Becoming Institutionalized...Beach Day...

      We were swimming at my Mother's trailer and Isobel was displaying all of her new swimming abilities.

      Isobel: "Watch me, Nana. Watch me dive!"
      Nana: "OK Honey, go ahead."
      Isobel: "See, I am a great swimmer now."
      Nana: "You sure are. You're like a little fish."
      Isobel : "Daddy, did Nana just call me a fish?"
      Daddy: "No honey. She said you were like a fish, they way you swim so well."
      Isobel: "OK."
      Daddy: "Were you worried that Nana was seeing things? Like old people things?"
      Isobel: "No!"
      Daddy: "Yes you were. That's OK. Did you show Nana your funky nails?"
      Isobel: "My fucking what?"

     Those of you that know me from past incarnations, know that I used to play in a band of some renown. We traveled up and down the highways and byways of America and I loved every minute of it. I loved nothing better than being inside a hotel room, a cold drink in my hand, TV blaring and the A.C. on full blast.
      This past weekend I was in Maxville for the North American Piping championships. The bad and I are not North American Champions. Three cheers for mediocrity, we'll get 'em next year. At any rate, I left on Thursday and would be there until Sunday. For those of you keeping score, that's four days of walking around the hotel in a shower towel in the freshness of full bore air conditioner mania. I was also four days of family free glory. But I actually started to think about this in the second 45 minute stretch of being stuck in construction.
      It would be four days of not seeing the kids. I have written about this kind of thing before-missing the kids but a new thing dawned on me. The Hotel would have wifi so I could use my ipod and video chat with the kids and it would be as if I were right there. This is such a wonderful world of technology that we live in.
      OK, so first off the Hotel was actually a Motel. A small detail but an important one. Small being the operative word. The bed was in the middle of the room and if I lay in the middle of the bed, I could touch both walls. I tried to do it kind of spread-eagled. Lying on the bed I tried to touch the walls with both my hands and my feet. At least I wouldn't be bored if the cable went out. Ah yes, the cable television. Another marvel of our modern world!
    I, like many of  my countrymen have been watching the Olympics. Or rather having it on the background so at least folks won't say I am unpatriotic. But in a hotel with three channels on the television and only one in English, my patriotism went through the roof in a hurry. I must admit when I got home, I was pleased to discover that the tint on the TV in the motel was shot and Canada's gymnasts were not actually wearing gold and lime green uniforms. But I was out, right? Like the old days!
       The sign in the office did say wifi. The sign written in magic marker was quite clear about that. I would have a shower and then give the kids a ring. The shower was warm and had excellent water pressure and was quite spacious in the hotel where the rest of the band was staying. Mine however would have been the perfect height for Isobel if she bent down a little. The towel I had dreamed of walking around the hotel in was actually wider than the shower curtain and the two shower towels, two hand towels and two wash cloths were nearly absorbent enough to soak up all the water that the shower curtain directed to the floor of the bathroom.
      But it had a fridge. One of the kind of fridges that I've seen in garages. Not the big bastards that have the name of Norge or Westinghouse scrawled across them in stylized lettering, no I mean the little cube shaped ones that you might have sitting on your work bench. It'll hold a couple of six packs and maybe four in the door but I'm only guessing here. That was the kind I had in my room and I gotta say my beer has never been so tepid. It was a joy really. To think I have been drinking all that cold beer lo these many years when I could've been having it a slightly below room temperature all this time?
    I shouldn't complain. The room was small and a little smelly and the pipes above the toilet dripped badly enough that I was starting to think I had a serious aim problem but the bed was really uncomfortable so there's that. I was clean-ish and now I wanted to talk to my kids. One thing the magic marker sign wasn't clear about was that to get wifi, you actually had to go outside of your room and into the parking lot. I got to talk to my kids and so did everybody else staying in the Motel. It was kind of a multi-ethnic; multi-family conference call.
      I talked to Isobel and The Boy (who amazingly enough had taken a break from Mine Craft) and felt overwhelmingly lonely after I hung up with them due to impending battery failure. (the bane of the techno world). I went back into my room and fired back a couple of tepid beers. I sat and stewed and brooded and had another couple of tepid beers.

      There is a disease that effects all who drink. It is the desire to phone people after you have had enough cocktails to alter the chemistry in the reason centre of your brain. This is absolutely how I know that I am NOT who I used to be. When I was in the band, all alone with a head full of beer and I picked up the phone. It was usually to get myself into some kind of trouble. The good kind of trouble and the bad. This time I wanted to call back the kids...can you believe that? Hell, I even missed Mrs. Narrator. I thought better of it. It was a video call after all. I would be hard enough to explain to Izzy why I was calling back after midnight. Let alone why my eyes wouldn't focus. Scotland is gonna be rough...



      The decision went up that there was to be no computer today (except Ipods and Iphones which don't count yet) and bottoms would sit in uncomfortable chairs and faces would squint at the sky and fun would be had by all god dammit.We haven't been to the proper beach as a family since Mexico and too much time has been spent indoors this summer. Partially my fault and partially the obnoxiously hot weather.
      We went to a beach about an hour away from us and it is one of our favourites. It reminds us all a lot of Mexico. Sand beaches, warm water that you can walk out a long way and it has that Mexican beach sound. That sound...when you close your eyes and just listen, can only come from the beach. You know the sound. I thought I t only came from the beaches in Mexico but this beach has it too.
      Anyway, Isobel is ABSOLUTELY MY CHILD and to that end, she needs to be slathered with sunscreen. A fact that she is well aware of and begrudgingly, puts up with.
      "When are we going to get there?" Isobel asked.
       "Pretty soon." I said.
       "When I get there, I'm going right into the water. I am burning hot."
       "Sunscreen first." said Mrs. Narrator.
       "That's right Pick. You need sunscreen before you swim."
       "OK," she relented. "Mummy?"
       "Yeah?"
        "When you put on my sunscreen don't put any on my butt cheeks," Isobel said. "That's just wrong."