Last night I spent an hour cleaning orange juice residue from twelve of my keys. Thank God for the keyboard condom I got after the last time Lil' Dude spilled a drink on my computer; otherwise it could have been way worse. I really should back up my data...

"No eat the pine cone?"

"That's right. We don't eat pine cones."

"I had an epic struggle trying to get Lil' Dude to sleep."

"Oh yeah? As epic as The Lord of the Rings?"

"I don't know. Did The Lord of the Rings feature a child forcibly opening another character's mouth and deliberately drooling a goober into it? 'Cause if it didn't, I think my experience was more epic."

What the fuck made me think that I could take up cross-stitching and raise a toddler at the same time?

I was holding Lil' Dude at a bus shelter and asked him if he wanted to sit down on the bench. He said yes. Two women were talking on either end of the three-seater, and their bags were on the ends of the bench, so I said, "Excuse me" and inserted Lil' Dude in the vacant middle seat. The older woman muttered something under her breath and, through gritted teeth, said to the younger one, "Take her picture."

I turned to her. "Sorry—why are you taking my picture?"

"You like to take it up the rear, don't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"You take it up the rear. That's the only reason they let you stay on our land!" (Both women were First Nations.)

I was standing there, holding Lil' Dude's hands. The bizarre verbal assault continued. "You're a slut! When he grows up, he's going to want to have sex with you. You'll just spread it for anyone, won't you. You're not sorry for anything. We're taking your picture because we're sick of it. You're going to get deported! They're sick of it, too. Sending you back where you came from! Look at you! Cover yourself up! You slut!"

At that point I just picked up Lil' Dude and walked over to the bus stop a little ways away and waited for the bus to arrive.

When I recounted the story later that evening, my sweetie remarked, "Yeah, nothing says 'easy lay' like a knee brace."

"No, no—shoes don't belong in the fridge."

The most useless response from Clubhouse:
***
Dear nori:

Thank you for contacting us in regards to our Club House Extracts. Our customers are our first concern and we are always interested in assisting you with any questions or comments you may have on any of our products.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We have forwarded your comments to the marketing director for future consideration.

If you have questions regarding any of our products, please do not hesitate to contact me via email or call our toll free number, 1-800-265-2600.

Sincerely,

Valerie Mailloux

Consumer Affairs Specialist
McCormick Canada
www.clubhouse.ca
***
I didn't write back, but I regret that a little bit now. Marketing? How is that productive?

I guess if I'm going to start making this complaint letter schtick a thing, I should start following through, huh? Anyway, if in five years you start seeing vanilla and almond extract bottles that don't fucking leak (I'm pretty sure that technology will be available then), know that you have me—or possibly hundreds of other people who have come to the same simple realization—to thank.

So you know how when you inadvertently translate your hand a key over and start touch-typing gobbledygook? It seems Google is clever enough to know you've done that and what you actually meant. Huh.

All right—for lack of something better to post, here is my complaint letter to Clubhouse:
***
Category Type: Complaint
Subject: Packaging
Product Name: Vanilla extract, almond extract, etc.
Message: Is there any way you can redesign your vanilla extract and almond extract bottles to be more leak resistant? I can't imagine that I am the only consumer who accidentally and unknowingly knocks over those bottles in the pantry only to discover them lying in a messy puddle with half the extract wasted. It would be enormously helpful if you could add a soft plastic gasket to the lid or something, because the paper gasket that you use just gets saturated and then doesn't function well as a barrier against leaks.
***
Their response to follow.

I'm in Edmonton, where my parents have asked me to go through all of my childhood shit so that they can cull what they can and get the house ready to sell. I started the process yesterday, going through two bookshelves and three desk drawers. Dear Lord, I had a lot of useless crap. I've already stuffed one recycling bag and am well on my way to filling another.

I expected having to sort through my old belongings to be exhausting and emotional, but it hasn't been too bad so far, possibly because we went through a great purge of our apartment a few months back, when I learned that I needed to take a clinical approach. Still, twenty years' worth of accumulated possessions, memories, and unfulfilled ambitions are bound to be fraught.

What isn't hard at all is throwing out my old florid writing from my high school days. I'm almost embarrassed to read it—it's so awful. I now know that's a phase I had to go through. Experimenting and pushing the edges of my sensibilities so that I could feel out where my boundaries are. Not that I knew that's what I was doing at the time—I'm sure I thought my writing was fucking brilliant back then. I'll just have to keep this in mind when it's Lil' Dude's turn to write for school and not stifle his own discovery by trying to impose my standards of quality on him . Fortunately, since I rediscovered this blog eight years after starting it, as I read through the archives I was relieved to discover that only a few of my past entries really made me cringe. Of course I hope I'll never stop learning, developing, and evolving, but it's reassuring to know that my tendencies have been reasonably stable since I've matured a bit.

I also found (and discarded) stacks and stacks and stacks of my old study cards from high school and early university. The handwriting is mine, but I have no recollection of creating it. This exercise has made me realize how much I once learned and how incredibly much I've now forgotten. How knowledgeable I'd be if I could just retain a fraction more of what I read.

So now I'm left with about a shelf's worth of university-level physics and math textbooks that I have no idea what to do with. My cursory online research has turned up Books for Africa, an NGO based in the U.S., and Books 2 Prisoners, which has a Vancouver office. Not clear if the latter will accept physics texts, though; its focus seems to be the humanities, and law. More probing needed.

I tried to sneak a juice box for Lil' Dude past airport security, but they confiscated it. I was tempted to say, "You know Osama Bin Laden's dead, right?" but I didn't want them to take me to the little room.

"Please stop paddling your mother with the pie server."

Sunlight—the exclamation-filled response:
***
Hello nori,

Thanks so much for writing!

We are writing in response to your comments regarding our advertisement for our products.

As a manufacturer we feel it is a major responsibility to provide our friends and consumers with the most creative and informative means of advertising possible. Needless to say, we are most concerned with your comments as they suggest we may not be successfully promoting this message on behalf of our product.

You may be interested to know that all of our commercials and advertisements are pre-tested and various techniques are used to evaluate consumer reactions. Based on the results of our pre-testing procedures, the presentations are chosen for their majority appeal. Please let us assure you that your comments are extremely important to us in evaluating the success of our commercials and advertisements.

We have a long history of presenting "tasteful" advertising to the public. Our ads must be informative and truthful. The agencies creating our advertising adhere strictly to these guidelines.

We certainly do not wish to offend anyone. In developing product messages, Sun Products and its agencies may not always anticipate all possible implications of an advertisement or television commercial.

We will certainly forward your comments to the Marketing staff. Consumer comments are very important and evaluated on a regular basis.

We do thank you for your interest!
Your friends at Sun Products
***
I especially like the quotes around "tasteful." And I yet again did not succeed in getting free samples, not that I was angling for them.

Apparently the latex within fig leaves can be a severe irritant to human skin. Perhaps not the best option for covering one's shame?

Got attacked by stinging nettles at Rebecca Spit today, but I think the haul of beautiful salmonberries was worth it.

Lil' Dude seems awfully fond of them.

The QR code for this blog is









This is what happens when I find myself on holiday with too much time on my hands.

Doesn't "I'm a Little Teapot" conflate teapots and tea kettles?

My sweetie thinks it's "cute" that I write complaint letters to faceless corporations and attempt to reason with them. *Shrug*. I don't really expect anything to come of them—I'm not even angling for free samples or anything—but if I'm going to complain about something, I figure I may as well complain to the companies themselves, which are they only ones that can do anything about the problem... right? I keep assuming the art must be in striking the right balance of constructive criticism, but maybe I need to take a squeaky-wheel approach.

My latest missive was to Sunlight®:

In your Sunlight Deep Clean commercial, your use of statistics about women implies that doing the laundry is entirely a woman's responsibility. I know that I'm not alone in feeling that this implication is outdated, if not a bit irresponsible. As a consumer of laundry detergent and other cleaning products, I can say that I would be much more responsive to an ad that took a more balanced approach and showed that cleaning is just as much the responsibility of male members of the household.

Thanks,

nori maki
***
I wrote a note to Clubhouse a few months ago. Maybe I'll post that later for its entertainment value.

Complaint letters—perhaps that can be my blogging schtick.

Am I really resurrecting this thing? After spending a couple of hours trying to remember what login I used for this account and wrestling with Blogger to get my access restored, I now feel sort of obligated to see it through.

What started it all was a conversation I had with SW, who'd signed up for a Twitter account so that he could tweet his random, inane (almost always hilarious) thoughts. Yet now he doesn't feel that he can fulfill that promise, because he's somehow ended up accumulating a bunch of what he calls "respectable" followers. I'd thought for a microsecond about joining Twitter for the same purpose—sharing my completely irrelevant "insights"—but his experience gave me pause. I concluded that it was best to vacuum the cobwebs out of this sad blog and bring it back to life.

I'm almost certain nobody will read my posts, but what finally convinced me to come back was reading through my own old entries. Recalling friends, experiences I'd forgotten about.

So now what?

I see my posts here as an opportunity to keep up my writing and to purge what's on my mind as I leave the secure (?) but exhausting (!) world of in-house editing to pursue a freelance business full time. I won't have lunchtimes with coworkers to shoot the shit, so Internet, you're the next best thing.

We'll see how long I can keep this up.

yeah, i've taken quite the hiatus. unexcused absence, really. i know nobody is reading this anymore, but i feel i should get back to writing something on a regular basis so that i don't, you know, lose my perspicacity.

i had a cold about a week and a half ago--nothing serious--but my sweetie said, "oh, you've got a compromised immune system? i've got an idea! let's spend the long weekend camping in the oregon desert freezing our asses off in subzero temperatures!"

"that sounds like a superb idea!"

it was a thirteen-hour drive down there. we left the city at 4:30 pm, so you do the math. we were stuck at the border for two and half hours, part of that because we were detained. four of us in the car, and the border official asked my sweetie and only my sweetie if he's ever been arrested. then they made us leave our car because we confessed we had pepperoni amongst our groceries. although we were pretty sure the pepperoni was made in the u.s., they searched the vehicle while they questioned us inside. again, it was my beardo sweetie they questioned, not any of the rest of us.

"where are you going?"

"smith rock, in oregon."

"and what are you doing there?"

"climbing some rocks."

"aren't there rocks up in canada?"

"uh...yeah, but they're kinda wet."

eventually they found SW's pepperoni and let us go. "you can't take this," the border guard told us.

we ran out and made a clandestine escape. they found one of our pepperoni packages, but missed our 1 kg stash in the trunk.

my sweetie had promised me that i could recover from my cold by sleeping all the way down. of course, since i was folded into the volume and roughly the shape of the inside of a washing machine, that promise went unfulfilled.

we arrived at the campsite at five in the morning. in the dark we set up our tent, where i spent my first of several fitful nights trying to keep warm.

the next morning, i wasn't fully recovered, and i wasn't strong enough to go rock climbing, but i did feel sufficiently well to hike around smith rocks while my sweetie and SW climbed.

in the evening the three of us headed into town to grab supper. according to the climber's guide to smith rocks, chan's restaurant was the "best chinese restaurant in town (Redmond)." my sweetie suggested we head there, although i was highly dubious. i said we should look at the menu, and if they served chop suey, we should leave. the others agreed.

when we arrived, the menu actually looked decent, and we decided to stay. we each decided on an entree and ordered. our meals came with soup: my sweetie and SW got the hot and sour soup, and i ordered the egg drop. the bowls of soup came with saltines -- seriously. and apparently, in the states the crackers aren't "premium plus" -- they're just "premium."

the rest of our dishes came, and they were actually pretty good. but as we ate, people came in ordering take-out. i nearly choked on my food when some dude ordered "sour cream wontons." i frankly have no idea what those could possibly be.

another dude came in and said, "yeah... can i get two orders of the general... uh... the chicken dish."

"general tsao's chicken?"

"yeah."

"two orders?"

"yeah. but no vegetables. just the meat."

"no vegetables?"

"yeah. and, oh, not too spicy."

"two orders?"

"better make that three orders."

as this conversation was progressing, i began laughing harder and harder. my sweetie accused me of being "culturally insensitive."

when we finished our meal, we headed back to camp. that night, temperatures plunged, and i could barely sleep. the next morning i wasn't feeling so great, so my sweetie and SW went climbing, and i stayed in the tent for the entire day. during the afternoon, the wind got fierce, and i heard drops of precipitation on the fly.

apparently, it rained -- and snowed -- more in that one weekend than it usually does in the entire month of november down there.

by nightfall, my sweetie and SW came to fetch me, and we headed in to terrebonne, oregon, for supper at this mexican eatery called "la siesta café." i ordered the chicken taquitos. it was good when i ate it. little did i know i would be tasting those taquitos twice.

in the middle of the night, in the tent, i woke up feeling urgently naseous. i sat up, turned around to face the vestible that didn't contain our shoes, and shrivelled into a fetal ball.

"what are you doing flipped around?" my sweetie asked, groggy.

"i'm gonna vomit," i said. i unzipped the tent and retched out onto the grass. i retreated back into the tent because it was horribly cold. but in short order, i had to expel my stomach contents again. and again. then the other end of my digestive system lost it, and i found myself scrambling to pull on my rain gear to make the twenty-metre dash to the latrine.

incidentally, the latrine didn't have any toilet paper.

needless to say, it was a rough night.

the next day, we started on our way home. i managed to keep a couple of immodium pills down, to SW's relief. last thing he needed was me befouling his vehicle. we drove from place to place in redmond attempting to find some gravol. apparently, americans don't know what gravol is. i guess they just chug pepto after meals. anyway, we found some ostensibly gravol-like pills, i took them, and we were on our way.

it took us twelve hours to get home. i ran a fever for at least half of that time. thankfully, the canadian border official didn't give us any trouble. the contrast was really remarkable.

annoyingly, the week i was trying to recover from this horrible bout of food poisoning, vancouver issued its boil-water advisory because of turbidity that made the water look like weak tim hortons coffee, even after filtration. ironically, too, the weekend after my horrible episode, i was scheduled to take a foodsafe course to learn how not to food-poison people.

i'm fully recovered now, and i can sort of laugh about the experience, but my sweetie will never again convince me to go on a trip when i'm not feeling my best.