Catt's Blog
(Reprinted from the Stockton Gazette)
Take Two Aspirins and Call Me in the Morning
There was a time when I used to wish that I could just sit back and have everything done for me. No stress, no worries, no mom’s taxi, no endless repetitive household chores, not even the need to dress myself.
I recently had just such an experience and let me tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
You see, I was a guest at the Stockton Civic Hospital. A great place to visit, but you probably don’t want to live there.
I received my invitation at my son’s soccer game when an errant ball knocked me out. I’ve never been much of an athlete but, as a supportive parent, I showed that I’m more than willing to take one for the team, as it were.
I woke up in the emergency room and when I saw how glad they were to see me, how could I refuse their hospitality? Of course, their joy was not exactly unrestrained, and may have had something to do with the fact that I had finally gotten around to opening my eyes, but we can’t fault them for their persistence. I was then poked and prodded and asked so many questions that I began to think I should have crammed for the exam.
Oh, and that not having to dress yourself thing? Vastly over rated. Hospital gowns are not exactly haute couture, and they are very drafty. Not to mention totally lacking in originality. Everyone has to wear the same thing. It’s like belonging to some bizarre cult populated by serial exhibitionists.
The best part of the whole experience for me was being able to listen in on every conversation without appearing snoopy. But even that began to pale in the early morning hours when I just wanted to get some sleep.
So line up those household chores, give me a list a mile long of things I need to do and places I need to be. I’m champing at the bit.
And a word to the wise: be careful what you ask for.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
To See or Not to See -- Really, Really Well
When I was growing up, the one thing I envied most about Superman was his X-ray vision. I mean, lots of things are faster than a speeding train, and I could never envision a need to stop a bullet with my bare hands, but X-ray vision? Now that’s impressive.
Imagine being able to see right inside things! You could tell at a glance if your missing keys are lurking half hidden at the bottom of your bag, or if the sofa is disguising purloined coins and other long past their perishable date items, not to mention your kid’s missing hamster which, if left on its own for long enough, will eventually take care of those other perishable items so that you don’t need to bother. After all, small rodents have their uses too.
And why stop there?
Nothing and nobody in the entire neighbourhood would be safe from your roving, albeit deceptively myopic, gaze. Your casual conversation with Mrs. Jones could in actuality be an in-depth perusal of her wallet, the fillings in her teeth (attesting to her penchant for one too many bonbons), and the suspicious silicone implants which you have always believed to be a natural, if somewhat unfair, physical endowment.
Yup, this could take snooping on the neighbours to new heights.
If I had X-ray vision I’d probably even be willing to wear dorky Clark Kent glasses so that nobody would realise that I was actually in the process of evaluating their tacky decor and so yesterday furnishings.
But, snoopy as I am, I draw the line at using this as a cheap and boorish method of creating embarrassing, if true, gossip.
Even for a guy who changed clothes in a transparent telephone booth, this might be taking things too far.
Heroes just aren’t what they used to be. And then, neither are telephone booths.
But there’s still no good reason not to be naturally curious.
I sure am, X-ray vision or not.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
What's in a name? Plenty!
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
So you might assume, especially if you are an aficionado of the Bard. And that might well be the long and the short of it if you are named, perhaps, Bob, or John, or Ann or even, stretching all credibility, and many, many baby book names, Guinevere.
In our family, however, choosing a name for the incoming infant was less of a fun, yet serious endeavour to ensure a name that would not provoke antagonism, jeering and outright derision, and more of a lottery. The kind you can never hope to win.
That was more or less the case with my older brother and sister. They were called, respectively, Farout and Cosmic, which pretty well reflects upon my parents’ mental and psychological state at the time. I suspect there were some pretty significant doobies responsible in large part for these names but, since I wasn’t around at the time, I can only go by what I know.
And that is basically that, while I still have a stupid name, by all accounts, mine is still the most normal of the three. I was named Catamaran in honour of the fact that my folks were guests on just such a vessel when my untimely arrival occurred. Thank God it wasn’t a paddle wheeler or a dinghy.
Of course, we all altered our names to make them, well, less offensive. But mainly to avoid being beaten up on the playground. Schools provide such a barometer of societal accepted norms. Who wants to challenge that?
In a way it’s nice that so many people would give our concerns about our unusual names so much consideration that we would be encouraged to change them. Either that or risk losing an eye, or remain stapled to the playground equipment until the end of the school day and still have to explain to the principal why we missed class.
But that’s the wonderful thing about being parents, isn’t it?
You can give your child the gift of uniqueness.
How they plan to deal with that is their problem.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
With my Fingers Firmly Crossed Behind My Back
One of the basic tenets of society that we attempt to impart to our children from their earliest days is the importance of not telling lies.
This, of course, does not include white lies (“No, mommy is not eating the last cookie and spoiling her appetite for dinner. She’s just making sure it doesn’t go to waste”: sacrifice), misrepresentations (“And besides, that wasn’t a whole cookie. It was just a few crumbs”: thrift) and, of course, out and out fabrications of the truth (“It’s mommy’s new diet. You don’t want mommy to get sick, do you?”) Deflecting blame is always a good option when you’re caught literally with your hand in the cookie jar.
So, you may well ask, if truth is so bendable, why do we make the effort to force our children to abide by it? The answer is simple: self preservation.
Indeed, if you look at it that way, it’s easy to see the right for adults to play a little fast and loose with the rules. They make them.
And, besides, children have us to protect them. Who rushes to our aid with a few good falsehoods and believable excuses? We’ve got to think on our feet.
And what better way to do that than fib, flim flam and, in general, fabricate whatever is necessary to get you through unscathed? And, of course, full marks for creativity, too.
So, getting down to the whole nitty gritty of this article: I’m sick today and won’t be able to come in to work. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there is a major blowout one day sale at the mall.
And that’s the truth.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
Dogs are Man's Best Friend, But Cats Make the Rules
When Jack, my husband, first broached the idea of getting a pet, the concept was really appealing. I mean who doesn’t want love and acceptance from other forms of life? Something nice and cuddly to snuggle up to you in bed and lick your face when you awake. Something affectionate, something obedient and, yes, something subservient.
What we had in mind was a dog. A cute furry blindly obedient pooch with a happy disposition and a friendly manner. What we got was anything but.
What we got was Edgrrr.
Imagine a combination of gremlin, Sasquatch, and sabre tooth tiger, complete with fangs, claws and the intent to use them on everyone and everything, and you’ve got Edgrrr.
Of course, since this was our first brush with the feline species, we thought this was perfectly normal. And I suppose, for Edgrrr, it was.
The fact that Edgrr prowled the house at night looking for, and getting into, mischief (read: breaking things), and slept all day wherever he darn well felt like it, completely impervious to attempts to remove him, and with the added risk of being decorated with a full set of claw marks accompanied by some pretty rude language, didn’t mean we didn’t love him. Though it did make us wonder periodically why we hadn’t gone with our first option and gotten a dog.
So, in our own defence, we got another cat. Nothing says duel like the introduction of an interloper. Edgrrr now spent most of his time skulking on top of the furniture, lying in wait for Parker, who proved to be up for a little glove slapping and destruction herself. What had we done?
Three more sweet and gentle cats later, I can truthfully say that we’re on the winning side. Most of the time anyway.
Still, there’s something to be said for subservience. At least, that’s what I’m told. I guess we’ll never know.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
Does This Make my Butt Look Fat?
Diet.
Now there’s a rude word.
I have it on good authority from my friend Jilly that the ‘D’ word is no longer allowed to pass the lips of dedicated foodies, such as herself. That even the thought of this evil term raises goose bumps on the pleasingly plump, the outwardly portly and those who just enjoy a good nosh every now and then.
Who among us hasn’t carried a few extra pounds at some point in time?
Does this make us stupid? Less educated? Ill-informed? Or, as certain health clubs seem to presume, lazy?
Jilly has tried just about every diet out there since she was first introduced to the apparent socially unacceptable sin of corpulence when she was in junior high school. And while it may have been deemed polite to point out her body shape failings, it also sent her on a thankless crusade of endless dieting. It has defined her entire adult life. And for what?
So that she can squeeze herself into spandex outfits only an emaciated Barbie doppelganger would find attractive? So she can expand the reading material on her bookshelves to reflect her newfound slavish devotion to all foods containing the caloric value of a single blade of grass?
Not Jilly. Well, not any longer, that is. After all the years of yo-yo dieting with predictable non-results, Jilly is now ready to embrace her new mantra: sensible eating. And if a hamburger, French fries and chocolate milkshake should just happen to sneak in there from time to time, who’s going to rat her out?
Not me. I’ll be in line behind her.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
All in the Family
When my sister, brother and I went to live with our grandfather, it never occurred to us that we might be upsetting the apple cart, that Gramps might have something better to do with his life than raise a gaggle of unruly children whose idea of table manners meant not only eating with our fingers and with our mouths full but scrapping relentlessly over every morsel of food on offer. We were like a bunch of alley cats with a dead mouse, but not nearly so polite.
So when Gramps came to live with us, after an inglorious stint at the Sunnyview Rest Home, where his reputation was sullied not by what he didn’t do, but by what he did – which was basically to cause mayhem and trouble for fun and entertainment—I got to see the situation from the other end of the telescope.
While Gramps was savvy enough to realise that the blame for our terrible behaviour could not be laid entirely at our feet, and that our folks had a lot to answer for in the parenting department, I admit I failed to demonstrate the same standard of reasoning when he came to live with us.
Gramps was an adult, I reasoned. That meant he could pretty much look after himself. After all, we were providing the room, the meals, even the laundry service. What more could he want?
The answer to that is a LOT.
Gramps has been demanding, intrusive, cantankerous and, in general, a royal pain in the butt. But, having said that, deep down I have to admit that he has taught us many lessons (such as the fact that certain items should never be flushed down the toilet, or that you can indeed, if patient enough, stick things to the wall with oatmeal). And, most importantly, that love comes without strings attached.
In short, I would have to say that the best thing we’ve learned from Gramps is that blood is thicker than water.
But oatmeal works better.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
There's Always More Stuff
A place for everything and everything in its place.
How often have we all heard that? It’s one thing to agree with this sage comment, but quite another to actually follow its edict.
Besides, there’s another comment that I far prefer, one that
comic George Carlin built his whole routine around. One that I believe is way more apropos for most people. It suggests, quite correctly in my estimation, that we all just need some space for our stuff.
And, whoa, do I have a lot of stuff.
And you know the thing about stuff. It breeds more stuff. One minute you’ve got all your stuff neatly arranged and then some more stuff comes along. So you make room for that. The next thing you know, the stuff has multiplied and divided (kind of like multi-celled organisms; whether they multiply or divide, you’ve suddenly got a whole lot more than you started with) and created even more stuff. And science backs me up on this.
My friend Jilly is kind of a neat freak, so she doesn’t really get the problem I have with this accumulation of stuff. But then she’s single. She doesn’t live in a household full of people who each have their own stuff. How am I suppose to keep track of that? I’m having a hard enough time with mine.
I am encouraged, however, by that other popular line, the one that states, “He with the most toys wins.”
Looking around, I’d have to say I’d win hands down.
I’m not sure what the prize is but, with my luck, it’ll just be one more thing I need to find a place for.
(Catt Russell lives in Stockton with her husband and son)
Site content (c) 2008 Carol Wakefield. This site is property of Cyrus Wakefield Incorporated, so keep your grubby little mitts off it. For further information Carol can be contacted at: 32-40 Castle Rock Drive, Richmond Hill, ON L4C5H5, Canada. (This is the address to which you can send enormous globs of money.) She can also be contacted by email at carolwakefield@cyruswakefield.com, or by phone at 905-884-9060. Please don't call about the used mattress; we told you it had squirrels in it when you bought it.