Writing: Articles and fiction written by this and other citizens.
I like my vacations unstructured and relatively inactive. Apparently, this is abnormal.
Feb 15, 2001
Why is it that vacations are usually more stratified and planned out than a standard work week? It would seem, logically, that a vacation should be a restful time of leisure and calm. So why is it that vacations often cause as much stress as filing your federal taxes? People seem to have this concept that on a vacation, you need to be constantly Going Somewhere and Doing Something. It’s just wrong to sit still and be quiet for longer than three hours — then, by Mum And Apple Pie, you’d better be off to your next event, or you’ll waste your vacation time! But isn’t that the point of vacation time? To be still if you want? To go places if you want? To do nothing if you want? To waste it if you want? Or are we all so structured and strictured that we can’t function without some kind of externally imposed routine?
In the modern age of automation when people might work ten or twenty hours a week,
man for the first time will be forced to confront himself with the true spiritual problems of living!
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
I remember vacationing in Panama for Christmas 1991, during the time when the Panama Canal had been given to the Panamanians but the Canal was still being managed and run by American personnel. My then-boyfriend and I flew down, stayed with his parents for ten days, spent three days at the San Blas Islands (I recommend that anyone who visits Central America go scuba diving off the San Blas Islands - it’s gorgeous), and then flew home. I didn’t really care about seeing the native market, or buying gold jewelry, or heading into the mountains to browse at a craft fair. I just wanted to walk around, relax, and spend time with my boyfriend and finally see the place where he grew up. I vividly remember looking out the bathroom window every morning and seeing the blue-black clouds from the morning rains, and the bright green hills in front. I remember the flight to the San Blas Islands, and how small the island looked when we came in for a landing. I remember meeting his aunt and cousins at a family dinner. I remember meeting the marmalade cat from the next yard over, who came into their back yard every afternoon and purred like he was trying to loosen his skeleton. I loved my time there. Apparently, though, many of them thought that I was unhappy because I didn’t express any interest in doing these various things.
My mother was hit by some bug — I believe it is commonly called "competition with the sister". Every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, as well as a few other days each year, the two families would gather at one house or the other for a family evening. I dubbed these "Happy Family Memories": Thou Shalt Be Happy Or Else, God Dammit. My cousins heard about my term, and called these little get-togethers "Hideous Family Memories". There was inevitably tension at these get-togethers, but it was the weeks of planning that preceded the events that were the true hell. Mum would gradually become more tightly wound (as would everyone in our house, and probably in theirs, too), and she’d start getting snappish. Then came The Day Of Reckoning. Get a decoration theme ready. Dress nicely. Set the table with the nice dishes. Clean the whole house. Clean it again. Okay now, this is family. They’ve seen us ill. We’ve seen them ill. The kids have seen each other bruised and banged up from playing. Why are we acting as if they’ve never seen the house with a tiny bit of clutter before?!?? Eventually Mom outgrew this phase. I had moved out of the house by then. Funny how life works out like that…
Let me say how much I love my family. Really, I do. But sometimes they drive me so crazy. Then I get out into the Real World (™) and find that other people aren’t much better.
Don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes I like running about and doing things. But that’s usually when I’ve planned for that type of vacation. When I met up with the Lexxians in Halifax, the group of us walked all over the place. We went to local plays, we walked up and down the wharf, we checked out the last days of the Busker’s Festival (this in addition to the convention-like stuff). But I didn’t tour the Citadel. I never visited Peggy’s Cove, nor do I particularly care to. To paraphrase what many said when James Cameron’s "Titanic" hit the theatres: "It’s a cove. Get over it." If I were a Nova Scotian, I might feel differently. As it is, I don’t really much care. The beaches on the west coast of the continent are nicer anyway (snark). And we don’t have to worry about freezing to death after four minutes in the water (snark snark). I’d rather spend time talking with the people, or sleeping in, or loafing about — all things I can’t do when I’m at home and in the middle of a work week.
Stop for a minute and think. When was the last time you just…did…nothing? And I’m not talking the kind of nothing that people often do at large corporations when someone further up the decision-chain is stopping things. I’m talking about just sitting and being quiet. Relaxing. Having yourself a little Zen moment. (Sleeping when you’re ill doesn’t count.)
Or pretty soon, you’ll start needing vacations from your vacations.
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It's the little differences that throw us the hardest.
Feb 03, 2001
I recently emigrated from the United States to Canada. (And if I hear one more person ask "Why did you move from the US to Canada?" in the same tone as they might ask "Why did you slam your hand in the car door on purpose?" I will be Very Angry.) For everyone in the United States, Canada’s great. You really should come up for a visit some time, though if you live in the south or the west, I’d confine my visits to the summer months. The people of Canada do not live in igloos, there is not snow on the ground year-round in Toronto, and you get from place to place using your feet, a bicycle, or a car - not sled dogs. Unless you go to Quebec, you don’t have to speak any language other than English. The money looks different and there are no dollar bills, but it’s spendable for food and lodgings and other things. In cities on the US/Canadian border, most businesses will even accept American cash (you’ll just get your change back in Canadian money.) Cars drive on the right side of the road (that’s "right", not "correct"...but for North America, it’s the same thing.) US citizens don’t even need to get a visa go travel to Canada. If you were in a US city one day and magically woke up the next day in a Canadian city, you wouldn’t notice the difference right away. The differences are all in the details.
The maple leaf, not the stars and stripes, flies from the tops of buildings. The sodas use sugar, not corn syrup. (They never went through the "new formula Coca-cola" garbage up here, they stayed with the good stuff!) Sausage is spiced differently - it’s not as piquant. The drugs are different. Not the illegal ones…they’re probably the same just about everywhere. I’m talking about the legal ones that are in every drug store and supermarket. The stuff that everyone depends on to get them through colds and flu. Out of all the things that could have given me problems — this one was by far the oddest.
When I was living in the US and had a bad cold, I would get non-drowsiness formula cold medications. I would take a single regular dosage of the medications in the evening, and never mind what the package said, they would put my lights out. Non-drowsiness forumula Sinutab and Benadryl were companions I could count on. I was guaranteed a good night’s sleep uninterrupted by coughing, waking up achy, or any of that garbage. Best of all, this was all without alcohol (which is in most cough syrups.) I would wake up the next day feeling, well, not necessarily better, but I did wake up the next day - not several times during the night. This did mean that I had to suffer through the days, but I’d make the best of it, knowing that my non-drowsiness forumla buddies were waiting to speed me on my way to six, seven, maybe even nine hours of blissful, uninterrupted, healing slumber.
My first Canadian winter was no problem. I crossed the border in October, and had a decent single-person pharmacopia for winter chills, coughs, hacks, fevers, and flu. My second Canadian winter I was out of medications, and made a trip to my local store and bought a package of non-drowsiness formula Sinutab. I got home, waited until after dinner, took the Sinutab and got ready for bed. Damn if the non-drowsiness formula didn’t do what the packaging said: it didn’t put me to sleep!!! I stayed awake most of the night aching and wheezing and feeling yucky; and couldn’t sleep during the day. This was a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
After a few days, the cold began its migration from my head to my chest, and I started coughing. Previously I would have gotten enough sleep that this stage was REAL short - a day or so, at the most. This time, though, it hung on and on and on… I headed back to the store to get some cough syrup (those lozenges never do me a bit of good.) Looked through all the usual suspects, Nyquil (just slap a "percent-proof" on that stuff), Vicks 44D, and others of their ilk. I spotted Buckley’s Cough Mixture on the shelves. I’d been seeing ads for this stuff since I crossed the border. The price (about half of what the others cost) combined with the lack of alcohol in the stuff decided me, and I took a bottle home.
Buckley’s Cough Mixture is apparently uniquely Canadian. Their ads feature an old man walking out on a stage to stand in front of a microphone. He speaks the ad-stuff, and slowly turns to head off the stage to applause from the audience, and then the commercial cuts to a picture of a bottle of the cough mixture against a plain white background. Buckley’s slogan is "It tastes terrible, and it works." Knowing this, I was prepared for just about anything. I read the directions like a good little self-medicator, opened the bottle, and poured a tablespoon of this thickish, oozy, milky-white stuff. My thoughts were a little off the beam:
They want me to swallow this…and they’re not taking me out to dinner first?
I screwed up my courage and swallowed, and for ten of the longest seconds of my life my throat felt like it was being clawed by small animals with lethal pedicures. The main ingredients in Buckley’s are menthol and camphor. They have a soothing effect, but more importantly, there’s a slight numbing effect too. Unfortunately, the numbing effect takes longer to kick in. Well, they were right about the taste - but geez, they want us to swallow, they want us to pay for the privilege of doing so, and they don’t even have the courtesy to add pineapple juice? NOW I know why the guy in the Buckley’s commercial always has that hidden smug look on his face. I also know why he walks like he does. He’s not old, he’s 23!! He’s just prematurely aged from filling all of those little bottles. He can’t even walk completely upright any more.
I now have friends in the US pledged to send me American-style over-the-counter medications in care packages, containing Aleve (basically non-prescription strength naproxen sodium), Neosporin (can’t figure out why this isn’t available up here), and good old American nondrowsiness formula cold medications that actually are "mega-drowsiness formula" for me.
Now if only I could find a way to get McDonalds’ sausage pucks…
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