Long Distance

Oh boy.

And I do mean boy.

But boy means male, and a boy can be any age, really.



I thought my son, 16, was over his long-distance relationship with a girl who used to go to his school and who moved about seven hours north of here.



In fact, it was only Thursday night that he told me thought he would end it, acknowledging that he thought I was right. That's now changed again because she'll be able to come and visit every once in a while.


I had been gently trying to tell him that, well, long-distance relationships don't work, or at least rarely can.


See, there's this problem.



You can get emotionally attached in a beautiful way. But how can you really know who or what you are getting attached to? I mean, totally?



You're getting attached to something or someone you can't see, can't feel, can't touch.


You can't see their eyes when you say something, you can't be mesmerized or repelled or whatever by their body language and little nuances, can't see how they are at 6 a.m. or 11 p.m. or in between.



Emotional attachments, don't get me wrong, are spectacular. They're the foundation, if they last, for amazing relationships. Those kinds of things can't be denied and they're what we all seek the most, I think.



But emotions are just part of the equation, and even then, they can't be totally believed if they're just by email, text messaging, IM or whatever. There's chemistry and intermingling and other neat stuff that no electronic medium can replicate.



There's a look in the eyes, a recoil to the touch, a turn of the cheek towards or away, a whine or a frown or whatever that makes all the difference...smells, unique features or ways of doing things...



A hand placed on the lover's lap that just isn't visible or possible from hundreds or thousands of kilometres or miles away, no matter how passionate you want to be.



I have had, or have tried to have, such relationships. And the results have been, to use a cliche, close but no cigar.



There's a reason why we are creatures who have evolved things like dances and other social occasions to meet members of the opposite sex (or whatever sex we prefer). It's called reality, which includes using all of our natural senses.



My son's decided that because she can come here and visit a few times, that he won't split with her. He knows what I think, because I've told him, but he's going ahead anyway, which is what I've told him he's got to do.



I want him to learn on his own, without me dictating to him, and I want him to make his own mistakes, if that's what this is, and I think it is. We've gotten past the issue of long-distance telephone bills and that stuff.




Now it's just about him and her. I think he'll eventually figure it out himself, but for now, some girl 700 kms. away is almost all he's thinking about.



There's something lovely about that, but also tragic in the sense that the prospects are dim.



But life's prospects are always dim, if you look at it in a negative way. He will learn. And I want him to learn. And to love.

Cold Climate Car Calamities and Other Nerdy Newsbriefs

SO YOU WONDER WHY US ADVANCED INTERPLANETARY BEINGS FROM OTHER SOLAR SYSTEMS VIEW EARTH AND THE HUMAN RACE AS DOOMED TO EXTINCTION?

Here, in no particular order, are three random samples:

WINNIPEG -- A 52-year-old man, raised on the frigid Prairie landscape of Canada's Great White North, committed the ultimate winter stupidity on Tuesday and paid for it the next morning when he couldn't get into his own car.

Mr. Within Without, dubbed "Four Eyes" by his 19-year-old daughter, told police he "had a brain fart" when he decided to take advantage of unseasonably warm temperatures and wash his filthy car Tuesday evening.

Unfortunately for Mr. Without, the temperature --predictably -- dropped so much on a January night that when he tried to enter his car Wednesday morning to go to work, the locks to his car were frozen and he couldn't get in.

Witnesses say he spent the next 15 minutes using knives and other instruments trying to enter the car and appeared to be a thug breaking in, so they called the police. (OK, I'm just kidding, but bear with me; or bare with me)

Sirens blaring, the cops descended on the unsuspecting and frustrated would-be motorist, whose request that the police draw their guns and shoot him was rejected. After explaining the situation, the stand-off was resolved.

"D'oh!" said Mr. Without in an expression of pure intelligence. "I hate winter. It freezes my brain."

The police, scuttling their laughter, let Mr. Without off with a warning and passed him a copy of "How to Survive a Winterpeg Winter" by Homo Escapeons.

*****

*****

AN incident in which a Fijian soldier urinated on a Japanese woman on a plane has ended up doing "untold damage" to Fiji, the country's main daily says in a strongly worded editorial today.
It was commenting after the international carrier Air Pacific published its annual report saying its Fiji-Japan route was performing poorly.

The report made no mention of the incident in March last year when a drunk Fiji soldier on a flight from Japan exposed himself and then urinated on a Japanese woman in her seat. The incident made major headlines in Japan.

In its editorial today the Fiji Times said it was an "appalling incident" that was an urgent reminder to every person in that country.

"This unforgivable offence has caused untold damage in Japan a market which Fiji has strived for decades to cultivate," the newspaper said.

"All it takes is one moment of stupidity to paint a black picture of this nation and her people in a lucrative market. The incident has generated widespread, negative publicity at a time when we need it the least."

The newspaper said the whole country had to "share in the shame he has brought upon his uniform and to this country. Urinating on a tourist on an international flight is a high-profile incident which gains global notoriety.

"It is a brief moment which brings unwanted exposure (eds note: HA HA HA!) and deprives the economy of millions of dollars in revenue."

*****

Kuala Lumpur -- A Vietnamese tourist got more than he bargained for when he patted the buttock of a policewoman on New Year's Day.

Vu Minh Vinh, 44, committed the offence while the 27-year-old police officer was standing in front of an outlet at KLCC in Jalan Ampang at 10pm on Jan 1.

The officer scolded him, showed her identification papers and arrested him.

Vu, of Ngan Son Hai Duong City, admitted to the molest charge at a magistrate’s court here yesterday. The court set Feb 13 for sentencing. No bail was offered.

Magic and Matthew

The most memorable holiday gift I received this year, the thing that most made me smile through the whole Christmas season, was to see my nephew Matthew and his emergence into our crazy extended family.

Because at least outwardly, it wasn't always this way when he was a younger lad.

Not that he wasn't a part of our family before, he's always been loved and accepted, same as his brother, Joshua.

But now Matthew, in some way, for whatever reasons that his mom and dad attribute only to him, appears to be opening up to us.

This has not been an easy post to write. I don't want to sound over-emotional about it or anything except what I really do feel: amazed and extremely surprised and happy about Matthew's progress.

Matthew is autistic. He and I have always gotten along fine together, but autism, to the extent I understand it, is a condition that often keeps people affected by it within themselves, in their own little worlds.

(Check here if you want more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism)

And that's how I had always accepted Matthew, although loving him unconditionally.

He was always there, as much as he could or wanted to be there...but aloof, distant in some way, off in a corner or doing something else, most often by himself.

And I accepted that.

He always enjoyed it when I picked him up and swung him around or turned him upside down, sometimes far beyond what my aging bones could manage, but there was also a time just to let him be.

And that was OK.

But he so much has always loved just doing the things we all want to do. And that's HAVE FUN!

I had always understood the amazing caring his parents always had for him and the work they did with him, and the sometimes rough roads they had travelled to get him all the help he needed.

And I believe those have paid huge dividends.

This Christmas, when we had our family get-together, Matthew was an entirely different child.

He was communicating. He was opening up to the world. He was teasing me and others. He was talking. And it was amazing and it made me very happy. And so here was Matthew, breaking onto the scene.

Matthew has grown into a person who now acknowledges he knows us and he loves us and, hopefully, he can feel our love for him.

And while his mom and dad give him all the credit, we know their love had a lot to do with it.

Now, THIS is what life's all about.

How to make Swedish Nuts

REALLY, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY.

INSTEAD, MAKING NUTS TASTE GOOD IS HARD.

That is, if the directions aren't exactly clear, or if the person in charge of acquiring the ingredients and then whipping them into shape as per instructions doesn't know a pecan from a toucan.

Or if he doesn't have one of those high-falutin' whipper-upper thingies.

Blogger buddy Anna sent along this recipe for Spiced Swedish Nuts, something she said her husband and everyone else raves about.

I hummed. I hawed. But being the amateur gourmet chef I am, a master of chicken stir fry, bacon and eggs and Kraft Dinner, I finally decided to try them. The first thing I did was look at the recipe.

The next thing, of course, is to get the ingredients. This is where I began to foul up. As instructed, I bought the pecan halves.

Unfortunately, because I actually tried to remember the ingredients instead of writing them down when I went shopping, I only bought half a pound. So I had to go back to the store a day or two later.

And when I did, they didn't have the pecan halves any more, they just had the pecans in the shell, a whole giant package. Unwittingly, I figured a bunch of whole nuts is better than half a thing of half-nuts.

So I bought that, leaving me with this:



Well, DOH! I've never busted nuts before (only had mine busted). And these things are HARD! I had to bring out all the artillery.

Nothing really worked all that well. Pecans are, ahem, tough nuts to crack. But I needed another half-pound of "pecan halves." So I soldiered on, through trial and tribulation.

I tried my garlic press. I tried my pliers.

My hammer worked the best, but a lot of pecans lost their lives in the process and were crushed to bits. I don't know how the professionals do it, but if there's a secret, I couldn't discover it.

And my dang nuts seemed to be laughing at me. Doesn't that look like a sly grin to you?

Anyway, I never got even close to extracting half a pound of pecan halves from that big pack of nuts. I gave up after about half an hour.

And compared to the hugely expensive but convenient pack on the left, I ended up with what's on the right. So fine, let's proceed with the recipe.

I had to extract two egg whites from two eggs, leaving the yolks behind. But what the heck was I supposed to do with the best part of the egg, the yolk?

As instructed, I heated up the pecans.

And in an amazing first for me, while I was doing that, and without the benefit of an electric mixer, I had to manually "whip" the egg whites, chili powder and all kinds of other stuff like sugar in a "large bowl."

UNTIL STIFF!

Surprisingly, I managed to do both things simultaneously.

Then all I had to do was mix all this gooey stuff together.

Back in the oven they go, for three 10-minute intervals of stirring (not one 30-minute interval, no sir-eee!)


TA-DA!!!

I'm sure I got the volumes (or is that weights) of the ingredients wrong, but they ARE good!

I thank you, Anna. And I hope the Muppets' Swedish Chef would be proud.