 11, 1999, by Rob Brezsny, probably in NOW magazine, because NOW is free and I used to read it when I used to do more things that didn't involve sitting on the floor and making plastic things move and talk:

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): I have a taboo against advising you to be like me. You and I are so different, after all. How could the tricks that work for me be right for you? But now an exception has arisen. Chalk it up to the warp factor of the approaching millennium. And so I say unto you: Be like me. Be sensitive and vulnerable but irreverent and insatiable. Believe in freaking miracles but maintain your sardonic skepticism. Be extra good to the creatures who sustain you, but be alert for rebellious inspirations arriving from left field. Don't take anything too seriously but treat the whole world as a sublime gift. Make sure that love is your highest law.

The other, from March 24, 1999, from the same source:

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): Is this the time Nostradamus was referring to when he wrote, "The Lion shall rip the dead lilies off the altar, fix the broken toys, spank the devil with a ping pong paddle, and retrieve the half-eaten cake of love from the back of the freezer"? After studying the cosmic configurations, I've concluded it is. I believe the prophet's vision describes your accomplishments in the early spring of 1999. It's true that in our mediapocalyptic age, there are no heroes, only celebrities. But you're the closest thing to a hero I've seen in a long time. Your heart is 90 percent free of toxic vibes, and your wise-guy morality rivals that of my sister when, as a teenager, she squirt-gunned grape Kool-Aid in the face of her abusive gym teacher.

I read these, and I think, wow - I need to think of myself in that way more often. Instead of "You are bulgy and tired and on the edge of snapping ten times a day. Your daughter doesn't see the awesomeness as much as she could if you'd only breathe a little, and your husband misses parts of you that read like erased pencil lines. Buck up - it's not that hard. You can do it." And maybe I CAN be in People one day - if the magazine ever mees Rob Brezsny's demand #4:

"I demand that People magazine do a feature story on "The World's Fifty Sexiest Perpetrators of Beauty, Truth, and Rowdy Bliss."

Since horoscopes are fantastic oracles, but don't come with iron-clad guarantees - can I just wish everyone a Happy New Year, one that's filled with beauty, truth and rowdy bliss? And if you see me, remind me to look in my wallet more often. There isn't much money in there, but there are great treasures in store.

The Good Family's Christmas Wish

It'd be lovely to have followed through with my original intention, which was to get my act together this year and mail out cards that were charmingly hand-decorated by Josephine. It's such a treat to receive things in the mail that aren't bills, reminders of parking tickets, or notices that yet another movie being filmed in the neighbourhood is going to take over our street parking for a day or two, and I'm grateful for every card we've received. Even the one from the shifty accountant we only see once each year.

It would also have been great to go with the second option, which was to just send some cute cards that I bought. I even saved the envelopes from all the cards we received this year so that I'd have the return addresses for people who sent us cards.

Then, the third option - an email to each friend, thoughtfully written with personal messages with a few pictures to illustrate the past year for our family, well that kind of never happened.

And then, on Thursday last week, I snapped a great photo of Josephine. And I thought, "HEY! That could be a nice image on which to put a message, and I can at least send a little something out, because I really to want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!" After all, what good is a graphic designer/production artist/Mac monkey husband if it's not for making a cool jpg for emailing? If he can make a nice image to post from his band like this, he can certainly make a simple family Christmas mailer, right?



So, I sent him the image, though I knew he was very busy at work, and asked him if he could please knock out a little something. This is what I got:



And it's very nice, and his co-workers liked the design. But I am a person who is generally regarded as a bit fussy by those who know me well and by mere acquaintances and the odd stranger who may have encountered me in situations where I might have needed to assert myself a little...

So I told him, "Well, I like the font, but it's supposed to be a sentence, not a title and so no ampersand please and I'd like all the words to be the same size and why does the child look so grainy?"

My love for my husband is never shaken by his curmudgeonly responses, thankfully. His good nature, often hidden by his situational crankiness, shines through and because we share the same base sense of humour, I understand that this is only a challenge to me - a light glove slap on the cheek, and a chance to come up with a response that will make him laugh. This is what I got back:


Which prompted me to respond with:



(Except that I didn't know how to make a layered photoshop file into a jpeg, so it was a psd file and it wouldn't allow me to send it to him, and so I had to wait until I could show it to him this morning. Then he taught me how to do it properly, so now I can properly flip him off right back when I want to.)


After a short time, I did receive a modified version:



But, in true to myself fussy fashion, I responded:

There’s no period. It’s a sentence. Also, the child is still grainy.

M

The final version finally came through, not without some heaving and moaning about the length and breadth and depth of his inestimable busyness at work.

And so here you have it: my Christmas greeting to you all. And it's not just for Christmas - let's call it a New Year's Greeting, so it's secular.

It's a sentence (finally). It's a command. A quiet statement, not an exclamation. It's what I really want for everyone. Merryness and brightness, no matter who you are. And not all day long, I don't mean that - but there should be moments of mirth and brightness and if in each day you should feel a few moments of lightness, I'd be so happy for you. I'm happy I'm able to wish it for you, because having it myself makes me want it for everyone. I mean it:

Getting My Jollies...

The kind of busy we've been is busy of our own invention. It all starts out unremarkably, and then it gets weird. That's how it is, and we can't really help it, and so it doesn't seem strange any longer. It's just our normal now.

Let's take yesterday - The day starts out quietly enough, with puttering around the house and then getting ready to get out and about as the day goes on - but when you add a few Christmas ingredients to the mix, well, it all goes a bit haywire.

One of the best and worst purchases of the season has been the Playmobil Advent Calendar, which is going to get a new name next year as it has nothing to do with Advent as I knew it growing up, except that this one includes an angel-type figure that Josephine calls a fairy and about the only thing we play with her is "Can you put her thingy back on?" (the thingy being some kind of band around her head that's not really a halo). That and "Now the Mommy pulls her on the sled." and "Now the Mommy plays with her."


Every morning Josephine opens one of the little boxes, and then plays with the set for a good long time. That is why it is an excellent find. Not to mention, I paid about $20 for it one day while we were running errands in Yorkville, and compared to $3.49 each for some of the wee mini sets I purchased in order to have on hand for emergency gifts, it's a freaking steal for that many Playmobil pieces.

So, playing with it is mostly about making the Mommy do stuff. Push the baby in the stroller. Count the birds. Walk the dog. Pull the fairy on the sled. Tie the handle of the sled back on. Now pull the boy on the sled. And because our kitchen slopes, rather significantly, she's always chasing after the stroller or the music box as they go careening across the buffet. The mommy is rather frazzled, and it's only the 21st. Is it the 21st? The 20th? I have no idea what day it is.

What's that? You noticed that? The music box isn't supposed to be opened until the 25th? Well, when the box opened the other day revealed nothing but some weird brown platform (another thing used for the mommy to push everyone around), it was decided (by me) that Josephine was getting enough gifts on the 25th, so let's have that cart make more sense.

Because quite honestly, this set raises enough questions, and lots of the presents are birds. Like today was the fairy's weird horn-thing and a bird. The mommy (nicknamed Tippi inside my head) has to contend with a lot of birds in this set-up, and I'd like to ask Playmobil to do a little better here. Nobody needs that many birds.


She is also rather distressed that she can't hold her red purse and push the buggy, so it gets left on the bench a lot. Also, it keeps ending up with birds in it. And she worries about her little boy, and what germs he might be picking up by sitting on a bench that's likely covered in pigeon poop. Because he keeps feeding the shithawks with that weird thing that came with a bird, and also he can never seem to keep his hat and scarf on. Not all of the birds are cute little red birds and blue birds. Two are most definitely pigeons.



And there's this giant crow that hangs out in the tree - it's madly disproportionate to every other bird, and it keeps staring at the baby buggy...


Not to mention the great two horned dilemma that all moms having both kids and dogs out for a walk have to worry about - say the bloody dog runs off, but I... I mean she... can't leave the kid to chase it... What happens? Leave the kid and try to get the dog? Stay with the kid and lose the dog? Pick up the kid and run after the dog, giving oneself an asthma attack? Yell for strangers to help and try not to hate them when they don't? Okay, that happened to me a month or two ago - Molly figured a way out of the fenced-in leash-free zone at Kew Beach, and I couldn't run fast enough with Josie to get her back. Thankfully a family with sandwiches held the hound's attention long enough for me to catch up, through mere inattention and availability of food on their part really - but there were a few frightful minutes there. Thankfully, that's not a problem with Playmobil dog.


Hey, I have to get my jollies somewhere. Especially once Josie noticed its "penit".

And then, that might cause me to wonder..."Things are awfully quiet. Where's our dog?"



Oh.


Well then, it's only fair since she's tucked in to our bed where she shouldn't be to let the kid pester her.


Once the dog is properly annoyed, and the child has been both emptied and filled up, then errands must be run.

A stop off at the Bay's Christmas windows proved unexpectedly delightful, as Huggy (the baby giraffe) (and toy of the hour) got to see "his Mommmmmyyyy!"


Then, lunch and a successful and beautiful picture with Santa (gasps! oohs! aaahs! It may never happen again!) and the purchase of the last few needed gifts. There were pleasant surprises along the way, like the windows at Zara:

(How did she ever develop such a deer fetish?!)

Then, at the very end, when it was either a crowded and frustrating streetcar ride home -or, hey- let's see if Daddy can meet us after work for skating.



The impulse to rent skates and kill the twenty minutes until Steve could meet us was strong, and couldn't be denied, especially once I accidentally voiced it out loud. Except that it took every minute of that time to go to an ATM, rent skates, find lockers that worked, get the skates on the kid, get the skates on me, and get on the ice. So Steve rented some too, and we had some disgustingly charming good old-fashioned and slightly painful family fun.


She had gone skating once last year, but this year she was actually better without us holding her or helping her at all. She beamed, and said she was skating "with Blizzard like Katie" (because God knows how that movie's been in heavy rotation this month) and after two whole minutes upright on her own she was "vewy certain" that she was ready to start circling the rink with all the other skaters. Huggy was along for the ride, as, in case you didn't know, it was "his birfday and the whole city is cewebwating it by skating, and we can NOT weave him in the wocker!"


And then, after a few more falls, when Steve joked that maybe she needed a pillow on her bum, and I then joked that Huggy could go in her pants and be her pillow, she took me seriously, and would not take no for an answer.

So that was us last night, skating around the rink at City Hall. We were the ones whose daughter had a giraffe in her pants.

It's Kind of a Blur...

Busy.

But the worst part is, I don't love the bottom of the line camera that replaced the one I dropped in the ocean. It doesn't do it for me. It's just so weak. It's barely adequate. So, it's like my voice is gone, in a way - like laryngitis. I like to show things, and then tell things. So in this time of other jobs and kidindaycareinthewinter sicknesses, and putzing around with seasonal stuff, I'm just trying to let you know all is well enough...and I've promised "Santa" "favours" if he'd bring me a nice camera for Christmas. The one I have just doesn't capture the length and breadth and depth of what I don't have the time to write fiftymillion words to convey.

Daily "favours".

"Stop fiddling with that atomic pile and come down here!"

Steve: "Imagine being Bruce Wayne AND Batman..." (with seemingly undue enthusiasm)

Marla: (silence) (eyebrow raised in his general direction - I'm somewhat skeptical of this enthusiasm)

Steve: (admiringly) "Wow...look at that mask..."

Marla: "Well..he did have a nice utility belt..." (grudgingly, becoming more enthusiastic)

Steve: "I'm not talking about Batman..."





(when cleaning out my parents' basement lock-up, I found a vintage Viewmaster. Steve has mentioned several times since his admiration for Julie Newmar's appearance in "The Purr-fect Crime", one of the many interesting reels found in the stash of old discs)

(he is also wearing a pink cone-shaped princess hat rather like this one that I found at the One of a Kind Show - one with a trailing filmy pink veil)


(I have to mention that, because of the Julie Newmar thing.)

You Don't Want to Know...

Where have I been? Oh, there's been working, a lot of working...and American Thanksgiving and stuff...and spending time trying to fulfill a Christmas wish for a very particular and peculiar little girl named Josephine.


As evidenced by what I just wrote in response to a Thank You for Your Order email I just received from a company in Snohomish, Washington:

"You're welcome - and THANK YOU! Do you know how hard it is to find a mommy cow with pink (PINK - not white) udders for a three and a half year old whose only wish for the past half-year has been to find a mommy cow with pink udders for her family of stuffed cows? And to find one that is also the right size compared to her other cows? The thing she just asked Santa for? The only thing she wants for Christmas, if you ask her? I'm not Santa here - YOU are Santa. I walked into and out of ten stores this past weekend looking for a cow with udders - and would have settled for white and would have dyed them pink myself if I had to if I could even have found that, but I couldn't - and so all I can hope is that it arrives in time to go under the tree. If I need to upgrade to the faster shipping, please let me know. Otherwise, there will be tears.

Thanks.
Marla Good"

What I didn't add? Thanks for having one that wasn't fifty dollars. And thank the powers that be for a decent exchange rate lately. And thanks for coming up near the top in searches like "stuffed plush cow udders". And thanks for not making me shop at a place called the Bovine Bazaar. And thanks for being a very charming and personal-sounding company so I didn't have to sell my soul to some gigundous evil monolithic company to make my Josephine happy. And thanks for letting me cross one more thing off the never-ending list of "Things to Do".