Seasons

This week my maternal grandmother, Mary Alice McCormick, passed away.   She was 86, had been in decline for a year, and went peacefully in her sleep with my mother and uncle beside her.

4 Generations:  Mary Alice, my mother Kathy, my sister Anna, and my niece Grace.

As I think about her life, I realize how I've seen her differently at different phases of my life.  As a child, she was, naturally, revered.  Now I realize how my tee-totaling, Southern-Baptist parents projected their values on to my perception of my grandparents; as a child, I assumed they were "good" Baptists, too.  Only later, did I realize that all of my grandparents, like most from south Louisiana, liked to drink; Maw Maw was also into ballroom dancing.  As a teenager, Maw Maw was a familial novelty.  And as an adult, I started to know her as an adult, and that's when the trouble started.

Maw Maw had a difficult personality.  She would frequently foist unwanted and unnecessary advice on you and do so in less than diplomatic terms.  She was often an argument waiting to happen, and as an adult, that turned me off.  Over time, though, I gained some insight into some of the psychological dynamics behind the behavior I didn't like.  And right now, I'm less inclined to think about some of the things that she said and more about some of the things she did.  Though she never had much (She married my good-for-nothing grandfather.), she was reliably generous and hospitable.  She loved books, and she was a good storyteller.  She will be missed.

The delicious pecan pie Nicole made for Thanksgiving.

It was Thanksgiving in the U.S.  In Canada, that occurs in early October.  Nevertheless, Nicole prepared a traditional tofurky feast, and afterward we watched the Saints almost give a game away to the Dallas Cowboys.  I was telling a co-worker that I prefer the U.S.'s Thanksgiving to Canada's.  There the end-of-year holidays begin with the light and fun Halloween.  A month later, the holidays escalate with Thanksgiving.  A month later, the holidays crescendo with Christmas, followed by a coda at New Year's.  Of course in New Orleans, there's Twelfth Night, too.  I thoroughly enjoyed the Thanksgiving here, and when I brought my co-workers half of Nicole's pecan pie, they enjoyed it, too.

St. John's Slide Show

"A Time" on George Street

After I mentioned the possibility of a slide show of St. John's, I was barraged by requests--nay!  demands--from followers of my blog for just such a slide show.  So relax, people.  Just click HERE to see it.  You might want to slow down the player's speed to read my captions.

It's hardly an exhaustive presentation.  Largely, I just took a few photos, as Nicole and I walked to our gym in the center of the city.  But I think it does offer a glimpse into the city's charms.

(Look at this!  An election just occurred, and I'm not saying anything political.)

Tired

Lately, I've been tired.  I don't mean for the past two or three days.  I mean for the past two or three weeks.  I get 7-8 hours' sleep, and I'm going to bed earlier and earlier.  Yet when I'm not working, I'm existing from one nap to the next.  I've also been having some vivid, odd dreams.  Last night I dreamt I was driving across the American southwest, when I ran into my friend Angelle Arata in New Mexico.  (Back when I went to Arizona State, I made that trip on several occasions.  I've got no idea how Angelle got in there.)  I've also been craving beer, though I haven't been drinking a lot, typically 1-3 each night.  While I've always liked beer, usually after the first, I'm moving on to the whiskey.  My tiredness and my beer craving seem related, but I don't know how.

(Also, Nicole has told me that on several occasions she's woken in the middle of the night and looked over at me, only to find our cat Ella sitting on my chest and just staring down at my unconscious face.  I've wondered if she's psychically tapping into my weird dreams.)



I think what's going on is . . . With our new life here in St. John's, we've arrived in a more stable, happy place, and I feel like my body's trying to catch up on all the stress it's carried over the past few years.  The same thing happened right after I got off active duty.  I was thrilled to be done with the Army, but suddenly my body had all these stress-related symptoms.  Later, I realized my body was pushing down the stress when I was on active duty until it could let down.

One thing about being this tired is that we've missed some things.  There was a women's film festival.  I'd wanted to go but missed it.  Every year here they have a big Halloween/Mardi Gras celebration on George Street.  (I know, they've conflated Halloween and Mardi Gras due to the costumes.  Actually, today I explained to a local that Mardi Gras is the day before Ash Wednesday.)  We missed both.  Ah well.

One of the things I've missed is my St. John's slide show.  It's coming, people!  But here are some tidbits about Newfoundland.  Though St. John's is very old, Newfoundland is the last territory to join Canada, in 1949.  It had been a British territory, and there was serious talk about its joining the US.  But Newfoundland isn't a province by itself.  For some reason it's grafted on to Labrador.  Labrador is about the size of Arizona, but has about 50,000 people living there.  It's total wilderness.  So the province is actually "Newfoundland and Labrador."

I know there's been some talk about my recent post, announcing my marriage to Nicole.  So I'd like to share this video with you.  Obviously, it's not of Nicole and me, but I was struck by the eerie similarities between the video and how I proposed to Nicole.

Catch All

I've been really busy at work these last two weeks, though I'm glad to have a productive task to give myself to.  I've been expanding the capabilities of an existing computer program, which is a living example of every bad programming practice.  At one point, I needed a break and went to see "The Social Network" about the founding of facebook and got to watch the fictionalized Mark Zuckerberg programming away.  I identified with him completely.  Though of course by the end of the movie, he ends up a billionaire, and I am not one.   Though I do have more friends than he did at the end of the movie (none).  So I'd say I'm richer than he is.  (And yes, that means you can expect me to ask you for a loan soon.)  Nevertheless like Zuckerberg, I've neglected other aspects of my life (including this blog), and I've got to correct that.

I'd intended to offer a slide show of St. John's, but that's not going to happen tonight.  When asked what St. John's is like, I have to say "Ireland."  And I say that without having spent one second in Ireland.  But from what I've seen they're quite similar--green rolling hills over rocky terrain jutting out into the Atlantic.  St. John's is actually closer to Ireland  than it is to New Orleans.  But I guess the clincher is that the local accent is a real, full-on brogue.  (It is not the Canadian accent, eh.)  I'm constantly asked about my accent, and I think My accent?!  Have you listened to yourself?

Just the other evening, I was leaving a grocery store when a local guy ask me for money.  I gave him some change, and he asked if I had time for a joke.  Sure.  An old man . . . and after that he lost me.  His voice became just a low, ripple of rolly's, lolly's, holly's. So as I stood there, looking at him, I wondered how his face got so damn freckled this far north, and then I realized--out on the sea, fishing.  About that time, he reached the punchline.  I knew because he showed me his god-awful teeth in a big grin.  I gave him a convincing laugh and a nod and went on my way.

We're married!

Most of you know that Nicole and I got married.  Though there's some of you who don't, but now you do.  However, many of you don't know that this November we'll celebrate our fourth anniversary.

So here's the story.  Way back in 2006, in the post-Katrina summer, Nicole and I went on our first date to hear Kermit Ruffins at Vaughn's.  (If you've been watching the Treme, you're familiar with the act.  Actually, Kermit and his music figure prominently in this video.)

I found aspects of post-Katrina New Orleans rather romantic; things were starting over and just being there felt like an act of defiance.  I likened it to living in post-WWII Paris.  So naturally, we fell in love.

Our relationship was going great, when we decided to take a vacation to Vancouver in November.  But then,  Nicole wasn't allowed back in the US, because her papers weren't in order.  A week later, she was given a visa solely for the purpose of getting her van and belongings back into Canada.  The visa would expire in a matter of days, and then she'd have to remain in Canada indefinitely.

Well at that point, I'd had five straight months of her hot lovin'.  There was no way in hell I was letting my Canuck cookie out of my clutches.  So the next day, we went to the Gretna courthouse, eloped, and told Immigration to suck it.

So why'd it take so long for you to hear about it?  Well, at first, it was our secret, which made it all the more romantic.  We hadn't been together that long, and while we definitely wanted to continue our relationship, we weren't ready to publicly wear the "married couple" label.  Then after that, of course, we had the house fire and were completely distracted by that.  And the truth is the period after that has been a difficult one for each of us as well as our relationship.  There never seemed to be the "right" time.

But now that we're starting over again in St. John's, I hope that our lives and relationship are entering a happier phase.  And I'm happy to have Nicole in my life.

The Move

As I've stated, I felt bad that I couldn't help Nicole with the move out of Toronto.  So she and her 70+-year-old parents were left to load up a 14-foot U-Haul truck on their own.  (On the other hand, I told Nicole to hire movers, but she said was too busy to get around to it.  I say she was too busy not to.)  Some twelve exhausting hours later, they got the truck loaded.  Or so I thought.

When I called her around ten the next morning to see how their drive was going, they were still loading things.  But by about 10:30, they did depart.  Unfortunately, somewhere near the Ontario-Quebec border, a trucker dozed off and rammed his truck into a bridge over the main highway.  The trucker was unhurt, but his truck exploded.  More to the point, traffic was stopped for hours.  Nicole and her parents ended up stranded in a truckstop, whereupon learning the cause of the hold-up, Nicole proceeded to mock the incompetence of the said driver (in a truckstop).  They didn't make it to Montreal as they'd planned. 

Meanwhile, as I stated, Newfoundland was shit-hammered by Hurricane Igor.  No it does not compare to Hurricane Katrina.  But it was serious.  One man was killed.  Lots of homes were flooded, and more roads were washed out.  I was without power for two days.  And I also got my first direct exposure to hurricane-force winds, learning firsthand of the phenomenon "stinging rain."  As I told my co-workers, "In Louisiana, we stay home when a hurricane hits."

But the effects of Igor weren't done with us.  When Nicole and her parents arrived at North Sydney, Nova Scotia, they found the ferry--the last of the season that goes directly to St. John's--getting filled with military personnel and their heavy equipment.  They were going to assist with the post-hurricane clean-up, and it was looking like, because of that, our U-Haul wouldn't make it on.  Fortunately, Nicole's mother, Maria, was on the scene.  She's a little, septuagenarian with a thick German accent, and when she sets her mind to something, it's hard to say "no" to her.  She spoke to three different ferry personnel before getting assured the U-Haul would be included.

The ferry ride was 16 hours.  Fortunately, Nicole and her parents had their own cabin.  But the cats were left in the cabin of the cars.  And it freaked them out pretty good.  Ella spent the whole trip under the passenger's seat.

Fortunately, though, they arrived Saturday afternoon.  And the next day, we unloaded the U-Haul.  That is, I hired movers.  Best $169 I ever spent.

Things to do

Next week, Nicole and her parents (and our cats) begin their trek from Toronto to St. John's.  They leave Tuesday and will arrive Saturday morning.

 It goes without saying that Nicole has had a lot to do.  (Yet I say it anyway.)  I feel bad that I can't help her with it, and I feel glad that I don't have to.  But while I may have escaped the hassle of moving out, I cannot escape the hassle of moving in, starting a new job, moving to a new city, and immigrating to a new country.  The pile of tedious phone calls and documents seems endless.

I realize that few enjoy fumbling with the minutiae of modern life, but I honestly dread it.  Sure I get it done, but the whole time I'm, say, interacting with an automated phone system to, say, set up my internet, I've got a script rolling in the back of my head--Why in the hell am I wasting my brain power on this?  Such experiences have revealed something about myself--I like ideas, thinking about "the big picture," but I don't like dealing with all the details that go into that big picture.

Bart's photo of Friends of Lafitte Corridor, on an annual hike of the route.

Here's an example.  Years ago, I was walking with my friend Bart when we crossed a dead railroad bed, and I said that someone ought to make it a bike trail.  That happened one or two more times, before Bart started a group, Friends of Lafitte Corridor.  To make a very long story short, this group became the impetus for making this trail a reality.  That is, after a lot of work by Bart and other volunteers, New Orleans' City Hall signed a contract with a design firm; the bike trail/park is going to happen, marking a major improvement in New Orleans' infrastructure.  Bart has credited me with the idea, and I appreciate that.  But the truth is I didn't do, nor would have done, dick-all to make that happen.  I had a big idea but no patience for the details.

I can't wait for Nicole and our kittens to arrive.  As we begin our lives in this new city, I should invest myself more in the details of some of my ideas.