Just a Friendly Reminder

I'm not here any more, I've moved.

www.mrsspit.ca

Make sure you change your bookmarks and your blog readers.

Come Saturday, I won't update at all here anymore.

Stop on by, the coffee's on.

Turn Me On

Remember, I'm not here any more. I've moved to

www.mrsspit.ca

Come and join me there, making sure you update your bookmarks and re-direct your readers. Also, if you are so inclined, it would be great if you could be my friend!

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This is the man that I am married to.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love him, I adore him, and I will stand by my statement: Marrying Mr. Spit was, by far, the smartest thing I ever did.

But, this man.

He likes his consumer electronics. Well, I do too, but he really likes them. As in – ask if he wants to be alone, get nervous – like.

Which means that we have to get new stuff. Especially new AV stuff. A lot. With alarming frequency.

Let me explain my relationship to TV this way: When we were first married, we had cable so that I could watch West Wing. The problem with our cable was that you had to pay them by cheque. I had to write a cheque and mail it every month. And you know how likely that was to happen. (If you manage to write a cheque for something every month, be quiet. You make the rest of us feel bad)

They shut my cable off. They shut my cable off in August. I noticed, just before the season premiere of West Wing, in November. . .

This time last year, the mister announced that we were buying a new, ginormous, whizz-bang TV. It would have Acronyms! and Ports! and Buttons! and Screens! and Sizing Options! It was large and black and shiny, and came in a huge box that I had to help carry, and get this readers, it was $700! For a TV. To replace a TV that already worked! Then we had to buy Cables! and an UpConverter! and a Remote! And West Wing is off the air, so I don’t care!

So, we bought the TV. And a new DVD. And there were boxes! There are 5 boxes, with blinking lights under this TV! It’s like a runway. Frankly, I’ve seen server racks running entire corporations with have fewer lights.

The modem downstairs has something to do with the television. And when my dadgum phone rings, the TV tells me who is calling!

Readers, do any of you remember how you used to know who was calling you? You picked up the phone! And you said Hello! And someone said “It’s your mother”. (Or the Cable Company). And what the heck does your phone and TV have to do with each other anyway?

But all of that matters not, because I couldn’t turn it on. No, I’m not kidding. I paid for the TV. The DVD, the buttons, the cables, the acronyms, and all of those cables back there (I’ve seen better organized spaghetti in a colander). Every month, I watched money leave my account to pay for acronyms, and to have my TV tell me who was calling.

Or rather, that’s would would have happened, but I couldn’t turn the TV on.

I must protest. I have a University Degree. I did some really freaking hard economics. I can talk about hegemonic stability theory. I know from a priori evil, but I can’t turn my TV on. Do you know how to feel stupid? Be unable to turn your TV on, when a 5 year old can.

You pick up the remote and wave it around. It asks you what you want to do. No really, it asks. You tell it “Watch TV”. It goes through screens, while I sit in my chair, yelling. No, not that. No, not that either. I pay how much for static? Not the play station screen with the folding proteins. The play station screen is purgatory. I hit random buttons for random time, and then the gods of videogaming will grudgingly let me out. Maybe.

This process, which takes me 15 minutes, well it works. Oh, not well. But, eventually.

So, what does Mr. Spit do to celebrate this new-found achievement of mine? Ahh, yes.

He gets a new remote.

New Digs

Mrs. Spit is moving. . .

She has her very own domain name.

www.mrsspit.ca

I'll cross post until January 2, 2010, and then this blog will be completely re-directed to the new domain.

I've already shut off the comments here.

It's been a pleasure knowing you here, and I hope that you'll join me in my new home. Everything is moved in, and I'm unpacked enough to know where the coffee pot is.

If you go. . .

To mrsspit.ca

You will see that it is "parked"

Which is fancy-pants internet talk for:

"Mrs. Spit owns this website, but she only got it yesterday, for Christmas, and she hasn't at all set it up yet."

But, ahh. I am a website owner.

Happy Geek-mas.

(Why yes, if you have information about web hosting that you would like to share, I'd love to hear from you!)

The Wreath

Perhaps I should tell you that I was young, very young. Barely 23? At any rate, I was young and image mattered a great deal, far too much. The very notion that we had so little money for Christmas, and that there would not be days of celebration was not at all in keeping with what I wanted, wished or imagined. A limit of $30 each was not how I imagined our first Christmas together.

Christmas Eve came, and we decided to open our presents. I cannot recall what I bought for Mr. Spit, but he gave me this parcel, wrapped with care, and he was so happy. Love was shinning out of his eyes, he was pleased.

All good stories have a bit of drama. This one too.

It seems to me, that marital gift buying is 2 parts knowing your partner, 2 parts having a wish list, and 1.75 parts sheer dumb luck. We have found that you even the score with the wish list.

And while I'm confessing, I should tell you that Mr. Spit found my love of Christmas bewildering. Christmas is an entire season for me, with boxes of decorations, and 2 trees. A wreath for every door. Every surface that will stand still has garland. Ornaments from my childhood.

For the record, Christmas at Mr. Spit's meant going out to the garage, hauling the tree in, pulling off the sheet that covered it, standing it up, fluffing up the homemade popcorn chains, and shoving the presents under it. On Boxing Day, you covered the tree back up, and took it back out to the garage. Not what you might call a big deal.

We had, you might say, slightly different expectations and slightly divergent experiences on this whole Christmas thing. Which came crashing together that night.

My gift was before the wish list.

I opened my present. It was, well, I took a picture for you.

Yeah. Not what I was expecting either. I guess my face showed it. That look of love and excitement on his face? Oh yeah, it was gone.

And we could all argue, what woman wouldn't be overcome with a crocheted wreath? With crocheted roses! And hangy bits of ribbon!

It probably didn't help when my mum came asked who on earth gave us that ugly wreath. The tacky, tasteless wreath I hung over my couch! Mr. Spit came entered the living room in time to hear me commenting that it was the worst gift I'd ever received.

We had words over the wreath: hard words, mad words, difficult words, sad words, and finally, understanding words.

It turns out, Mr. Spit bought the wreath because he knew how much I loved Christmas. He wanted to give me a decoration, because he knew I liked decorating. A wreath didn't seem to be such a stretch for a woman who already had 5. He bought the gift with me in mind, and he bought it with love, negotiating a lower price from the lady who made it. He didn't buy the first thing he saw, he looked and he thought. He bought it with love and care and delight, thinking he was going to make his brand-new bride so happy.

My mum and I were sitting on the couch the other night, chatting after dinner. She looked at the wreath, hung in it's traditional place behind the Christmas tree, and she smiled and said "It's still ugly."

"Oh, I don't know", I replied. "Almost 10 years later it kind of grows on you."

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas.

Words of My Mother

My mother always taught me to be polite and not make waves. She also taught me to never, ever be rude or crass. These 2 things are warring in my head. I'm fuming. I tried to ignore it, but frankly, I'm mad as hell. I'm not willing to stay silent. Someone needs to speak up.

Someone should be celebrating her second daughter's birthday, and instead she's remembering that her daughter couldn't stay. And another blogger posted, wonderfully about this. Which is a good and kind thing, to remember together.

When your best friend's husband leaves her and the kids for his 19 year old secretary, you don't rave about the lingerie your husband bought you for your birthday.

When your SIL's mother has died, you don't phone on the anniversary of her death and talk about your mother.

And when someone's child has died, you don't comment that you'll kiss your own kids because you are so sad. That's rude. More than rude, it's actually mean. Cruel. Thoughtless.

It's all of those things because you are making the situation about you, and not about the hurting person. It's mean because you are being selfish. It's inappropriate to respond to someone's grief with your joy.

There are appropriate words for this situation. Two of them.

I'm sorry.

You could go a step further. You could add 4 more words.

I'm thinking of you.

And if you can't figure out how to be nice, how to be polite, how not to make a bad situation about you, shut the hell up.

I mean it, muzzle it.

Book Me

Ahem. . .

This has post has been kicking around, for, well awhile. But, I was doing some Christmas baking, and my mum came for coffee, and now it's late and my teeth really hurt and I don't have a post for today. So, consider this a burst of summer memories, in a wintry moment, would you?

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Slate has Obama's summer reading list up. Now, it seems to me, but asking to see someone's reading list, especially a summer one, is like asking: boxers or briefs.

It's a fundamentally personal question that gets given all sorts of meanings that aren't necessarily true, and more than that, no one is going to answer really honestly anyway.

You may have noticed that I'm a book person. Not just a reader, but a book lover. A reader reads, a book lover enjoys everything about books. A book lover goes to books first. A book lover buys books for the sake of having them.

I'm not sure that it matters, but I haven't watched television in at least 6 months. (I think the last show was a Discovery production about King Tut. Egyptology is a secret love of mine). The last television series I watched was the West Wing, which went off the air in 2006 (Oh, how I miss thee Toby).

And about the only thing that might tell you, knowing that I don't watch TV and I read obsessively, is that much like anything else, there are some books I will cop to reading, and there are some that I won't. You can go and look at any book lovers list. They will effectively have 2 piles. The living room pile (Wayson Choy's Not Yet, Julie and Julia, A Prairie Mennonite Woman's history, The Book of Negro's and a re-read of Mansfield Park).

Ahh, by my bed. Yes, well. If you really want to know what a book lover reads, check out beside their bed. Next to the loo. In their home study. Those books are in helter skelter piles. Some books stay in the pile for a long time. You can see what books I've been trying to read for a year (Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hayes) and more. I've been buying book series. Much the same way that people buy television series, but possibly more pulpy. There you'll find Elizabeth Peter's - both her Amelia Peabody and her Vicky Bliss books. You'll find the Aunt Dimity books, and an Ian Rankin Novel. I've got The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (and I'm not sure what the heck happened here - I sat up until 1:30 am reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

And so I feel for your President. I'd die if my list got publicized. I really would.

Sometimes a book is just a book.