The Importance of Lending a Hand

     It is really important to help out wherever and whenever you can. Call it "karma" or "the golden rule" or "what goes around comes around" - I believe every person has a connection to all of the other living things on the planet and, in my opinion, helping others is just another way of helping yourself.
     This week, I declared it my personal goal to revisit the words of my old Brownie motto and to "Lend a Hand"... even though I hated Brownies. So, hold up your right hand and extend your pointer and midde fingers. Ah ah ah... use BOTH fingers! And, repeat after me.

I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God,
the queen and my country, to help other people every day.

     Very good. So, first things first. Japan. I don't watch the news about all the devastation caused from the tsunami because it will hurt my heart. But, I do know they need cash. Unfortunately, cash is something I don't have because I spent it all on a $35 face massage. Urgh! But, I did attend the Karaoke Kitchen Party at Books & Co. last Thursday. They were taking donations at the door for the Red Cross and there were all kinds of other ways to donate.

My origami crane as a tapas for my Sandbanks wine

     Kudos to the organizers because I haven't seen that many interesting things to do at a bookstore since the midnight release of the fifth Harry Potter book at a Chapters in London. There were matcha-flavoured marshmallows for sale, face-painting for the kids, origami cranes to make, wine sampling, face sketchers, arts and crafts demonstrations, local entertainment, a silent auction, photographers.... the list goes on and on. I was particlarly impressed with a young man named Bradley Higgins, who designs and creates his own jewelry.
     No word yet on how much money was raised, but I think they did quite well based on the turnout. Although I dropped a couple of bucks at the event, I didn't feel I had filled my quota for good deeds, so I offered to help my baby daddy's parents move on Saturday.
     I bet he just loooooves that I call him my "baby daddy", which is all the more reason for me to continue to do so. There is currently no love lost between Jeff and I, but I frequently waffle back and forth between liking him, tolerating him and downright hating his guts. Today, I am somewhere between cursing the ground he walks on and accepting him for the jackass he is. That's only because we haven't spoken since last summer (via text so I didn't have to see his nasty face). Prior to our last big disagreement, I spent several Christmas days with him and his family (including the time we spent putting up lights on the eavestroughs - which baffled his neighbours), I attended his wedding, I went on vacation with his wife and I rolled half-naked down his neighbour's snow-covered slide in February at his hot tub birthday party. It makes me a little sad that we can't be friends anymore, but I was still glad I didn't have to see the motherfucker this weekend. He was golfing in Florida.
     Anyway, I picked up my mother-in-law at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning so I could take her to visit friends in London for the night. I HATE 6 a.m., just so we're clear. We picked up coffee at Timmy's and made good time to London, which is about 4 hours (and $40 worth of gas) away. My daughter slept in the back seat for most of the ride. Big Reet and I listened to Crooked Wood (http://www.crookedwood.ca/) to keep me awake. Tim Finnegan's Wake makes me laugh every time I hear it.
     By the time we got to the house at 10 a.m., gas prices rose to $1.29/litre (!) and Brian's two nephews already had most of the big stuff in the U-haul. All that was left to do was pack up more stuff in boxes and keep piling them into the other vehicles. I was probably more of a distraction to the efforts than anything because I managed to corner Dana (Jeff's stepmom) at the new house and harrass her with all my child-rearing woes for about an hour. So, here's the secret to raising your teenagers - you can't raise them aymore. Once they hit 18, they have to make their own decisions and you have to let them go. Even if that means that they don't live out the dreams you didn't get to fulfill (like going to University and becoming "successful"). You just have to love them, which doesn't always mean picking up their messes for them either. Just love them and let the chips fall where they may. And, yes, people are going to say "you should have..." or "what if..." and "Oh, what a shame...". Well, too fucking bad. You do the best you can with what you have and, after that, you deal with the consequences.
     In the meantime, your children (and anybody, really) will treat you like shit because they can. My daughter and I play this game of "I-can-hurt-you-more" and there is never a victory. She says I am unbearably irritating and I say she's a high-maintenance princess with no regard for other people's feelings. It gets quite nasty. It is now (according to Dana) my job to stop the vicious cycle, which means biting my tongue and mentally pushing her away so she is free to grow up without completely alienating her... or binding and gagging her in the back of a U-haul van and dropping her in a remote area where they speak only Spanish.
     So, the moral of the story is, when you help people move, you get invaluable life lessons and advice. "What goes around, comes around..."
     In other news, I went to Wonder Sushi on Highbury Avenue in London at the suggestion of my co-worker, Lisa. They were just getting ready to close for the afternoon, but we put in a quick order of Salmon sushi, edamame, vegetable tempura, fried tofu, salad, miso soup and grilled eggplant. I went to wash my hands and who did I see on the way back from the washroom? My co-worker, Lisa, from Picton. What are the odds of that?! I'm still shocked, especially since both of us were off on a Saturday... but that's another story and I can't wait to hear the repercussions of it at work tonight. :@
     Before the server took our order to the kitchen, she told us we did not order enough food. In spite of my better judgement, she encouraged us to get two sushi rolls, two hand rolls, 4 more fried tofu, vegetable udon and 4 spring rolls.
     Now, at the risk of being stereotypical, I cannot eat like an Asian. So, her idea of "enough food" and my idea are going to be very different. I've seen my boss, George, eat a large mixing bowl portion of fried veggies with a side of two cups of boiled peanuts and a bucket of Chinese fruits for dessert. We watched the staff at Wonder Sushi enjoy a meal of what looked like 3 roasted ducks and countless other plates filling the entire table, which they devoured in less time than I took to figure out how to wrap the udon noodles around my chopsticks. I did not make it through all of the food we ordered and I was pretty sure I was going to blow chunks in the parking lot.
     I kept everything down and even sucked back a cake pop from Starbucks. That afternoon, I offered to watch my nephew while Sarah went to work, in keeping with the "lend a hand" theme of the weekend. I turned on Mario Brothers Galaxy 2 (which he calls The Walking Game... he's soooooo cute) and we proceeded to get all the bad guys and save Yoshi. There is one part of the game where you have to destroy a little evil wizard who repeatedly shoots mean mushrooms at you. It was at this point that my darling, innocent Buddha Boy, whose birth I witnessed some 3 years ago, started to tell me how the mushrooms were "a pain in the ass".
     "Those guys are a pain in my ass," he repeated over and over - emphasis always on the word ass. "They're a real pain in the aaaaasss."
     Well, I got to laughing so hard I thought I'd pee. Sara says it's Dana's fault because she is always saying that when she plays the game. Unfortunately, I have added to the problem because every time I got to a new level and the star shoots Yoshi and Mario ever further into the galaxy, I would exclaim, "Hooooly Shit!", which was (by the way) my daughter's first real sentence back in 1993.    

A little goddess in the outfit Alexis brought back from Greece