These Apples....

That Canadian Boy I Married and I have been together for 10 years tonight. Ten years ago, it was holding hands and kissing and hanging on each others every word. Now it's kids and rent and jobs and chaos.

But it's also what seems to me, at least, to be a serious lack of anything in common with each other. Tonight, he's at a house party. I have no desire to sit around with his hockey buddies as they play beer pong and watch sports incessantly. His friends are fine, decent enough people, but I'm not into sports (The Red Sox excepted) and I'm definitely not into beer pong. So we never go out together.

I go out on Friday nights, usually, to my friend C's house. I hang out with my sister and a bunch of other people and we laugh and talk politics or current events or get all wanky over word usage and proper grammar (I know - me, who'd have thunk, right?) and I have a great time. When TCBIM has tagged along, he looks out of his element and gets bored. It's how I feel when I hang out with his friends.

I'm just not sure how to fix this. I don't even know if it is fixable. We're so different. I geek out over books and historical programs on the television; He's excited over the Winter Classic. I long for a complete, 27 volume set of the OED; TCBIM doesn't even know what that is. He told me the other day that he needs a new hybrid driver. Cue one blank look and crickets. (Apparently, it's a type of golf club.)

I don't feel like he should have to change who he is for me, though, because I don't think I should change who I am for him. I don't want him faking an interest in art or books any more than I want to fake an interest in hockey or, god help me, football.

It's funny; when I do drag him to a museum or an artists gallery, he enjoys himself. But I have to beg and plead and bug the shit out of him prior to getting him to go. Once he's there, he's into it. We went to Snow Farm in Williamsburg MA a few weeks ago and he loved the things he saw there. We watched a blacksmith work and he was asking the man a ton of questions. I know he has the curiosity and interest in these types of activities but he never seeks them out. He's content to go along on the surface of life, watching television, playing sports and farting around on the computer.

I want more, though. I want to go to New York City to see the Tim Burton exhibit. I want to find more cool places like Snow Farm. I want to go to Vermont, to see the Lake Champlain chocolate company and go to the Vermont General Store. I want to go on an antebellum house tour down south. I want to see Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings in Chicago, I want to go to Powell's book store in Portland. And I'd love it if I didn't have to beg and plead for him to want to come with me.

Most of all, I want to go back to school. I want to get my bachelor's degree and I want to do it at a good school. Smith College and Mt Holyoke College both have programs for women returning to school and I have sent for information on both of them. I really want to do this so I can learn to write properly, so I can get a good job that will challenge my brain rather than just provide a paycheck. I mainly want to go because I love school. I love learning new things, I love the challenge of it and I love the environment. I want to do this. Hell, I need to do this, for me, so I can be happier with who I am.

But I worry that having that will drive us even further apart and that scares me. I need to do it, though. I need to put myself first this time.

Oh, Canada

So we've spent a week in northern Alberta, freezing our asses off and visiting the in-laws. For the most part it was nice. A little dull, but when you're 300 miles north of Edmonton, there's not a lot to do, really. The girls had a good time, though, and That Canadian Boy I Married's parents were thrilled to bits to see us.

I do have a beef to pick with Canada as a country.

I saw a lot of cool things on the endless drive back to Edmonton.


A wolf. Running along the side of the road. Very cool. I wish The Bug hadn't puked all over my camera - I would have loved to have a picture of it.



And a guy running a dogsled. Also on the side of the highway. Very cool, in a good-god-I-wouldn't-do-that-in-a-million-years sort of way.

I've also seen a baby black bear.

I saw horses and magpies and oil rigs and lots and lots of snow.

But in all my trips to the Great White North, I have yet to see this:


And believe me, I've looked.

What the hell, Canada? I think you're lying about the moose. You don't really have any, you just say you do so Yanks like me will keep coming up there, hoping for their own Northern Exposure experience.

Frozen

I haven't posted here in ages because we were going to visit That Canadian Boy I Married's parents and I don't know if they read this and I didn't want to give the game away but now we're here so now I can post. We surprised his parents with a visit for Christmas.

Oh my holy fucking HELL it's cold up here. And it gets dark at, like 3:30 in the afternoon and the sun doesn't come up until almost 9:30 in the fucking morning and it's insane. In. Sane. I could not live here. I would kill myself. Seriously.

But his parents were so happy to see us and it's been a pretty nice visit, all things considered. The girls were fine with flying - in fact, TCBIM is far worse of a traveler than they are. The girls got snow suits from their grandparents and have been having a blast playing outside in the snotsicle-inducing cold and I haven't had to keep an eye on them at all because hello? Doting grandparents. Fab. U. Lous.

In other news, my son and his wife had their baby on the day we flew to Canada. Which officially makes me a grandmother. If I could figure out how to move photos from my phone to my computer, I'd post them, but suffice it to say, she's adorable (of course) and I can't wait to hold a little, smooshy baby again. I'm looking forward to hitting the Roots store in Edmonton tomorrow so I can get her some cute Canadian gear. (Holy SHIT, I'm a grandmother. Holy shit.)

I'd show pictures of all that's been going on up here but The Bug puked all over my camera on the drive up. I am definitely going to need a new camera soon. It was already in rough shape - now, it's totally screwed up.

*Head, Wall, Bang* Lather, Rinse, Repeat

This is a sweary, stabby kind of post. You have been warned.

Sweet suffering FUCK, people.

I want to write. Really, I do. I have things I want to say, ideas that are floating around in my head, but I can't write them down. Not because I don't want anyone else to see them but because my girls have gone absolutely BATSHIT CRAZY.

They run. All the time. Everywhere. They jump. They scream, at each other, at the clouds, at the dog, at motes of dust. They make massive messes and scream when I ask them to pick them up. They hit each other, they hug each other, they poke each other in the eyes. They're starving, all the time, even immediately after eating.

It is driving me INFUCKINGSANE..

I spend most of my days repeating myself endlessly. "Stop hitting. Stop jumping. Stop dragging the cat around by his neck. Put your shoes on. Put your pants on. Stop chopping off your hair. Stop sticking beads up your nose. For the love of god and all that is holy, STOP SCREAMING!"

I am losing the will to live.

And in a few days, we have to go on a very, very long trip with them.

Please. Send vodka. Or tranquilizers. Or both.

Old (ish) (Wo)Man Yells At Cloud

My email was hacked tonight while I was at work. Some sort of "Hey, get a free computer" thing went out to my entire address book. Lovely.

And what did the majority of people write back to me about it? Not "Hey, what the hell, dood?" No. They all said "You would never write something so grammatically incorrect - this has to be spam."

It's official.

I have become my mother.