This is so NOT a snowflake

As some of you know, when he's not drilling, filling and billing teeth, my husband lives to play music. In fact, he's been known to sit at the keyboard singing his heart out for four or five hours at a time. He has actually reached the point where he's been forced to stop because his stomach muscles ache, and I have actually reached the point where I want to tear his stomach muscles out with my salad tongs if I hear one more verse of Elinor Rigby. But I don't, because he loves it, and I love him, and I love to hear his voice raised in song (just not in the concert equivalent of a full marathon.) He and his buddies sometimes play together at our cottage, setting themselves up in the basement where the acoustics are such that the whole house is filled with joyous noise, for hours and hours, which I enjoy whilst the other wives sip gin and tonics on their docks and listen to the loons of the avian variety.

Together, they call themselves The Olde Farts Band. They may need bifocals to read the music, but by gosh they know how to rock like it's 1974.

There's my husband "The Molar Man" providing vocals.

There's John "The Marathon Man" on keyboard. He favours Billy Joel and Elton John tunes. John is a defense attourney in his other life, and he runs marathons for fun. To me, that's like saying, "I gargle broken glass for fun!" He says he enjoys it, though his agonized Long Distance Runner face and sweat-soaked clothing seem to indicate otherwise. I always make an effort to join him, metaphorically speaking, by raising my coffee mug high above my Sunday newspaper to salute him in a show of solidarity as he slogs around the lake.

There's Ross "The Glass Man" (he owns a glass company) who is Doug's cousin and technically not a member of the band as he claims he has no musical talent, so he operates more as a roadie. He provides moral support and cold Laurentide beer and the occasional tree-felling service. He has a long-standing love affair with his chainsaw and refuses to upgrade, despite the choking haze of blue exhaust from its stuttering motor. When the music moves his soul i.e. early rock and roll, he dances with wild and unfettered abandon, hence his other nickname "The Rubber Man."

And then there's Claude "The Pad Man" on guitar, a gentle giant of a guy with a big heart. Now, you're probably asking yourself how Claude got his moniker. He designs and manufactures Feminine Hygiene Products, or more specifically, sanitary napkins. Now, like most men, in his early days of marriage he was never comfortable tripping the light fantastic down the Aisle That Shall Not Be Named. That is until he began a career in analyzing Aunt Flo's monthly visits, and it opened up the flood gates, as it were. Sitting at a dinner table, he will wax poetic about the quick release backing on one's panty liner faster than you can say "pass the salt." He will reach into the nearest handbag or bathroom cabinet to back up his assertions that there's more, so much more, to the humble pad than meets the eye. He even donated a jacket, which I won in a golf tournament, that reads "Be Nuts for Peanuts," peanuts being common parlance for the panty liners with the unique peanut shape. Though they've never met, here is a Brother In Arms, hard at work to change public perception.



You have to love the woman who asked "Are you a snowflake?" Seriously. I know we live in a cold climate and we get a lot of snow, but how many snowflakes have you seen that look like a giant sanitary pad?

Oh, and if anyone has any free time next summer, the bands needs a drummer. Any volunteers? We have cold Laurentides and an unlimited supply of pads with your name on them.