The Banana Guard

I was going to write about last weekend's trip to Ottawa to celebrate a friend's birthday at the Nordic Spa. The sleeping arrangements were a bit tricky because there were four of us in a room with two queen-size beds and I don't like spooning with other women (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I brought a blow-up bed but by the time midnight rolled around we had consumed the mini-bar that K brought and I decided I didn't want to ask the valet to drive the car around to the front of the hotel so that I could pull the garbage bag containing my blow-up bed out of the back of the car and lug it up to the room. That meant we had to figure out who was going to sleep with who. T had told me on the way to pick up K that last week her husband woke up perched precariously on the edge of the bed because T has moved to the centre of the mattress and, with the cat, was occupying most of the space. He had to become a human bulldozer (or T-dozer in this case, which perches precariously on the edge of a pun so I can't resist) to get her back to her side of the bed, something she managed to sleep through. I decided that eliminated T as a potential bed partner. Then N said that she sleeps perched precariously on the edge of the bed and doesn't move at all, which sounded like the perfect match for T's bed-hogging shenanigans. So K and I ended up sleeping together. K asked me, just before turning off the light, if I move around a lot, because she's a light sleeper. I do. I also told her I talk in my sleep. Then I asked her what kind of sleeper she is. She replied that she flails her arms. I found that I was making such an effort not to move around and that I was so worried about getting my nose broken by a flailing arm that I couldn't sleep. Around 4 a.m. I whispered to K, not sure if she was awake or not, “Do you feel like you're back in the sauna?” because I was so hot, and she whispered back that she did, and I stumbled over to the thermostat to turn it down and tripped over someone's luggage and started giggling and then K started laughing and we couldn't stop for a while and T and N slept through it all.

I was going to write about that, but we had such a fruitful series of conversations at work today I want to write about them instead. They were all about the Banana Guard. There's a show in Canada called Dragons Den, where people pitch their ideas for a business and try to get one or more dragons (who are multi-millionaires) to invest in them. Three emergency room doctors were on last night's show. They had been on Dragons Den a few years ago trying to get the dragons to invest in the Banana Guard. The dragons didn't buy into the idea and now, a couple of years and 1.5 million dollars in sales later, the three doctors were back on the show pitching their new line of guards for different types of fruit. MM and D refuse to take the Banana Guard seriously and MM asked if they make a Banana Guard with the top cut off for Jewish banana lovers. H, on the other hand, became a Banana Guard convert after a friend gave her one for her birthday, and now she has a Pear Guard as well. She tried to convince MM and D that eating bruised and battered bananas is a really awful ordeal that no one need go through if one has the Banana Guard. I concur. Then G arrived and declared himself on MM's and D's side of the Banana Guard debate. How damaged can a banana get on the way to work? he scoffed. H replied that before she got the Banana Guard she used to transport her banana in her hand, that's how worried she was about it. I replied that having the Banana Guard had probably saved H's life, as someone could easily have mistaken the banana in her hand for a gun and shot her in self-defense. I proposed that we conduct a randomized controlled trial, where we would bring in 12 bananas and randomly assign 6 of them to be carried to work the next day in a Banana Guard and the other 6 to be carried au naturel, and then we would get two raters, both blind to the objectives of the experiment and the exposure status of the bananas, to determine which ones looked healthier. H, being a student, asked if we could use a smaller sample size as bananas are expensive. Then W arrived and, while refusing to take sides, demanded to know how exactly the Banana Guard can handle bananas of different shapes. What if they're straight? she asked. What if they're really curvy? What if they have an odd kink in them? H tried to explain that the Banana Guard can handle bananas of all shapes and sizes but W remained unconvinced. H then went into Google Calendar and scheduled a Banana Guard demo for next Thursday. MM spitefully declared that she is going to bring a plantain.

H and I have decided to give those three emergency room doctors some competition. We're going to go on Dragons Den and pitch the banana sling (similar to this, except it would contain a banana, not a baby or an alien impersonating a gigantic rodent), the banana belt holster and the banana ankle holster. Let us know if you have any other marketable ideas for a banana holder/protector.

What I did on the weekend

I met friends for brunch, twice. The second time was at the vegetarian restaurant, which is run by a cult. But they don't try to recruit you, although maybe they're using their food instead of more conventional tactics like persuasive pamphlets and weekend retreats where you don't get to sleep in. If I were ever to join a cult it would probably be this one. It used to be the Hare Krishnas because of the music, but I don't think they serve Celtic honey cake.

I went to a fundraising yoga class for Haiti, twice. The room was packed and I was a bit claustrophobic. That was my “hardship” for the weekend. It's at times like these that I wish I had gone to medical school. It was on the list, once.

I watched the last episode of Season 4 of Lost (I'm making my way through Seasons 1-5 before the final season starts in February). WD-40 missed a great chance for product placement when Ben was trying to turn the wheel to move the island: it looked like it could have used some oil.

I bought a calendar for $5 that I'm going to give to my younger nephew for his birthday in early March. The calendar has a tear-off postcard for every week in 2010, each of which features a photo of a baby bunny or other such adorable animal and a caption like “Grandma died” or “We'll have to amputate.” If you're also wondering who buys those rubber chickens that squawk and lay an egg when you squeeze them, that would be me. I found a box of them in a shop before Christmas and tested each one to find the loudest squawker. I'm not sure where to put it... in the fig tree in the living room, where it can share space with a snake, an apple, a pomegranate, a naked barbie doll and two anatomically correct guardians of heaven that I bought in Indonesia? Or should I decapitate it and have its head poke out from the hole in the baseboard in my funky bathroom?

I bought a refill for my pen, which a friend got for me in Germany. I love it because it's small and highly engineered and spotted like a leopard, except that over the years the spots have been wearing off. (Who says a leopard can't change its spots? I like to think it's becoming a cougar.) I'm sure my pen is the sort of item Indigo could wax eloquent about, but since you're stuck with me I'm clumsily switching to an anecdote about winter boots. I was in a store and asked to try some boots on in sizes 7.5 and 8. The 7.5 was too small on one foot and the 8 was too big on the other, so I tried one size on each foot to try to figure out which would be better. “Are you trying on a different size on each foot?” the salesperson demanded incredulously. When I responded in the affirmative she informed me that I shouldn't do that. “It's not like you can buy a different size for each foot” she sniffed, looking at me as if I was a moron. I did actually know that footwear is sold in pairs, although maybe it should be sold as individual units since people's feet are often different sizes. Plus that way people with two left feet could buy two left shoes, which might make their feet happier and improve their dancing ability. Obviously shoe people don't think outside the shoebox. Morons.

I read an article about whether Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare. The one fact I remember from that article is that falcons are trained through starvation and sleep deprivation. For some time I've wanted to write a post about animal rights and wrongs, but I find it too hard to inform myself about the subject. I suspect that animals that are confined to small spaces and never see natural light and are prodded to an abattoir reeking and shrieking of terror or that are subjected to experimental protocols until dissection day comes around are not very happy, but I could be entirely wrong about that. I just don't know. Because I can't bear to read up on it.

On that somewhat unhappy note I'll end. Appropriately enough, someone has come up with a mathematical formula to predict the unhappiest day of the year, and it's today. But tomorrow's another day.

Mom hit pop

Mom hit pop. I love this opening line. It conveys, in triumphantly tripartite fashion, such singularity of purpose on the mother's part. How much less compelling it would have been if Pop was hit by mom--thus demonstrating the superiority of the active over the passive voice. We kept trying, after reading that line, to come up with a snappier opening. Mom wept. Too predictable. Mom farted. Too crude. Mom offgassed. Too coy. Mom vacuumed. Too stereotyped. Mom recovered. Too anticlimactic. Mom screamed. That had possibilities. Then we changed screamed to screeched and liked it even better. How about Mom bellowed? Or better yet, Saul bellowed?

There really needs to be a category of nanoflash fiction for stories of two words or less. Freed from niggling worries about sightlines, character development and plot, writers could master the art of the unsaid. Readers wouldn't have time to lose interest, and much lively discussion about subtext would ensue. Compared to these condensed gems, those six-word stories that once were the rage would be like bloated baubles from the dollar store.

2010

I'm a little depressed about 2010. October 22 will mark the end of my forties, which is a big deal for me in so many ways. For one thing, it means that I only have ten months to become a cougar. Is there even a category for women in their fifties who have sex with younger men (the rare snow leopard perhaps)? For another thing, 50 means I will definitely be on the downward and no doubt very slippery slope of my life. I probably passed my chronological pinnacle some years ago (unless I live to age 100 or more, which I really really hope I don't do; my plan is to start engaging in risky behaviours at age 70 – smoking, foregoing seat belts, having unprotected sex – to minimize my chances of becoming a centenarian), but psychologically and physically 50 seems to mark the end of so many things. I would list them, but I don't have the energy (which would be on the list if I did have the energy to produce one).

Work is a bit of a worry too. Funding for the research project I've been working on since 2001 ends at the end of 2010, and unless we can find more $$$... the idea of my job ending is not just depressing because of the loss of income. Work, I realize, is a bit of a social event for me (which is probably leading you to question the quality of my social life). Although I really don't have that much in common with my co-workers – for example, one of them doesn't appear to believe in recycling and I am constantly inspecting the contents of her garbage for stuff that can be put in the blue box instead, another one cut short a stay in New York City so that she could shop at an outlet mall in Pennsylvania, and yet another spends substantial amounts of time on the internet cooking fake food and decorating her fake café with moose antlers – they are very dear to me. And entertaining. The non-believer in recycling believed for years that her cousin had graduated from the Disney University with a law degree. “The Disney University? Who would trust a lawyer who has that degree hanging on their wall?” But she was adamant. We finally did a Google search and found out that while there really is a Disney University, its mission is to teach Disney employees customer service skills and how to talk in a Mickey falsetto. I remain unsure as to whether her cousin actually has a law degree, or whether her aunt and uncle lied about that to my coworker as well. I fear that if my job ends, all my blogging material will too.

This year is also the year that Lost ends. It's like I've been reading an un-put-downable novel rivalling A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in length (information supplied courtesy of Deloney) and I'm finally coming to the last page, at which point the characters will desert me. I will be bereft.* I will wear black.* Which thankfully is slimming. Fat cougars are an abomination, and unlikely to catch any prey.

To the hunt...

*Statements supplied courtesy of comments on Indigo's blog.