The Big Apple

Last week we went to NYC. Don't let people tell you otherwise, New Yorkers are a friendly bunch, especially if you have cute kids. Everywhere we went, especially the subway, people were friendly and more than willing to answer the toddler's question of "what's your name?". So, if you are looking to go to NYC and are a little scared that the big apple is intimidating, bring along a cute smiling baby and a curious three year old and you'll be fine.

The opinion that U of Michigan Wolverines is the best team ever is MANDATORY!!!

Apparently, it is a requirement that if you live in Michigan you MUST be a fan of the University of Michigan Wolverines. Now I'm just not a fan of football to begin with but Michigan's obsession with football is all pervasive. Twice this past week I've been to functions where the talk turned to football. One of those functions was 15 women and one man, and it still turned to football. Craziness!!

Nelly Furtado is following me...

In my car, every grocery store, Jo-Ann's, Ikea. (see first post)
Funnily enough, she doesn't follow me at Lai Thai or Bombay Grocers.

I ain't gonna see nobody nowhere. (My diatribe on double negatives)

I HATE THE IMPROPER USE OF DOUBLE NEGATIVES!!!!!!

There I said it.

Yup, the improper use of double negatives is a spur up my grammatical buttocks. For those of you unfamiliar with the term double negatives, it's when you use one negative (such as not) and then use another word which implies negation (nobody, nothing, nowhere, no how) so that in fact is means a positive (I haven't seen nobody really means I have seen everybody or anybody.).

Now Michiganders use this AAAAAALLLLLLL the time and they actually think this is proper English!!! I get so irritated when walking through the grocery store listening to people tell other people that they "ain't been nowhere, seen nothing, done nothing.", etc. What happened in Michigan to steer their grammatical boat to the wasteland of bad grammar?

I thought my eyes were dim

like the Raffi song....
Anyways, I thought I was going crazy last night. A and I were sitting out on the back porch in our lawnchairs (we inherited white metal chairs and a table with the house but we never use them. We sit in our Canadian flag lawnchair which is normal height and my little lawn chair that I bought at the Edmonton Folk Festival last year). I'm kinda sitting sideways and I see a flashing of light out of the corner of my right eye. At first I thought it was just a light reflecting off it from somewhere but it kept happening. Then I changed positions and looked straight forward. What the hell? Was something wrong with my eyes? What were those flashes of light in the lawn? I thought I was going crazy. Nope, I was not (well at least not this time)....what, you may ask, was I looking at? Lightening bugs. That's right, folks, up until last night I was a lightening bug virgin. Never seen them before....ever. I think I probably read about them in some Judy Blume novel when I was younger but never really knew what they were. I'm sure A and I looked like idiots walking around our and the neighbours' lawns at 10:30pm in random patterns for no apparent reason changing direction every three metres with our heads bobbing back and forth trying to find the little suckers. It seems that everyone but I have a story about chasing and catching lightening bugs in jars as children and the subsequent manslaughter of those self-same critters. For those of you not in the know (i.e. most of my Canadian readership), lightening bugs rear ends light up really quickly for a second then stop 'til they move somewhere else and flash the hood. Apparently, this is to attract a mate. I'm trying to imagine going through life with a flashlight behind. Weird!!!!

Ain't no flies on us.

Some of you may remember the childhood taunt/game "there ain't no flies on us". If you aren't familiar with it, there are two teams and each team says successively louder ...

there ain't no flies on us
there ain't no flies on us
there might be flies on some of you guys
but there ain't no flies on us.

Now, I know it's not grammatically correct (which sadly seems to be happening more and more in the English language by supposed native-speakers) and is in fact a double negative which means that there really are flies on us.

Well, in Michigan there really are no flies on us. Why you may ask? Well, and I know this sounds strange, but Michigan flies are the slowest flies I've ever seen in my entire life!! A three-year old child with undeveloped reflexes could kill a Michigander fly. I know it's a strange posting but I've killed several flies in the house now because we tend to leave our garage door open when we're home as does most our hood (yes, burgalurs, people are more lax about home security in the burbs), so we get these big Michigander flies who fly in, think they own the place with their noisy buzz, and then get killed by my hand and a piece of papertowel. Aren't you supposed to have some kind of sense of accomplishment when you kill a fly in your home? Some kind of sense of "gotcha sucker!!! Michigander flies steal that feeling from you. It's kinda sad.

Detroit Orientation Institute

Recently A and I participated in the Detroit Orientation Institute (http://www.doi.wayne.edu/) which was an absolutely amazing experience for we learned a tonne about Detroit and met some pretty amazing people.
Some of the things I learned:

1. The population of Metro Detroit is upwards of 85% black (African-American for you PC types. Although I really think this name should be changed. I'll go into that another time.), with the rest being caucasian, bengali and middle-eastern.

2. There are some pretty amazing houses in the richer areas of town.

3. The public school we visited had one science teacher who taught every student in the school (all 600+ of them) for one hour a week. She had 27 classes and no prep time! And there's no toilet paper in the school. Who runs a school with no toilet paper? Each of the class room doors is locked from the inside too.

4. There is some absolutely amazing redevelopment going on in Detroit. New loft spaces, business districts, community organizations.

5. I've never seen so many abandoned buildings in my life. Detroit's population went from 1.6 million in the Metro Detroit area in the 1940s or so to less than 1 million today, leaving a lot of unused housing to rot and decay.

6. One of the first food banks was created in Detroit and is now a model for most other foodbanks in North America. (see: Forgotten Harvest http://www.forgottenharvest.org/; Focus Hope )

7. Domestic violence is a big problem here.

8. There's a huge split between people who live on the East Side and people who live on the West side, so much so that someone told a story about two Detroiters meeting in Vietnam, discovering they were from the mid-west, from Michigan, and from Detroit. When the question arose of what side they were from, they discovered it was from opposite sides, and they WALKED AWAY FROM EACH OTHER in disgust. How bizaare!!

There's more and I'll come back to it at a later date.

Near and Faaaaaar

A three weeks ago we went down to A's home town to visit with his son M. A spent lots of time repairing and installing things at his mother's house while I wiped up drool, spit up and baby poo. Oh yeah, high times are here again!! M and I bonded. It was good.
We humans do the funniest things at our different levels of development along this journey of life. And we are fascinated by the strangest of things as well. M's fascination? My belly. As he sat in my lap he would faceplant into my belt buckle (which says love on it) and then sit up again. Repeat. Same when I was wearing the pyjama pants with the tie. Faceplant. sit up. faceplant. sit up. repeat ad nauseum. As he did this, A and I would say Near......Far......Near.....Far. He could have done that for hours if it wasn't for his need to be changed or fed. I took some photos of him the best of which he's wearing a blue onesie coated in spit up and with a look on his face that matches his father's when he's had a little too much to drink....Ah genetics, isn't it wonderful?

Driving with Yahoos

As you may have seen before, Michigan drivers are crazy. They make Quebec drivers look like model citizens!!! On Tuesday I was hit by one of these Crazy Michigan Drivers (here by known as the CMDs). Actually let me start that the beginning- Detroiters can be very rude and crazy.

I left my office at the Renaissance Centre on Tuesday by car and as I was coming out of the parking lot and preparing to turn left at the green light, Pedestrian Yahoo stepped out in front on me on his cell phone and looking the other way. I slammed on the brakes and honked my horn. What do I get from this young dude in a suit for not wilfully crippling his sorry ass for being a dumb one? "I'm still a pedestrian, bitch!" Yup, that's what I get for not permanently disabling this dumbass. And you know that PY was on his way to his car so that he could then translate this aggressive Pedestrian Attitude into the Crazy Michigan Driver. Here's the guy who sees no irony in his transition from the Aggressive Pedestrian who feels it's his right who walk where and when he pleases to the CMD who feels that it is his right to drive where and when he pleases.

Less than four minutes later I'm in the right-hand lane of the highway on a curve under an overpass. This dude in a Gold SUV with the Michigan Licence Plate ASZ87 comes outta nowhere on my left-hand side and decides that he needs to be in my lane where my car is. No signal and no warning, he is in my lane and scrapping the paint off my side of my car. He realizes what he's done and goes back into his lane and speeds off. I pick up my speed, get his licence plate number, pull up next to him, roll down my window and ask him to pull over. This CMD almost kills me (between him and the concrete wall 4 feet to my right) and all I get from him is a shrug and a sheepish Sorry. Not very satisfactory!!!

So then I've missed my turnoff for the 96, construction is happening on the highway I'm on and I miss the turnoff for the 94 and I'm stuck on the M-10 on a slow trip to nowhere. Finally pull off, survey the damage, pull myself together and head out to try and find home. I discovered that this is easier said than done during construction time in Detroit. I discovered the Hood... and the wannabe gangstas...and the unpaidfor Escalades...and the burnt out and boarded up buildings...and the Male Exotic dance bar with a couple of people who had undistiguishable genders hanging out in front...After 15 minutes in the hood praying that if anyone is going to be shot at or taken it'll be the dude in the Escalade, I found my highway and headed home. Not the best drive ever!

Canadian Music

Something has really surprised me over the past two weeks- the amount of Canadian music being played in the US is pervasive. I mean really really pervasive. It's one thing to be cruising down the aisle of our local Canadian grocery chain and hearing muzaked versions of "My heart will go on." You expect that with all our Cancon rules. What you don't expect is to go into three stores in a row and hear kd lang, Gordon Lightfoot and Sarah McLaughlin at least once in each store. This has happened to me now in two different cities- suburbs of Detroit and downtown Buffalo. Now, having spent sometime in Buffalo, I understand that it is pretty much Canada with a NYer drawl, but Detroit is not/not Windsor, my friends. Detroit has created it's own musical sound more than once (Motown and the Eminem, 50 cent vibe). Why am I consistently hearing Canada's openly lesbian country/pop crooner in almost every store I enter into in Conservative America? Why is it that every time I'm in the US and A turns on the radio for the past four years I'm being assaulted by the likes of the boys from Hanna (Nickelback) and the dudes from Default? (there's a story in there about potentially insulting Mohammed Ali's daughter five years ago but we'll save that one for another day.)

My new vocabulary

Anytime one moves to a new place, one must learn new vocabulary. It is simply a necessity in order to get your point across or just simply to understand what's going on. Here are a couple of my new phrases or words:
-A**munch- a favorite of A's. This one is particularly useful when the tenth person in five minutes has cut you off in their 1976 Oldmobile Cutlass which is obviously not insured or some old dude of a certain age is barrelling so far up your ass while driving that he can tell you the state of your small intestine in his ginormous pick up truck, only to speed out from behind you, pass you, get in front of you (none of this with any signals) and proceed to slam on the brakes.
-Git wid yeur administraaaation
-aksed

The most expensive cutting board EVER!!!

So A and I now own the most expensive cutting board ever!!!! Ever you ask? Yup, ever. $180USD ever!!!

A couple of weeks ago prior to the buying of the Middle America Car (see above post), A got it into his head that we needed a cutting board. This isn't just any cuttingboard. Nope, this is from a restaurant supply store. Amongst other things A is a kitchenware snob. He once said that he considered a deal to be a $65USD sauce pan. Yup, that's my man. So he trotted off to one restaurant supply store and discovered they were more into selling big hunks of cheese rather than kitchenware. Now, I'm into cheese as much as the next guy but not 10lbs blocks of it in my refrigerator for the greater part of 2007. So after two weeks of sharing one vehicle between us (it became a daily ritual of exchanging spit and vehicle), he was feeling a little housebound so he decided he was going to drive me to work and keep the truck during the day. He said the night before that he was going to regret it...little did he know how true that statement would be!!!

So he dropped me off at work after swearing for the greater part of an hour on the morning commute, saying how "this is why I work nights" and demi-yells of "long pedal to the right, people." I, on the other hand, just put my chair back, closed my eyes and enjoyed the morning drive in. I'd been doing the commute for two weeks already so I had little sympathy. He dropped me off at work.

At 8: 45am I get the call. He had gone to the store, walked in, bought the cutting board, and exited to find some black guy standing near his truck and then making a run for it. He got in and starting driving. Damn!! The 3rd door window was cracked. Apparently in downtown Detroit the car thieves wander around with bricks in their jackets so they can break windows and steal the cars. Another minute or two later and A wouldn't have been an owner of his truck. This is why we are now the not-so-proud owners of the most expensive cutting board ever!!!

Now the statistic that I've heard is that the average family income in Detroit is about $19,000USD (about $22800). Now I don't know what they consider the average family to be made up of but I cannot imagine trying to make it with a family of 4 on $19 000USD/year. Someone told me not to believe what I see out there on the streets with respect to people's vehicles and that often the vehicle on is driving has absolutely nothing to do with the person inside because so many people have family discounts or receive discounts from their friends on their vehicles that it just doesn't match with the reality. One person said that they were intrigued by a vehicle they had seen and when they tried to take a picture of it the driver took evasive action because he'd stolen the prototype car from his employer!!! I'm going on a course in April all about Detroit so I'm sure I'll be full of even more facts and figures by then. Be afraid!!! Be very afraid!!!

The Journey

Well, I guess to tell the story one must start at the beginning. I left Ottawa....with suitcases, musical instruments, cleaning supplies (cause apparently they don't have those in Detroit- which shall become clearer with context), jarred peaches, a Samsonite luggage carrier with wheels, my mother and a Beta fish named Gordon in a rental car. We stayed at my friend's house in St. Catherines (thank you B) and I learned an enormous amount about skateboarding (thank you, little B. I've been fully educated on the world of Ollies now).

Where did I go? The burbs of Detroit. Yup, Detroit, one of the miligned cities in America. And believe it or not... I asked for it. Yes, I actually asked if I could move to Detroit. When I told one of my friends about moving to Detroit she said that her friend had commented "quelques fois les choses sonts plus étranges outrelac que outremer." (translation from French: Sometimes are stranger over the lake than they are overseas). This is my tale of being over the lake...or in this particular case, over the Detroit River.

We drove from Ottawa to Windsor, Gordon, my mother and I. First stop, the mall in Windsor which luckily enough was also the location of the car rental place which we showed up at at precisely 2:49pm. It closed at 3pm. I always was the queen of the last minute. After driving around for a bit, my boyfriend A showed up. Now, given some of the above listing of materials in the car (it was a Malibu), and for those of you who know my mother, you can imagine just how full that car was. One must always kiss one's significant other and reassure both of you of your love and commitment for one another before allowing said significant other to see said amount of stuff in said car on a Sunday at 2:55 when one must unload one's rented car and transfer all materials therein into said significant other's truck to cross the border at the busiest border crossing in North America as said boyfriend has visions of having his vehicle torn apart by bitter angry customs types (I can say this with the greatest respect).

Luckily after all was said and done, the customs types had very little interest in the truck or my livestock and we were on our way after a short half-hour stint in US Immigration. It's amazing how little interest is taken in one's livestock after it has been made clear that the individual has spoken to three US Fish and Wildlife Officials to obtain a permit for one little Beta Fish. You know that if I didn't have the one little paper, they would have ripped the truck apart and made me dispose of my lovely pet Gordon.

In the end we got to the house and it was great!!

I bought a car a couple of weeks ago. Nice little 2002 Silver Honda Accord SE. I feel like I now belong to the Silver Honda Accord Club- just me and 5 million of my closest Silver Honda Accord driving buddies. Say hi to them as you cruise down the highway and think of me!! Funniest part of it all is the new staulker I have acquired. Staulker Tim calls me at least twice a day to find out if my paperwork is done for my registration of the vehicle. He leaves me a message everyday but he always seems to forget his own phone number. Now, I don't know how many of you remember Leon the Ladies Man from Saturday Night Live but he always said, "I wanna git wid you" to every woman he met. Well, Staulker Tim uses that phrase...sorta... It's something like this: "you gotta git wid yur administraaaation" and I'll I can think of is Leon going "I wanna git wid you, I wanna git wid you." Now I like the folks in the Administration at work, but they are really "gittin' wid" material (for me anyways).