Snow Shoveling Retraction

Obviously I either don't listen to people or my dyslexia also takes conversations and twists them around to fit my needs because I was told in no uncertain terms that I had got the snow shoveling all wrong.

This quote from Ms. Brenda N -

Nooooooo noooooooo nooooooooo nooooohhh that's down the middle then left and right. Gotta have a place for your feet.

This information will help me in the future in not falling down or getting shit-loads of snow down my boots. I appreciate Ms. Brenda's input and we can only hope that this new information will help my sidewalks not look like a snake having seizures.

THE GREAT STORM OF 2006

Or maybe it always starts snowing in November and ends sometime around April. Hell if I know. But I can tell you it has been snowing for two days straight.

First year I liked shoveling the sidewalks for a couple of reasons. 1) we didn't have much snow last year and 2) it was a novelty.

This year I find out there is a specific way to shovel your sidewalks. This information was provided by Brenda formally of the Hobo clan.

It was explained to me like this:

First you go up the side walk shoveling the left side (never ever the right side, bad mojo if you do) then you shovel the right side and you finish it off with a lovely down the middle flurry of pushing the shovel and cleaning all the missed bits.

I still learning this talent that is in the Canadian gene pool, am embarrassed by my lack of finesse. You can tell what I have shoveled since it looks like a drunken crazed shoveler went on a rampage in front of my house. It looks someone like a snake, can't miss it.

The only thing I can say in my defense is, at least I am the first on the block to do it, making everyone else feel shame and I see them hanging their heads as they look down the street at my snake shovel effect. They could be hanging their heads because of the wind and snow combination but at this moment in my life I feel that if I am depressed and am suffering, I shall make others join me in my pain.

So this year the shoveling thing, not so much fun, cause the motherfuckering snow just won't stop.

So that's it from Saskatoon.

My stages of grief

No one knows how to do the grief. I have found there are no right ways to do it and I jump around like a Mexican jumping bean with them so that isn't so much fun. These are the five stages in case you are interested:

Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
Anger (why is this happening to me?)
Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
Depression (I don't care anymore)
Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

Being a type A personality I have found that I work well with just a few. Anger and Depression and therapists say that anger is just depression turned inward. Which means I am doing both of them at the same time - snarling, crying, hating, crying, crying and crying. Hard to deny that a parent is dead. I have moments when I don't think about the impact it has on my life and then I see a beautiful sunset or when I see the ice flows moving down the river and I think Daddy would think that is interesting and then I remember that he isn't around to talk to anymore. That thing about having tears stuck in your throat is true. The last time I talked to Daddy was when I called and he answered the phone (he only answered if he was passing by and he did it to shut up the insistent ringing) excitedly I told him about seeing the Northern Lights the night before and how that was one of the things that I always wanted to see in my life. We talked about his experiences seeing them and it wasn't deep or profound but we connected. Finding things to connect with my father about wasn't easy but a pleasure when I found them.

Not being able to go home was awful, knowing that they are going to have a memorial for him that I won't be able to attend really pisses me off (as you can see I am staying within the 5 stages, if you leave the 5 stages before doing all of them I believe you become emotionally stunted.)

My mother wants me to reach out to my one sister and make things right. I don't think that this is like the best time, cause emotions running high and if she is anything like me we are both doing the same to stages, if we talk while we are both doing anger. Well resolution and reconciliation ain't going to happen. Plus I found that she has a MYSPACE site where she puts her age at 42, let's see I am 47 she is 5 years older then me so she is being so internetish.

I am not writing anything deep here. This isn't worthy of much more then me pulling some of the shit out of my head and onto the Internet.

Oh yeah and they forgot the stage of grief where you turn into a pregnant termite and eat everything in the cupboards including the cardboard packaging.

What does one do with themselves

So it hasn't been even a week since my father died. Everyone else gets on with their lives and I sit here checking Google and other people's blogs about how they felt about my dad. I feel almost embarrassed writing since my father was such an amazing writer and I feel daft and silly trying to put into words how I feel. One should never have a desire to do the same craft as a parent who did it so amazingly well.

I've talked to my mother almost every day. We talk about how they want to name a peak after him and have a memorial service. I hope that they wait until I can come home before the have one, since now my father is gone and it is for the living to mourn and grieve the loss. I would like to be there for part of it, since I can't be there now.

My father was writing an autobiography before he died. That should be good reading I'm sure. Maybe he knew his time was near and that was why he was writing so furiously, one will never know if they know their time is near, because by the time they themselves figure it out, they are usually dead.

I need to not be resentful or hurt that my brother or sisters don't answer the phone or have talked to me since Daddy died, I have to admit I haven't asked to talk to them when on the phone with mother and she hasn't offered to hand the phone over to them to talk to me. People grieve in their own way and losing a parent isn't like the Hollywood movies where everyone forgets their differences and comes together in hugs and kisses.

Really do I want to talk to them? I suppose not or else I would be the bigger person and make an effort to reach out. I think that I don't have the energy to fight and apologize, forgive and forget and then talk. They probably don't either, though they do have each other to talk to in Seattle and I am left in the cold so to speak.

So what happens now? Paul and I will talk sporadically. Paul will talk to Becky, Becky will talk to Mother, Penny will talk to Mother and I will talk to Mother. A fractured family with nothing left inside them to give to each other. A family without a centre, without a foundation to stay connected.

I miss what never really was and now is apparent will never be.

Death of a Parent

On Sunday November 12th at 4:50 pm PST my father Harvey Manning passed away at the age of 81.

http://news.google.ca/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:2005-25,RNWE:en&q=harvey%20manning&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=in

This picture was taken on his 80th birthday. I left for Canada about a month later, so this is the last picture of him but is in no way my last memory of my father.

You know everyone knows intellectually that mortality is one thing we all have in common, it's a given unless you are in your 20's and then you think you are immortal. But having to face and feel the lose of a parent is so, so much different. When a reporter interviewed me about my father, it was so hard to put into words who he was and my memories of him. How do you tell a complete stranger about a man that even after 47 years is still a mystery to me?

He was my buddy pal. That was our nicknames for each other. He was my one and only buddy pal and I will never have another. He was the man that rescued me from what he called them my evil older stepsisters, though they were no more evil then your average sibling and they weren't my stepsisters. This probably did little to help my relationship with my sisters growing up and I remember years of what was then called rough housing but now would be considered bodily injury. On weekends when my sisters were too old to go hiking and had their own lives and were prowling for blood I would go as my father put it lets go exploring Claudia. I said you don't get no where 'xploring. But I went because going no where 'xploring was better then what lay at home. We would take our sandwiches of pumpernickel bread which is think and dense and dark brown and add peanut butter to it. This is a meal that should be taken with several gallons of water but tasted good to me. Along with that we would share a milky way candy bar and a warm cream soda. Life was good. We were hiking up Bandera mountain one warm weekend, following the logging roads towards the ridge of the mountain. The clear cut afforded us a beautiful view but little in the way of shade. I said I bet we are going to see a marmot. My father said Claudie this isn't the right kind place for a marmot to live. Minutes later a marmot poked his head from a large rock, whistled and disappeared down a hole below the rock.

As we were close to reaching the top of the ridge the afternoon sun warming up the cream soda to body temperature I said, bet there is a lake on the other side of the ridge. Daddy said, I don't think so buddy pal, the map shows no lake. We reached the top and looked down and there was a lake surrounded by trees and mountains.

So being only 9 or 10 years old and being two for two, I considered on this day we did get somewhere going 'xploring.

My father was a man of great passions, whether it was food, cigarettes, booze, writing or his fight to save nature. His great passion was the saving of the wild spaces in Washington, the others were his addictions, that other then food he conquered along the way.

Today I feel less then who I was, because I no longer have that one parent or that one special love that goes with having a parent. I am feeling less unique, I am still Harvey Manning's daughter but I no longer have him to see and hug. He wasn't a man who was comfortable opening up to people and I never was able to break through the walls and barriers he created to protect himself from others, but what I knew of him I either liked, loved or finally as I got older accepted and forgave.

They say death is final and one doesn't realize it until it happens close to home. Because I am here in Canada and am working on getting my landed resident status, leaving the country to be at home with my mother and siblings might mean I would be refused entrance back into the country for six months and I can't afford the risk.

That makes me sad, but then again on the other side I also know that there is a count down of how long my sisters can get along before something big, bad and nasty will happen. Since Penny and Becky don't talk to me anymore, some of it my fault some of it theirs, I won't be there for the blow up or accusations or attacks. So I am thankful to Canada for that. With Paul my younger brother we talk and are close so maybe he will call me from Seattle.

What is sad is to be here in a city where I have no close friends and feel so alone and to know that they are all together without me, but what makes it worse is even my father dying won't bring us together like some Lifetime movie.

Daddy I will miss you more then you know. I am your daughter. I too fought the same addictions as you did. My one hope is that I will find my passion so I can do something in my life that I am proud of and that you would be proud of me for doing.

I love you Daddy.

So this is the deal

Man do I suck at being consistent. I'm sure everyone feels like I dropped off the face of the earth. The truth is if the earth had a face I would be now living up towards the hairline of the face.

Ok I moved north. To Saskatoon, I had too. No it wasn't because I was running from the law. Or that I didn't like Regina. And no I'm not going to change the name of my blog, what would I change it too? Saskatoon Sleaze, Prairie Prattle? Toontown Talk? No none of those are appealing. I am sure my readership will drop down to 5 (thanks mom for still reading!). No the reason was simple. My partner/spouse had been commuting since May from Saskatoon to Regina. So it was necessary.

I am in the process of getting used to this place. I miss my friends, my hair dresser, my butcher, I miss the small town appeal and that there were less cops. Not that I am running from the law I'm not, Regina moved at a slower pace and I enjoyed it.

Now that I am up here I have to find a job and work on getting permanent resident status. So that no red flags will come up while in this process, I have been asked by Barb my spouse, not to mention any of the following: crystal meth labs, Stephen Harper or George Bush, since she feels that my jokes and opinions might be detrimental to receiving a resident status.

This will also limit what I can talk about on my blog, so sorry if my blog might sound rather Brady Bunch Canadian Style for the next few months while I go through this massive process to become a resident.

I hope to post some cool pictures of the river and the piled up ice flows that are along it. Very cool.

I will miss you Regina, though I will come and visit, you were the first city I went through my first winter in and the first place where I ripped skin off my lips with frozen metal. So remember, you might not have a piece of my heart but you do have some of my DNA somewhere down there.