Hostilities aren't stilled
through hostility,
regardless.
Hostilities are stilled
through non-hostility:
this, an unending truth.

Unlike those who don't realize
that we're here on the verge
of perishing,
those who do:
their quarrels are stilled.

- from The Dhammapada, Pairs.

happy tomorrow...

I should be studying. Or editing my term paper on crime statistics... so what am I doing? I'm making turtle cookies for the kids' valentine parties at school tomorrow. 22 for Rachel's class, 24 for Ian's class, Kirsten's class doesn't need any because they're having a Dance instead. With a capital D, trust me. Joeby has been hanging around in the kitchen trying to get his tongue up far enough on the counter to steal cookie dough, when he thinks I'm not looking. Inbetween times, I've been spelling names for the valentines. "How do you spell cock?" "Why do you want to know?" "Because I want to give one to the student teacher and his name's Mr. Hancock." "Oh, right."

why I love the internet. eggs anyone?

spent some time with Rachel this evening. She sometimes feels a bit lonely when I have to work or study a lot. we painted some pictures, with the lovely watercolors the poster child for financial mismanagement sent home with M for her, bright pictures of flowers and mountains. Then we read her new Winnie the Pooh book, 101 uses for a honeypot, which she enjoyed. After some supper, we had a bubble bath, which I think is a bit strange but she really likes, and while we were sitting in the bath she said, "Have you ever noticed something that you've seen before and all of a sudden it's beautiful?" And I said, "Yes." She went on, "Sometimes when I come up here and the incense is burning, the windows in here and the walls are so nice..."

She wants to read me a bedtime story now. Sometimes, yes, things that you've seen before can suddenly be beautiful.

A full day of writing about observational definitions of crime and the resulting statistics. I'm sure it'll be fascinating reading. Kids went swimming and then they and all their friends came back here, at which point I was pacing up and down trying to figure out how to end the paper. I still haven't figured it out, but it's not due for another ten days so I have time to play with it. (read, obsess over it.)

One statistic to think about... in 1994 in British Columbia, 33 pedophiles were known to have abused 2,055 children, between them. That's an average of 62 each, in a year... and they were boy scout leaders and daycare workers, not strangers hiding in the bushes at playgrounds.

Sometimes all the reading I do catches up with me. Last night I woke in a panic from a dream of being trapped in a lighthouse by a madman who was planning to extract my brain through my nose as I watched. I got up and wandered around the house for a while, not wanting to go back to sleep and re-encounter the madman.

One of my little old lady customers came today to play Keno. It's funny, but for the longest time I thought she was a bit senile, because I'd say things to her and she'd just be unresponsive. But if I smiled at her, (which I did a lot, getting no other reactions) she would always give me a big grin in return. So I figured, ok, she just doesn't talk. Today she came and suddenly started talking to me, telling me that she was having a much easier time of it now that she'd had her HEARING AID fixed.... And we had a good long chat, she used to be an income tax auditor, back when she worked, and she was telling me that she never thought of the numbers as being enormous sums of money, they were just numbers she was working with.

Tonight it's the Crimestoppers Mexican night. I was down there at 8:30 this morning to help decorate the auditorium at Beban Park, and I even got to put up crime scene tape... Somebody, and this is something I had actually wondered about, had neglected to see to getting a cash float for the cash bar, so I volunteered to sell them the change out of my safe at work. I love having a safe. Makes me feel like a tycoon.

So anyway, all the tables have been sold, and the thing is tonight, which is good, because there have been too many meetings, and I have to study for my midterms. Tomorrow.

At 3 am the small person climbing into my bed says, "I had nightmares, Mum", and I don't even really wake up, just lift the blankets and let her snuggle up. I wake again an hour later, she is nestled in my arms, like she used to when she was a baby, and it's a bit too hot because she is, after all, seven now, but I stick my feet out of the blankets to cool off rather than wake her up. In the morning, she seems fine, and I know that the nightmares are really about Pop-tart being dead, rather than the tornadoes and earthquakes her mind has conjured up for her

The smallest member of the household, Pop-tart the three year old mouse, died today. He was pretty old, as mice go, and his fur had started to fall out, despite the remedy (for a suspected case of mites) that they gave me at the pet store. I'm thinking that in the wild, when they get old and lazy, they get eaten by something young and quick, and I pointed out to Rachel that if she hadn't bought him he probably would have been fed to someone's snake. You know, when they're selling the mice 3 for $5 that they're not intended to be pets.

my dentist, as perhaps you will remember from my previous visits, is insane. In a nice way, but he's definitely insane. He flits around between patients, and talks non-stop while he's working on me, explaining exactly what he's doing and insisting that I watch in the little mirror. "You see that orange spot there, that's decay. That's what the bacteria do to you... I'm using the white filling material on this one, it's got little bits of silicone in it, but it doesn't last as long as the silver stuff..."

Sometimes I think I'd be better off without knowing.

What I like best about working on essays is the bit where they're mostly written and the rest of the work is just playing about with the words. I notice I use the word "people" a lot. Still, hard to write about the justice system without referring to human beings.

I'm going to the dentist tomorrow, with my broken tooth. I think they should just pull the whole lot out and I'll get a nice set of dentures. Stupid teeth keep exploding.

On Thursday, as if I didn't have enough to do, I have to go work a bingo for the school. It's so smoky, it makes me just want to buy a pack and join in. Then the next day I actually get nic fits, even though I haven't had a cigarette since 5:45 am Dec 7, 1999. 1,145 days, 16 hours, a few minutes... nope, not counting, really, why do you ask?

What Type of Villain are You?

mutedfaith.com /
<�>

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.