Unloading and Meandering

The End

2011-07-14T19:54:00.005-04:00

Tonight a huge chapter in my life comes to a close. The final movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, comes out at 12:01 AM. I will be at a 12:05 AM show with my friend. My first, and last, midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie is sure to be memorable, to say the least. And mere hours from the moment when that beautiful, jagged lightning bolt of a screentitle will appear before me, I find myself thinking about my literary journey with the books and how it was so different from my cinematic experience.

I discovered the Harry Potter series for myself in 2000. I had just graduated from university and was working at my local public library branch as a shelver, and despite my ever-expanding interests, I eschewed Harry for a long time before I condescended to read it. "It can't be THAT good," I said to myself. Naturally, once I expressed interest in finally reading it, Ms. Rowling decided then would be a great time to publish the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This renewed the public's interest in the series, making it nigh impossible to get one's hands on the first three books for at least several months... in English.

I came across the first three books in French, in an astoundingly proper translation: those French from France, they sure know what they're doing. Since I hadn't read anything in French for leisure in about ten years, it took substantially longer to read, as I had to have a dictionary on hand when doing so. But I slogged through for weeks, where normally I'd have finished tearing through them in a few hours. The story was amazing, otherwise I would have given up after a few chapters.

When I finally got my hands on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (in English) after being #350 on a holds list, there was some initial confusion with regards to names and spells and such - Severus Snape is Severus Rogue in French; Hogwarts is "Poudlard" - but the book represented such a turning point in the series, and also a change in my appreciation for it, that I started raving about it to everyone I knew. (My mother famously repeated to me, "They can't be THAT good," then bought all four through a book club offer, read them all in a week, then called me up begging me to tell her when the next one was coming out.)

Around the time that GoF was slated to come out, rumors were swirling about Hollywood starting a movie series based on the books. I remember when it was confirmed and Vanity Fair ran an umpteen-page exposé with so many beautiful photos that for the first time since elementary school I bought a magazine and tore pages out of it to put star photos on my walls. Harry was perfect! Quidditch uniforms looked awesome! SNAPE!!! Oh my god, they picked Alan Rickman. Never in the history of cinema has an actor been so perfectly cast.

Of course, I saw each movie the day it came out, and bought each subsequent book in advance. I re-read Order of the Phoenix so many times I could find you a particular passage within ten seconds. I even drew a crappy-looking storyboard for what I wanted the last 150 pages of the book to look like in a movie. (I then showed it to my husband, who said, "Okay, so Harry is looking through a telescope, then there's a gorilla --" "That's Hagrid!" "Okay, so a gorilla is coming out of a house and a midget --" "That's Umbridge!" "... is shooting laser beams at it. It looks pissed off and then someone shoots lasers at a man wearing a tepee --" "That's McGonagle!" You get the idea.)

I cried for hours when I read the end of Half-Blood Prince. I cried so hard while reading it the first time I had to reread it the next day because I could make no sense of the end. I left my mother a tearful voicemail telling her not to read it because it was so sad and J.K. Rowling was a bitch for writing it.

Then came the final book. My husband, by now being wise to my personal seclusion at these times, chose to go sailing for the weekend, knowing I would be completely ignoring him until I had read the book, reread choice scenes, and then started discussing them with him without him ever having read the books. Ever. (He is constantly reminding me that I'm forever reading passages aloud to him and he's seen all the movies, so he doesn't have to read the books.)

It was sad. But in that sometimes peculiar way of grief, it didn't hit me until later. I was reading the book for the third time on the bus on my way home from work on day, several weeks later, and this particular scene near the end of the book hit me. The tears started pouring down my face, and me with no tissue. I made the people around me nervous, I fear.

I haven't read Deathly Hallows nearly as many times as the other books, but I know this movie is going to hurt. The last one didn't end where I expected it to, but it seems as good a spot as any. I'm preparing my purse as I write this, stuffing it full of tissues and mentally calculating how much caffeine I need to consume in order to stay alert until 3:30 AM, the time at which I roughly expect to get home tonight (tomorrow?). I'm bringing a pen, to write the previews on the back of my ticket as I've done for the last 16 years of movie-going. I'd like to bring my awesome camera, because I'm sure people will be in costume and it will be beautiful and loud and fun, but I'm scared it will be confiscated. Maybe the smaller one, assuming my husband remembers to bring it home. I'm bringing my rarely-used inhaler, just in case I'm sobbing so hard I have trouble breathing. (Hey, it's not inconceivable.)

It won't be the last time I watch a Harry Potter movie in the theatre - I plan to bring my husband with me to another showing later, since he's staying home with our (teething) infant son tonight. But it's the last time I'll get to experience opening night madness for what has been the most emotionally gut-wrenching movie series of my life.

Oh, why didn't I order that Ravenclaw scarf ages ago...

Allergy Rant

2011-07-06T21:55:00.003-04:00

Okay. I don't really complain a lot about my dairy allergy. I've had it my entire life. I was taught to read the ingredient labels on everything; I substitute butter for oil, and cow milk for soy milk, and cheese for, well, air. And I constantly joke about how I wouldn't be as svelte as I am (er, was) if I wasn't allergic to dairy, because for SURE I'd be eating more junk food than I already do.

In this day and age, where it seems everyone and his dog has some kind of food sensitivity, many more food establishments are aware of this and are more than accommodating when presented with a customer with a food allergy. Leave it off, or cook it with oil is the general rule of thumb with a dairy allergy.

But some things are pretty much no-brainers, y'know? Like, if I order a hamburger, why did I get a cheeseburger? Why didn't I say, "No cheese", like I do when ordering pasta or a sub? Because I ASKED FOR A HAMBURGER, NOT A CHEESEBURGER!

Why did I not realize I'd been given a cheeseburger until I took several bites of it? Maybe I wasn't paying attention. But then again, I shouldn't have to. It's a freaking burger. It's one of two type they sell: with cheese, or without. You only need to specify the cheese part if you want cheese. I should not have to specify that I want no cheese on my hamburger. Otherwise I'd just say, "Cheeseburger". "Hamburger" is the default setting, people!

So now I've downed nearly a liter of grapefruit juice and sucked/chewed on two English mints, to chase down the Benadryl I had to take to make the itchy throat (not to mention panic) go away. Benadryl always knocks me on my ass, so at least I'll sleep well tonight. So will Henry, once I feed him before going to bed. And as a result, so will my husband. I'm happy that Benadryl is one of those safe drugs a breastfeeding woman can take.

Meanwhile, I've been waiting 40 minutes for my replacement hamburger... So now I've got an itchy throat, I'm getting tired, I'm getting an anger headache, and I'm still hungry. This is going to be a fun night...

I AM A CHAMPION TOO, DAMMIT

2011-06-23T12:35:00.004-04:00

A few months ago, I discovered the awesomeness of Allie Brosh, creator of Hyperbole and a Half. I read most of her blog in a day, and nearly wet myself laughing about a dozen times. Her simultaneously self-effacing and self-aggrandizing style of writing is a lot of fun to read. One of my favourite posts is called "I AM THE CHAMPION!!!", wherein she describes various random situations that make her feel like she has 'won', such as holding her breath for a whole minute, finding a matching pair of socks (double win if it's under a minute), or, my personal favourite:

"If I pick up a deck of cards and yell "clubs!" and then draw a card and it isn't a club - I don't win, but I will yell "clubs!" again and keep picking cards until I pick the right suit and then I win." - Allie Brosh

So, lovely Allie who will probably never read this, here's my own list of things that make ME a champion.

If I look at the clock and it is a series of consecutive numbers (such as 12:34), or the start of the Fibonacci sequence (11:23) - I win. I also get to make a wish.

If I can change my son's clothes and get a bib on him before he spits up - I win. (I don't win that often, sadly.)

If I'm loading the dishwasher and I can make every item fit so that there is nothing left in the sink - I win.

If I can sing along to a song I haven't heard in years on the radio and remember all the words and note variations with no hesitation - I win. ('No Rain' by Blind Melon springs immediately to mind.)

If I can remember something blast-your-laughter-out funny that my husband has said, which I am allowed to repeat (oh my god, the things I can't tell you guys), and I get the same hysterical reaction from you that he got from me - I win. He wins too, even though he gets all embarrassed about it and insists that I take the win. So then I double win. Ha!

If I have a piece of string long enough to make a cat's cradle, I can do the "Bridge" and then undo it over and over. I especially win if I can do it without looking at it.

I have a bad habit of leaving cups everywhere, usually partly full of some water or juice. If I walk into a room and find a drinkable cup of the very thing I was wanting to drink - I win.

If I'm talking about Harry Potter (or any other book with which I am intimately familiar), and someone says, "I don't remember that part," so I run to the bookshelf and pull out the book to find what we're talking about, and I find the passage in less than 30 seconds - I win.

When it's September 19th, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day (not to mention the birthday of Hermione Granger, a fellow - if fictional - Virgo) - so I win. So does everyone else, because talking like a pirate is awesome.

If I am wearing a white shirt and can manage to eat either curry or spaghetti without getting sauce on my shirt - I win. (Okay, who am I kidding? I never win at that one.)

This last one takes some explaining. There are two light switches for the main lights in the basement: one at the top of the stairs, behind the door we always keep open, and one at the bottom. In order for the lights to be off, both switches need to be in the same direction, either both up or both down. My husband flicks the upstairs switch then he goes downstairs. I prefer to go downstairs then turn on the lights, because I hate having to reach behind the open door to flick the upstairs switch. If I go downstairs and I have to flick the switch down to turn the lights on, and as a result flick the switch up to turn off the lights when go back upstairs - I win!

When I recently told my husband that his flicking of the upstairs switch annoys the hell out of me and always has, because it messes up the going down-flick down/going up-flick up method I prefer (this after five years of living in this house), he looked at me strangely and said, "I didn't know this about you." A pause. "You're insane."

What sort of things do YOU win at?

IS it a laugh?

2011-05-30T15:48:00.004-04:00

Our son Henry is 14 weeks old today (read: just over 3 months), and although he's been smiling for several weeks now, I've been trying my damnedest to get him to laugh. I'm sure an innocent bystander who didn't know that I have a baby would think I was crazy with all my antics.

The other day I was walking around Rideau Centre, alone, with Henry in the stroller. He was looking around like mad - so many new things! - and I passed American Apparel, on the second floor. I looked up and saw a male mannequin dressed, I kid you not, in a neon pink wife-beater and tiny gold running shorts. I was in a just okay mood at the time, but this sent the endorphins skyrocketing. I completely lost my shit and started laughing hysterically in the middle of the mall. I even pointed at the mannequin, and described it to Henry as my walk slowed to a crawl. Then I noticed people staring at me so I wiped away my tears of hilarity and kept walking.

The point of the story is that Henry saw me laughing and started smiling like mad. He opened his mouth really wide and made a little huffing noise. I tried to get him to do it again, but alas, the moment had passed.

Parents (or those who know babies), I ask you: is it a laugh?

In my opinion, sadly, no. To me a laugh has to have audible tone, not just be a breathing, huffy noise. Which has not stopped me from trying to get him to duplicate the phenomenon. No, this is just the beginning, ladies and gentlemen.

I've tried dancing like a crazy person (or, to be honest, like a friend of mine who is not afraid to dance like a crazy person for her kids), I've tried blowing short raspberries in his face (moderate success), I've tried tickling (zero success with that so far), I've tried laughing at his farts to see if he'll think they're funny too (nope, he just gets red in the face and/or bug-eyed), and I've tried making faces, but that just scares him. I think I might have to try knock-knock jokes or channeling Eddie Izzard or something next.

So... yeah.

Clutter clearing my body and my closet

2011-05-11T11:08:00.007-04:00

So while I've spent the past few weeks carefully crafting the telling of the birth of my son (I'm still not ready, literally or emotionally, to post it), my body, especially my belly, has very slowly been trying to get back to its pre-baby form.

When my husband got me a bag full of junk food as a Mother's Day gift (among other things, don't worry, he's not an idiot), it was because I'd spent the two days before that loudly announcing my ephemeral cravings for chips, cookies, nachos and salsa. But the morning of Mother's Day I resolved that I would give up junk food for a while and actively pursue abdominal firmness.

Then this windfall of sugar and salt fell into my lap, literally.

I would like to think that I scarfed all of that junk food - to wit, a bag of chips, a bag of nachos (I had help with that, though), a box of Oreos, a Coke and a grape Crush - in two days not because I am a disgusting pig, but because I'm in a hurry to begin my new diet without temptation. It looks horrifying when you read it, and it's even more horrifying when I think about what I've put into my body.

Yesterday I spent a few hours systematically going through my pre-pregnancy clothes, ruthlessly - though sometimes wistfully - sorting them as, "it fits", "it will hopefully fit soon", and "Jay-zus, my boobs are too big for this." It is the latter pile that really frustrated me, as it included one of my favorite dresses, nearly all of my lingerie, and about half of my shirts. I also threw out about half of my underwear (will never fit me again), three of my bras (too old and waaay too small), some stockings with runs in them, and socks with holes. I've now got an overflowing bag of gently used clothes that I'm going to first offer to my future sister-in-law, and then to Value Village.

While my shirt pile is much smaller than it was before, it leaves room for new, well-fitting shirts to come into my life. I learned long ago not to get too hung up on the number on the tag (for a while I used to remove the tags on my clothes, and then conveniently forget what size I was), so new pants will be in order too, to accommodate my post-baby saggy belly.

Sod's law says as soon as I buy pants that fit me properly, I'll probably lose the weight and belly fat that requires they be larger than normal, and then I'll need to get all new pants again, but I'm okay with that.

It's official - I'm sick of being pregnant.

2011-02-10T18:51:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I had a baby shower thrown in my honor, which was attended by friends and family both in person and via Skype, and was totally awesome. I'm incredibly grateful that so many people were able to come and a bit humbled by how generous people were.

Cleaning the house in preparation for the baby shower, though, made me realize that I am ready for this baby to arrive. I had a rather ridiculously-caused meltdown the day before the shower. Let's just say that our house does not lack for Mr. Clean Magic Erasers anymore, and my husband knows that I make the decisions now about when to throw them out.

To continue with my list of things I can't wait to be able to do after the child is born, I offer the following seemingly innocent activities:

eat spicy food without getting heartburn
see the underside of my belly without a mirror
have non-itchy stretch marks (seems I may have PUPPPS, hooray for me)
get in and out of the car without myriad gasps and grunts
shave my legs
sleep with only one pillow, i.e. the one beneath my head
sleep on my back! or my right side!
play Dance Dance Revolution (I think this may be my post-partum weight loss tool)
eat sushi more than once a month

I'm sure there are more, but naturally baby brain has removed the memory of those wishes. *sigh*

The Do-Again List

2011-01-17T11:47:00.003-05:00

Many people seem to have some sort of stereotype of a pregnant women in their head. Either she's a whiny shrew or she's so cheerful it makes you want to scream. I like to think I've struck a healthy balance between the two this pregnancy. If someone asks how I'm feeling, as a nitpicky Virgo I almost automatically mention the "bad" things first, like how my back is hurting or how tired I am. But I don't go on and on about it, and I'm just as quick to point out when Jellyfish is kicking or how I can gleefully state that, at 34 weeks, I still don't have stretch marks.

That being said, I've begun to compile my mental list of things I can't wait to be able do again. It's not intended to be an angry, ranty list, bitching about the activities that now escape me for various reasons; rather more of a wistful, oh-it'll-be-nice list.

putting on footwear without gasping or using special tools
reaching the back of a cabinet or the end of a counter
holding my bladder like a normal human being
while we're on the topic, not feeling the urge to pee every time I change position
being able to fasten the front of my coat (I estimate I will lose this ability within two weeks)
swing quickly in and out of bed
rolling over in two seconds instead of two minutes
eat a large meal and not feel like I'm going to explode
carry/push heavy objects
have a choice between more than three pairs of pants and six tops
drink alcohol or caffeine without censorious glares from my husband

Naturally, of course, there will be another mental list compiling in about two months, one that's a little bit snarkier and more emotional, of the I-wish-I-could-still-do-this variety. It will likely include such items as:

sleeping longer than two hours at a time
showering more than twice a week
talking to someone besides the baby about something other other than baby poop...

So when does this nesting thing start again?

2011-01-05T10:56:00.004-05:00

I've begun about a dozen blog posts about my pregnancy so far, and have, as you may have noticed, posted about two of them. Procrastination is my strong suit, let me tell you.

Here's the update so far: I'm almost 33 weeks along (due around February 24th, give or take), my midwives say I'm healthy and so is the baby - who is head down now and likely to stay that way, huzzah - and I'm aiming for having a water birth at home, which makes my husband very anxious.

Overall throughout the pregnancy, I've been trying to eat better, exercise, and do everything A Good Mom Should Do. I've avoided over-the-counter medications as much as I've been able (so far I've had a couple of Reactines for fall allergies, a Benadryl for a food reaction, and two ibuprofen for shoulder/back pain), I've taken prenatal yoga classes - though keeping up with the exercises has been spotty at best - and painted the nursery with low- and no-VOC paint.

I've avoided lifting heavy things, and when I do I bend at the knees. I use a shoehorn to put on my boots instead of failing miserably at reaching my feet. I sleep with a pillow between my knees and one supporting my growing belly. I get my husband to slather my belly with cheap lotion and so far, no stretch marks as far as we can tell, though I may be developing linea nigra very faintly below my navel.

Jellyfish, as we've been calling the little one, is very active. I was actually able to distinguish a limb moving last week; I suspect it was an arm. It was the oddest thing to see. The baby moves quite a bit when I'm resting, i.e. at the computer, but is gradually moving around regardless of my activities. Although it doesn't really hurt most of the time, it gets really quite uncomfortable when Jelly decides to park its keister (or its feet, I can't really tell yet), right below my ribcage. Firm but gentle pressure on the hardened bit eventually makes it sink back down into a more comfortable area, but more often than not it just moves back after a few minutes. Oh, well.

Due to my increasing abdominal girth, my centre of gravity has shifted and my back hurts more often. While I have had the good fortune to not have really gained any weight in my legs or derrière, when pants fit well there they have now become too tight around my pelvis, with elastic maternity waistbands squishing my bladder. When the elastic fits well over my belly, the pants are extremely baggy from the hips down and I constantly have to hike them up. I guess I should be grateful that I'll have less adipose tissue to try to eliminate post-natally, but it's hard to feel grateful when you pull up your waistband for the 17th time in an hour.

I'm not quite at the, "I'm sick of being pregnant" phase, but I think I'm getting close. I've scheduled a pregnancy massage for the end of the month, at a hotel/spa recommended by a friend, and I can't wait. It feels amazing when my husband rubs my sore back, but that's usually only for a few minutes before I roll over or we fall asleep or whatever. This will be one hour of bliss, if my friend's experience is any indication.

So I keep waiting for this "nesting" rage to happen. It seems to have come in spurts over the past months: I HAD to finish painting the nursery, I HAD to get more baby clothes from Value Village, I HAD to clean our bathroom at 11 PM the other night. I keep expecting to wake up in the middle of the night and have a sudden urge (and pre-pregnancy flexibility) to ninja through all the crap in our house and get rid of it.

Something I've realized about myself is that when I'm happy, I'm a slob. I only seem to clean if I'm in a bad mood, because then I can angrily clean the shit out of something and feel like I'm working out my frustrations on the sundry scum of my life. (Yes, I was in a bad mood when I cleaned our bathroom the other night, in case you were wondering.)

But I still have about 7 weeks left, give or take, so I suppose like the rest of the things happening to my body, I'll just have to wait for it.

Babies and Old Wives

2010-10-28T10:24:00.007-04:00

When my husband and I went to the 18-week ultrasound, we knew we wanted to know the sex of our firstborn. I'm the kind of person who can't stand not knowing things, and my husband, well, just wants everyone to know. The fact that I've set up a baby pool on Facebook and at work, allowing people to guess the sex and date of birth (and in the case of my workplace, the birth weight), annoys him. "You're turning our baby into a circus!" he says, somewhat accusingly. But I think it's fun.

I have told people I don't know personally, like the dentist and the opthamologist. But keeping it a secret from my friends and family is HARD. Now that we know what Jellyfish is, it has become increasingly difficult not to use personal pronouns when talking about, er, the baby (see what I almost did there?) to other people. This is doubly difficult in French, where nouns have genders, so "le bébé" is masculine. I've had people jump on the fact that I have referred to the baby as "il" (he) to mean that the baby is a boy. Which may or may not be true.

I have slipped up on occasion (including when talking once to my dad, who just said nonchalantly, "I didn't hear anything," which may or may not have been true), but instead of hurriedly using the alternate pronoun, which is a dead giveaway, I just try my best to keep talking normally.

This is more difficult than it sounds.

Also, the fact that I have mentioned that "it was clear from the ultrasound what the sex is" to naturally mean that there was a giant penis on the screen waving around and saying hello. People, the absence of something is also definitive, you know! Which is not to mean that I'm saying it's a girl.

Boy, am I sly!

One coworker believes it's a boy, because we had a discussion where I asked her about boy names. All the baby name lists I've created over the years - and there have been many - are predominantly filled with girl names. Girl names are easy! I've always had trouble finding boy names I've liked. And generally, there is a delicate balance to finding a baby name that is:

kind of traditional (no Moonshifter, Ziggy, Lafawndah, or Kodi);
not too common or popular (no David, Ethan, Emma, or Olivia);
not impossible to spell or pronounce (e.g. Niamh, pronounced NEEV);
preferably has a French equivalent or pronunciation that is not too far off the English version (Henry/Henri, Bridget/Brigitte);
is not sexually ambiguous in English (e.g. Kerry, Madison, Jamie, Ashley);
is not sexually ambiguous in French (e.g. Michel/Michelle, Gabriel/Gabrielle);
not too long (e.g. Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles; read here for the reference);
doesn't rhyme with MacDonald (Ronald, Donald);
and last but not least, doesn't have the distinction of being the same name as someone in our past that we disliked (examples omitted to protect ourselves)

So when this girl said she had a whole host of good boy names, I naturally was curious and pumped her for information. Leading to assumptions which may or may not be correct.

I've been finding it hilarious to hear people determine what the sex is based on old wives' tales, like the position of the baby or my shape or how pretty I am. It's even funnier when one person says it's a boy and another says it's a girl, and they each give me the same reason for their theory. Or, conversely, when I've known the opposite reason to be true.

e.g. "You're having a boy because your belly is all forward." To which I reply that this is how my mother carried me - at seven months she stuck straight out and people walking behind her didn't know she was pregnant until she turned around.

e.g. "You're having a girl because you're a little rounder than you were before." I chortle to myself and say that my mother was round all over when carrying my brother Scott.

One of the funnier determinants I've heard is the pretty-ugly factor, which I have heard used for both sexes. I had a nice table all set up, but I can't figure out how to insert it here, so I'll just have to write it out.

Theory #1: If you're pretty, it's a boy!
Reason: If you're pretty, it's because a boy is taking your ugliness.

Theory #2: If you're ugly, it's a boy!
Reason: If you're ugly, it's because a boy is passing his "ugliness" (masculinity?) onto you.

Theory #3: If you're pretty, it's a girl!
Reason: If you're pretty, it's because a girl is enhancing your pre-existing prettiness.

Theory #4: If you're ugly, it's a girl!
Reason: If you're ugly, it's because a girl is taking all your prettiness for herself.

There is a funny quiz online to figure out your gender odds based solely on old wives' tales. Here are my answers, for your edification on my current state of gravidas, and your temporary amusement.

My hair is shiny and full-bodied.
The hair on my legs growing just as fast as before. (Where did THIS theory come from?)
My nails are growing faster and stronger.
I have had morning sickness.
I generally crave sour or salty things, as opposed to sweets.
My tush is not growing abnormally large.
My feet are no colder than they were before.
Fetal heart rate is generally below 139 bpm.
I'm not craving orange juice.
Baby's resting low.
My belly is watermelon-shaped, not beach-ball shaped.
Baby's kicking mostly to the right.
Baby's kicking mostly low.
The dad's not gaining sympathy weight.
I can't see the weight gain in my face.

According to these answers, there's a 60% chance it's a boy, and a 40% chance it's a girl.

I'd love to hear any other old wives' tales you've heard to predict gender!

Mezzo preggo

2010-10-08T10:45:00.008-04:00

I'm a little more than halfway through my first real pregnancy. And I have to admit, at this point, I still don't feel that physically different. Though, here are some of the types of things my brain has been saying to me over the past few months to explain the ways my body has changed.

You didn't have morning sickness. You had all-day food poisoning. For eight weeks.

You didn't have to diet because you lost 10 pounds from, er, food poisoning. Yay you!

You're gaining the belly fat back. It's just firm belly fat now.

You have trouble cutting your toenails, puting on your socks, and tying your shoes because of your poor flexibility. It has nothing to do with the new, firm belly fat.

You only slept 16 hours a day for seven weeks because it was a hot, hot summer.

Your boobs got massive for no apparent reason, and for the first time you so dazzled a waiter with them that he forgot your order. Score one for the new awesome rack!

You had gas because you kept drinking pop, and eating the gigantic runner beans growing through the chain-link fence of the school near your work.

You're only craving pasta because pasta is delicious.

You're only craving oatmeal cookies because oatmeal cookies are delicious.

You're only craving gravy because gravy is delicious (and you don't know how to make it).

At least, my brain was saying all these things until about two weeks ago. Then came The Nudge.

When my husband and I went to the 18-week ultrasound, it was astounding how much Jellyfish, as we'd been calling the creature inside me, was moving around. From the moment the technician put the wand to my belly, we could see Jellyfish was kicking, arching its back, moving its arms, and turning around, generally looking very different from the tiny blob we'd seen in the first, 8-week ultrasound. The strangest part was seeing all this glorious movement on the screen, and not feeling a whit of it inside me. I'd been having tons of gas (hooray for pregnancy hormones messing up digestion), so it was impossible for me to say whether I'd been feeling just gas bubbles, or if there was fetal movement mixed in with the abdominal shenanigans.

This lack of feeling was explained my the technician as being caused by having an "anterior placenta", meaning the placenta had attached itself to the front of my uterus instead of the customary position in the back. This basically means I have a cushion of liquid at the front of my belly, and the baby would usually be behind it, kicking the placenta instead of my uterus. She said I "probably wouldn't feel anything until week 22, at the earliest." A little disappointed at the delay in this next step in parent-baby bonding, but happy to see that Jellyfish seemed to have all the relevant bits (heart, brain, liver, limbs, etc), we left.

The day that week 21 started, I was writing a long e-mail to a friend who is teaching overseas (and who is rather disappointed that she's missing all the babyhood that's happening in the meantime). I was explaining about the whole anterior placenta thing to her, complaining bitterly that I wouldn't feel anything for a while. I stopped typing in mid-sentence to scratch my belly, looking down at my gradually flattening navel, when all of a sudden...

*nudge*

My whole belly just... twitched, about a half centimeter to the right. I froze.

I had joked with my midwife about the difference between gas and fetal movements ("If it makes a sound, it's probably not the baby"), and how it was really neat that when I lay quietly I could feel, and sometimes even see, my pulse beating faintly near my navel. This felt very different.

When you have gas, your intestines perform an astounding array of digestive orchestration, from low rumbles, to mid-tone pops, to bizarre squeaks, all accompanied by the various sensations of abdominal tightness, travelling gas pockets, and finally the ever-relieving fart.

This was most assuredly a nudge. There was no sound apart from my sudden intake of breath, none of the slight relief caused by the sudden, mysterious dissolution of gas that oddly, does not require a fart. This was a definite push outward by something that was certainly not my guts.

I gently put a hand on my belly, and then there it was again, fainter, but not at all Me. It was truly It. I pushed inwards a bit, hoping to get a response, and then again, fainter still - a flutter instead of a nudge - but still not Me.

Naturally, I rushed to type this to my friend, and then called my husband to gush about it to him, and then called my mother to gush about it to her. Then I sent the e-mail, and immediately went to lie down and try to commune with Jellyfish some more, but after several pokes and prods I guess the wee thing had had enough excitement for one day.

It's been two weeks since then, and the movement has become so much more defined! It's definitely focused on the right side, and I (pardon the pun) get such a kick out of actually seeing my belly move faintly. Jelly moves around a bit when my husband reads aloud at night, and it's tremendously satisfying. I'd love to share the movement with some of my co-workers, but generally speaking the nudges are too low for physical contact that is not indecent.

I find myself softly talking to my belly at work, when no one's around. Like most pregnant women, I'm stroking my belly constantly, partly for comfort, partly to feel when Jellyfish is moving, partly for support. I'm not that big yet, but I'm definitely noticing a change in my posture and where I feel tension in the skin of my belly.

One thing I have not enjoyed too much is when Jellyfish decides to step-dance on my cervix. It is truly the most bizarre and uncomfortable feeling. (Except for that thing where you lie on your front on the ground and someone lifts up your arms and holds them up for 30 seconds and then s-l-o-w-l-y lowers them and it feels like your elbows are going to go through the floor. Okay, that actually feels kind of cool.)

Men, there's really no way I can describe this in a way you can understand. Ladies, it feels like you have to pee and fart out of your vagina at the same time. There's just this unrelievable, and sometimes painful, pressure. When it happens I try to change position (seated to standing, or standing to laying down), or do leg raises to try to move the wee dancer out of there, but Jellyfish goes quiet for a few minutes and then stomps up a storm again, as if to say, "Oh, YEAH?!??"

Doesn't bode well for post-natal discipline, I tell you what...

Driving me crazy

2010-07-21T08:51:00.004-04:00

People sometimes give me strange looks when I tell them I only have my beginner's license. "You're how old?" I explain that my parents always said they'd never teach my brothers and I (father too impatient, mother hates driving) and that if we wanted to learn we had to pay for it. On top of that, from the age of 16 onwars I always lived in a city that had decent public transit (Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa).

But my husband and I have been trying to expand our little family of two for some time. I figure it would be rather practical to be able to drive on my own with a future little one without Andrew having to be in the car with me. (As a beginning driver, I must have someone in the car with me at all times who has a full licence and at least 4 years of driving experience.) So I signed up for Driver's Ed with one of the cheaper organizations in the city. Well, you get what you pay for.

In my four days of in-class sessions, I learned the following things:

the teacher once lost his teaching license for two years for too many speeding tickets
if you take a Canadian penny and slip it in between the treads of a tire, Queen's head down, and you can see her crown, your tires need to be replaced
the teacher "practically invented road rage"
a pair of pantyhose can temporarily replace your serpentine belt
the teacher got thrown into alcoholic detox at the age of 15
parallel parking is "the easiest thing in the world"
the teacher once made his daughter pay $400 to fix a dent he put in his bumper because she didn't notice it when she borrowed his car (always do a circle check!)
a car has four blind spots
the teacher has had four heart attacks
older people don't check, or aren't aware of, their blind spots
the teacher once had mescalin put in his beer without his knowledge and it took him seven hours to get home
if your tires squeal during your driving test, you fail
the teacher currently has 3 demerits on his license; one more and he loses his teaching license permanently

As you can tell, I don't feel I learned a whole lot about driving during class. Also, the teacher is rather fond of cursing, which I can only hope is a scheme to grab the attention of sleeping teenagers, but which feel is actually his personality coming through.

On the plus side, my in-car instructor is very different. He is very talky. Rather more professional than the class teacher. I've had my first lesson already, and he said at the end that I'm a very calm and confident driver (good thing he didn't see me nitpick at everyone else's bad habits), but that he's going to hammer at my weak spots (checking my blind spots, among other things) until I hate him. I won't hate him, but I may strongly dislike him.

Overall, I think my first lesson went well. We stopped only once to go over the rules of a yield sign - specifically, DO NOT STOP UNLESS YOU HAVE TO (or you fail the test) - and he only touched his brakes twice. It's a little disconcerting to have the brake pedal disappear under your foot while you're driving. I think the best part is that the car (I'm hoping it'll be the same one) is a Sunfire, practically the same car as our Cavalier, so I don't need to fiddle about looking for various signals and things.

I have to find my Rules of the Road book. I need to finish my homework before my last lesson. My first homework in ten years. It's odd.

Rumble in the Capital

2010-06-24T10:39:00.005-04:00

As a girl growing up on Air Force bases across Canada, I quickly developed a healthy respect for the awesome power of airplanes. Particularly since I was about six, when a friend of the family lost her husband in a flying accident, I have had an even healthier fear of airplanes crashing. (I mention this only as an indicator that I have had this fear since well before 9/11, when most sane people developed similar fears.)

As a base brat I became attuned to the various sounds of flying. I could tell the difference between takeoff and landing without looking, and during one particular summer could actually differentiate between the sounds of an F-14 and an F-18. I can't do either anymore, but I still peer suspiciously at the sky when I hear an aircraft which seems to be flying unusually low over a civilian area, while I look for smoke trails or a brighter light signalling a fire and not the wingtip lights. Just in case, y'know.

As I was playing a video game on the computer yesterday, on the upstairs level of our house, I was in the midst of a battle scene when this faint rumble began. For two seconds, my brain thought,"Cool, I'm really getting into the game." Then the rumble got much louder and the house started to shake. I swear on everything I hold dear I truly thought it was a plane coming down. I stood up and peeked out the curtains for about half a second, to assess where the noise was coming from and in which direction I should run to avoid having my head removed by an errant wingtip ripping through my roof. It was so loud!!

I didn't see anything in that split second, so I ran out of the office just in time to hear and see the mirror in the guest bathroom, which was never attached to the wall, fall forward and hit the faucet, sink, toilet and floor in quick sequence, shattering into a million pieces. Ash bolted downstairs and hid under the dining room table. I ran past him into the living room, where our touch lamp was flickering on and off, to see if I could spot contrails from the patio door. Nothing there. As I ran to the front door I spotted Juno diving under the living room chair. I still saw nothing, and by then the rumbling had stopped. It was only about 30 seconds. Not the longest 30 seconds of my life, but maybe in the top ten.

I hurriedly threw on some clothes (hey, it was my day off) and ran outside. A few neighbors were out there (including, I kid you not, a woman on her knees with her hands up in the air, praying). I called across the street to two women, "What WAS that?" A couple of shrugs. I ran back inside to grab the cat carriers in case I needed to get the cats out, wrinkling my nose in distaste at the state of them (what? they're not used that often, and basements are dusty). Went on a cat hunt and found Juno immediately, but I couldn't find Ash. He had fled from the dining room table, and it took ten minutes before he finally came up from the basement. Lots of good hiding places there. Figuring the worst of whatever it was was over, I ran upstairs and picked up the phone - no signal. I remembered that the computer was still on. Internet? Check. Immediately jumped on Facebook, where there was already a deluge of posts.

So, as all of Canada knows by now, it was actually an earthquake that hit the Quebec-Ottawa region (and not, as I had feared, a large airplane), measuring approximately 5.0 on the Richter scale. There are reports of minor damage in Ottawa, such as broken windows and fallen chimneys, with more serious damage in areas of Bowman, QC, the worst being a collapsed causeway and a damaged church roof. The quake was felt as far south as New York City, as far west as Thunder Bay.

So I made it through my first real earthquake and lived to tell the tale. The only casualty in my house was the mirror and the cats' nerves. Well, mine too. Took an hour for my fingers to stop shaking. But now I know what an earthquake feels like, so I'll hopefully be less panicked next time it happens.

(And just so we're clear, I'm not actually afraid to fly. I'm afraid to crash. On one memorable flight home to Halifax during my university years, I sat in the window seat right next to the propeller... during a snowstorm. I have a vivid imagination, and so the mental image of the propeller, a black silhouette against a backdrop of blowing snow and a bright winglight, rotating right off its casing, slicing through the cabin, and removing my legs below the knee, still stays with me.)

Mild, mild March

2010-03-31T15:49:00.004-04:00

Today marks the first day I enjoy my yard work in 2010. It seems all my preparation in the fall of 2009 paid off: barely two bags of yard waste, and a delicious pile of compost just waiting to be spread. It actually worked! I'm truly surprised, since the last time I saw the inside of the compost heap it still had most of an undegraded lemon in it, among other things. Oddly enough, the grass clippings I dumped in mid-October are still uncomposted. Oh, well. Soon enough!

I found less cat poop than I expected. Last year there was a cat who would crap in my vegetable garden at least once a week. (The vegetables stopped growing.)

A pile of firewood is ready, and now the yard is pretty much set for a wonderful Easter Egg hunt this Sunday. We're supposed to have gorgeous above-seasonal temperatures this weekend (even today did not feel like the advertised 15°C - I was sleeveless all afternoon), which is perfect.

What did I get rid of? I bit the bullet and cut down some raspberry canes that were in the way of other plants. Some. I never remember which ones are the new canes and which are the older ones. Most of the canes fruit for two years.

I mostly got rid of dead leaves on the hostas and lilies and irises. Later, when it's a bit warmer, I'll be digging up the pampas grass. It's overwhelming the plants by the southern fence, and so bye-bye it will go.

I cut down another big branch on Anna Willow that was leaning over the fence into the neighbor's yard. Beth Willow will require some serious pruning later on too. And the Forsythia had a few long branches removed, but not nearly enough.

So what's growing so far? Tulips, irises, sedum, hyacinth, miniature daffodils, daylilies (they're behind the canoe stand, though, and they never seem to make it to blooming, but we'll see). I spotted buds on some of the raspberry canes, and some of the mystery trees I uncovered last fall. It'll be fun to finally find out what they are!

I wasn't the only one to enjoy the sunshine though. Ash the Cat submitted to being harnessed and put on a leash. He nearly escaped when I wouldn't move from the composter and he freaked out, thrashing like a rabid animal. I put the body harness back on (the collar was still around his neck) and tried an experiment. I unhooked him from the leash, covered the only bolt-hole I could find, and let him explore on his own. Then I heard Juno the Cat meowing at the patio door. Normally she doesn't like Outside, but she seemed curious, so I opened the screen door and let her out. Of the two, she is microchipped, so I'd worry less about her than Ash. (Don't worry, he's getting chipped soon.)

When Ash is outside, he becomes totally wild. He doesn't hear his name, totally ignores me, and doesn't make a sound. He tends to stick to the edges of the yard, rarely walking straight across it. He also tries to eat all the long grass he can find. Ash hates being brought back inside (he actually hissed at me today - a first), but once back in the house he is quick to have the harness removed.

This was Juno's first time Outside, and she behaved rather differently from Ash. She meows in acknowledgement of her name being called, but doesn't come back like she usually does. She tended to wander all over, not really smelling much, just trotting around.

There was a pretty hilarious moment when the two of them spotted each other from opposite sides of the yard, and approached each other so slowly, their tails puffing up and their bodies slinking low to the ground, until they got a good sniff and the puffiness abated. Then the garbage truck came by and Juno took off back to the patio.

I think their outing was good for them. I know cats sleep a lot, but they've been passed out for about an hour each. I could use a nap myself. It's probably more sun than I get in a week!

Resolve... for real

2010-01-08T12:18:00.003-05:00

At this time of year, as many well-meaning people do, I have made a New Year's resolution. It seems fitting that at the close of a year, one reflects on the past twelve months and wonders, "How can I do better?"

The common resolutions I hear others make are, "Lose (the holiday) weight" or a fitness variation thereof, and "Save more money," no doubt a wish made by those who feel the post-season financial crunch.

It took some thinking to figure out how I wanted to improve my life. "Lose the holiday weight": sure, I can do that using our new Nintendo Wii and eating less extravagantly than I did in December. But with a bit of work the eight pounds I gained in as many days (!) will be gone in a few weeks. So what then?

"Save more money." Well, my credit card is hurting a bit, but I'm working extra shifts for the next few months and have no gifts to buy for a while, so with luck that should be paid off by Valentine's Day. Then what? Ten months of gluttony and merciless spending so I can make the same resolutions next year and feel, for two months, that I have accomplished something? Not for me.

It's tough for many folks to make resolutions, whether New Years'-induced or not, stick. I read something once that said if you want to change a bad habit to a good one, or adopt a new habit, you need to do it every day for 21 days. By the time the 21 days are up, it should be so incorporated into your routine by then that you don't think of it as something new.

I found that to be true when I went on my weight-loss diet this past summer. It was really hard for a few weeks -I felt constantly hungry - and then, it just sort of... stopped. I still eat less junk food in general now (with the obvious "Except in December" caveat), and we cook more food at home instead of eating out 3-4 times a week.

Well, the emphasis on that sentence should be cooking... not necessarily eating.

My resolution for this year is to throw away less food.

My husband and I have a really bad habit of cooking a big pot of something (soup, spaghetti sauce, stew), eating it for a couple of days, then letting the rest rot in the fridge. It's really appalling the amount of food we throw away. I'm slightly relieved by the green bin program our city has just begun, since this means we can rest assured that our blue and black leftovers (and kitty litter!!!!! ?Zounds!!!!!) will wind up in a composter instead of a dump, but I'd like to really focus on reducing the amount of food we throw away, period.

We bought a whiteboard and a handful of colorful pens for the kitchen, and have started to write the week's dinner plans on it. It being the first week, there was naturally some leeway with it. It started with:

Sunday: Yummy delicious stew
Monday: Yummy delicious stew leftovers
Tuesday: Chili
Wednesday: Stir-fry
Thursday: Chili leftovers
Friday: Dambergerts (see the new Pink Panther movie for the reference)
Saturday: [insert hand-drawn logo for East Side Mario's here]

Today is Friday, and this is what actually happened this week:

Sunday: Yummy delicious stew
Monday: Yummy delicious stew leftovers
Tuesday: Yummy delicious stew leftovers
Wednesday: Dambergerts
Thursday: Subway (oops)
Friday: Whatever I make, since hubby is going to a hockey game and won't be home for dinner
Saturday: Something home-cooked, since my friend is coming over for dinner

As you can see, it's something of a work-in progress. On the plus side, the subs were free, since I had enough points on my Subway card to pay for them both.

On the whiteboard is also the shopping list, and today I aim to inventory both the fridge and the freezer, since knowing what food I have to cook with in the first place is half the battle. My hope is that all this cooking of massive meals may lead to the later acquisition of a small deep-freeze.

However, hubby is more opposed to this idea, arguing that the garage is cold enough in winter to keep frozen things frozen, and he shouldn't have to pay for electricity to make a box cold in a cold garage. I argued back that there is always a pool of water under the car, hence it is at least above freezing. He said that it was kept liquid by the salt coming off the car. We tested this idea with ice cubes in an open container on a shelf in the garage. After two days, they were still solid and hadn't at all melted into each other, and neither had the water on the floor really solidified. Okay, he won that one.

Now the debate is how to store food without critters getting into it, since I know from experience that little rodents can and will eat through thin plastic to get at food they like. So Rubbermaid containers are out. I don't know that a cooler would work if there are no cooling packs inside it.

I'm soliciting any advice on how to store frozen food, electricity-free, without critters getting in. Does a freezer stay cold in the winter if you don't plug it in? Let me know, and wish me luck on my resolution!

'Tis the season to give!

2009-12-11T10:34:00.006-05:00

I haven't felt very Christmassy of late, but this week's snowstorm certainly cured me of that. Hard to not feel the holiday spirit when your latissimi dorsi are protesting the slightest movement from an hour and a half of shovelling, right?

Today, December 11, I have most presents bought, or at least thought of. Andrew and I are pooling our money this year to buy gifts from World Vision's Gift Catalogue. We don't really need any more stuff (particularly since we just buy the stuff we want throughout the year), so we decided to instead spend the money we would spend on each other on useful things that would help a family in need. He's really glommed onto the idea of a goat. I haven't yet decided what I'll pick: I tend to veer towards medicine or school supplies. But I suppose all the drugs and books won't help unless you have food in your belly first.

Tonight is my workplace Christmas party. We're going to dinner at a restaurant called Little Turkish Village. Decent food, great service. And it's a gift exchange too: this year's theme is mittens.

Although we've been directed to spend only about $10-15, I've had another, slightly more expensive idea. But if I go with a related, but more expensive gift and no one else does, I don't want to look like I'm one-upping my co-workers. It's also not clear to me if these mittens are actual gifts to the recipient, or if they're gifts that will later be donated to charity.

Either way, I'm sure the recipient has actual mittens or gloves of her own, and even if they are for charity, surely 25+ pairs of mittens are better than one, right? Oh, wait, did I mention this gift is a multiplier, and so is worth five times that, i.e. clothing for 125 people? No? Well, yes.

World Vision is awesome. And before non-religious people start worrying that since World Vision is a Christian organization they're all about converting the masses, rest assured this isn't the case. I'm sure they preach in countries where Christianity in its many forms is one of the common religions like Mexico or Chile; but in countries like India, Nepal, or Senegal where the predominant religion is Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, they actually respect it instead of trying to change it. Neat, huh?

Remembering.

2009-11-11T10:49:00.004-05:00

Today is Remembrance Day. I'll spare you the oft-repeated passages about sacrifice, courage, and honor - not to lessen the horror of war, nor the strong will of those who face it, but because I think sometimes we forget that behind the mask of the military, there are people.

Although I was less than a gleam in my parents' as-yet-uncreated eyes when my paternal grandfather went to war, I still remember that he wouldn't talk about it when I was a young girl. (My grandfather died in 1991. I was barely 12 years old.) I'm not really sure where he fought: for years, I thought he'd been in the Pacific, but I have photos he took of captured German subs. My mother says he never spoke of the war in all the time she knew him, though my father still keeps a big blue metal chest in the basement; I fancifully think it may be Grampy's sea chest. I really don't know what's in it.

I like to think that my grandfather, in his own way, didn't want anyone to share in what he suffered in the war. The cynic would say he probably just wanted to forget, but in not speaking of it, my grandfather helped the world retain a bit of innocence. If we don't teach our children what war is, then why would they have reason to wage it? And since I can't tell you what it is he didn't tell us about war, I can tell you what I do remember of him.

The things I remember most about him are the way he smelled of aftershave and Export A cigarettes, and how it never bothered me even though I was terribly asthmatic. His constant stubble and prickly mustache on my cheek was very comforting.

How we used to wash the big blue truck together, and how when I was seven years old that could be the most exciting part of summer vacation. A bucket of soapy water, a big soft sponge, and a strong hand guiding mine on the hubcaps would make my day.

How he and my grandmother taught me and my brothers how to swim in the pool in their backyard, and how he used to make us fly through the air in the little floater. When I turned eight or nine, I was finally old enough (read: strong enough) to help him put the cover on the pool at night, and take it off in the morning.

And how cozy it felt to sit in the middle of the front bench seat in the giant Olds, the hot burgundy naugahyde searing the backs of my skinny little legs when we went to the post office in the afternoons, Grampy driving, and Grammy on my right.

But what makes me sad are the things I can't remember, like how he used to ruffle our hair before bedtime and call us... what? Some strange little pet name that probably drove my mother crazy. It's on the tip of my mental tongue, but I can't remember it.

Or what his naval tattoo really looked like. I think it was on his left arm, and probably involved an anchor. Or was it his right arm? Did it have lettering? Or dates? Was it blue? Black? That faded greenish color of ancient inks?

What did his voice sound like? I remember a gravelly rumble, no doubt caused by the smoking destroying his lungs and heart, but I can't remember exactly what it sounded like.

So although I've missed the traditional minute of silence in writing this, I've been silent whilst writing it, and been remembering him like I only seem to do around this time of year. I think that more than counts.

Once, a few years ago, I had a very vivid dream where the doorbell rang and when I answered it, it was him. He was wearing his long blue coat, and looking a little annoyed that the door was closed. I gaped at him, and said (rather calmly, under the circumstances), "But... you're dead!" He looked around furtively, keeping an eye out for the rest of my family, and whispered conspiratorially, "Not really. They just think I am."

As I sit here and hear the mundane sounds of suburbia outside my window, I wonder how many more things I'll forget about him in the coming years. I hope I remember much more than I forget.

Wait... Buckwheat. He called us Buckwheat.

Healthy me!

2009-10-30T15:58:00.003-04:00

So I'm finally nearing my goal weight of 120 pounds: I'm at 121.8! Since my birthday, I have been taking it easier, exercising less frequently, and still mostly eating healthy foods, with only occasional forays into junk food.

Helping my weight loss was my recent hair cut, done by me, myself and I. I donated my hair again to Beautiful Lengths, a program from Pantene that encourages women to donate their hair to make wigs for women who lose their own hair to cancer. Since my hair grows fast, I was able to donate most of my hair for the second time in a year.

As a result, I lost nearly a pound of hair. Yay me!

My pants are almost all loose now (excepting a few pairs I've had since university, when I was about 15 pounds lighter), and I don't have to keep pulling my shirts down over my pooch. My bras fit better around my body, but are looser in the cup. That kind of sucks, because shopping for bras is a nightmare. But I digress.

It's so wonderful hearing everyone compliment me at work, particularly since I cut my hair myself. (Did I mention that?) I'm not saying it wasn't hard - it WAS - and it took me an hour and a half, three mirrors, a pair of scissors, a comb, four elastics, many hair clips and bobby pins, and an electric razor with an attachment, but I think it looks okay. A little uneven in the back (hey, I'm not a miracle worker), but once it dries you can hardly tell.

Two more pounds, and then the dreaded bikini photo!

Halfway!

2009-08-06T14:08:00.007-04:00

When I stepped on our crappy old scale on June 30, and it read nearly 137 lbs (62 kg) for my 5'2" frame, I knew it was enough. Fed up with my thickening waistline, with the crotch of every pair of pants I owned wearing out in a matter of weeks due to the size of my thighs. I thought, that's it.

I'd like to say I jumped right into a diet plan with a minimum of effort and oodles of willpower, but I'd be lying through my teeth.

Some years ago, my husband got sick of me whinging about my pants not fitting (and it says something about my lowering standards that I was at 125 lbs at the time) and proposed that he become my diet coach. That, for three months, he in essence was the boss of me. Well, the diet didn't last three months, but I did drop about 8-10 lbs and I was very happy with the result. Unfortunately, a sedentary job for several years and a gradual laziness setting in amounted to me feeling fat, despite protestations to the contrary from my friends. Hey, they didn't see me naked. Clothing can hide a lot.

This time I asked my husband if he would consider doing it again. I'm not the kind of person who can start a new habit like this without lots of help and a ridiculous amount of encouragement.

So, first thing we did was buy a new, ultra-modern scale. To be sure of its accuracy, we weighed an unopened bag of flour on the new scale, and it was only off by a tenth of a pound. Then my hubby weighed himself on the old scale and the new scale and found a three-pound difference: the old scale was actually under! So I weighed 140 lbs. Marvy.

So now, five weeks into my ten-week diet, I have lost at least ten pounds: weigh-ins are on Sundays so I don't know my exact weight right now. (Okay, I do, but I'm not supposed to weigh myself more than once a week, so shhh!)

I am eating smaller portions, healthier food, and exercising a lot more. I have only had potato chips once in the last month. When I ate bacon with my eggs this past Sunday, I found I couldn't even eat it all, because it was so salty. And yesterday, I worked so hard in the garden that I lost my appetite and couldn't eat more than half my chicken salad for dinner. (But it had bacon in it, so maybe that put me off a bit.)

We are keeping a meal and exercise diary, which my hubby has brilliantly rendered in MS Excel. We seem to be either underestimating the value of my exercise, or overestimating the caloric value of what I'm eating, because mathematically I've only burned about a third of the calories needed to drop 20 lbs, but I've already lost half the weight. I'm not complaining, just confused.

For exercise, we're counting my shelving work, biking to and from work (10 km total, about 6 miles), Tae Bo, and DDR, which, for the uninitiated, is Dance Dance Revolution, a dance pad game available on multiple consoles. The workout function lets you count the calories you burn.

So my ultimate goal is to get to 120 lbs by my 30th birthday, which is September 8. I'll be rewarding myself with a tattoo on my new hot bod.

On being gastronomically challenged.

2009-07-17T20:06:00.004-04:00

My friends and family know that I have a dairy allergy. Unlike most children who develop allergies as toddlers and grow out of them before they hit first grade, I have had this condition my entire life. Despite the fact that I complain constantly about lots of other things, I rarely complain about this dietary inconvenience, because it's something I truly can't change.

I admit, I sometimes felt left out as a kid, going to a friend's birthday party and not being able to eat the cake and pizza that were served. I've been telling people not to put butter or cheese on my food since I was about seven years old. My mother never cooked with dairy, excepting the odd recipe for the rest of my family.

Growing up in the eighties and early nineties, before allergen warnings became commonplace on food labels, my parents and I had to read endless lists of ingredients to ensure the contents were safe for me to consume. I knew what whey powder and modified milk ingredients were practically before my classmates could spell the words.

Today, I'm fortunate to just be able to glance at the bottom of a block of text to see in slightly more prominent font, "CONTAINS: MILK" before I put it back, instead of spending several minutes scrutinising the tiny print, looking for esoteric chemicals that may cause me to react. All in all, I think I do okay, food-wise.

But never do I ever feel so out of place, gastronomically, as when I go on vacation.

When I went to Mexico five years ago, I assumed (incorrectly) that their cuisine would be light on dairy, and heavy on vegetable and corn matter. This assumption led to the worst allergic reaction I've ever had in my entire life, when I ate chicken that was cooked in... something. Butter? Yogurt? I still have no idea. I had even made it a point to ask, and the server told me no, "No es cocinada con leche." ("No, it's not cooked in milk.")

Usually, I can tell almost as soon as I taste it if I'm allergic to it; but I was on my second helping before my lips started to swell. Twenty-four hours, a couple of doses of Benadryl and a case of full-body hives later, I realized that it's difficult to trust anybody in the food industry.

When I went to France, I thought I got a lot of strange looks when I requested no cheese on my pasta or butter on my bread. (My husband disagrees, but I'm the paranoid one.) I mostly ate baguettes and pasta when I was there, as it seemed a safe alternative to their dairy-laden offerings. When I eat out, I always make sure to specify to the server that it's an allergy, not lactose intolerance.

Dessert is actually the thing that bothers me the least, probably because we only ever had it on special occasions when I was growing up. Birthdays, family visits, that sort of thing. And it was usually Jell-O or some cake or a couple of cookies: nothing fancy. Therefore, I have no concept of dessert being a regular part of one's meal, which I tell people, with a grin, has kept me healthier anyway.

I have never, ever been able to eat dessert in a restaurant, with the exception of a Chinese food place in Moncton I visited as a child which served Jell-O as part of the all-you-can-eat buffet. But seriously, no Oreo cake, or chocolate mousse, or tartufo, or peach cobbler, or apple pie, or fudge mountain, or ice cream of obscure flavour have I ever been privileged to sample.

People often ask me, "Don't you wish you could have [insert luscious-sounding food here]?", or if I "miss" dairy. I never had it to begin with, and the few times I have had it it's made me dangerously ill. Why on earth would I miss something that makes me feel like crap? Sometimes I do wish I could have it, though, if only to be able to understand the ineffable relationship between wine and cheese, or be able to debate the virtues of ice cream versus yogurt.

So now, on the eve of my summer vacation to my mother's hometown in northern New Brunswick (safe kitchen, since my mother and I will be cooking), I think about tomorrow's stopover in Quebec City, a city which, according to the menus I've found online, seems to have an obsession for multiple-course meals featuring various game and fish, drenched in every form of dairy known to humankind.

I found restaurants which sound truly amazing, but whose menu would kill me within minutes. It seems a shame that I can never partake in the many delights these establishments have to offer, because in my experience it has been much easier for a restaurant to accomodate my diet if they have simpler fare. Complicated menus rarely, if ever, can offer substitutions. Use oil instead of butter? Preposterous, you'd lose the flavour. Soy milk instead of cow's milk? Why, it would ruin the consistency of the sauce.

No, no butter poached lobster with asparagus and hollandaise for me, thank you. I'll pass on the sweetbreads, raisins and foie gras terrine with onion confit prepared in crème de cassis. I'll save the Chicken picatta coated with mozzarella and fresh herbs, marinated and roasted in pepper sauce for my next life.

When watching "Up", don't forget your tissues.

2009-06-04T09:25:00.005-04:00

Last night my husband and I went to see Up, the new Pixar movie. We had planned to see it anyway, but when friends of ours gave it a glowing review, we resolved to see it as soon as possible, so we could watch it in all its glorious Disney Digital 3-Dimensionality.

Oh man, did I ever cry. I almost had to pull over on the way home because I was crying so hard until Andrew thankfully started blasting some techno music inthe car. The music, which thankfully I cannot remember exactly now, just devastated me - piano scores in particular often do. So did the cloud-watching scene. And the scene immediately afterward. And the scene at the end. And several scenes in between. I probably would have cried more if I hadn't lost my packet of kleenex near the beginning of the movie and hadn't had only one tissue to work with for 90 minutes. (I found the rest of the packet on the floor, where it had slipped off my lap, when the lights came up.)

This has got to be Pixar's best movie yet. And from someone who has watched The Incredibles about fifty times, that's saying something. The animation, and I don't just mean the 3-D aspect, is superb. The music frightfully appropriate. The dialogue, funny and touching. The casting, bang-on.

Go watch Up! And remember the tissues!

I <3 Star Trek

2009-05-12T14:14:00.003-04:00

Hubby and I went to watch the new Star Trek movie Sunday night. We had been hoping to see it in IMAX, but when we got to the ticket wicket, it was sold out. We made a quick decision and bought our tickets at 6:39 for the 6:40 show. We sadly decided to forego concessions and hastily grabbed seats in the fourth row, near the middle, which wasn't too bad.

But my belly would not settle for nothing during a movie. I hastily took Andrew's order and ran out of the theatre, praying there would be a short line. Fortunately, most of the movies had begun, so I only had to to wait about 10 seconds to be served. Unfortunately, the server was sooooo s-l-o-w. It was as if he knew I was antsy and wanted to make me suffer. But I got my Coke, Andrew's Diet Coke and our popcorn in record time and rushed bach to my seat in the middle of a truck commercial. I didn't even miss the previews! For those who know me, you know I must write the previews on the back of my ticket. Must get to that 15-year ticket display project sometime. Anyway...

The movie was, in a word, AWESOME. In two words, FREAKING AWESOME. In many more words, I think it may just rival Star Trek: First Contact for my favorite Trek movie.

The casting was astounding, particularly the roles of Kirk and Spock, but most especially McCoy. For Lord of the Rings fans, the actor who played Dr. Leonard McCoy is Karl Urban, who played Eomer, leader of the Rohirrim of Rohan. He just had the Doc's mannerisms and accent down perfectly, and I'm not just referring to the typical, "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a 'fill-in-the-blank-with-another-career'!" « Il a un jeu très subtil,» as my high school drama teacher would say, a very subtle play, and it is likely that only people who have really watched the original series will pick up on how eerily he plays the role to perfection.

SPOILER WARNING!!!

The fact that the entire story takes place in an alternate reality certainly leaves things open for future movies with this cast - indeed, most have already signed on for an as yet unnamed movie due out in 2011 or 2012.

I can't wait to own this movie!

Il mio giardino, aprile 2009

2009-04-16T09:14:00.006-04:00

Tuesday marked the first day this year I really spent working in my garden. Chopping down dead pampas grass, raking up as much mulch as I could, cutting down branches that were in the way, losing my shears, emptying a yard waste bag I though I had left them in, refilling the same bag once shears were not found, looking all around the house, yard and garage for shears until they were found hanging off the wheelbarrow (where, as soon as I found them I recalled thinking to myself, "I'll put them here so I don't lose them").

Today is Thursday and my legs are still killing me. I didn't realize how much squatting and lunging I do while gardening, but wow. Or rather, ow.

Tulips and daffodils and lilies are sprouting up. Irises are peeking through and so is the sedum, which I hope does not attract as many wasps as last year. *shudder* The forsythia has buds, and I'm strongly considering chopping down the smokebush to a more manageable height than its current ten feet. Unless I invest in a good pair of loppers...

It amazes me that ivy seems to never die. The ivy by the patio appears just as green now as it was in November.

But what with all the pruning I did before the snows it'll be exciting to see what grows this year. In particular there are two small trees that I'm anxious to see leaf and flower, as they were so covered up by other plants I didn't even know they were there!

Ash and Juno

2009-04-14T10:54:00.008-04:00

My hubby and I adopted a second cat this past Christmas. For a young female who had given birth at only 9 months, and already had her babies adopted out, the name Juno seemed only appropriate.

Never having owned cats before we got Ash in late 2006, I never realized what different personalities they could have. When we took Ash from a farmyard barn Thanksgiving weekend, he was barely eight weeks old. He was carried around as much as he would tolerate, and we didn't know that he could be really trained if we had tried. We didn't realize trimming his claws regularly would get him used to the idea, or that always keeping a squirt bottle handy would keep him out of the kitchen better than yelling. As it was, Ash was definitely king of the castle at our new house. He had the run of every room but the kitchen, once he dispatched the fish in the office by chewing through the filter hose and letting most of the water leak out.

But then, Juno arrived.

I had been thinking of getting Ash a "friend" for a while because he was never properly socialized. We took him away at such a young age, and with no other cats around, he didn't really know how to react around other animals, or other people for that matter, since he only saw us with the occasional visit from family or friends. So hubby and I started looking on the Ottawa Humane Society's website for a suitable cat. Internet research told us that it would be best if we got a female who was younger (opposite sex to avoid fighting, younger so he could still be the boss). We saw a couple of super cute ones on the site, but we decided to go to see them in person and find out if any of them clicked with us.

We walked in just before Christmas Eve, intending to look at a pair of black male twins, just 3 months old. Turns out they'd both been adopted just hours before. But a small, scrawny little "torbi dil" (I just now found out that means "tortoiseshell diluted") caught our eye. We looked at her chart, saw that she was barely a year old and had already had a litter of kittens. We asked to see her, and when we picked her up she immediately started purring. She was so thin - the effects of birthing, recent spaying and shelter diet meant she didn't weigh very much - that we could feel her pelvic bones eaily through her thin, scratchy fur. She was very chatty: lots of meowing and purring and chirping. We put her back for a few minutes, and looked at the other cats to at least give them a chance to win our hearts.

There was a grey female who could have been Ash's twin - grey fur, yellow eyes, same facial structure - except her white patch was under her chin instead of under her belly; we were sorely tempted. There was an adorable little ball of fluff about four months old, grey with big white patches, but we figured a long-haired cat would spell trouble for allergies. I seem to recall an orange male tempted me for a while (I've always wanted a ginger cat), but this skinny little yowler had already charmed us. Too bad we missed the adoption deadline for the night. We paid a deposit so we could pick her up the next day.

We went to the pet store to buy more supplies (cat bed, new toys, more litter, more food) and set up our empty spare room as a place where Juno could be alone while Ash got used to the idea of a new cat in His Domain. I was frankly alarmed at the idea that we might have to keep them apart for up to twelve weeks if they displayed overt hostility towards each other. I prayed Juno's shelter experience would make her magically pass on "socializedness" to Ash really quickly.

I shut Ash up in the basement for the few minutes it took us to set Juno up in 'her' room, then let him loose once her door was closed. Juno seemed to like being in the room alone... for about 24 hours. She quickly got bored and would head for the door anytime we went in or out to feed her or play with her.

I'll never forget the first time Ash actually saw her.

It was the third day of her being in our house. Andrew opened the door to go in to feed her and play with her, and his foot caught on the door so he couldn't close it immediately. Ash saw her, and he backed away slowly, his tail rising straight up and poofing out like a bottlebrush. For the first time in his life, he hissed. Andrew keeps telling me that Ash really is the best cat he's ever had, and that I don't realize how lucky I am, and I guess that day I partly acknowledged that because I had NEVER seen Ash so scared. Not even when he met my in-laws' über-friendly dog Meggin; he'd only been ten weeks old then, and he curled up into the tiniest ball of kitten I'd ever seen, his fur going all poofy and his ears flat back.

Juno, of course, being the friend sort, trotted right up to the door before Andrew slammed it shut, and I tried to soothe our poor outraged beastie.

Things were a bit hairy for a while, a couple of fights a day, but nothing lasting more than a few minutes of scrabbling. It's hard to say who really won those fights. Juno seems to have appropriated most of Ash's "spots": the catbed outside our bedroom door, the top of the kitty condo we built last year. But not out of any spite, I think; it seems to be more a question of familiarity. It smells like cat, so it must be a cat place. Ash has found new spots, or retaken old ones: in front of the bookshelf in the upstairs hallway, on the sheepskin in front of the TV. They share our bed during the day, or the old aquarium stand in the spare room which we hope to make a change table someday.

Ash is definitely settling into lap cat status, while Juno is still happy to play fetch with the little fishie with the rattle in it, or ravage various mousies. Ash is still a champion laser chaser, though. Juno doesn't seem to understand it. There's still the odd tussle between them, but overall I think they've finally become friends, which is exactly what we had hoped for.

New home design, from below the ground, up.

2009-03-30T16:34:00.006-04:00

Wow, I forgot how smelly new furniture can be.

In an effort to make our basement into a more comfortable space, we wound up buying a new couch for the living room yesterday. Wait for it, there is logic.

Andrew and I have been debating for some time now how best to use the space in the basement. He has been using it for weight lifting and other exercise. I was using it (sparingly, of late, I admit) for playing video games of both the seated and dancing variety, seating provided by a couple of awkward butterfly chairs. We had two large rugs covering most of the space.

My dream for the basement has always been to turn it into a "Zen Den", with dark furniture, vivid red or green walls, and a small, enclosable space for entertainment. The ultimate vision would bring our entertainment center down from the living room, so all movies and games would be enjoyed from the cozy calm of the Zen Den, and maybe hidden away for board games to take over. Hard to feel Zen when someone is lifting weights or kicking the crap out of an 80-pound bag hanging from an I-beam.

So yesterday morning we started designing. Andrew plotted the entire basement in AutoCAD, so we can print off a scale drawing of our basement for reference, including stairs, pipes, appliances and furniture. (Oddly enough, he has not drawn the ventilation ducts - i.e. what he actually does at work.) I cleaned the kitchen while he drew, and started thinking about the materials we needed. Ideas were tossed around: should we build cubbyhole shelving to go along a wall? Helpful when kids come around and need space for their masses of objects. Could we build our own seating, or perhaps a big hollow ottoman to store games? Possibilities for design really are endless.

In the end, our plan was this: head over to IKEA (like the rest of Ottawa does on a Sunday) and buy two more matching rugs (Dragör, in case you were curious) to fill in the empty spots in the 'living' area of the basement, and also get a paper towel dispenser, because I don't want the paper towel on my spotless kitchen counter. Afterwards, take a trip to Home Depot to get an extension cord for our AeroGarden, which has outgrown its under-the-cupboard space in barely two months, a shower rod cover and new shower curtain rings, because the ones I bought at the dollar store were crap (figures), and some hardware for mounting a clothes rod from the basement ceiling.

Well, what a trip. Driving to IKEA in the pouring rain, finding the rugs we needed in less than five minutes, then spying a couch that begged to sit in our living room. While we had discussed the possibility of a new couch, it was not on the shopping list. But so comfy, and a good price ($399), and a color that went well with our current furniture.

So we thought. It's brown, but with a tinge of purple, which I sense is the reason it appears to have been discontinued. It's sort of like a grape chocolate. Not as great with periwinkle walls, cream furniture and orange accents as we had hoped. But I swear, it didn't look that purple in the store.

Now Cocoa, as we dubbed her in the store, is happily off-gassing in our living room, stinking it up with formaldehyde sofa farts, and the cats are staying far away, which I guess is a small relief. It would really be frustrating to have the couch for less than a day and have it turned into a scratching post.

What became of the loveseat that was in the living room, you may ask? It is now in the basement, serving as scratching post and seating for video gamers and Dance Dance Revolution spectators. The weight bench has been moved to where the cat's stuff used to be, and now the cats have their own nook under the stairs for food, water, and litter. The only think that really needs organizing now is the area around Andrew's workbench, and I'm not going there. Far be it for me to mess with his 'system'. He has graciously *snort* permitted me to clean the workbench if I wish, but I'm not to sort anything or throw anything away. That's his job. *rolls eyes*

Whatever. I have a big open space downstairs, the cat stuff is now contained to a small area, the kitchen is clean and we have a new couch. Now if only I could give Cocoa some Gas-Ex or something...

Arg.

2009-03-24T11:31:00.003-04:00

I just finished playing one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen: Syberia. The graphics are amazing, it won a bunch of awards including Game of the Year 2002. And yet I'm disappointed.

You are Kate Walker, a New York lawyer sent on a quick trip to a small town in the French Alps to get the owner of an automaton toy factory to sign over her company. Unfortunately, you arrive in town to find out that not only has Miss Anna Voralberg died, she has an heir: her brother Hans, who was believed by all to have died seventy years before. Your new duty is to locate Hans Voralberg and get him to sign the ownership papers. Simple enough, right? Except the last Anna has heard of him he was in Siberia.

Along the way, you meet people who know of Hans or remember him, but no one seems to know where he went. You find out that Hans is a brilliant inventor (evidenced by the train you ride through Europe that he designed, and the accompanying automaton, Oscar, who was designed to drive it), and throughout the game you have to solve many puzzles that people around him were unable to complete.

I won't give away the ending, but it was patently unsatisfying to me. It's only a small condolence that there is a sequel, which picks up exactly where this game left off. But that's of little use to me NOW, when I want to know what happens!!!!

Magnetic poetry on the wall today

2009-03-23T10:46:00.003-04:00

I have your kid
I will make him eat soy if you do not return my bike

Climb to drink the gift mother gives

When you touch my beautiful body we laugh and taste the morning together

(random selection)
for sun throws are feeling oddly saturated with winter energy wave
wander in
excite through

Yay, green!

2009-03-19T10:57:00.005-04:00

Yesterday marked the first day of 2009 that I worked in my garden. Huzzah! The snow has mostly melted except along the fences, where there is still about a foot of a strangely pebbly and granular snow/ice in some areas.

As a result of the melt elsewhere in the yard, I was finally able to cut down dead raspberry canes along the side of the house from the last two years. I was too afraid to get rid of all my raspberries the first year, and last year I couldn't remember which ones had already borne fruit, so I let them all be. I also cut down thin, weedy-looking canes to make way for stronger ones in future. A trip to Home Depot is in order in the coming weeks to purchase tall stakes. This year will be a more organized crop, I hope.

There appears to be strange webby-looking mold on certain areas of the grass, namely the walkway from the patio, probably due in part to the natural dip in the landscape keeping the ground wet. But it's also near the base of the pink rosebush. I'll keep an eye on it in the event it begins to change color or smell like trolls or something, but it's probably just spring's talent for decomposition at work.

But the best part of yesterday was seeing the bits of green beginning to emerge. The grass is still a bleached yellow mat that crackles when you walk on the areas dried by the sun, but along the house, beneath the powder room window, are sprouts which will eventually become tiger lilies. Further along, coneflower buds can be seen. Amongst the canes is the oddly bright lipped mouth of hyacinth. And to my delight, my experiment with dividing rotted tulip bulbs until I found a few good nuggets seems to be bearing leaf.

Two years ago, I had purchased several bags of tulip bulbs, which I was unable to plant before the first frost. This past October, I spent several hours on my back step, enjoying the heat of the Indian summer sun beating on my skin, carefully taking apart the tulip bulbs that had rotted in the bag in the hopes that some would still have viable cores. Tulip mold is a fine black powder that has an amazing softness, like fine ash, and would fly away if pressed too hard; I took care not to bring the bulbs too close to my face so that I wouldn't inhale it. Like garlic, tulip bulbs have cloves, but not always in the structured way that garlic has: tulip "cloves" can grow around each other, and it was usually these outer layers that had rotted, leaving strangely formed innards I broke apart for maximum flower spread.

In the end, I had, I believe, over 30 pieces that might grow into flowers, not including the new narcissus bulbs I had bought. If it works, it will be a one-time only, blowy display of pink, orange, purple, and yellow. If not, well, at least I'll have a new narcissuses (narcissi?) to cover an area once taken over by a dead blackberry bramble.

I love spring!!!

LaSucka (okay, it's immature, but I don't care)

2009-03-16T19:22:00.004-04:00

I realized the other day I needed new underwear. Some of it got holey, some had grown (shrunk?) too small to be comfortable, you know the drill.

So I head over to LaSenza to pick up something new and fun and above all, comfortable, for spring. I recall that the last time I shopped there that the "Medium", regrettably, no longer satisfactorily covered my womanly arse, so I found several items I like in a "Large". Yellow, Orange, Blue, Green, and Black. Fun. Every girl likes new underwear.

A few days later I pulled one of the new pairs out from the shopping bag, and alas, had trouble pulling said pair onto my obviously more womanly body. Although I managed, they were uncomfortably tight the whole day, and left unsightly marks when removed. As all five pairs were of a similar cut, I smartly realized that I could get my money back at least on the other four pairs I had not worn. Cue a trip back to the store this weekend.

I walked up to the counter and told the cashier, who turned out to be in training, that I wanted to return these items. The supervisor walked up and asked why, and I said the items didn't fit. I told her point blank that, at 130 pounds, and 5'2, that my butt didn't warrant an "Extra-Large".

The supervisor pulled the remaining four pairs out of the bag and said, "We can only give you an exchange." I told her I hadn't worn them, in fact, I was keeping the pair that I had worn even though they didn't fit. She then asked, demonstrating she hadn't processed anything I'd said, "Would you like to try an Extra-Large?"

I paused and stared at her in slight disbelief from behind my sunglasses. "No," I said, with a bit of ice in my voice. I wondered just why I was allowed to try on underwear in the store for free but not return something that had only touched my hands and the hands of the various salesgirls.

In the end, I wound up with a gift card with my $27 and change on it instead of money back on my Visa. Which sucks for me because I don't like underwire bras and I now loathe their underwear. I don't wear pajamas, they don't carry silk things anymore, I like the slippers I have, garter belts don't fit, and I hate the perfume they sell. I just wanted my freaking $27 back. I'd give the bloody card to someone as a gift, but then they'd have to deal with the outrageous sizing standards and made to feel fat regardless of their body shape

What burns me is that although the receipt says I can get a refund on unworn merchandise, "Due to the intimate nature and hygienic standards of certain items, we regret that it is not possible for us to accept returns on babydolls, panties, bodysuits, hosiery, and teddies."

Pardon the vulgarity, but what the fuck else do they sell? Why, why, why, will they let hordes of people try on intimates in the store, but not let them return it later, unworn and still tagged?

LaSenza is now dead to me, until the unlikely day that I use the $27 to buy something I don't really need.

Snips and trails and piggy/pony tails

2009-03-16T19:11:00.006-04:00

It's official: I can put my hair up again!

In November 2008 I cut off nearly ten inches of my hair and donated it to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, which helps make wigs for women afflicted by cancer. I plan to donate again as soon as my hair's long enough, and today's first pigtails in nearly four months mark some progress for me.

Ponytails will also help keep my hair out of my face, something which has been bugging me for some time, but I'm loath to cut it again until the back reaches at least chin length. (When it was cut, it was longer in the front than in the back, due in part to my own self-haircutting efforts.)

So while said tails are barely two inches long and are situated perpendicular to the back of my head, it's a start. I'm hoping to possibly be able to donate again by Christmas, but it might be another year from today before someone else can have Hair By Nadine.

Spring is in the air...

2009-03-12T14:40:00.007-04:00

... and so is the smell of poo. I know I blogged about this last year, but it still irks me. Pick up after your pets. Shit does not dissolve in snow. It freezes and then waits for spring.

Crap aside, it is beginning to smell like spring. The weather is getting warmer (I write this as it is -19°C with the windchill, naturally), and yellow-brown grass is reappearing from beneath the geological formations created by several months of industrious activity on the part of shovels and snowplows. I can see half of my patio now, and I was able to trek out to the composted the other day without getting my pant legs soaked. Alas, it appears that nothing has decomposed over the winter. I spotted half a lemon that was still yellow.

But this is becoming the most fun time ever for my garden! Okay, maybe second most-fun after the snow melts... or third-most fun after the May long weekend... you get the idea. I love my garden all the time.

In preparation for this, I have already ordered about $100 of plants for various areas of my garden. For the bare front walkway, where I tried to grow string beans last year with very limited success, I have ordered two Japanese Painted Ferns and tree bunches of Mixed Lungwort. They'll regrow each year, and add some color to the front yard.

For the backyard, I have ordered Blue and White Phlox to go against the side of the house, and Lily of the Valley to probably go beneath Willow A (the willow against the western fence of our yard). And the pièce de résistance will be the Garden Pleasure Lily Trees (!) to be planted beneath the powder room window to eventually provide a smidge more privacy.

And I haven't even mentioned edible plants! We're having raspberries again, of course, but we're going to try beans and carrots and peas again after building an animal-proof cage. We might even try potatoes in a bucket, as well as onions. Can't wait for April!!!

Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

2009-02-25T17:01:00.003-05:00

Pasta is probably my most favorite food. I live in dread of becoming diabetic because then my pasta intake would drop to virtually zero. Part of the reason I love pasta so much is the delicious sauce that I make to go with it. I made some the other night, and have been craving pasta practically every day since. So, to share with everyone, here's the recipe I love so very much, and which has taken years to perfect.

~1 lb (or ~ 1/2 kg) ground beef (medium, lean, whatever, just changes the amount of fat to drain)
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or chopped
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1 29 oz cans tomato sauce (about 3 cups)
1 5 oz can tomato paste
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped (I like yellow for colour, but green or orange are fine)
1-2 stalks celery, chopped
1/3 cup of your favourite red wine (I like Shiraz, myself)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp thyme
1/2 - 1 tsp crushed chilies (to your taste)

Put ground beef in stock pot with chopped onion, and cook on high until meat has mostly browned and onion has softened. Drain the fat and add the garlic, basil, oregano, thyme, and crushed chilies. If you are using dried herbs, rub them between your hands to better release the flavour as you add them to the pot. As I don't have much experience with fresh herbs, I can't really offer any appropriate equivalents.

Once the meat is fully browned, add one can of tomato sauce, one can of tomato paste, the sugar, and the rest of your vegetables. At this point give the pot a good stir to judge if you need more tomato sauce; it should be thick, but not too chunky. If it is too chunky, add a bit more sauce, and finally the wine. Give it a final stir and turn it on low. Let simmer for 30 minutes, stir, let sit another 30 minutes, and serve over fresh pasta with a glass of the wine you used in the recipe. Enjoy!

P.S. A nice appetizer to go with this is roasted garlic spread. Baking 1 bulb of garlic is usually enough for about 6 people, so divide your bulb appropriately if there are less than 6 people.

Garlic (remove some of the papery layers, but leave mostly unpeeled)
Olive oil
red wine
aluminium foil

Preheat oven to 375°F. Tear two squares of tinfoil. With the first, place the unpeeled garlic in the center, and curl the sides up to make a small bowl. Add a good glug of olive oil, and a smaller glug of red wine. Roll the garlic in this mixture until it is well covered. Tighten the tinfoil around the garlic, and wrap again in the second square of foil, taking care not to let any of the mixture spill.

Place in oven and roast for 45-60 minutes. Remove and let cool for a few minutes. Each clove can be carefully removed and easily opened to be spread onto crackers or bread. Warning - this will absolutely give you garlic breath. People can smell you several meters away when you talk, so be sure you are with fellow garlic lovers when enjoying this treat.

Since there are no buses, there are probably no spoons either...

2009-01-28T17:25:00.003-05:00

... So we must be in the Matrix. Except I didn't think the Matrix was going to be so cold.

On this, the 50th day of the OC Transpo strike, I had to walk to work. Again. In the snow and the wind and the cold temperatures. Really, they couldn't have picked a better time to piss people off. In the summer, it wouldn't be so bad because many more people would be walking or biking. (I privately applaud and simultaneously wonder about the sanity of people who bike in the winter.) But it wouldn't surprise me if, after the strike, people just refused to use transit for a while - say, for the expected 14 WEEK-delay of a full return of service.

I have been relying on my mother-in-law (with whom, fortunately, I get along with just fine) for rides to work when it gets too cold to walk, but I hate being so dependent on her when I'm sure she has other things she'd rather be doing. So when it's nicer - this being a relative term, clearly, and in this case meaning around -10°C or warmer - I walk. Except today.

My normal place of work is exactly 60 minutes away. I have another casual place of work which is about 25 minutes away. (All times calculated in walking speed, though if you really want to know it's 4 km and 1.8 km.) Today I had agreed to work an extra shift at the casual place. I bundled up, as usual (leggings under my pants; an extra pair of socks in my purse, just in case mine got wet on the journey; and a sweater with a high collar I can use to cover my face) and realized it was not as warm as I had hoped. The snow had already drifted a few inches on my porch, and thought, "Oh, crap, I'm going to have to walk home in this same weather and then shovel. Gravy."

But in the midst of all this misery, I have also realized that I have learned several important things.

I've learned the delicate art of removing one's boots without shaking the snow that's stuck to your pants onto your feet, the floor directly beneath your foot where you're bound to step once you've lost your balance, or the inside of the shoe you're about to put on.

I've learned the trick of rolling your pant cuffs a little higher than normal so they don't accumulate as much snow, and thus wick salty slush up to your knees, leaving your pants stiff and white with salt.

I've learned that wool blends dry faster than pure wool.

I've learned that gloves, toques and scarves worn for several hours a day actually start to smell a little bit funky. (People don't often think about smelly winter clothes, but I try to chuck mine in the wash at least once a month - though it should be much more often than that.)

And I've also learned that I really want my own car now.

Good thing #3

2008-11-26T13:54:00.003-05:00

Next in my series about self-positivity... minutiae.

Minutiae?

Minutiae.

I have the ability to remember tiny details about many things I encounter. It's not like knowing trivia, and I definitely do NOT have an eidetic memory, but rather I'm good at remembering song lyrics, or the Dewey Decimal number of a book I retrieved for a library patron one time, or the location of my first chicken pox welt, or the exact way that my grandmother would say my name.

On the first point, my husband is always astounded at how I can remember the lyrics to songs I haven't heard since grade school, or even since high school. Old 80's TV theme songs ("Perfect Strangers" comes immediately to mind), multiple verses of Christmas carols where most people only know the first... Maybe he's more amazed because he doesn't sing at all, and I adore singing, and when I find a song I like, boy I glomm onto it like nobody's business. Maybe it's burned into my memory from sheer repetition. You know, when you listen to a song so many times that people around you beg you to listen to something else just for one hour? Well, I can usually memorize a song within a day or so.

A few months ago, I was cleaning up the library at the end of my shift, and I picked up a stack of books that was on the table and put them away. About ten minutes later the librarian came up to me with a woman in tow, asking if I'd put away any of the woman's books about mosaics. I said yes, and immediately rattled off the Dewey Decimal number that most of them came under (738.4, or close to there), and left to continue my clean up. A few minutes later, they came back and asked me if I remembered where the last of her books was. Though the call number didn't spring to mind, I did remember where I had shelved it, and retrieved it within seconds of reaching the shelf. The librarian was quite impressed with my memory, and she seems to me to be one of those people who is hard to impress.

Movies and plays. I regularly quote from them (movies moreso), but not just quote, but recite entire scenes from memory, complete with gestures and tone and facial expressions. Yes, I took drama in high school, and yes, I love movies, so that would naturally translate well into memorizing them on my part. In high school, after a few weeks of practicing, I'd know the entire play off my heart and could correct someone flubbing a line, or fill in if someone was missing. If anyone had a question about the script, they'd say, "Ask Nadine, she'll remember." (Though my memory didn't work so well in my favor during a sketch in grade 12, and I forgot my lines almost from the very beginning. I wasn't pleased with myself.)

It seems to be related to reading - that which I see, I remember. I sometimes feel like I have comprehension issues when I hear things (if I had a penny for every time I asked someone, "What?", I'd be a gabillionaire), so often I put on subtitles when watching a film of TV on DVD. I feel bad that it annoys my husband, but what is being said sticks so much better if I read it. This, I feel, is why I can remember so much that I read.

I like that I remember details.

Good thing #2

2008-06-09T12:20:00.003-04:00

Continuing my mini-series on things I like about myself, the second stone on my "happy bracelet"...

I read fast. Very fast. Not in that fake "learn how to read books in five minutes" garbage, but pretty fast. In the second grade, the seventh-grade boy who lived down the street, Sean Puff (who I had a massive crush on), nicknamed me "Speedy Reader". I glommed onto that sobriquet with gusto. "I'm a Speedy Reader" I'd tell everyone who'd ask.

I don't know why I read so fast, I just do. I tore through the fifth (and biggest) Harry Potter book in about six hours - over a hundred pages an hour. I finish a regular paperback in about two hours or so.

Perhaps part of it is simply the great desire to find out how the story ends; I hate not knowing with a passion that surprises even me. I've been known to be late for things more often that I care to admit because I couldn't put a book down. I've been exhausted some mornings because I began a 400-page book at 10:30 PM and "forgot" to turn out the light until about 3 AM. "I'll just finish this chapter," I say, while my husband's disbelieving look gets replaced by his back as he turns away from the light of my bedside lamp. A few hours later, he'll roll over and mumble, "Are you done the chapter yet?"

The small downside of reading fast is that I sometimes gloss over details in a story. But then comes the joy of rereading, again and again, and discovering all the little bits that I missed.

People ask me how I read so fast. I truly don't know. The human brain operates faster than we give it credit for sometimes: I understand faster than my brain can process the words, if that makes any sense; it sort of leaps ahead and tries to figure out what's going to happen ahead of time, and sometimes it's even right.

But anyway, I read fast, and it allows me to read a kid's picture book in about 30 seconds at work. ;-)

Good things.

2008-05-29T09:23:00.003-04:00

In cleaning out the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink, I came across a bracelet I had purchased for myself. It's nineteen pieces of rose quartz on a stretchyelastic, each piece rounded and polished. I bought it with the specific intent of it being my "happy with me" piece of jewelry: every time I felt sorry for myself, or thought I was useless or pathetic, I would wear it and think of all the reasons, one for each stone, why I liked myself.

So, in contrast to my last post about what I can't do and what I don't like about myself, this, and future posts, will be about what I can do and what I do like about myself.

When I bought this bracelet, it was late fall. I first wore it on a train - though I don't remember where I was going. As I fingered the beads, I thought about snow, and . . . snowmen.

I am really good at making snowmen. I know it doesn't seem like a difficult thing to do - roll up three balls, stack them, and stick some twigs and rocks in it - but I do more than that.

I smooth each ball out and pick out the bits of grass that have gotten stuck in the snow. I carve features into the face with my bare fingers and small sticks, and use the darkened pennies fished out of the depths of my coat pockets for irises.

Ears are difficult - carve them too low, and the snowman becomes a snow troll. Carve them too high and they look, well, not right. Noses can get too big really quickly, but just as easily shaved down with the right-sized twig.

You need a couple of pairs of thin gloves, so you can work your individual fingers into the sometimes unyielding mass of snow. The reason you need several pairs is that they will inevitably get wet and your fingers get cold. A good pair of waterproof mittens are best for smoothing out large areas like the snowman's back, front and legs.

Legs?

Yes, I try to give my snow people legs, or the illusion of legs. One Christmas, Andrew and I stayed at his parents' house, and made an eight-foot snowman whom we affectionately called PHuFFO'H - pronounced foo-foe - Patrick Hugh FitzFinnigan O'Hara. He was so called because when we were done, my father-in-law gave us a giant shamrock hat to put on his head. PHuFFO'H had what looked like giant boxing gloves for hands, his arms akimbo. He had a slightly large head, but nice round cheeks, a big smile, and pants and shoes.

A year later, we walked through a park near our apartment and on the fly made Helga the Hausfrau. She was about half of PHuFFO'H's size, but she had lovely wavy hair made up into a bun in the back, a beautifully curved stick to delineate her mouth, and a matronly apron. over her dress. Her hands were on her belly just below her respectably sized bosom.

I am good at making snowmen.

pbthth

2008-05-28T09:55:00.006-04:00

It occurred to me yesterday that I am a unique person. (Though one might argue, isn't everybody unique?)

Compared to most people, I cannot move much of my face.

Through an interesting quirk of genetics, I cannot arch my right eyebrow by itself. Nor can I curl my tongue, flare my nostrils, or wiggle my ears.

It's fascinating, really. Both my parents can curl their tongues, as well as both of my brothers. My youngest brother, in fact, can dip his tongue into three or four nubs. (And let's leave the 'lucky girlfriend' jokes aside, shall we?) My other brother has double jointed elbows.

One of my friends from high school could flare her nostrils on command, and my husband, the ultimate betrayer, can wiggle his ears and arch both eyebrows independently AND flex his pecs. How's that for talent?

But what caprice of creation deemed that I, the firstborn of my family, have none of these marvelous abilities that most people take for granted? Honestly, the looks I get when I tell people I can't curl my tongue, you'd think they won the lottery. Because I inevitably have to demonstrate that no, in fact, my tongue is curl-defunct. *bleaaaagh*

It's the most common of these tics, you might say, though probably tied with the dual eyebrow arch. Ear-wiggling and nostril-flaring seem to be less common abilities, and still, I have none of them. For a while, I was pleased to find out that I have some double jointed toes, until I found out that most people do too, courtesy of our simian ancestry. But I wonder at the usefulness of curled tongues, flared nostrils and wiggled ears in the context of monkey life. Did some antecedent of mine starve because they couldn't curl their tongue into some tree's hollow to eat some tasty bugs? Did the lack of flared nostrils cause an untimely death by a predator that was not scented in time? Was there a secret ear-wiggling code that my great-to-the-nth-grandparent wasn't able to learn, and was abandoned by the family group as a result?

Not that it's obvious, but I reek of jealousy.

But I do do a mean left eyebrow arch, though.
-- ^
O-O
<
\__/

Gardening on Earth Day

2008-04-22T14:41:00.003-04:00

So I only learned after the fact that I was working in the garden on Earth Day. It's just so beautiful today!

I am taking pictures weekly of the garden and posting them on Facebook. I also have been trying to post a video tour I made last year with my dad's camera, but it won't work for some reason. I think there's a three-video limit that they're not revealing.

But the garden is looking pretty good. I spent the first part of the morning cutting dead branches off one of my rosebushes and weeding my vegetable garden. I was quite surprised to return from Toronto yesterday to find all the hyacinth in full bloom, and some of the tulips budding. So I decided that today would be the day I start the large haul of spring garden cleaning. There was a hyacinth in my vegetable garden and I had no idea how it got there. My brother-in-law stopped by to drop off my key and said that there had been hyacinth and tulips there before, around the fishpond-which-is-now-my-vegetable-garden. Once it dies for the season, I'll move it. I guess I didn't notice it since the veggie garden didn't get planted until the end of May, early June of last year.

The second part of my day involved raking under the willow bushes, and pruning the crap out of the one by the front fence. I actually bagged most of what I chopped off this time, as opposed to leaving it on the ground to kill the grass like I did last year. Tomorrow I'll be cutting down the large branches that got lopped off, then shoved back under the willow and bagging them too.

It's amazing how huge these willows are. I focused on cutting off lower branches so that one day we can put a bench underneath its canopy. Heck, if we had a bench now we could probably manage it. A few wispy branches in the face isn't too bad.

So, giant dead lopped off branches (and a forgotten dead juniper) aside, the yard is shaping up quite nicely. I think last year's clean-up involved about fifteen bags of yard waste, and so far I'm only up to two. I'm thinking maybe two more bagsful and I'll be done. A great improvement over last year.

Renovations

2008-04-03T13:35:00.004-04:00

For those of you who are following my photojournal on Facebook, our renovations are going well, though have stalled of late.

We have temporarily left the bathroom (much to my husband's chagrin) to focus on our second bedroom. See, back in September or so, our darling Ash the Cat chewed through the aquarium filter hose, and caused over ten gallons of water to leak into the room's carpet. We removed the carpet, sold the entire fish set-up to some hopefully responsible aquarists, and suffered with bare chipboard subfloor ever since.

We always knew we were going to replace the flooring upstairs, since the carpet was at least ten years old if it was a day. Wood of a sort (hardwood or laminate) were the options we had largely considered. I ordered some lovely bamboo hardwood samples from a company in Vancouver. We even went to IKEA recently and purchased laminate flooring.

Unfortunately, the floor in that room is very uneven: there is a huge dip down the middle of the room, about nine feet long, roughly four feet wide, sort of oval shaped. The reason I know it's oval-shaped is because my husband and father-in-law purchased some levelling compound from Home Depot, which, when poured, filled the dip very well.

Unfortunately (again), the levelling compound curled up around the edges when it dried. To boot, it still wasn't level enough to allow the laminate to snap together as it should. We're able to return the two unopened boxes of laminate, but not the two opened boxes with cut pieces, or the underpad foam, or the "flooring tools".

We'd heard about a sale on laminate at Home Depot, so with heavy hearts we went to look, hoping it was better quality than the IKEA crap. What we found, and what Andrew had to sell me on, was parquet flooring. Easy to install, much more flexible than hardwood or laminate, and you can measure your progress quite well since the tiles are each one square foot.

Well, it was quite a bit easier. We still had to beat the tar out of the floor to get rid of the cracked levelling compound (we used the scrap IKEA boards to fill the dip - oh, the irony!), but the floor looks beautiful.

If only we can get started on the shower again...

Oh, shit.

2008-04-03T10:13:00.005-04:00

Another spring is upon us, and, oh, shit... it's everywhere. The doggy droppings abandoned by lazy pet owners.

Apparently, there's this unusual property to snow that makes people think that crap magically disappears when it's dropped into its fluffy white goodness. Well, news flash, people: it doesn't disappear.

It sits there.

And waits for some unsuspecting springtime pedestrian to walk in it. Because... *drumroll* ... IT DOESN'T VANISH.

IT SITS THERE.

It was almost comical this winter walking along the path plowed through the park and seeing atop a four-foot mound of snow a pile of tiny, tied up plastic bags. The mound of snow ostensibly hides a trash can, so that when the snow melts - TA-DA! - the bags will naturally fall into it.

But alas, that's not how it works. What will really happen is that the snow will melt, and people will find that the snow plow veered a little too far in one direction, and that the garbage can they assumed was beneath the mound of snow is about twelve feet to the left of the now huge pile of bagged dogshit, and then, lo and behold, the dogshit will be on the ground again.

One might assume that I, being a chronic pedestrian and frequest walker of said trail, have actually stepped into a pile of doo. As luck would have it, I have been fortunate to escape this scenario thus far. But I know that the time will come when I'll be running for the bus, and will just see the little dessicated-on-the-outside-but-still-ripe-on-the-inside-pile-of-crap at the last possible moment. I will have a split second to twist my ankle just so I don't get the full-on shit squish, but I will get a wet piece of turd on the side of my boot that just won't go away, no matter how hard I frantically scrub my boot with the remaining slush on the side of the path.

Moral of the story: always make sure you have poo bags when walking your animal. And just take the poo home in the winter. Think of your fellow pedestrians.

Valentines' Day haiku

2008-02-14T14:28:00.006-05:00

This Valentines' Day
I got a sweet love letter
From my dear husband.

It made me laugh, and
I remembered happy times
Like last night's dinner.

"What is a birthright?
Why did Esau give his up
for a chicken dish?

"Jacob must have been
one hell of a cook; did he
make teriyaki?"

Many giggles, snorts,
hushed up by my napkin, as
Andrew sat, musing.

"Was teriyaki
worth giving up his birthright?
Jacob was a fink."

"Maybe they'd now be
'Esavites', not 'Jacobites',"
I said, chuckling.

"But a whole birthright!"
My husband was indignant.
"For teriyaki!"

"It's not even that
delicious," said I, giggling.
"I don't care for it."

Later he bought me
red roses, because there were
no more peach-hued ones.

He says that roses
stay the same price all the time.
Despite what they say.

"Roses in August
cost the same as those in March.
Well, the ones you like."

It doesn't matter.
They still smell as sweet, don't they?
Shakespeare did say so.

I love my husband.
I love to write haiku, for
him and for me too.

Decor "whoa"s

2008-01-29T13:24:00.003-05:00

My husband has informed me that a store in our local mall is closing. While this, in itself, is not really news - many of the stores are closing; the place looks like a ghost town during weekdays - it happens to be one of the stores I like the most.

Bouclair is a store which, up until recently, sold lots of fabric - I mean hundreds of different ones - along with sewing notions, pre-fab curtains, and various decor items: pillows, throws, mirrors, etc. I was looking on their website and smack on the homepage this week was the following ad:

Branches Starting at 6.99

Now, I don't know about you, my humble readers, but having a bunch of dead, or worse, plastic, branches artfully arranged in a vase just doesn't do it for me. Nor for the cat, who would no doubt knock it over in that "everything has to be on the ground" way that cats have. Nor really for anyone who doesn't live in a pristine, Zen-like atmosphere or has a maid.

I remember vividly, while watching Juno recently, just a few seconds of a manicured feminine hand rearranging things : aligning picture frames so they were slanted just so, polishing an upstairs banister, and adjusting what I assume were scent sticks so they fell in a perfectly equal spray.

Who has time for this for everyday??? I mean, maybe it's easy when you both work away from home and have no pets or children. Shoot, even then my house was a sty. But maybe that's just me.

I mean, to me, decor is wall hangings, paint colors, and the color/material/texture of furniture and accessories like pillows and throws. Not big vases filled with sticks or, heaven help me, giant bowls filled with plastic balls. Useless tchochkes are a huge pet peeve with me. Yes, you can have mementoes of people and places. But jeebus, keep it simple and uncluttered. Keep it contained. Have a cabinet specifically for those things if you must. But don't have things scattered all over hell's creation until you're knee-deep in crap and can't reach what you need.

Arg. I can't wait until I start my new job. Much clutter to clear. Much spring cleaning to do. Even though it's not spring yet. No like time like the present, aye?

F-word and other obscenities

2008-01-24T18:53:00.002-05:00

My hubby bought me the soundtrack to Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny for Christmas, along with an MP3 player. I ripped it onto my player, and have been listening to it almost non-stop. They seem more amazing the more I listen. Genius! Their gratuitous use of the f-word is not vulgar, it's oddly apropos. I mean, they're f*cking rockers, man!

At least, I don't think it's vulgar. Well, I mean, I know it is, but put into the proper context, it's not. It's just a very useful word in this movie.

"A long-ass f*cking time ago, in a town called Kickapoo..."

"The government totally sucks, you motherf*cker..."

"I totally miss the honesty and special times / and honestly /
I totally miss the f*cked up thing you do /
Dude I totally miss you / I really f*ckin' miss you /
Dude I totally miss you all the time"

I've been trying to avoid using vulgar language as much (hopefully, by the time I have a kid, the vulgarity will have been phased out about 90%) but have been failing miserably. It's all I can do to not take religious names in vain when talking to my mother on the phone, or using the word "shit" when my mother-in-law is in the room. When did I become so potty-mouthed? Eh, probably university. Even in high school, I rarely used the f-word, and "shit" was used sparingly. "Bitch" was probably the worst word in my pithy arsenal. Hey, I was the girl whose best friends deserted her in 6th grade because I didn't know what a condom was. *shrugs*

Now I try to be all copy-cat creative with stuff I've ripped off from books or movies. "Jesus Christ on a piece of toast!" had its heyday in my everyday rants while I was at SDM, though occasionally politely substituted with "Cheese with rice!" *nods out to JPF, of the rib0flavin persuasion, if he's reading this* Of course, after watching Team America, the use of "Jesus titty-f*cking Christ" skyrocketed.

Lately, "H Murphy!", or simply, "H!" has been my expostulation of choice. It doesn't mention any religious figures - only a poor guy named Murphy - and so shouldn't offend anyone's sensibilities. (In case anyone cares, that one super-morphed out of Diana Gabaldon's "Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!" Since I was not alive when Roosevelt was, and then wanted to use my dad's popular, "Jesus Murphy" without the "Jesus" part... QED.)

In French of course, it's all about religion. Bodily functions rarely figure into French cursing, in my limited experience. It's all about Dieu, tabernacle, hostie, and calisse, with the occasional merde thrown into the Jésus, Marie, and Joseph mixture. I'm really not as conversant in French cursing as, say, the average Quebecker. I remember this guy I went to high school with, Sébastien Larocque, and boy, could he curse. Pretty, in a kind of a bad-boy way, but a real prick. But I do remember being amazed at his ability to create blue streaks, en français. Hence the color of this post. But do I remember any of his unusual church-and-fornication collaborations? Alas, no.

Not that I'd use it, of course.

Pet peeves

2008-01-24T18:11:00.001-05:00

... when people spell it "perscription" instead of "prescription"
... when people say "the" to rhyme with "duh" when it's not appropriate, e.g. the end, the apple, the elephant. People, when the noun following begins with a vowel, "the" is almost always pronounced "THEE".
... when roof is pronounced like Tim Allen says it. It should rhyme with "goof", not have a soft double 'o' like "book".
... when people don't listen when you ask them a question, and answer with something really random. Honestly, if you weren't paying attention, or you didn't understand, it's okay to ask for clarification. I won't get mad.

Nuff for now. I'm sure I'll have more. Just needed to vent.

Shopping.

2008-01-17T13:27:00.003-05:00

I will be going shopping after work today. I was inspired by a dream I had last night/this morning.

Short version of the dream: I was in an apartment that, in the odd way dreams allow, belonged to my friend Steph and my two great-aunts simultaneously. One of my great-aunts asked my youngest brother if he wanted to go through the stuff in the attic. Me, on the lookout for new clothes, latched on to this idea. I found myself attracted to several green shirts. One was a thin silk blouse with long sleeves, in a beautiful emerald green. The other was some sort of polyester/rayon shirt in a similar green, but which went with an overshirt that gave it a gold and purple shimmer. To be honest, the "overshirt" looked like a bib. Again, in that funny way that dreams are, it changed from an overshirt, to a bib, to a decoration that slipped over the sleeve, if you only wanted a hint of color.

Anyway, this dream really made me want new clothes. That, and seeing three shirts hung up and two dozen empty hangers. (I have since done laundry, and have more shirts, however.) But I still want new shirts. I haven't bought any new shirts in almost a year, so I think I'm entitled to a little spree before I am making less money. So... green shirt it is. And hopefully an orange shirt. And maybe a yellow shirt. I've had enough of blue for now; half of my wardrobe is blue, red, or black. No more bruise colors! I want spring colors!!

Hmmm... Old Navy, Smart Set... I can usually get tons of shirts for cheap there. Man, I miss H&M.

New job. And great movie.

2008-01-16T12:24:00.004-05:00

I did it. I'm back at a library. Well, I will be in two weeks.

I have resigned from the Service Canada Centre, and will be working as a page (read: shelver) at a local branch of the Ottawa Public Library. For considerably more money than I made at the same job in Halifax, but I digress. It will be part-time work; fewer hours than I'd like, to be honest, but there's always a possibility of extra shifts. Lower pay rate. A and I crunched the numbers last night, and if we stop ordering in or eating out four times a week we should be okay.

Working part-time will certainly help me out with going back to school, which I hope to do in the fall. I want to upgrade my three-year bachelor's degree to a four-year degree, preferably by upgrading my English minor to a second major.

The trap will be all the free time I will have. Last time I was unemployed (or partially employed), this translated to a lot of TV-watching and video game-playing. Now that we have a house, and not an apartment, this will give me lots of opportunities, which I dearly hope I'm smart enough to take, to clean, to decorate, and to learn to cook more than my current eight-dish repertoire allows.

Andrew and I celebrated last night by watching Juno and eating unhealthy cinema food. They're not kidding when they say they make their money of concessions. We went on cheap ticket night, so, 2 tickets = $8.40, concessions for two = $25. (!!!)

Juno is such a great movie. Ellen Page is a fantastic actress. One of my favorite scenes is when she's imitating "this girl who took too many behavioural meds and tore off all her clothes and dove into the fountain at the mall and was like, 'ARG, I'M A KRAKEN FROM THE SEA!'". Her expression is priceless. Highly recommended movie. Such funny dialogue in an otherwise poignant movie. Examples:

Juno: There are ads in the Pennysaver for parents?
Leah: Yeah! 'Desperately Seeking Spawn'! They're like, next to the ads for parakeets and lizards and shit.

Receptionist: Free condom? It's boysenberry.
Juno: Uh, thanks, I'm off sex right now.
Receptionist: My boyfriend wears one every time we have intercourse. It makes his junk smell like pie.

Juno: I went, but the receptionist kept talking about her boyfriend's pie junk...
Leah: Yummy!
Juno: And the place smelled like a dentist's office, and there were these weird water stains on all the magazines, and, and Su-Chin was there, you know, from school? And she was like, "Your baby has fingernails!" Fingernails!
Leah: Ooh, so you think the baby would, like, claw your vag on the way out?

In theaters now. Watch it!!!

Men can't be pregnant, last time I checked.

2008-01-14T14:46:00.001-05:00

So I'm reading the Globe and Mail online just now. Get to the 'Life' section, and see the headline, "We're having a hard time getting pregnant". Presumably written by a guy.

I am so sick of men claiming that "we" are pregnant. No, "we" are not pregnant. She is pregnant. "We" do not have a swollen uterus. She has a swollen uterus. "We" do not get morning sickness (unless you're one of those men who gets sympathetically ill). She gets morning sickness. Yes, you are partly responsible for the creation of this beautiful miracle, but for the love of god, you are not pregnant too.

I understand you men want to be included; that it must be difficult to watch your significant other get attention lavished on her (whether the positive, gift-giving type, or the negative random strangers grabbing her belly type) and little on you; that your physical contribution to the process is ignored while people are in awe of your woman's changing form. But surely, there are better ways to announce your great fortune, like in the following examples:

We're expecting a baby!
I'm going to be a dad! (or a mom! for gay couples)
My wife/girlfriend/fiancée/life partner is pregnant!
This is our new nursery! Ta-da!

Never having been pregnant before, maybe I'm being a tad insensitive. But I know when I call my parents at the end of my first trimester, I will not say, "A and I are pregnant!" In fact, I will probably say something like, "Hello, Memère!"

(And for those reading this, this is not a hugely veiled post about me being pregnant. I'm not. I just watched Juno yesterday and have pregnancy on the brain. Fantastic movie, BTW. Everyone should watch it. Amazing. And funny!!! *wipes tears of laughter from her eyes*)

Mmm...books...

2008-01-10T11:28:00.004-05:00

There is something so satisfying about discussing books with someone, especially books you love. The expression "shared joy is increased" is totally true when it comes to sifting through the details of a story that someone else loves the book just as much as you do.

Even better, is when you have a book that you love and reread so often that the colors of the cover are duller than when you bought it new (because who uses dust jackets anyway; they just get torn!), the pages are softer, and you remember that time you were eating spaghetti while reading that left a tiny spot of sauce on the lower right corner of page 49. (Mmm, that was good spaghetti...)

I was on the bus this morning on my way to work, and saw the woman across from me reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. It's one of my favorite books, but one of the saddest I've ever read. She wasn't very far along in the book, maybe the first twenty pages, but I glanced at her between penning answers to the morning's Sudoku to see if her face revealed any hint of awe or puzzlement. I saw nothing but a slight frown as she digested what was happening to Jonas. I hope she enjoys the book.

I feel the same way when I read passages aloud to my husband from various Harry Potter books (he maintains that, between seeing the movies and hearing me recite pages upon pages, he doesn't need to actually read them now) or books written by one of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon. I just love watching the look on people's faces, or hearing their gasps, laughter or exclamations when they read a certain passage or hear it for the first time.

I speed read. I always have. My nickname in second grade was Speedy Reader (or Shorty, depending on who you talked to). It maybe stems from my unfailing need to know how something ends - I need to know right now! So I tear through a book, grabbing the essentials and missing out on some of the details. But I need the details. So I read it again.

And again.

And again.

Until I'm talking to someone about the book and say, "Oh, remember when this character said..." then I repeat the text word for word, and they look at me blankly and ask, "How many times have you read this?" "Um, thirty-five times, why?"

I get a lot of head shakes after this.

The thing is that I pick a book apart like it's a tangled ball of a hundred pieces of string; I ruthlessly pull and yank at story elements, stopping occasionally to unravel a knot of information, until I have a nice collection of straight, unknotted pieces of story, which I bundle carefully back up to make a nice tidy yarn again. It is so tremendously satisfying.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit know I'm a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. But it's because of the details. Seemingly innocuous tidbits play a huge part in later books. When talking about this to people, I frequently mention the example of the Vanishing Cabinet.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second book in the series, the caretaker's cat is Petrified. This makes the caretaker, Filch, dole out extra punishements in his misery. On his way back to the dorm after a rainy and muddy Quidditch practice, Harry is talking to a ghost, then gets caught by Filch for dirtying the floors. Just before assigning punishment, they are interrupted by a loud crash above them. The ghost convinced the school's poltergeist to topple over the Vanishing Cabinet on the second floor to distract the caretaker. The Cabinet is broken.

In the fifth book, the school is in the clutches of a maniacal Headmistress who creates the Inquisitorial Squad, students who have the same authority to punish students that teachers have. Friends of Harry's stop a member of the Inquisitorial Squad from taking points away by shoving him into the broken Vanishing Cabinet. The member of the Inquisitorial Squad reappears, disoriented and confused, after several weeks.

In the sixth book, Harry's school nemesis, Draco Malfoy, finds out that the Cabinet is actually one of a pair which, when fixed, would actually create a passageway between them. Harry, in the meantime, only comes across the Cabinet again in passing, finding it in a hidden room with other broken magical objects, where he needs to hide a book. Draco later fixes the Cabinet, and uses it to allow Death Eaters to take over the school.

See? Who would have thought (besides the author, natch) that a simple cabinet, mentioned casually as a tool to avoid detention, would turn out to be integral to the takeover of Hogwarts? Rowling does this over and over throughout the series. And I simply looooove reading them again and again to pick up on the little details that turn a simple story into a wonderful saga. And even better, is unraveling these threads with someone else.

Reno woes, or "Cry Me a Ceramic Dust River"

2008-01-04T12:36:00.003-05:00

My hubby and I are renovating our master bathroom. We started just before Christmas (what were we thinking!) and are technically half-way done. Thus far we have...

- removed the old vanity
- removed the shower unit
- ripped up the old, peeling, cracking, vinyl floor and the crappy 1/4" plywood beneath it
- reoriented the sink drain and faucet supplies
- installed stop valves on the sink faucets (there were none; older house)
- ripped out tiles which were above and around the shower
- drywalled where we had to access the sink drain
- installed the new vanity
- installed cementboard, new tiles, and grouted
- installed a new faucet

What we have left to do...

- build a shower curb out of 2x4s
- custom build the shower floor (so many steps to this!!!!)
- tile said floor and curb, and tile shower walls
- install baseboard (should have done this before we installed the vanity, whoops)
- fix the drywalled hole *wince*
- wash aaaaaaalllllll the grout off the tiles, as it is very gritty
- prime and paint

We can at least use the toilet and sink again, but the shower has a ways yet to go.

Doing It Yourself certainly has its pitfalls, and a potentially steep learning curve. Lesson number one for bathroom projects: don't grind ceramic tiles in your bedroom, even if they are tiles for the on-suite bathroom. Just... *shakes her head* just do it in the basement or the garage or something. *brushes ceramic dust off her clothes for the millionth time in the last month* The shit just never goes away. Note to self: buy some TSP to wash down the walls, and the shelves, and the hangers, and the furnishings...

It was such a relief when, ceramic dust notwithstanding, our bedroom stopped looking like a construction zone: toilet on a plastic bag in a corner, tools next to it looking lonely, pieces of chipboard and cementboard lying against the wall, furniture crammed next to the bed to make way for the movable workbench, a clamp underfoot in a bed of crumbled cement, bits of tile and wood shavings. Oh, did I mention we slept in the guestroom while this was going on? ;-)

Mannequin hate

2007-12-17T12:57:00.001-05:00

We all know where nipples are located on the human body. It doesn't need to be grossly emphasized. We will safely assume that wherever the boob starts to slope inwards and downwards again is where the nipple should be, and we will extrapolate and apply that information to our perception of where that shirt will hang on our own bodies. Furthermore, being able to see that the nipple is clearly visible through the fabric is not necessarily a way to entice a woman to buy an article of clothing. Not all women care to be that cold, or invest in silicone nipple covers, or thick bras.

(I've been noticing this more and more as Christmas approaches. Who thinks a woman wants to wear a wee scrap of gauze and shimmeryness to a party when it's 20° below zero and her coat is doing nothing to keep the wind out?)

Similarly, guys, don't be intimidated/disappointed that the underwear mannequin has a huge package/flat frontpiece. When is everyone going to realize that mannequins are not an accurate reflection of reality, hello!!!

/end rant

Galaxy Quest - The Perfect Movie

2007-02-09T14:18:00.003-05:00

My husband (it still gives me such a thrill to write that!) and I watched one of our favorite movies this evening, Galaxy Quest . It literally has everything you could possibly want in a movie - a spaceship, Thermians from the Klatu Nebula, tons of hilarious lines (Tony Shalhoub's seemingly stoned character is a source of tremendous amusement), a bit of romance, not to mention a meaningful revelation about the true nature of entertainment. The sound is quite good, the digital effects great (though the makeup of Sarris and his crew could have been a little more form-fitting around the mouth, not looking so puppet-like), and the writing genius.

For those not familiar with the movie, it revolves around Tim Allen playing an actor named Jason Nesmith, whose claim to fame was a science fiction show in the 80s called Galaxy Quest, which he "commanded". Along with his faithful crew (Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and Daryl Mitchell), they are a passé passel whose only appearances are at sci-fi conventions. At one particular convention, Jason is approached by people, who he believes to be fans in costume, looking to hire him for a gig. They are in fact aliens (the aforementioned Thermians from the Klatu Nebula) seeking the help of "Commander Peter Quincy Taggert" to defeat their enemy. They know of all the Galaxy Quest missions from the "historical documents" which they received by satellite many years ago, the morals of which they have used to rebuild their society after a planetary cataclysm.

Some of my favorite lines:

JASON (Tim Allen): They were called Termites, or something... I don't really remember because I was hung over.

GWEN (Sigourney Weaver): At least you had a part. You had a character people loved! My TV Guide interview was six paragraphs about my boobs and how they fit into my suit. How did I perfect my trademark sidesaddle pose? Nobody ever bothered to ask what I do on the ship...
FRED (Tony Shalhoub): You were the, uh... Wait, I'll think of it...
GWEN: I repeated the computer. "It's getting hotter, Commander!" "The ship is disintegrating, Commander!" Nothing I did EVER affected the plot, not ONCE! Nothing I did was ever taken seriously!

JASON: You will go out there!
ALEXANDER: I won't, and nothing you say will make me.
JASON: [after a pause] The show must go on.
ALEXANDER: ... Damn you.

Those of you reading this probably know I never have a single favorite anything (color, song, book, actor), and it'll be no surprise that I don't have a favorite character from this movie. They're all amazing in their own way: Jason, particularly when he realizes the true damage that the show has done to the Thermian society; Gwen, when she patently refuses to accept the reasoning behind having "chompers" on a spaceship; Alex, when he is faced with the truth that continuing to play a role he despises has allowed his biggest fan to die happy; Fred, allowed to bring his natural mellowness to the rigidly disciplined Thermians, who find it strange but satisfying; Guy, who finds he is not the expendable crewman he has always believed he was; Tommy, who is brought down a notch when he discovers he has to fly a real-live spaceship; and finally Mathesar, who learns he can command his people.

Rent Galaxy Quest today! :-)

Voyage à Paris - Day 6

2007-02-08T16:30:00.003-05:00

The return home. Ten hours of travelling when you're fevered, chilled, nauseated, achy and exhausted is really quite unpleasant.

I spent a pretty restless night, tossing, turning, and repeatedly crawling to the bathroom, though nothing came out. My whole body ached: I felt like I'd been pummelled. So I was very tired and not to steady on my pins packing in the morning for our afternoon flight.

Andrew slept a bit in the taxi on the way to the airport. I took in the few sights I could from the highways - Montmartre, in particular stood out on that grey morning. The cabbie encountered some strange roadblock near the airport, but still got us there in plenty of time for our flight. I tipped him ten euros for our 30 euro ride, and he actually protested that it was too much. I thanked him and told him he deserved it for being so patient at the roadblock.

The flight was hell. There was only one working bathroom, and the working one was about four feet away from me. The smells didn't help my rebellious stomach, and I was freezing cold. I did not once enter that bathroom, however. I saved everything for home.

Skipping over the details, I lost 13 pounds in the next three days. In the end, Pepto-Bismol was all I needed.

They say one in two people has a chance of becoming sick during a foreign holiday. I've been sick nearly every time we go somewhere. I love my new husband, but it's his turn next time.

Ghost towns of America

2007-02-08T14:21:00.002-05:00

I have been to the shiny U.S. of A three times in the past three years, moving further out into New York state each time; Buffalo, Rochester, and the weekend before Easter past, Syracuse. But don't bother going yourself.

There is nobody there.

When we went to Buffalo a few years ago, we stayed at a hotel downtown. Besides the hotel staff and the members of the orchestra we watched, I think we saw about five people during the entire weekend. Even at the theater, I think we were the only two people in the room.

In Rochester, it wasn't as bad, but still pretty empty. We saw more people at the (then) soon-to-be-opening ferry terminal than in the downtown core. That was the exciting thing to do at the time, check on the progress of its construction. Still, there were more seagulls at the ferry terminal than people. Oh wait, we did go see a movie there too. All older people, though. (Not that we'd want to hang out with people our own age because we're both too shy to just walk up and start talking to someone.)

I don't get it. Do Americans have a statute of limitations on existence? They can only be in our dimension 9-5, Monday to Friday? Do they wear invisible clothes during the weekend? Or do they just do all their business in town and live in the outskirts?

Reason, of course, dictates that the latter is the most likely. Then it makes me think about how the whole mentality of city-building seems to be different in the US compared to Canada: here, we build and try to surround our homes with everything we need, within a short distance; in America they build their homes in one area, and businesses and entertainment in a completely separate area.

There are pros and cons to each type of design. Pro-Canada: less driving. Pro-America: more SUVs. (Yes, I know, this is a gross generalization.) Do you get more Whuffie from being environmentally friendly and walking to work, or from driving a big black monster with 23-inch black-on-black rims that looks shiny and impressive but is probably compensating for some lack in your life? Do you get more Whuffie if you leave your work at work and take the time to relax at home, or if you are diligent and live close to your work so you can go back at a moment's notice?

Cats and Canals

2007-02-04T23:14:00.001-05:00

I went skating today with Andrew. We tried to go skating on the Rideau Canal during the historic First Visit in university (gosh, what was that, February 1999?), but it was tremendously slushy and pitted, and I was wearing Andrew's mom's skates, which were too big. My feet were also very cold. We only made it to the first turn before I begged off.

This time, the weather couldn't have been better. It was only a few degrees below zero, just a breeze, and it was snowing lightly. I had bought myself a pair of thick skates at Canadian Tire using one of the gift cards we got as a wedding present, and they fit perfectly. Best part? They're insulated. Oooh. Aaah. It was a completely beautiful day.

During the course of the day, I only fell four times, all four times on the same side. It was only by lucky happenstance that each time I fell, I was wearing my glasses; most of the time they were so fogged up I put them in my left pocket. But each time I put them back on I fell a few minutes later. One time I even fell as I was saying, "It's a good thing I'm wearing my glasses, otherwise they'd break in my--argh!"

By the third fall my kiester was really starting to hurt, and by the fourth my fingers and toes were quite chilled. Apple cider can only do so much. Near the end, though, this really nice girl walked up (she was leaving) and asked me if my hands were cold. She handed me two disposable warming pads, about the size of teabags. Oooh, they were nice.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend V. sent a picture out of her mother's kitten. Kitten wanted to play one night and mother kicked her...and broke the kitten's leg. She felt horrendous, and the photo shows a teensy kitten with a huge cast.

Well, we got home from skating, had a wonderful spaghetti dinner, and trekked upstairs to bed. Our kitten was lying on top of a clothes hamper, the kind with a lid. (He stands on it during the day to look out our bedroom window.) I pushed at the kitten, to try to get him off the hamper. Wouldn't budge. So, I started to tip the hamper over to get him to slide off. Well, doesn't the little bugger get his paw stuck in the handle of the lid and start making the most gawdawful noise. He manages to extricate himself after writhing frantically, and runs out of the room down the stairs. I already feel horrendous and I don't know if he's actually hurt or not. Andrew calls out, "What the hell happened?" And then I hear, "Oh, that's not good."

I am paralyzed in our room, afraid to come out lest I petrify the poor thing, the words "abusive cat-mommy" ringing through my head. "Is he bleeding?" I ask. "Is he okay?" He was apparently curled up on the stairs, protecting the leg that had gotten stuck. We were afraid for a while he'd broken his leg too, but after a bit he was running around again (away from me). I felt absolutely terrible. He got lots of treats and pets after that incident, for which he has since forgiven and forgotten.

Words to ban from my vocabulary

2006-10-18T09:08:00.001-04:00

I've been working at this job for three and half years, and have realized that giving five months' notice that I am quitting was probably a bad idea. I have had five months to come to terms with the fact that I am leaving, and part of me just doesn't want to make the effort anymore. I'm getting sick and tired of it - as if my previous posts about "Things I'd love to tell a customer someday" wasn't enough of a hint for you all! - and at this point I can't wait to leave.

When I finish, there are two words in particular that I truly hope I can successfully wipe from my brain.

"inconvenience" : I detest this word. It demeans the person's experience until it is merely a triviality, but what else can you say? You don't want to inflate the situation, but you don't want to make it seem like it's barely worth your time.

AND...

"marketing" : This is such a broad f*cking term that can mean anything from donations and sponsorship to corporate buyers to advertising to who knows what else. So when someone says, "the marketing department", I wish to god people would remember that there are about seventeen different uses for that word in today's business world, and to specify what the hell they're talking about.

Pepto-Brainwash

2006-09-27T12:26:00.001-04:00

"Take it every half-hour or so," the doctor who showed up around 5:30 said, "as long as you need to. Should clear things up in no time." After he left, I promptly called up my husband (!) and asked him to pick up some on his way home from work.

I've heard people say how yummy Pepto-Bismol is. "It's like pink marshmallow stuff," they say, "or cinnamon hearts or something." And other such insipid commentary.

All said with a fond smile - which I can only assume is caused by the memory of the relief it brought more than of the taste of the noxious, gooey, mouth-coating slime. Pepto-Bismol tastes vile. I almost spat it out. *bleagh* My husband couldn't believe I didn't lick the inside of the little measuring cup to get the rest of the medicine, and almost looked a little disappointed that he couldn't since he wasn't sick.

I have to give the stuff credit, though. Other than witnessing a variety of rumbles and noises emanating from my entire torso over the past 16 hours, (rumbles and noises which have ranged from the interesting to hilarious to highly embarrassing, I might add), I have only had to visit the necessary once since then. I am finally able to slowly replenish my body's fluids and slowly eat some food, of which I have had almost none over the past few days.

So if anyone tells you liquid Pepto-Bismol tastes good, they're lying. It just makes you feel better. Go with the pills or the chewables instead.

L'eau bonne de France (WARNING: CONTAINS HINTS OF UNPLEASANTNESS)

2006-09-26T11:03:00.002-04:00

Well, all it took was one glass of Parisian tap water to cause me to be violently ill since Saturday. As I unfortunately cannot stray far from the facilities long enough to get to a clinic, I was forced this morning at 8:24 to call the Doctors House Call service, where the receptionist told me in a bored voice, "The doctor will be there anytime between now and seven."

"Seven?" I replied, in as disbelieving tone as I could weakly muster.

"Seven." (After we hung up I realized my health card expired two weeks ago. Oops. Well, I have a credit card.)

So it's nearly eleven AM and I've just escaped for the seventh time since midnight and I honestly don't know if I'm going to survive the day. I'm so dehydrated and I can't keep any fluid in me long enough to make up what seems to be the gallon or so of water I've left behind since we arrived back in Toronto Sunday night. I really hope the doctor arrives with an IV drip or something, because as my friends and family know, I am not good at drinking anything fast, much less water. It's just so...boring. And yet I find myself vastly interested once I'm missing about 10% of it from my body.

Voyage à Paris - Day 3

2006-09-21T20:52:00.002-04:00

Nine hours of sleep. We slept in like lazy sacks of turd. The hotel room's curtains, when fully drawn, completely blocked the light and my internal chronometer is all dizzy so we ended up scratching plans for the Louvre since it would be close to noon by the time we got there. We decided instead to hit the Musée de la Marine.

Learning from yesterday, we bought 2 demi baguettes for breakfast (total cost 1/10th of yesterday's meagre breakfast and caustic service) and ate them as we walked. We walked across the Pont de Bir Hakeim, which has a giant statue of someone on a raging horse, I think. The bridge was built to commemorate a ridiculous number of soldiers who either triumphed or perished, I don't recall, when marching across a desert or a city, I'm not certain which, named Bir Hakeim. Don't know what that has to do with horses. Then again, maybe it was a giant goddesse on a sea creature. My memory is kind of foggy.

The Musée de la Marine and the adjoining building, which together form the old Palais de Chaillon, are very white and extremely bright when one has left one's sunglasses at the hotel. It was very hot and very uphill. I was not in the best of moods. But, the sight of the Eiffel Tower from across the river, what a sight worthy of many photos. It really does lean away from the sun, it's weird!

The Musée de la Marine was stupendous. HUGE models of monster square-rigged warships at 1:18 or even 1:12 scale! Nadine composed some wicked pictures of the models.

One model described how some Egyptian decided to give France an obelisk, leaving it up to the French to get it to Paris. So the French built a special barge, sailed over, cut down the obelisk, levered and pullied it over to the barge which they had pulled up onto a beach, sawed the end off the barge, pulled the obelisk in, sewed the boat back up, and took it home. This is the big spike that sits in the middle of Place Concorde, and inspired us to check it out later that day.

Next up, the Arc de Triomphe - but lunch first. We had pasta and a burger and a demi bouteille of red wine that went straight to our heads as we looked out over the sidewalk patio. With a lot of giggling we continued to the Arc de Triomphe. We were first struck by the madcap traffic circle around the Arc. I can see that the rule is for traffic in the circle to yield to traffic entering, and the policy is to do so begrudgingly. I counted about two near misses in a handful of seconds as cars and scooters threw themselves across multiple lanes. Lanes that were of course only perceived, not painted.

Nadine found a bench and wrote a postcard (a drunken postcard, I might add, to my dear friend and maid of honor Stephanie) while I gaped at the traffic. Two people came to ask us where the tunnel was to go underneath, but we hadn't found it at that point. I began to wonder how many Frenchmen were actually in Paris.

Good great view from the top of the Arc, man, oh man. We reversed Nadine's trick of taking photos through the pay telescope by getting ultra-close pics of the Eiffel Tower.

We picture-bombed the underside and outside of the Arc, and then decided we would walk down the Champs Elysées straight to the Place Concorde to marvel at the spike. ("Real Egyptian sh**!" Nadine enthused.)

We finally found some shade and liquids along the Champs Elysées, photo-noting the Louis Vuitton store with a long line-up.

The spike was very Egyptian, and like the Arc de Triomphe, ringed by a Paris-style accolade of madcap motorists.

Our next stop was decided to be the Gardens around the Louvre (Jardin des Tuileries) as the sun settled and we strolled along eating sorbet cones. We took a whole photo-journal of our approach to the glass pyramid. We had a nice sit by the pyramid.

We took the bus home to save an hour's walk in the dark. Bought two bottles of wine at a corner market, and then struck another item off our list by getting dinner at duhn duhn daa... McDonalds. I had a Royale with bacon and got miffed when the silly wench at the counter wouldn't accept my French. I was saying, "Quoi?" because she was speaking at 2 decibels in a noisy environment, not because I don't know what "Coke? Coke? Coke? Coke?" means. I just kept forging ahead with my order but had to repeat it all because she never progressed to the subroutine after "Coke?". I have two bottles of wine and it's ten o'clock. No Coke! The McDonalds tasted funny. No diarrhea though, praise be.

I wanted more fries, though. I can never get enough of McDonald's fries. The wine wasn't the greatest; I guess our expectations of French standards were a little high. That, or just not the right meal to eat with it. ;-P Found two English channels - CNN and something else. Tried to watch French TV but they spoke way too fast, even for me. And so to bed..

Voyage à Paris - Day 2

2006-09-20T20:29:00.002-04:00

Twelve. Hours. Of SLEEP. AWESOME. Reveille at 9:00AM and on the street by 10:00AM. Looking for a hearty breakfast we found only 2 fried eggs and 2 razor thin slices of ham and 4 pieces of toast for 20 euros!!! Holy Crap!

I decided I needed a new jacket as I felt very shabby in the city of fashion, so I kept my eye out as we headed toward Notre Dame, via Rue Sevres.

We sidetracked from our beeline to Notre Dame so we could check out Eglise Saint Sulpice. Very nice, as you'd expect. Lots of arches, lots of stones, pretty dark inside. Got lots of photos of the Rose Line featured in the Da Vinci Code, which is accompanied by several posters entitled: "The Danger of the Da Vinci Code: Lost Faith!" More savvy business practice would have been to have a stand of those cool spiked leg-torturing things that the albino monk wore. You mean the cilice.

I found my jacket in a little mall, and scored a complimentary gym bag and matching kit bag that may help us bring home lots of wine. Now when people ask where you got that awesome jacket, you can say you got it from "Somewhere", as that was the name of the store. Clever, no?

We had an emergency lunch at a pasta place. Grimbergen beer - nicht gut. I had a 7Up. I think it was the best 7Up I ever had. 25 centilitres of sugary goodness.

On to Notre Dame, at something like 2:30. We started our visit with the "crypts" underneath the spot were the Hotel Dieu stood before it burned down. Roman and medeival French sewers and cellars are intermingled, superimposed, and intertwined in something that now looks like Escher's staircases. It smells bad too. It smells like dried seaweed, like in my grandfather's basement, which is a smell I noticed first and immediately said it smelled familiar. It's because the docks of the Seine used to be further north of where they are now. On to the cathedral!

Many photo ops in front. Inside is very dark. Even on a really sunny day. We discovered the difficulties of taking pictures of dark things, and bright things, in the dark with a camera that automatically adjusts the shutter speed. No matter how steady you hold it your heart still has to beat, so it ends up fuzzy. Maybe it will make everything seem ghostly or bathed in a spiritual radiance.

Looked at the "treasures" of France and was not impressed. Everything was copies! Not so breathtaking with cubic zirconia, dudes.

We tried to get to the top of Notre Dame but the steps had been closed for the day. We made a solemn vow to return. We walked instead around the south side of the cathedral, snapping pictures of the flying buttresses. There's an awesome park with rows of trees trimmed into square hedges behind Notre Dame, filled with people sucking each other's tonsils out. Like those parks back home where people play chess, except for people who suck face. I think we have pictures.

We walked home, stopping for sushi at a place that only had pre-made maki in plastic trays. I was able to communicate my order entirely in French, though. It's nice having Nadine there, like a batter on deck, ready to jump in when the conversation goes badly for me.

Snapped some photos of L'Hotel des Invalides in the dark, and of the Eiffel Tower with epileptic strobes flashing all over it. The postcards can't really do it justice because the shutter speed is slower in the dark, so when you see a picture of the Eiffel tower all lit up--and I mean bright-white lit up--it's only because all the lights flashed once in the time it took for the shutter to close. Try to picture it with only about a quarter of the lights on, and that's what a half-second of that time is like.

Voyage à Paris, Day/Night 1

2006-09-18T20:04:00.001-04:00

[Note: Nadine's text in peach, Andrew's in blue.]

We have had about five hours between the two of us...oh, of sleep, I mean. See? Can't even string a sentence. Together. Arg.

Another five hour sleep stretched out on two plane seats. Felt refreshed for about twenty minutes. Not at all impressed with the subway system that was so lauded by our advisors. But I am just tired and very easily frustrated right now, so I hope to rebound tomorrow. I'm beginning to feat that I'm incapable of relaxing in foreign environments, that I can only function with routine life. It's just so demeaning to be standing in front of a multicolored wall map designed to be understood by preschoolers while native citizens jostle and zoom by with ease. I got chewed up by recalcitrant turnstiles, bleeped at by indifferent red LEDs, and trapped inside the subway system, unable to leave through the "Sortie". How can you call it a "Sortie" if you can't sort? It should be called a "Peut-être sortie".

It's much, much warmer than I expected it to be here. My legs swelled on the plane from the pressure in the cabin and the tiny amount of leg room. Now I'm wearing my wrap dress sans leggings, and my legs look fat.

We went out to dîner at this restaurant which served a teensy French steak with a heaping pile of fries (made with French potatoes) and a single leaf of lettuce. No veggies. We went to the Eiffel Tower after, which we found when we switched tables at the restaurant. Just behind me. Andrew took a picture. Then at the Tower we took about 50 more, including two from the telescope machines. Got our first glimpse of Notre Dame de Paris!!! It got cold so we went back to the hot3el. The elevator is more like a dubwaiter so we took the stairs. Did I mention we took the stairs down - and UP - the entire Tower???*

*Okay, up to the midpoint deck. Still, 668 feet!!!

Four days

2006-09-13T13:41:00.001-04:00

...and I'm feeling thoroughly nauseated. I have all this nervous energy that I need to burn off or I'm going to have a heart attack or something. We're meeting with our minister tonight to write our vows, four days before the event. I can't believe it.

*covers her head and screams*

Bad dreams

2006-08-31T13:27:00.001-04:00

I tossed and turned all last night... too warm, too cold, brain racing at a million miles an hour, and when I did dream it was of brides-in-training failing all their tests. The Trailer Park Boys also featured at some point for a completely unfathomable reason. Very violent, they were.

I will be very happy when the day is underway.

Twenty days...

2006-08-28T08:36:00.001-04:00

...until the day of the wedding. This was brought to my attention just a few minutes ago and is completely freaking me out.

*scream*

To the asshole at Mr. Sub

2006-08-19T12:36:00.002-04:00

I know it's frustrating to not be able to get what you want when there's a giant poster advertising it.

But when someone apologizes and tells you it's not available because that's a breakfast item and not available in the afternoon, your options are:

a) leave.
b) order something else.

The following option, which you exercised, should be deleted from the list of possibilities:

c) scowl, badger the employee for five minutes straight - while a line forms behind you - until she makes up a reason why what you want is unavailable, force her to make a meatball sub with only meatballs and cheese (and they have different cheeses, so naturally you get angrier when she asks you to specify what kind *gasp* THE NERVE!), then when she goes to ring up your order, you shove the sub back at her and say, "HERE! I'm not going to eat this SHIT anyway because YOU didn't have what I wanted so YOU eat it!" then slam down your tray on the counter and stalk over to another food stand and glower at their employee, who has no idea what's going on.

Stitches in my time

2006-08-11T08:45:00.001-04:00

Nothing seems to occasions comment or sidelong glance - or outright stares - so much as a young woman doing cross-stitch.

Cross-stitch, you say? As in needlepoint? How utterly bizarre. How antiquated. How very domestic and crafty.

I have had complete strangers on the subway ask me about my hobby. A nice Jamaican man saw me working on an Asian-themed pattern a few years ago and asked me lots of questions about it. A Russian woman once saw me working on my current pattern of sunflowers in a green-and-white-striped pot, and told me it was lovely.

Last week an Asian girl sat across from me on the train, while another Asian girl sat next to me. The one next to me was practically hovering over my shoulder as I worked on one of the sunflowers, while chattering to the girl across from me. In the middle of the train ride, they both got up abruptly and switched seats, whereupon the first Asian girl started chattering excitedly back to the other as she started peering over my shoulder. Oddly gratifying but a little weird. Not to mention completely unsubtle.

One wince-worthy moment: one of my co-workers, who is five years younger than me, said to me, "That's so pretty. My grandmother does those things." Talk about making be feel old. Yeesh.

It's relaxing, though. Just me, the needle, the thread, and the diagram. The focus must be completely on the tiny patterns made by the different colors in order for the picture to come out properly. Each set of symbols on the diagram, marking the various hues, must be mapped to ensure minimum waste of the thread. It's terribly satisfying to finally finish using a particular color. (It is, however, very unsatisfying being distracted once and then later seeing that you've missed one teensy stitch in a color trail. Most annoying.)

It's funny, though, since I've only ever finished two cross-stitch patterns. I remember my first pattern, a Christmas angel pattern I was given by my cousin during a "Bitch'n'Stitch" session with her girlfriends, when I was living with her in university. I never did finish it. It was far beyond what my novice fingers could have handled: various beads, 3/4 stitches; slippery gold thread; French knots; some three-strand stitching; some two-strand.

The first pattern I finished was quite well done, if I do say so myself. It's done on black fabric, instead of the usual white or beige, and when it is done you realize it's a tiger's eyes staring at you. I've always meant to get it framed. Maybe I will once we move into our new house.

The second pattern I finished was the Asian design I mentioned, a large character in Chinese script which means "Good Fortune". I gave that to someone who I once considered a friend but we've grown so far apart I don't think we could be again. It was a sort of 'thanks-and-have-a-good-life' gift, but not as snotty as I just made it sound.

I have almost finished my sunflowers pattern. When it's done I'll post a picture. Maybe a nice green frame with a red and gold matte...

disorientation

2006-08-03T14:26:00.001-04:00

I get this... feeling, I suppose, but it's more than a feeling, on occasion. I can never predict when it's going to happen or when it's going to end, but it's the strangest, most uncomfortable sensation.

It's like there is a presence hovering over my right shoulder, sort of tingly but not on my skin, just in the area above it. Like a cloud of flies that you want to wave away, only there's nothing there. Or like standing with your back to a bonfire and feeling the heat but not hearing the noise, just sensing the crackling going on behind you. It's just a very wrong sort of feeling.

When this happens, I can't stand being around electronics. Having to sit in front of a computer with this feeling now going on its fourth hour sets my teeth on edge. Turning on the TV this morning caused a shiver to run down my spine and I only left it on long enough to check the temperature. Even the radio hurt my ears this morning.

I want to go outside and get away from this mass of electricity and run or walk through the grass or something!!!!!! Just to escape it. It's driving me crazy, particularly because I don't what sets it off or when it ends.

In which we buy a house (aka "In which we become poor")

2006-07-14T17:45:00.001-04:00

So we went down to Ottawa this past weekend and stayed with my future in-laws to seek a house. And seek we did. It was practically a hunt. ;)

Very long weekend summarized shortly, we found a house which is perfect for us!!! It also happens to currently belong to my future brother-in-law and his wife. Now they have to find a house.

We could help them. We're old hands at this point.

My privacy complaint - Xentel's response

2006-06-30T12:24:00.001-04:00

Dear Ms. Mealey:

Thank-you for contacting us about your concerns with Xentel's do not call system. Xentel has operated its own do not call registry since 1988, recognizing that some Canadians do not want us to call them for our non-profit clients. [With harassment three times a day, who can blame them?] What you have described is of great concern to us and we are investigating the specifics to determine what has to change to ensure no one else has a similar experience.

I am assured by our do not call system manager that we have placed your telephone number on Xentel's do not call list. It will be purged from all calling lists Xentel creates for the next three years. [I guess it doesn't matter since I'm moving, but what if I wasn't? After three years, I would get called again?]

Again, thank-you for contacting us about this.

Len Wolstenholme
for Xentel DM Incorporated

My privacy complaint - update

2006-06-30T12:16:00.001-04:00

I must mention that I received three calls yesterday from this accursed company, XENTEL. One at 10AM for Rameses Shriners. One around 12:30 for the Toronto Police Association. Another at 1:49 for the Rameses Shriners. The last call I received after sending my e-mail, and I pretty much lost it with the rep. Guy got off the phone with me pretty quickly.

Privacy violation - my e-mail

2006-06-29T12:13:00.001-04:00

Hello,

I have requested at least twenty times or more within the last two years to be put on your "do not call" lists for the five organizations for whom I am solicited through your call centres. The calls stop for a week or two, and then begin again.

It has reached the point that I cut off the representative right at the beginning of the call and reiterate that I have made this request. Some have been understanding ("I'm sorry, I'll speak with my supervisor right away") and some have been less so ("Well, what did we ever do to you?" - Yes, I have actually had a rep say this to me). I am -thisclose- to simply screaming, "STOP CALLING ME!" when I pick up the phone and then immediately hanging up. Sadly, the calls continue.

Once, within the last three months I believe, I had a discussion about this 'do not call' service with a female representative who was calling. I explained, as I often do, that it is nothing personal against her, I know she's just doing her job, etc, but that I was truly sick and tired of receiving these calls and that I want them to stop. I rattled off the few organizations I remembered offhand, and she proceeded to explain to me - off the record (!) - that my information would never be truly removed from the system, since it was in a country-wide database that just cycled from call centre to call centre. But she dutifully noted my request not to be called for the five organizations that are in my 'profile', but said this request would only last for a few months.

I believe I got another call again within three weeks.

I am called on a regular basis, sometimes several times a day from different call centres, be asked to make a donation for one of the following organizations:

- Rameses Shriners
- Toronto Police Association, for whatever event they happen to be hosting
- Canadian Council for the Blind
- Battle of the Bands
- another event/organization whose name escapes me

I work in a call centre too. But when a customer makes a request to not be contacted - either by phone, mail or otherwise - we honor that request. It may take a few weeks to cycle out their information, but it gets done. If they call us again later because they've been contacted again, we apologize and make restitution as the situation demands.

I simply request a written statement from your organization, indicating the steps you have taken to either remove my contact information from your database (and please don't give me a 'random dialler' excuse; it's not random if it's always the same five organizations that call me) or to indicate a permanent 'DO NOT CALL' note on my 'profile'. If anything, the fact that I haven't donated any money to any of those organizations in over two years should strongly indicate my disinterest. I simply choose to donate to other causes with whom I feel more connected. I am tired of this harassment and I want it to stop.

I look forward to your reponse.

Sincerely,
Nadine (with all my other info)

House hunting : v. - 1. to look to purchase a permanent lodging. 2. tramp through the forest with a spear to wrangle a big hairy house.

2006-06-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

My husband-to-be and I will be moving to Ottawa later this year. We are considering, seriously, purchasing a house. If we can't find one in our budget, we will, of course, rent until we find find one that does. But in two weeks, we will be going on a house-hunting expedition.

Who came up with the term "house hunting", anyway? It almost brings to mind straggly-haired barbarians dressed in furs and carrying spears, tramping through the forest seeking to wrangle a big, hairy, scared house and subjugating it so they can camp in it (until they find a bigger or better house).

I prefer to think of it as "house-seeking". The implication is that it's almost a quest, and that you're looking for a match; a partner, if you will. I mean, you're going to be spending a fair amount of your time with your house. It's definitely worth it to seek something with which you're comfortable. It's a very personal relationship, that of you and your house.

You must ask yourself important philosopical questions while seeking. Do I like the feel of the space? Could I do the things I normally do here (cook, entertain, walk around naked without curtains, whatever), i.e. be myself? Will I have to drastically change what I own to fit the space, or worse, drastically change the space to fit what I own?

Then there's the traditional house-related questions, like 'how old is the house' and 'when was the roof last shingled' and 'does it have southern exposure', blah, blah, blah. But those are all facts that can be verified within a few minutes of speaking with the realtor. Finding out how you feel with the house takes more time. You're like strangers at first, and you have to make friends, get to know each other, learn each other's foibles... and eventually become part of the family.

I know there's lots of work involved in any case: there's the obvious painting of rooms--which is still very exciting for me because I have always lived in houses or apartments where painting wasn't permitted, and I have a trillion ideas about what colors I might pick--the possible buying of appliances, and moving your meager apartmentful of belongings into two or more floors of space and saying, "Geez, we need more stuff." But that's half the fun!

So I'm getting excited, and honestly a little bit scared, at the prospect of actually finding and buying a house, one in which we can Begin Our Life Together (never mind that we've been living together for over three years already), with our family a little bit closer than it is in Toronto. I'm looking forward to it.

Une grande visite de mon petit frère

2006-06-21T09:16:00.002-04:00

I'm so excited! My baby brother (who's 21), whom I haven't seen in about a year and a half, will be here, in my apartment, tonight!!! He's moving to Alberta to be with his girlfriend, and he's driving down with her sister, across most of Canada, to do so. He's stopping here in the big T-Dot (as one of my friends - you know who you are *wink* - likes to call it) for the night. From what I gather, they'll push on to Thunder Bay for tomorrow night, Regina the next night, I guess Edmonton or Calgary Saturday, and arrive in Cold Lake on Sunday. Funny, I thought there was another day in there somewhere. Or two. Huh.

So, naturally, my fiancé and I have been cleaning like demons since last night. I couldn't sleep and I woke up early, I'm so excited. I pretty much just have to vacuum and get some groceries.

This is gonna be great!!!!

Dahncing

2006-06-19T13:08:00.002-04:00

The big surprise was complimentary dance classes at a studio not far from our old apartment. It was very warm there (no AC, just fans), but nice and open.

Unfortunately, the instructor was kind of a bitch.

I must begin by saying that my fiancé hates to dance. Could happily live his entire life without dancing, ever. So for him to set this up for me is surely a testament to his love, right?

And an instructor who is worth her salt should surely recognize that, in a man who blushes and gets sweaty palms at the very mention of the word "dance" in the context of him enacting said verb, is probably already very nervous and doesn't need to be told, "If you don't do what I tell you, I will make your life a living hell", should she not?

Have I mentioned that it is costing us less per hour for our wedding photographer than it would cost for one 45-minute class from this studio? Being at the mercy of the hands and feet of this abrasive woman for the minimum 8 classes she suggested would not only a complete act of financial drainage, but also of deep-seated masochism.

Waiting for a surprise

2006-06-09T18:16:00.001-04:00

My fiancé has been bugging me for days, asking me if I'm working June 17th. I told him repeatedly, I don't know, the schedule's not posted yet. When I asked why, I'd get the ever-maddening, "No reason."

So this morning I called my girl at work and asked if the schedule was posted yet (which I was about to say had damn well better be posted because it starts Monday). She happily told me that I have all next weekend off.

From: Nadine Mealey
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 12:08 PM
To: Fiancé
Subject: June 17
I have the whole weekend off. Can you give me a hint?

Nadine

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Nadine
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 2:02 PM
To: Fiancé
Subject: FW: June 17

And can you buy me a steak and stuff? (This is related to the dinner party we're going to tonight.)

From: Fiancé
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 3:51 PM
To: Nadine
Subject: FW: June 17

The hint is that you won't want to be weighed down by a steak. You'll like it very much, though, don't worry. (This is him not realizing the two statements are not related.)

So of course, I start to ask him if he's taking me out of town. Out to dinner? On a helicopter ride, hence the need to shed excess baggage or food? Airplane lessons? All I can think about now is sky-related events.

Curiouser and curioser...

Bike butt

2006-06-05T18:27:00.002-04:00

My darling fiancé bought me a bike yesterday. And a matching helmet. And a lock. And a kickstand. And new brakes, but we'll be taking them back. The brakes on the bike have been adjusted so that I can actually reach them.

My butt hurts. A friend of mine says I need to re-develop Bikers Butt. I haven't riden a bike on a regular basis in over ten years. You never forget how to ride a bike, but oh, how you easily forget about the pain in your ass when you get on one again after all the snow melts.

They say that...

2006-06-03T17:08:00.001-04:00

...people who can get through making wedding invitations together will be together forever. Well, it'll be a near thing, I think.

We've, ahem, debated about the color of the invitation backing. We weighed the wording of one invitation over another, and whether we should make room at the bottom for a rubber stamp imprint.We argued about how to figure out how wide the border of the dark blue rice paper should be so that it was consistent all around. (Okay, I flipped out when my calculations wouldn't work and then yelled at him and tore up the paper I was using to calculate. And yet, we somehow arrived at the same answers. Huh.)

discipula astrologiae suum

2006-05-31T08:52:00.001-04:00

I am taking an astrology course right now. It's so much fun!!! I almost hate to say more fun than any other class I took in university. (Well, "Introduction to Ancient Egyptian" comes in at a close second.)

I'm taking the class through the Canadian Association for Astrological Education. I have my fourth class this evening, and I still haven't done my homework. Okay, okay, so some things haven't changed. ;)

Although I understand many of the mathematical priciples involved in drawing up a natal chart, it's the actual interpretation that I have difficulty with. This is what I'm learning, and it's fabulous. There are only five people in my class, so it's great that my teacher isn't swamped.

Happy place

2006-05-18T23:49:00.001-04:00

After an amazingly long and boring wait at the "RapidClinic", the doctor declared me fine. Just a headache to remind me for the next few days that I should always wear my seatbelt.

*whew* Glad that's over.

belated birthday greetings to my dear friend

2006-05-18T23:36:00.001-04:00

Well, U No Hoo, I would like to publicly and humbly offer my deepest apologies for forgetting your birthday. I really hope that you had a kick-ass time even though I, your one and only little waif, neglected to express birthday wishes on the day in question.

Here is a lovely cake for you. Make a wish! ;) Luv ya.
***i i i i
**(~ ~ ~ ~)
*(* * * * *)
(: : : : : :)

Hospitals suck.

2006-05-18T17:31:00.001-04:00

So one of my coworkers has freaked me out sufficiently to spur me to go to the hospital for a checkup. (She said her brother had been a car accident years ago and had a head injury, which only caused him problems several years after the fact, due to an incomplete checkup.)

Even though I'm convinced I'm fine, the thought and the anticipation of being in a hospital has made my belly clench with dread. I now have a small bruise on my knuckle in lieu of a scrape, and although the skin of my forehead still hurts, there is no visible bruising and a bump only detectable by touch, not by sight.

My innards are clenched very tightly. I am not in a happy place right now.

One way to get out of work

2006-05-16T15:13:00.001-04:00

So, on the one day that I don't wear my seat belt in a cab and wear mascara, I get into an accident and then cry my eyes out later. Just peachy.

Don't worry, I'm fine, everyone involved is fine - well, the drivers were angry, but unhurt - and I survived with only a scraped knuckle and a little egg on my forehead where I hit the roof. My fault for not wearing a seat belt.

It is not the cabbie's fault, I'm saying this right now. It's the fault of the f*cker driving the silver SUV that screeched in front of us from the left lane with us only about three car lengths from the stop line. The rain, the suddenness of the asshole's lane change...smashy, smashy!

Leaving the SUV with only a few little scratches and dents in about a square foot area of his bumper, and the cabbie with a smashed headlight, folded hood, and apparently some damage to the front driver's side that left him unable to open his door so that he had to crawl out of the passeger side door.

I can't help feeling like a complete idiot. I always wear my seat belt.

*sigh*

Well, that'll teach me.

Contrary to popular belief, Mercury is NOT retrograde right now...

2006-05-14T14:42:00.001-04:00

I called my maman this morning to wish her a happy Mother's Day. Good thing she asks how wedding plans are going and I reciprocate by asking her how travel plans to my wedding are coming along. She tells me how she's getting ready to book their flights and how they're hoping to leave on the 19th of September. As in leave Labrador to come to Toronto.

At which point I remind her that I'm getting married on the 17th. She argues that no, I'm getting married on the 23rd, and I say that's the date we wanted but not the date we got. Slightly panicked hysteria ensues.

Long story short, we have successfully headed off the possibility of my entire immediate family showing up two days after my wedding. *whew*

TILTSTACS, Part 3

2006-05-07T12:30:00.001-04:00

No, I can't change information for your spouse. Grow a spine and tell them to call in themselves!

Even if we did send out product samples, we can't e-mail them to you. Dumb-ass.

Why are you so freaking perfect that there is absolutely no way that you could have switched a numbered card with no name on it with your husband/wife/child/sibling/friend? No, my information is not wrong. YOU SWITCHED. THE CARD. Yes, you moron, you switched the card.
You saw one of our employees in a bar drinking and dancing and making faces? And you don't think we should have people like this in our store? Well, what were you doing at the bar?

Okay, I can't find your account under this phone number. Have you moved or changed your phone number? No? Are you sure? Alright, may I have your name then please? ...okay, I have you here with phone number 382-5968 ... so that's your old phone number is it? So you did move. Why do you think I asked you that in the first place? You clearly knew it, you recited the phone number along with me. Can't you answer a simple question?

Wonderful Day

2006-05-07T10:43:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was such a fantastic day! I woke up on my own with the sun streaming on my face (as opposed to hubby booting my lazy ass out of bed at the crack of dawn), and had a lovely breakfast with my darling man.

We went to Mark's Work Wearhouse where he bought a new pair of pants and a sweater, and I bought this flirty gypsy skirt. I've never owned such a fun garment in my life. It's black and goes to just around my knees and it flips most airily. It almost feels like a flamenco skirt or something.

The best part is, when I wear it with my pirate boots (as I am today), I feel like River Tam from Firefly, specifically in the episode "Safe", when the emotionally distraught girl hears music for the first time since her escape from the Alliance, she begins to dance. She has black boots sort of like mine, and a pretty flowing skirt (hers is pink, though). I don't know, I just feel like a gypsy; no other way to explain it.

Anyway, after breakfast hubby and I went to Loomis, this great art store, and picked out stuff with which to make wedding invitations. Then we went shopping at another store, and went to dinner where I had the heartiest vegetarian chili I've ever eaten.

We went home and watched The Replacements on TV, and later began to watch Dumb and Dumber - I had forgotten how ridiculous that movie was. In between boring parts, I tried working on the invitations. Let's just say I wasn't at my most patient and loving when trying to calculate how to properly calculate the dimensions of the multiple layers of paper we had purchased and how to center them. Oh, and ribbon tying was a complete fiasco.

All in all, though, yesterday was a fabulous day off. Hooray for free time in fabulous weather!

The joy of taxes

2006-04-28T19:06:00.001-04:00

Wow, I've never had such a non-problem filing my taxes before this year. For the first time, I have purchased income-tax software. For 2005. (And for, uh, 2004 too... But it's okay!!! They owe me!) Now I just have to wait for this 2004 return to be processed so I can continue with 2005.

In the past, nothing could transform me into a blubbering pile of jelly worse than doing my taxes. I vividly remember the year I had had three jobs, leftover tuition claims, charity receipts, investments and employment insurance claims to tabulate into what was hopefully going to be refund. (I think in the end it was even.) I wound up sitting on the futon in my voluminous bathrobe, wanting to tear all my receipts to shreds along with my hair, while I sobbed about how f*cking confusing the whole thing was and why didn't I just sell everything I had and buy a tiny island and live there Survivor-style away from the rest of the planet where taxes didn't matter. So my hubby took over for me, the darlingest sweetheart-peach-pie that ever was.

But you've gotta love QuickTax. It's so stupidly easy. No need to calculate at all. It's all done for you. I had a minor problem trying to figure out when hubby and I became common-law, but left it out in the end since we weren't common-law in 2004 anyway. Oh, and the fire alarm went off while I was on the phone with the QuickTax people, but that wasn't my fault. Damn annoying, though, when a wicked A sharp that is slightly flat is piercing your eardrums while you're talking to someone who's getting more freaked out the longer the alarm goes on and is urging me to leave the building. ( I assured her it was probably not a real fire alarm; as it turns out, the alarm went silent about two minutes after I hung up.)

Here's to wondrous tax-eriffic technology and to a refund that is going directly to a honeymoon savings fund!

Stupid water

2006-04-26T09:23:00.002-04:00

Water main break just outside our building... no water means no shower. Lucky we have an aquarium and therefore a big bucket of tap water to use. The fish can survive a few more days without a cleaning. Also lucky that there's still water in the toilet (or was when we left for work this morning), and a brand new bottle of hand sanitizer.

Current update from City of Toronto says it's going to take the better part of the day to dig up the 24" main. Radio report from this morning freaked me out by saying, "Repairs could take a long time."

Short memory

2006-04-14T12:01:00.001-04:00

It's amazing, isn't it, what short memories we have, especially when we're sick. You long for the days when you weren't [fill in the blank], and yet can barely remember what is was like to not be [whatever it was you suffered from in the previous blank].

Although I have recovered from my cough, the medications have left lasting effects on my poor body with which I will not bore you. Let's just say I'm not at my best and I don't want to talk about it.

I can't even remember what it was like to not be [my own blank - I said I wasn't going to talk about it!].

Crazy instructions

2006-04-05T17:52:00.001-04:00

My fiancé recently purchased a brand-spanking new watch that has a radio transistor that connects to the Atomic Clock In Fort Collins Somewhere In America. He delights in telling me each day at what time the watch "acquires the signal", which takes place anytime between 11PM and 4AM each morning. It will automatically update the watch if it's behind by even a few microseconds, display the date, and update for Daylight Savings. Only three buttons on the thing. Very schmancy.

It comes with a detailed instruction manual in English, French and Spanish. On page 24, it tells you you can manually adjust the date and time (presumably if you are in an area where you cannot "acquire the signal"). It also has this warning:

If you become confused and lose your way during the following procedures, simply put the watch down and do not perform any button for about three minutes. This will cause the watch to enter Timekeeping Mode (indicated by the normal one-second movement of the second hand) automatically. After that, you can try performing the manual setting procedure from the beginning.

I mean, can you get any more obvious? Of course you put the watch down. Unless you're like me and you get so frustrated you throw it across the room, but that's not going to help things, now, is it? (I didn't throw anything, by the way, I'm just saying what would have happened if I had gotten confused and frustrated.)

Got a kick out of that, thought I'd share.

P.S. Belated happy birthday to my friend who hopefully received her e-card today!

Mmm...Codeine...

2006-04-05T17:40:00.003-04:00

So I'm nicely medicated now, taking industrial-strength cough syrup that the pharmacy warns me has addictive properties. I'm on antibiotics too. I wonder how many times I've been on antibiotics in my life. I easily remember a handful of ear infections as a child, with the yummy pink or yellow creamy syrup that I almost couldn't wait to take.

I can talk properly now, with only a little hoarseness. I'm still coughing a little bit, mostly when I change position (lying down to sitting up, for example) or if I haven't had a drink in a while.

See, the thing with codeine, they tell you, is that it makes you constipated. Well, I assume it does that through ridiculously intense dehydration (which halts proper bowel function, is my guess), because I have drunk more liquid in the last two days than I think in the last week combined. I'm not a big drinker; ask any of my friends. The only thing I can usually consume in copious amounts is tonic water or grapefruit juice. But in the past 48 hours I feel like I've drunk about a million little cups of water. And lemonade. And more water. I need to bring my own mug in to work, I think. Oh, and I need to eat some lentils or something.

On the plus side, I can now kiss my wonderfully supportive fiancé without worrying that I'm going to cough in his ear or accidentally blow snot onto his neck. And I can sleep. Underrated commodity, that. Wonderful, glorious sleep.

Speechless

2006-03-31T18:49:00.001-05:00

I find myself having largely lost my voice due to my persistent cough, which, as previously mentioned, presents somewhat of a problem when working in a call centre. I have been fortunate enough to have understanding supervisors who are perfectly happy to let me respond to e-mails, instead of having me try to hit the mute button at justtherighttime when talking to someone on the phone so they don't hear my dry-but-sometimes-rattling cough.

I have a wall of phlegm in my throat that will not be melted, no matter what I drink, and will not be dislodged, no matter how much I hack or try to clear my throat. I have found a wondrous cough syrup, Neo-Citran for Cough and Flu, which is the only product I have found which lets me sleep most of the night. Like most yellow medicinal syrups, it tastes like ass, but hey, if it'll let me catch a few glorious hours of sleep like I wasn't getting earlier this week, I'll take it.

My fiancé has been wonderful throughout this mess. I came home from tutoring a friend late Tuesday night - the same friend who introduced me to the miracle medicine - and found a mound of pillows on my side of the bed (where only one lay before) so that I could sleep sitting up to help prevent more coughing. Instead of waking up about 15 times to cough or drink or blow my nose, I only woke up twice. It's been the trend for the past few days. I go to bed around 10ish and wake up with the sun.

I have told my boss I won't be in tomorrow as scheduled, because on the weekends I no longer have the luxury of working on e-mails; seeing as I can't say five words without tearing my throat apart... I'll finally be going to a doctor. Hubby has very sweetly offered to come with me.

According to Google, I apparently do not have strep throat. One of my colleagues has semi-freaked me out by implying I might have bronchitis. However, as all my congestion is in my throat and not in my chest, the sane part of me doesn't believe it. But... the part that's been sick for six days is going, "Omigod, bronchitis? I had bronchitis. When I was five. I had to stay in the hospital. In a bubble. I ate popsicles and didn't like the other food. The bathroom smelled like alcohol. I don't wanna go to the hospital again! [This last part said in a whiny, cranky, verge-of-tears way]"

La Laryngite

2006-03-28T15:23:00.001-05:00

I can't talk properly right now, which is useful in a way as it allows me to expand my writing skills during this (hopefully) short period where my voice is useless.

I have a bad cough right now that has lasted about two and a half days. As a result, I am very hoarse. When you work for a call centre, this has the potential to be a Bad Thing.

Not only am I paid to talk to people, I am also in a building which, like most office buildings, operates on 50-90% recycled air. Which means my icky cold germs are being spread around the workplace like so many dandelion seeds, and likewise those of my colleagues make their way to me now. Someone's germs are roaring in glee at the success of their propagation experiment.

On a tangential note, I find it hard to believe that the manufacturer of a cough suppressant has no information for the public to advise why people with asthma are recommened not to use the product. Just a wee bit unprofessional. Talk to my doctor? What doctor? This is Canada, we have no family doctors, ask anyone.

Crazy Harry Potter Dream

2006-03-21T09:16:00.002-05:00

Even I am astounded at how much detail I recall from this dream.

It didn't start off with Harry Potter characters. I was driving to this base or something, in a beat-up old car. Went inside this building and there were trapeze artists. No nets. My friend from work was there and we both climbed up this 15' stepladder (one of us on either side). She grabbed a trapeze that was just a bit higher than the top step you're not supposed to step on. She went first, just swinging back and forth in a lavender bathing suit she'd worn just for this event. I was embarrassed because I was just wearing jeans and my lumberjack jacket (big, baggy, and blue), blue and green stripy socks (the same ones I was actually wearing yesterday in real life). She didn't do anything fancy, just swung back and forth, but fairly high up, almost in a complete semicircle. Everyone was applauding (there was an audience somewhere but we couldn't see them); then it was my turn.

She got back on the ladder, and steadied me as I climbed up. I was afraid that the bar would be crazy smooth plastic and that my hands would be all sweaty and I would slip. I grabbed the closest end of the bar (it was blue with big red stars on it) with my left hand, then had to let go of the ladder and grab further out on the bar with my right, then shift around. No net, remember. I began to swing, and after a few moments of terror, I realized the bar, although smooth, was very cool to the touch, and I began to swing higher. I realized my jeans were too long and baggy, and kept catching on something at the front end of my swing trajectory (another trapeze?) so because they were suddenly big and baggy, I just shook my hips a bit and they fell off. The cheers swelled in my ears, and I realized I hadn't shaved my legs in weeks; I was mortified. It was finally time for me to get off the trapeze, but with no net I had to gradually slow my swing so I could grab back on to the ladder; no way was I going to try to grab onto the ladder in mid-swing. It took forever, and I could tell the audience was getting bored, and my friend was getting impatient. I finally slowed down enough that I was able to gently hook my leg around one of the ladder's legs, and my friend helped me back onto the ladder. She stood above me on the second-highest step in all her lavender-suited glory, waving and smiling to the cheers, while I stood four steps below shaking in relief and embarrassment, buttoning my jacket up and squatting as low as I could to hide my hairy legs. Suddenly the audience was gone (though I had never really seen them, just heard them). I climbed down the ladder, my friend ran ahead of me and vanished. I walked over the dirt floor to where I thought my jeans had fallen, and a tall, dour-looking man glared at me and said, "They're over there." Maybe he just pointed, I'm not sure; you know how dreams are. He somehow conveyed to me that my pants were not where I thought they were. I looked over to where he indicated and there they were. I ran over and put them on, feeling much better as I did so.

Then I'm walking around the inside of the now empty trapeze building, which has yellow walls with many doors, and a high black ceiling like a warehouse. Ginny Weasley, Ron Weasley, and other unidentifiable Harry Potter characters are there with me; I think there are five of us in total. Am I Harry? I don't know. My identity is always completely mutable in my dreams. I've been male, female, but I'm always Me, just in a different shell. I sense that I'm a male now, instead of the embarrassed female that was on the trapeze just a few minutes ago. I don't feel like Harry, though. We are looking for something, but I'm not sure what.

Then we are walking around in the crisp outdoors that looks like morning but feels like afternoon, cool like early spring but looks like early fall; all the foliage has yellow leaves. We occasionally see brown bears, and we stop talking (though I do not recall anything we ever said to each other), and sometimes hide behind rocks or in the underbrush; the underbrush smells nice and is unnaturally quiet, like it would if it had just rained and your steps would be muffled, but the air feels moderately dry and yet there is very little crunching underfoot. Sometimes we think the bears see us and we run away as quietly as possible, going in a different direction.

At one point we are escaping the bears (which always seem to be in groups of four or more), walking through the brush, and we see something on a dirt road down the hill from where we are. I think it is a car, black and curvy, like something you'd see in a 1940's movie. We all shush each other without making any sound, and make sure to stay out of sight. I know we have found what we are looking for, but I don't know or understand why we're looking for it or why we don't want the car's occupants to see us. We back away after it passes, and run across the dirt road behind us, at the top of the hill.

There is an enormous field of sunflowers, and there is a building in the distance. We know that for some reason we need to get to that building as soon as possible. We start to wade through field, which is very difficult to navigate as the sunflowers are at about armpit-height and grow very close together. All of a sudden, We look to our respective rights and see another group of people also trying to wade through the field of orange and yellow and brown. It is Future Us, our group, but from the future, and for some reason there are multiple Harry Potters; the one closest to me is Harry dressed as he was during the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament - black and red shirt, black cape with red lettering. He has his wand in his hand but doesn't use it to magically clear a path or blast me out of the way.

The sunflowers are thick, and it is impossible to run in the field; I think for a moment about trying to get down and crawl but the stems too thick. I see the Harry Potter closest to me beating us to the yellow building. The dour-looking man from the trapeze building is there, holding us back at gunpoint, while he lets the others in through a lone green door; the door has no handle. The Harry who was closest to me looks somewhat regretful that we have to be held back at gunpoint, but doesn't say anything. The Dour man slinks into the building, and the door shuts.

We rush to the door, which has closed, and somehow, quickly, we pry it open. We enter the building but they're already gone; the building feels eerily empty. There are many metal doors painted dark green, and they have flaps where we assume food is slipped through, like in a prison. The glasses I am wearing making it hard to see through the cat-flap, blurry, but I don't take the glasses off (wrong prescription maybe? Harry's instead of mine?). We move through the cool concrete corridor, and all the rooms are empty except one. We find one room with many bears in it, many of them standing up like people. We avoid the door, though the bears look at us through the bars. No physical menace, they're quiet, but just the implication of potential violence makes us nervous. All the walls and doors are either dark green or dark grey. It feels like dead ends are everywhere, but we must find Future Us.

We walk out into stark outdoor courtyard which feels enclosed but somehow isn't. Concrete pillars, metal picnic tables, white roof. White partitions. Very cold.

Suddenly we are in a clearing; there are many tall trees with leaves only at the very top, which block much of the sunlight with their canopy; what little sunlight there is shows a winding country dirt road and an old house in the distance, also covered by the thick canopy. We are standing next to a beat-up old car - maybe the same one I drove in the beginning, I'm not sure. We are looking at reflections in driver's side windows. (I realize now the reflections shouldn't have been so clear, since sun was about thirty degrees to the right of us, early morning.) I, ever the mutable one, am reflecting a male adult (James Potter? Nervous driving instructor?). I'm tall, messy brown hair, glasses, brown pants with suspenders, blue shirt, grey/brown sweater.) To my right, Harry from book five (who I guess was with me before) reflects Harry from Book 4 with movie Triwizard garb. To his right, Harry from Book 6 reflects Harry from Book 5 (but dressed like Harry from the movie of book 3). Neville reflects Ron, which I know doesn't make sense because Ron was with us, not Neville. Finally at the end, Ginny is reflecting an older Harry, who has a thin mustache and no glasses, wearing a grey hoodie sweater. Looks like a lazy teenager. We laugh at her when we realize who she is now. Then we realize the real Neville is in the car waiting for his first driving lesson, but for some reason can only see me, tall professorial male, laughing at the car window.

I get in the car, and realize I don't know how to drive (and in real life I really don't know how), but must somehow perpetuate the idea that I can and demonstrate it to Neville. I can't find keys, there's just this strange little worn-out button where the ignition should be, and I start the car. In short, I drive like a maniac - I always do in my dreams - and I drive down this country road that I know now to be the same country road I've driven in other dreams (though I don't recall this at the time). It stops being a first person and I see it from the outside. I see the car driving away, and then from another angle I see the car crash through fences, smash through sheds, bump over rocks, etc.

The dream sort of fades off at this point. I think the car eventually stopped and Neville and I stumbled out, completely disoriented. Then I woke up.

Sweet, sweet sleep

2006-03-18T13:05:00.001-05:00

I have learned the hard way in the past two weeks that I become a cranky bitch when I don't get enough sleep. I miss it. A lot.

I've been working 8-4 shifts for the past four weeks. Not only am I switching to 12-8 shifts for the next two weeks (before going right back to 8-4 for another two), I am working BOTH days this weekend due to forced overtime, which is only legal because apparently during my job interview three years ago they asked me if I could work overtime as necessary and I said yes.

Mr. Garrison, of South Park, once said, "I don't trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn't die." Well, I'm exhausted from two weeks of 5-6 hours of sleep per night instead of my usual 8-9, weak from blood loss, and someone has heated up what smells like a big hearty can of Campbell's Beef Soup and the smell is making my mouth water. Well, it would water if I wasn't so dehydrated.

I am not in a good mood.

I love Katamari

2006-03-13T11:53:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine came to visit this weekend, and he got me hooked on this PS2 game, Katamari Damacy. Your father, the King of the Cosmos, has a bad experience with Ecstasy (that's what it sounds like when he describes it, anyway) and knocks all the stars out of the sky. You, the little Prince, must create new ones with your katamari, which is a big sticky ball that you roll around. You start off very small, picking up pushpins, matches, and caramels, and slowly get bigger and bigger, eventually picking up things like cars, people, animals and trees. The bigger you make your katamari in the time limit subscribed, the happier the King becomes. Each level is the same map, just at a different scale: First a room, then two, then the whole house, then the house and the yard, then the neighborhood, then the city. Then the world!!!!!

Very addictive. Naturally, the music sticks in your head worse than a telephone pole to the katamari. Luckily, there is a cure. ;-)

Le Bigliete della Cinema Sola

2006-03-04T20:33:00.001-05:00

I don't know about you, but I always watch a movie with someone. At the theater, I mean; watching a movie on TV is different. I haven't been to a movie by myself in years. Actually, I think it was six or seven years ago, when I was in university, and I made a day and half of it of it: I watched The Matrix, La Vita E Bella, and Shrek. (I think it was Shrek, though maybe it was another kids' movie. I'll have to check my ticket stubs.) (Yes, I keep my ticket stubs. I have for the last 12 years. Doesn't everybody?)

I always seem to feel more...empty, I guess, when I go to the theatre alone. I like to be absorbed by the movie, but I also like to hear and watch the reactions of the people around me. Is it an anthropological desire to study human behaviour? Is it more an issue of behavioural acceptance, where I watch other people so that I know how to react myself? I don't know.

I see previews for so many movies (which I painstakingly write on the back of each ticket stub). More often than not, they are not movies I would really like to see. I abhor horror (no Saw II or House of Wax for me, thank you very much), and mysteries are not usually my cup of tea. I like science fiction (like Serenity or Star Trek), I like romance (like The Notebook or The Princess Bride), I like intelligent comedies (The Aristocrats comes to mind). I also like some alternative/indie movies, like Run Lola Run (aka Lola Rennt), and Strictly Ballroom.

Below is a shortlist of movies I would really like to see, but that have a low probability rate of being seen by me, either because the people I know don't want to watch them, or because they've already seen them and don't feel like watching them again. Does this make me sound like a pussy?

- Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger being a fabulous(ly gorgeous) actor is the main reason I want to see this movie - plus Jake Gyllenhal doesn't really do it for me)
- Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron, but all the guys I know are horrified at the warping of the classic comic, even though Theron is a goddess)
- Casanova (again, Heath Ledger being devastatingly romantic, but less tragic this time)
- Eve and the Fire Horse (I like movies where religion is challenged, like Stigmata and Dogma)
- Nanny McPhee (I also like movies where kids are made to realize what terrors they are and smarten up)

Then there are the movies that I have watched on my own, like...

- The Notebook (good thing I didn't watch it in the theater because I sobbed throughout the whole last half of the movie, which would have scared everyone)
- I, Robot (my fiancé hates seeing any movie with Will Smith in it, because at some point, the phrase, "Aw, hell no!" will come out of Will's mouth)

Last and definitely least, The Chronicles of Narnia. This is a movie I will not watch, simply on principle. I read the entire story only a few years ago, while working in a library; I checked out this beautiful hardcover edition with all six (seven?) stories in it, color illustrations, glossy paper. And then I read the end. "The Last Battle". Lewis used a classic literary cop-out (which I will not elaborate on just in case someone wants to read the story eventually) which pissed me off royally. You might argue that hey, it was written fifty years ago, so maybe he was the one who made that type of "ending" classic, but it still pisses me off. I know it's probably a beautiful movie, but I can't bring myself to watch it, knowing how the story ends.

Social Leprosy

2006-03-04T20:23:00.001-05:00

It's weird, isn't it, how hard we try to isolate ourselves. I realized this a few days ago, as I got off the bus with a few other people and ran ahead a few meters, so I wouldn't feel the discomfort of walking with other people and not be a part of them. I see them, but we are not a part of each other's lives, not really. And I, like many people, will probably try hard to keep it that way.

I was at a mall the other day with my fiancé, in the food court. Before even getting our food, we saw that there was nowhere to sit. My fiancé hates crowds, and looked at me beseechingly. "Are you sure you can't wait to eat?" I plowed on steadfastly to Subway while he got some barbecued thing.

We looked around, and miraculously saw a little table for two just on the other side of the section in which we were standing. We walked as quickly as we could with our trays, each going around in a separate direction, and I got to the table just as this older woman sat down. My fiancé looked at her pointedly while she studiously avoided his gaze, then looked at me standing about ten feet behind her. He walked over to me and in a low voice swore he was going to launch his tray over the railing onto the escalator below. Like I said, he hates crowds.

I ignored him, and after a few harrowing minutes we saw another table, wedged between two others. We squeezed ourselves in and, disconcertingly, both sets of people on either side of us gave us disgusted looks, as if to say how dare we invade the empty chairs between them.

We began to eat in silence, giving each other significant Looks indicating we should eat quickly to get out of this animal madhouse. About two minutes into our meal the woman to his left said to her two companions, "Let's move this table." They partially stood up and moved the table about six inches away. I glanced to my left at the two surly teenaged girls on our other side, who kept sneaking looks at us as if mortified to be sitting next to two people wearing winter coats and not talking. I think they were upset because I noticed a minute or two later that the table at which we were sitting was connected to theirs, so there was no chance of them moving away.

After finishing our hasty meals, we pushed our chairs back - inadvertently making lots of noise, and once again both sets of eaters glared at us - and walked away. While dumping our garbage, I asked him, "Okay, was it just me, or did you feel like a complete leper too?" He gave me another Look and we hustled out of the feeding trough.

What is it now about this city that you feel like you're doing something wrong when you are just sitting down to eat?

Ugh, Ugg! (and Other Fashion Crimes)

2006-03-04T18:52:00.001-05:00

I must say that the most ridiculous thing I've seen today was on TV about an hour ago. A high-end fashion show, Chloe Spring/Summer 2006, featuring maternity wear. Worn on girls six feet tall with no breasts and certainly no buns in their respective ovens (or even on their back ends, for that matter).

Maternity wear. On painfully skinny, non-pregnant women. In case you can't tell, I'm shaking my head in disbelief.

True to my astrological sign, I am a tremendously picky Virgo, and my choices of clothing and footwear are no exception. I detest shopping, because everything I like either doesn't actually look good on me, is too long (i.e. pants) or too narrow (i.e shoulder breadth in shirts), or is very complicated to size (bras).

I went shopping for a bra yesterday, and if the so-called "over bust - (underbust + five inches) = cup size" formula was accurate, then I wouldn't need a bra. Because, boys and girls, 36 - 36 = nothing, and last time I checked I did indeed have boobs needing support. Plus, for reasons of comfort and health I do not wear underwire brassieres, which makes it that much more difficult to find something that fits properly. Sure, I could mould my chest into two perfect hemispheres within a stiff wire and fake lace cage, but can you run in that? I don't think so. Wires poking you in the armpits do not make one feel very sexy.

Being five foot two, I am largely required to shop for bottoms in the petites section. One thing that really galls me is the price of "petite" clothing. In many stores, it is substantially higher than in a regularly-sized section. Given that much less fabric is being used, you'd think the opposite would be true, but then I'm sure you'd get the "I'm being penalized for being bigger than five foot four" lecture from the Amazon camp and anarchy would ensue. *sigh* So I try to avoid the petites section, find I pair I like while ignoring the number on the tag, and pin up the extra six to eight inches they've added to the leg until I can get it hemmed.

Shirts are another pet peeve of mine. I am short. But I have broad shoulders for my size. In order to accomodate my shoulders and prevent the shoulder seam from starting at my collarbone, I need to buy larger shirt sizes. However, 90% of the time this translates into a longer torso which will reach to my hips, very long sleeves that reach to or past the ends of my fingers, and not much difference in shoulder breadth. As a result I tend to opt for tank tops (which I'm not permitted to wear at work anyway) or stretch v-neck t-shirts (which I can get away with at work). Oh, and always solid colors, no patterns, unless they are almost indetectable.

Finally, shoes. I almost want to start a new post just about this.

I love shoes. Men reading this are saying, 'yeah, what woman doesn't,' and looking pointedly at their hall closet where their lady friend's footwear has taken over all available space. I can honestly say I have only six pairs of footwear: one pair of sneakers (white), one pair of highheeled mules (black), one pair of high heels which have only been worn once (deep red to match the dress I bought them for), one pair of tough winter boots (black), one pair high-heeled calf-height leather boots (black), and my most recent purchase...

...my Pirate Boots. Black suede, mid-calf height, black flat-soled Airwalk boots with straps and buckles. I feel like a pirate when I wear them. Arrr! The best thing is, I can run in them. I'm not a runner, but if I have to boot it (no pun nintended), I don't like to be paralysed by the possibility of my shoes falling off or causing me to break my neck.

I look at every woman's shoes, and am mentally very critical of some footwear creations. One brand that I love to hate is Ugg. I hate the rounded toe, I hate the way you're supposed to half-stuff your jeans into the leg, I hate that weird seam that goes over the rise of your foot, and I hate the way they look like sixties space boots. Ugh. The part that kills me: they'd probably fit me better than most boots, because I have cursèd wide French peasant feet. Oh, and long toes. One of my friends once said I have gorilla toes. I prefer to think of them as elegant.

Comfort is a big factor for me in footwear, and it's always a challenge to find that. With today's kitten heels and pointed toes being all the rage I'm surprised it hasn't become fashionable to have bunion surgery instead of a facelift.

"Oh, Diane, your feet look wonderful. Did you get some work done? [this is always said coyly]"
"Thank you, Bernie, but don't tell anyone. You wouldn't believe what an artist this man is with a scalpel and a saw!"

The miracle of "Tom's Diner"

2006-02-22T14:45:00.003-05:00

Ever get a song stuck in your head? I often do.

It's always worse when you don't know all the words, and the same four lines just play ad infinitum in your brain, taking over all adspace and causing you to sit virtually motionless at your computer while you mentally sing the song yourself, trying in vain to reach past the end of the last sentence you know and reach into the rest of the song. Sometimes there's mental video accompaniment, and it's even more maddening watching the singer's lips move and you can't remember what they're supposed to be singing.

But there is a cure. The cure is "Tom's Diner".

For those of you who prefer to forget the eighties, "Tom's Diner" is a song by Suzanne Vega. You know, the "Doo doo doo doo, doo da-doo doo" song. You don't need to know any of the lyrics, just sing the catchy chorus.

I discovered in university that when I sing this song, the song I have in my head magically disappears, and I don't even get this replacement song stuck in my head. It's the 'Getting a Song Out of Your Head' Song. Try it. It really works!

Things I'd love to say to a customer someday, Part 2

2006-02-21T10:19:00.001-05:00

Yes, we're absolutely going to change this policy right away. Just. For. You.

Of course I need your damned account number. Why didn't you look for it during the 15-minute wait that you've whined about so much?

No, I'm not going to compensate you for the gas you wasted going back to the store. You have not called a gas station.

If today you got the biggest shock of your life because of this change in procedure, then I'm afraid for you; if something really big happens, you're going to fall apart!

No, sir, we can change our program legally without notification because it is in our Terms & Conditions. No, it is not the same as deliberately hitting someone when they are jaywalking. (Note: The customer said that if he takes this to court, even though it's in the rules, it won't stand up. Just like you can't hit someone when they are jaywalking even though what they're doing is illegal. Yeah, doesn’t really make sense, does it?)

I'm sorry, you think waiting seven whole minutes is a long time to wait for your photos? I could understand if your photos had been lost for three months and were suddenly recovered and when you finally went to the store to pick them up there was a little mild hysteria because someone had put them in the manager's office as a precaution instead of in the drawer; then seven minutes might be a little maddening. But that's not what happened. Hell, some people's photos are never recovered. Count yourself lucky.

On a similar note, do you think that if you e-mail us several times over the space of a few days we're going to respond to your first e-mail any faster? We're a nation-wide company, we get literally hundreds of e-mails a day. Hold your frigging horses.

Okay, so you had a problem with one of our stores, is that right? How bad was it? I mean, on a scale of one-to-ten, ten being really bad, how bad was it? No, I don't really need to know what happened, I just need a number. Nine, huh, that's pretty bad, I guess. So what's your address? No, I don't need your name, I just want to send you a gift card. How much? Well, you said your problem was a Nine so, let's see...multiply by...and carry the...um, a million dollars, is that okay with you?

Vote for Pink

2006-02-18T13:42:00.001-05:00

I love Pink. She is such a bitchin' singer. Amazing body, amazing voice, and I don't know if she writes her own songs but, great lyrics.

I just yesterday saw the video for "Stupid Girl", and it was hilarious. She makes fun of Jessica Simpson, Loni Anderson, Paris Hilton, I think Lindsey Lohan (in the vomiting scene, which is pretty gross), someone from Nip/Tuck, and the chick from Black Eyed Peas. I don't know if the girl on the treadmill is supposed to be "someone", or the bowling chick either. Oh, and Britany Murphy's in there too, slamming into doors and buying chihuahuas and hitting people with her car.

I especially like the Jessica Simpson car-washing scene where she falls off the car while trying to look "sexy". And the scene where she asking where are the girls who want to be president; she looks so put-together and professional, hell, I'd vote for her. Vote for Pink!!!

Colorblind

2006-02-16T17:26:00.001-05:00

My fiancé made fun of me when we went to the art store the other day to look at invitation-making materials, because I tried to show him what color the dress is .

"It's sort of this color." I'm pointing to a sheet of fine art paper. It's sort of a beige-y color with golden tones.
He looks at it. "Oh. That's nice. It's not white, though."
"No, I told you it's not white, it's like a champagne color. Well, actually, " I pause and look at another sheet nearby, "It's more like this color, only lighter."
"Okay."
Then I point to a ribbon holding up the sign that says, 'DO NOT TOUCH THE PAPER. PLEASE ASK FOR ASSISTANCE.' "It's actually more like this color, only not as bright."
He looks scandalized. "It's yellow?"
"No, it's like a golden color. It's paler than this, has more brown tone in it."
He stops and looks at me. "You don't really know what color it is, do you?"
I look at the floor. "No."