On Cars, Vacations, and The Constant Uncertainty of Living Correctly

It’s been said that when you hit your forties and you’re settled down with a kid or two, nothing much happens to you anymore.

 

 Oh, you might take a trip, like we did to Florida in April, or buy a house, which we haven’t and may never do. But barring any illnesses or misadventures, it’s a quiet, settled routine we’ve achieved.

We did buy a used car to replace the 11 year old Corolla, whose repair costs were getting larger and more frequent by the year. Eventually, a little math suggested a payment for a newer car would equal to or less than the annual cost of repairs. Or maybe a little more. I’m shit at math. Still, I got a decent amount for the trade-in and ended buying a 2009 Mazda 5 GT.

You may only see the front.

It’s a little more updated in terms of technology than the Corolla, which didn’t even have power windows.Then again, my first car, a hand me down 1988 Pontiac Sunbird, didn’t have a window that rolled all the way down. Onwards and upwards for me then.

It has a Bluetooth connection for those important, 30 second “Can you get milk?” calls on the way home from work. It has power windows, a remote starter, and a sun roof, not to mention leather seats with the arse warmers. The in-dash six CD changer forced me to go down to the basement and find what CDs I had left. I can tell you that in 2000, I was listening to Wilco, Joel Plaskett, Ben Folds, Johnny Cash, and the Clash. I’m still discovering secret compartments to hide things.

I had actually been looking for the replacement for the Corolla for some time but always assumed it would be another Toyota, probably a Matrix or a Yaris as we knew we wanted a hatchback. But my cousin, who came to my wedding last summer, drove a Mazda 5 and it planted a seed. Eventually a mental Venn diagram formed in my head with the Mazda 5 appearing the shared section among Cars That I Want, Cars That Are Practical, and Cars That I Can Afford.

Anyhow, I like it a lot, even if it is a little noisy on bumpy roads. Retiring the Corolla was done quickly, in the end. It was only after it was gone that I realized that car represented the last bit of my New Brunswick life that has stayed with me since moving here ten years ago. It was the first car that I had purchase on my own and it was my late brother-in-law who sold it to me. When I was clearing my things out of the car, I found his business card and put it somewhere safe.

Ten years. I’ve been up here ten years. Every now and again, we get serious about moving to New Brunswick to be closer to family but despite a number of job interviews, it just never happens. At one point, I interview for a position, didn’t get it and then was called again about the same position as they hadn’t realized they’d already interviewed. But focusing on the move back has proven to be a distraction from our present lives and we often feel as though we don’t truly live here.

So we’re making friends with the neighbours, volunteering for things, and getting James involved in more activities. We’ve unpacked the figurative suitcases and canceled the actual Indeed.ca job alerts.

I never decided if I wanted to live in the city and vacation in the country or live in the county and vacation in the city so we live in the suburbs and vacation in Florida.

Last month, we went to Florida for surprise week’s vacation. My parents had a condo rental that was going unused in Daytona Beach so it was given to us. Daytona is a NASCAR and spring break kind of a town so it’s not really a place we would have chosen on our own. But after the winter we had, it was just nice to see palm trees.

 

We managed to get in a day trip to Disney World. I had been there once, when I was nine years old so it was nice to go back and see what’s changed and what’s the same. The Jungle Cruise is the same un-pc attraction its always been but the Buzz Lightyear ride was pretty cool. So, we took our kid to Disney World. We’ve done our jobs as parents, I guess.

And now when James throws a tantrum or whines about how unfair life is, I just pull the old “Yeah, your parents who take you to Disney World are terrible.” We plan to ride that one well into his high school years.

The thing that impressed our son the most about Disney? The monorail. He even asked for a souvenir of it when we left. If that’s all it takes to impress the guy, I would have just taken him to Seattle.

Florida as a state is pretty interesting. People are generally friendly and chatty and you see why so many people retire there. Then you see ads for places where you can pawn your gold and buy a gun, or divorce lawyers who who only take male clients and it all hints to something darker. The local news tends to support the state’s recent unsavoury reputation.

Still, if you’re ever in Daytona Beach, I recommend Dancing Avocado Kitchen as a nice, non-chain place to eat if you like vegetarian fare and craft beers.

This summer we leave for the UK for two weeks. This will be the first time since we started going there together that we’re not heading straight for Scotland as soon as we land at Heathrow. This time, we’re spending two nights in London, two nights in Weston-Super-Mare where Kerry partially grew up and two nights in Edinburgh before spending the rest of the trip with the in-laws in Langholm.

There will also be a trip to Cheddar. I intend to eat a lot of caved aged cheese.

In fall, our wee lad starts kindergarten. Over the summer, he starts soccer and in fall, Beavers. So between the soccer, swimming, minivans, and Beavers membership, and trips to Costco, we’re pretty much living the West Island Anglo stereotype.

So are we doing things right? Who knows?

The Continuing Conversations with the Four Year Old

We are in front of the TV, watching Daniel Tiger’s
Neighborhood. The episode is drawing to a close and Daniel is about to sing is his good bye song, a revamp of “It’s Such a Good Feeling” which closed Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood back in the day.

He jumps up to turn off the TV, “It’s over. I have to turn it off!”

Me: “But don’t you want to hear Daniel sing his song?”

Him: “NO! IT’S OVER!”

—

Mummy: Did you have fun with your friends at daycare?

Him: I did.

Mummy (turning to me): Daddy, did you have fun with your friends at work?

Him: DADDY DOESN’T HAVE ANY FRIENDS! HE JUST HAS A BOSS!

—

Watching Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on Netflix.

Him: SPIDER-MAN IS FIGHTING A FIRE MONSTER.

Me: Yes, yes he is.

Him: REMEMBER WHEN SPIDER-MAN FOUGHT THE FIRE MONSTER?

Me: Yes, it literally just happened in the opening credits.

Him: REMEMBER WHEN SPIDER-MAN FOUGHT THE FIRE MONSTER?

Me: We just talked about this.

Him: REMEMBER WHEN SPIDER-MAN FOUGHT THE FIRE MONSTER?

Me: Oh, dear god…

20 Second Book Review: Saga, Volume One by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wanted to switch up my comics this month because I do tend to spend a lot of time in the super-hero world so I picked this up on a whim in my local comics shop because I had read good things about it. Brian K. Vaughan, who has written Ex Machina and Y: The Last Man has returned with an epic space opera that centres on the lives of two lovers from opposite sides of an ongoing war. One side’s combatants are winged people from the largest planet in the galaxy and the other are their horned, magic-using, humanoid inhabitants of that planet’s moon.

When these two enemies fall in love and have a baby together, it’s decided by the powers that be that they must die and so they flee an ever growing list of people who want to kill them. All this to a backdrop of Game of Thrones level sex and violence.

Highly recommended but definitely for mature readers.

View all my reviews

How Television was Made in the 1970s

In the 1970s, I spent my Saturday mornings on an orange carpet, where I would consume Shreddies with about a half cup of sugar on top and a plastic cup of Tang and, like every other kid, I’d watch the cartoons.

Super Friends was a favourite because it combined the ubiquitous Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the 70s with the Justice League of America to come up with gems like this:

One of my other favourites was Scooby-Doo. In those days it was a love song to skepticism. Invariably, Shaggy and Scooby would be frightened of a ghost. Fred, Daphne, and Velma would prove that it wasn’t real. OK, so the dog spoke and once in a while Sonny and Cher would join them on their adventures but still, skeptical. Over the years, the show would start incorporating elements of the supernatural but most people in the forties would agree, I believe, that the show went to shit when Scrappy Doo showed up.

Still, back in the early halcyon days of Scooby-Doo, it was the centrepiece of my Saturday morning routine. I wondered, then, how such a show was made.

We had two TV channels at the time and the one I watched most was CHSJ located at channel 4. CHSJ was a sort-of CBC affiliate as New Brunswick didn’t have a proper CBC Station until about 25 years ago. Most programming was either produced locally, from the CBC, or was from the U.S.

On the corner of McAllister Drive and Rothesay Avenue, there used to be a TV transmitter which I mistook for the actual TV and radio station which was silly because there was no way they could run a TV station and a radio station and TV studio all from all 500 by 500 foot building. That was actually done at the real studio uptown.

Where the magic happened. It’s now the offices for a tire warehouse or something.

I naturally assumed Super Friends came from the US because the resources to create such stunning special effects as “Aquaman rides flying fish” would only come from a nation with its own space programme. Miss Ann, a Romper Room style children’s show was filmed locally because my sister was on it and I remember being kept outside the studio doors when they were filming.

Scooby Doo was a mystery to me. I was aware that most programmes were created somewhere far away. And I knew, in a general way, how animation worked. Scooby Doo had similar production values to Super Friends but the audience laughter clearly, clearly, indicated that it was shot before a live audience. And the only place I ever saw an audience was at CHSJ when they’d run the Empty Stocking Fund.

Therefore Scooby Doo was filmed before a live studio audience in a small regional television station in New Brunswick. It’s the only explanation that made any sense.

Luckily, my brother, who was seven years older than me, knew everything. He explained that actors record the voices of the characters which is then set to animation . This meant the cast would gather round a microphone as the animation would play before them and their lines would synch with the action on screen. And all this would happen before a live audience. That’s why you’d hear laughter.

I imagined that the characters of Scooby Doo were drawn to look like the actors who portrayed them.  And, yes, the cast included a specially trained Great Dane.

Clearly, the resemblance is uncanny.

In later years, I would somehow imagine that the actress who voiced Velma Dinkley looked like this. This resulted in new feelings.

(image source: Gina B Cosplay at Deviant Art)

Of course, as I grew older I realized that Shaggy’s voice could also be heard in just about every other cartoon character back then and that most of my entertainment came from Toronto or California and that the stuff that was produced locally wasn’t quite up to the same standard. It actually took me a while to connect Robin the Boy Wonder and Norville “Shaggy” Rogers as the same voice.

I would also learn that, despite the resemblance to the King of Kensington actor, my father was not actually Al Waxman.

I am not convinced that realizing any of the actual facts surrounding television production has made me a happier person.

20 Second Book Review: The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There was a time, in my aspiring CBC reporter early twenties, when I would have loved this book.

“At last!” I would have exclaimed out loud in the McAlister Place Coles. “A comic novel about Parliament! Why hasn’t someone written this before?!”

A Liberal Party political aide and grammar pedant, agrees to manage the no-hope political campaign of a reluctant engineer who is also a grammar pedant. They spend much of the book correcting each other’s speech as events take an unexpected turn.

While it’s a pleasant enough read, there are few false notes in the book that are hard to overlook. For one, I don’t believe CBC radio one would interrupt its regular programming to report on a breaking sex scandal. I also don’t believe the scandal would be enough to bring down a government minister because, as it was presented in the book, it in no way appeared to impede this person from doing his job.

Today, being less of a political nerd than I used to be, I merely liked the book.

Still, I hear it’s being developed by the CBC as a miniseries and I actually that, if it’s done well, would be a better format for the story and I’d probably watch it.

View all my reviews