Every now and then (ok, too often) I get a day where people feel the need to tell me off.

The first pair were buying scratch and wins and when they were finished they threw them down the semi-circular hole in the counter that enables me to lift up the hinged flap and open the little half door to get out of the booth. One said, after throwing her ticket down, "Is that a garbage?" "No," I replied. "You should really close that up, I bet a lot of people throw garbage down there." (it's about one a day, really.) I was dumb though, and had to say, "I need it to lift the counter, it's too heavy." She has to have the last word (or seven) "You should cover it with plastic, then."

Saran wrap, maybe? I don't know. She was quite annoyed with me, even though I was the one who had to go down on the floor to pick up her ticket.

So anyway. The day goes on. Another happy shopper woman comes, and requests a ticket. I print one out for her. It's apparently not what she wants. She starts pacing up and down, going, "No, no, listen..." and then telling me again. This time I understand, that she doesn't in fact want what she originally asked for. But, this is my fault, you know. So I make her the ticket she did want. But like the last happy shopper, she can't leave it alone. "I WANTED the COMBINATION, UNDERSTAND?" Not only do I understand, but she now has the ticket. She goes away muttering.

One more, just to make my day complete. She comes bouncing up with her friend. They're both a sort of woman I'm scared of, with capes and long greying hair and they're discussing herbal tea. Friend walks off, and scary woman moves over to the side counter with her enormous purse and says, "More room over here." The little old man behind her takes that as his cue to step up and order his tiny ticket, while she's going through her purse. So I quickly make his ticket, take his money, and turn back to her. She finishes going through her purse and says to me, very loudly, "I can't believe that old man pushed in front of me like that. And that you served him." I say, "I'm sorry," but she's not done.

Is it a full moon or something? She gave me, I swear, at least 3 minutes on how rude the old man and I were. How I should think of the customers, and ladies should always come first, and on and on.

Big raspberries all round, I think. Retail sucks.

Just so you all don't think I'm picking on the kids, I'm not. I admire their enthusiasm. I enjoyed the class for other reasons, too, but I hadn't anticipated the difference 10+ years would make on things. When I first went to University, everyone in all my classes was shit-scared of the professors, and would never have tried to argue...

University courses are better than TV. I am serious. I had so much fun today. The professor in the "Canadian Criminal Justice" class I hiked over to Burnaby for spent a fair amount of time making fun of how much all the kids in the class didn't know...

He asked, at one point, referring to the Raelians, "How many of you think cloning should be criminalized?" About ten or fifteen of them immediately put their hands up.

He pointed to a brunette in the second row, "Why do you think it should be?"

She replied, "Well, like, it's like, where do you draw the line, you know? Do you know what I mean?"

He waited a second for this to sink in, then he said, "No, actually, I don't have a clue what you mean. Could you be more specific?"

She tried again, "Well, like, who gets to do it? You know?"

Her friend came to her aid, "She means will it be elitist?"

He replied, "No, there will be universal access to cloning, Jean Chretien will make sure of it, because he'll be able to stay in office until he's ninety. Now do you still think it should be criminalized?"

She had nothing more to say. But others did. Everyone who was fool enough to try and answer one of his questions got the same treatment, and like those rats who get an electric shock when they go for the piece of cheese, they all kept going for it. It was way better than TV.

something creepy: every time I go to look at my tuition fee statement online (and I keep doing this obsessively because) someone has knocked another fifty dollars or so off the total. I was getting kinda paranoid about this, thinking up reasons, like that they had decided that I was really old and were giving me a senior's discount, or maybe a stupidity / we-feel-sorry-for-you discount when I remembered that all of the voluminous readings I did last term had to be returned, and that as I was leaving the returning place the cutie behind the counter said, "your refunds will be processed in a couple of weeks."

I'm baking potatoes in the microwave for lunch. There's no food in the house, but M's boss (the financial wizard) paid him on Wednesday and told him not to cash the cheque until Friday. I'm currently subsisting on leftover Christmas cookies and a box of Turtles my mother gave me.

Today at work I overheard a woman telling her friend that her New Year's Resolution was to buy more clothes. I think she must watch too much television. I mean, that's like an ad for the Gap or something. "Spoil yourself"...

I will be setting foot in a University lecture on Tuesday for the first time in almost 13 years. Wish me luck.

A few people at work today asked me what I did on New Year's Eve. I replied, "The kids and I watched Dick Clark and drank root beer." Which was only three quarters true. We did watch Dick Clark, and the kids did drink root beer. From wineglasses, their treat. I, however, drank the rest of the bottle of sherry my mother left.

Kids and I took the opportunity also to turn up the MuchMusic 24hr dance party and dance.

I should be doing the dishes. M has gone to Ben's, and the kids are pretending to clean the playroom.

I had a good day at work, today, mostly because at 10:30 one of my customers brought me sushi, and the mall closed early at 5 for New Year's Eve.

I guess I have to think of the word for 2003, now. I don't know. 2002 was freedom... that went well, don't you think? I think perhaps... Equanimity. It's my year, too, year of the Sheep.

Well, it went. Everyone ate, and now they've all gone to bed.

No, seriously, not a bad year this year. Apart from Jazz eating an entire Terry's Chocolate Orange and being heartily sick on the deck, and Rachel getting her sticky little head thingy stuck to the ceiling, no major crises. Tomorrow I have to go and do boxing day at the mall which should be an adventure, and at the moment I don't want to go to bed because I've eaten too much and I'm sure I'll have bad dreams...

when I say a big yam, I mean a really big yam. Every year at Christmas the grocery store fetches out all the decent-sized yams they've been hoarding in the back, and sells them for 49 c a pound. Seriously, they are the size of small chickens. A meal all in themselves. Who needs turkey when the yams are this big. And I have a beautiful butternut squash, and fresh brussels sprouts, I'm feeling quite pleased with myself. My father is bringing the turkey, I figure if he wants to roast birds he can knock himself out...

All this month I've been selling change to the couple running a kitchen implement stall just down the way from me at the mall, and today they brought me a present: red and green dyed popcorn kernels in a plastic bottle with a ribbon round it. It popped up real nice but the kids were disappointed that it was only the hulls that were dyed. We ate it, anyway, but now I'm wondering if I'll glow in the dark from so much dye.

Things that have so far been good about Christmas:

it's a small list, granted

teaching Ian the words to O Holy Night and singing it with him
gin (warms the cockles of your heart, whatever the hell that means)
a big batch of molasses raisin cookies in the cookie jar
the mall's closed until boxing day

that's about it. tomorrow I'm cooking a big yam for Christmas dinner. and making trifle. and probably dodging the missiles launched by my mother.

sometimes I think being an orphan is underrated.

Oh, ho ho, what a joy it is to work in retail at Christmas time.

Can you feel the sarcasm?

Sometimes I forget that although I want to move beyond little kid things, Rachel isn't quite ready. I took her to the mall today, because she came the other day and said, I want to go see Santa, and although the other two proclaim their non-belief loudly I guess they haven't convinced Rachie.

When we got there, there was a miniature ride-on railway, and it turned out that she wanted a ride on it. I said, without much heat, "Are you sure?" and the next thing I know I've paid two dollars and she's riding on the engine, ringing the bell, and there's another girl about the same size as her sitting in one of the carriages. The train probably would have seated about ten kids, but as there were only the two of them the operator (I think) gave them an extra long ride, and when she got off he told us there was going to be a puppet show, and of course, we had to go and see it.

It was actually quite a good puppet show, as these things go, and didn't turn religious until the last minute or two, and Rachel was totally into it, clapping on cue and shouting things and generally having a good time. Kirsten and Ian at that age wouldn't have been, they've always wanted to be more grown-up than they are. Funny how these things work.

Next was Santa. She hugged him and told him she wanted a skateboard. He, amazingly, told her he didn't think that would be such a good idea. We've been telling her that for ages, and have got her a gameboy. (which she also wanted)

Then she did her Christmas shopping. She bought everyone a stuffed bear, each one wearing a different colored sequin shirt. The cashier laughed when she said, "I'm done my Christmas shopping now."

On the walk home, she said to me, "I think his beard was sewn on." Maybe next year she won't want to go, but I'm glad that I managed to find time to do it with her this year....

It's raining, maliciously and unrelentingly. On the floor in the coffee shop, while I'm waiting for the bus, there's a piece of paper that I want to pick up and read, but don't. My mother phones with her annual list of what she wants me to buy. I dutifully write it down. Then she tells me all the same stories she told me yesterday when she called. Now I don't point that out any more, I figure if it makes her happy to tell them again, who am I to be a killjoy. She's been drinking, I can tell, she says she misses me. My mother only loves me when she's drunk. For a while. Then comes the stage where we're all being nasty, or so we're told. She asks me for the eighth time when my last exam is. "I've had it already, it was on Tuesday."

Those of our readers currently in Australia should know that they are always welcome here, at any time, for any length of time, and for any reason with no questions asked. Just thought I'd throw that in, in case decisions are getting made.

more of this... bizarreness

just think of how much could be accomplished with this energy... snowmen?

The dogs have discovered the joy of shelling and eating walnuts on my livingroom floor... M managed to cover the whole house in pine needles when bringing in the Christmas tree he got from the grocery store. I'm feeling strange again at the moment. My left hand has apparently left town for Christmas, and this afternoon I managed to fall down the stairs. Also I'm losing words again. I hate that. The ones my brain supplies to fill in the blanks are invariably wrong. And I don't realize it's happening, and get cranky when everyone falls about laughing. They're getting used to it, though.

At the grocery store, they have a young man outside guarding the Christmas trees. He told us politely that we needed to go inside and pay for a tree, then come back out and pick one. Inside, the cashier said, "We had to post someone outside because people were just helping themselves to the trees and not paying for them." Yup, that's the Christmas spirit for you.

If you ever read my diaryland ramblings, you'll perhaps recall that I don't really like Christmas. Every year I feel myself getting more and more intolerant towards the whole thing. I've mused in the past that it's something to do with working retail and being tired of everyone looking to shop themselves into a coma... I don't have anything against Christmas itself, I just hate all the fuss. It seems a recipe for disaster, so much anticipation. I think I'm against the preparations rather than the day itself.

Apparently my purchase in Vancouver (The Eminem Show) has confirmed me as the world's most bizarre mother in the eyes of my 11 year old daughter. "Did you buy it?" she asks, with horror in her voice, "None of my friends listen to him, Mum, he's a... disgrace." "I think he's funny," I reply, but she says, "I'm really worried about you..."

"somebody you'd give a lung to be..." --Eminem (I like the image of giving a lung, for some reason.)

Exam written. Successfully, I think. Choose three essay questions out of five and I'd anticipated three quite nicely. Good when that happens. Then a nice quiet journey in the dark and rain of Vancouver, and I'm home again with no need to study hard again until finals next time. I picked up my new course materials for the distance education for January, and looked it over on the ferry. Looks interesting. Going to bed now. Sweet dreams. :)

jodi, the other day, was talking about how sick-making it is when grownups talk gibberish to babies. At the risk of sounding smug, I never did. Never referred to myself in the third person. Never called anything a ba-ba or a soo-soo or a wee-wee. In consequence, I ended up with three kids who were interesting to talk to by the age of four. I remember a long and involved discussion about the meaning of life, and the possibility of reincarnation, with Kirsten before she hit kindergarten. We took Ian to a store one time and the cashier tried to talk to him in that saccharine silly voice, and he turned to me and said, "Why is she talking to me like that?" Luckily she was too busy cooing to hear.

On the flipside of this, though, is that my kids are always incensed when adults don't treat them the same way we do: like adults. Kirsten is having a hard time in school this year because she's got a girly-girl teacher who likes their art projects to be childish. Kirsten doesn't have the slightest interest in gluing rocks onto a paper plate to make a river bed for paper salmon. At the moment, she's feigning sickness to get out of something, I'm not sure what. I haven't asked. I figure, if she feels she doesn't need to be there, she's probably right....

tomorrow, my last final exam. I've studied too much, I think, I've been dreaming about court cases. R. v. Delgamuukw, and the impossibility of provinces extinguishing aboriginal title... wheeeee. The trip to Burnaby's a bit silly, bus to the ferry terminal, ferry to the Mainland, bus to downtown, skytrain to Production Way, bus to SFU... write exam, do trip in reverse. I managed the whole thing coming back on Friday in 3 1/2 hours... I reached Granville station downtown at 6:04, and the only bus that gets to the 7 pm ferry leaves at 6:06 from out front of the Hudson's Bay, so I had to run up four flights of stairs, and arrived breathless just in time to board the bus. Then the bus dropped me off outside the ferry terminal at 6:49, and they stop selling tickets at 6:50 -- they actually closed the door to the passenger walk-ons behind me. Since the exam I'm writing tomorrow isn't finished until 6:30, I'm thinking it won't work....