Lifestyle choices

Appropriate Song Lyric Thursday: Brother, Can you spare a dime?


My husband called me from work two mornings ago to let me know that AIG, the parent company who acquired the Texas company, VALIC, which holds one of my 403B accounts was tanking in a rather spectacular way.

A quick online asset check revealed that I still have money for the time being and another google search partially assured me that my particular type of account would survive a bankruptcy and that VALIC itself is considered to be one of AIG’s few real assets.

Still, it makes me wonder about my homeland and the worship of the unregulated free market, which seems in dire need of actual oversight and perhaps isn’t as “free” as the players at the top have thought it to be (we bottom feeders have always known there isn’t any such thing as “free”).

It also made me wonder how a person could pull the lever for McCain in five or so weeks. Perhaps its time Americans stopped voting their values and worrying about how they are going to clothe, feed and house themselves and just who – if anyone – is going to be looking out after them when they are too old or sick to do so for themselves.

I think Al Jolson may have sung the original but here is Tom Waits for those Wall Street types (and the people who they screwed in their wake).

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

Gorney, Harburg

They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.
They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits
Gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say don’t you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember?
I’m your pal.
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum!
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!
Oh, say don’t you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Say, don’t you remember?
I’m your pal.
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

A Week in Review: August 18th thru the 22nd


Globe and Mail writer, Christie Blatchford, was moaning about blogging and bloggers in Thursday’s paper, so in her honor I have decided to write the most banal of all blogging pieces – the update on my life.

I find “real” writers’ abhorence of blogs and their laments about the decline of “real” writing and journalism amusing. Newspapers long ago succumbed to the tabloidy tricks that placed selling above content. Print will never be able to compete with cable news channels and the Internet for timeliness of delivery, and when it comes to depth of topic, the political blogs have the edge and the freedom. Everything evolves. Just ask Darwin.

Besides journalists with blue-blooded leanings make lousy bloggers anyway.

So read along as I squander my finite word bank* by committing to the blogosphere my “most idle thoughts and mundane obeservations”**

My funked up mood from earlier in the week has cleared up thanks to a near complete abandonment of my schedule. No gym. Late lunches. Later suppers. No manuscript.

I just did as I pleased, and oddly it pleased me to reorganize the bathroom closet and search out the source of the fouler by the day odor in the cabinet where the dry goods are kept. The former is still awaiting final purge approval from the husband and the latter turned out to be a sack of something that had reached the gelatinous stage of decomposition therefore defying labeling attempts by both Rob and I.

I attended writing group on Tuesday evening and managed to be racially offensive to a potential new member of Cree descent. I didn’t do it on purpose but as I was explaining more of my novel to the group after reading the first several pages, I mentioned that one of the stories my main character tells is based on a family story. My grandmother’s great- uncle was the source of much concern when he was a toddler because a local native woman took quite the shine to him and hovered about whenever they ventured into town. The family, like most white immigrant settlers of the time, mistakenly thought she might snatch him. I could see the new member tightening as I told the story – even though I explained its origins and how it fit within my novel. I hate having to weigh words. I hate more that when people are offended they often fume instead of speaking up.

I finalized my writing course picks for the fall. Made out my yoga class schedule.

I prepared a new dish for supper.***

BabyD and I shopped. For her. She is quite the opinionated little clothes pony. While trying on a variety of pants, she jumped, pranced and wiggled – admiring herself in the full-length mirror as she did so. One pair of leggings left her standing completely still and not smiling. When I inquired about this, I was told,

“This pants don’t make me dance, Mom.”

A girl with her priorities straight.

While at the cute children’s clothes boutique, which is actually in The Fort, I overheard the owner mention she was looking for part-time help and I inquired. I nearly danced myself when she asked me to bring in a resume. Until I remembered that I don’t want to work for someone and that I dislike “service” work. Oh, and I am none to fond of the constant flow of humanity in the real world and that I find most things SAHM-ish incomprehensibly dull.

In fact now that I am sounding a bit more mommy-bloggish than I am comfortable with- let’s get back to me, shall we?

All deck work stopped this week. Rob and I are slightly fried around the edges and have just taken a step back from all the reno for this week. Sometimes one needs to surf the web and watch pointless movies in bed.

I got back to contributing at Moms Speak Up. Wrote a piece on Texas teachers being allowed to carry concealed weapons on the job. I won’t go into why this is the worst idea ever but if you knew some of the people I have worked with over the course of two decades, you would just take me at my word. I have yet to meet the educator who hasn’t uttered the phrase “It’s a good thing I wasn’t carrying a gun” at least once in their career – out loud and in the presence of witnesses.

Oh, and I have been reading. A novel.

Finally, I finished tagging my earliest blog posts from mid 2006 until about the time Rob and I started dating. Mostly very depressing widow stuff, but if that kind of thing interests you or you would like to know where I started my blogging journey, I am now easy to search under widowhood or grief. They can also be found under remarriage or long distance relationships or YWBB. Enjoy.

* Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated believes that writers have but a finite number of printable word combinations in them and to blog is to basically piss them to the wind.

** To quote Ms. Blatchford

*** That deserves its own paragraph. I am sure my husband can attest to the wonder of my attempting to expand my meager repertoire.

When a Man Loves his Woman (thin)


For a while I was reading Overheard in New York, a blog that asks people to send in the inane, amusing and scary conversations they overhear as they go about their own business in the New York City area. Although the novelty of it has worn off and I listen to Rob read it to me more than I read it myself now.

On our recent holiday in B.C. we had to stop at the Wal-mart in Kelowna. We’d left Katy’s swimsuit at her Grandmother’s in Penticton and because the resort we were heading to was literally in the mountains with not much for retail around, and had a pool, traveling on without replacing the suit was not an option. If you’ve ever stayed at a hotel or resort that possessed a pool with your kids, you know why.

Kelowna is a boom town built mainly on tourism. I have been through it only once and really could avoid it for the rest of my life without trouble, but we needed to use the TransCanada to get to Three Valley Gap, and it took us right through it. 

Rob waited with Katy in the truck while I ran in to grab a suit (and blister stick that Band-aid makes that I swear by when running or hiking). It was a good thing. Rob is a non-shopper and Wal-mart on a Sunday afternoon is like mecca for the consumer-set.

Back in the States, I would cruise the Target on a Sunday morning after reading the flyer. It was a ritual born of my pre-widowed days when a dying husband and toddler prevented me from having much contact with the world at large. Aside from the grocery, my only real outings every week was to Target and occasionally taking my daughter to the indoor play area at the mall. I have noticed that shopping seems to have replaced church for many people on Sundays or is their post-church, pre-lunch ritual. I always knew the church goers. They were the ones all dressed up as if they were going to a wedding. The boys in collared shirts and the girls in skirts or dresses. Conversely I always appeared to be on my way to the gym and Katy looked as if I would be dropping her off at a costume party along the way. This was in her “Halloween costumes as every day clothing phase”.

While this Sunday mass consumption thing has enriched the Walmart family, I am not sure it has been an enriching thing for people in general.

As I wound my way through the women’s clothing section in search of the girl’s section, I made a pass of the dressing rooms, scooting around a tall man who was standing directly outside the entrance to the women’s changing room.

As I passed I heard him say to someone who was in the change area,

“The suit looks great, honey, just gotta get on that diet now.”

Not certain I heard that correctly, I actually stopped and looked back at the fellow. He was beaming and nodding – encouragement? – at someone unseen. His arms were folded at his chest and he was clutching a couple of hangers with swim attire dangling. He was not one to give diet either. Obviously athletic at some point in his youth, or at the vary least involved in manual labor of some kind, he had that early thirtyish look of someone not quite unfit but definitely going to seed. Faint traces of a jowly future and the start of what will likely be sturdy love handles.

With praise of the kind this man offered his significant other, should low self-esteem, distorted body image and the eating disorder rise among middle aged women really come as a surprise?