Get Well Soon Newfoundland!

Published in the Clarenville Packet.

I’m typing this from my sofa surrounded by wadded up tissues and the sound of my own groaning.

There is clanking and clattering in the kitchen, and from here I see the blur that is my one-year-old, removing all my baking sheets, pots, and pans from their cabinets.

She is robust, healthy, and entirely untouched by the germs attacking me. She picks up the colander, studies it for a second, and then puts in on her head.  I’d take a picture, but I haven’t the energy.  Today, she seems to move at warp speed, but I could just be delirious.

The doctor said I have just a small virus. It definitely won’t kill me.  It hasn’t killed my husband, who has battled it for the past three weeks, and still continues to fight a hacking cough, stuffy nose, and on and off head aches.

This nasty cold is everywhere.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say almost everyone I know in Newfoundland is sick right now. We are all united in our misery.

The playgroup I attend with my daughter hasn’t met for a month due to illnesses in all of our families. We’ve thought it best just to quarantine ourselves until this crazy, record-breaking flu season comes to an end.

This quarantine has had strange effects on my kiddo. The only companion eye-level to her is the family dog, so she has become rather canine.

Yes, I know it is developmentally appropriate for a child her age to carry things around in her mouth, chew on her toys, and put her face in her food, but nonetheless, it will be nice for her to associate with other human children again.

I did a bit of research on how to prevent the spread of germs. Most of what I found was the usual wash your hands, and cover your mouth when you cough business that we all know to do.  However, I want to share a few tips that I’d never heard before from Dr. Melissa Conrad Stoppler’s article “Ten Ways to Prevent the Common Cold.”

Avoid cigarette smoke. Dr. Stoppler says, “Cigarette smoke can irritate the airways and increase susceptibility to colds and other infections.” This includes exposure to passive smoke.

Use paper towels in your kitchen and bathrooms for hand washing. I know this is not the most environmentally friendly advice, but if someone in your house is infected, their germs can live for several hours on cloth towels. Just use that roll of paper guilt free until everyone is feeling better.

Finally, go throw those snotty tissues away immediately. Obviously the used tissues sitting on the couch or your bedside table will contaminate the surface you leave them on. I am the worst offender of this in my house, but I will now keep a wastebasket next to me at all times.

Hopefully, these tips along with some rest, relaxation, and ever-constant hand washing will help your family end flu season a bit early.

I’m off to guzzle Dayquil. I hope everyone out there is feeling better soon!

Stumbling upon Santacon

My husband and I recently took our first trip away together without our baby.  

We went to New York City during the most magical time of year to see all the usual Christmas sights.

We saw the giant Unicef snowflake twinkling on 5^th Avenue, the Rockettes tapping and kicking at Radio City Music Hall, the decorated store windows bringing fanciful winter dreamscapes to life, and hundreds of drunken Santa Clauses overrunning the streets.

At first we thought the Santa-thing was an odd coincidence. We were seeing four or five together at a time, which seemed a bit above average, even for the week before Christmas. 

At each intersection we crossed, the crowds became redder, jollier and quite a bit more bearded.

It wasn’t long before we were engulfed in a sea of red Santa suits, and wishing we were dressed to match.

We found ourselves smack in the middle of SantaCon NYC 2012.

SantaCon, also known as Santa Rampage, Santarchy, Santapalooza, etc., is an annual gathering of folks who dress up like Santa to troll the streets of a chosen city or town, spreading good cheer, singing naughty carols, supporting local charities, and guzzling down the liquid form of holiday spirit.

The tradition is described on numerous Web sites as a "not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious and non-logical Santa Claus convention, attended for absolutely no reason."

This is not a wacky American thing. It was actually started by the Danes in 1974. According to SantaCon.info, there are 14 Canadian cities participating this year, including Halifax, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, P.E.I.

My husband and I theorized that perhaps SantaCon was once an actual Santa conference held by professional Santa Clauses that ironic hipsters hijacked into a mega pubcrawl.

After a quick Wikipedia search, I learned that SantaCon was originally created to protest the rampant consumerism during the holiday season. The surrealist movement, and guerilla street theater heavily influenced the SantaCon gathering. It also used to feature the macabre tradition of hanging a Santa in effigy.

But in recent years, SantaCon has set aside its subversive roots to encourage silliness, creativity, merrymaking, and general flirtation.

I suppose in a crowd of fat Santas, Chanukah Santas, random Easter bunnies, slacker Santas (these guys just don the hat), scantily clad Mrs. Clauses and sexy helper elves, love connections are bound to happen.

At lunch, we sat next to two Santas having an awkward first date.

A nice guy Santa wearing a red blazer, and a tie with Christmas lights embroidered on it seemed to be imagining how he’d tell all his friends he met the love of his life at SantaCon.

His less enthusiastic date was wearing one of the Santa getups you find in the lingerie department.

She gazed longingly out the window at a more rakish sunglasses-wearing, cigarette-smoking Santa.

Half way through appetizers, she was certain she’d chosen the wrong Santa.

My husband and I enjoy people watching, and Santa watching in New York City was more entertaining that we could have ever imagined.

But we both felt a bit wistful. We’d bedeck ourselves in fake velvet too, if we were just a few years younger, and cooler, and more, well, single.

“Maybe SantaCon will come to Newfoundland one day,” my husband said.

“Maybe, “ I replied. “But who needs hundreds of Santas, when you’ve got mummers?”

Published by The Clarenville Packet

Grandmotherly Love

I’m writing this column from my parents’ house in Florida. My daughter and I arrived yesterday. From the moment the plane touched down, my daughter was catapulted into a world of unfamiliar faces and voices and hands that want to cuddle her.

She takes it all in stride, and I believe I have an assortment of Newfoundland grannies to thank for this.

We meet these lovely grandmothers everywhere. Some of the more popular grandmother spots are the exit and entrances of craft fairs, The Clarenville Inn during bus tour season, the check out aisle at Walmart in the middle of the afternoon, the waiting area at the airport, and Rod’s on a Sunday morning.

These women see my daughter and gush over her with such gusto that my proud mother heart hurts.

My baby smiles magnanimously.  She revels in the attention, but plays it cool, by clapping her hands, shyly looking away, and then engaging in a quick game of peek-a-boo.

She has become so accustomed to getting attention when she is out that she is miffed when people around her don’t engage.  She offers her drooly grin with its three little teeth, and when the smile is not reciprocated she gurgles to me in exasperation and points her finger at the offending person.

But this never occurs when the grandmothers are around.

They greet her with the phrase, “Aren’t you gorgeous!”

Then the cooing, leg pinching, cheek tickling and rapturous praise begins. 

When it is over, the grandmothers all tell me about the grandchildren they have in provinces far away, or the children working abroad on the verge of becoming a parent.

I can hear the ache in their voices, and I understand that the attention being lavished upon my daughter is really just a moment for them to exercise some of that pent up grandmotherly love.

It is then my turn to gush. I listen to them share the recent milestones their grandchildren attained, and tell them how handsome and smart their grandchildren must be based what they describe to me.

For three minutes we all engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.  With her grandmothers far away, my daughter experiences what it is like to bask in the unfettered adoration a beloved grandchild can feel. With their grandchildren far away, these grandmothers can pretend that the loving smiles my daughter gives them are the same as the ones they’d receive from their own grandchildren.

Of course she can’t replace their actual grandchildren, or vice versa, but together they each fill a little part of the tear distance rends in the heart.

I used to worry that coming home to my big, loud, in-your-face family would be scary for my daughter after our quiet months in Newfoundland, but thanks to the kindness and the enthusiasm of these women, my daughter associates new faces with love.

As I type this, I watch my daughter play on a swing erected especially for her in her grandmother’s back yard. She shrieks with glee every time she is pushed, and reaches her hands out to touch her grandmother’s face.  

I pray that this holiday season, I’m not the only one experiencing these treasured moments with my far away family.

Coming Clean

I’m about to come out of the closet and tell you something I don’t often admit.

I pay people to clean my house.

Feel free to direct your judgment towards me. Call me lazy, over privileged, or spoiled.

I choose to call myself smart and I dismiss any guilt that comes along with my decision.

When I was fifteen, I picked up one of my dad’s self-help books, a gem I still have, called Coach Yourself to Success: 101 Tips from a Personal Coach for Reaching Your Goals at Work and in Life by Talane Miedaner.

This wasn’t typical adolescent literature, and some of Miedaner’s tips like “Date your Spouse” or “Take a Sabbatical” clearly didn’t pertain to my moody, zit-covered teenage self.

But tip #14, “Hire a Housekeeper” resonated with me.

I was brought up to do chores and whenever possible do a job myself. I thought only really rich or very lazy people had housekeepers.

But Miedaner’s argument for hiring a housekeeper was a compellingly simple one: if you can afford it, and hate spending hours scrubbing things, why not delegate that task so you can direct your time and energy to the things you are passionate about?

According to the OECD Better Life Index, Canadian men spend on average 146 minutes per day cooking, cleaning, and caregiving and Canadian women spend an average of 248 minutes a day on domestic work as well. That equals six and a half hours! Think of what you could accomplish if you are able to reclaim a couple of those hours by outsourcing them to a local cleaning service.

I know a number of women my age who use a housekeeping service, but are completely mum on the subject, because hiring someone to scrub your bathroom seems like a shamelessly indulgent thing to do.

I experience this guilt too. I have two hands. I am perfectly capable of doing it myself.

But why should I feel guilty paying someone to clean my house, and not feel guilty paying someone to grow the food that I buy at the grocery store, or not feel guilty for paying a waitress at a restaurant to serve me food? Technically, I could do those things for myself too. How are these things different?

Maybe the guilt has something to do with the lingering effects of the term “women’s work” from a bygone era, or maybe it has to do with this era’s assertion that “women can do it all.”

Either way, our society disregards the value of housework. We have a tendency to assume that if there is a woman in the house, she will instinctively whip the house into shape in her free time.

Now, there is nothing I love more than a clean and organized home. I value the work required to keep it clean and organized so much that I’m willing to pay someone to do it, rather than do it poorly on my own during my precious downtime.

As soon as I was in a position to afford it, I started paying for a cleaning service.

The benefits to my personal wellbeing were astounding.

I became a neater person. It is not the job of the cleaners to organize my house. Before they can wipe down surfaces, those surfaces need to be clear of clutter. This forces me to steadily keep things in their place.

My house became cleaner than it would be if I cleaned it myself. This is because the cleaners use professional equipment that cleans more deeply and effectively than my pathetic excuse for a vacuum ever could.

I used the time I regained to work on the things I’m passionate about. I wrote, or read, or researched things I was interested in. I painted and built things. I pursued my dreams without being interrupted by the niggling desire to dust.

Now that I’m at home with my daughter full time, I’m even more grateful for housecleaning services.

I have more time to give to my loved ones. I use the time the cleaners are in my home to call my mother, or take my daughter to the library, or exercise my dog. I don’t have to spend the precious time I have with my husband cleaning. It is hard to quantify how much maintaining relationships with my loved ones is worth, but the small monthly fee I pay for my cleaning service feels like a steal.

Finally, hiring a cleaning service is my one way of taking extremely good care of myself. I don’t want to start playing a violin or anything, but being a stay-at-home mom with a husband that works long hours can be emotionally and physically taxing.

The $140 a month I now spend to get my house cleaned every two weeks is a luxury I’m loathe to part with.

Some people spend that each month getting their hair and nails done, going out to eat, paying for a gym membership, or buying cigarettes or alcohol.

I don’t.

I put that money towards the exquisite feeling of coming home twice a month to a sparkling clean house. It is like magic fairies visited and left my shower free of mildew and my baseboards free of dog hair.

That’s not to say I do nothing around the house. There is still the laundry, cooking, dishes, and other things that must be done. It is important to know how to clean a house. I would want to teach basic housekeeping skills to my children, so that they can live on their own in relatively clean state.  And if I needed extra money, the cleaning service is probably the first thing I would sadly cut.

 However, for the moment I take the following Miedaner quote to heart.

“The danger of cleaning your own house is that it may give you the illusion that you are accomplishing something when in reality your time would be better spent working on your big goals and dreams.”

So if cleaning your house doesn’t thrill your soul, and you have the means to get a housekeeping service, don’t let guilt stop you. Stimulate your local economy, use your time to do the things that are important to you, and leave the cleaning to the professionals!

Don’t worry. I won’t tell.

Published in The Clarenville Packet.

The Coming Winter...

Last winter, when I was about eight months pregnant, we let our driveway ice over something awful.

My husband was outside for three hours trying to break it up. Exhausted, he came in and asked me to come out and give him a hand.

I was outside for less than a minute, before our neighbors from two houses down appeared with their metal shovels (our plastic ones were making no headway).

“Don’t you look knackered!” my neighbor told me as she and her husband made short work of the ice.

“I should have asked you to come outside three hours ago,” my husband muttered.

Within ten minutes the four of us had the driveway clear.

My husband and I were grateful but embarrassed.

“Don’t worry,” my neighbor told me. “The driveway on the corner is iced over, too.”

I have a feeling ex-patriots are living there as well.

This was not the first time wonderful neighbors have helped us deal with snow and ice.

I can’t tell you how many mornings I woke up to catch the teenage son of our next door neighbors blowing the snow from our walkway.

We remember what it was like to be a teenager, and how helpful it is to have a few extra dollars to take your girlfriend to a movie, buy a video game, or save for a car. So we tried offering him some cash as a thank you. He refused to take it.

We’ve since learned our offer of cash is a huge Newfoundland faux pas.

Last December, we visited family for most of the month, and while we were gone our neighbors shoveled our driveway so the house would look lived in.

I attempted to show my gratitude by delivering baked goods, but apparently, this “tit for tat” reciprocation is also not appropriate.

So I have to admit, the coming snow makes me uneasy.

Without baking thank you cookies, or handing out Tim Horton’s cards, how do we show our appreciation?

“I’m thinking of purchasing a snow blower, just so we can participate in the early morning neighborhood snow clearing sessions,” I told one of my new Canadian friends.

“What will you do with it when you move back to Texas?” she asked.

Good question.

I imagined a small shrine in our Texas garage proudly displaying our snow blower, our winter coats, and a small sled.

Our baby, all grown up, looks at the device in wonder and asks us to tell her more about that strange phenomenon, snow, we once revelled in.

My friend dismissed this image with a quick eye roll.

“The next time your neighbors go out of their way to clear your driveway, just say thank you and stop worrying about it,” she told me.

“I’ll do one better, and publicly thank them in my column!” I said excitedly.

“You’re really missing the point,” she said.

Dear neighbors,

Thanks for all your help last winter! We appreciate your kindness and we are amazed by how effortlessly it flows from you. Please don’t get too mad at me if I show up at your door with brownies. I’ll try not to turn my oven on the minute you guys do something kind, but it is a compulsion that is hard to kick.

With love,

Jayme

Published in the Clarenville Packet