I hate small talk for the most part. I hate the fact that people feel the need to fill an empty silence with mindless blather about the weather, some sports event, or “didja hear”s (usually followed by recounting of some death somewhere in the world). Just once, I’d like to say to someone I have just met, “Y’know, just before I got here, I had one of those life-altering dumps that feels like you’ve performed an exorcism so I’m not really in the mood to speak at the moment. Certainly not about the intricacies of why it’s two degrees warmer today than it was yesterday, anyway.”

A maid comes in every morning where I work and we invariably have the same conversation EVERY SINGLE DAY:

She: “Hello”
Me: “Hi”
She: “How you doin’?”
Me: “Fine and you”
She: “Oh I’m fine. How’s your baby?”
Me: “She ran off with gypsies.”
She: “Oh that’s good.”

Well, I don’t tell her Syd took off with gypsies but the conversation is so automatic, I can’t even remember what I actually say anymore. (Side note: I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned Syd’s five and not technically a baby but one of the corollaries of small talk is that after a certain period of time, you aren’t allowed to correct a past mistake lest you make the other party feel foolish).

Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk about.

It occurred to me yesterday that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a child. Very dangerous given my motto at the top of the screen. Two events triggered this revelation. The first was suppertime. I was working on something on the computer and Liza was preparing Syd’s food. Shortly after she and Syd sat down, the phone rang in the office and she got up to answer it. After a couple of minutes with her on the phone, I got up and went to the kitchen. Syd was munching away slowly with a strange look on her face. It was kind of a sad look and for some reason, I felt guilty all of a sudden.

Do you remember ever eating alone as a child? It’s not a fun feeling usually. Essentially, we dumped Syd at the table, told her to eat, then left her there. “Not such a big deal”, you say, “I do it all the time.” That’s true, it’s not that big a deal. Teach the kid that alone time is a fact of life and I’m not suggesting we need to coddle her every time she decides to ingest. It just struck me that I had forgotten the feeling of eating alone as a child.

Second incident isn’t really an incident but an awareness of my answers to Syd’s questions after I got to thinking of the dinner episode. She will often ask my permission to do something or if we can do something together. Like doing a puzzle. Sometimes I’ll say yes and we’ll do the puzzle and go on our merry way bonding like Super Glue. Other times, I’m tired or have something else to do so I’ll say no. The thing is, I don’t put any thought into my decision for things like that. Most of the time it’s automatic. So what if I can’t work on the puzzle with Syd? It’s just a puzzle, she’ll find something else to do. And she usually does.

But I remember asking if I could do something mundane and being so disappointed when I wasn’t allowed. And on the flipside, there’s that feeling of elation when Mom or Dad say, “Sure, go ahead, knock yourself out.” As parents, it’s just a game or a puzzle or something little like that. But to a child, being allowed or disallowed to do anything fun is perceived as a life-altering event and most of the time, I ignore the weight Syd puts into my answers.

Again, I don’t intend to spend any more time agonizing over whether Syd can play Xbox or ride her bike. Just that I had forgotten.

Oh, more of Syd’s pics here. And some October pics here.

 Most of this post was adapted from an e-mail I sent updating a friend of mine. So Simon, if you’re reading, you can skip this entry (but I’ll re-iterate my invitation to come down sometime this winter).

On Thanksgiving:
We had a gathering at our place with our neighbours (the husband is originally from Saskatchewan) and a friend of Liza’s. There were five kids between all of us so it was quite the menagerie when all was said and done. Syd and I made four pumpkin pies for the shindig. I was pretty pumped by the end when two and a half of them were still uneaten. Then Liza started handing them out as people left and a little part of me died when each one of them left. Seriously, she was throwing them around like they were frisbees (“head’s up! Pie comin’ at ya!”) with no concern for my own pie-eating enjoyment. She even had the nerve to buy low-fat, sugar-free, taste-free whip cream but I countered with my own private stash that I keep in the freezer whenever I need to whip up a quick cheesecake. The Saskatchewan-ite and I had to eat ours outside in the patio under the cover of the night, lest our health-conscious wives find out and confiscate our contraband dairy products.

On Hurricane Season:
Still one more month of potential hurricane goodness to go but it looks pretty calm these days. People keep saying not to let your guard down but you know what? Screw ‘em. I’m letting it down.

On Liza and Syd:
Liza and Syd are doing fine. Have developed a beautiful mother-daughter bond that usually ends with one of them storming off in anger while the other turns to me and says, “You deal with her!” Syd had a fever last night which should have been distressing but she is way too funny when she’s sick and sleeping. Keeps acting out her dreams. Last night, I had to get up on several occasions to beat her pillow. She'd sit up and scream, “Daddy! Daddy!” then point to the pillow and say, “Hit it, daddy! Beat it!” Not sure what she was dreaming or what the psychological implications of her actions are but at 2:30 in the morning, any parent will tell you: Kicking the snot out of that pillow is the quickest way to get back to sleep.

On Switching Careers:
I’ve started studying for my soon-to-be-revitalized actuarial career. Was surprised how quickly things started coming back to me, particularly the reasons why I left the field in the first place. I swear you need a philosophy degree or a whole lot of drugs to understand some of the mathematics in those books. If mathematics is one of the universal languages, I plan to be illiterate for a long time.

 So we bought a bird. Syd named him Tweety (after rejecting my suggestion of Beeblebrox). Unlike the mammals in the house, Tweety is surprisingly low maintenance. We fed him the first night and as of this morning, his food and water are still amply supplied. (Although Ann may have fed him while we weren’t watching. She’s pretty good at guerrilla-style house-cleaning.) Other than that, he’s there for our enjoyment when we want him, and doesn’t whine (or bark incessantly!) when we want to ignore him.

Somewhere along the line, I turned into my father. Well, truth be told, I’ve managed to take the more “interesting” traits of both my mother and father and merge them into a personality that most sociologists didn’t think was scientifically possible. But for the purposes of this post(ulation),  the hypothesy is that I’ve turned into my father and I will give some proof to back up my assertion (sorry, I recently started back into the mathematics world but that’s the subject of another post). And the proof is my bottom lip. Those of you in the know have probably figured out where this is going. But we’ll digress a little into child rearing techniques. Keep your shirts on, this is going somewhere.

Syd is a normal five-year-old girl insomuch that she has developed a five-year-old’s streak of stubbornness at times (augmented by her mother’s genetics). When it first surfaced, I tried doing the 00s thing and tried to make her aware of her behaviour and the negative impact it was having on our social being. Then I tried the 90s thing and attempted to reason and compromise with her. Then I did the 80s thing and offered her money to do what I wanted. Finally, I went through a 60s phase where I just let her do what she wanted (I’m among the many who refuse to acknowledge that the 70s existed).

Where my father comes in is in my newest technique. When Syd started showing signs of rebellion, I used to send her to her room calmly and quietly. She didn’t like it but she never disobeyed. Until recently. That’s when my bottom lip started disappearing. I know from personal experience that one of the most feared expressions on a father is when his bottom lip disappears and he starts speaking through his teeth. My brothers will back that up. The first time I did it was quite by instinct:

Kyle (calmly): “Syd, go to your room”
Syd (not so calmly): “NO!”
Kyle (incredulously): “I’m sorry, what?”
Syd (less calmly): “NO!”

This is the point where instinct kicked in. The lip vanished, the teeth slammed shut, and I heard someone say in my voice, slowly: “I said, go to your room”. The response was absolutely stunning. From the first word, she jumped three feet in the air and was halfway up the stairs before I finished the sentence. Not sure what nerve that expression touches but if it’s not patented, I plan to make a lot of money from it.

A few things of note in recent days. Firstly, we were the proud owners of a baby bird for about a day and a half. Liza’s friend brought it over one afternoon from who knows where and Syd promptly named it Tweety. I don’t know my birds so have no clue what kind it was. Wasn’t a pet store bird, that’s for sure. Anyway, it stayed the night in an empty Schmirnoff Ice box and I put an end to the happiness the following evening on the grounds that…well, who brings a baby bird into a house unannounced? Nonetheless, Syd was pretty upset when we let Tweety go and even had herself a little cry a couple of days later because she “missed Tweety”. Odd how the logic of parenthood has overridden my unconditional acceptance of strange animals in my house.

Went to church for the first time in many sins today. Liza’s been feeling guilty (like every Catholic should) about not going and friends of ours recommended a church that wasn’t quite as Reverend James-ish as the others in the Bahamas. My chest didn’t burn too much when I walked through the doors so it’s either a sign that God hasn’t forsaken me or that He’s got bigger fish to fry (so to speak). Service was good, people were friendly, and Syd was bored out of her skull. We’ll be back next Sunday.

Got a copy of The Sims 2 last week. I’ve heard it’s already on track to be the best-selling game ever and it’s easy to see why. Syd loves it. She spent an hour and a half building The Smudge Family (parents Kyle & Jessica Smudge, daughter Sam Smudge, and aunt Tita Smudge) and has been in here every five minutes while I type this asking if we can play some more.

Had the first of five scheduled visits with her teacher last week. Not much to tell. Teacher seems nice and Syd’s adapting well to Reception/Kindergarten. One item of note is that Anthony is apparently no longer Syd’s boyfriend at school (not sure how he feels about the break-up ‘cause I don’t think he really knew about the courtship). The new flame is a boy called Oliver. Seems all the girls in reception like him. When I asked Syd why that is, her older-than-her-years response was, “because he’s new”.

Off to bake me some pumpkin pies. Happy Thanksgiving to all Canucks!

 Power was down yesterday on the island (yes, the WHOLE island). Not sure what the problem was but it did prove that I am adapting well to island life. When it went, I was in a café with a co-worker. The entire patronage did the same thing at exactly the same time. Everyone raised their eyes skyward to the lights to acknowledge the outage, then kept right on speaking. Not one single reference to the fact that it was dark and that those of us who had ordered hot food may have to change their orders.

My friend and I continued our conversation, paid our bill (thanks, Damien, next one’s on me), and went back to work. At the time we were coming from a client’s office so we were on the other side of the island. When we arrived back at our own office, I heard the generators blasting away and it occurred to me: I had just driven the length of the island, through about half a dozen traffic lights that were no longer working, and I didn’t even notice. Or rather, I noticed the traffic lights weren’t working, but it didn’t actually slow me down the way it used to.

In fact, in many ways, non-functioning traffic lights tend to speed things up a bit. People do NOT follow the four-way stop rule so it depends heavily on what direction your facing and how aggressive you are. The last part is something I’ve improved greatly on. I’m no longer worried about offending someone by cutting him off to get through an intersection, mostly because I’ve discovered that no one is ever offended by bad driving here, mostly because it’s so rampant, I suppose. But there are surprisingly few accidents, especially considering how church-going the people are (“I’m sick of waiting. I’ll just put my foot down on the gas pedal and let God get me through this intersection.”).

But I digress…and I’m not really sure where I was going in the first place. I guess my point was that my driving skills have deteriorated enough to be considered a local.

On a totally unrelated note, if any of my readership decides to come visit me, don’t bother taking a cab from the airport. I’ll pick you up.

 While preparing for Hurricane Jeanne, I was bringing some chairs into the house. As I set one of them down inside, this…this…THING came leaping out after me. This big, hairy creature from the netherworld the size of a Winnebago was ticked at his home being moved and was taking his revenge on me.

I exaggerate, of course, but only slightly (it was only about the size of a VW). In this case, it was a spider. I’ve since learned from several sources that it was a ground spider (“Was it hairy, the size of a dinner plate, resembling a tarantula? You got yourself a ground spider”). And it is one of several species of animal and/or insect that preys on Canadians that are easily freaked out by creepy crawlies.

Others in the list: cockroaches, centipedes, lizards, snakes, and frogs. The lizards and snakes, I can deal with. Lizards are small and kind of cute. They startle me when, say, I open the garage door and one comes shooting out but for the most part, I tolerate them. Ditto for snakes mostly because I’ve seen my share of garter snakes (I did grow up close to Narcisse, after all). I can hear the frogs but I haven’t seen too many, despite my neighbour’s insistence that you will never truly feel like a Bahamian until you’ve stepped on a frog while wandering through your house barefoot in the dark. A couple of times, I’ve found hundreds of tadpoles in the dogs’ pool, but they don’t last too long (mostly because I drain the pool after I find them; take THAT, PETA!).

But it seems I’ve inherited a gene from my mother that seriously creeps me out with bugs (yes, I’m including spiders big enough to carry your children away). Cockroaches are disgusting just to look at, doubly so when they’re actually moving.  We have traps laid out throughout the house so we occasionally find one (or in the case of last weekend, two) curled up somewhere on the floor. But once in a while, there will be a live one, usually in a bathroom, just sitting there with his little feelers twitching back and forth, as if saying, “Do your worst. I can survive a nuclear blast.” About a month ago, Syd was brushing her teeth in her room acting all proud to be doing it by herself when she let out a blood-curdling scream. A cockroach had crossed her path as she left the bathroom. She hasn’t brushed her teeth alone since.

I have yet to see a live centipede, but judging from the dead ones, it’s not an activity I’m actively seeking out. I’ve heard conflicting reports that they may or may not be poisonous but that’s beside the point. The simple fact that they exist is bad enough. Ants are also a personal pet peeve of mine but they are more a nuisance than anything. It just…ummm…bugs me that every kitchen in the Bahamas is full of them.

Somehow, mosquitos and prairie dogs don’t seem so bad anymore…