bogeyandruby

Random stuff, reflections on the meaning of life and death, humour, self-deprecation, a bit of bad poetry.

2020-01-02

bogeyandruby

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January 2, 2020

January 2nd, 2020. The public health care system I work for requires me to write it in this format: year/month/day.

I purposely did not post resolutions yesterday. Been there, done that. Besides, they don’t really work and leave us feeling less than. Life is too short.

2016-02-20: a birthday present from my sweetie.

At some point yesterday evening, I found myself eating some pretty high quality chocolate called Mozartkugeln (I refer to them as Mozart heads): “A Mozartkugel (English: Mozart ball), is a small, round sugar confection made of pistachiomarzipan and nougat that is covered with dark chocolate. It was originally known as Mozart-Bonbon, created in 1890 by Salzburg confectioner Paul Fürst (1856–1941) and named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Hand-made Original Salzburger Mozartkugeln are manufactured by Fürst’s descendants up to today, while similar products have been developed by numerous confectioners, often industrially produced.” They are so good, I once convinced a couple of friends I was travelling with in France, to take a train to Berne, Switzerland (where Toblerone is made, by the way), in search of Mozart heads, only to realize years later that like Mozart himself, they were actually made in Austria.

What I’m trying to say, is that for more years in my middle-aged lifetime than not, I was always on some sort of diet January 1st. How liberating it feels to be mindfully enjoying my Mozart heads at the start of a new year instead of trying to finish every sweet treat in my pantry by December 31st.

So no resolutions this year. Rather, I have three intentions: 1. to try to read 52 books again 2. to blog once a week, even if no one reads it 3. to add a couple of morning runs on my treadmill to my trice-weekly kettlebell work-outs at the club because it’s always a better day when I move my body in the morning.

Oh, and to declutter my space. An ongoing challenge. Because if I were to keel over tomorrow, all this stuff of mine would be a terrible burden on my son.

Resolutions or intentions, peeps? Or will you simply carry-on?

Whatever your strategy or non-strategy may be, I’m rooting for you.

Happy, happy!

Books Read in 2019

bogeyandruby

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January 1, 2020

My intention was to read 52 books this past year and I made it to 80.

I will continue reading throughout 2020 and hope that the cataract surgery that is pending will ease the distressing eye strain and blurriness I have been experiencing of late.

Impatient to begin a new list, I started the first book of 2020 yesterday evening. No loud ringing in the New Year for me, just the quiet turning of pages as a brand new story unfolds. I wear my party-pooper badge proudly; I will always chose a good book over a party.

Here is the entire list, the first eight months copied and pasted from a previous blog entry. There was only one real dud on the list, identified with a thumb’s down but obviously somebody somewhere enjoyed that book. If the book has a heart next to it, it simply means that reading it caused something to shift inside me, permanently. Doesn’t mean it will do the same for you but on the off chance it might, I thought I would mention it.

Do feel free to share your own reflections/recommendations on what you read this past year, and of course, what you plan to read this decade.

Lastly, love to all my followers, whether you like to read, prefer to party or live a balanced life with a little of both. And gratitude for putting up with the introversion and anti-social tendencies that tend to go along with my passion for books.

Books Read 2019

  1. The Little Paris Bookshop — Nina George
  2. I Know You Know — Gillian MacMillan
  3. Life After Life — Kate Atkinson ❤️
  4. Big Magic — Elizabeth Gilbert ❤️
  5. And Then She Was Gone — Lisa Jewell
  6. Bridge of Clay — Markus Zusak
  7. Grit — Angela Duckworth
  8. The Marrow Thieves — Cherie Dimalin
  9. To the River — Olivia Laing
  10. The Atomic Weight of Love — Elizabeth J. Church
  11. Siddhartha — Herman Hesse
  12. Lying in Wait — Liz Nugent
  13. Less — Andrew Sean Greer
  14. The Woo Woo — Lindsay Wong
  15. A Noise Downstairs — Linwood Barclay
  16. Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
  17. The Organist — Mark Abley
  18. Homes — Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah with Winnie Young
  19. The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
  20. Brother — David Chariandy
  21. The Best Kind of People — Zoe Whittall
  22. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of War and Love — Lynsey Addario ❤️
  23. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye — David Lagercrantz
  24. All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr ❤️
  25. Songs for the Cold of Heart — Eric Dupont
  26. By Chance Alone — Max Eisen ❤️
  27. Life’s too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious — David Dark
  28. Agatha Christie — The Mystery of Three Quarters
  29. The Travelling Cat Chronicles — Hiro Arikawa
  30. Case Histories — Kate Atkinson
  31. Gift from the Sea — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  32. Under the Visible Life — Kim Echlin
  33. The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
  34. A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles
  35. The Leopard — Jo Nesbo
  36. Gingerbread — Helen Oyeyemi 👎🏼
  37. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman ❤️
  38. The Moon Before Morning — W.S. Merwin ❤️
  39. The Word Is Murder — Anthony Horowitz
  40. My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante
  41. The Wild Edge of Sorrow — Francis Weller ❤️
  42. Warlight — Michael Ondaatje ❤️
  43. Flash Count Diary; Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life — Darcey Steinke
  44. Natural Causes — Barbara Ehrenreich ❤️
  45. Voices in the Air (poems for listeners) — Naomi Shihab Nye ❤️
  46. The Blue Between Sky and Water — Susan Abulhawa
  47. One Good Turn — Kate Atkinson
  48. When Will There Be Good News? — Kate Atkinson
  49. Grief is the Thing with Feathers — Max Porter ❤️
  50. Bird Therapy — Joe Harkness ❤️
  51. Lanny — Max Porter
  52. The Tattooist of Auschwitz — Heather Morris
  53. The Song of Achilles — Madeline Miller
  54. The Turn of the Key — Ruth Ware
  55. Deep Diversity (Overcoming Us vs. Them) — Shakil Choudhury ❤️
  56. #HashtagRelief — Blossom Thom (poetry) ❤️
  57. Crow — Ted Hughes (poetry) ❤️
  58. Started Early, Took My Dog — Kate Atkinson
  59. Baggage — Wendy Phillips
  60. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong ❤️
  61. The Impossible Will Take a Little While — Paul Rogat Loeb
  62. All the Lives We Never Lived — Anuradha Roy
  63. Albatross — Terry Fallis
  64. The Overstory — Richard Powers
  65. Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice
  66. Fog — Rana Bose
  67. Crow Winter — Karen McBride
  68. The Poet X — Elizabeth Acevedo ❤️
  69. Create Dangerously — Edwidge Danticat ❤️
  70. Crow — Amy Spurway
  71. Night — Elie Wiesel ❤️
  72. The Crying Book — Heather Christle ❤️
  73. The Magic Lamp — Ben Okri
  74. Owls and Other Fantasies — Mary Oliver ❤️
  75. Aspirations: Voices of the Street 2019 — Megaphone’s annual literary anthology
  76. Year of the Monkey — Patti Smith
  77. Blue Nights — Joan Didion ❤️
  78. Normal People — Sally Rooney ❤️
  79. Breakfast at Tiffany’s — Truman Capote
  80. Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe — Stuart McLean
Awesome Christmas gift from my husband’s daughter and her partner.

My Dad Needs A Handler

bogeyandruby

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December 27, 2019

For several years in a row now, my brother and sister-in-law have invited both sides of the family to Christmas Eve dinner.

Two nights ago, as my 88 year old, East Indian dad was sitting strategically in front of a plate of warm prosciutto hors d’œuvres on the coffee table, my sister-in-law’s elegant and ageless mother swept into the living room, spotted my father, and with arms extended, moved forward to embrace him.

My father saw her coming and extended his arms towards the acorn-fed ham, in the name of all starving people in India, plopped it into his mouth, then stood up to greet her, leaving a long remnant of prosciutto dangling from his chin.

“I’ll just let you finish that, Paul.”, she said, graciously, before giving him a hug.

There was another incident later on, that one might blame on a combination of romantic dinner lighting and advancing macular degeneration, when my sweet-toothed father mistook a rather generous pat of butter on his side plate for a piece of limoncello cheesecake.

The next day, he opted to wear sweatpants to the modest, catered meal he and my mother hosted for a small gathering at their house: Lac St.Jean meat pie and a veggie option for those of us who don’t eat rabbits or other cute animals.

At 88 you don’t choose between red or white wine, you simply have both. And eat two servings of dessert. This time the cake was orange-chocolate with crunchy hazelnut, served under bright lights.

Dad, comfortable in sweats.
Well-lit dessert.

Rehearsal

bogeyandruby

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October 26, 2019

Sometimes I feel like an imposter in my own life.

This evening, my rockstar husband and I are playing a gig at our beloved Mariposa Cafe to raise money for the St. James Drop-In Centre, a wonderful community resource that supports members who are coping with homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. Our friend, Antonella, volunteers in the art therapy program there and her enthusiasm for the program and compassion for its members convinced us to support the cause.

It is less sold out closer to showtime but for a few weeks it was!

We played a similar gig nearly a year ago, selling copies of our self-funded cd of cover tunes and raising close to $1500. This year, all proceeds from the $15 cover charge will be donated to the cause.

I’ve come a long way, baby.

From music teacher Mrs. Bloomer with the chinny chin hairs and frightening side part insisting I draw what I feel while listening to Chopin’s funeral march in primary school to Mr. Hay, my high school music teacher, snatching the tenor sax from my poor, hobbit hands and replacing it with a mid-sized clarinet when I told him my fingers didn’t reach the keys, and forever marking my failure as a sax player by taking aim with a stubby piece of chalk (he later claimed he was aiming for the student behind me, as if that made it okay), throwing it overhand, and hitting me smack-dab in the middle of the forehead. Owie.

Then there was the time my friend and I auditioned for a high school variety show, singing You’ve Got A Friend, only to have the the cheeky grade 11 student judging our audition tell us to come back when we’d practiced.

Or that time in my early 30s playing in a guitar quintet, when I sat for several minutes on stage tuning my classical guitar down to drop D, before realizing that the other four people in my group, not to mention the conductor, had already taken their bows and left the stage. I can only imagine that the members of the audience were holding their collective breath waiting for my rendition of Passacaglia by S.L. Weiss. It is much more likely however, they were politely waiting for me to leave so that they could go home.

Sometime in between the above, I think I was in grade two, I begged my parents for a guitar. Miss Rona, my teacher, used to play and sing for us in between lessons, songs like Jamaica Farewell and Yellow Bird. Those singalongs transformed me. I was smitten. It also didn’t hurt that Miss Rona was beautiful and had two eyebrows instead of a single V-shaped one.

“And if your eyebrow goes straight across your head, you will most likely become a murderer.”

“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked, touching their face.”

— Elaine McCluskey, The Most Heartless Town in Canada

She also didn’t throw chalk at me.

I got my first guitar at the end of the school year. It cost $20 and came in a cardboard box from a bottom shelf in the “music” department at Miracle Mart.

Fast forward several decades that include hundreds if not thousands of hours of lessons, probably a gazillion hours of solitary practice, a romantic interlude with a 3/4 violin, and back to the guitar, an acoustic mini now, and here I am playing music again.

And singing. Way out of my comfort zone. With an untrained, reedy warble reminiscent of George Harrison ( i like to think). Into a mic. In front of an audience. Next to a gifted music teacher. Gifted because he inspires everyone to sing and encourages them to sing with their own unique, authentic voice.

If there is one thing I have learned is that music is to be shared. It is community. Musicians need listeners and vice versa. The best music is about heart and not ego. So just play or sing or do both. Find a safe and welcoming place, take a deep breath and let the song out.

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

— Ludwig Von Beethoven

Let’s Go Rain

bogeyandruby

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October 21, 2019

From a Facebook post 3 years ago today. I have no idea where the umbrella in question is. I’ve since moved on to one of those inside out models with the ergonomic handles.

Fed up of all the cheap models breaking or opening up at the most inconvenient times like in the middle of the highway or going through a doorway, I bought the mother of all umbrellas at the pharmacy today and promptly hit myself in the face with it getting into my car.

It was on odd feeling, kinda like getting out of bed and realizing you can touch your toes without bending over or carrying your shopping bag out of the store with your arm extended only to realize it’s dragging along the floor.

I haven’t even opened it yet but I’m already worried it might lift me up and carry me away on a windy day.

My search for the perfect hood/umbrella combo continues.

What Kids Say

bogeyandruby

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September 30, 2019

“Grandma says if I eat too much rice it will make me unconscious.”

If it weren’t for facebook memories, I would forget these little gems.

Wish I’d written them all down but I didn’t.

If I think hard, these are the only two that come to mind: 1) “Mummy, can I play on your pincuter?” And 2) “Just read the constructions.” The latter in response to a gazillion lego pieces falling out of box instead of the fully-formed Star Wars space ship on the cover.

This morning a hooded figure headed down to the basement for a work-out. He says it gives him positive energy to start his day.

Now there’s something I should write down.

Crumb

bogeyandruby

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September 27, 2019

I found a crumb on my bosom the other day. That’s where they usually land when I eat. The less buxom among us find them in their lap.

I have this habit of changing my clothes right before I eat. Depends on what I’m already wearing (anything light or white, for example) and what we’re eating (anything that isn’t white) but I usually cover all the bases by putting on something that hides tomato sauce stains really well, like my navy blue Canadiens tee shirt.

If it’s supper time and I plan on wearing said tee shirt to bed later, without looking like a crime scene, I will take extra precautions and tuck several sheets of paper towel into my collar. You see, I have a bad habit of multi-tasking when I eat, not mindful at all, and my shirt knows it.

Back to the crumb. Wasn’t meal time but I had eaten a snack a little earlier. Didn’t think twice when I pinched that morsel between my thumb and forefinger and popped it in my mouth.

I don’t know what I expected. Knowing me, I probably hoped for sweet but resigned myself to the possibility it might be salty.

Well folks, it was neither. Ever tasted bird pellets? Not the poopy kind but rather the seeds. Betty White flinging her food around again. Landed on my chest. Tasted like stale cardboard. And I ate the whole thing.

At least it didn’t leave a stain.

Next blog topic: what not to eat on a first date.

Betty White

Three Boys, Two Dogs and Some Snacks

bogeyandruby

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September 22, 2019

The best dog walks are the ones where I don’t bump into anyone. Just me, the fur kids and nature.

I know I’m not the only anti-social, lone wolf out there. Indeed, I recognize the body language in others: head down, eyes averted, the abrupt change in direction, the slowing down or quickening of pace to avoid that awkward crossing of paths, ducking into the woods to stare up some random tree like you lost your favourite kite/kitten/raptor, pretending to look for dog poop in long grass, untying then re-tying your shoelaces in double knots real slow.

Yep, I’ve got dozens of strategies to avoid people, but alas, they are only effective when it comes to adults.

I’d almost made it home intact this afternoon when I heard the sound of running feet, lots of them. Flashes of navy blue and Kelley green. Reflector strips on grubby sneakers. Three pairs of sneakers.

“Can we pet your dogs, lady?”

I looked up. Three boys already crouched down with arms extended before I could answer.

“Sami, sit!” I tugged on his leash to stop him from jumping and he sat.

“Hey, my name is Sam too!”

I looked more closely at the boy named Sam and recognized him from my son’s former elementary school. They are about five years apart and I hadn’t seen Sam since my son was in grade six.

“Oh my goodness, you’ve grown, Sam! What grade are you in now?”

“Five!”

I asked the other two boys what grades they were in and they replied five and three, respectively and told me their names were Natarajan (pronounced Na-tarzan) and Santosh. Both boys had their left ears pierced, one with a gold stud in it and the other with a small gold hoop which I thought was totally cool.

We chatted about school and homework and they tried to get Gamin to sit, switching to French when I told them Gami was French but of course, he still wouldn’t sit which they thought was a hoot.

After a while, I was itching to get home so I pulled the dogs away from the boys and headed towards the house, thanking them for the visit.

“Bye Sami! Bye Gamin!”

Almost home. Running feet again. I turn around.

“Hey, we got snacks for you!”

Sam with outstretched hands. In them, a Kirkland granola bar, a cheese and cracker snack pack and a small bag of sour patch kids. Natarajan and Santosh flanking him to the left and right.

“That’s really nice of you but the dogs can’t eat those.”

“But they’re for you!”

You know the scene where the Grinch’s heart grows three times bigger? That was my heart then and there.

So thank you, Sam, Natarajan and Santosh for interrupting my walk today. Thank you for your running feet, your guilelessness and most of all, thank you for your generous hearts.

There’s a Pomade for Everything

bogeyandruby

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September 17, 2019

I always thought a pomade was a type of waxy paste that you slicked through your hair when going for that pompadour look, open palm at your hairline, fingers spread wide as your rake them back towards your crown, then up to the heavens with a final squeeze, tease and tug of your digits at the end of the maneuver. This required you to lock eyes with the image in the mirror, tilt your head downwards while maintaining that gaze, sneer your upper lip, raise your collar with a shrug of your shoulders, and sling your 1956 Gibson around your back.

The only time I ever performed this move myself was in the 1980s. My version required a comb for teasing a little more texture into my bangs, followed by extra-hold hairspray. Here’s a hair hack for you: use a blow dryer with your head tilted downwards to keep it all in place.

Yesterday, I discovered that in some Francophone cultures there’s a “pomade” for every skin ailment you could possibly think of : dry skin, itchy skin, painful skin lesions, and mushrooms, which explained why the gentleman in question insisted on putting some between his toes.

Apparently the origin of the word pomade is from the Latin root pomum meaning apple (the world’s very first hair gel back in the 16th century) and the French word pommade which means ointment.

Ahh …

Next time I see my family doctor, I will ask him to prescribe some pomade for my eczema.

In the meantime, I have traded in my 1980s hair pomades for some calming balms to tame the voluminous Brillo pad growing out of the top of my head.

Have a great hair day, everyone!

Liberace Hair

bogeyandruby

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September 16, 2019

This showed up as a memory on my facebook feed this morning:

“It’s never a good sign when a dying patient says you look tired and the next day a 95 year old man with Liberace hair and a tan tells you the same thing.”

Eight years later and I’m still tired. Mind you, back in those days, I used to gulp down two cups of coffee before leaving the house. I’ve since reduced it to one cup, mainly because the second cup was never a mindful one and I was working on mindfulness back then,

My fashion sense is definitely tired. And my hairstyle.

Like most people, I hate that Monday feeling. Not crazy about the Sunday before Monday feeling either. And when I have a Monday off I get that Sunday before Monday feeling for two days before it’s Tuesday but feels like Monday rolls around.

I think I need to practice a little gratitude today, and put on a happy “yay, it’s Friday” face.

How do you cope with Mondays? One cup or two before leaving the house?

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