Where's my f*&^%!!& delete key?!

K-Rock 105.7 morning host Darryl Kornicky looked at me and started howling.
Tony Orr was also smiling.
Apparently, I'd just unleashed a deep-hacking-try-and-shake-the-phlegm-out cough into the microphone. When it was on.
At 7 a.m.
For thousands to hear.
Who needs an alarm when you have Sarah Crosbie and her chest cold to get you up out of bed.
Oh, morning radio, how you scare me.
For nine years, I was a newspaper reporter and editor and there's this frickin' wonderful invention on a keyboard called a DELETE key. When you're writing a story and you make a mistake, you hit delete and it fabulously disappears from your screen.
For five mornings X 3.5 hours a morning, so 17.5 hours of my life, I've been doing morning radio and there is no delete key. Things just come flying out of my mouth and I hope they're OK, funny even. Smart, maybe. Interesting.
In one week, we talked about crusty toenails, Dorothy the Dinosaur, bad drivers, In the Night Garden, A-Rod and his drugs, the K-Rock Centre, Neil Young, animal food banks, The Tragically Hip's new song, the Academy Awards, Dweezil Zappa, Easter Seals kids, belly button fluff, Tony Orr's alleged manscaping, green box recycling, potholes, Jamaica, Pancake Tuesday, Willie Nelson, great hockey coaches, "thick" women, lottery tickets and how I am not actually Mrs. Crosbie, despite Darryl Kornicky's blog entry on the K-Rock website.
I've burned a hole through Kornicky's head staring at him this week. Partly I was staring because I was a little nutty. I had to get up at 4 a.m. Monday and Tuesday killed me and then by Wednesday I was OK. Up at 4, showered by 4:15, reading the papers, blogs, my e-mail and Twitter (my favourite new thing in life) by 4:30 so I knew everything going on in the world. But I mostly spent a good chunk of my week staring at him because, for the first time in a long, long time, I had someone in a professional capacity I could learn from. I absolutely loved my old job, putting out an entertainment magazine at The Kingston Whig-Standard, but I didn't have any mentors at the paper. They've either left and moved on, or taken jobs that meant I no longer interacted with them. This week, I had the thrill of being scared again, being on my toes. Instead of being the seasoned journalist, I was the green radio co-host. Terrified shitless and loving every single second of it.
So, I used this week as a crash course in radio. I listened very carefully every time Kornicky took a phone call with a listener to see how he interacted with them and I watched Tony Orr do the news. When he speaks, you listen to him. It's a great gift to have. So little things some people may not pay attention to – how my radio guys held the mics, how far they were from the mics, how they announced the call letters "K-Rock 1-0-5-7 – I obsessed over all week and maybe, possibly I practised in the shower at 4 a.m. when no one could hear me.
The coolest thing about K-Rock letting me crash the morning party was how much freakin' fun it was to make peoples' mornings great.
On Tuesday, I baked two Neil Young tickets into a pancake on Pancake Tuesday and held a drive-thru contest in the K-Rock parking lot. And this morning, we offered two Willie Nelson tickets to anyone who would go into a gas station in Kingston and sing a Willie song in honour of the fact he's an environmentalist and a biodiesel promoter. The winner made his wife's day. (She, in fact, ordered him to do it.)
This week also gave me a chance to play reporter again, getting Const. Mike Menor from the Kingston Police to tell us about bad drivers in the city - he once saw two people naked in a car who'd just come from skinny dipping in Portsmouth Olympic Harbour - and having Sandy Singers from the Partners in Mission Food Bank explain to us how needy families in this area can help feed their pets.
It was a fun week.
Sorry for the cough though, everyone. r
Yes, I see that "r". I'm going to leave it there. It's symbolic of the fact I no longer have a DELETE key in my professional life, heck, I don't have a professional life, but that's OK. You gotta go with the flow. A little lesson I learned from the K-Rock Morning Krew.

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Cheap and free in K-Town

This week while guesting on Kingston's K-Rock 105.7, Darryl Kornicky, Tony Orr and I discussed the fact that in the U.S., dog and cat food banks are popping up because people can't take care of their animals once they've lost their jobs. In Kingston, Ont., our own food bank, Partners in Mission, will help struggling families with pet food if they ask for the help.
In recognition of this sucking recession which sucked away my job as a newspaper editor, I've compiled a few tips for you to save a few bucks.
Post 'em if you've got them.


Cheap and Free in Kingston
1. Playtrium Gym for kids: Half price admission on Thursdays. www.playtrium.ca
2. Agnes Etherington Art Centre on Queen's campus: Children, students free. All admissions free on Thursdays. www.aeac.ca
3. Kingston Canadian Film Festival's Building “The Border”, a seminar-style event featuring Peter Raymont, David Barlow, Graham Abbey and Jonas Chernick from CBC TV’s popular series The Border. Building “The Border” is a free event and advance registration is not required. The event takes place Sunday March 1, 11:00 am at Etherington Auditorium on Stuart Street. www.kingcanfilmfest.com.
4. The Screening Room, which shows indie movies, has $5.25 tickets on Tuesday nights. (A couple bucks cheaper than the bigger theatres!). www.moviesinkingston.com
5. Free public skating at Wally Elmer until March 21 throughout the week. Check for times. http://www.cityofkingston.ca/residents/recreation/arenas/wally/icepad.asp
March 16, 2009 to March 20, 2009
6. Play with snakes: Little Ray's Reptiles. See, touch and learn about all kinds of exotic species like giant snakes, lizards, turtles, spiders, and even an American alligator named Crusher. March 16 to 20 at the Frontenac Mall. http://www.whatsonkingston.com/shopping/frontenac/index.cfm
7. Free parking at S&R Department Store in downtown Kingston.
8. Free movie rentals (and books, of course) from Kingston Frontenac Public Library. They have hit TV series, too!
9. Free instrument rentals from the Joe Chithalen Music Lending Library.
10. Get passes to go to Kingston museums (like the Hockey Hall of Fame) from the Kingston Frontenac Public Library. Just like books, you check 'em in and out. Free! Visit www.kfpl.ca/ for details.
11. Children get a free cookie at the Kingston Centre Loblaws bakery section. Sarah Crosbie's son looooves it. (She'd like a free cookie, too).
12. Free leisure swim at the Kingston YMCA on Sundays from 1:15 to 5 p.m., sponsored by the City of Kingston.
13. Free skating in Market Square, behind City Hall, 216 Ontario St.; also at rinks at City parks around the city.
14. Grades 5 and 10 Physical Activity Pass. This program offers free access to community recreation centres for all grade 5 and 10 students in the KFL&A area. Designed to promote an active lifestyle, the Grade 5 and 10 Physical Activity Pass is organized by Kingston Gets Active, KFL&A Public Health, and area school boards. http://www.kflapublichealth.ca
15. Union Gallery in Stauffer Library on Queen's University campus has no admission fee.
16. Games night at Starbucks on Barrie Street. Every Friday night at 8 p.m.
17. Minotaur on Princess Street hosts a game night on Wednesday and Sunday.

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It's 5 a.m., do you know where your mother is?

In about 10 minutes, it's time to head to radioland.
This week, I'm filling in as a morning host on K-Rock 105.7 with Darryl Kornicky.
Monday, getting up at 4 a.m. was easy - it was all on adrenaline.
Yesterday, I had that high school fear I was going to sleep through an exam panic, so I woke up at 3 a.m. - eyes wide open, laying in bed for an hour waiting to get up at 4.
Today, on our third day, I've got a rhythm. Up at 4. Into the shower. Like a high school kid on the first day of class, I get my clothes ready the night before and stack them up like pancakes (jeans, sweater, undies, socks) on the back of the toilet so I can get dressed the second I walk out of the shower.
I check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and read some online news while I have coffee and eat cereal - though I'm cutting back on the Bran Buds this week because you have to have a key to get into the bathroom at K-Rock and I don't have one and, well, you get the picture.
This morning at 7 a.m., we're talking about animal food banks. Maybe we'll chat a little about Barack Obama's address to congress, though that's pretty heavy stuff for 7 a.m.
Must go now. It's 5:05 a.m. - which means it's time to head out.
I love doing radio, but it kills me not to see my family before I leave.

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All you needs are logs; Logs are all you need

My husband and I aren't big on celebrating the Hallmark celebrations imposed on us. The worst one is Valentine's Day. I honestly think it's a Get Out Of Jail Free Card for men who behave badly.
Husbands, boyfriends and partners can act like schmucks 364 days of the year and then, on one dreary day in February, boom! All of a sudden, they're Enrique Iglesias: "I can be your hero baby. I can kiss away the pain. I will stand by you forever. You can take my breath away."
Oh barf.
You see, a real man is someone who deals with the real crap of life.
The shit.
The dirt.
The logs.

It's Friday night, the day before Valentine's Day, and my husband is tired from a long day at work. And I'm pooped from being laid off. (Being laid off is tiring, but that's another whole post.) My husband is downstairs on the couch snoozing and I'm upstairs in our bathroom giving our two-and-a-half year old son a bath.

We're playing with his fishies and fishing rod, his Little People boat and he's having a blast blowing bubbles in the water and splashing me. I'm wet so I turn to get a towel when I notice there's a magazine on top of our toilet tank. The magazine is promoting a contest to win a trip to Texas. This looks interesting ....

I swear I looked away for two seconds. Three seconds tops.

"Mommy!" my son yells.

"There's dog poo in the bath!"

I turn to look at my son and he is holding – I'm gagging just writing this – a log of poop in each hand.

"Look! Dog poo!" he squeals.

For a split second, I'm horrified. How did dog poo get in my ..... oh nooooooo.

For the first time in two and a half years - the first time in his life - my son has gone to the bathroom in the bath tub.

And now, he's holding it. Scrutinizing it. Studying it. Squishing it. (Insert more gagging here...)

"Oh my god!" I scream, which has its intended effect. My husband comes running up the stairs.

"Look, daddy! Dog poo!"

My husband shakes the logs out of my sons hands while I head out of the room. It's leave the room or throw up.

My son stands wrapped in a towel cutely trying to explain to both of us how the doggie doos came to be while my husband, god bless his soul and god help me I hope he really scrubbed his hands, picks up all the bits from the bathtub. He then scrubs the tub. Sanitizes it. Scrubs it again. Sanitizes it. And rinses it all away – while I stand with my son and run dirty towels and bathmats down to the washing machine.

Would I have done the cleaning if I had been home alone at the time? Absolutely. But, without complaining or asking for help, my husband took on the "jobs."

Now that's a gift.

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Next Valentine's, let my husband write you a card

My husband and I don't really do Valentine's Day. I think it's a day created for all men to make up for the other 364 days of the year they've been forgetful, unappreciative, "Women-are-like-shopping. I-can-go-window-shopping, I-just-can't-touch-or-buy" dinks.

My husband and I do, however, give each other a card.

Here's what he wrote: (Short but sweet and true and real)

"Feb. 14, 2009: I don't need anything for Valentine's Day as long as you're near."

I guess I could have done better than: "You're, like, totally hot and smart and stuff."

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How not to do a job interview

Today is Panic Day.
It is the day I circled on my calendar two months ago.
I have now been laid off for two months and today was the day I needed to have a job by – or, it's time to panic. Not seriously panic, like I can't take care of my son, but panic because I've gone two months and no one has scooped me up.

(Which, let me tell you, is the REALLY annoying thing EMployed people do. They say, "Oh, Sarah. This was meant to be. You'll get something great. Someone will realize your talents and pick you up. You'll be fine. I just know it.) Sorry, I need to take a break from typing this. Apparently, 23 people are knocking on my front door wanting to offer me a job.
Not.
Remember in that great movie Gremlins when the good guys kill the Gremlins by exploding them in the microwave and blender? That's what my kitchen looked like last night. I was making Smartie cookies with my son for his daycare Valentine's Day party today and, thanks to an old blender and an excited toddler, there was batter dripping off the counter and down the toaster. (Don't worry. I washed our hands 10 times during one cookie-making session.)
I had just popped the cookies in the oven when the phone rang.
It was someone I'm really, really, really hoping to work with (you know who you are) returning my phone call.
Too bad my husband was at the gym – so my Mr. No. 1 is on the phone and my two-year-old son's hands are covered in Smartie cookie batter.
I pick up the phone and chat. And chat. And chat.
And now he's licking his fingers. (My son. Not my future coworker. Or, maybe he is licking his fingers in anticipation of working with me, but that's a dream.)
Now, my son's fingers are covered in liquidified cookie batter.
And the timer's going off.
And I have to get the cookies out - and oh, sh*t, they've spread into one massive cookie, so now, while they're hot, I need to cut them into cookies.
Chat, chat, chat.
"Mommy," my son says.
"What?" I mouth.
"Mommy," my son says again.
"What?" I mouth.
"I pooooeeeed."
I immediately put on my best wild-eyed look and put my index finger to my mouth in the universal sign of "SHHHHHHHHHH!"
My devil look inspires my son to play devil, too.
He runs to the counter with a stink-trail behind him and grabs the bowls of Smarties, plowing handful after handful of chocolates into his mouth.
Chat, chat, chat.
My son continues to yell at me about how Toot and Puddle (a cartoon about world-travelling pigs) is on, how it's not The Wonder Pets, nor is it the Backyardigans.
More chat, chat, chat.
Finally, my son is ticked with me.
He grabs his Fisher Price Corn Popper toy and starts to chase me around the house with it. And, so, thank god I'm training for a run, I run around my house, continuing the chat, not letting on for a moment that I'm jumping over Tickle Me Elmo, hurdling his Little Tykes tool bench and leaping over his Thomas the Train set while I try to (forgive me for saying this) run away from my son. (Just for a minute!)
Finally, my husband walks in the door.
The cookie batter is still dripping off our kitchen appliances.
My son's bum is a toxic dump and his face is a rainbow from shoving Smarties in his mouth.
And I am leaping around my livingroom.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is what it's like to try to scam a job for yourself, while being Betty Crocker, while getting some exercise, while making sure my child is getting dinner.
And you thought laid-off people sat around the house watching Oprah. Ha.

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Kathleen - you're the next contestant on SarahCrosbie.com!

Well, it's time to announce the winner of the very first Crosbiemania contest.
I asked you to guess the amount of my knee-high boots. Sure, you can drop $200 to $300 on a pair of boots, but I have a toddler who costs a lot of money and now I'm the big U (unemployed), so I was a thrifty gal.
(Though not as thrifty as my mother would like me to be. She guessed my boots were $19.99. Geez, Louise, mom. Waddya want from me?)
Anyway, the winner of the inaugural contest is reader KATHLEEN who guessed they were $59.99. Did you go through my recycling looking for the bill?
They were, in fact, $59.99 from Winners, as Kathleen guessed. So, in total, $67.79 with tax.
Kathleen wins a $20 gift certificate from The Body Shop, courtesy of moi.
We'll make arrangements to get you your prize, Ms. Kathleen. :)
Thanks to everyone who entered.
Sarah "Cheapskate" Crosbie


And here is the rest of it.

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Go on, give everyone an A+, Mr. Rancourt

The Globe and Mail today has the most interesting story I've read in ages – it seems a University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt has been suspended (and arrested on campus and charged with trespassing) for being radical.

Erin Anderssen of the Globe and Mail writes:

"On the first day of his fourth-year physics class, University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt announced to his students that he had already decided their marks: Everybody was getting an A+. It was not his job, as he explained later, to rank their skills for future employers, or train them to be “information transfer machines,” regurgitating facts on demand. Released from the pressure to ace the test, they would become “scientists, not automatons,” he reasoned."


The self-described 51-year-old anarchist is fighting back and has posted his side of the story on YouTube. This idea of not doling out grades is interesting to me as I sit here at 9:31 in the morning, laid off from my job as a newspaper editor. I should be at work, WORKING, but instead, today, I will finish painting my hallway that was done, but then the paint, (please excuse my anger here) god-damn bubbled and now I have to do it again. I will buy some 1% milk for cereal and go run on a treadmill and check in with the companies (harass, actually) that I'm hoping will hire me.

How did I get laid off? How did I become one of the thousands of people with no job? See, the biggest thing about being laid-off is that it's not fair. I graduated high school with a 94.6% average. I went to Queen's University, one of the top schools in the country. I graduated with a BAH. My last year of university, I also worked full-time at The Whig-Standard, school during the day, work at night and on weekends. I busted my butt for eight years at the paper and received accolades, pats on the back, award nominations. All I wanted in return for my hard work and perseverance since Grade 9 was a good job, a good salary, and some coworkers who I could share a chuckle with. Instead, I'm in PJs, wondering, literally, what it all means now.

And here's where I trace the problem to: School. Elementary school and high school.

Kids learn very early on how to play the system. In group work, when there's two smart kids, the class a-hole and a kid who tries really hard but can't manage anything more than a 60%, the two smart kids take over, push the a-hole completely out of the system and let the try-hard do something, but not too much. When I was in school, part of the Ontario curriculum had groups of four each assigned a role: One person was the writer, one person was the "thinker," the person who came up with ideas. So far, so fair. Those two jobs worked in tandem. But then – I know some of you will remember this – one person was the encourager. It was his/her job to say: "C'mon guys. Good thinking. You're really thinking hard on this one. Nice penmanship, Sarah." And the other job was for someone to be the timer. Yup, if you have 20 minutes, the timer gave us time updates. Guess what job the a-hole got? The timer. The smart kids never cared if the other two piggy-backed on their 95% because they got 95% too.

In high school, by the time I'd reached Grade 11, I'd dropped all the maths, sciences and geography classes and took only drama, music, English, French, history and sociology classes. Why struggle through a chemistry class and get a 65% when you take English and easily get a 90%? Why, because now that I'm 31, I wish I had more of a math and science background – but high school is a marks game. You need the best marks to get into the best school so you can get the best job. (Allegedly).

But I had the best marks and went to one of the best schools and now I have no job.

It happened when I was in high school and it happens today: Kids are given the most insane/inane projects. Bristol board projects on Macbeth. Ooooh, good cut-and-paste, Jimmy. Too bad you're 18 and in Grade 12 English.

Nice title page. It's worth 10% of your mark? Title pages are very important in the real world. I did them every day in my job, I swear.

But one of the biggest problems with high school (and I know geography and socio-economic status play into this) is that people my age were taught (wrongly, of course) that smart kids went to university and, well, the others went to college.

I vividly remember taking personality tests that lead everyone in our classes to job descriptions for doctor, lawyer, journalist, writer, dentist, teacher. Did anyone ever tell us that elevator repair people can make $100,000 a year?

Not once in five years of high school (when school in Ontario went from Grade 9 to Grade 13) did any teacher, guidance counsellor or guest speaker, tell us to do anything other than get good grades and get into university.

No one presented college as an option. If you were in "advanced" classes, you went to university. No one said take a year off and work, or travel.

Yes, as 18 and 19 year olds we should have had the independence and smarts to make these decisions on our own, but since kindergarten we were groomed for university – and it takes a brave spirit to abandon the flock and go out on his own.

I was not that kid. But could I have been?

I also had close friends whose parents wouldn't chip in for school unless they took what the parents wanted them to take. Guess what happened when the kids who wanted to study art were forced into sciences? Or the kids who wanted to go to a small school were forced to go to their parents' large alma maters? They dropped out, failed, struggled.

Sure, some kids will abuse Denis Rancourt's A+ system – but that's part of the whole experience, isn't it? It's part of learning.

As I sit here, still unemployed 21 minutes later, I say the economy is showing us we need to think outside of the box and consider all options. And when it's time for my son to go to school in 16 years, we will encourage him to do whatever he wants: College, chef's school, design school, travel the world, do an exchange, apprenticeship, go to Queen's University (which, for the record, I did love, but mostly because I made the experience what I wanted it to be and spent the majority of my time working at the student newspaper).

It's good to shake things up.

And to conclude, this is a shout out to high school teachers who did rock the boat, who did treat us like adults, who did give us some freedom to explore, play and learn: Mr. Court, Mr. Baird, Mr. Jones - you guys were my faves.

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Guess the price of my sexy boots. Win a prize.

See these boots? They were made for saving. We're in a recession. I have no job. You probably either don't have a job, are worried about losing your job, or have someone in your family who's out of a job. Trust me, I get it. I'm Sarah-Save-A-Lot these days, but I still have to look good. I need to look decent so that when I'm at Wal-Mart buying Rollback bargoons, and someone sees me and says, "Dang! That Sarah Crosbie is looking fine. I need to give her a job!" So check out my boots. They're knee-high. They're sassy. OK, maybe they're pleather and not leather, but they're still sexy. So how much do you think I paid for 'em? (Here's a little help: It's not outrageous to spend more than $200 on boots. But what did I spend?) Guess right and I'll send you a little help for Valentine's Day – a $20 gift card to the Body Shop so you can get him/her something nice, courtesy of SarahCrosbie.com. All you have to do is post a comment here with your price guess. Closest wins. Contest open until midnight Feb. 9, 2009. I'll post the winning guess by 9 a.m. Feb. 10. (You have to leave a name in your comment – not anonymous – so I can match the winner to the guess. Once I declare the winner, I'll give you 24 hours to email me.)

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