What a Mess

What does it mean when the laundry sees its shadow?

Re the title of this post: I find it hard to understand tidy certainty. Mixed feelings are the only kind I ever have. Also, this piece is a bit of a mess.

I've been away from the blog for a little too long. Each passing day has felt more overscheduled and underslept than the last. It's become hard to find time to write a post (much less add a few words to my longer projects that languish, or process a rejection thrown in my path this month).

The usual reasons apply: work and kids and household squalor, plus my spouse away all week for training--and we're all thrown off by that; we all miss him. I'm staring at a huge stack of university exams that aren't going to mark themselves, as the saying goes. They always seem manageable in the abstract, and then--well, each one deserves careful consideration, which in the aggregate takes hours and hours. My normal April end-of-term hysteria is blurring into spring term start-up and the urgent need to prepare for a college course on effective teams in the workplace--which I'm teaching, ironically, without a team. Just me. Your correspondent is cranky. I may need a prescription drug of some kind.

But perhaps the bigger problem, buried in busyness, is distress. Our newspapers and screens have been stuffed with serial trauma of late. Consider the failure of the (craven) US Senate to pass the most innocuous form of gun control ever devised; terrorism in Boston and the prospect of terrorism on a Canada-US train route I've taken many a time; brutal war in Syria and other global crises defying enumeration; and yesterday, news of the building collapse in Bangladesh that killed 256 garment workers, according to the latest count. It's happened twice in one year in Bangladesh; last November more than 100 died when a plant that supplied Wal-Mart and Sears burned. These are tragedies, but no accidents (just as the recent explosion in West, Texas was not an accident). They are the result of shoddy conditions in the factories that produce our clothes--yes, ours. I buy from Joe Fresh and other cheap&cheerful stores, just like everyone else.

As consumers, we desperately need strategies to resist capitulation to "the way things are". Boycotts seem like the logical answer--careful, screened buying--and yet boycotts often fail. Information asymmetry is too great for consumers acting on their own to prevail. The marketplace is purposely opaque, the loud, pulsing funhouse of multi-brand promotion obscuring the true identity of those running the carnival. This is too difficult to tackle as individuals. Isn't it?

I have no answers, only questions that pile up. Research that needs to be done.

In the face of all this, it seems trivial to write about daily living, but that's what I'm left with. Control is illusory, but we must attend to our small sphere, our homes and families and communities, as best we can. Carry on with whatever duty of the moment calls, and take our joy whenever and wherever it shows up.

And so, this week I'm acknowledging blessings, and the power of small acts: 

--finding a few minutes to start tomato seeds in containers on the windowsill
--maintaining some homemade meals through hectic times despite a distinct slackening in The Unprocessed Project (when a take-out dinner hit the table, my daughter gleefully stage-whispered to her sister, "I think we're giving up")
--kids who make me laugh
--the homecoming of my daughter from university and my husband from his trip, both tomorrow
--the concert another daughter will perform in tomorrow night--a youth-run initiative to raise funds for the Youth Emergency Shelter: massive energy + music + teenaged idealism
--the ability to walk and see the beauty of this landscape
--those exams! (and the fact that I have work, safe work)
--escape into the novel I'm reading (John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead)
--hanging laundry on the line for the first time this spring--and believe me, I never thought I'd be thankful for laundry
--questioning
--life, perpetually messy

What are yours? 

On Resilience

As I type, rain continues to fall, relentless dripping that soon will wash away the crust of snow left during the storm of the last two days. It is still cold outside. My walk (desperately needed) is now looking unlikely to happen. I will have to get over that small setback without undue crankiness to loved ones.

Yesterday folks were posting photos of ice-encased branches: gorgeous crystalline chill forms of wonder. Trees have fallen, and hydro crews are still working to restore power to our region. We lost power only briefly but were bereft without internet, phone and television service for hours. Everyone was home, squabbling for rights to the computer as it flickered in and out of consciousness. That's a revelation in itself, as worthy of contemplation as spring's fickle reversals: how dependent we have become on the steady drip of the electronic IV.  And not just for entertainment, but for everything: information, commerce, communication of all kinds, and of course, work. These are legitimate needs in the age of no-interesting-paper-mail. Still, the realization of electrodependency makes me want to retreat to an unwired room for regular bouts of disconnection, just to make sure I can still cope. 

These pansies were advertised as frost-resistant, and they've certainly passed the test. The photos were taken about a week ago after a night of below-freezing temperatures. The flowers sulked, claiming to be camera-shy, but sprang upright soon enough, tracking the sun. Today, after two days of being battered by freezing rain and wind, they look much the same. I'm not sure how modern horticulture has accomplished this feat--are these Frankenpansies or what? All I know is, they provide today's lesson in resilience.

Taxing Matters

A plan for this weekend is to turn date night into tax preparation night--doesn't that sound appealing?--but it hasn't happened yet, so perhaps we can procrastinate just a little longer. There's not much time left, though. 
The osprey have returned to nest atop platforms specially built for them high above the Otonabee River, and three of the biggest crows I've ever seen landed in our yard for a loud conference this afternoon, while a tiny chickadee flew in and out of the birdhouse hanging from the apple tree outside my kitchen window. Spring has arrived, and with it, tax season.

Other birds we might speak of in this regard are snowbirds--Canadians who migrate to Florida and Arizona for the winter--some of whom might end up jailbirds under the new US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA, which I can't help always reading as "fatcat"--it stuck in my brain that way when media reports of FATCA began circulating a year or so ago, and now I can't get rid of it, the way you can't stop humming the music from Les Miserables once you hear it--and no need to thank me for that earworm: you're welcome). Also concerned are the estimated million American citizens resident in Canada. Some were born in the US but left in childhood and no longer maintain any US ties. They don't consider themselves American at all, but legally they are.

Of course I don't mean jailbird as in JAIL, but the penalties for non-compliance with FATCA might make the citizenry wish for a cozy lockup: first a $10,000 fine and then up to $50,000 for continued failure to report after IRS notification, PLUS up to 40% of non-disclosed financial assets. 40%! So, imagine a stereotypically polite Canadian, a community volunteer (probably took her kids to the freezing arena for dawn hockey practice for years and years), someone who has worked her whole life, lived frugally and avoided debt, diligently socking away her maximum annual RRSP contribution--in other words, Jim Flaherty's kind of person. If she happens, through no fault of her own--an accident of birth, say, or an ill-advised love match--to be dual US-Canadian and had no idea she was required to report her Canadian income to the IRS as well as Revenue Canada, too bad for her: 40% of her life savings can now be sucked into the US Treasury.

Anyone who holds US citizenship, even if they live in another country, is supposed to file a US tax return annually. Forever and ever. This has always been the case, but FATCA requires more reporting and represents stepped-up enforcement. By the way, the US is the only country in the developed world to make its citizens abroad file returns. (In fact, an expatriate lobby group is actively fighting FATCA on grounds that it treats citizens outside the country worse than citizens at home, among other issues.) If you must know all the gory details, see IRS Rules and Forms and FBAR form and rules, but fair warning: caffeinate first.

FATCA first emerged in 2012 as a news item mostly confined to the business pages. The bank reporting rules have not yet been fully implemented pending regulations (now finalized) and an intergovernmental agreement (in the works), but the rules affecting taxpayers were already in place in time to file tax year 2011. The Canadian financial industry objects to the law because of its extraterritorial reach--it essentially turns Canadian (and all non-US) banks into IRS agents, forcing them to report accounts held by US citizens. (They don't want to play this role, but rest assured, they will. The alternative is exiting the US market, and that is not happening.) Minister Flaherty himself objected to the law when it was proposed, commenting that Canada's not generally known as a tax haven. I love that dry Canadian sense of humour--even the Finance Minister has it. Anyone who has forked over 13% HST on items that used to be exempt from the old 8% GST can appreciate the irony in his remark.

Last year at this time, Americans-in-Canada were trying to figure out the rules and the risks. Financial advisors were sending their clients cautious CYA letters. The Globe and Mail ran more than a few stories--this one, a glimmer of hope, about a US watchdog slamming the government for "terrifying" ordinary people; and that one, offering delinquent taxpayers five easy ways to come out to the IRS. It was also reported that the US Consulate in Toronto had begun holding mass citizenship renunciation parties.

As a dual citizen, I've resigned myself to double filing, but I can still be grumpy, no?

And curious, always. It's helpful to compare notes. I want to understand the impact of FATCA on the many colleagues and friends I've encountered over the years who have US connections of some sort. Beyond my own contacts (I stopped counting when the list reached 50 people), how are the multitudes, the million hidden AMCITS, coping?

Now I hope to find out. Friends, exciting news: I've created my first online poll. It's completely anonymous and takes very little time to complete. Please, if you find yourself in the unfortunate situation described above, take my Can-Am Games: Tax Survey--just nine easy questions to answer. I promise to share the results with the world.

Easter Pizza and Other Adventures

Composing a text message on my ancient flip-model phone, I begin to type the word "easter", but the predictive text function offers "exhaustion" in its place. My dumbphone is smarter than I thought. Predictive indeed, given all the scurrying that major family-visiting holidays seem to require no matter how much advance preparation is undertaken. 

Exhaustion goes with Easter like snow and spring? Like worry and motherhood, like fighting and family, like joy that remembers sorrow and makes room for it. Frankly, I'm too exhausted to continue this line of thought, because it was back to work for me today. I dragged myself around, work-fatigue compounded by post-sugar lows. And wine. There was wine.

I really only wanted to share some pictures.

Because two birthdays coincided with the Easter weekend, we had cakes and gifts galore along with Easter baskets for kids too old to believe in the Easter bunny. Best of all, we had genuine, imported, devoted grandparents and uncles. They liven up the place.

The Unprocessed Project is on hiatus. Although dinners, birthday cakes and Easter pizza (below) were all homemade, I shudder to think how much dye, artificial flavouring, preservative and paraffin wax we ingested this weekend. Never mind. One of the things I'm learning is that we're never going to achieve 100% compliance and that insisting on the rules will just alienate everyone (or else drive them to their friends' houses, which I imagine as slacker paradise: open bars offering unlimited chips and pop and violent video games). Choosing unprocessed food most of the time represents improvement over the old (admittedly more convenient) ways. On balance, we're still better off, albeit imperfect.

The cakes were angel food with whipped cream and strawberries, and chocolate with vanilla icing and strawberries. Unfortunately, we've run out of the local berries I picked and froze in volume last summer, so we bought some. The other great lesson (so far) of the Unprocessed Project is the necessity of planning far, far ahead--figuring out realistic quantities and then freezing or canning that much when produce is in season. 

Birthday girl 1 (15!) decorating sister's cake

Tim with Birthday girl 2--suddenly 20!

There was a third cake. My mother makes a candy cake for each child every year. It consists of an assortment of candy bars stuck with copious amounts of tape to an overturned bowl, with a candle on top. Easy to assemble, great fun, and always a hit. I don't know, she never bought any of that crap when I was a kid. Grandmothers don't care about rules.

Now for the Easter pizza, an Italian concoction my great-grandmother and grandmother both made. According to my unscientific Facebook poll, at least ten other cousins and assorted relatives took the cardiac risk of consuming Easter pizza this year. It is basically a pot pie filled with cheese, pepperoni, ham and egg in alternating layers. It looks like this when you are not good at pastry. (Precision isn't my strong suit; throwing the filling together is a breeze, though.)

The other treat we normally make, but did not get to this year, is Easter egg bread. Also Italian, this slightly-sweet twisted ring is, in my opinion, a chore to eat. Not my favourite, but who am I to fight tradition?

My great-grandmother used to shape this into individual portions, one for each child in the family--dolls for the girls and suitcases for the boys, because she had never heard of gender-neutral toys, nor of suitcases as portents of death. We just make the dolls--here's to equal-opportunity bread dolls! These photos are from 2012.

And finally, our new tradition: the Easter Peep, aka Terry, my brother's wonderful partner. He probably doesn't realize that he's signed on for this role in perpetuity. The Easter Bunny is dead to us.