Last week I was at a local community pool with my daughter, and saw someone there who looked familiar - but I didn't know from where. Riffling through the inventory of places I've frequented, I couldn't place her in any of them. Grad school? No. A fellow mommy from K's daycare? No.
Then it hit me: she had been on two different CBC shows I'd watched - and very much liked - over the past couple years. Since they're Canadian shows, the people in them tend to reappear in other Canadian shows - a different orbit than the Hollywood types.
Is that why she felt so familiar? It was as though I'd reconnected with an old friend when I figured out from where I knew her. Her name is Paula Boudreau, and she starred in the fun hockey pseudo-reality show The Tournament, and also guested on the excellent This is Wonderland (both shows cancelled, two other brilliant moves by the CBC that seemed to fly in the face of the reception both shows got from viewers).
It was great to chat briefly with Paula and her lovely son; she was very helpful and kind to my daughter, too. And it was intriguing to feel such a sense of familiarity with someone I've never met. When I told a good friend about this, she said it was the quintessential Canadian experience.
Indeed, was it because I already felt familiar with the characters she'd played, so authentic in their Canadian-ness that they felt kindred? Do such characters mirror us as Canadians back to ourselves? (I try not to think this is possible with the Trailer Park Boys, however, despite that the director of the show is actually part of my extended family by marriage...LOL).
Or, is it the Canadian experience to have a relatively smaller pool of known talent, and therefore to feel that sense of familiarity with the faces that appear so often in our homegrown shows? Think Rebecca Jenkins, Sheila McCarthy, Maury Chaykin, Cara Pifko, Kate Trotter, Elias Koteas, Sonja Smits...they're the Al Waxman and Bruno Gerussi of my generation.
And now I can add Paula Boudreau to this list of "kin". I hope we meet up again sometime!
Branded feet
Okay, all you academics and overthinkers out there (and we know who we are)...this post contains endnotes for all of us who need to get our overanalytical ya yas out. =;->
You'll see them *surrounded by asterisks*
The Brandish Invasion, via bas-relief sock traction
I've just completed a week of holiday, spent with my 3-year-old. So naturally, my thoughts (i.e., rants) turn once more to the Brandish Invasion as it relates to kids' supplies.*See endnote 1*
Does anyone who has kids get annoyed, as I clearly do, about the way it's almost impossible to avoid having your children "branded" by their clothing? I've lately come to see that I unwittingly advertise for the companies - to whom I already give my money - that make the garments my child wears.
Take her socks. We have slippery floors where our daughter hangs out most often. So even though she's three, we still have her in those socks that come with rubberized slip guards. Designed to get the kid some traction, they slow down the more contortionistic positions your child might otherwise end up in, should she slip while running.
The slip guards are often shaped like cute shapes, such as stars, pawprints or butterflies. However, I've found very few pairs that had only these shapes; the rest also, or only, displayed the name of the socks' sellers as well. *Endnote 2*
The Brandish Bas-Relief of the subtitle, those brand names are almost reverse brands. The one we most readily think of is that which a cow would receive. That is burned into the animal's skin. But with K's socks, the name sticks out rather than being burned in.
Let's just say I'm looking forward to not needing the embossed socks anymore. And I won't even start on the Disney/Pixar/Nick Jr. monopoly on the design of my favourite brand of diapers. I've got her wearing the blue, boy's cut ones at present, because she likes the cars, and I detest the princesses on the pink ones. I'm starting to think switching to generic is not such a bad idea, cardboardy texture and all...*Endnote 3*
But once again, thankfully, K will outgrow those soon, too.
Will blog more soon - pooped from keeping up with that li'l fireball all week! (Best job in the world, tho')Thanks for checking in.
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And now for those *Annoying Endnotes*...
*Endnote 1*
I'd started to write "kids' gear", but changed to the more generic "kids' supplies" when I thought of how pretentious that other word sounded. Funny how even what we call something has its own connotations, containing judgments about the speaker behind the word.
*Endnote 2*
Again on word choice, I'd started to write "the socks' makers", but then remembered that The Gap is not likely the name of the company that actually made my daughter's socks.
*Endnote 3*
I have tried the generics, but have just found the known brands to be better and more comfy for K. I'm just so pleased we can now recycle diapers in Richmond Hill now!
Out in the soil, but still feeling invaded
I’m back in the garden this week, getting the last of my seeds in and continuing to marvel at nature’s powerful language.
It makes sense that another post would come from our backyard, since I use this space to yammer about messages from around me. I’d like this to extend more concretely to ‘us’ someday, but for now we’re pretty much in Michelle’s World at present (until I see some more comments – yes this means you!).
At this time of year, I often benefit from being a home-based worker by spending the first half hour of the morning out among the fronds. It’s the best time to poke around the plants, see what new colour has appeared, and give some help to the droopers (Contrasted with those joyous flowers of last post, droopy ones communicate their own form of pathos with the downward curve and nondescript paleness, as if their petals had been sheathed under transparent tissue paper, then had the texture blown out of them).
Today I heard Bill Carroll on CFRB 1010 AM talking about his Rule of the Backyard. It goes that when you and your neighbour are both in the backyard, you should each do your best to act as though the other was not there. His logic is that in one’s backyard, one often is seeking solitude and privacy. So, even if the fence between you yields a peek or more, you should act as though there’s an invisible shield that keeps you from seeing one another. At the front of the house, on the other hand, it’s okay to approach your neighbour and chat.
An old proverb that still holds true
It’s true that good fences – imaginary or otherwise – make for good neighbours. I had heard a few years back that it’s an expression that translates into more different languages than most. And on further research I found a short piece on this very subject, called "Good fences make good neighbours": history and significance of an ambiguous proverb online – which spoke to the dark side of this saying. I also learned that the expression had been used ironically by Robert Frost in his storied poem, Mending Wall. (Check out the brief entry in Wikipedia about Mending Wall)
I often wish my fences were about two feet higher all around, so that so much cellophane and plastic packaging wouldn’t blow into my garden from others’ waste bins and the schoolyard behind us. My rule in the garden is, “If it’s not natural, it cannot be in my soil.” So I’m seen daily extricating cigarette butts, pieces of newspaper, receipts, shopping bags – you name it – from their former wedged position.
The Brandish Invasion revisited, via the composter
I guess that by removing packaging from the garden, I’m also eliminating brand presence. If you read my series on the Dora phenomenon, you know how I try to keep boundaries between brands and my private space. And I, too, consider the backyard as sacred.
So imagine my annoyance when I emptied my composter last week, and had to spend about ½ hour picking all those little produce stickers out of my fresh yield (“Ah,” says reader, “now I get the choice of photo”), along with doing a second sweep through the garden after dumping compost to ensure I hadn’t missed any. It’d likely be okay if they were pure paper, but many are plasticized in some way, I guess to keep them flexible to stick on uneven and rounded surfaces (think avocado).
I guess it’s better than starting to put all fruit and vegetables into packages in order to identify their source. But what a pain in the a**. Certainly, food more than anything else needs its source properly identified, if for no other reason than to know who to go after if you get sick after eating it. But imagine all the labels that got missed by other faithful composters. And imagine how many hours are spent at municipal waste management centres, peeling those little stickers off the contents of our green bins so that they can be properly fed back into the earth.
I went to an outdoor education camp as a teenager, and at the time I also smoked. I remember we went on a nighthike, and the leader telling us that if we absolutely had to smoke, we should pocket our butts afterwards. Evidently, it takes decades for the artificial material in the filters to even begin to biodegrade.
I wonder how long those stickers take to start decomposing. Maybe the next person to own our house will get turned onto Turbana bananas, too, while digging up our garden.
The lesson? Peel those puppies off as soon as you take the produce out to eat, and put them in the trash where they belong. The critical view? Labels find their way everywhere, even where you don’t expect them to.
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