I had a birthday a while back. A milestone birthday, in that it ended with a zero.

So today I was heating water to make a cup of tea. As the water heated, I moved quickly through the house to find my cup, so I could drop another teabag into it. I had to be quick, because I'd set the microwave for a minute, and I wanted to have my cup ready when it beeped. I knew which cup I'd been using all morning... but it wasn't in any of the usual spots.

Bah. Hell with it. I got a clean cup and dropped a tea-bag in, just as the microwave beeped. (Timing!!)

And when I opened the microwave door...

there was the cup I'd been looking for.

Full of tea. Hot tea. A full cup of tea, which I'd been re-heating, as I'd left it steeping on the stovetop a little too long, and it had gotten a little cooler than I prefer.

Steeping, because I'd made it, as I always do, with an electric kettle. I have never once made tea in a microwave. Not only is it an enormous waste of energy to boil water in one of those things, the times I've drunk tea made this way at someone else's home, it makes the tea taste weird.

(Yes, it does. Does too.)

But in my addled and distracted, soon-to-be-senile, post-milestone brain, I'd managed to morph "re-heating tea in mug in microwave" to "preparing fresh cup of tea in kettle".

Oy.

At a Christmas potluck last night, Matthew points to one dish among the many crammed onto the long table, groaning under its calorie-rich burden. It's a colourful dish, dark green and white, aromatic with curry and ginger.

"Look, dear. You should have some of that. It looks like just your kind of thing."

"You called that one right, love... It's the one I brought."

I love that man.

"I recommend... walking around naked in your living room..."

"Thanks, Alanis. I'll do that." It seems that at sixteen, Emma approves of in-home naturism. "Though it would help," she muses, "if you lived alone."

"I'll say. It's happened now and then that Matthew and I will be sure we have the house to ourselves for a while, and decide to make out downstairs, and then someone will knock on the door. Last time, we had just -- just -- gotten back upstairs when Alex (her youngest stepbrother) walked right in the front door."

Emma blinks. "Alex? When was that?"

"Last weekend."

"Ew! I'm not sitting on that couch any more, ever again!"

Mwah-ha. Teenagers are so predictable sometimes. And what is the point of having these predictable, so-conservative bodies around if you can't push their buttons, just a bit? I grin at her.

"How do you know it was the couch? How do you know we didn't use the dining table?"

"EW! You DIDN'T!"

I let my grin grow wider.

"EWWWW!"

She pauses mid-gross-out as the initial revulsion fades and a different thought strikes her. "But at least wood wipes up better than upholstery. I don't have to worry about sticking my elbow in the wet spot."

She grins back as I shout with laughter.

Yup, she's her mother's daughter.

"People don't know how to title things," the youngest grumbles as she plays with her iTunes. "Look at this. Someone's given me 'Fun, Fun, Fun' by the Beachboys, and they've..."

I join her. "...only capitalized the first word."

"Yeah!" she nods. "It's not a sentence, duh, it's a title."

I am so proud.

If you head upstairs after dinner, returning to the kitchen half-hour later, do not expect me to respond with cheerful gratitude when you say, "Are you done the dishes already? I was going to offer to do them!" For, even though I believe you are quite sincere in this, I am not a mind-reader to leave them for you without hearing your intention spoken aloud, and now I am only more annoyed that I did the dishes when I could have been doing something else.

Just sayin'.

Family myths. We all have them. You know, "Oh, sis is so [insert trait here]", "Brother is the [trait] one." For years my mother -- my entire family -- always passed the gravy boat by me, based on my preschool loathing of the stuff, despite the fact that at every holiday gathering in my adult life I'd been grabbing the damned thing back and liberally dousing my mashed potatoes with its delectability.

We have myths in our family. I'm sure there are some I buy into without even realizing it's a myth, but there are others I watch with some bemusement. I don't necessarily say anything; many myths serve a useful and empowering purpose... but myths they remain.

I've even used myths. Shortly after she'd learned to read, my middle step-daughter was finding this whole 'literacy' schtick hard-going. Reading was difficult for her, and, being the contrary little cuss she was at that age, she was resisting mightily. Add to that a mother who sees time spent 'with your nose in a book' as time wasted, and the girl was well on her way to being functionally illiterate.

Enter devious me, weilding the parental tool of the Family Myth. Every time we saw her even glance at a book, Matthew and I would start perpetrating the myth: "There she is, reading again! That girl always has her nose in a book!" (Only in our family, that was a good thing.) "Lizzie's such a reader, just like her dad!" "It sure is nice to have such a book-loving family!"

And it worked. In very short order (two months?), Lizzie (and all of her siblings) bought into the myth. Lizzie was A Reader. And, perceiving herself to be a reader, so she became one, and the myth became a reality. She is still the child most likely to have a book on the go, the one most likely to bring a book in her backpack against those empty moments.

(Aren't I brilliant?)

So. Let this stand as proof that I have nothing against the family myth, providing it's a positive thing. What bemuses me is how people buy into things that are patently false. It's very weird.

We have a bunch right now, surrounding the dog.

-She likes men better than women. (She does? Who believes this? Everyone in the family but me and the dog, evidently...)
- She has a particular fondness for the youngest step-son. (She likes him, sure. Just like she likes everyone. Male and female. She's a friendly little critter.)
- She has a most particular fondness, a tremendous bond of adoration, for Matthew.

It's odd, this family tendency to slice up and allocate the dog's affections. While the first one totally confounds me -- I have no idea where it came from, or on what it could possibly be based -- the other two have some basis in reality. She pays more attention to my youngest step-son because he pays more attention to her. However, she pays him no more unsolicited attention than she does anyone else.

And that last one?

Well, she greets Matthew like a crazy thing when he walks through the door: leaping up, licking his face, yodelling. She does not do that to me. She does not do that to the children. This much is true. She does not do that to the rest of us because we don't let her. I trained her within the first month that she was not to jump up on me, and so, when I come through the door, she does not jump up on me. The children did the same. Matthew, however, loves the jumping, and so permits (even encourages) it. And now the fact that she goes banzai when he walks through the door (and a more muted form of banzai when the rest of us do) is read as the dog loving him more intensely.

Am I annoyed by this? No. Nor will I ever, ever do anything to dispell the myth. Indeed, I encourage it.

He often travels for work. When he is gone, she'll walk up to his side of the bed, put her chin on it and sigh. She takes his slipper into her crate, and sleep with her nose in it. I make sure to tell him these things. I do not tell him what I know from the children: She does these things for me, too, on the far rarer occasions when I am away for a day or two.

Some months ago, you see, Matthew was mulling over his current condition, and concluding that Something was missing. He wanted more social contact, he knew he needed to get more exercise, to get out of the house more. He's a depressive sort, and he felt the need for a source of pleasure in his life. (I know. Living with me was not enough to put him in a state of perpetual bliss. It's an astonishment to me, too.)

He considered a few options -- join a book club, take a course, volunteer -- but what he decided in the end was to get a dog. A dog would get him out of the house, would give him casual social interactions with other dog-owners at the park, and would give him a source of affection and pleasure.

The dog has done all that. Daily walks, chat with other dog-owners, and a living, loving creature to take pleasure in, something to bring a measure of joy to his (mildly) depressive soul. It brings me great satisfaction to see his genuine need met in such a simple, wholesome, loving way. If part of his joy is predicated on the myth that she loves him above all others?

He can have that.

Observation:

When, in a confict, someone says, "Not to belabour the point, but..."

They are belabouring the point.

Moreover, they know it.

My daughter is in the shower upstairs. I know this not only because of the hiss of the water though the pipes in the kitchen, but because the locus of her music has shifted. Her iPod dock has moved with her.

She is fifteen, and it is 7:33 on a Saturday morning. (She heads off to work in an hour.)

Thanks to the wonder that is iPod, she is never without her music. Dock in use in her room and the shower; earbuds in at all other times.

She is not quite as bad as her brother was at that age: I'd pop my head in his room to check that he was in for the night, and see him sleeping with the earbuds in. And yes, diligent mother that I am, I'd check the volume levels. I knew from experience how much tinny drizzle I should (and should not) be hearing, seeping from the leaky earbuds. Generally I turned it right down on principle...

It was because of the brother that I made a rule: earbuds in only ONE ear in the house. One gets tired of speaking to non-responsive lumps lost in their private world of sound.

Their older sister was similar, though her technology was a mere Discman.

Just as I catch myself shaking my head in dismay -- do those kids never need quiet? does she not need to ease into her day? -- I realize I was very similar at the same age. With a radio and LPs. (Though, unlike my own children, I never had vocal music on while I did my homework. One cannot do physics or memorize French verbs while singing along, or at least, I never could, and I can't listen to vocal music and not sing along. So I listened to classical. Mozart. At 15. I'm so proud.) Still, though I was a quiet kid, I hadn't the drive for quiet that I do now, a near-physical need for it.

I hear Emma's music come on in the mornings, I tense up. It's not that she has it unduly loud. She's essentially respectful of the other residents. It's louder than I'd like it in the enclosed space of my bedroom, but it's reasonable.

But it's still noise. As I sit here, there is already the hum of the fridge in the room next to me, the more strident buzz of the dehumidifier in the basement. The water heater drums mildly. I'm enjoying the tick of the keyboard and the mild patter of rain outside, the occasional swish of tires down the wet street, but those other noises, the fridge, water heater and especially dehumidifier, I could live without. They intrude.

Add the bump, bump, bump of Emma's music, and my shoulders start to rise.

It's curious, this need for sound we have when we're young. It's not just that kids use their music to establish their identity, though of course they do, but that they seem to need to be immersed in it at all times. Is there no need for peace? No desire to be unstimulated by anything but their own thoughts?

Seems not. Seems that desire comes with maturity, mostly.

And quite honestly, when I consider that in another four or five years I will not be receiving a morning thud, thud, thud on my eardrums, I do not get wistful for times past, I get eager for times to come. Bring on the empty nest!

A peaceful home. The only music the music I choose, when I choose.

And I'll get a different damned dehumidifier.

There's something soothing about plunging your hands into hot water. More so in winter, when, at least for me, the intial sensation often sends a rather pleasurable tingle down my spine and into my arms -- if it's particularly potent, right down to my calves. No idea what that is, but I like it.

The tangy citrus scent of the dishwashing liquid as it enters the sink and churns to a froth under the pouring stream. And that froth! White and clear, yet somehow studded with blue and red and green and turquoise iridescence. You could get lots in the colours.

Swirling the wet cloth across ceramic plates, working it along the tines of a fork, those are tactile experiences, experiences to be savoured. The undulation of the cloth in the water -- visual sensuality. Even the sounds, the muted rattling of cutlery under the water, the tap of china against glass bring pleasure.

And then, pulling the dish, clean and dripping, from the water, watching the water curl across its surface and away, the steam rising, the plate newly-minted and angled perfectly amidst its peers in the drying rack.

If you think about it the right way, it's a glorious medly of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.

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I tried.

I really, really tried.

But I still hate doing dishes.

I knew it would hurt. I'm not an idiot. I picture the procedure (as described in fairly graphic detail by a helpful girlfriend), and I just know, you can't have that happen without pain.

However -- and here I haul out that tried-and-true test of female fortitude -- I have had three babies. More to the point, three labours, and even more to the point, all of them without drugs. Sure, they hurt, but I was up for it. I can deal. I am focussed, I am stoic, I am capable. I don't like pain, but I can manage.

So yeah, this was going to hurt, but I knew I could cope.

So I lie down on the table, wearing nothing south of the navel but a pair of disposable panties. (Indeed. Who knew those existed?) And the sweet young twenty-year-old sets in to deforestration.

It's not so bad. The wax goes on, warm and almost soothing. The wide strip of cloth is applied. I press where instructed, to hold the skin taut, and -- FZZT! -- the cloth is ripped off, taking a decent amount of foliage with it. And sure, it stings like a bugger. My skin is burning. It ain't pleasant, I'm not having fun, but it's nothing I can't deal with.

And that's as bad as it would have ever been, had I just been getting a "bikini wax". But, brave, gallant fool that I am, I was not stopping there. For I was getting a brazilian.

Why? Because I am a generous and considerate woman, that's why.

See, we've just passed an anniversary, my sweetie and me. Our first, if you're measuring from the wedding. Our twelfth, if you're measuring from our first kiss. (Yes, we married on the anniversary of our first kiss. Isn't that so sweet and romantic? It was he who made note of the First Kiss date, not me. I'd never have been more specific than "sometime in the spring, wasn't it?")

So, because he is such a wonderful, sensitive man, and because I am still very happy to be with him, I thought to commemorate this occasion in some way. In addition to the small piece of sculpture I bought him, more of a desk ornament than anything, I thought I would get him something more personal, more ... intimate.

Given how many highly satisfactory hours the man has spent (all told over the years) nuzzling about down there, considering how he gets far more up close and personal with the lady bits than I've ever managed -- more so than any of the various medical personnel, even -- I thought I'd buy "him" a wax. And no half-measures here. We're doing the full monty. Nothing between him and the object of his affection but ... air.

The sweet young twenty-year-old bends to her task. "Press here." "Just once more, then I'll move over there." "Push down here, please." "Just once more for this spot." "Gee, those ones are stubborn, aren't they?"

Gradually, she moves in from the outer edges. Gradually encroaching on ever-more-sensitive tissue.

And when she gets to the crux of the matter? When she's into true brazilian territory?

"I'm going to use this kind of wax now," she chirps, indicating a different pot on the table beside us, "because it's gentler."

She daubs it on, taps it to test for consistency, gets a good grip, then ...

I passed out.

KIDDING!!

I only WISH I had.

There is nothing, people, nothing more painful than what happened next. There is no pain on earth to match it.

Okay, I exaggerate. We all know that. If you've had an arm gnawed off by rats, if you've had toenails removed without anaesthesia, if you've had smallish portions of your body seared with hot irons, you've experienced worse. But in the ordinary run of things painful?

Nothing can match having goodly sized chunks of hair ripped from the edges of the lips of your labia. (Too graphic for you? Too bad. I lived through it. That's far, far worse.)

I stared at my focal point. I did the labour breathing -- the third stage, high-level, I'm-going-to-die-if-this-doesn't-ease-up-in-12-seconds breathing. It helped. I know it did, because I stayed there on the table. I did not, as flashed through my mind at intervals, beat the sweet young thing unconscious with the magnifying mirror and make a break for it.

I did not even scream, though at times my head jerked back and my chin jutted to the ceiling as my eyes rolled up and gasps, ohmyGODithurts gasps squeezed past clenched jaws.

And, when the waxing is finally, finally over, when she puts away the pots and the wooden spatulas and the bits of cloth, just as you're starting to think you have indeed survived... she goes in with tweezers. For the hairs that didn't come out with TWO kinds of wax. That is, the REALLY, REALLY STUBBORN ONES. Tweezers.

My labour analogy?

A brazilian at its epicentre is worse than all but the very worst moments of labour. In fact, if a brazilian lasted as long as the average labour, women would go insane. Totally mad with pain. And possibly never recover.

If labour hurt as much as a brazilian throughout its entire duration, women would certainly never have a second child. Not without heavy, heavy drugs.

I am not having a second brazilian without heavy, heavy drugs...

On the way home, shaky with a combination of pain, adrenaline and sheerest relief, I phone my girlfriend, she of the graphic description. Who has had, I now note, never had a brazilian, but only the far gentler bikini wax. Because when women experience something we need to TALK ABOUT IT. At length.

I inform her that when the esthetician left the room and I had a look ... there were a fair number of stray hairs. 45 minutes of unpleasantness which included 30 of sheerest agony, and there is STILL HAIR DOWN THERE!

"So did you call her back to finish it off properly?" A reasonable question. I paid an exorbitant amount of money for the procedure; the damned thing should be done right.

Did I call her back in?

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND???"

"Call her back in"... Good lord.

Matthew is delighted. And very solicitous of my comfort, and beside himself with appreciation for my self-sacrifical agonies. I have earned many, many, many Wife Points.

So there's that.

And I will never, ever do that to myself again.

The End.

Great excitement in the Irreverent household today! Bekah and I finally got around to trying out the cookie press we bought at the Pampered Chef party a month ago.


(Note to self: Do NOT take enthusiastic and social teen to party at which one might be tempted to spend outrageous amounts of money on luxury goods. Enthusiastic and social teens are so damned appealing that it is very hard to say "NO. No, we will NOT be purchasing the cookie press at $41.50, and we will even more so NOT be purchasing the $40.00 deep dish pie plate, even if it IS in a very pretty cranberry and even if you DO love pies and even if you WILL make pies yourself -- AND clean up the kitchen, mum, really!!!" It is very difficult to say NO to all that sweet and sincere enthusiasm without looking like a total wet-blanket drip of a mother in front of a room full of completely besotted adults. "Isn't she cute? My 14-year-old is never so sweet and enthusiastic.")

So we haul the cookie press out from under the counter. We mix up the recipe included with the kit. We ooo and aaaah over all the different shapes.

We learn a bunch of stuff, too. We learn that you need to set the press flush against the cookie sheet. Flush. And press the handle once, and only once. We learned that it is wise to scrape the exterior surface of the disk after every couple of cookies. We learned that if you tip the barrel up, you will get air bubbles in the batter. We learned that when you change disks, you need to tap the barrel to get the dough to settle against the disk again.

We learned so very, very many things!

Then we set the three dozen cookies into the pre-heated oven. And within three minutes, we have learned another, VERY important cookie-press lesson. When you are preparing cookie-press dough, you may not (NOT!) substitute margerine for butter:


Ahem.

I hear the giggles as I walk by her room. Bekah is chatting on Skype.

(She has no idea of the luxury of those limitless calls. Limitless long distance calls -- limitless because they're free. What will be the luxuries her children enjoy which bemuse her? What awaits my grandchildren?)

She is chatting with her friend Philippe. Philippe was the very likeable young man who spent a summer with us as an exchange student two years ago when he was 17 and Bekah not quite 13. English-speaking 17-year-olds from Ontario went to Quebec and New Brunswick to improve their French; French-speaking youths came here in exchange. A lanky young fellow, with an exuberant mop of red curls, Pilippe's soft-spoken easy-going ways and good humour endeared himself to the entire family.

Bekah, it seems, endeared herself particularly to him.

They've kept in touch through emails and IM, and most recently with the free phone calls. The conversation just flows between those two. Hours and hours of it. He's held her hand through a boyfriend and a breakup; she gives him (very sensible) advice re: family relationships and the appalling lack of greenery in his diet. I don't know what all else they might talk about over the hours. I'm not told.

I am of two minds about this relationship. I am not entirely comfortable with the amount of time she "spends" with him. Obviously, sex isn't an issue, which is a relief to me, because she's only 14. A physically mature 14, a very sensible and emotionally stable 14, but still fourteen. But still, she spends a lot of time on this one relationship. I worry some about balance in her life. I keep an eye on her, making sure that other activities and relationships are not suffering as a result. They don't seem to be, but I keep a cautious maternal eye on her.

On the other hand, and this hand weighs heavily, I am very pleased that one of the most significant relationships in her life revolves entirely around conversation. They have no shared activities. They have shared interests, but, separated by a thousand kilometres or so, they can't do them together. The can't watch movies together. They do occasionally play internet games together, but not often.

What they do is talk. And talk and talk and talk.

Yes, I do haul her out of her room. She eats meals with the family, chores get done, homework is accomplished, she spends time every day chatting with me. But they talk. Every day.

I recall an occasion when her father came to visit me over Christmas break. We were in our early twenties, maybe even in our late teens, and had each gone to our respective families for the holidays. But ten days was too long for our love-struck hearts to be separated, so he drove over to visit one day.

After visiting with my family, we were desperate for some time together, so we went for a drive, chatting idly about this or that thing out the window, and ended up having a coffee in a roadside diner somewhere. We sat on opposite sides of the table ... and the conversation shrivelled. We had nothing to say to each other. Nothing.

He held my hand. We smiled at each other. But we had nothing to say.

Why did I go ahead and marry this man, when conversation is so desperately important to me? Well, at the time I didn't know that. I didn't know at lot of things at 19 or 20. It took twelve years of a conversation-free marriage to teach me how my soul craves conversation. Not just mindless words, words, words tossed out, cluttering the air -- though there's certainly a place for casual, idle, and functional chatter. But conversation: a steady flow of interest in the other, the exchange of ideas, the building-up of new ideas as a joint creative enterprise.

To me, that's the bedrock of a relationship. Fundamental, foundational, indispensible.

And for twelve years, I lived without it.

I married him because I was young and stupid and "in love". We loved each other! Conversation would come, right? I didn't realize that "in love" would not create something that didn't exist. I didn't realize that "in love" would parch to dust and blow away in the desert of silence and strictly-functional communication.

Bekah, in her room, chatters away. There is no lack of conversation with those two. Their relationship is not, as mine was with her father at the same point in the relationship timeline, built primarily on hormones and the physical.

So, though the amount of time she spends with this one friend does cause me some concern, the quality of the relationship reassures. If he is going to become someone significant in her life -- someone even more significant -- they are going about it the right way.

But I'm still glad he lives in New Brunswick.

Six things about me. Meme from John.

1. I have claustrophobia. I have trained myself so that I can manage elevators, if the trip's not too long, and I can manage the toilets on trains and planes, but caves? Can't manage 'em for love nor money. (I've tried both: a bit of naughtiness completely scuppered by a panic attack; and if even that can't get me in there, bribery can't even begin to be effective.)

2. I used to play the piano with reasonable competance. I loved Chopin's waltzes in my teens, but now find them a bit lush and overblown. Bach's preludes and fugues were my adult favourites, but, sadly, life encroached and it's been years since I've played properly.

3. Every morning, I sit in front of a SAD light for 45 minutes. It keeps me from plunging the depths in the winter. I loathe winter. Loathe it. Unfortunate, that, given where I live.

4. I used to scoff at the idea of a soulmate. If such a thing existed, most of us managed just fine without one, but I had serious reservations as to the existance of such a thing. That was my stance on the matter for years. Until I met mine.

5. Although I've been happily monogamous for some years now, I am generally ambivalent about the practicality of monogamy. I certainly don't think it's neccesary or essential.

6. I am left-handed.

It started with a not-quite-dry bath towel.

I'm changing careers. This is not news; it's been ongoing for a while now. I work from home, and will continue to do so; only the source of the income will change. Well, that's not true. A lot will change, most of it for the better. Or so I hope.

In the meantime, however, I continue with the old job and squeeze the new one into the cracks. As new income increases, old job will decrease, but for the foreseeable future, I'm holding down a job-and-a-half. And it's going to get worse.

Matthew was heading into the shower when I realized that his towel was still in the dryer. (He does the meal planning and grocery shopping; I do the laundry. Both of us view this as equitable. Most days.) I popped down to the basement to retrieve it. Because it was very cold, it was hard to tell if it was quite dry or not. But when I'd flapped it a few times in the warm kitchen air, it was clear: still damp.

Our dryer is functioning at about the same level of efficiency as the fridge a month before Christmas. It needs replacing, but we do have laundry lines in the basement, which I used for years, with the dryer there for emergencies only. This year I've gotten lazy.

I hand Matthew his towel.

"I'm afraid it's still a tiny bit damp, but it'll do." He nods, easy-going sort that he is. "I could be hanging things, like I did last year, but there's so much clutter heaped up down there I can't move around."

My voice cracks on the last words, and, to my astonishment, I'm falling apart. Some men would grab their towel and head for the hills at this point, but Matthew is made of sterner stuff. He doesn't take me into his arms for a "there-there" pat on the back. He just tips his head, indicating his listening ears.

And I'm off. Stuff I didn't even know was in there.

"I hate using the dryer all the time, I hate using all that electricity when I don't have to, but I can't even reach the lines because of the clutter, and I hate the state the basement's in, and I know I keep saying I'll get to it, but I just never do, and everywhere I look there are lists of things that I should be doing and I'm not, and I just feel so inadequate. I know I could be doing it, but I'm disorganized, I'm not using my time effectively, I procrastinate..."

I wind down to a halt. My throat feels shredded with the tension, but I'm not crying. I don't cry readily, not for personal stuff. Too busy analyzing and thinking it through. I save tears for fluffy-cute kittens on TV commercials and tragic stories of children shredded by wars.

He's a patient man, Matthew. He knows when to listen, he knows when to speak. "You're not inefficient at all. I don't see that as procrastination, I see you being strategic with your time and resources properly. There isn't time to do it all, so you choose what's most important. That's not inefficient, that's not disorganized: that's just smart."

Now I'm sobbing, but it's the good sort, the shudders that break up and release the tension, and I'm in his arms. My sobs shake both of us, and Matthew, patient, loving, perfect Matthew, holds me until the storm runs its course.

Wonderful man. He's right, of course.

And that damned basement? We'll sort it together. When there's time.

I get up early. Really early. Five, give or take fifteen minutes, generally. I do this because I like the quiet, the peace, the solitude. I could, as so many people do, get that at the other end of the day, but that doesn’t work for me because a) I have teenagers and b) I fall asleep.

The younger teen is in school, so she has lights-out at ten, but I’m well gone by then. Staying up later would be work, a monumental effort probably involving toothpicks in the eyelids, not to mention copious amounts of caffeine — which sort of takes away from the “peace and tranquility” aspect of it all.

So, morning it is. It’s dark, it’s quiet. I get some reading done, I might catch up on a couple of emails, but mostly, I think. About my work, about my goals, about challenges to overcome, about things that give me pleasure and satisfaction. I think and take notes, writing always having furthered my thinking. An interactive process between me and the paper, because yes, this form of writing is always done with pen and paper. Much as I love my keyboard the rest of the day, the glaring white glow of the monitor is an affront to this very quiet time; the blanket of stillness around me is best suited to — no! requires — the soft scritch of pen over paper.

The feeling that the whole world sleeps while I have this hour or two of solitude is immeasurably precious to me. Which is why the sudden loud hum from the kitchen came as such a jolt. Why, when it escalated into a choppy screech, I found myself standing staring at my wailing fridge. A sharp vending-machine smack to the front didn’t help. Nor did the swift kick to the side.

Clearly fridge abuse was not going to help. The noise was the fan. Of that much I’m quite sure. Not from the rear, but from the freezer compartment at the bottom. The compressor?

The noise is growing louder. Were I upstairs in bed, I’m sure I’d be hearing it, and I briefly wonder if the whole house is about to be woken by a screaming appliance. But no. No because while it increases in volume, it decreases in tempo. It’s getting slower. And slooower … and now the noise is lower, more grind than squeal … and s.s.s.l.l.o.o.o.w.w.e.r.r.r.r…

And …

it stops.

The fridge gives one final, convulsive shudder, and is no more. Silence thuds against my eardrums. It has given up the ghost. Let us have a short moment of silence for the faithful, if occasionaly leaky, refrigerator .

Everyone else in the house is still sleeping. It’s just me and the corpse. I can’t leave it like that. It’ll soon start to stink.

It takes five minutes to unload the freezer compartment into the basement chest freezer. Another five to put two plastic grocery bins full of produce and condiments at the chill end of the unfinished basement. They should last a few days down there. Certain dairy products are on shelves in the back porch, where I hope they won’t freeze solid.

It is only as I turn to head back upstairs for the seventh and final time that I notice, in the velvet early-morning silence that I so treasure, a semi-regular drip … drip … dripdrip … drip. There’s water dripping into the laundry tub! And it’s coming from … the ceiling. The unfinished basement ceiling.

Look at it! A steady rivulet, about a foot wide, a glistening swath along the underside of the kitchen floorboards along which pulsate half-formed droplets, sparkling domes of water gliding along the stream, which, when they reach the joist about the laundry tub, accumulate sufficient weight to form into a drip… drip … dripdrip …. drop.

It appears to be coming in from the outside wall, but that’s crazy. It’s well below freezing out there. There’s no ice dam, just a huge mound of snow. I know, because I was out there, at ten to six in the half-lit morning, digging. Just to make sure.

At a more decent hour, I call the contractor. The very wonderful contractor who fixed our porch last summer, the man who earned my undying gratitude for a) doing it quickly b) doing it mostly on budget, (even my pathetically small budget, which had caused other handy types to stagger away in fits of derisive laughter) and c) dealing with the eight-seven gazillion carpenter ants that emerged when a rotten board was removed. (Said carpenter ants being the little surprise that caused the “mostly” in the “on budget” sentence.) I particularly love him for doing this all while I was OUT OF TOWN. I didn’t have to actually see one single carpenter ant. And that, my friends, is a great way to spend your honeymoon: NOT seeing seething, pulsating swarms of carpenter ants dripping in writhing clumps from the ceiling and onto the porch deck.

So when I hear his voice on the phone, later that day, after dawn has broken, I am instantly reassured.

“Turn off the water to the house,” he tells me. “Open the lowest and the highest faucets in the house. Wait an hour. If the drip stops, we know it’s a pipe that’s probably frozen and burst.”

As indeed turns out to be the case. Mr Wonderful Contractor Guy will be around tomorrow morning, with his friend Mr (we hope) Equally Wonderful Plumber Guy to find and repair the leak. I am hugely relieved. Faced with the choice of a few hundred dollars for plumbing versus ten thousand dollars a foot for foundation work? I’ll take the plumber. Well, yes, really what I’d like is for the leak to magically fix itself, free of charge. But I don’t think that’s one of my options.

So, you can see it’s been an eventful day here at casa Ilona. With no water (which means NO FLUSHING) and no fridge, I think I’ll be cancelling the party I had scheduled for tonight.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have some phone calls to make. Because tonight? Tonight I won’t be hosting a party — I’ll be buying a fridge!! And not flushing. Urgh.

We don't have a lot of excess money. We live in a small and lovely house in a nice neighbourhood. We aren't suffering, but with eight children and huge child support payments going out (and teeny ones coming in: Matthew pays, quite literally, over ten times the amount I receive), there is enough for basics and no more.

Since we don't run a car and this is North America, some would say we don't even have the basics.

Though I do sometimes get weary of the constant balancing this against that -- "You got new boots last month, so, no, you can't have a pair of dress shoes this month" -- I don't tend to feel that way.

This is partly the fiscal autonomy we have. We each put a set amount into a joint account to cover monthly expenses; we also each have a private savings account, allowing us some discretionary money that needn't be accounted for to the other. It may not be a lot, but it is private.

It's mostly, however, because Matthew and I are so much in synch on what must be purchased, what is optional, and how funds should be allocated.

Last weekend we went to a favourite gallery for a reception. The featured artist is a friend, and we have a couple of his pieces. (Which have, I add with some satisfaction, appreciated markedly since their purchase.) In fact, his work has increased in value so much that nothing we liked was possible for us. His silver lining is our cloud...

In the basement rooms, however, we found a piece by a different artist, which we loved. The gallery, as we have cause to know, has a very generous monthly-pay plan. We looked at the piece, went away for dinner, came and looked again, went home. Two days later, Matthew came home with the piece. Because we bought this, he won't be buying the rowing machine he's wanted for months, and I won't be getting these boots for a while yet.

But the art, ("mixed media on wood") sits over the dining room table, and every time I see it, I get a rush of pleasure. It looks good at all times of day; every light level brings out some new aspect of it; there is no time at which it is less than appealing. To us, at any rate, which is all that matters.

(I did try to get a picture for your possible curiosity, but my camera, she is a light hog. No flash, the image is blurred and you miss the gorgeous subtle textures and much of the colour; with flash, a huge white glare distorts part of the glossy surface, no matter which angle and distance I took. So you'll never know what the fuss is about. My regrets are sincere.)

Another man would have insisted on the rowing machine. Another man would have been sullen and pouty because he couldn't have both. (The man I used to be married to would have bought both things he craved, neither of which would have been anything I wanted, and let me fend off the bill-collectors.)

I feel such gratitude that I am in a relationship with someone with whom I'm in such basic, effortless harmony. Not that we don't annoy each other bytimes, but we don't abrade.

And now we have another lovely piece of art for our mutual delight.

Bekah's iPod was stolen from her locker a couple of weeks ago. She hadn't secured her combination lock sufficiently it seems, and a brisk shake was enough to loosen it. (This, at any rate, is the theory of her two older siblings, who have more recent experience than I with high school lockers and combination locks -- which, evidently they're not making as well as they did when I was in school ...)

So, the girl has no iPod. She loves, loves, loves her iPod. Listens to it all the time. Is never without her music. So, not surprisingly, she asks for one for Christmas. The new one. The iPod Touch. Which, having seen one owned by one of Daniel's friends, is a very snazzy gadget indeed. One can see the appeal. Hell, seeing the thing has me, who has never owned any kind of MP-3 player, wanting one, just for the extreme coolness of the thing. So sleek, so well-designed, so very clever.

However, a little quick research tells me it costs $330. Before taxes. Which puts it solidly outside my Christmas budget. I might be able to manage that for one, but not for all three of them. Bekah suggests a compromise: "It can be my only present, and I don't need a stocking." I try to picture a Christmas with one gift the size of a thickish credit card and nothing - nothing! - else. Besides, I've already bought stuff, so it's too late anyway.

We sit on my bed and have a Serious Talk, in which I explain why her suggestion, generous as it is, doesn't really resolve the difficulty, and how I just don't feel I can spend that much more on one child than I would be on the other two. I ask if she has any other ideas. At this point, however, she is mute with despair. Possibly anger. Definitely mute.

"Well, love, I'm going to go do the dishes now. You think about it, and in a little while, we can do some brainstorming." Perhaps I got a nod, but perhaps that was just her head wilting a little closer to the bedspread.

As I do the dishes, I suffer. I want to buy the damned thing for her. I have a couple of ideas, in fact, as to how it could be managed, but I'm keeping them to myself for now. I don't want to leap in and solve this problem for her. I want her to face the reality that satisfying this desire of hers would result in injustice to her siblings. I want her to wrestle with it.

But I don't want her to suffer! And I have a possible solution or two! And I could just run up there and fix it for her right now! And I sternly tell myself to Knock It Off, and I finish the damned dishes. And tidy the kitchen. And clear the dining table. And sweep the floor. And mess about with bits of paper on the end table. All the while one ear is cocked to the upstairs bedroom. I don't hear any slamming of doors and drawers. I don't hear any sobbing. Is this good or bad?

Just as I am about to pop with maternal angst, I hear her on the stairs. She swings round the newel post to face me. Her face is not blotched, though her eyes are a bit puffy. And she is smiling.

"I have decided I don't want the iPod." And she proceeds to lay out her new idea for her Christmas gift, a clever, creative, grown-up one. (Which I will not describe at the moment, so as not to distract the flow of the narrative.) And the iPod? "I can save up for one and buy it in the new year. If I get any Christmas money, I can use that towards it, too."

Imagine. A fourteen-year-old, denied her heart's desire, does not scream and rage, does not slam doors, or hurl things about her room, nor even stomp on the stairs; she does not rail against the injustice and hate me for not making enough money and her siblings for stealing resources that might otherwise be hers. Instead, she faces facts, changes direction, and comes out with a different, creative solution.

I am so proud of her.

Every couple develops their own little rituals, little domestic patterns of behaviour, patterns that you very often scarcely notice, but which give comfort to both: the comfort of consistency, the comfort of familiarity. Two people moving in the comfortably worn, familiar, soothing patterns of mutually satisfactory domesticity.

Little rituals that you scarcely notice unless one of them drives the other mad.

Every night, when I get undressed for bed, I put such items as require it in the laundry basket, conveniently located on the floor next to the shelves on which our clothes are stored. Such items as can be worn again are hung or folded, and put away. Then I wash my face, read for a bit. If Matthew is in bed and awake, there's usually ten minutes of snuggling and talk before we turn out the light. Sometimes the snuggling becomes more ... focussed ... and takes considerably longer than ten minutes, but we'll fade to black on that. It is not the point of this post.

Every night, when he gets undressed for bed (often, though not always, at the same time as me), Matthew leaves his clothes in a heap on the floor beside the laundry basket. Then he brushes his teeth, reads for a while. (Ditto the snuggling and talk and fade-to-black as per paragraph above.)

I have no idea why his laundry has to spend the night on the floor. Usually (though not always) it makes it to the basket in the morning. I have asked him why; as I have utterly no recollection of his answer, it is clear to me that it was neither convincing nor compelling. However, whatever it was, it is both convincing and compelling for Matthew, because, happy in having explained all to my satisfaction, he blithely continues in this irksome habit. Not wanting to disappoint his cheerful self, and, because generally he does put it all away in the morning, I have decided to let it go.

So what if the socks'n'boxers'n'shirt'n'jeans sit in a rumpled heap in the dark overnight? No skin off my nose. Once it's dark, I can't see them. Once I'm asleep, I'm unaware of them. It's a small thing, a fleeting thing, an insignificant little quirk.

AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!

But here is my dilemma: To object to such a small thing would be petty, and I deplore pettiness. I will not admit it in myself, nor, worse, display it to the man I love. The nightly freeing of the laundry is a very small thing. And he has his reason -- whatever it was -- for this little domestic Chinese water torture ritual.

Despite all my nobler inclinations, despite my efforts to rise above it all, it still irks me. Whenever I pass by the laundry basket -- sometimes to see a sock, or even the sleeve of a shirt draped, in tantalizing potentiality, right over the rim! (Why not all the way in? Why? WHY?) -- it irks me.

So I've come up with a solution, brilliant in its simplicity. Every morning, when he is in the bathroom, I take from his pocket the largest value coin in there: a loonie or a twonie. So far, in two weeks of employing this new strategy, I have accumulated close to $20.

Now when I see that heap o'laundry in the evening, instead of an itch of exasperation, I feel a small rise of smug vengeance, knowing that in the morning, he'll pay for the privilege of parking his clothes outside the designated area.

It's a system that works for both of us. One of those little domestic rituals that evolve between couples, enabling us to rub along with minimum of abrasion, a ritual and a pattern that brings comfort and satisfaction to both.

And it's not petty. Nuh-uh. Not at all.

You scored as Hot, You are Hot, you scream and are wild, people love doing anything sexual with you. Hot 94% Soft 88% Exciting 75% Violent 44% Sweet 25% Wet 25% Awkward 6% Shy 0% What is your sexual style? created with QuizFarm.com

Aw, gee. I'm blushing. (Because I'm just so shy...)

(44% Violent? Okay, so I'm not averse to a few friendly swats between lovers, but 44% seems a bit, er, enthusiastic.)

"Where did this come from?"

Matthew stands in the entry, holding a clear plastic bag.

"It was going out with the garbage. It should have been leaning up against the bin. Why?"

"That's where I found it. I mean, where did it come from?"

The item in question, inside the bag, is a crocheted blanket. My grandmother would have called it an afghan (I'm not sure why). It's a hideous affair, huge granny squares made of something thick and scratchy, more twine than wool, in a visual assault of orange, brown, green, and yellow. I found it in the back of a storage area in the basement, where it's sat for a least three years, and am sending it to its just reward.

"It came from the storage room. You know I'm decluttering down there." He pauses. I can tell he's waiting for something more from me, but lord only knows what it might be. Communication is a tricky thing. I'm saying words, he's saying words, pretty simple words in this case. We each know what the other's words mean, but somehow, I can tell, meaning is not attached to the words we're tossing at each other.

We pause in befuddlement.

Then he says the words that make the whole thing clear.

"This is the blanket that my granny made for me when she was dying."

Oh.

Good Lord.

And he found it propped up against a garbage tin in the drive. The blanket his granny crocheted for him as she lay dying. Oh. I feel a little sick.

"Good heavens. I didn't know that. Well, I guess we won't be throwing that out then, will we?"

And I take it from him and give him a hug. We have a cup of coffee, we chat of this and that. A couple of hours later, he heads up to bed.

Leaving me staring at this thing.

Which his granny made for him on her deathbed. We can't throw it out. (Damn, I wish he hadn't spotted it!)

But it's still ugly. Really, really ugly. (Utterly out of the question to toss it out now.)

And scratchy. And heavy. (How could she lift the damned thing on her deathbed? Maybe she smothered to death? Oh, good god. How crass of me. I am should be ashamed. No, I am. Sheepish, anyway.)

Oh, dear. (If he hadn't spotted it, it would be gone before breakfast, and no one would have been any the wiser.)

Oh, dear. (Because, after all, it's been in a basement storage room for three years now, and I had not a clue what it was. Nor did he know where it was. Or miss it, apparently.)

I return it to the storage room.

Where it will stay.

Sigh.