Tag: family

I fell in love with a boy

jhayne & baby xander

One of the benefits of no longer working at the Dance Center is that I now have Sundays free to work learning web-development with my friend Alex. (I was going to quit so I could do just that, but they fired me before I had the chance. Well darn.) It’s nice going over there, he and his wife Chrissy are incredibly in love. They’ve just had a baby together, so now I’m an auntie. I’m not sure how convincing I am as an auntie, I think my face almost dropped off when I caught myself stirring a pot in the kitchen while holding a baby. Thank mercy I had socks on.

(If you look closely, you can see the panic in my eyes in the picture to the right.)

Honestly, though, babies are weird. They can’t talk, don’t understand that they have limbs, and can barely focus their eyes. Their brains are a protoplasmic neuro-mush that hasn’t fully shaped yet, they’ve got a soft spot in their skulls, and they smell funny. Like, well, baby. It’s a cloying, overly sweet smell that tries to rummage in my system for the breeding clock. I can feel it prodding at my DNA, aggressively trying to turn me into a factory assembly-lining the next generation of wacky Holmes kids.

Not that it’s going to succeed in the slightest. As far as I know, my baby clock has only ticked once. Memorable, a thing like that. I’d been missing someone, a usual state of affairs, but it had been a rather chronic feeling that week, I don’t even know why, and to take my mind off it, I went to a see a film with friends. Not a bad idea, except when it came to my choice of movie; a film prominently starring a man who looks like an older brother to my absentee. I couldn’t help but sigh. Then! The actor had an overly sentimental, tender moment of baby holding and suddenly my reproductive urge twitched for the very first time. Panties in a twist indeed. Yecch.

It was very loud and incredibly uncalled for. It felt like a temporal lobe misfire. What was that? It felt unnatural to my person, as if I’d undergone a momentary psychotic break. I thought of Tim Crow and his argument that that schizophrenia may be the evolutionary price we pay for a left brain hemisphere specialization for language, except that it bypassed both the right and the left and just punched me in the base of my spine. Terrible.

That said, Xander is an utterly adorable little squid and you should all ooh and aah at the miracle of his creation, lest we hunt you down with jam:

the little one with mum tiny

click here for a guest pass to my flickr

yes, that is a tarot card on my watch chain. no, I have not gone flaky

A little late, but I found this years sequel to Santasm.

My goal this week is to go to bed and be asleep before four in the morning, even if only once this week. The lack of sunlight is getting to me. I need more regular hours, even if I have to manufacture them myself. Today I wasn’t in bed until the sun began to come up at eight o’clock, then I was up again only a few hours later to help Lisa wrestle Mike Jackson’s old futon couch up my stairs at noon, (because Lisa is awesome, that’s why), just in time to get ready for work downtown at the Dance Centre.

Tomorrow I have a possible job interview, then I’m going to go and visit with Alex and Chrissy and my new nephew Xander, who I haven’t met yet, before my circus training. I’m really looking forward to seeing them. I haven’t been over since the day Chrissy went into labour and, depending on what time things happen, it might be the perfect chance to start taking all the heart-churning pictures I wish someone had taken the time to create for me and mine when we were children. (Yet another marker of the information age, the conversation over whether or not Xander would be YouTube’d).

Speaking of which, I have a small cardboard box of family photos I would like to have a chance to scan in properly somewhere. Does anyone have a machine I could take over for an innocent afternoon? I’ve reconnected with yet another batch of family over Facebook recently and it would be nice to be able to remind them how brown-corduroy-awful everyone dressed when we were all spending time in Winnipeg together.

There’s still time to vote for Mike as That 1 Guy.

from inside the house

Thanks for the 365 mention, Warren!

My mother’s started a new project of her own this year, called the Live More Lightly Tour. Her idea is to drive her motorcycle cross country, playing folk music to raise sustainability awareness, while streaming live video from a camera mounted on her bike.

She’s hoping to get some attention, so I’d appreciate if you dropped in and said hello. Especially if you know, at all, what sort of gear she should be looking into. I expect this sort of concept to look crackling simple on the out-set, but to be unmercifully riddled with ugly technical difficulties that won’t be apparent until much farther in. If anyone knows of a similar project, and I’m sure there must be some, (I have yet to be the dutiful daughter and properly sweep the archives of we-make-money-not-art*), that would be great too. The more information she has going in, the safer she’ll be, and though I love my mother dearly, I’m not in any position to be sweeping in, attempting a rescue should she get stranded somewhere in the middle of the prairies.

*which, btw, has a syndicated LJ feed here.

Back to the 365, my friend Jesska‘s got an ambitious take on the project, she’s posting a daily triptych. Because she is crazy. Crazy like a superhero, but with polaroids in place of wearing her underwear on the outside of her pants.

Go vote for Mike as That 1 Guy!

I’m ready for your love

Canadian chocolate, it’ll break your knees. Wait, what?

The closer I get to stepping on a plane, the more of New Wave I’m apparently listening to for an ultimate dose of positive reinforcement. Excitement has been building up in my body, buzzing in my chest and cooling my stomach at random moments of smiling memory. It’s so natural, I’m not even worried. Well, not about Mike, at any rate. No – even better. My primitive and peculiar social structures extend over the mountains. I realized today that not only is Calgary home to the man who was my very first boyfriend, but also my ex-boyfriend who’s since been declared a relative.* And, just for fun, they’re friends.

Oh, my convoluted family, how I love you all. I’m hoping to get to Silva and Amber’s wedding photos soon. They have been languishing, (yes languishing – a person with the right flavour ears can hear them crying), on my hard-drive, just waiting for me to have the time to process them and pick out the good ones. I’m thinking they’ll have to wait until I get back from Calgary, however, as people have continued kindly sending me requests for photos, (I’m at $130, can you believe it?), and those, being monetary, have priority. That I’ve managed to survive the past year without a Real Job is nothing short of extraordinary.

New York manhole covers, forged barefoot in India.

*the term boyfriend as used here is inaccurate, but close enough for rock and roll. Also, I am hilarious.

a quick, useless note before bed: we’re all related because we say so

I have decided my family tree isn’t even a bush. It’s a tesseract. My day began crawling out of bed at Alastair’s, (who briefly dated Kelly, one of Antony’s co-workers), stealing a pair of his pants, coming home, slipping on the corset Antony gave me over one of his left-behind shirts, then taking part in my godmother Silva and her partner Amber‘s coyote-blessed Jewish/Hopi wedding. (Where I found out that her nephew used to be my friend Elliot’s wife’s roommate for many years). After the wedding was concluded and the reception wrapped up, I was dropped off by my not-actually-aunt Terry, (one of Silva’s best friends), at Eaon‘s birthday party, (who was best friends with Silva’s ex-partner’s daughter), who then introduced me (to simplify things) as his sister-in-law on the basis that he’s slept with my not-actually-sister, the ex-step-daughter, and I’ve slept with his not-actually-brother, Antony, so therefore…

I am beginning to believe I have reached a social event horizon.

To tie it all together in a nice neat loop, last time Antony was in town, I brought him to Silva’s for nummy birthday cake. (And with that, the use of the word nummy, (is that even in the dictionary?), I am giving up and going to bed. Night all. Congratulate Silva here and Amber here)

as whitewashed as I can make it..

I was approximately four years old when my parents became involved with another woman, Sarina. My clearest memories of her involve cigarettes, dark hair, and a lean, shrewish voice. As the story goes, she met my mad father at a bar and found him interesting enough to follow home, pretending that her car had coincidentally broken down in front of our house. Apparently, somehow, this worked. She moved in soon after, bringing with her two little children – Daniel, age three, and Brianna, age two – from her marriage to another man. It was unexpected. Suddenly, not only did I have another mother, I had young siblings, the first children I had ever encountered.

All three of us were incredibly blonde. We were thin kids, the sort with exceedingly clever hands that like to climb bookshelves and get in behind furniture. (Once, in a fit of crackling genius, we gave Brianna a safety-scissors haircut coloured with our favourite smelly markers.). In the few photographs that survive, we look unquestionably related. It wasn’t official, however, until our parent’s decision to have children together – Robin in January then Blake in September.

My mother left soon after, young, worn, and tired, taking Robin and I with her. We moved out, (really it was more of a midnight raid as we ran away, with Daniel helping me out of the bedroom window), and settled into a nice apartment on the Drive above Nick’s spaghetti house. Silva lived across the hall, I began going to school. Life continued. Very rarely did I see that branch of family after we left. Not only did they move every year, Sarina became increasingly difficult, systemically explaining to we-the-children that everything we lived had been delirious make-believe, even to the point of raising Blake with a fictional name. Eventually, they became impossible to find. Vancouver Island swallowed them whole.

All of this was so long ago that I never expected any of them to remember – Blake certainly couldn’t, he was a tiny baby, maybe three years old the last time I saw him, and Daniel and Brianna had likely been quite thoroughly brain-washed by their unappealing mother – but I continued to hope I would find them again. Vancouver Island is vast, but population small, and Blake’s birth certificate, after all, had my father’s name on it. One day, eventually, he would need it, if only to apply for a driver’s license.

It turned out, however, that Blake found out he had a different father when he was seven years old. He and our sister Brianna were having an argument, and she burst out, in perfect cliché, “He’s not even your REAL daddy!” Way to go, girl. (Last time I saw her, she was extolling, very seriously, the various merits of My Little Ponies). From there, the facts began to trickle in. His false name was discarded when his CareCard came, (“My middle name isn’t James?”), and when that foretold moment with the Birth Certificate happened when he was sixteen, his mother threw a fit, refusing to tell him anything or sign anything until he legally changed his name from Holmes. Apparently it was a bit of a drag down war, complete with shouting matches and threats of cutting him from the will. Being a smart kid, however, he simply waited out three years and applied again when he was nineteen. At that, his mother, not relenting, but simply giving up, finally told him of my existence. That was six months ago.

Next time he was in town, he looked me up on-line in the phonebook. And that, my friends, brings us to yesterday. Tah-fiddle-dah. My long lost brother returned, remarkably undamaged and notably sane. I’m proud of him for struggling through our dubious genetic heritage, our intensely unstable parentage, and his obviously isolated upbringing. He could have gone away and come back a deeply unpleasant individual, but he didn’t. Apparently none of them did. I’m told our brother Daniel is currently scuba-diving in Thailand and our sister Brianna is living in Sweden with family. I never would have guessed.

with no life saver

A compelling alternate history of chinese science-fiction.

Writing as the domestic occult, dead by tired hands, a packet of matches at my feet acting as a story seed. Once when I was young, I took a pack and lit them one by one and dropped them off the side of a bridge into a dark creek below. Somewhere in Canada. Somewhere I can’t remember next to a trailer park. The flame from the matches was suffocating, bright stars that glittered, reflections swallowed. There was a rope under the bridge that boys in long shorts would swing off in the day, splashing and hollering. Blonde then, it must have been a very long time ago. I could only just look over the rails if I stood on the bare tips of my toes. Summer. Maybe it never happened. I can believe it never happened. A cardboard story from a cardboard muse.

Paprika mp3’s.

I bought a father’s gift today for the first time in my life, for Michael‘s dad Stephen. We found him two dreadful silk ties, a sweet green one that looked as if it had been knit and a scarlet one, terribly classic, almost too hard on the eyes, and colour-matching happy-face atom bomb boxer shorts. We were going hard on tradition, biting back irony with just enough class for it to be flattering. Michael is going to write in the card something like, “To our beloved dictator-for-life, may you rule in good health forever. We love you. Signed, your dutiful citizens, M & J.” My adoption is escalating.

An untrained farmer in China has been making home-made robots.