Crapper

I haven't posted in forever, because I am trapped in reno hell. A small en suite bathroom gut and rebuild has been going for a month and is still not done. In the second week -- after approximately 20-ish work hours had been done (ie four short work days) -- I did some research and wrote some notes for this post.  But now I can't find my notes and they were good, smart, funny.

The notes were about Thomas Crapper -- you know that guy that everyone says invented the flush toilet. Everyone except the people who say he didn't. The ones that say some guy who worked for or was related to Queen Victoria invented it. I'm thinking that those people are monarchists. Brits and monarch-loving, royal-baby-bump-watching kooks. Because what Queen V had was essentially a pit privy in her palace. A lovely pit privy fit for a royal highnie that leaked noxious sewer gases and other substances, since there really wasn't any sewer system to speak of. Yeah let's give that guy the credit. He was a knight or a peer or something...

And then there were other cool facts like how Wedgwood and Royal Dalton made the early toilet bowls and decorated them angels and such. Only rich people had toilets. Poor people had chamber pots... and that reminds me of something: he's so poor, he don't have a pot to piss in...and now it makes sense. Oh yes, and if you did have a pot to piss in, you emptied it by chucking the waste out the window. Nice...fancy a stroll luv?

But along came Mr Crapper and he figured out how to stop the ceramic toilet bowls from leaking the flushables, invented a proper flush mechanism, and just about everything else that makes a toilet a toilet in the modern, no seepage or sewer gas, vein. So I say give credit where credit is due and let's not allow wikipedia or anyone else call the Thomas Crapper story an urban myth (that's right, some people are trying to sell that load of....

....it's too easy. Too cheesy. I just can't make that joke. It's beneath me.

Adult vs Grown-up

I got a new book yesterday: “Neil Gaiman’s  ‘Make Good Art’  speech”.  If you’re looking for bookshelf art, it’s a gorgeous book. If I can figure out how to post a picture, I will. Otherwise, you’ll have to go to the bookstore and get one – do that anyway, because it’s an amazing book. And it will take less than an hour to read it because it’s a speech and the best speeches are the shortest.  But you will want to keep it close by and read it again.  It’s a commencement speech.

Do you remember your commencement address? I don’t remember mine. It was law school, so probably a lawyer or a judge. But that’s a guess. I can’t remember a single thing about it. So it was probably a sober, grown-up sort of speech about excellence in the profession and some cliché about the road not taken. What I do remember is that we stood for O Canada. And again for God Save the Queen. I was going to stay seated in protest because I don’t believe in any kind of inherited power or status, but then I noticed my mother watching me as she stood and sang -- like a good ex-pat brit whose family had not one single university grad. So I stood. And the rest is a blank.

But, if the speech was like Neil Gaiman’s, I would’ve remembered every word of it:

“…nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it…”

“I hope you’ll make mistakes…”

Are you are wondering who the hell is Neil Gaiman?! And why does he want me to make mistakes?

“…If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, Coraline looks like a real name…”

That’s right, he wrote the book, Coraline. Which is way scarier than the movie and not at all for five-year-olds, so don’t read it to them at bedtime. Trust me. Just let them see the movie and do not leave their side. Because (1) it’s a little scary and (2) it’s an awesome movie.

Neil Gaimanis an adult, but he is not a grown-up. So his speech had lots of useful advice in it: Ignore the rules, the limits and ‘the way it’s always been’ and make fantastic mistakes. He is aware that bellies need to be filled, and bodies sheltered, but just don’t sell your heart and soul to do it. And -- I’m embelishing here -- people, love, and a healthy planet are worth more than things like great big cars, closets full of shoes, and McMansions with hot-glue-gun-scrapbook-rooms. 

Depending how you feel about that last paragraph, you will know if you are a grown-up or an adult. I am an adult. But not a grown-up. I like that last paragraph. Grown-ups will not agree. They are the ones who believe that late-slips make kids get to school on time. They make stupid playground rules like no skipping ropes in playgrounds because one time, somewhere, a kid got strangled by one. Which kind of reminds me of the pop-rocks and coke myth – you know, the kid who filled his mouth with pop-rocks and coke, held his mouth closed, and his brain exploded!?  Or the pop-rocks blew through the roof of his mouth and tore up his brain. I always wondered, why didn’t he just open his mouth? Grown-ups would ban pop-rocks.

The point is, there are adults: people who are over 18 years of age, have bank accounts and maybe even houses and kids, but they still think a lot of the rules of grade school are unfair and absurd, and that climbing trees is fun, candy is delicious and should be shared. And there are grown-ups: unbending, rule-making, non-sharing (because of ‘germs’) candy hoarders.

Adult vs Grown Up*. Sharer vs Hoarder. Choose your side.

*I am sticking to the word theme, as I announced last week. Today’s blog has been brought to you by the word ADULT  and it’s counter, GROWN-UP.

what this is...or isn't

I don’t like blogging. I don’t read blogs. I don’t tweet…don’t follow anyone…and, to be honest don’t really know how to do it.

But now I have a blog. For two reasons:

(1) Ken Nicol has one (www.every3point65.blogspot.ca). He is the most non-conforming person I know and he’s blogging every day for 365 days.

(2) I wrote a book. A memoir… ie a book about me. So, in a completely craven attempt to ‘build my platform’ so I can either sell my book or get an agent to do it for me, I am blogging.

I cannot promise regular updates, but I can promise there will be no tales of my daughter’s cuteness (even though she is way cuter than any of yours’); no recounting of my husband’s ineptitude or our arguments…because the Blogess does it better (okay, I’ve read a couple of blogs); none of my lame vacation photos or anything else that I think is fascinating, but totally irrelevant and boring when viewed by others.

And, possibly most importantly, I will not go all yogi, Yoda, guru on you – even though I survived a bout of brain cancer, had to re-learn all my motor skills, balance (etc) at the same time as becoming a new mom (the subject of the afore-mentioned memoir), had a near-death experience…and well, clearly in some way am constitutionally superior to just about everybody, I don’t want to lord it over you. Really. That's the kind of evolved person I am.

So, what will my blog about? Whatever I want it to be…because it’s mine.  Welcome.