Magpie

I love me some sparkle.

My maternal grandmother loved costume jewellery.  Whenever I was at her house when I was little, she would let me sift through the necklaces and bracelets and clip on earrings and adorn myself however I chose.  I would pile six necklaces on top of each other and put clip on earrings not only on my ears but in my hair as well, with bracelets laddering up both arms.  I would put on one of her wide brimmed hats and one of her gaudily flowered dresses and prance around in my finery.  But the real star of the show, as far as I was concerned, were the sparkling paste jewels I adored.

My mother is not a fan.  Maybe it skips a generation?  My daughters aren't big on sparkly stuff either.

In no particular order, here are some of my favourite pieces from my own collection of finery.

This necklace was a thrift-store find, and for $25, I could not walk away from it.  There is one more loop on each side of the citrines surrounded by the white aurora boreallis square stones, and then it becomes a single strand of the white stones all the way to the clasp.  It reminds me of a very similar piece my grandma had, except hers was blue instead of amber.

I bought this brooch, with matching earrings, from a school friend whose mother sold Avon when we were in grade school.  I lost one of the earrings, sadly.

A friend bought this for me as a birthday gift, about fifteen years ago.  She found it at at one of the stalls in Kensington Market.

I bought this brooch off ebay, many years ago now.  The stones have a coating of blue aurora borealis, and the layers of stones make it easy for things to get caught on it.  It's less green in real life, but I couldn't quite capture the colour.  I don't wear it as often as some of my other brooches, but I always get compliments on it.  At about four inches wide, it's pretty striking looking!

This is much more modern - the lilac is painted white over the metal, and the leaves are enamelled.  I wear this all spring on a denim blazer with a pashmina.

I bought this peridot brooch off ebay as well - in fact, I think it was one of the very first things I ever bought online.  The green is very fresh, and it sets off the aurora borealis stones so perfectly.

These earrings were a local thrift store find.  They are clip on earrings, and they are very tight, so I don't wear them often, but after I photographed them, I found myself in front of the mirror, putting them in my hair and preening just a little.

I love collecting sparkly things.  Seeing them, touching them, and especially wearing them, bring me a little closer to my beloved grandma, who died when I was fourteen after a double mastectomy.

No danger of the sincerest form of flattery

Today was mostly a pyjamas and lazy day.  I was out really late last night with friends, slept in this morning, and felt supremely unmotivated to do much of anything.  Hello, internet!

I was reading a thread on Ravelry where the person in question had asked a question about beading a particular shawl.  I’ve only beaded one knitted item, so I clicked the picture to find the project and read the description of beading. 

One of the great things about Ravelry (and I was tempted to leave my typo as Revelry) is that you can click names and get taken to that person’s profile.  I scrolled through her projects to find the shawl, and was glad to see that she had a few pictures of the shawl from different angles on a dress-form, styling it by draping or tying it in several ways.  She had written up a complete list of her modifications, including bead weight and placement, and a short how-to of the beading method she’d used.

I favourited the project and then jumped back to her project page.  It took a couple of minutes to load, as she had over a hundred projects listed, and as I scrolled through, admiring her photography and  the styling of the various items, which were mostly accessories, I found myself wondering about her wardrobe.  The wardrobe not shown, the one the accessories had been made to augment.

Almost everything had been made in a solid or semi-solid colour.   I compared her projects to mine, which are RARELY one colour.  I gravitate towards the variegated skeins, affectionately known in my group of knitterly friends as clown-barf.   I do own some semi-solids, but mostly not. 

Not only were they solid or semi-solid, they were almost universally neutral.  There were a couple of pops of orange and chartreuse, but overwhelmingly gray and navy and cream and camel.   I closed my eyes and let my brain free-associate.  

Classic.  Minimalist.  Zen.   Restful.

I even found myself imagining the knitter, because she does not appear in her project pictures.  In my mind’s eye, she was well-dressed.  Expensively dressed.  The close-ups of her knitting showed even, well-defined stitches, lace that had been blocked hard to show the beauty of the pattern, an appreciation of something well-made, of high quality materials and workmanship.  I went to her flickr account to see more of her knitting photos, and her photography is the same.  The background is not competing with the item.  Cream walls, blonde wood surface.  The items that are photographed with jewellery or other items are also chosen for the simplicity of the accent.  Pearls.  A single leaf.  Such precision.

I couldn’t help comparing my own photos to hers.  In the summer, most of mine tend to be outside.  Yarn nested in a container garden, which almost certainly has at least one bright flower.  Draped over chairs, or with a smiling kid modelling.  There’s a chaos about them.  A lot going on, visually.  And again, multicoloured yarns make multicoloured items.

I found myself, momentarily, feeling inadequate in comparison.

Fortunately, that feeling only lasted a minute or two.  I remembered that both knitting and photography make me happy.  Colour makes me happy.  So does movement, and the unexpectedness of things. 

I love to look at the beauty of a Japanese garden, but I would rather spend time in the overgrown English cottage garden in my own backyard. 

I could learn from this person, but I’ll never be her.  And I’m okay with that.

Plain, ordinary Friday

Another end of the week.  Lately I've had an extra reason to rejoice in Fridays.  One of my colleagues works a short week.  Friday is the day she isn't there.

When I first started working at the firm, I was taken around to meet people.  When I was introduced to her, I gave her a big smile and said, I understand you are the office guru in PC Law, so I hope it's okay while I'm learning the program if I can ask a couple of questions.  I like learning from the best!  She glared at me and said, are you making fun of me?  She told me later that since no-one in the office liked her, she was convinced I was mocking her.  I said, no, I was told you were very good in a program I had to learn.  I just wanted to, you know, say hi and make you feel good, maybe get our first meeting off to a good start?  Oh, she said.  I guess we'll see.

She's very confrontational.  VERY.  Over four years, I've watched her alienate almost everyone she's ever come into contact with.  The guy behind the counter of the corner store where she goes to buy smokes - one day she doesn't have money, asks if he can stand her purchase to the following day, he says no, she flips out, I'm never patronizing your store again,what good is it to be a regular if you don't get anything for it.  The guy at the post office.  The guy at the bar and grill across the street.  The guy at the sports bar a block away. The process server.  The dental hygienist.  The hairdresser.  

After four years, I may have finally crossed over into the group she actively dislikes, instead of just distrusts (which would be everyone that she doesn't actively dislike).  

The building our firm is located in has been up for sale for about six months.  This has made her edgy, from feeling like she has to be nice to the real estate agents bringing people through, to the outrage she feels about the managing partner selling the building he purchased from the older, retired partner and therefore in her eyes not respecting the history of the firm, which has been at this location for more than fifty years.  

The building sale went firm, and she and the lawyer she clerks for went to view a new set of offices.  When they came back, I asked her whether she'd liked them, which was apparently the wrong question.  She flipped her lid, and what I got out of it, beyond the swearing and the suggestion that I was information-gathering to take it back to the managing partner to use against her, instead of, you know, asking whether she liked the new office.  She put forth her speculations about the move and related matters down as fact, and chastised me for being too stupid to know the truth when it was right there in front of me.  

I really don't do well with confrontation, but I had surprisingly little difficulty responding politely and calmly, and then telling her I was turning my back on any further gesticulations or loud remarks.  And then doing it.  Which sent her over the edge anger-wise.  She has not spoken to me, unless there is absolutely no way around it, for at least two weeks. 

Most of the source of her panic, I think, comes from the sudden realization that her area of the firm and mine will be under different roofs.  I will be at the main office, quarterbacking, as the managing partner calls it, while she will be at a satellite office, and she will be in the position of having to assume some administrative duties which would normally fall under my umbrella.  The managing partner, however, has decided that she is capable of handling it, that it makes more sense for her to handle it, and so I will have almost no contact with her at all.  As much as you might think that would suit her down to the ground, it has had the exact opposite effect.

With the exception of her husband, I get the impression that I am virtually the only other person in her life who generally suffers her outbreaks of hostility and disagreeableness with a degree of tolerance.  Moving to a different office, she will have to cultivate a new punching bag.

Today, in a solo day at the office, I have had classical music and productivity and absolute quiet. Not a confrontation or unpleasant word in sight.

I have to admit, I really looking forward to this being the norm for the week, instead of just Fridays.

My very first blog post ever

I was a very unassuming blogger when I first got the urge to write for an audience.  My sister-in-law (the one who defriended me, if you’re a reader of past posts, based on our differing opinions of parenting) was very internet-savvy, as the company she worked for was internet-based, while I was a stay-at-home mom, and my familiarity with the internet had more to do with stuff you did online.  The extent of what I was doing online was banking, ebay and the odd magazine website.  She was, indirectly, the reason I started what I thought of at the time as blogging.

She used to post pictures of herself, her husband, house and garden on her MySpace account, but as you may have gathered, was overly protective of her son, so she would email those to us.  The tipping point for her was a poorly-worded comment on one of her photos – her hubby rode a Harley, and they actually got married in Sturgis during the Rally one year, and she had uploaded some photos of the two of them.  As someone who fancied herself an almost-professional photographer, with a good eye for composition and a knack for candids, she was taken aback when someone posted the comment “SHOW US YOUR T*TS!” on one of her Harley rally photos.

Now, I’ve never been to Sturgis, and I’ve only ever ridden on the back of my dad’s Harley, but even I knew that the sentiment expressed is pretty typical for Harley riders, and not intended to target any particular female.  She, however, did not look at it that way, and immediately panicked.  MySpace did not have suitable privacy capabilities.  OMG, wherever can I ever feel safe posting pictures on the internets? *back of hand to forehead*

All of us subsequently received invitations to sign up for Facebook.  I did a bit of reading about it, and I kind of liked the idea.  A private place to share photos and exchange news – sounds great!

I signed up for a Facebook account over Christmas break, 2006.   As the family photographer for my branch of the family tree, I didn’t have a current photo of myself, so I made a mostly accurate picture of myself (or one that would have been accurate if I was a fifteen year old stick bug - similar glasses and hairstyle to mine, and wearing clothes I would wear if I was, as I said, a stick bug) using my daughters’ favourite website, Doll Maker, and started exploring the world according to Mark Zuckerberg.

It didn’t take me long to find the “Notes” feature.  I didn’t know how other people used it, but to me, it seemed like the perfect vehicle to post my scribbles to a captive audience of “friends”.  At that time, and into at least March of 2007, my friends list was about six people max, five of them being family much younger than me.  My very first blog post was written on January 5, 2007 entitled “Looking back on 2006...” with a companion piece later that day, “...and looking forward to 2007”.

Rereading the two, I have to roll my eyes at the second one and say, yeah, I’d probably still do that in exactly the same way.  I commented, among other things, about new slang that was reputedly about to become popular.  Hindsight matched my prediction – none of it did.  In the first one, I make some remarks on a few life events, including my love of the way I was changing my body via Turbo Jam, my regret for neglecting the garden I loved due to two dragged-out family deaths that summer, and the raw feeling I still had about the death of one of them, my paternal grandmother (who died on my son's fourth birthday), which I would also expect as the kind of retrospective I could still see myself writing.

I’ve reread this post a few times over the past ten or fifteen minutes, and there is something driving me more than a little nuts.  Here’s what I wrote, as a retrospective regret:

*Having to admit to myself that I don't try nearly as hard as I think I do to understand people & stay connected to them. For example, last year I lost someone I love, maybe forever, because I was only listening to what I thought she was saying, not what she meant, and reacted accordingly. Hopefully I will have a chance to right that wrong soon.

I have been racking (wracking? spent ten minutes trying to decide if by that word it’s better to allude to stretching/draining or torturing/punishing) my brain to remember who it is that I’m referring to within the context of this regret. 

I’ve scanned my digital photos from that year.  Almost a thousand.

I searched 2006 in my gmail inbox saved emails. A dozen or so over two hundred.

I’ve spent the last half hour trying to recapture the sense and flavour of things I would have done, either with my family or without, in that year.

I CANNOT remember who it is that I felt I’d loved, and lost.  I haven't got a clue who I'm referring to.

Since then, I’ve written 162 notes on Facebook.  A few have been cross posted here, although most have not, since “here” has only existed for a year.  My friends list has grown from six to over five hundred, and I feel genuinely indulged when I get comments or likes.  In some ways it’s easier, in some, harder.

Regardless, I’m still writing.  To those I’ve forgotten, to those I remember, and to those I’ve yet to meet.  

You inspire me.  Always have.  Always will.

The makings of a duster

A few days, maybe a week ago, I posted about a dress I picked up intending to make a duster, and the other dress I found later that was maybe perhaps the exact thing I was looking for to complete it.

Because of internet connection problems, I missed a couple of posts (because I declared my intention of one post per day for NaNoBloMo), and I thought I might catch one up by posting the photos of the actual dresses.

Here's the skirt of the dress that screamed DUSTER to me.  I can't get the whole dress into the frame against a plain background, so I decided to photograph the skirt, which is most of the reason the dress appealed to me in the first place.

You can't tell from the picture, but the points are actually uneven (different lengths and widths), and I love the lettuce edging.  It adds to the ethereal, floaty quality of the floral pattern, and the fabric.

This is the second dress.  I LOVE this crinkled satiny fabric, and the contrast edging.

A close-up of the hemline, which gives a better sense of the texture of the fabric, and also the colour.

And the two dresses together.  I took this one from the top, so less focus on the skirts.  I wanted to highlight the contrast edging of the second dress, and the way the colours are SO! PERFECT! together.

I have to admit, I'm a little apprehensive about cutting into either one of them.  Almost all of the sewing I've ever done has been from fabric off a bolt of fabric (where, if I make a mistake, I can, you know, buy more), or making something small out of something larger.

I know it's just fabric, and if I plan and measure and am careful, there's no reason that the very persistent image that's in my head of this beautiful long faery duster can't come to life.

It's just that first cut, you know?

I woke up to snow outside today

I live in Toronto, and we get snow.  Sometimes, so much snow that our mayor decides to call the army.  Well, a previous mayor.  Now, when people think of Toronto mayors, they think of a different kind of snow.

I shivered all day, and now I'm pretending it's not winter by remembering a few of my favourite moments from this past summer.

My daughter Maddie at the cottage.

My son Cal, during his very first swimming lesson, spontaneously deciding to do something cannonball-ish.

And my daughter Melanie, looking very, uh,  intellectual. :-)

Prompt: A blog post you wrote but decided not to publish

I was reviewing some old never-been-posted files recently and came across this one.  It's not complete, but you get the idea where it was going.

****
A love letter to my daughter, or why Mel almost got grounded from Facebook 

Dear Mel,

As you know, I've been a member of the Mean Moms Club since you were in kindergarten.  You and I would walk home with A and her mom, and the two of you decided early on that you had The Meanest Moms Ever.  Her mom and I used to joke about how we ought to come up with a logo and put it on the back of our jean jackets.  You were always pouty and petulant when you said it to me, and it always used to make me smile, because later you would whisper to me you didn't really mean it. While I've never expected that you wouldn't at some point join the generations before you who have played the time-honoured game, "My Mom is Worse Than Yours", I didn't expect that our smackdown would come about as a result of Facebook.

You know that over the years, especially when we were all still living in ***, that I made some unpopular decisions as far as parenting went.  Your nana and I repeatedly butted heads about my letting you go to the park by yourselves, or letting you stay there on summer nights until the street lights went on.  She was convinced I was just asking for the group of you to get abducted by pedophiles.  I was more concerned that you knew how to cross the street safely, because I thought, and still do, that on average it's more likely that you will get hit by a car than abducted or molested by a stranger.  Your auntie K actually defriended me on Facebook and in real life for the same reason...when your cousin came to visit us a couple of summers ago, I permitted him to go to the park with you, Maddie and Cal and the rest of the usual suspects.  I pushed back instead of backing down when she questioned my parental judgment.  I stood by my judgment, and held you and your siblings up as proof....my kids are bright, curious, courteous, they do well at school, they are well liked and well adjusted, so it doesn't seem like I'm making a whole slew of bad decisions.

I wanted you and your brother and sister to be able to play freely at the park with your friends without me hovering anxiously, calling out every few seconds to be careful.  To climb trees and have that dizzyingly good feeling that you were doing something daring, maybe even dangerous.  To go biking by the creek, knowing you would roll your jeans up to your knees and dangle your feet in the water and look for crayfish under the rocks, and then come home & swear you stayed on the path without me challenging you, because I used to do the same thing at the same age with my friends at the creek on the way to school or back home.  To explore, in a reasonably safe environment, the parameters that allow people to develop their own good judgment and to be able to think for themselves.  I did not want to keep you in a glass box, to restrict you so that when the time came when I could not confine you anymore, that you had already tasted some measure of freedom and had the tools to make good decisions without going too crazy.  

One of the conditions I put on you having Facebook was that I would observe and had the right to impose restrictions when I felt they were necessary.  Up until the photos a couple of weeks ago, I haven't.  I've wrinkled my nose a few times at the things you've "liked", winced at some of the language, but to me, those things were all within the parameters of you at your age...it would be stupid for me to be an oblivious prude and pretend that you aren't aware of the crude and the vulgar.  More importantly, those posts gave me some insight into the music you were listening to, the interests you have, the friends you interact with most regularly.  A few weeks ago I was concerned about some photos you and J had posted and tagged on her profile, and that was the first time over the course of the year you've had an account that I have had occasion to raise a red flag.  

When we talked about it, and if you recall, it was actual talking, without yelling or demanding, I explained why I felt the way I did, and you seemed to accept my reasons for feeling that way.  You complied with my request to ask J to remove the photos I was both uncomfortable with, she did so, and I was happy with that.  I was proud of the fact that while you had made what I considered a bad decision, you apparently recognized my perspective and corrected the problem.  I'm now guilty of one of the oldest crimes in the book...pride goes before a fall.

I was taken aback when I saw a picture of you two or three days ago, same flavour as before, tagged with your name.  I sent you a message on Facebook, please untag yourself, we've talked about this already, I love you and I can't wait to see you on Friday.  Your response was angry...what's wrong with the pictures, I promised if I didn't like something I wouldn't let her post them...not all of them.  Within a minute, another message dropped into my inbox, one which you did not intend to send to me, but to J.

"My mom is fucked in the head.  She pretty much hates the pictures we take."

I can't tell you I wasn't stunned and hurt, and angry, when I read your words about me, but I moved past those reactions pretty quickly, and made a decision about how to respond to them.  

My first and strongest reaction, which is a gut parent thing I don't expect you to understand, is the same emotion I had to defend myself against, both to your nana and to your auntie K.  I experienced the same thing pretty strongly this past summer, walking to the store to get ice cream and passing a couple of older teenage boys on their bikes riding in the opposite direction.  I watched them looking at you, lanky and slim and still innocent in your cutoffs and tank top,  with predatory and covetous eyes, and had to swallow the mama bear reaction...she's only thirteen, keep your eyes off my daughter!  All parents react this way.  It's part of the manual when you take delivery of your daughter.

Understand, I could remove your profile from Facebook without a qualm for that reason alone, because I don't want strange boys looking at you online and coveting you, or because I could work myself into a frenzy about how complete strangers COULD stalk you, but that's not realistic, according to my own longstanding beliefs.  And, it wouldn't help you understand why I need to make you think about this.

I always believed that letting you have a childhood unfettered by paranoid restrictions would give you a sense of independence, and I wagered, if I can use that expression, that that independence would stand you in good stead when it came time to standing up to peer pressure and refusing to give in to the demands of the herd.  I believed you would make good decisions when it came to teenage issues like smoking and skipping classes, sex and drugs, anything anyone could bully you into doing or trying.  

******
That was three years ago.

I had intended to ground her from Facebook.  No fanfare, no punishing post on her wall for her friends to read and gleefully post, "HAHAHA YOU GOT PWNED BY YOUR MOM!"  Just, a week off to think about our discussions, and for us to talk more.

I didn't end up grounding her.  We have always talked about internet safety, and my main issue was that she challenged me about the photos I objected to, saying no one would see them except her friends.  What I did instead was, on a computer that was not mine and therefore with no prior connection to my own Facebook account, in front of her, set up a brand new user account, let her pick the name, and then looked her up to see what her public settings were, what was visible to complete strangers.

To say that she was shocked was an understatement.  Seeing what she thought of as some fun photos she had let a friend had taken were not, in fact, anywhere close to private, because of her friend's privacy settings.  The friend in question was someone I would have preferred my daughter not to hang out with, and with an oblivious dad in charge, I felt really helpless to prevent things from going from bad to worse.  

I could have lived without the super-provocative poses, or the set of pictures featuring my thirteen year old daughter in a bikini in the snow, draped over the friend's brother's motorcycle with her finger in her mouth.  I could definitely have lived without the friend encouraging her to smoke, or cut classes, or that it would be more fun if my daughter dropped down to hang out with her in some of her applied-level classes as opposed to in the academic stream.  The part that really sent me over the edge was the day she tagged Mel in a post saying they were"going down to the creek with a couple of grade twelve guys, to...you know", with a smirky icon.

There was a happy ending of sorts.  Mel recognized, without my having to spell it out for her, that her friend was bad for her, as much because she wouldn't take no for an answer as because she did things I didn't approve of and didn't want my daughter participating in; that while fun, kinda-sexy selfies are totally okay with me, the ones J was tagging her in for the whole world to see weren't.   

More importantly, she understood WHY.

Grounded, then, but in a better way.  The way I always hoped she would be.