Posted on July 6, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

I know I should be sitting in an air conditioned bar sipping on a few cool ones. But those of you who have been following my stories for several months, know that I am not normal… not even close. I am sitting at a my computer,  in a room that could pass for a sauna, drinking coffee. Writing.

I don’t know if there are any road races scheduled for this weekend. Hopefully not. This heat would be brutal for runners but I can tell you, this is exactly what it was like in 2012 when a few of us ran  the Boston Marathon. You can check out a story I wrote about this at www.week45.com. Go to the archives for April 15th. In honor of all runners, especially new runners, I wrote a story today that I will be posting on Sunday the 7th. of July. I am going to try and describe what it is like to stand at the starting line for your first race. The story is called ” It All Starts Here”.

As promised, in a video on my website ( Sea People ), I am going to tackle a tricky subject: the problems in the lobster fishery. I am doing this with a great deal of trepidation. I value the small number of friends that I have and this number could be significantly reduced after publication! The story is called “Into a Pot of Boiling Water”.

And coming up later next week, I will be posting a story about the Antigonish Landing. It is called ” A Soft Landing” and once again you can preview the video of the same name.

What a weekend to be in Canso or Cavendish for two incredible music festivals.

Hope you’re having an awesome weekend and get ready to lace ’em up tomorrow morning.

 

Posted on July 5, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

Our youngest daughter is soon to be wed.  I have watched with a combination of admiration and astonishment as she and her fiancé have planned the modest event in the calmest, most laid back fashion humanly possible.  They have made it easy for everyone around them.  In my humble estimation, this is an exception to the rule… a complete and utter aberration.

I remember distinctly the day we got engaged.  Immediately after making the announcement and sharing a glass of champagne with my future in-laws, the wedding plans ramped into high gear.  I suggested a small, family wedding.  There would have been a better response from a conference of deaf people.  I found out very quickly that my outlook, well, didn’t count.  So guys, here is tip number one: your opinion simply does not matter when it comes to planning the wedding.  Do not offer any brilliant ideas because you will quickly find out that they hold no merit.  Get used to shutting your mouth, nodding your head and keeping a silly perma-grin on your face.  Your fate is in someone else’s hands.

My daughter’s wedding is going to be a small, intimate family affair.  If most men had their druthers, they would opt for one of those classy wedding chapels in Vegas where you can rent just about everything, including the wedding attendants and guests, including cheerleaders if you want them.

Many weddings these days can take months, and in some cases, years to plan.  By the time the couple says “I Do”, everyone is suffering mental fatigue, emotional hangover and insolvency.

Here is tip number two: if you are a man, your impending nuptials have nothing to do with you.  You are an afterthought.  Quite frankly, if you don’t show up at the ceremony you will hardly be missed.  Nobody cares what you wear.  Absolutely nobody is going to be looking at you.  If you have a plate of spaghetti and meat balls before the service and slobber some of it on your crisply ironed, white shirt, not a single living human being will notice the orange hue as you stand sheepishly at the altar waiting for your betrothed.

Tip number three: on your wedding day, stay out of the way.  Grab a few of your buddies and go for a game of golf.  I did.  Or grab the fishing rod and head out to some remote river where the only sound you will hear is birds and gurgling water.  Now if you are a masochist, you may not take my advice and may want to participate in some of the last minute wedding details.  You are one sick puppy so don’t ever come to me for advice again.

During the summer we often drive by the Cathedral as a wedding is about to take place.  I watch as the dazzling bride exits the limo followed by her entourage.  I start to roll down the window to scream at the top of my lungs “Don’t do it!”, but I am stopped by a stern rebuke from my wife.  She is on to me.

Posted on July 2, 2013 under Storytelling with 5 comments

Most men I know don’t know a damn thing about bras.  Truthfully, we don’t understand much about women’s apparel.  No, let me rephrase that.  We don’t understand much about women.  Period.  Talking about bras is dicey but writing a story about them is fraught with danger.

What little I know about bras I probably learned from (here goes the first confession) looking at the four pages of lingerie in the Sears catalogue.  Come on.  Admit it men.  You’ve done that too.  I am occasionally permitted to do the laundry and when it comes to bras, I know the drill, intimately.  The first (and last) time that I put a bra in the dryer, it was as if I had crossed the demilitarized zone in some war ravaged country.  I did not make that mistake again.  I now hang them on the “bra tree”.

A few years ago, at a Canada Day party, we were playing some silly trivia game with the neighbors.  The men were asked to respond to several questions to see how perceptive they were about their spouses. “What is your wife’s cup size?”  You could have asked me the atomic number for tungsten (it’s 74, in case you didn’t know) and gotten a better response.   And then, there was the guy who was sent to a fancy lingerie shop to buy his wife a bra.  A surprise purchase, no doubt.  When asked about his wife’s size, he seemed a bit perplexed at first but then blurted out “6& 7/8”. “But sir, that is not a measurement for a bra!” exclaimed the equally confused salesperson. “Well, the other night when my wife was sleeping, I took my ball cap off and tossed it on her.  It fit perfectly”, he said.

Of course, we see bras blowing on the clothesline and it is not uncommon to see them affixed to trees, shrubs and flagpoles on someone’s property for a special birthday.  And lately, our home has become a refuge for a number of young mothers with newborns, so I am well aware of the role of nursing bras.  Back in the day I would send a coded message to my wife when I heard a knock on the door – “flaps up!”

We all know what it’s like when school ends.  Many families plan trips and the tires hit the pavement minutes after the kids get home with their report cards.  It can be (?) pandemonium trying to get everything together.  It takes most men about 3.5 minutes to pack.  Then we wait in the car for the family.  Our spouses are trying to do a thousand things at once.  It is a classic case of “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get”.

Do you know what a bra barrage is?  Men, if you are still reading this, for your information, many women wash all of their bras at once.  They store them up like, recycled beer cans and toss them all in the wash at once.  Don’t ask me to explain this phenomenon.  It’s like many other mysteries that are best left unsolved.  You know that you will get “the look” if you dare to inquire.

The other day I became aware of the desperate plight of a woman, who threw all of her bras in the wash at once in readiness for a family road trip at the end of the school year.  As fate would have it, not only was there a wardrobe malfunction but there was a mechanical one as well.  This cry for help popped up on Facebook: “The door is stuck on my washing machine and every bra I own is in there”.

I didn’t think that “wireless technology” belonged in the washing machine.

Within nanoseconds, (mamoseconds?) suggestions came pouring in, some of them practical and many of a more humorous nature.  I chose not to weigh in.  The words “me” and “fix” are rarely uttered in the same sentence.  Given the choice of solutions, I would have gone at the door with a crowbar or suggested attending a bra sale at Target.  I know that fire departments will go to great lengths to extricate a cat from a tree so why not bras from a washing machine.  Wouldn’t the fire truck chasers get a surprise when they arrived at the house?!

I never heard the final outcome.  I have a picture in my mind, though.  As her spouse waits in the car with his kit bag packed, the kids run in circles around Mom as she gazes through the glass porthole at the colourful tangle of satin and lace – so close, yet so far away.