sometimes it's just easier to make brownies out of a box

'high maintenance' can be divided into two camps; the 'i need a coach purse for my birthday/valentines'/christmas/halloween/pancake day' kind (which was the reassuring "good god, not me" mantra in the early stages of any relationship), versus the; 'i don't need expensive things, i'm simple/easygoing/thrifty/don't believe your credit card bill should reflect your commitment, instead i want you to pay attention to the tiny nuances of my personality and make something or do something that resonates with that so i will become more giddy than girl-with-brown-on-beige-accessory'.

aka; a lot of work.

and so my request for the first anniversary, was to go camping. and take the mountain bikes. and kayak. with both dogs.

why the hell anyone would want to leave their own, already paid for, climate controlled environment with all of the key amenities, for an over-priced permanently 70/21 degree room- even if it has a five star restaurant/bar/jacuzzi, when there are whole patches of dirt, zip up windows and metal toilets that require shoes to commute to at 3 in the morning is beyond me.



the 'totally-not-high-maintenance' control issues kicked in, in preparation for a weekend in the woods. thank god for amazon.com and 'how to camp with your canine' books, coleman's selection of clip on, magnetic tent lights, the arbitrary 'tree trolley' for wayward and disobedient pooches, and a made-out-of-ballistic-material 'modular hauler' to organize, by colour code, the campsite electrics, french press, canine accoutrements, and assortment of bungee cords. preparation and anticipation, as with most things in the life of an obsessive-compulsive, is key. i even called ahead to make sure that the camp site was "dog friendly".



we were effectively 'tailgating'-- overnight. it must be a cultural thing, but this was a new york city tenement of camp sites, minus the protest. as a child of the 80's, pitching a tent in the middle east meant there were no neighbours except the ones your parents brought for 'booze backup'. camping in dog friendly northern maine is all about sharing 100 square feet of dirt with homesteaders and their monogrammed bird baths.

it's a bayyyyyyy-beeeeeeeeeeee!

look! a baby! she's even my pseudo mini-me, and the most difficult and uncomfortable thing i had to do was shell out for a transatlantic plane ticket.

i got to spend a week 'job shadowing' my sister-in-law and 8 week old niece-- minus the breastfeeding and nappy changing. kind of like my brother, i'm still; "building up to it".

and so we all surfaced from our beds (at different times, mind you) to a groundhog day of; feeding, burping, cuddling, jiggling, changing, napping; feeding, burping, cuddling, jiggling, changing, napping;...drinking wine.

in addition to learning the ins and outs of the labour, hearing a great story about projectile poo flying out of her bottom (baby, not s-i-l) across the changing table, i got loads of practice doing the infant macarena; sway, sway, lunge, lunge, grand plie in second, repeat until lactic fatigue. yep. it's a lot of work, and there really is no per diem option.

"you'd be a great mummy/you're a natural/look how at ease you are with her". sure, you can take one look at a kenyan and know he's going to set records, win medals and suddenly obtain U.S. citizenship. i'm just not convinced that this means you can cherrypick a winning breeder.

i suppose one of the handy things about having a sibling is that can they can act as the proverbial canary in a mine shaft-- fortunately after seven days, i hadn't keeled over in my bird cage.

keep calm and carry on

i was about six or seven when why my avi died. we were living in the united arab emirates at the time, and i remember seeing my mum take that phone call- all of it. we flew back to england for the funeral, it was cold, everyone was crying, i didn't want to be part of any of that.

my amma passed away when i was 17, i was at boarding school, i got the phone call from my mum, she was so upset, i couldn't say anything to make it go away, i knew she was overwhelmed by it all, i couldn't and wouldn't try and empathize with her, because then i had to deal with the concept that one day it would be her, and she would be me. so instead of going home that weekend, i went to my friend's birthday party- my mum told me i should go. then we had her funeral, i was there, we were all there, i felt the same way i did when i was six.

i am 36, today my dziadza passed away. he was old, he had been struggling with cancer, but he was one of those people who was just invincible. he got caught up in the chaos of world war two as a young boy; sent by train to siberia from poland, separated from his family. he fought for his country and for freedom for europe, he came to england with my babcia and married her at 16. he had some made for movie type stories.

i have a friend who's family get together for dinner twice a year- well, more than twice a year- but twice a year as the 'original five'; mum, dad and three girls. no spouses, no kids, just them; before all the major life stuff happened. she knows that some day there will be a place setting missing at the table. now that my dziadz is gone, i know this means everyone moves up a place. and i move back to my place of 'not thinking about it'.

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.

"you're pretty athletic"

was the complimentary feedback i received halfway down sugarloaf mountain from "mr double black diamond". clearly he hasn't noticed the frequent withdrawals from our checking account that go to active.com on a fairly regular basis. nevertheless, he had been on at me for the last couple of years to give downhill skiing a go so that we could have "something to do together", why he just cant be happy that we both enjoy a bit of bravo tv from the same couch i do not know.

ski resorts; clearly i have been missing out on a whole new realm of people watching. north face aside, many seem to view it as an opportunity to showcase their collection of voluminous snowflake sweaters. i took it as one to test the commitment of my relationship.

starting with the ski boots. not only do those things bloody hurt, but they make it virtually impossible to maneuver 25 metres from the rental place to the 'staging area'. this doesn't even factor in balancing two extremely cumbersome and overpriced pieces of wood on one clavicle, while trying not to poke someone else in the crotch with a pole. 2,400 centimetres later and it's time to rearrange everything in order to get on the bloody chairlift, which was "fun" (sort of like an amusement park), until we stopped, mid-mountain, due to wind gusts, and just hung there helplessly swinging in the swirl.

and the hills were indeed alive with assorted expletives.

fortunately ours made it to the summit (and i was able to disembark with all equipment intact), to a snowstorm; all the better to propel us down a mountain that no one could actually see. so...if a couple can survive a cross country road trip (we did-- twice), then they need to try skiing from high altitude together. after a brief tantrum, i determined that passive-aggressive would be the best strategy to facilitate a sooner apres-ski, and guarantee that i would never be asked to go again.

and so i made full use of the many, many faceplants, lying like a dead starfish, waiting to be plucked, along with far flung skis and poles, from the snow and pine trees. "i hate skiing/winter/this/why did you bring me here/i cant do this/it's too steep/i'm never doing it again/this is your thing, not mine/stop trying to force me to do your stuff/this isn't fun".

neither my behaviour or technique were pretty, let alone gracious and graceful. and had there been video footage, rather like people who choose to record their boudoir moments, i don't know that i would ever pick up a set of poles again.

it took us 45 minutes to get down the mountain when it should have taken eight. it felt like two hours.

but i did make the "noise".

i did it all for the t-shirt

my second (and final) snowshoe race of the year went significantly better than the first. i did not finish last, instead climbing up to third from the end. this may have had something to do with the fact that we three back of packers kept a nice, even pace the first 2.5 mile loop. that, and borrowing a pair of "racing" snowshoes. it's amazing how much easier the whole process is when there aren't ironing boards strapped to the bottom of your feet.

and much like the elusive 'runner's toenail', i can't seem to acquire 'snowshoer's bum'.

show us your bibs!

new orleans, what better place to run a long distance foot race than during mardi gras season; it's flat, temperatures are not "sweat pooling in your butt crack and belly button" and there are plenty of doughnuts, i mean beignets, to fortify the fat stores before the big event.

while we did see michael j fox in the arrivals hall at louis armstrong international, i was somewhat surprised, given the season, at the lack of trannies handing out cytomax along the actual course- by the time i came shuffling through the aid station, even the most hung over should have been up and scarfing a bacon wrapped beignet or two. however, the route masters did a great job of touring us through "things from tv and the pages of people magazine in real life"-- the superdome and media focus of hurricane katrina hysteria (apparently also a football team), the funereal skyline of above ground mausoleums, mark twain's mississippi river, complete with big noisy paddle steamers lumbering by, and the quaint neon charm of larry flynt's hustler clubs in quicker succession than antebellum porches shaded by spanish moss.

so aside from all of the other verbs-- "drink"; hurricanes, martinis, cosmopolitans, and a shiraz called "ass kisser", "shop"; or at least try to figure out how to get the lady at the joe malone counter in SAKS to give us flutes of champagne- apparently it's two more decades and a very pronounced 'botox face', "eat"; anything that swam, scavenged or mooed covered in beans, rice and grits, "play"; 'talking to random strangers at the bar', which definitely gets more mileage than 'talking to random strangers you are sitting next to on the flight from portland to laguardia, and "people watch"; a couple getting engaged in the grass at franklin park, we did "run", and because i still haven't figured out how to do more than charge the bloody garmin, i used basic maths-- fairly accurately (for me). 1 under cross-trained/over run left knee with a history of dislocation minus 13.1 equals 13.1 (yes, i scaled down to the half, keep up people) divided by a bunch of other halves where i now know an acceptable pace per mile marker and when to ramp things up, equals me crossing the finish line in (personal) record time with fatigued legs, but not feeling like i just want to lie on the tarmac for 35 minutes and aspirate sport's beans. 2:07:21. final answer: i am officially on target to kick oprah's ass time at the next 26.2