you may say that i'm a dreamer, but i'm not the only one...

father's day is almost here (again), and not un-like mother's day, facebook has kindly prompted it's masses to copy and paste (and post) assorted pater related paraphernalia (south africa, 1975, dad is third from the left, next to mum, both sitting behind me).



but which photo? staring at the albums i got that same glazed over feeling which happens at baskin & robbins. but this is the one i went with; awali, bahrain, sometime in the mid 80's, on his way to work to do a couple of fillings. there were a lot of different names on the house signs, some in arabic, but as far as i can remember there weren't any others that started and ended with a z-- and believe me, there are a lot of arabic names that do.



at this point i think it is fairly evident that i cant commit to much of anything-- and i do thank, not blame, my dad for that (it is his fault about the flat feet though) geographical transience can do that to a person. iceland; circa. we were very small-- somewhere in the 3 foot range-- but this demonstrates how the fedorowicz's never travel light, regardless of how much practicing at it goes on.



then there was the "badass" one where he ran the comrades ultra-marathon in south africa (that's 90k south of the equator) some time in the late 70's.



or the one where he took "teenage me" mountain biking around the jebel (bahrain) with his windsurfing buddies, post-gulf war (the first one).



speaking of windsurfing...sheik's beach, bahrain, the 90's.



there was also the apres 'ride around the desert', in the paddling pool, with floating beer...



scuba diving in the red sea in the 80's. well, diving and drinking home brewed wine for the grown ups, ripping apart sea cucumbers and starfish for the under 9's.



and the "poo thing"...duba, saudi arabia; we were so proud of the home made camping toilet that was the sum product of the fedorowicz, wood and barnes families' hard labour.



because this is what we all had to put up with before; a shovel, sand dune and a roll of andrex...



always a family favourite, dad laughing uncontrollably while pointing out the giant, steaming pile the horse (that just carried his son and future daughter-in-law away by carriage) left behind. (keysoe, england, 5-ish years ago).



my birthday card (from my brother), detailing the finer points of a dog's bum, caused such silent mirth and tears of appreciation, that we could not miss the opportunity to document it (buckden, england, two-ish summers ago).



at this point, it's clearly evident that freud would have a field day; the apple cant even be pried off the tree. dad in his dental chair, bahrain.



last christmas.

itinerant

recently arriving into san diego's airport, i was met with a series of faces that were as familiar to me as those i had just spent 5 hours looking at in US weekly; minus the boobs, botox and bevy of octo-babies-- speaking of, she must be a little cheesed at the whole advent of swine flu now occupying serious, journalistic breakfast television and hysterical, afternoon couch time.

willie


eddie


dave


neil shigley is a san diego artist responsible for the series "invisible people" http://www.neilshigley.com/ plexiglass prints of the city's homeless population. each print is marked with their personal, transient's co-ordinates; name, age, intersection, and a symbol from the 'hobo alphabet'- google it and improve your trivial pursuit quotient.



and where else, but balboa park, can you take a nap by the rose garden while your unmentionables finish up in the eco-friendly rinse cycle.

painting by numbers

i have a long history of not committing-- to eyewear, shampoo, relationships, countries, and walls. as a child, we moved into accommodation provided by my father's work, i then lived in my grandmother's flat during undergrad, and moved into rentals every few years thereafter. however, i have been "practicing" thoughout the course of my own changes in address, by helping 'mortgaged and monogomous' friends; spackle, strip, and roll, offering (unsolicited) opinions on the merits of "watermelon-mango" as an accent colour for the toilet cistern.

the walrus said, "the time has come" (check your nearest lewis carroll), for me to choose, and while i typically enjoy as much colour as dame barbara cartland's eyeshadow palette, this does not translate well into a space inhabited by furniture, framed art, and periodically, a christmas tree. too bright and/or too many, is too trendy for the interior-- and will date faster than those god awful lamp shade dresses that everyone has been wearing this past year.

perusing the colour wheel at lowes, i found that choices are categorized into food groups, the weather, and random nouns. an immediate appetite boner occurs when rifling through; "burnt caramel", "coconut cream", "pale butter", "maple taffy", "orange toffee", "honey tea", "creamy oat", "pumpkin custard", (does the paint company outsource to yankee candle?), "coffee whip", "butterscotch sundae", and "tomato bisque". and i strenuously object to "fruit compote" as a signifier for pale yellow.

aspiring (or even actual, and therefore super-dooper nerdy) meteorologists can choose from; "heatwave" (with a "dehydration" accent wall and "gatorade" trim?), "lightning", "sunburst", "solstice", and "rise-n-shine" (the abercrombie line of paint identifies it as "morning wood").

and the more peculiar; "grand hotel awning yellow", "fuzzy navel", and "champagne tickle". i question the validity of "soft duckling", because how many times do you really see matted looking chicks with feathery dreds.

i would like to submit my contributions to either the eddie bauer or martha stewart collections; "batshit grey", "morning sickness", "bloodshot pupil", "draining sinus", "burnt bile", "seeping scab", "penile drippage", "toasted scabies", "rosacsea", "oops-i-washed-my-whites-with-my-blue-jeans", "one-week-out-of-the-month-knicker-stain-umber", "white t-shirt's armpit", "dig deeper earwax orange", "sewers after the tsunami", "wifebeater plum", "toilet bowl" (a popular choice for those doing the pebble dashed sponge painting technique), and "lint trap", accented with "oops-i-sharted-myself-after-a-serious-chicken-vindaloo".

remembering the 80's- when a school picture sparks a thousand memories (and comments on facebook)

catching octopi at the red sea with BBQ skewers, intentionally peeing all over the boy's bathroom floor, having a dunce hat put on your head by the teacher and then being told to stand in the corner, separate swim days at the pool for men and women- so you could never actually swim with both parents at the same time, teachers jailed and then deported for growing marijuana, being warned that you could go blind if you didn't look away as your classmate's father (also your opthamologist) is bringing a cauterizer towards your retina, motley crue tapes being censored with "the black marker" because saudi authorities didn't realize the band members were men, harbouring resentment over an imperfect spelling test when the american teacher docked a point for the addition of a "u" in "colour", even though it was an international school.

and the 90's; where the size of your (ok, my) glasses increased in tandem with the myopia.

just visiting

there are some places that come under the "nice place to visit, but i wouldn't want to live there" category-- london is on that list of temporary residences, and detroit is definitely only a "drive-thru-late-at-night-lost-in-the-wrong-neighborhood-when-the-petrol-light-comes-on-indicating-you-are-about-to-run-on-fumes-until-a-front-tyre-hits-one-of-the-many-potholes-on-a-street-inhabited-by-people-who-probably-wouldn't-be-thinking-about-giving-a-blonde-with-an-accent-driving-a-mazda-with-california-plates-and-two-bikes-on-the-roof-directions-to-the-nearest-shell-station".

one of the advantages of "just visiting" status, for the perpetually non-comitted, is that there is no one else's flowery wallpaper preferences to wrestle and swear off the wall, no swollen or blackened feet from sweeping/scouring/scrubbing/soliciting grime, grease and dog hair accumulated over 30 years, no cigarette butts circa. the original star wars movie to dislodge from windowsills, no peanut shells haphazardly scattered in closets, no random cans of budweiser deposited around like an easter hunt designed for the alchoholic redneck, no nails the size of knitting needles to yank, pry, pull and tease from the wall (many walls), no parrot shit (apparently ingested with a tube of krazy glue) pebble dashed to any porous surface, no generations of neanderthal dust bunnies to excavate and exhume from behind the radiator (as well as random bottles of windex, empty loo rolls and scratch off lottery stubs), no chewing gum from michael jackson's "thriller" era bonded beneath the kitchen counter, no dicing, slicing and stuffing into a black rubbish bag of the many limbs from an out of control house plant to dispose of, at an undisclosed location (unpaved country road) after dark, no bleach fumes to bring on a migraine headache the proportions maternal guilt induces or to dilate the capillaries in your eyeballs to a lovely shade of magma.

and who needs to waste money on overpriced blinds at pier 1 when there is overgrown foliage over the windows rivalling sleeping beauty's castle, to keep searing UV rays out of your living room?

unfortunately, even i am now beginning to acknowledge the 'just like your mother' size 3 obsessive-compulsive footsteps that are inevitable- right about the time i caught myself spraying clorox onto the skirting board.

kentucky: where the grass is blue, the necks are red, and colonel sanders isn't as popular as ronald mcdonald

10 years ago when i announced that i was going to graduate school in kentucky, i was met with the: "i just smelled boiled eggs dipped in cat litter and deep fried in garlic" face. i personally, can imagine far worse places to pack your 'two suitcases at 40kg' luggage allowance, to begin accruing tuition debt at exorbitant international student rates. while kabul and east st. louis no doubt offer a competitive package for inexpensive accomodation and an affordable cost of living, the 'getting shot at/stepping on a landmine while nipping out to the supermarket to buy a (competitively priced) carton of milk, holds about as much allure as trying on lance armstrong's bike shorts after he finished the final stage of the '05 tour de france. but then it's a bit odd what some people come to identify as "home" for themselves (zip codes with an emphasis on genocide rather than generic front lawns, or trailer parks in the midwest where the retail demand for miller light is only surpassed by the high consumer interest in sudafed), no more than speculating why a chihuahua is now an acceptable definition of "dog", or that dressing in voluminous floral trousers, showcasing every colour in the crayon box is o.k., especially when co-ordinated to match the "dog".

in the last decade, i've only seen a handful of KFC's (and certainly never from the interior), have not become destitute as a result of buying a horse, gambling on multiples of them, or just trying to purchase a regular admission ticket to the derby. my taste buds have proven impervious to the local zealour for graeter's ice-cream, or an even more inexplicable and ungodly adoration for ramsi's (a long standing "ethnic" restaurant), earning it's "genre" as mediterannean, because it serves overpriced, flavoured hummus. find me an arab who eats fire roasted garbanzo dip, and i will try to find an israeli that munches on sun dried cinnamon raisin bagels with blueberry brown sugar cream cheese. for me, "the big lebowski" was mostly experienced during REM sleep, so an entire weekend festival devoted to it, is about as appealing as a BLT is to a hasidic rabbi. i have seen muhammad ali twice, never eaten a white castle hamburger, and cannot stomach the american version of "biscuits", "gravy" or anything else that represents the "country cooking served in platters upon 20 foot long picnic tables covered in checkered cloths" food group. i do enjoy looking for rednecks, just not in a 'steve irwin to snapping crocodile' proximity. there are also many things that are not typically associated with kentucky that i have experienced, and would never have had the opportunity to do so, had i not chosen the road south of the mason dixon. now when i tell people that i am moving to maine. i get the familiar "face", followed by "wow, you know, it's really cold up there in the winter".

"no shit?!!"

obviously, living in the bluegrass state the last few years, i have been completely cut off from any news and weather that didn't involve histrionics over 'o-zone levels' and panic over the possibility of an inch of snow accumulation. however, there are just as many rednecks in the northeast as there are in the south, and quite frankly the northerner's tendency to punctuate the "ar" sound at the end of certain words (making them sound like they just got stabbed in the chest), grates on my ears more than a twangy drawl operating slower than jessica simpson's limbic system.

if it's broken, and can't be fixed; throw it out

more so than skydiving, shoplifting, or trying to cross shelbyville road on my bike, the sight of carboard boxes, plastic rubbermaid ware (gallon not sandwich size), and bubble wrap can stimulate my endorphins, pretty bloody quickly.

packing and moving are action verbs, and i can wrap like a chippie wench in the north, on a sunday morning, right after the pubs close. it mattereth not whether it's an apartment across the city, a condo across the country, or a new home on the opposite side of the planet, the ritual of throwing out and packaging up, to then unwrap the same tinkerbell coffee mug on a different latitude always has that xmas-day-morning-first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life moment. and when i am not personally in the throes of upheaval, i will be the first to volunteer to help others move their garfield "i hate mondays" coffee mug.

of course every time you move, there are always casualties.