Trying to Trot to Tadbury

2008-07-12T19:37:00.004-04:00

CAT WOMEN

I was once told by a guy I was dating that the really interesting girls like cats. I’m definitely a dog person. But anyway, even though the guy who told me this wasn’t exactly Mr. Fascinating himself, as I’d always fancied myself to be at least a moderately interesting woman, I was bothered by his comment. Mostly because I felt that he was implying that I was uninteresting.

Actually, since he made that comment, I found that I was constantly stopping myself in the middle of my recounting of personal anecdotes. I became self-conscious that I was boring the listener. Inevitably when I would comment about how this story must be a bit boring and sorry for going on for so long, the listener would take great pains to assure me that, no, they were really interested and to please keep going. But by then the momentum was lost and who are we kidding, no story about laundry mishaps can really be that interesting anyway. So it was really like a curse. I became the girl who stopped short of the punch line. Which, if there never is a punch line, means that you tell pretty dull stories.

I stopped getting invitations to parties. I found myself sitting at home alone every night - paralyzed by a combination of social phobia and extreme unpopularity. I had no energy. I thought about putting a profile online to try to get a date, but felt like it was too big of an effort.

One Sunday afternoon I was lying in bed and got a call from my mother who was concerned about me and told me I couldn’t stay all alone like that in my apartment anymore and that I was only twenty-seven and that I should be out there meeting people and having fun. She said she was coming over with a surprise.

The surprise was Yoni the cat. Yoni had come from the Orthodox Jewish family who lived beside my mother and who was making Aliyah and couldn’t take Yoni with. My mother told me that Yoni needed very little care and that I just needed to feed him once a day, change his water and scoop the cat litter whenever it became smelly.

Yoni liked twist ties. It was kind of crazy how he could spend the whole day batting around a stupid twist tie and never get bored. I brought some twist ties into my bedroom and put them on the floor beside my bed so that I could watch him bat them around while I was lying down. At some point I got the idea that maybe Yoni would like to play with some string, so I found a ball of yarn and watched as Yoni played with it and nearly got himself completely wound up in a mess of blue yarn. Yoni also loved to play with boxes. One time he got his head stuck in one of my Lean Cuisine frozen TV meal boxes and he looked so funny wandering around the kitchen and bumping into things. But most of the time, Yoni just wandered around the apartment or gazed out the window thinking his own cat thoughts.

This is what I tell Mark, who is sitting across from me at the coffee shop. U of T law grad. Setup by my mother.

"Wow," breathed Mark. "Cats are such interesting and mysterious animals."

He said this while looking deep into my eyes, as though he was trying to unlock a door into my soul.

2007-07-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

I remember the first time we tried to do it. I say "tried," of course, because it didn’t work . You were way too nervous.

But after that, you lay behind me and kept your hand on my back until I fell asleep. Well, at least you thought I was asleep. I couldn’t actually fall asleep but I pretended because I knew you were a romantic and liked the idea of me falling asleep in that way.

I read about this study where scientists found that babies who do not receive touch and affection stop growing. The theory is that touch signals to babies that they are being well taken care of, so they can invest energy in growth (thus increasing their energy intake requirements) because their future food/energy needs will be met.

But lying there I thought that this really just illustrated the broader phenomenon of all humans needing touch. Before that warm afternoon, I’d felt a bit like an energy-conserving shell myself.

There was also something about the fact that I lay with my back to you. You could have done anything to me- cut off all my hair, stabbed me in the back with a big knife, or stolen my clothes and run out the door. But I knew that you wouldn’t. I totally trusted you.

But you never let me lie like that with my hand on your back.

You said it was because you had bad back acne and you were too embarrassed. But I wouldn’t have been disgusted. And the fact that you never let me made me feel like you didn’t trust me. I still think you didn’t.

I don’t really think about this moment all that often. And I’m definitely not one of those visualizing ‘breathe and go to your happy back rubbing place’ kind of people either. But just the same, when I think about heaven I imagine it as a place where it is always a lazy Sunday afternoon, and we are all lying on a giant plush bed, dozing in an endless chain, hand-to-back, with the smell of fresh coffee wafting up through the clouds.

2007-05-01T07:32:00.000-04:00

April Challenge -

I can't believe April has come and gone and I have not managed to write a single thing about time. I took a quick look at my archived posts and realized that I actually seem to be obsessed with the topic. It is not that I don't have lots to say about time - I have just run out of it. In a very lame way I suppose this is my post. May will be better.

2007-03-20T15:57:00.000-04:00

Here is my March Writing Challenge Post.

MISSING RESEARCHER FOUND BY GAZEBO IN CITY PARK

OTTAWA - According to witnesses, Dr. P.K. Langa was picked up by police at the city park late this afternoon. He was found wandering in circles around and around the gazebo. Dr. Langa had been reported missing by his wife late yesterday afternoon.

"Yo, it was like the dude was short-circuiting or something," said Ted who apparently noticed the scientist while passing by the gazebo on the way to the skate park. "Yeah, it was like the lights were on but nobody was home, if you know what I mean. He just had this totally trippy look on his face."

Indeed, this accords with many reports from those who interacted with Dr. Langa during the last few days of his decline, prior to his disappearance. Some described his look as "glazed," "blank," or "other-worldly."

Dr. Floban, a rival Bio-Computoficiency Investigator in the Milton Research Institute, was less than sympathetic towards Dr. Langa.

"Dr. Langa was never one who could accept his failures. Plus he was lazy. He simply didn’t take the time to work out the glitches and safeguards in his Compu-Life™ System," said Dr. Floban.

Lily Ambrose, a graduate student in Dr. Langa’s laboratory, who is currently testing the Biocompu-Lumination™ System (a system in which a micro probe in the computer-user’s arm senses levels of melatonin and vitamin D in the body and regulates the office halogen lights according to bio-need) still speaks with pride about her boss’ invention.

"The Compu-Life™ System is really an invention whose time has come," she said. "We’re talking the latest in fully-integrated, computolife real-time synchronicity, plus biofeedback monitoring. It’s beautiful," she said glancing at the photo of Dr. Langa that appeared as the screen saver on her desktop computer. In the photo, Dr. Langa is wearing a white lab coat and holding a giant clock in one hand and giving a big ‘thumbs up’ with the other.

From the preliminary reports of Dr. P.K. Langa that were submitted to the Ethics Board, and obtained by reporters through the Freedom of Information Act, we are able to gain some insight into the functionality of the invention. In general terms, by monitoring all aspects of the user’s life in real time, the computer does instantaneous calibrations and spits out time-minimizing and efficiency-enhancing instructions for the user.

The System requires the user to wear an armband at all times. The device has a voice-activated display that connects wirelessly back to the main central computer. It also requires the wearing of a tiny camera that takes real-time video of everything seen by the user as well as Compu-Pit Pads™ - thermal monitors that are worn under the arm pits that detect the user’s pulse, scent, and temperature. This device had been validated as an excellent proxy for physio-chemical states key to human decision making. The main computo-output interface is through a simple earpiece that the user keeps in his or her ear at all times. The computer has a synthesized voice, used to communicate the instructions.

In terms of daily use, every morning, before the user leaves his or her home, the user would program in their approximate schedule for the day. The computer would then monitor the user's life events as they unfolded.

For example, the computer would know about a scheduled 9 a.m. meeting- and using fairly standard optical-GPS technology, could detect if the user was running late. If such was the case, the computer would send directions to the user’s remote earpiece that would guide the user to take the best alternative route.

"But," Lily said, "the real advantage of the Compu-Life™ System is the fact that the computer integrates so much information that it is able to perform much more nuanced decision-making functions."

As one example, Lily described the advantages of the system’s face- and voice-recognition software. Using this technology, the camera monitors the user’s interactions with others throughout the day and can assess characteristics such as the sincerity of the person with whom the user is interacting. Based on the facial-voice analysis, the system would analyse any decisions that were to be made based on the interaction and provide the user with the best statistical course of action. As a trivial example, Dr. Langa, who hated to be ‘taken for a ride’ apparently used the system to buy a used car at a good price.

"It’s true," said Lily, "the earpiece kept barking ‘don't accept, don't accept’ after each offer until the system recognized that the salesperson truly had no ability or intention of being talked down any further."

It appears from the records that the Ethics Board refused Dr. Langa’s application to conduct full-scale experimentation of the Compu-Life™ System on user subjects. The consequences of such a refusal meant that Dr. Langa would have to go back to the laboratory to do many time-consuming refinements in the technology and protocol before he would be allowed to proceed to market. In reality, experts say, this refinement process could have taken years.

"The problem," said Dr. Floban, "was that the Compu-Life™ System had no override. The dangers of such a deficiency would have been obvious to any reviewers."

In general terms, what this meant was that in any given decision-making situation, efficiency analysis would be simultaneously performed and commands would be sent to the user’s ear piece. As a result, the user would be met with a constant barrage of instructions.

"One couldn't, for example, just decide to turn the System off for dinner with the wife and kids," said Dr. Floban.

This, of course, was both the genius and the danger of the Compu-Life™ System. The ability to perform accurate statistical life-analysis is dependent on the fullest integration of all aspects of one’s life. On a more metaphysical level, the idea was that trivial comments or commitments made at dinner with the wife and kids, could significantly and unpredictably affect the decision-making nexus at the next day’s business meeting. Full compliance, i.e., wearing the device at all times, is essential to the accuracy of the System's outputs.

"This is really the first time that such an attempt has been made to capture the nearly infinite factors that affect the course of one’s life," said Lily.

Dr. Langa’s wife was interviewed in their suburban home.

"He was just so damned determined. He became totally obsessed with proving that his Compu-Life™ System could make life better and more efficient. After the Ethics Board rejection, he insisted on wearing that armband, camera, and earpiece 24-7. I, for one, was never comfortable with it. Especially where it intruded into, um, private matters," she said, lowering her voice.

Of course, being fully integrated, physical decisions of all kinds, including those made in the bedroom, were also the subject of Compu-Life™ System directions.

Dr. Fanny Bubs, a prominent psychologist at the South Beach Institute was able to provide an explanation for what had befallen Dr. Langa.

"It is classic psycho-physio detachment," she said. "Prisoners and those subject to extreme authoritarian control have displayed similar characteristics in the past. This is where subjects alienate their own decision-making power and invest it totally in another human being. But in the case of Dr. Langa, of course, he has simply invested it in the Compu-Life™ System."

"All day that stupid thing was shouting instructions in my dad’s ear," said Billy, who was interviewed while chewing gummy Coke bottles in front of the Max Milk store. "If dad didn’t agree with the instructions, the computer would just keep repeating them over and over. I saw my dad have ugly panic attacks those times he disagreed with the computer. I think he eventually just kinda decided it was easier to do what Compu-Life™ said. I know he didn’t want this to happen. He was too stubborn to take that darn device off. It would have been like giving up on his dream."

Dr. Bubs was less certain about the possible treatments for Dr. Langa. "How can you re-invest in someone their own free will?" she asked rhetorically. "Anything we do for him will necessarily be a kind of reprogramming. We may have to accept that the former Dr. Langa may never truly return."

Tonight at 7 p.m., a vigil is being held in front of the King Street Psychological Hospital, where Dr. Langa is currently undergoing observation. Speakers will pay tribute to Dr. Langa’s many innovations and Reverend Burns will lead prayers for his speedy recovery.

Those who wish to contribute to Dr. Langa’s Recovery Fund can do so through Dr. Langa’s homepage: www.promiseofefficiency.com.

2007-02-25T21:18:00.000-05:00

Stitch n' Bitch

My new favourite thing to do is to buy old sweaters and t-shirts from Value Village and refurbish them. This sweater was my first project. Unfortunately the photo doesn't really show the best part - i.e. the sweater flower that I used to cleverly cover up a big whole/scissor mishap. More to come...

2007-01-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

I thought I was just incredibly vitamin D deprived.

Let me explain.

I work in a space called the Top Secret (TS) Room.

To get to the TS room, I use my key to unlock the door to one windowless closet-like room. Then, I walk to the back of this room where I use my key to unlock the door to the TS room - another windowless closet-like and radiation-proof space.

In the TS room I sit and work on a laptop that has been specially built so that no electromagnetic waves escape. No secrets radiate out of the TS room.

And no natural light gets in.

For the months of November and December, I sat, often alone, in the TS room and worked. And that was all I did.

Mid-December rolled around and I sat in the TS room and missed my friend’s Chanukah party. He was planning a group candle lighting – something I look forward to every year.

When I was younger, my mom wouldn’t let us go to sleep with the Chanukah candles still lit. “Big fire hazard,” she’d say.

So I’d stay up with my family until the candles burnt themselves out. I have memories of the very specific warm light that would fill the kitchen, emanating from just above the microwave where the menorah sat.

But this year there were no candles.

I celebrate the winter solstice every year in Toronto’s Kensington Market. There they hold an annual parade where the street is shut down and everyone carries paper lanterns of all different shapes, sizes, and colours.

My favourite are the big dragon lanterns that make coloured patterns on the faces of the lantern holders.

But despite the passing of the solstice, the length of my days and nights stayed the same.

Finally, I emerged from the TS room – sometime just before the new year – feeling weak and very ill at ease.

I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the sun. It was about 8 in the morning on a Sunday. I bought a coffee and began what I'd decided was to be my restorative walk.

I started my day by walking east. I walked in the direction of the light. Sometime later, the sun was overhead and then, soon after, it was in the west.

I turned around and walked back home.

The next morning I studied my face in the mirror. It looked slightly less sallow. But I still felt out of balance.

I thought that maybe my steady diet of coffee, chocolate pecan squares (from Bridgehead), and cereal might have left me lacking in one or two vital minerals.

I went to the grocery store and bought some organic vegetables, lentils, and spices. I also bought some pomegranate juice. (Incidentally, does anyone know how pomegranates so suddenly became the new “it” fruit? Is there some powerful pomegranate marketing board that was recently formed? Seems everyone is pushing them these days. I, personally, don’t get what all the fuss is about.)

That night, I ate a giant nourishing meal.

The next morning I woke up and took stock. My energy levels felt a bit higher. My face was definitely starting to have a bit of colour.

But still, I felt decidedly ‘off.’

Last Sunday I arrived in Vancouver very late at night. I’m here for work.

Yesterday, still not adjusted to the time change, I woke up at around 5:30 a.m., local time.

The sun had not yet risen and the coffee shop had not yet opened. I brought my laptop into bed with me so I could check my emails.

The electric cord not being long enough to reach, the screen gave off only a dim battery-powered glow.

But then something remarkable happened. A message was sent from many provinces away. It traveled through space encoded in bits of zeroes and ones and landed on my screen –

Cordlessly, Wirelessly.

And then I realized what had happened – I’d come unplugged.

I had that afternoon off. I called my best friend and caught up on our news. I made plans to see family. I went to the coffee shop and chatted with the man beside me who was reading the paper.

I started writing.

This morning, again, I took stock. And I feel more like Myself.

This year, I’m making an effort to get my vitamins, buy halogen lamps for the office, and take regular walks in the sun.

But more importantly, I want to keep control of what is important- my personal (and virtual) connections to myself and others.

And that may be the first real illumination I’ve experienced in the last two months.

Thanks.

2006-12-14T00:44:00.000-05:00

This isn't a real post. It is a guilt post. One of those I have not posted in a million years and feel like I'm neglecting all things important to me post. I do that with people too, I'm ashamed to say. I realize late at night that I have not made contact with friend X in a very long time and then I send a rambling place holder of an email that merits no response but is really just meant to be an "I'm thinking about you and feel guilty that I'm such a poor friend" contact. This is also a please-don't-cancel-my-blogpage Blogger post. I'm not sure if they do that with blogs - shut them down for disuse, that is. They do that with hotmail. When I forget to check my hotmail account for 30 days they shut it down. Well, I can re-activate it but then all the emails that were there before are lost. Maybe They are less likely to shut abandoned websites down these days because it seems that space is no longer at a premium on the net. Yahoo not too long ago gave me approximately a zillion times more space than I used to have. How is it that space keeps expanding when the junk (not unlike this semi-random splat of words) keeps being added? Perhaps They keep finding ways to scrunch these little bits of data into smaller bits? Did you know that if you roll your clothes you can fit a ton of extra stuff in your suitcase AND the clothing does not wrinkle. It is true. And that is because the clothing rolls fit super tightly together. I'm sure it must be the same with the internet.

Alright. I think I've made my point.

2006-10-08T09:49:00.000-04:00

Incredible how this smell of “clean” now pierces my nostrils and makes me want to retch.

I run my fingers over the delicate lace border my wife had so painstakingly sewed onto the main square of fabric. Often she would practice her craft in front of the television during “prime time” - especially during the Thursday night sitcom mega-lineup. She was somewhat philosophical about her handkerchiefs; she said intense concentration was the enemy of truly inspired work. Perfect stitch work was done while properly half-distracted during episodes of “The Jeffersons” or “All in the Family”. Something about canned laughter reached deep into her soul to unlock her vast stores of creativity.

Now, this hulk of a woman before me, unapologetic, offers to clean my next item for free. As if I would let her callous, bulbous fingers touch anything I cared about. Can she not see that each careless bleach hole has left a corresponding void in my heart?

I squint my eyes - the dim fluorescent lighting is no friend to us sufferers of farsightedness. I pick up the cloth and am thankful that I can still make out the tiny but discernible dot of black ink on one of the corners.

This indelible ink dot was my wife’s trademark. For the untrained eye- her work is perfectly symmetrical on all planes. Each corner has the same embroidered rose, each side the same 32 equally spaced stitches, each edge the same quantity of lace.

But true symmetry was unsettling for my wife.

“Nothing in nature is that perfect,” she would say, “to try to emulate perfection is ungodly.”

And so for every work she did, she would place a single black ink dot in one corner that would offset the symmetry- but would restore balance to her little world.

That she learned the craft of needlework from the nuns likely contributed to the deeply religious overtone that her handkerchiefs took on. When she would kneel beside the bed for her prayers (before her knees gave out from years of speed walking in old penny loafers) she would often hold one of her handkerchiefs with her hands and methodically run her fingers along the border stitches - as if she was counting her rosary beads.

The monster before me now offers me two free dry cleaning services. Her eyes are pleading and bewildered. Every inch of her body seems to scream, “what’s the big deal, it’s only a cloth.”

But I can tell by looking at her that her inner machinery is just not put together to comprehend such things. Stains, she understands. Ironing, she gets. Fabric softener, she remembers. But love? Love she knows not.

I can’t help but sense that what has come to pass is the will of my wife – still making her points from beyond the grave. I see her hand reaching up out of the ground, finger pointed, wagging, and her ghost is mouthing the words “see- why can’t you just let things *be* Richard?”

She is right.

Had I not been so pig headed, I could have kept this precious cloth at my bedside for the rest of my days- her lipstick stain there to rub against my cheek on the cold winter nights when my bed felt most empty.

2006-09-11T00:51:00.000-04:00

His question was so innocent and yet so cruel.

I was in the Dominion checkout line. I found myself doing something symptomatic of working too many weekends - purchasing expensive pre-cut fruit salad and ice cream twenty minutes before a pot-luck dinner with friends.

My blood sugar was exceptionally low and all I could think about was sugar and getting it into my bloodstream as quickly as possible.

I decided to purchase one of those new "Thins" Cadbury chocolate bars that everyone seems to be eating at the moment. [It is obvious my judgment was clouded by the hypoglycemia - why would any self-respecting chocolate enthusiast ever pay the price of a full-sized chocolate bar for a 3 millimeter-thin bar of rather low-quality chocolate? It was about as satisfying as smelling a Dorito when in the throes of a salt craving.]

The little boy behind me received somewhat reluctant consent from his mother to purchase a colourful candy. It was, after all, a Saturday night. Time to let the motherly guard down and to allow your kid a little sugar rush.

The candy was a thick yellow tube that resembled a lipstick - but with three little interlocking candy sticks inside. Red. Purple. Orange. Each stick could be individually pushed up and held like a kind of lollipop.

I suddenly regretted that I hadn’t spotted these candies earlier. Now fascinated, I asked the boy’s permission to look at the candy.

Me: Have you tried these before?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Are they good.
Kid: Yeah. Really good.
Me: So, is it just like a lollipop?
Kid: [Horrified at the suggestion] No. It’s not like a lollipop.
Me: Oh. Okay. Sorry.

His mother gave me a half-scowl. I looked down at my purse. Then the boy turned to me.

Kid: Why are you so interested in the candy? Do you have a son at home?

Me? Have a son? Do I *look* old enough to have a son?

Sure, I’ve been biologically old enough for about a decade and a half now. And half my friends have already produced fruit from their wombs. But nobody has ever suggested to me before that I look old enough.

I resisted the urge to ask everyone behind me in line to guess my age. I felt a sudden desperate need for affirmation that I couldn’t possibly be old enough to be out of school and I could definitely pass for someone who is of the appropriate age to enjoy candy and hang out at the mall. And furthermore, I certainly don’t look like someone who is old enough to even think about having a mortgage, or paying tax, or producing babies.

I always predicted this would happen:

I looked like a child throughout my young adulthood- My *real* ID was very embarrassingly and publicly turned down at the now defunct Shark City club. The bouncer smirked and said, "yeah, that’s a good one. Sure, you’re 20."

And then the second I reached a stage where it is was no longer desirable to look older than my age, I suddenly started looking far beyond my years.

Positive sides: Discount days at Shoppers Drug Mart and kind offers of seats on public transit?

2006-08-28T00:51:00.000-04:00

I never want to be one of Those People who takes great pleasure in asserting her right to good customer service. These power-starved people who feel that any lapse in customer service, no matter how tiny, is a direct and intentional assault on their Rights As A Customer. Or else a personal slight that goes deep down directly to the very core of their human dignity.

You know- those people who become incensed when they learn that the plane has just run out of the chicken meal and -no -they don’t want to eat beef or a cold plate because they have paid just as much as the last chicken-eating customer. It is not the beef. It is the principle. You know those Principled People. Then these people ask to speak to the manager and begin their story with, "you know, I’ve been a loyal customer of x company for x years. For the last x years, I’ve flown on your airline day in and day out. I even bought my daughter a child-size air hostess uniform when she was younger. I sing your praises any chance I get. But after this [insert offensive incident] that is all gonna change, I tell you. I’ve never been treated like this before. I don’t know what is going on here. But It Just Isn’t Right."

Their outrage is loud and sometimes they’ll bring you into It as a prop. Like when you are sitting behind one of them and she whips around and points at you and says, loudly, "how do you feel learning that x company thinks you are a second-rate customer and that you don’t deserve chicken and that you should eat whatever dregs are left over from the front-of-the-plane customers? Hmm?" And then you are in a lose-lose situation where if you say something to agree with this person, you are guaranteed to have air hostess spit in your next coffee, and if you disagree, or honestly admit you could care less about the chicken because you had pre-ordered the Asian Vegetarian meal, not because you are Asian or a vegetarian, but because you were curious about it and the option was open to you, you may have to prolong your embarrassingly loud and public conversation with this person. Or worse, have her wrath transferred onto you.

No, I never want to be one of those people.

Or one of those people who thinks that vanilla is a valid flavour of ice cream.

2006-08-04T18:40:00.000-04:00

Things I like about Ottawa - Thing #1

My obsession with the Toronto Public Library is well known - and infectious.

I’ll try not to gush too much in this space - but honestly - it is maybe the best use of our tax dollars. Ever.

One can log onto the Library’s website, electronically search through zillions of book, CD, DVD, and video titles and place a hold on desired items. Then the library, free of charge, will send it to your closest branch. An automatic message calls you to let you know when your item is ready for pickup.

I reserved so many titles that I started to get three calls a day. I actually stopped saying "hello" when I answered the phone in anticipation of the "pause….hello….this is the Toronto Public Library, you have one or more items on hold..." message.

In any case, I enjoyed many, many free movies, sampled new musicians, and even listened to books on tape on my walk to work.

Unfortunately, the secret of the Toronto Public Library is out. Way out.

After asking about ten people whether they know that Stevie Wonder song that goes: "you can feel it all over, you can feel it all over," accompanied by my little dance, I found my answer:

Sir Duke.

I googled the title, found out the CD it was on, and put a hold on it.

Number 156th in the waiting line to get the CD.

I waited. And I waited. Winter ended. I waited. Spring ended. I waited. Got a job. Still waiting. Moved. No Sir Duke.

The third thing I did when I got to Ottawa (after finding the grocery store and place to buy chocolate croissants) was sign up for a library card.

This morning I put a hold on the "Songs in the Key of Life" CD.

This afternoon, a mere 6 hours later, I’m listening to Sir Duke.

Sure there are fatal digital skippy bits from over-use. But it’s all mine (for 3 weeks with allowance for one renew).

2006-07-13T17:34:00.000-04:00

Who would have thought that planning a move would be such a complete drain on one’s creativity?

Alas, all my energies are currently being channeled into writing lists and little do-not-forget notes on yellow sticky tags. I’ve also written some reminders on my hand that seem to have washed off, and now I am at a loss.

Tomorrow I leave my favourite city in the world for a job.

But leaving Toronto means many unknowns:

Will my new favourite Toronto coffee shop survive without my business?

Where will I purchase my Saturday morning chocolate croissant, and in which park will I read my newspaper?

Who will replace Andy Barrie and Metro Morning on my walks to work?

Will I survive the harsh winter?

Will I be able to get over my pathological Torontocentricity?

Only time will tell.

Think of me.

2006-06-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

Cities exist in a delicate balance.

Subways come along once every 3-5 minutes. People file in, people file out. Ebb. Flow.

Sometimes the equilibrium is perturbed. Like after a big concert at the Dome. Then people crowd onto the subway platform. People file in. People file in. People file in.

But such disturbances in the yin yang of traffic last for but a short time and then return to normal.

Such is not the case, however, with the city’s burgeoning pigeon problem caused by the chickadee-brained romantics who park themselves in public high-traffic places, armed with bags of moldy bread crumbs that they toss at their feet, causing frenetic, parasite-infested pigeons to swarm.

Pigeons are scavengers. Scavengers play an important part in this delicate equilibrium:

Eat a hot dog. Drop a crumb. Pigeon eats it. Pigeon flies away. Eat a sandwich. Drop the crust. Pigeon eats it. Pigeon flies away. Ebb. Flow.

See? It all works very nicely. Our streets stay clean of crumbs. Pigeons get enough food to provide them with enough energy to survive, maybe court another pigeon, and perhaps even make a baby pigeon. We all win.

But then along come these lonely, Mary Poppins watching, crumb hoarders. They get some sick pleasure by being surrounded by armies of diseased birds.

Look, I don’t mean to be callous. We all need love. We all need to feel like we matter. But if you want to feel like you are making a difference go read to children at the library, go hold an elderly man’s hand at the geriatric centre, go to the zoo and give a therapeutic massage to a lama if ‘giving back’ to the animal kingdom is what turns your crank.

But when these pigeons get fed, they become fat, lazy, and make lots of fat, lazy babies. As long as they keep being fed by these “angels” of bread, bird populations go up and up. Pretty soon, our sidewalks are covered in a whitish brown carpet of poo and we can’t walk through the courtyard to our office without a prudent head covering.

And furthermore: Now you eat a hot dog, drop a crumb, but no bird is there to swoop down and clean our street. The pigeons have become greedy. Why would they expend energy and fly over to that single crumb when they can loiter in our cherished public spaces and wait for a feast to be thrown at their ugly, bacteria-soaked, feet?

It is time for everyone to wake up and tap into the city zen. Stop feeding the pigeons and seek professional help.

2006-05-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

Loyalty

I get creeped out by people who feel intense loyalty to corporations. While corporations are technically “persons” under the law for some purposes, a corporation won’t suggest you put on a sweater when you are feeling cold, or feel sad for you if you are unwell, or tell you that you have spinach in your teeth after a meal. Unless, of course, you pay it to do so.

Loyalty to people, I get. Though sometimes the distinction between the two kinds of loyalty gets confusing. Things get even more confusing when dealing with small businesses.

The result of this confusion is that I currently carry the great guilt that comes with sneaking around behind someone’s back. In short, I’m a coffee slut.

For the past eight months, the object of my affection was Shakira. Shakira works at the nearby mom and pop coffee shop. She is tall and exotic with a mass of black curly waist-length hair. She calls me pumpkin. She noticed my haircut.

She also remembered my order after my very first visit: “Large coffee no milk, Pumpkin?”

Unfortunately, the coffee there just isn’t that great. It is rather weak. I kept going back because I like the idea of supporting local business, and because of my platonic Shakira crush.

But three weeks ago another little coffee shop opened up about a block from my place. I was lured in by the smell of freshly baked scones. The beautiful and perky co-owner welcomed me with a big smile. As she poured me a large she chatted to me about how she and her partner “fell in love” with this coffee and felt they just “had to” open a coffee shop. I was charmed.

The coffee was the best I’ve tried. Bold, but not bitter. Spicy flavour. Deep and heavenly aroma. I was hooked.

My walk to work brings me first to the new coffee shop, moments later I walk by Shakira’s place. I’ve taken to grabbing a coffee at the new place, and then guiltily rushing by Shakira with my head down on the opposite side of the street. Sometimes I take a one-block detour to avoid the large window through which Shakira sometimes looks out.

Unfortunately last night I unexpectedly bumped into her at the grocery store.

Shakira: Oh, hi!
Me: [looking at my shoes] hi..
Shakira: Haven’t seen you in a while…
Me: Um, yeah. I’ve been, well. You know.
Shakira: Yeah. I know.
Me: Okay – well, bye. See you soon…
Shakira: Right. Bye.

She totally knows. I’m so busted.

2006-05-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

Today I shrunk myself.

I concentrated very hard, and then a bit harder. I fixated on a grain of sand and willed myself to become smaller. And then, it felt as though my skin was bunching like an accordion, my bones creaked and the thinner ringed portions slid into the thicker ringed portions like those old fashioned pocket telescopes. Pretty soon I found myself in a small and dusty crack in between two slats of the hardwood floor.

I tried to speak and my voice was very high pitched. Like the notes in the upper range of Mariah Carey’s Sweet Lover Come Rescue Me.

And then, into the room she came. But she couldn’t see me. Nor could she hear me.

I took little dust mites by their tails and hurled them at her big leather boots. I sent a spray of spit particles hurling upward so that they coated her hem in a fine salivaish mist. I screamed every four letter word I knew. I jumped up and down. I even mooned her.

And I felt better.

Then I looked at that oafish face. And I thought about all the times she had tried to make me feel small. And I realized that I was the bigger woman.

2006-04-30T18:13:00.000-04:00

One day after I posted my last entry, I began to regret it. The regret turned to mortification, which led me to this dilemma:

To delete the entry, or to leave it be.

Some people use their blogs as a diary. They expose details of their private lives in the most public way possible. This is a type of exhibitionism.

Others use their blogs as a purely creative medium. It is a fairly non-judgmental forum in which to experiment with ideas and writing techniques.

Without doing so consciously, I think I’ve tried to achieve something in between these extremes. I enjoy writing, and I’m a fairly easy subject. But I’m not comfortable with exposing too much of myself.

It is true that my last entry contained no specifics-- one friend asked me if it was about job frustrations, another asked me if I was having "man trouble."

So I guess my embarrassment doesn’t stem from having confessed my darkest secrets. But I think my unease has to do with the fact that it shows a lack of emotional discipline and takes on a self-helpish tone that doesn’t suit me well.

But this is all beside the point. The interesting question is whether to delete.

After watching The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I thought about whether there were any memories that I would like to delete from my brain. My conclusion was no. The bad things that have happened to me have shaped me into who I am today. I need to remember these things as they are essential contextual references upon which I base my current decisions and personal identity.

I recognize, of course, that I’ve led a fairly privileged life to be able to have this rather academic attitude towards the idea.

But leaving that aside, my question is what then of blog entries?

Would deleting one be the equivalent of a digital lobotomy? And if so, is that a bad thing?

I think it would be.

For me, blogging is a bit risky. I always feel nervous for a few minutes after I have hit the "publish" button on blogger. Though I’m not discussing my latest bedroom adventures, I am exposing parts of myself for public judgment. That is something I have never done willingly or well.

Therefore, perhaps as penance, I’m leaving up my last post. I also realize that the unfortunate consequence of this post will be to draw further attention to my last post.

So there it is in bold type: I am vulnerable, irrational, emotional, and prone to bouts of extreme irritation.

Just don’t be expecting to see much more of that any time soon.

2006-04-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

Unusually Emotion-Filled Personal Post with an Absence of Detail.

Alright, I am Officially Annoyed.

If annoyance was really something that could be certified as official, I would likely be fast-tracked to the front of the line. I wouldn’t need to have an affidavit commissioned, or a DNA sample submitted, or a cover letter created. The officials would take one look at my face from their vantage across the counter and see that I was bona fide annoyed.

They would stamp my certificate and I could go home and sulk. Officially.

And it is worse than just feeling like I have endured the misfortune of something outside of my control. No, this annoyance comes from not even understanding the rules of the game. And in not understanding the rules, the super plus annoyance comes from wondering whether it is actually in my power to prevent this annoyance in the first place. Or whether annoyance is the appropriate strategy. Or whether I should be working on a strategy at all.

I am rather staring into a black box and any time I see a glimmer of shape inside it, I immediately ascribe all sorts of supporting, clarifying, enhancing detail. So it is about 10% truth, and 90% fabrication. And as one friend says, someone who lies 1% of the time is a liar. So it is actually my fault.

Because if I could just sit patiently and wait for the detail to fill in slowly, I wouldn’t have to create these fictions that shatter when I take them from the box and hold them up to the light and see that they are actually not what I imagined them to be.

But sitting patiently doesn’t feel right to me.

So perhaps the best I can do is just be honest about what I can and cannot see and wait for those with the illumination capabilities to do their thing.

And I should give people the benefit of the doubt. Always.

And strangely, I feel like my annoyance has been downgraded from a red to a yellow alert. Good stuff.

2006-04-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

Letting Go

It was 6:15 p.m. and I was sitting on the patio with Scott and Seiren, trying to relax. On this beautiful afternoon, we left work early and headed to a large outdoor patio for a beer.

But it was getting late. Pottery starts at 6:30 p.m.

I signed up for pottery through the school board’s continuing education program and I take the class at the local high school. To be honest, it wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to take “Writing for Beginners” or “Intro to Drama” but both were cancelled due to lack of community interest.

So pottery it was.

At about 6:05 p.m. I declared that I wasn’t going to let myself get stressed about an activity that was supposed to be for the purposes of stress relief and for exploring my creative side.

“Whatever, I’ll be late. It won’t matter. The teacher usually does the demonstration late anyway.”

This was true.

Our pottery teacher, who thus far had been pickled-drunk every class, would usually stumble in about half an hour late, begin a demo, and halfway through would say:

“Well, you get the picture. I don’t wanna waste any more of your time. Go to it team!”

And with that she would excuse herself to go outside to flirt with the school janitor.

But in spite of my commitment to laidbackness, I had begun to guzzle my Corona and started to calculate how long it would take me to get to the pottery studio.

Before long I was semi jogging up the street towards the school.

I arrived, sweaty, breathless, fifteen minutes late, to find that I had not yet missed anything.

All the students were sitting silently with their blocks of clay in front of them. Even though we all stuck our fingers in the same sludgy slip pot, we had not managed to break through our collective social awkwardness. We all made pinch pots in silence.

There was a new student in the class, T. He had a perfect upturned nose, wore dark eyeliner, and spoke with graceful gestures of his hands. Our teacher took an instant, but unsettling, liking to him.

Our teacher loudly welcomed the new student:

“Welcome, T. This week we’re making mold bowls and next week we’re making goblets, and I know you have good use for those!”

I think she was meaning to give him a joking nudge on the shoulder, but she missed and ended up sort of stumbling into him.

T’s face turned pink.

Aside from concern about missing the demonstration, I was also concerned that I arrive at class early enough so that I could make an incense holder. I had been designing it in my head all week.

We all sprung into silent and intense pottery action.

But my incense holder was not coming along as planned. In fact, it was a downright monstrosity.

I felt a tinge of stress as I looked at my utterly failed creation.

But then it just struck me as incredibly funny and I began to laugh. A number of my fellow students gathered around me to see what I was finding so funny.

“Well,” said T who was speaking while pouring all his soul into smoothing out his bowl “You are lucky to be comfortable with asymmetry. I’m so damn perfectionist that [smooth] I can’t even relax [smooth] until [smooth] everything is [smooth] perfectly symmetrical [smooth].”

“I’m just happy to be here,” said the girl with dark Gucci frames who had made a minor monstrosity of her own, “I’ve been meaning to take pottery for three years but investment banking doesn’t leave much time for creativity.”

Then the class prodigy came to join the discussion. She explained that she comes by her sculptural abilities honestly. She is a professional cake designer. I asked her what the strangest cake she ever created looked like. It was for a baby shower and was a woman giving birth. Made in chocolate.

She exclaimed how refreshing it was to be able to simply create without having to worry about the taste of her creation.

And then I thought about the beer I had consumed before this class. And I thought about our inebriated pottery teacher. I realized that even in her drunken absence, our teacher [prophet?] was bestowing her deep knowledge upon us:

The key to an enjoyable pottery experience is letting go. And the key to letting go is alcohol.

2006-03-31T17:37:00.000-05:00

Somewhere, deep down at a micro-cellular level, discrete portions of my double helices are slowly waking up, uncoiling, unzipping, and coded bits of never-expressed-before traits are suddenly being copied and pumped out as tiny behavior/body-altering protein machines.

Last Monday I cried as I held my best friend’s new baby for the first time.

Note the awakening of:

Maternally inherited, late-onset trait #1: crying from happiness gene
Maternally inherited, late-onset trait #2: not being scared of holding tiny people gene and maybe even liking them gene.

This week, at the gym, I sat on the gigantic hunk of steel known as the “Hammer Strength.” I examined the faceless, pumped-up Demo Man who appears on the side of every machine with his primary working muscle group coloured red, and his secondary working muscle group coloured blue.

Here, hammer strength Demo Man’s back muscles were red, and his shoulders were blue.

As I pulled down on the big levers, I suddenly felt a shooting pain up my lower back.

Note the awakening of:

Paternally inherited, late-onset trait #1: bad back gene

Today, I sat on the couch in the office of my co-workers. We were chatting. It was typical twenty-something banter.

Then, I had what can only be regarded as an out of body experience. Or was it a possession? I felt my voice box vibrate for just a few seconds. It took my brain a few more to process that horrifying sequence of words that had emanated from my mouth.

One part pun. One part wink-wink nudge-nudge. All knee slapper.

I welcome:

Paternally inherited, late-onset trait #2: dad humour gene

Finally, an end to the nature vs. nurture debate: It’s all nature folks. Cruel, cruel, nature.

2006-03-20T10:52:00.000-05:00

Everything smells like vanilla.

This is not some optimistic statement about my current state of affairs. I mean that literally, there is something strange going on with my nose and everything really does smell like vanilla.

I first noticed this at an engagement party I attended yesterday.

My grandmother embraced me and the smell of vanilla beans wafted over me.

Me: Wow, granny, have you been baking?
Granny: [strange look] Well, I made a beef brisket today, why?

Then I noticed that my party sandwiches (tuna and egg) smelled like vanilla as well and that seemingly, every man, woman, and child at this event was wearing vanilla perfume.

Something was seriously wrong.

When I got home I did a quick PubMed search to see if anything like this had turned up in the medical literature. (PubMed is a medical database where abstracts to all major medical science journals are published.)

I found information on the benefits of vanilla in testing for certain brain lesions in rats. Also, using sugar as a reward, cockroaches can learn to distinguish between the smell of vanilla extract and peppermint.

While the smell of car fumes is infinitely more pleasant when scented vanilla, if this is a permanent state of affairs, there are many smells I would really miss. Like coffee beans. And chocolate cake. And pine needles.

I think that the source of my problem was prolonged exposure to an overly-cologned male who sat next to me on the subway yesterday morning. My olfactory receptors went into overdrive. At first my nose just stung and my eyes watered. But pretty soon I became desensitized and couldn’t smell anything.

As if the threat of bird flu wasn’t enough, here is one more reason why we should all go out and buy masks right away.

2006-03-14T18:34:00.000-05:00

I am not generally a possessions kind of person.

But yesterday evening, as I walked in the rain down the beautiful lamp-lit and glistening street of Palmerston while listening to “The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead,” by Final Fantasy, I realized that my MP3/radio player has actually fundamentally changed my life for the better.

In the mornings I walk to work listening to CBC Metro Morning. I tune into the BBC World News on the Jazz FM station.

No matter what mood I am in when I walk home, I can add music and enhance that feeling. It is like MSG for the soul.

I have read a few articles lately that talk about the anti-social effects caused by widespread use of MP3 players. People using MP3 just “cut themselves off” from the world – so They say.

But I have two things to say to these people.

First, as someone who has now lived in downtown Toronto for five years, I can say that Torontonians often go to great lengths not to engage one another on the street. Rather than risk direct interaction we lower our eyes, turn our backs, examine at the peeling paint on the elevator door, and hum non-melodiously to ourselves. In this sense, the MP3 player is just the logical extension of our urban loneliness. Fine, if we are going to walk around in our bubbles, we may as well fill our little spaces so that we are surrounded by music that moves us.

Second, I am not so sure that MP3 players don’t actually have the reverse effect from that alleged. That is, they may actually bring us closer together. In my short time of MP3 player ownership, I have swapped and traded music with people and learned of more new bands in the past year than I have in the past five. Increased awareness of music means more potential points of commonality between people.

But on a less practical level, I have sometimes found myself emboldened by the music I listen to. While listening to a particularly upbeat song, I have caught myself smiling at people around me. Music is acknowledged to have the potential to stir deep visceral reactions in people. Maybe it is the case that our MP3 players sometimes actually help us to achieve a heightened sensitivity to others around us.

And even if this is just a cockamamie theory – who cares? MP3 listening is pure bliss and if you don't like it, mind yo' business and leave me alone.

2006-03-07T21:14:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I caught a glimpse of things I had long forgotten existed - the stars, fresh air, and packing snow (suitable for the construction of big snow balls).

Tonight I walked home from work.

I sucked in car fumes and felt utterly oppressed by the tall buildings looming overhead and blocking any view of the sky.

Though I do, of course, realize that even if the buildings were not there, I wouldn’t see any stars. The light from the stars is drowned out by the bright lights of the:

Big! Exciting! City!

I read that Toronto actually sits on very fertile soil.

I fantasized about taking a huge spoon and cracking the pavement, like I would crack the shell of a soft-boiled egg. I would dig my hands into the freshly liberated dirt and I wouldn’t remove them until they were Properly Dirty.

But make no mistake - this dirt would not be Dirty Dirt. Not that subway pole, gym stairmaster button, waiting room magazine kind of dirt.

This is clean dirt that I crave.

Because sometimes things taste better when we eat with dirty hands. And because we need zinc. And because we’re just a little too unsoiled for our own good.

But we’re certainly not unpolluted.

Need. Air.

2006-02-22T23:24:00.000-05:00

Anything I say in my head just sounds like a line.

But lines often express what I want to say better than anything that I could come up with on my own.

And anything I came up with on my own would really just be paraphrasing.

And paraphrasing still counts as plagiarism.

So I really have no other options.

Except for lying.

And why should we be so adamant that we are deserving of something original?

Is it just egotism that leads us to believe that our situation is unique?

Should we really be so surprised that our experiences and feelings are so common?

If we are cut, do we not bleed?

If we eat too much asparagus does our pee not smell funny and look a bit greenish?

Though if you don’t eat asparagus, then you may not be able to relate.

And if you aren’t eating asparagus, I sincerely hope that you are getting enough green leafy vegetables in your diet.

Because you need vitamin B-9.

We all need vitamin B-9

2006-01-25T09:07:00.000-05:00

Moral Issues - Part 1

I think I’ve learned just about all I’m going to learn from my mistakes in 2005. In any case, it is nearly the end of January, so as of today, my thoughts are firmly planted in the year of The World Cup.

That said, in keeping with the theme of themes, this week I will pose some important and enigmatic moral questions of our time. I hope to get some input.

Issue #1: Moral Duty With Respect to Hair Products

Situation:

Being a novice hair dyer but looking for a change, I purchased the $30 hair dye and highlight kit by L’Oreal.

The kit was called “French Éclair” and the pouty-lipped beauty on the box promised hair that would scream sophistication, fun, and cream-filled pastries.

The base colour was to be an intense chocolate brown and the highlights would be golden.

D and I drank a few beers* and then set to work on my hair.

About one hour later, I rinsed the highlight goop from my hair to reveal a head of fluorescent-orange hair. I was Ronald McDonald.

I salvaged whatever brown base dye was still left in the bottle and slapped it all over my head in an effort to tame the orange highlights. It kind of worked and the result was a head of uniformly auburn hair.

Upset by the trauma of clown hair, and incensed that I had purchased the most expensive dye known to woman, only to have it ruin my hair, I demanded my money back from Shoppers Drug Mart.

After many calls back and forth with the lovely Makeup Expert:

Her: I’m not sure we can give you your money back, since you already opened the product and used it.
Me: Yes, but that’s the point, it didn’t work
Her: Yes, but you used it. I’m only authorized to take back unopened products.
Me: Look, what would you do if someone bought a chocolate bar and when the customer took a bite it was rotten and moldy?
Her: I would refund the money.
Me: So then?
Her: [blank stare]

I did get my money refunded in the end. But here is where the moral dilemma comes in.

It is now just over a week later, and I now really like my hair.

[* I am certain that the beer had nothing to do with what ensued. The instructions were read thoroughly.]

Moral Question:

Do I now have a moral obligation to return the money since I am, in fact, satisfied with the product outcome?

My thoughts:

No.

While I may be happy with the outcome, this was not the outcome that was bargained for. I still do not have what was promised to me: i.e. golden highlights.

I don’t think that refunds on hair dye should be made on purely subjective factors like “do I like it” or “does it make me look sexy.”

The fact that I like my now auburn hair is irrelevant.

In the realm of hair dye, the only relevant basis upon which to refund or not refund hair dye is how closely, from an objective perspective, does the dye do what is promised.

Here, L’Oreal failed to deliver what was promised and so I deserve a refund. I do not need to give the money back.

Please feel free to agree or disagree.

2006-01-13T16:30:00.000-05:00

Lesson #3:

They say you can’t stick a square peg in a round hole.

But this is simplistic.

Sometimes you can stick a square peg in a round hole, but the length of the diagonal of the square (i.e. from point to point, cutting it into two triangles) must be just less than the diameter of the hole. This may actually be an ideal situation. Square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes make for peg-ish monotony.

Sometimes, at the beginning, the square peg is slightly larger than the round hole and won’t fit. But over time, the square may shrink slightly, and the hole may increase slightly. Then the square peg will fit.

But sometimes the square peg will shrink or the round hole will enlarge too much. Then, the square peg will fall right through the round hole. It will get lost. It may even forget that it used to be a square peg. Or, years later, the square peg may go through an identity crisis, remember it was a square peg, but it will have forgotten how to be a square peg. Then it may make a fool of itself behaving as an exaggerated caricature of a square peg. This is not an ideal situation.

What They say is also simplistic because it negates the fact that part of getting the pegs into the holes is a function of sheer will. Given two identical square pegs and two identical round holes, with concerted effort, one could likely make the first set fit, even though with less effort the second set might not fit. And then even once the first peg is in the hole, it may still require some effort to keep it there.

My Task: Not only recognizing when a square peg is being jammed into a round hole, but assessing the cost of the effort that would be required to get it in versus the benefit to be acquired once it is in.

NOTICE: If you have become aroused by all this talk of pegs fitting into holes, you have a dirty mind and have missed the point. There was no sexual innuendo intended here.

2006-01-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

LESSON #2:

There is a chance that at one time my mother was resident on Tralfamadore. In any case, she often comes unstuck in time. Though it seems that her time travel only occurs in respect of grocery purchases.

Pull any item out from the back of the cupboard. For example, the box of cheerios that has turned a weathered brownish colour and has pictures of a mother with a big perm on the front of the box.

Me: How old is this, mom?

Mom: Oh, [she now comes unstuck and travels back ten years….] I just bought that last week.

My mother is diligent in house upkeep in every other respect, but in the realm of groceries, the fridge door opens a fissure in time through which one can gain insight into the Loblaws of the 1990s.

This is what happens when one’s children move from the house and one adopts a salmon- and blueberry- only diet. I kid you not. Apparently they are good for the skin.

In any case, my lesson begins with a visit home to mom. To her credit, I find a fresh bagel and some cream cheese. I make a sandwich.

Then, I stick my head through the fridge portal and see a jar of pickles far in the back of the fridge.

Me: Mom, how old are those pickles?

Mom: Oh, […time travel…] I just bought those last week.

I gazed at the jar. The pickles seemed to have a hyper-green tinge. I was uncertain.

Me: Are you sure they are fresh? They look kind of old.

Mom: No, [still in the past] the oldest they could be is one month.

I opened the jar. There were three pickles left. Well, three and a half. One appeared to have had a bite taken from it and been placed back in the jar. A more pungent-than-usual vinegar smell assaulted my nose.

While cloudy brine may be one of the indicia of freshness, I wondered what positive opaqueness meant.

Mom: Go ahead, they’re fine.

I forked one of the pickles from the jar and took a hesitant bite.

It instantly disintegrated in my mouth and burnt my tongue.

MY TASK: Trust my gut instincts more. If it looks like a bad pickle, and smells like a bad pickle, in all likelihood, it is a bad pickle.

2006-01-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

For the next few days I am going to try and reflect on some of the mistakes I have made in the past year and resolve to work on preventing these sorts of mistakes in 2006. I am not going to divulge the actual mistakes I made, but I will provide illustrations to make my point.

LESSON #1:

As a child, every night before I went to sleep I would say my prayers. They went like this:

Hi,
Please forgive me for anything I’ve done wrong.
And please, please, please send me a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.
Sincerely,
Nadine

And then I would fall asleep and I would dream of being one of those pink-faced kids on the Snoopy Snow Cone Machine box. I was the one squeezing the cherry-flavoured syrup from the head of the snowman onto the crushed ice sitting in the Dixie cup. The ice had been sent down the Snoopy House chimney and then shaved into snow by Randi, my best friend at the time.

But the gracious heavenly father never saw fit to send me my gift.

At some point in adulthood, I recounted this story to ex who then, months later, surprised with a brand new Snoopy Snow Cone Machine that he had purchased on ebay.

I hugged the box. I was very, very touched. We immediately made snow cones.

They tasted like crap. The box now sits gathering dust in my mother’s garage.

The disappointment of the cough-syrupy snow cone far outweighed the pain of childhood-long longing.

MY TASK: Work on figuring out which “things” should be pursued in the flesh, and which should not. This involves recognizing that some things intrinsically bring more pleasure as abstract ideas than they do as physical realities.

2005-12-30T12:45:00.000-05:00

The expiry date on the carton of milk read:

“January 19, 2006”

I realized upon lifting the carton that there was just enough milk left for one more bowl of cereal.

I stared at the date; it was as though I was peering into the future. 2005 would be gone, but the bold promise of fresh fine-filtered milk would live on well into 2006.

As if by instinctual reflex, I closed the carton and placed the milk back in the fridge for use in the new year. Something about the idea of the existence of a constant in my fridge door, bridging the space from calendar year to calendar year, gave me great comfort.

Some years go by much like the Young and the Restless. One can tune into an episode in January, and then another in December, and not have missed anything of substance. The characters are still suspended in the same inane conversation, the maid may have come in and out of the scene a few times in all her pointlessness, but the only material change is perhaps the total collective number of face lifts undergone by the cast members.

In these years, I gaze backwards up the time line linking the December me, to the January me, and I see myself walking backwards, in my parka, then in a sweater, then with an ice cream (mint chocolate chunk), then with an umbrella, and then in my parka once again. There have been minor prop and character changes. But from my December vantage, I peer backward into my January eyes and I realize that, most importantly, I am unchanged.

Other years, like this one, when I sit in my parka and gaze back, I don’t recognize the January me. I want to slap the January me and warn her not to float so haphazardly into February. I want to warn her to soak in every minute of every day going forward, because when she emerges at the end of the year, she will have been fundamentally changed by every minute of every day she experienced.

This isn’t the space to rehash all that has come to pass in 2005. This will not be my “year in review.” But maybe this year, rather than trying to reconnect backwards with my former self who no longer exists, I can send a shout forward to the future me. I’m leaving her some milk so that when she goes to fix herself a bowl of bran flakes in 2006, she can draw on some of the goodness left in the past, to gain strength to walk consciously, full of whole-grain fibre, into her future.

2005-12-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

Dreidel, Dreidel, Yawn.........

When I was younger, the highlight of Chanukah was the game of family dreidel.

I remember the sheer exhilaration of being up ten pennies one minutes, and then losing it all the next. I anxiously anticipated each turn, and I spun the top with unbridled delight.

Determined to relive that childhood wonder, I insisted that we play a game of dreidel at M’s Chanukah party last night. I printed off a make-your-own-dreidel cutout from the internet, and went to work folding and taping.

After a few glasses of wine, some latkas, and some vegan chili, I announced that it was time for dreidel.

Even the lovely hostess M, who always humours me, was somewhat skeptical.

I insisted that fun would be had by all participants. M doled out the pennies and the game began.

After about ten minutes we were all bored stiff.

I tried to increase the drama by upping the stakes. Each player would now put in, *gasp*, three pennies each turn, rather than one.

Still bored.

I quickly thought up an adult modification - strip dreidel:

Gimmel: tell someone to take off an article of clothing
Nun: nothing happens
Hay: tell someone to half remove an article of clothing
Shin: take off an article of clothing yourself

O glanced at his younger sister sitting across the table, and at M’s husband, and gave a forceful, "um, no."

Why was it that I now found this game so boring? Had I been so corrupted that nothing but sex and high-stakes gambling could hold my attention?

Luckily I didn’t have to stress about this too long.

At my next stop that evening I found myself playing with the host’s table coasters. They are made of little rainbow coloured plastic people that fit together like puzzle pieces. Their baseline configuration is a ring. Their little arms snap into each others’ stomachs and they can also be made to sit on each others’ heads.

About an hour passed and I realized that I had made the plastic people lock into each other in every permutation and combination possible.

Seems that as we get older, our attention spans don’t wane, our tastes just become more sophisticated.

2005-12-17T14:49:00.000-05:00

Everyone Pees

A few years ago my sister bought me the book Everyone Poops for my birthday – a picture book by Taro Gomi. It has very funny illustrations of all different animals’ poo – from giant elephant dumps to little rabbit pellet poops.

A week or so ago I was in line in the bathroom at a very upscale club. In front of me was a model-like scenester diva. Every inch of her body revealed extreme contemplation and intense attention to detail – from her two-tone shimmery eye makeup, to her layered tanktops of various levels of frontal plunginess, to the designer scent that was diffusing down the concentration gradient from her wrist to my nose.

She stood with a perfect disinterested expression, eyes gazing to the distance, with her weight on one leg and her arms crossed across her chest. I took a step back from her. I think my subconscious secretly sensed that my aura had no business infringing on her aura’s space.

Everything about her said “look and admire. I am bar-tacular perfection.” And she was right.

A stall came free and the diva went in. She emerged about a minute later and I was next in line. As I squeezed past her I gave her a half smile, acknowledging the awkwardness of cramped bar bathroom situations. She looked through me.

I entered the stall and prepared to put a safe two-ply coating between the seat and my bum, but was stopped short. A golden splattering of urine covered the seat and glistened almost supernaturally in the halogen bathroom light.

For some reason I found the juxtaposition of the image of this mega diva with this bathroom mess to be hilarious. Despite my best attempts I couldn’t help giggling out loud (all the way through my own business).

Some people think that they have the best grandmother in the world. Then they meet mine and they realize that their grandmother may get the silver medal, but mine unquestionably wins the gold. Witty, warm, kind, and smart. She is also a perfectionist.

My grandmother will spend half an hour shaping butter into little perfectly curled pats. Everything in her apartment is placed just so, and at any given time you could eat off her immaculate floor. I have seen her nearly die of embarrassment when she found a fingerprint on a window. Needless to say, her bathroom is always spotless.

But she is getting older. Lately her eyesight has been getting worse and worse. A few weeks ago when she was mixing the dressing for the salad, she tried to pour lemon juice into a spoon but poured half the bottle directly onto the counter. I pretended not to notice, but I could see the immense frustration and despair on her face when she realized what she had done.

I was the first one to arrive for dinner at her apartment for dinner last week. Having consumed too much coffee prior to my subway trip, I was dying for the toilet by the time I got to her place. I kissed her hello and headed directly to the bathroom.

But this time, there was something uncharacteristically out of place. A small but unmistakable drop of pee had been left behind on the seat. I thought of my grandmother and how she would be mortified if she knew she had left this behind.

As I took some tissue and soap to clean the seat, I began to cry.

At work we have two bathroom stalls. The one on the left is a small, regular stall. The one on the right is a larger stall that is adapted for wheelchair access. Though nobody on our floor uses a wheelchair, as a matter of convention the ladies use the smaller stall if it is available.

I entered the washroom and found both stalls empty. I headed into the smaller stall and was greeted by a disgusting yellow-soiled seat. I quickly headed into the larger stall, did my business, washed my hands, and turned to exit the bathroom. But as I did, I met a co-worker on her way in.

I should have warned her to go into the larger stall. But for some reason it didn’t occur to me until after she had headed into the left hand stall. As I exited the bathroom, a wave of panic seized me. She was going to think that I was the messy pee-splattering culprit. It was so unfair.

I was reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets caught scratching his nose but from an angle that looked like a pick.

For the rest of the morning I stressed about how to delicately bring up the topic with my co-worker. What if word spread that I was a filthy bathroom user? I get angry when people fail to flush, let alone when they leave remnants of their nephron-filtered morning coffee on the seat for all to see.

Eventually my neuroses got the better of me and I knocked on my co-worker’s office door.

Me: Hi, um, okay, I have a really weird thing to confess to you. Well, not confess, exactly, because I didn’t do it. But that’s exactly the point.
Her: Okay – shoot.
Me: Well, remember when we crossed paths in the bathroom this morning and then you went into the smaller stall.
Her: Maybe.. I’m actually a frequent bathroom user.
Me: Okay, well, I should have warned you and I’m so sorry but that pee on the seat- it wasn’t mine. I used the larger stall instead.
Her: Oh. I don’t even remember that. But that kind of thing doesn’t bother me. Some people squat and don’t notice the back-splash. I personally choose to sit on a layer of toilet paper instead.
Me: Okay, okay, good then. I also sit. Bathroom time should be one of relaxation.
Her: Yeah, I totally agree. Squats are for the gym.

And strangely, I felt like we had bonded in some small way.

2005-12-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

I will update this blog before the end of the weekend.
I'm not writing this because I think anyone is waiting with bated breath for my next update. Rather, it is because I have entered an era in my life where if I don't write things down, they don't get done.

Wake up - Check.
Brush teeth - Check.
Shower - Check.
Eat breakfast - Check.
etc..

2005-11-29T08:37:00.000-05:00

There are those rare occasions where life itself hits us with such a barrage of metaphors that we cannot escape their underlying message. Here, no dream is needed to collect our subconscious anxieties and play them out in allegorical form. And no dream consultant is needed to scratch the fabled surface to reveal what emotional tumult lay beneath.

So it was that I woke up today and exclaimed: “enough already! – I get it!”

Last Thursday I got a call from the ex.

I had ended our relationship earlier this year. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But I believed, and still do believe, that it was the right decision.

Our relationship ended amicably, and since the breakup we have been working on easing into a friendship. Though, up to this point, we have both studiously avoided the topic of dating and new romances. In my case, that was mostly because there was nothing new to discuss. I figured that it was the same for him. That was, until Thursday.

Ex now lives in New York. He just got a promotion. And a beautiful new apartment overlooking Central Park.

I asked ex what kinds of New Yorky things he had been up to.

Ex had seen a show.

With whom?

With new girl.

Oh. new girl. I see.

A confusing wave of emotion washed over me.

I’m happy for you. And for new girl. I’m sure she is lovely.

I think I meant that. But what was this that I was feeling? I couldn’t put my finger on the emotion, but I knew it felt bad.

The nature of this mysterious feeling was slowly revealed to me, beginning with a Monday morning e-mail from ex.

It read: “36th,” and then provided a link to a website. I clicked on the link.

Ex had placed 36th in a large American marathon.

He placed in the top 40 of almost 4,000 male runners.

Top 1%.

By any measure, he was a winner.

On my bike ride home from work that night my pant leg became dangerously tangled in the chain spokes. I yanked my leg free, swerving into the curb, and ripping a hole in my pants.

In my dream both ex and I are running in that same big American marathon. I see ex cross the finish line about three miles ahead of me and run into the arms of new girl. She puts one of those foil blankets around him and hugs him protectively. As I finally stumble across the line (in the bottom half of the pack), ex and new girl turn to look back at me. I wipe my brow and give them a meek congratulatory thumbs-up.

I care deeply for ex and I do want him to be happy. So why does his happiness and success make me feel like such a big loser?

Concerned that I was actually a terrible person, I sought assurance from my father - the arbiter of all moral issues in my family.

Nah. It’s human nature, he said.

We want our exes to be happy and successful – but not happier or more successful than we are ourselves.

So there it is. Who am I to argue with human nature? And, I suppose this all makes sense from an evolutionary, selfish gene perspective. Males dance and cluck love songs in stunning displays of virility enabling females to wisely choose their partners in gene propagation. If the female later sees that the top-notch genetic material she forewent is about to be betrothed to another female, feeling like a genetic loser would be the appropriate evolutionary emotion.

Perhaps. But this theory doesn’t sit very well with my view of human women and our role in relationships and in society at large. And in any case, I would like to think that I could transcend my genes.

So I’m going to work on it.

Maybe part of my strategy is to stop viewing the success of ex vs. me as a zero-sum game. Perhaps I can justifiably view part of his happiness as my own personal success. I think we both grew to come to a better understanding of ourselves through our relationship. And surely, that understanding must have in some measure paved the way for his current and future happiness. And mine.

Well- that is more of a long-term strategy.

As a short-term coping mechanism I have taken to daydreaming about racing new girl. We’re in Central Park. Try as she might, and despite the wholehearted encouragement of ex, she just cannot catch up to me.

Why?

Grotesquely thick and heavy ankles.

2005-11-20T13:21:00.000-05:00

NOTICE: This is a pure work of fiction. Any likeness to real people or places is coincidental.

Any situation that seems representative of something you experienced is false.

Any emotion that rings true, or feeling you recognize, is a lie.

And if you think that there has been a coincidence, and you think that you can see yourself in here, that too is just your perception. Because you have drawn your own conclusions from what I have written, and you have judged your own experiences through the filter of your mind, and you see patterns where you want to see them.

You might think that there is some thread of truth here. But recognize that this feeling of familiarity has resulted from some often-accessed neural pathway. That pathway was created a long, long time ago when you were learning about what authentic experiences were meant to be.

WARNING: If you find something in here that causes you to feel some emotion that you don’t recognize, you might feel momentarily disoriented or temporarily discomforted.

But fear not.

Because before long you will figure out a way to slot this feeling into one from your rolodex. Take the card out. Examine it. And add this experience as a bullet point under that heading. Place card back in the rolodex. Dust. Place rolodex back on the shelf.

Here, I’ll help you through a simple demonstration:

Assume I write about someone from the fictitious past, who used to be romantically involved with the fictitious central figure in this fictitious story. But he has moved on.

How can this combination of physical stomach chemistry and cardiac circus rhythms be translated into something you can name?

Luckily, thanks to television, movies, and commercials, there is a simple and effective system of nomenclature in place. Start out with subject heading:

Romance.

Scroll to the next order of specificity:

Severed Relationship.

And then:

He’s moved on.

And there you have your answer:

Jealously.

There, don’t you feel better?

And now that you can name it, it must be real and true.

But if you think that it is real and true, go back to the initial NOTICE.

DISCLAIMER: The author of this fictitious work disclaims any and all liability for any and all damage that may come, howsoever caused, should the reader decide to abandon her rolodex.

The author does not recommend this act.

Take the red pill at your own risk.

Far better, in fact, to remain cozy and warm in this fictitious milieu.

2005-11-08T22:55:00.000-05:00

Hip Hop Havarti

After a day of intense seminars by judges, academics, practitioners, and educators, the attendees of the conference were in for a treat.

The suits piled into the small space behind the flimsy room divider in Ballroom #2. An elaborate wine and cheese spread had been arranged. We began politely sipping our wine and chatting in hush tones about the day’s themes.

Then, from the corner of the room, under the large luminous chandelier, using a patch of the ubiquitous leaf-patterned carpet as their stage, three young hip hop artists emerged. Bandannas. Baggy pants. Running Shoes.

We fell silent. A piece of gorgonzola dropped out of the gaping mouth of the elderly fellow beside me.

The artists sprung to life to the loud repetitive beats blasting from the large speaker that had been set up beside the performance space.

I looked around at my shell-shocked colleagues. Those who had begun the wine and cheese in casual conversation, now appeared to be huddled together for support. Some looked bemused, others fearful.

A few tried to ignore the music and kept chatting. Some began to clap along to the beat. One woman began doing what looked like a jig. The rest of us exchanged furtive, sidelong glances acknowledging how incongruous this scene had just become.

But as I started to catch the vibe being thrown out by this music group, I was beginning to tune into the vibe from the audience that was now coming into stark relief:

The vibe of collective uncoolness.

I have always been interested by this elusive concept of cool. I enjoy studying groups and figuring out who is the alpha in the pack. I’m fascinated by that hair-clipped poof that women in my area are wearing. But most of all, I’m interested in the way in which people’s perceptions of their own coolness shape their interactions with others.

Certainly, M & I had plenty of time to contemplate the concept during the high school prom while waiting out the slow songs in the girl’s bathroom. M was my unofficial date. S, who wore his grandfather’s kilt to prom, was my other unofficial date. When our friends lined up for a big group photograph at A’s garden pre-party, he stood (about half a foot) behind me. In the photograph, rather than the intended illusion of him being my date, S appears to be some random guy in the background who happened to stick his head in the frame and smile.

I’m not the only one who has made a study of cool. My friend Y has an elaborate theory about "Cool" with a capital "C" and "cool" with a lower case "c". Her theory is that the former is a main-stream type of high school, highlighted, lululemon Cool. The latter is a post-prom counter-culture anti-establishment cool. It is far better, she says, to be little "c". She assures me that this is what I am.

According to research, while true coolness is innate, it can be studied and copied. Author Neil Strauss has written a book, "the Game," for men who are not innately cool. The author studied cool men in their natural habitat and has wrote a guide to emulating cool. Apparently, by following a few simple rules, men can effortlessly bag women.

In reality, my interest in coolness has lost any emotional force and has become purely academic. I no longer feel sorry for the prom girl me who spent ten minutes with her hands under the dryer, while Stairway to Heaven droned relentlessly in the next room. I would like to think that if I were to attend the prom today I would wear a funkier dress, avoid that awful chicken, and, with or without a date, I would dance.

So why couldn’t I get into the hip hop today?

The heels - just couldn’t do it in the heels.

2005-10-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

Relativity and Gatorade

This year marks the 100th year anniversary of Einstein’s "miracle year" of 1905. This was the year in which he published five papers including those that formed the basis of quantum theory and the theory of special relativity.

Today also marks the two-month anniversary of G’s move to Ottawa for the year, my move to my new place, and our starting our respective new jobs.

"How is it," G asked me, "that looking back on the last two months, it seems like I’ve been here forever. Yet the time feels like it has gone by so quickly?"

This is exactly the way I always feel when I have been traveling: I look back and measure the number of new experiences I have had and the new things I have learned, and judging from these memories, I can’t believe that my time could have held all these events.

But then, my time has been so enjoyable that I am also astounded by how quickly time seems to have slipped away.

This leads G and I to form our own theory of relativity, which indeed, echoes some of Einstein’s thoughts:

The measurement of the speed of time is in part dependent on the position and perspective of the observer where:

The perception of the speed of time from the perspective of an observer reminiscing is inversely proportional to the amount of new and interesting experiences had;

Whereas the perception of the speed of time from the perspective of an observer judging the current speed from her point in time is proportional to the amount of fun currently experienced.

Thus, there are two ways to lengthen your life:

One way is to plan on having an excruciatingly boring life. Indeed, this is the approach that the character Dunbar takes in Joseph Heller’s "Catch 22." He spends his time shooting skeet because it is something he hates to do. Therefore, it slows time and makes his life seem longer.

The other way, is to make sure that one’s life is jam packed with new experiences so that when reflecting back, there will be many distinguishing markers of time.

This is the approach that I have resolved to take.

I am beginning to find that my weeks are flying by with one day melting into the next. On Friday, I can’t quite figure out what happened to Wednesday or Tuesday.

Routine is the enemy of time.

Therefore my plan is to break the routine in as many ways as possible. I’m trying to brainstorm some ideas:

-Taking a new walking route to work every morning.
-Buying my coffee from a different café.
-Trying a new hairstyle.
-Speaking with a different accent every day

I’m open to suggestions.

I understand that offices and routine are a logical function of our need for productivity. I just want to make sure that when I look back, I don’t feel that I have efficientized those important life things that are best enjoyed through good, distinguishing, and inefficient time use.

***
The Little Prince
[ Chapter 23 ]

- the little prince encounters a merchant

"Good morning," said the little prince.

"Good morning," said the merchant.

This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink.

"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.

"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."

"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"

"Anything you like..."

"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."

2005-10-27T07:17:00.000-04:00

Reasonableness Simpliciter

The plastic words that fill the page,
Swirling, cascading from my grasp,
Meaning less and less with each moment.

I grasped the fabric, but then it frayed.
The plastic melted and dripped away.
It pooled in a puddle on the floor.
A word soup that glistens and beckons me.
But the soup is dry,
My bowl is empty.

All that is left is a gigantic smudge.
Where reason used to lie,
Where understanding never settled.

2005-10-23T23:36:00.000-04:00

Jade is the New Blue

We don’t just get sad anymore. We become jaded.

I think there is a difference.

Those who are sad mourn their current losses, but can imagine an end to their melancholy, whereas those who are jaded are not only unhappy in the present, they become skeptical that the future holds any more promise. In short, jaded people become bitter people.

People are jaded by their job, jaded by the ‘dating scene,’ and jaded by politics.

But who are these jaded people?

You might expect these jaded people are intellectually challenged, unemployed, or full of debilitating acne. Nopers.

One is my attractive young friend who has a great job, good lifestyle, but despite meeting many eligible dudes, she can’t seem to find one she really likes (or at least not for long). Another is a brilliant ex-colleague who has tried out a number of careers, is successful at all of them, but constantly feels miserable in his job due to the nagging suspicion that a far more fulfilling job is out there.

Most people would be green with envy.

Isn’t it strange that the word "Jaded" means the opposite of "Jade." How is it that a beautiful, green, semi-precious stone is related to the word for a state of sad bitterness?

After some fruitless "google" searching, I decided take the old-fashioned route of searching through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. What I found was quite interesting.

Apparently there are two meanings of the term "jade." The first is the stone. The next is reproduced below:

Jade(2)/dzeid/n.1. an inferior or worn-out horse. 2. Derogatory: a disreputable woman

Okay, so jaded is not related to the stone. I choose not to explore the relationship between these two meanings of Jade(2).

Now, here is the interesting part:

Definition of Jaded:

Jaded/’dzeideit/adj. Tired or worn out; surfeited

Surfeited/v. 1. fill, supply, or feed to excess. 2. Be or cause to be wearied through excess

Whereas we think of jaded people as those who are missing something, the Oxford reveals that jaded people suffer from too much.

It was with this idea in mind that the book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" by Barry Schwartz caught my attention.

The thesis of the book is simple. To a certain extent, having choices liberates us. But past a certain point, options paralyze us and can make us less satisfied with the choices we actually make.

Schwartz illustrates this phenomenon in a number of ways. My favourite example is an experiment that was done with chocolates. One group in the experiment was asked to choose one bonbon from a small box of chocolates. The other group had a much larger variety to choose from. Then each taster was asked to rate their satisfaction with the chocolate they chose.

Almost invariably, the tasters who had had a far smaller selection rated their satisfaction higher.

Schwartz illustrates why it is that too much choice ends up lessening our satisfaction with our education, or relationships, and with our jobs.

One of the main reasons for this phenomenon, he argues, is due to regret. The greater number of options we have, the greater number of things we ‘give up’ once our choice had been made.

So where am I going with all this?

Am I advocating for a new totalitarian Canadian society? Do I think we should all cease personal grooming in order to make ourselves less attractive (and thereby decrease our mate options)?

Maybe.

Schwartz suggests we work at lessening our regret by making irreversible decisions (so we’re not always thinking ‘what if’ and looking back. He also suggests we become aware of sunk costs of our decisions.

Personally, my going-forward strategy is to never make a decision…

Magic 8 ball says: Response hazy, try again.

2005-10-16T13:31:00.000-04:00

Brunch and World Peace

Perhaps I have just been trained to question the assumptions upon which socially constructed lines are drawn. Or maybe I was simply drawn in by the promise of unlimited refills of coffee. But in the past few years, I have come to embrace, and indeed to love, the wonderful ambiguity of brunch.

For some it is about pancakes, for others it is about roast chicken. But for all of us who participate in the weekly ritual of brunch, it is about reclaiming a meal, and making it uniquely our own.

Brunch stands proud in the face of breakfast and lunch, the slaves of gastronomic regimentation. The morning and afternoon meal were invented for reasons of efficiency, crudely balancing our biological needs on the one hand with our drive for maximum productivity on the other.

However, on Sundays, I refuse to have the social forces dictate when I can and cannot eat my eggs. I defy anyone to deny me a waffle at three in the afternoon. I am the master of my own meal.

But brunch is not only about the blurring of time/food-specific lines. For me, there are also social and psychological benefits to relaxing the grind of daily routine. Sure, I see friends during the week. Usually we cram each other in between a meeting and hip hop aerobics. Great, let’s sit, have a coffee and a meaningful catch-up session in 35 minutes. Shit - better make it 30. My best conversations with friends often occur over our third cup of coffee. By that time the superficial pleasantries are through, and we have that happy and focused on each other caffeine buzz.

Of course, some people require a period of acculturation before they "get" brunch. I went for brunch a few weeks ago with a friend who spent the whole sipping-coffee-waiting-for-food period of brunch (which is my favourite brunch period) on her blackberry. Then, once the food arrived, she frequently checked her blackberry. She sporadically felt phantom (i.e. false) vibrations in her purse. Never a good sign.

This morning, after reading the paper, I started to feel a bit guilty about focusing this blog entry on the topic of brunch. There are horrible and catastrophic events occurring all over the world. How shallow am I that I choose to take up time and webspace with a tribute to eggs?

I spent this past Thursday fasting on Yom Kippur - the Jewish day of atonement. We are supposed to repent for what we have done wrong and commit to mending our ways in the coming year. While I’m very far from religious, I always fast on Yom Kippur. For me, the fast has a number of humanistic spiritual benefits. One is that it sensitizes me to the plight of those who routinely go without food and reminds me of how privileged I am.

In fact, many of the Jewish rules and regulations focus on food. What we can eat, what we can’t eat, and how our food should be prepared. In trying to get a satisfactory explanation for why we’re not supposed to eat pigs (these days they’re clean, and tasty, right?) a number of sources tell me the same thing: the point perhaps is not that we can’t eat *pigs,* per se, but that we can’t eat *everything.* The kosher laws are supposed to be, if nothing else, a self-enforced pause. We are to become conscious about the food we eat and the act of eating itself.

Indeed, as I sit at my desk and mow down on granola bars, or shovel bran flakes into my mouth while standing up, listening to the radio, and brushing my hair in the mornings, the act of eating is mechanical, semi-conscious, and certainly unappreciated.

And then it hit me - for me brunch is a good and nearly spiritual endeavour. I slow down. I appreciate my food. I appreciate my friends. I take time to give thanks for what is important. I make plans to do good things in the coming week. In short, greasy spoons are my church. And I would say that $4.99 for eggs, toast, hash browns, and coffee is a small price to pay for a little piece of heaven.

2005-10-09T13:19:00.000-04:00

The Curious Incident of the Blog in the Night-Time

[Warning: This concept is utterly stolen from "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon]

This a mystery entry. I have changed the names of the parties to protect their identities.

As I rode home from Abby’s on my bicycle late that night, two yellow cars zoomed by me. And I knew it was going to be a Bad Night. Just that morning, I had seen three red cars in a row. It had been a Very Good Day. But, as Siobban says, sometimes your day can take A Turn For the Worse.

This was what happened.

I entered my apartment and turned on my computer in order to check my Hotmail email account. I like checking my hotmail email account because I like email.

My Hotmail email account showed that I had "One New Message."

The message was from "Anonymous."

This was my First Clue that something was amiss. In detective stories, clues are often coming from Anonymous Informants. People who are Anonymous have something to hide. Sometimes they are running from the Mafia. Other times they are involved in torrid love affairs and don’t want to be Found Out.

This Anonymous message was a message that had been posted to my Blog.

I opened the message. The message said something Not Nice about another person.

Sometimes I want to say Not Nice Things about others. But Mother says that I should keep these things to myself because saying them out loud Hurts People’s Feelings.

I told Mother that this does not make sense. People have feelings. Feelings don’t have feelings. People can be sad, or happy, or cranky, or angry, or surprised. Furthermore, people can be hurt. But feelings cannot be hurt.

Then Mother got pink in the face. This was how I knew that I had said something to upset her. She said: "Fine then, saying Not Nice Things makes people feel sad."

And then I understood.

So this was how I knew that I had to Do Something about this Not Nice Comment.

I logged onto my blog and deleted the comment. I replaced it with my own comment that echoed the words of Mother. I told people to be nice.

But now there was a Mystery to be solved. I needed to find out who Anonymous was, so that he or she would not be Not Nice on my blog ever again.

In detective stories, they call this Getting to the Bottom of Things.

So I looked at my blog for Clues.

I noted the time of the Anonymous entry. It had been posted at around 9 p.m.

First, I thought about who else had previously posted at 9 p.m. in the evening. I remembered that there had been an advertisement posted to my blog a few weeks ago that had been posted around that time on a Saturday night. The advertisement said:

"Nice blog! Please be sure to check out my website where loads of inexpensive pharmaceuticals can be ordered and delivered right to your door! We specialize in drugs for male potency."

However this clue was a Classic Red Herring.

A Red Herring is a clue that is not a real clue. It leads you down the wrong path to a dead end.

I reasoned that this Advertisement had been randomly generated and posted to my blog. Computers randomly generate and post advertisements. Computers, of course, can be programmed to generate mean messages and post them on blogs. However, it was highly improbable that I knew the person who had programmed the program that randomly posted pharmaceutical advertisements to blogs. Therefore, the Advertisement Post was a Classic Red Herring.

Since this was a Saturday night, I reasoned that the person who had posted the Not Nice Comment was someone who either did not have much of a social life, or was sick at home.

I knew one person who was sick at home. The Woman Who Lives Upstairs was sick at home. However, she was currently without access to Internet. Therefore, it was unlikely that she had posted to my blog.

I have one friend, Gretzky, who is sometimes a hermit. This friend is also sometimes grumpy and sometimes makes Not Nice Comments. We would be meeting the next day to do some writing. He is working on a book. It is about how he should run the world. He was now my Prime Suspect.

I was now quite tired. Detective work takes a fair deal of energy. In addition, I had consumed quite a bit of alcohol that evening. I thought that perhaps my sleuthing skills would be sharpened after eating a giant chocolate chip cookie and having a Good Sleep.

I woke up the next morning and met Gretzky.

Unfortunately, all my Detective Work had been a waste because Gretzky capitulated and Confessed Everything the moment I saw him. He was without remorse.

But at least the mystery had been Solved.

2005-10-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

Funny Folk

I’m sitting across from Andrew at Starbucks. He asks me a question, and I respond in earnest. A very amused smile spreads across his face. A disconcerting smile.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand.

“You’re a Funny Person, Nadine. A real ‘hoot’”

Funny Person. A title to which every young woman aspires.

“What do you mean Funny Person? Do you mean like ‘haha’ funny?”

I come from a family that speaks in euphemisms:

Fat = ‘Cute’
Stupid = ‘Kind’
Drunk = ‘Happy’
Mega Evil Bitch = ‘Mildly Moody Woman’

“Funny” is the place holder for many undesirably qualities:

He’s a big-time perv = ‘he’s Funny’
There is penicillin growing on that odious cheese = ‘it has gone Funny’
He farts like a pig = ‘His stomach is a bit Funny’

I immediately get my back up the second I think someone is euphemising me.

“Nadine, you are funny in Every Way,” Andrew answers.

Fanbloodytastic.

I’m no comedienne. Yet, I have often had this title of Funny Person applied to me.

I think that many of my friends, unfamiliar with the neuroses stereotypically characteristic of Women of the Tribe, mistake my baseline disposition for an expression of intentional comedy.

My friend, HoneyBunny, certainly made this mistake. Convinced that I was actually a ‘haha’ Funny Person, she and her boyfriend asked me to give the speech at her 21st birthday party.

The funny thing about HoneyBunny was that there was absolutely nothing funny about her. I tried to recall a funny story about her. I came up completely empty.

HoneyBunny is the most horrifically normal person I have ever met. No weird quirks. No drunken foolery. No lapses in judgment. No obsessive tendencies. She was a good student. She respected her parents. She never littered.

I therefore did the only thing I could do in that situation. I wrote a very sappy and comatosely boring speech: “Top 10 things I like about HoneyBunny.” I wonder what boring speech writers did for material before David Letterman?

At the conclusion of my speech, HoneyBunny came across the dance floor towards me, with a palpable look of disappointment on her face, to give me a hug. She whispered in my ear:

“Thanks. But you weren’t really funny, were you?”

I recently completed an unofficial internet poll:

Approximately 80% of MSN Chatters prefer “lol” to “ha.”

But nearly 100% of MSN Chatters use either “lol” or “ha” once or more in a typical MSN chat.

Next I spoke to a bunch of MSN Chatters by telephone.

Less than 40% either laughed out loud or audibly “haha-ed” during our live conversation.

This leads me to the conclusion that either people are way funnier by MSN, or else people like the idea of laughing, or want others to think they are laughing, but don’t actually engage in much physical laughing themselves.

I’m inclined to believe it is the latter. People like the idea of laughing. People who laugh are fun to be around. They keep things light.

But not always.

I went to a book talk by Thomas King, who was born to a mother of Greek/German descent and to a Cherokee father. His books often touch on difficult issues surrounding Aboriginal culture and Native Rights. Plus, his books are freakin’ hilarious.

When asked about his use of comedy, he explained that being funny allowed him to be highly critical of white society but in a form that is palatable to his white audience. He also felt that the benefit of dishing up social critique in this comedic form was that the message tended to stick around longer with its recipient.

He said what depresses him most about being a Funny Person is that a sad number of readers don’t realize that his comedies are actually tragedies.

I know a tragic Funny Person. He uses comedy as a self-defense mechanism. He shields himself in a cloak of sarcasm that repels any serious or difficult issue in his vicinity.

He is very sad to be around.

So I take stock of all the types of Funny People I could be:

HaHa Funny
LOL Funny
Tragic Funny
Weird Funny
Neurotic Funny
Rotten Funny
Pervert Funny

I decide that I disagree with Andrew. I’m not funny in Every Way.

I consider the fact that Andrew, a 27-year-old, has told me: “you are a real ‘hoot,’” and “I get a ‘kick’ out of you.”

I decide to add another Funny to my list:

Anachronism Funny.

2005-09-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

The Stepford Wife.

Just relax,
And allow the social the rules to guide you.
And interject,
At opportune times.
The powers that be,
Feed you your lines.

Well-mannered, good.
Does what she should.
Well read,
Well bred,
That pretty head.
Alright.
Polite.

Just smile,
As their words are closing in around you.
And genuflect,
When they come near.
Just grit your teeth,
Consumed with fear.

Ritual absurd,
Seen and not heard.
Heard and not seen,
A tainted dream.
Well-mannered, good.
Does what she should.
Well read,
Well bred.
A joke instead?

Alright. Polite.

2005-09-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

Self-Critique

This entry will not have a resolution.

I will not tie up loose ends, or weave some fabric of meaning from the frayed bits.

I will fight against my tendency to cram each and every experience into the thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework. I will not turn this blog into a Chicken Soup for the Soul-esque space where every story ends on a hopeful and moralistic upturn.

Because we don’t always get the weekly gym pass. And sometimes we go through life not realizing why it is that our bras don’t quite fit.

But fighting this tendency won’t be easy.

I’m a resolution addict and I hate ambiguity.

In my mock cross-examinations, I always asked that one final question too many. That extra question that was supposed to nail the witness down, ended up alerting her to my theory and allowed her to wiggle away.

I’m compelled to finish the sentences that people leave hanging.

I ask people to lay all their cards on the table before they even realize they have a deck in their lap.

On the other hand, maybe I’m unhealthily fighting against an innately human tendency. Doesn’t this desire for meaning, resolution, and clarity define our existence and explain why so many turn to religion and spirituality?

Shit! Did you see what I just did? Just there. Just above. I wrote that turning-point phrase. Under normal circumstances this is the paradigmatic shift that happens somewhere in the middle of my essay that allows all pieces to fall into place and tumble down the logical gradient into some point of clarity.

I decide to try on a double A bra. I break through the robotic exterior of the gym introductress.

The paradigm shift occurs, so said Thomas Kuhn (albeit in the context of science), when the bits and pieces of observed information no longer fit into one’s current model. In order to achieve cohesion and resolution, there is a paradigm change - a new model is created that can reconcile the dissonant observations.

Before all this paradigm shift stuff, there was plain old-fashioned rationalization. Things don’t make sense? No closure? No problem, just rationalize. You’ll ultimately come up with some conclusion that allows you to go on without that unsettling uncertainty to ruin your day.

No. I will remain strong in my fight against closure.

Again, normally at this point I would write something about my new found realization about the importance of embracing ambiguity. I might relate an anecdote about my photography instructor’s perceptive comment about my obsession with contrast. Or maybe I would take the easy-but-true route of criticizing North American politics. You’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.

But that again, would edge me closer to resolution. I won’t do it.

The only problem with writing this way, is that I’m not sure when I’m done.

2005-09-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Livin’ the Good Life

The greeter at the gym actually called me “fresh meat.”

Then, before I could ask for the membership rates, I was whisked off to the far regions of the gym. I found myself sitting in a dark corner across from Karen, my gym introductress.

She handed me a book and told me it was mine to keep, just for coming into the gym.

On the cover of the book was a terrifying photograph of what appeared to be an 80-year-old man doing a push up. His smiled like a Cheshire cat and his teeth gleamed iridescent blue/white. He had those botoxy expressionless eyes that made him look like a cross between Chucky and a wax figurine.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Oh,” swooned Karen, who tilted her head and caressed the cover, “that’s the founder of our gym. This gym is not just a gym. It is a lifestyle. This book will introduce you to that way of life. It’s kind of, like, inspiring.”

Sorry to digress, but is it even possible to buy a product or service without purchasing a lifestyle? In Naomi Klein’s book No Logo she discusses the Starbucks phenomenon and quotes the CEO as admitting (actually boasting) that their coffee is no better than any other coffee on the market. We pay a premium at Starbucks, so he argues, because we are buying our own little piece of Starbucks lifestyle. (I must admit, it is a lifestyle that I have bought into in a big way).

“Um, no thanks. I mean, I’m sure it is a great book, but I have lots of reading to do for work and..”

Karen’s face flushed momentarily with hurt, “Suit yourself.” And she grabbed the book from the table and ceremoniously placed it under the giant clip of her clipboard.

Tour time.

Karen paraded me around the gym in a mechanical way. She seemed to have a personal anecdote for every machine along the way. Most of her stories began like this:

“I remember, when I was like you, first starting out and I had never used machine X…”

I was beginning to wonder whether Karen herself was a machine.

I asked Karen if we could just skip the equipment and head to the group exercise facility.

“I don’t really like exercise machines. They kind of freak me out,” I told her

“Freak you out?” I could see that this comment had thrown Karen into a state of severe cognitive dissonance. Her robo-mind could not retrieve the Gym-endorsed response:

100 Print = “this is our state-of-the-art thigh master”
200 If n$ = I use thigh masters, goto 400
300 If n$ = I don’t use thigh masters, goto 500
400 Print = “I remember when I was starting out on the thigh master..”
500 Print = “I remember when I didn’t use the thigh master”
n$ = “I don’t like machines, they freak me out”
Output = Does not compute, terminal error, reboot

[Yes, as a nerdy child I dabbled in Basic programming. I mainly programmed ‘choose your own adventure’ games. Then my parents discovered I was writing an erotic choose your own adventure game and cut me off]

But gyms are scary places. I see thirty people running on treadmills in The “Cardio Theatre,” silently sweating to CNN news, and I can’t help thinking about how bizarre and unnatural it is. We’ve evolved to the level where many of us can refrain from any form of physical exertion during the day, and then we rely on machines to relieve us from our sedentary lifestyles.

I wonder whether it would be possible to harness all that energy that we expend on exercise machines and use it to generate electricity. Screw the new nuclear plants, let’s get the Bay St. elite to power our computers!

Finally, Karen was ready to talk about rates.

Now I know this particular gym gives out weekly trial passes. But they only give them out as a last-resort sales technique. Karen was not going to give one up without a fight. She wanted to close.

Thus began our verbal sparring:

Karen: So if you are ready to sign up, I’ll just start processing your details
Nadine: Actually, I think I need a bit of time to think about it. Can I try a class or something?
Karen: Well sure. Actually, if you sign up today you have ten days to change your mind, so you can try all the classes you want for 10 days.
Nadine: Oh, like a cooling off period?
Karen: Well, we like to call it a “comfort period”
Nadine: Well, I’m still thinking of checking out another gym nearby
Karen: You know, I remember when I was like you, looking for a gym….
Nadine: Karen, maybe I should just come back later
Karen: You know, you owe it to yourself to start today

Just before Karen and I went into full-out BodyCombatTM, something strange happened. Karen somehow figured out that she knew my mom, who had taught her graphic design in college. Suddenly, Karen’s hard sales persona melted away and we began discussing her dreams of pursuing a career in advertising.

She confided in me, her face for the first time showing signs of humanly emotion, that she found this job so exhausting that she was devoid of any creative energy when she got home at night and was having trouble building up her portfolio. Karen gave a furtive glance towards her director’s office, said under her breath, “oh, what the hell,” and quickly wrote me up a one-week pass, and ushered me out the door.

2005-09-16T22:43:00.000-04:00

Friggin A(A)

Yesterday, in a dimly lit change room, to the non-beat of some synthesized wordless Billy Joel song, I bit my lip and stared in disbelief as I found myself in, possibly, my first ever properly sized bra.

For fifteen years I have deluded myself into believing that I am a size A. Not that being a size A is anything to get one’s neckline in a plunge or anything. But while the A is on the small side of the curve bell, it is still on the bell nonetheless. Something about wearing an A made me feel like at least I was in the game.

For years I have worn bras that don’t fit. I bought As, pulled the straps tight and the put back strap on the smallest hook level. But still, the bra seemed more like an accessory than any functional supportive device.

I was a late bloomer who only ever half-heartedly entered spring. When I complained to my mother about my non cleavage, she told me that what with me being so thin, if I had bigger boobs I would look like a freak.

Well, mom, look around you. This is a society that reveres freaks. There was a poster in the Student Health Clinic at my university that showed the legs of a super model and a starving African woman side by side. They were virtually indistinguishable. Try looking at a magazine photo of a model. Cover up her boobs and she is instantly transformed into an emaciated anorexic. Uncover her boobs and she is the pinnacle of beauty.

I’m not going to delve into the issue of how the media feeds us unhealthy images of women. That issue has been very well documented elsewhere. My only point here is that boobs seem to be the one aspect of the female anatomy that people don’t really expect to be ‘in proportion’ to one’s body.

I did once wear a B. I wore it with pride. I didn’t cut the sizing tag off that bra like I usually do. Itchy or not, I hoped that someone (preferably a boy) would sometime catch a glimpse of the tag and be impressed. This, of course, was before I realized that I was wearing a ‘vanity sized’ bra. At the GAP, they make people who are really a size 12 think that they are actually a size 6. This is a brilliant marketing ploy based on the fact that people buy more clothing when they feel good about their body. Similarly, my ‘petites’ bra was sized on the same principle, albeit in a different direction. People feel bad about being a double A.

But I am a double A. An AA. Anatomically Anomalous.

I am not exactly sure what it was that made yesterday’s trip to the Bay distinguishable from all my other previous trips. I have just moved into a new apartment and have just started a new job. I suppose I am learning to embrace change. For whatever reason, yesterday, after trying on five bras which did not fit me correctly, I made the choice not to deceive myself any longer. I was going to find a bra that fits.

This was no easy mission. Most bra brands do not make sizes smaller than A. Either because we below As are so few in number, or because I am not alone in my active suppression of my size self-awareness.

A well-endowed sales lady asked me if she could offer me any assistance. "Yes," I replied, "I’m looking for double As."

"Oh," she replied, while looking me up and down, "I think we may have a few of those lying around somewhere."

Yes, 'lying around'. I made a quick mental list of the types of things that lie around. Last week’s lunch. Playing cards. Pogo sticks. Lazy dogs. ‘That uncle’. Basically, things that don’t really have a whole lot of use to many people.

In an entire lingerie department there were three AA bras. None of which came in black. I figured that if I can’t be sexy in proportion, maybe I can be sexy in colour. Alas.

I tried them on, hoping desperately that they wouldn’t fit. But fit they did. Like a glove. And for the first time I felt support. Like a little hug on each breast saying, "I won’t let you down. Go ahead and bounce." And it felt good.

I can’t say that I have woken up today with some sort of total bodily self-acceptance. But I do feel that I have somehow edged into a new era of facing reality. I’m trying to see things as they are and to deal with them accordingly. If that means facing the world clad in ugly cream-coloured braziers, then so be it.