The Tale of Judas and Yoko

Saturday night was the Hubby’s Christmas party. He is an education student who is (praise the lord!) graduating this spring, so this semester he has been completing his internship at a school. Since he has only been at this school for four months, I have never met any of his fellow teachers. I’m not exactly a shrinking violet and since I love Christmas and parties, I was totally up for going. There was, however, a bit of a catch.

We live in a small city, and for anyone who has lived here for any length of time you are bound to bump up against your past from time to time. Well, our past was at the Hubby’s Christmas party, cocktails in hand, in the form of two people we haven’t spoken a word to in seven years. Let’s call them Judas and Yoko.

The Hubby was already good friends with Judas when I met him twenty years ago. Actually, friend is too weak a word; the Hubby idolized this guy. Judas was a bit older than us; already had a ‘real’ job, already had a baby and a wife, he was a guitar player in a band, etc., etc. He even had a cool dog. Judas had everything the Hubby aspired to have and from the Hubby’s perspective, Judas was The Man. I think Judas legitimately liked the Hubby, but there was certainly no idolizing going on the other way. The Hubby was to Judas how coke is to rum – complimentary, but by no means necessary. I was trying to come up with a better analogy than that, but I’m on the second day of a killer hang-over. Bear with me.

And I liked Yoko, although she was oddly competitive. I’m not very athletic, so us playing sports together was just fine for her. I’m not very domestic, so spending time in the Martha Stewart paradise she calls home was okey-dokey. However, she once decided to take an English class and asked me to read her first paper. After I started correcting her grammar she got a little miffed and that was the last time I saw any writing of hers. I was young and didn’t catch on to the fact that Yoko just wanted me to ooohh and aaahhhh about her writing talent, not point out the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. Anyhoo, the point being is that the Hubby and I were very young, new parents who were trying to find our way in the world. Judas and Yoko were our older more ‘mature’ friends who seemed to have it all together. We thought they were WAY cool.

Fast forward a few years…..the Hubby is a bit older and wiser, the rock band he had played in for ten years had just broken up and he was determined to play his first solo show. It was an ambitious project for a guy who had always been just the drummer (insert your favourite drummer joke here) of the band playing second fiddle to three young, buff, uber rock gods of the stage.

The Hubby wanted to have his own show – play guitar, do the singing, organize the song list, etc., etc. What better a partnership for this new adventure than to play with Judas? Judas is The Man! after all. Judas is a great guitar player, and not unlike Yoko and her writing, the Hubby just wanted Judas to be impressed with him as a musician. The Hubby imagined him and Judas rocking out, playing together as equals over a few cold ones. Yeah, that’s not how it actually went down.

Judas initially agreed to play the show with the Hubby, but after a few short, ill-fated practices Judas disappeared. Literally. The Hubby called him more times than a drunk girl calls her ex-boyfriend leaving a series of pathetic and pleading messages for Judas to please please PLEASE call him back. The show was looming, no practices were happening, the Hubby was becoming increasingly frantic and then finally, THREE DAYS before his first ever solo performance, the show that meant more to him than any show he had ever previously played, the Hubby was greeted with this note on his car windshield:


Dear Hubby,

I’m not showing up or playing at your show. I’ve never really thought you were anything other than a giant pain in the ass, and I’m going to take this opportunity to completely fuck you over. You are a shitty friend, a bad father and a sucky husband, and I am better than you in all ways so go fuck yourself.

Judas

OK, so that really isn’t the note he left, but that was the long and short of it, trust me. That was seven years ago, and neither of us have heard a peep from Judas or Yoko since. The Hubby has never really gotten over being bitch slapped by the one guy he had always looked up to, and I have never really gotten over wanting to go and beat the living shit out of Judas for making my Hubby cry. I get a little ‘mama bear’ about that kind of thing. I can make him cry, but if anyone else does it I’m going to punch them in the face.

Saturday night, December 6, 2008: Christmas party with the teachers. As it turns out in this dreadfully small world of ours, Yoko used to work at the same school where the Hubby is currently interning. I knew this fact, but it didn’t occur to me that Yoko and Judas were going to crash the Christmas party! She doesn’t even work there anymore! I think the Hubby knew, but he (wisely) didn’t share that little bit of news with me. I was very surprised to see these two people show up at the party and was immediately caught off guard. So what did I do? I started drinking.

I don’t really drink that much anymore, but something about having Judas and Yoko plopped in the middle of my current reality made me think that getting completely and totally shit-faced with a bunch of Catholic teachers would be a good idea. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve really tied one on, but let’s just say this – I went to the dark side. I may as well have been wearing a lamp shade while trying to organize a game of quarter bounce. I’m glad I never have to see these people again because in the light of day, I feel like an asshole.

There are two types of drunks – the ‘fighting and belligerent’ drunks, and the ‘I love you guys' drunks. I’m the latter, so after my initially distaste and trepidation (not to mention the undeniable urge to indulge in the punching) I started warming up to Judas and Yoko again. I’ve been so focused on hating these people (well, Judas, but Yoko by association) that I haven’t really given my self a chance to mourn the lost friendship.

Yoko is exactly the same. She looks the same, acts the same, laughs the same, dresses the same….it’s like she was frozen in time and then thawed out right before the Christmas party. I sware Judas picked her up off the counter and ran her under the sink for a few minutes before heading out the door. Judas, on the other hand, has dropped a bunch of weight and did not seem to be the easy going, casual guy I remember. He seemed almost pompous, in a way. Has he really turned into a pompous ass, or was he embarrassed by his past behaviour and was over compensating because he feels guilty? Or, is he just humiliated by the “I’m way better than you” tone of his go fuck yourself note? Or, maybe he was just the same as he used to be and I’m looking for problems because I’m still mad at him? Hard to say, because my judgement was, ahem….compromised.

I guess it doesn’t ultimately matter because the Hubby won’t be at the same school next year and I’m sure it will be another seven years before fate and the small town that is Regina brings us together again. Either way, the evening was enjoyable. Even if Judas and Yoko think we’re losers who are not worthy of their friendship, it was nice to have an evening with them again. And I didn’t even punch anyone.

Just making sure everyone keeps their gloves up

This post requires a little context, so before you continue you need to go read this.

Thanks for coming back!

I was recently discussing the topic of gossip with my friend Keely. Being human and all, we like gossip. There is something very appealing about discussing the lives of others. However, I think it’s important to have an established set of rules so the gossip stays within the boundaries of good clean fun.

As you may have figured out by now I have had the same group of friends for the last 20+ years. I have of course met other people I call friends during this time, but my main core best girlfriends have retained their title of ‘best friends’, if you will, since we were teenagers. Now that we’re adults we are more or less drama-free, but there is usually at least one of us going through something that is gossip-worthy. At the moment, it’s Valentina. I think more so because she is the only one of us not currently in a committed relationship. The rest of us bitch and moan about our men from time to time but it’s pretty much same old same old at this point and not nearly as fun as having a front row seat to Valentina’s boy stories.

Politika almost never does anything gossip worthy…..at least, I don't think she does. She does have the added advantage of living two provinces away so it would be easy for her to spin a juicy situation into a pretty mundane one by the time it gets to us. One thing is springing to mind, and that is the recent act of moving her mother-in-law into the basement suite of the new house she just purchased. Politika deciding to live with her M-I-L was definitely a topic of conversation, but it wasn’t as much gossiping as it was deciding who was going to organize the candle light vigil when she inevitably goes to prison for murder.

Keely and I are probably the worst offenders because not only do we like gossiping, but apparently we like gossiping on the internet. I guess that makes us verbally slutty. It’s all justifiable though because I have created some self-imposed rules to govern by:

Gossip rules according to FoN

1. No gossiping about things that friend A may not have already shared with friend B. Once friend A shares the potential gossip with friend B on their own accord - it’s fair game. For example, if friend A tells you about something regarding themselves or something that Friend B did, you cannot tell Friend C unless there is less than reasonable doubt that Friend C already knows about it anyway. There are two exceptions to this rule:

• If the bit of gossip is happy gossip and you were not specifically told to keep the news to yourself you can share it. Examples would be an engagement, new job, pregnancy, birth of a child, etc., and; (see rule 6 for additional information)
• No gossiping to mean people. If there is even a suspicion that a piece of gossip could be spread beyond appropriate borders and/or come back and bite Friend A, B or C in the ass and cause trouble, shut it.

2. It’s OK to suspend rule #1 and share a bit of gossip if you yourself are involved in the gossip and would be considered a direct subject of the gossip. Especially if it’s pissing you off. Valentina had a recent tryst with my ex-boyfriend. That is a great example of when it’s OK to suspend rule #1. I still love her though. And, I would also like to take this opportunity to go on record to say, "See? I told you he was weird."

3. No telling men anything.

4. Don’t say anything in the course of gossip that you wouldn’t be totally comfortable with the subject of the gossip knowing you said it. Preferably (and when possible) say what you need to say to the subject of the gossip prior to saying it to others.

5. Make a best effort to gossip between only close friends and only with people you know love who you’re gossiping about (see rule 8 for additional information).

6. No gossiping when expressly forbidden about anything negative, and/or when you are not sure if you are within the limits of rule 1. However, if friend A has something positive you are dying to share, you have to negotiate an appropriate timeline with her you both agree on. For example, I was the first to know when Politika had her babies, but she wanted to tell Keely and Valentina herself. I told her I would be able to keep my mouth shut for no more than a few hours, Politika asked for a full day and we finally settled on about a 12 hour window. That news was fair game once her time limit expired. Her too bad if she hadn’t told the others by then.

7. Gossiping about strangers to close friends is allowed, although be careful when gossiping in public.

8. Gossiping to and about outsiders* is OK as long as it (a) is appropriate to the subject matter and can be used to provide insight into a situation, and (b) safely falls within the context of rule #1.

9. No gossiping on internet social networking sites such as blogs or Facebook. There are two exceptions to this rule as well:

• Talking in ‘code’ is acceptable provided you are assured beyond a reasonable doubt that no one other than your intended gossip-ee will have a clue what you’re talking about, and;
• if you are messaging through private email and you know no one has your password.
  

10. When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

* - an outsider is considered to be someone who is known to friend A, B or C, but only on a casual, passing or acquaintance basis.

I'm a somebody!

Check it out! Right over there! To your right, right THERE!! I have a follower! Hi Jen!! I'm the Pied Piper! I'm Charles Manson! I'm MOSES. Ohhhh, I'm already drunk on the power. What do I do now? Should I start writing the State of the Union? Do I need to consider hiring a staff?

Jen, I kid. I'm just one of the people, so lets keep it real, K? I think it might just be you and me for a while anyway. And I totally promise never to insist you sacrifice your first born.

Worst. Experience. Ever.

Well, I guess that might be exaggerating just a tad, but after I get into this you will be completely horrified. Trust me.

My youngest, the lovely Lena Lemon (daycare nick-named her that. Stupid nicknames are fine. Nicknames you can give up when you out grow them. Sorry Bronx Mowgli, you’re screwed forever), is a lucky lass because she has the most beautiful hair ever. It is a perfect strawberry blonde colour that holds the exact right amount of curl. You can give her one pony or two and her hair will immediately obey by forming perfectly soft and bouncy ringlets. She is SUPER cute.
She also goes to daycare with other people’s children who are not nearly as cute as she is. I can understand why these kids would feel jealous. Wouldn’t you be jealous if you had to spend all day with the most adorable person ever? I know I would be, but I don’t think I would feel the need to infect the beautiful person with BUGS. That’s right everyone, my beautiful little lady caught the lice.

As it turns out I am the worst mother of all time because it took the daycare to inform me Lena had lice. They phoned me at work to let me know that my daughter is super gross and I was to come and pick her up immediately. After throwing up in my mouth a little I left work, drove to the daycare and was immediately shamed. The director lady sat Lena on her lap, flipped her hair up and sure enough – tiny brown bugs crawling all up in my baby’s head. How did I miss that? Her hair is long, but it’s not super thick or anything. Surely if I was paying any attention whatsoever to this child I would have noticed the BUGS in her HEAD, right? I guess not. I suck.

Lena is only two years old so I had to give some thought as to how I was going to tell her about these bugs. She’s the kind of kid that could really go either way with that little bit of news; she would either (a) think it was cool, or (b) have a complete melt down and go totally hysterical for hours. As it turns out it was (c) – she couldn't have cared less. She was just so jazzed to be sprung from daycare early and was already planning an afternoon of riding the couch while eating her pudding cups, picking her nose and watching Treehouse with her buddy Elmo. Anyway, on my way home I stopped by the pharmacy and spent an obscene amount of money on lice killing paraphernalia in hopes of clearing this little problem up that afternoon. Yeah, not so much.

Not only did those little fuckers survive the first dose of ‘Lice Killing Shampoo’ (seriously – that is what it’s called. I naively assumed it would kill lice when you used it. Nope.), they managed to live through the hours of combing, laundry, picking at each individual strand of hair, more combing, more picking, some crying and screaming (from us both), more laundry, selective hair trimming and on and on and on. We went through this nightmare for seven solid days before I had to wave the white flag of surrender. Lena couldn’t deal with one more day of me picking at her head, I couldn’t stay up doing laundry and vacuuming until midnight anymore and I was totally out of ideas. I had also missed about five days of work trying to deal with this because she was banned from the daycare until she was declared cootie-free. Our lives had to go back to normal for the sake of us all so I came to an extremely painful conclusion…… I had to shave this girls head.

Here is Lena before –

















Here is Lena after –














Still cute, yes, but I really miss her hair. The upside to this story? Lena sat perfectly still the whole time I was shaving her head and when we were finally done and she saw herself in the mirror sans hair for the first time do you know what she said? “I LOVE IT because now I look like JAKEY!”. My little strawberry blond princess was thrilled to bits because now she had the same haircut as her seven year-old brother.

I guess the ‘girl’ must not kick in until you’re three.

A sappy Christmas tale with a moral to bash you over the head

Now that November is drawing to a close I’m starting to feel all Christmas spirity (that is so a word). I really, really love Christmas. It’s definitely the best holiday by far, and it lasts for weeks. Most people start getting a little twitchy when they hear Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer for the hundredth time around December 20th, but I still sing along every time and I don’t even care if everyone feels like punching me.

This holiday seems to bring out the best in people, and I find that most people are much nicer and more giving this time of year. This is a pretty friendly town anyway, but the holidays seem to make people extra friendly. We even have a group of volunteers armed with quarters and Santa hats who wander around downtown during the month of December plugging parking meters that are about to expire. How cool is that?

I love Christmas every year, but there were a few years in the ol' FoN household that were pretty lean, to say the least. I remember a few times making the kids eat their cereal one at a time because they needed to share the bowl of milk. The argument in my house wasn’t whose turn it was to play on the computer; it was whose turn it was to get the fresh bowl of milk at breakfast.

This one Christmas was particularly bad and I was really sweating how I was going to make this holiday fun for the kids without gifts. Now, they wouldn’t have been totally deprived, the hubby and I both have fairly well-off extended families who always give the kids nice gifts at Christmas, but it REALLY sucks as a parent to have to choose between keeping the phone on and having something under the tree for your children come Christmas morning.

I didn’t exactly advertise the true dire straights of our financial position, so I’m not sure how many people really knew how poor we actually were (luckily I didn’t have many visitors for breakfast). At least one of our friends clued in though. I’m going to call her Donna.

Donna and her then husband Shit-for-Brains (he turned out to be quite the fucktard, but that’s a story for another time) called us up one night and asked if they could come over for a Christmas drink. I was initially panicked because not only did I not have any booze to offer them, I didn’t have ANY beverages to offer them. What was I going to say? “Sure! Come on over for a glass of tap-water cheer!”? Hearing my, ummm, uhh…..she quickly followed up by saying she had a bottle of rye and some coke she would like to bring. We didn’t get to see her very often so I said sure, come on over (a bottle of rye will get you in the door at my house every time).

Donna and S-f-B showed up about an hour later with a bottle rye, some mix, and a big bag of something. “What’s in the bag?” I asked. “Are you going to do your laundry while you’re here?” “No”, she said laughing. “We brought a few things over for the kids”.

In the bag that Donna brought were gifts for my kids – three gifts each, actually. She had them beautifully wrapped with their names on each, but nothing filled out in the ‘from’ tag. She then told me that she and Santa were buddies and that sometimes he gets her to help out on the extra busy years by delivering gifts for him a few days before Christmas if he doesn’t think he’ll make it to certain houses Christmas morning. The other four gifts, she said, were for me to give the kids because she knew how ‘busy’ I was and that I might not get a chance to go shopping.

I was so grateful to this woman that I almost started bawling right there; I didn’t even know what to say. Donna is not the type who goes looking for accolades, so she then promptly poured us all a stiff rye, put on some tunes and started dancing in my kitchen. We had a great night; had a few drinks, played some cards and didn’t mention the gifts she brought for us again.

I don’t see her that much anymore, maybe once or twice a year, but I will always remember what she did for us that Christmas. She probably doesn’t even remember doing it, but I will never forget the random kindness she showed us for no other reason than to make sure we had a good Christmas.

We’re not poor anymore, thank god. Not only do my kids all get their own milk with their cereal at breakfast time, but they have about four different types of cereal to choose from. My oldest daughter kind of remembers being poor, but my son has no recollection of it at all. If I told him he had to share his cereal milk today he would laugh hysterically at such a thought. The baby wasn’t yet born so she will grow up a privileged south-ender having no idea what going without whatever she needs is like. I’m simultaneously happy and horrified by that thought.

So the next time you’re in the store ready to go postal because the crowds and the Christmas carols are making you a little stabby, think of Donna and her bag of toys and bottle of rye. Then look around at your friends, neighbours, strangers, whoever, and go pull a Donna. Figure out what their bag of toys and bottle of rye is to them and go all Santa on their ass.

Whom doth rocketh??

Hey internet! J just earned 88% on her final Macbeth exam! Not only is she very clever but she has impeccable timing because about 30 seconds after I got the email from her English teacher (we were emailing anyway and she decided to share the good news) J called to see if she could have the new boy over. For the two hours that she's home after school without parental supervision. I was so loving her at that moment I said yes without really thinking. I kind of regret it now, but I do have a built in seven year-old spy on retainer so hopefully he'll keep me in the loop. I get the feeling sometimes he's a double agent though because whenever I ask him what went down while we were out and he says, “nothing” he usually has a ring of dried chocolate around his mouth.

Random Tuesday Thoughts for Keely

Why do some people not flush the toilet in public bathrooms? What makes them think I want to see their pee? Is it just straight up laziness, or are they in someway ‘proud’ of their discharge? We're women for god sakes - only men can get away with that kind of thing because they don't know any better.

Why do celebrities give their kids such ridiculous names? Ashlee Simpson just named her new son Bronx Mowgli. Unless you’re a cartoon character or a puppy that name is stupid. Can you imagine coming into this world the son of Ashlee Simpson and being named Bronx Mowgli? That kid is going to have it rough. She could have named this poor child Haywood Jablome and he would have had it easier.

I’ve been selected for jury duty! This is not really so much something to ponder as it is TOTALLY COOL. I know most people dread this kind of thing, but I have always wanted to be on a jury. I’m not asked my opinion much at work anymore and I really like giving it so jury duty is perfect for me. I also have very clear, self imposed rules regarding fairness so I will be a perfect juror. Hopefully I can be the foreman. Do they really have those or is Law and Order not exactly accurate? I hope not because I get most of my legal knowledge from that show.

I think the Beatles were talking about JC’s unit when they said “We’re bigger than Jesus”. Where do you think the phrase ‘rock out with your cock out’ came from?