newly human & strangely literal

teamwork

2010-02-19T18:44:00.003-06:00

I jinxed us by writing about Jake's sleep on the internets. Any progress we had been making seems to have gone out the window in the last few days, and I am spending a lot of time in the wee smalls sitting in his rocking chair, wretchedly reminding myself that he will eventually sleep through the night, even if that eventuality is several years away. Ugh.

However, the universe has been awesome, by which I mostly mean people I know. Kat gave us her glider, so I have a place to rock the baby in the middle of the night. Paul drove me out to Kat's to pick it up. Jenny took Jake overnight last Saturday so we could get some sleep. Folks have sent me sweet notes about my parenting abilities. And as a cherry on the top of it all, I found this website:

http://www.askmoxie.org/

Behold! A parenting website where people discuss their parenting experiences instead of screaming at everyone else about how they're doing it wrong! It's a miracle. Now if I could only figure out how the spambots are defeating my word verification for comments, all would be golden.

why yes, that IS a Cuisinart in my bathroom!

2010-02-15T18:51:00.002-06:00

Jake is finally spending some of the night sleeping in his crib. We're usually able to get him to sleep between 7 and 7:30 without too much fuss. He doesn't stay asleep particularly well, but it means as much as two whole hours some nights when we can just hang out, usually watching tv because we're too wiped out to do anything else. Still! Adult time is awesome. Oh, hello, person I married. I vaguely remember you as someone other than "that guy I hand the baby to."

The complicating factor is the layout of our apartment, in which the baby's bedroom shares a wall with--you guessed it--the kitchen. Another wall with the dining room. And since his nighttime routine (bath, story, nurse, song) can take up to 45 minutes on a tough night, we usually have not eaten before getting him down. Hell, some nights spook doesn't even get a chance to get home before I'm in there, rocking and singing. The only outlet in the house that feels far enough away to run a noisy appliance is downstairs in the bathroom.

I left my coffee grinder there this morning.

inside out

2010-01-08T10:45:00.003-06:00

Having a baby is, in my limited experience, like ripping your heart out and then sending it into the world where anything can happen to it. I meant to be blogging the last few months. In fact, I meant to be blogging every day. Babies nap, right? But the experience has so far been both so intense and so banal that I could not think of a way to express myself. And so I haven't.

it IS a fashion statement. it says "I give up!"

2009-09-29T20:45:00.002-05:00

I was really, really happy about buying a pair of jeans that fit me. Wearing maternity clothes when you are no longer pregnant is just depressing. And oh! The novelty of pants with a zipper! So why, you might legitimately ask yourself, did I also buy a pair of sweatpants?

TO HORRIFY STACY LONDON.

2009-09-19T11:47:00.003-05:00

What are you doing, 'col?

Well, I'm doing laundry, which hardly bears mentioning, since I'm always doing laundry. Unless I've given up on the laundry, in which case spook is doing it. This morning he said that he had put in all the laundry last night, and I thought no way, and then I discovered that all the laundry did not include the two sets of sheets and mattress pad that have been waiting to be washed, oh, since Jacob was born. I don't want to diminish his achievement; there was a lot of damn washing to do. He also washed all of the bottles and all of the breastpump paraphernalia, no minor feat. So today I'm trying to get through the aforementioned sheets, and to assemble all the diapers and put them away. For ten seconds we could have clean diapers.

Can we talk about cloth diapers for a second? They are not nearly the nightmare that I was afraid they would be. When I told Adam about it, he said "You're doing all that folding?" Incredulous, wide-eyed. I know there are people who do all that folding and think nothing of it, but I am not of that tribe. No, in fact, we bought the BumGenius diapers (I am embarrassed just typing that), a diaper described to us (more embarrassment coming up) as "the Cadillac of diapers." No lie. These are pretty awesome, and totally straightforward, a big plus for me since when the Diaper Lady was demonstrating prefolds for us, I realized that I would need a degree in engineering just to understand how the damn thing was supposed to go together. The other big factors in the ease of our cloth diaper experience are:

1) Flushable liners. You wouldn't think this would matter much at the infant poop stage, but they cut down on the rinsing.
2) A spray head for our laundry sink tap. Thank you, Jenny. Before this I could not get the water pressure high enough and had to scrape poop out of the diapers by hand. (Ew. I know. But babies are gross, so stay with me.)
3) Laundry in our apartment. I cannot stress this enough.

The other thing I've been doing lately is reading a lot about food. I just finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. He says in the introduction that he wrote it after The Omnivore's Dilemma was published partly in response to the reader questions he received: now that you've done all this research about food production, what do you think we should eat? What do you eat? So it's two parts critique of the way nutrition science filters into the public imagination and one part his guidelines about what he thinks makes sensible eating. His ideas feel possible to adopt, unlike the dogmatic and rigid thinking which makes up so much of food discourse. Instead of feeling squashed by impossible standards, I came off the end of this book feeling inspired to change our food habits--both shopping and eating.

iterative development

2009-08-27T10:18:00.005-05:00

Here is what I have learned in the last four weeks: the first month, all you will do is feed the baby, change the baby, and try to sleep. Seriously. Over and over and over and over and over again. If you do anything beyond these parameters, it is a fucking miracle. This is especially true for people who are single parents, or for people whose partners have to return to work right away.

With the help of our massive supporting cast, we have done some other things. Thanks to spook's job, which allowed him to be home (with the exception of a few days) until this week, we managed quite a bit of the housework. (We also had volunteers do some of our laundry and dishes.) Thanks to being strongly motivated to not go crazy, we went for a lot of walks, both to calm the baby and to get ice cream. Thanks to fairy godmother Jenny, we got a chance to go out to dinner, just the two of us. So I'm not trying to discourage you, folks who do not have kids, so much as telling you to keep your expectations super-low and then congratulate yourselves like mad on every small achievement. It feels much better that way.

This first week by myself is interesting so far. It's a lot less possible to get things done when there isn't a second set of hands around--and I'm cheating, because once again fairy godmother Jenny steps in so that I get to eat lunch. Lunch which she makes for me. I am completely spoiled. But today I count as a victory that I was able to take a shower, something which has previously only been possible when spook is home because it breaks my heart to put Jake down if he's crying, even for five minutes to get clean. But y'know, showers are awesome, especially at such a sticky time. (Not ten minutes goes by without me getting some substance all over me--drool, breastmilk, toast crumbs, and--rarely but unpleasantly--poop.)

My mind feels a little bit gone, although it's actually better than it was early in my pregnancy when I felt so sick all the time that I seemed to have been sublimated by my wretchedness. I do the same repetitive tasks and it's hard to get my brain out of that loop to talk about anything else, so I hate listening to myself, because even though I kinda knew I was going to be one of those people who's all the baby the baby the baby, I didn't want to be. And gradually, I guess, I won't be. There are non-baby activities in my life, even if a lot of them occur simultaneously with breastfeeding: watching HBO's Rome and the NFL preseason, playing Scrabble, visiting with friends. Today I'm going to rent National Geographic's documentary about the Romans in Britain. (Yes, it's a kick I'm on, all right?) It will mean a walk in the beautiful fall weather and a chance to look around at the slightly wider world. Baby steps.

safely back in the world

2009-08-01T12:19:00.004-05:00

"my heart's not new
I'm not like you
I've loved and been loved
well and badly too
my body's been
through everything
I've used and been used
I got over it
there's something that you learn on a tightrope
just outside the spotlight,
there's a big net waiting"
Tanya Donelly
I'm Keeping You

I'm listening to my son making little sighing noises in his sleep. It's been three and a half days, and I still can't quite believe he's here. I probably do not have time to tell you about his birth before he wakes up, but I can tell you that it was one of the most challenging and most rewarding experiences of my life, that spook showed me a depth of devotion and care that I can still hardly fathom, that although I was terrified that it would somehow be too much for me to cope with, it was not. And now he's here with me.

Et tu, Brute?

2009-07-23T14:26:00.002-05:00

I've been reading novels set in the Roman Empire (one series concerning the rise of Julius Caesar, another set much later in Roman Britain), so I thought I'd borrow some nonfiction from the library. It seems, however, that all I care about is looking at Roman art and reading about the structure of the military.

Also that it is a good thing I developed this quirk now and not five months ago, because I would totally have tried to talk spook into naming the shrimpbaby Gaius.

Anyone have any good military history to recommend?

It sparkles!

2009-07-21T18:29:00.001-05:00

I keep thinking "I should blog," and then I don't, mostly for the reason that the stuff in my life at the moment is all "I was sitting at the computer and my cat was hovering anxiously in my lap, when I realized I should probably go and pee for the ninth time in the last hour. When I stood up I discovered that one of my legs had gone to sleep and then I had a contraction and had to hold on to a chair to keep from falling over."

Yep. Glamourous.

On the other hand, the internet gave me this.

if you're reading this

2009-06-16T18:28:00.003-05:00

Dear Person Who Thinks That A Catchy Way to Get the Attention of a Prospective Employer is to Drop Letters at Intervals Around the Store You Hope To Work In (I'll call you PWTTACWTGTAOAPEITDL@IATSYHTWI; I hope that's not too informal for you),

You might recognize yourself from your salutation: "If you're reading this, it means I have already submitted my resume to you!"

While I commend your creativity, I feel that someone should point out to you the actual effect of your letter-dropping, at least in my workplace.

1. I found your letter on the floor of the elevator.

2. I wondered (admittedly, not very seriously) if your letter was full of Dire!Poison!

3. I handed it over to a supervisor, who rolled their eyes, because this was the fifth such letter they had received from you.

After the first time, which I will admit would have made me go and look up your resume to see if I wanted to hire you, although I make no such claims on behalf of any of my managers, it's just littering. If doing it once does not get you the result you hope for, I suggest you move on, because at that point you can determine that either this tactic doesn't get you the right kind of attention, or that the issue is your resume. Perhaps that is where you should direct your energy.

PWTTACWTGTAOAPEITDL@IATSYHTWI, I'm not trying to be a bitch here. I'm trying to help you get a job. Good luck.

'col

I miss my dignity

2009-06-10T15:27:00.002-05:00

This was the main thought going through my head when I was struck with a terrible foot cramp at work while multiple onlookers got to witness me going "Ow ow ow ow I'm fine it's just a cramp ow I know what to do about leg cramps but ow ow ow--oh. That's working. Okay."

Max said ten new words this week

2009-05-28T17:37:00.005-05:00

I would like to invite all of you to pledge to Team Max in this year's Walk For Autism. Max's mom, Katrina, has been deeply kind and supportive of me in the last few months. She played matchmaker for us with some of her friends who were looking to give away baby things they didn't need any more. She encouraged me when I was miserable and sick and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. And what I wonder, every time a note pops up from her with a word of advice about something I've complained about, or a check-in to see how I'm doing, is where the hell does she find the energy?

I can't possibly tell you what it's like to be the parent of a child with autism, much less what it's like to be that kid, but I invite you to consider the following figures:

Recommended treatment for autistic kids: Intensive Behavior Intervention. This is most effective between the ages of 2 and 5. It is recommended that children get a minimum of 21 hours a week of therapy. The cost, out of pocket, is $45 an hour. The wait list for funding for this therapy, as I understand it, is currently hovering somewhere between 2 and 3 years. That doesn't take into account how long you might have to wait to get a diagnosis in the first place. When I think about what this would mean for us--that in order to get appropriate treatment for our child, we would have to pay out more money than we make--I feel sick. And when I read about what Kat's working on to make sure Max gets all the opportunities he deserves, I feel inspired.

Come with me if you want to live.

2009-05-18T14:19:00.004-05:00

...Guys?

I know I just moved and all, and there are probably a number of updates that people might be happy to have about what's going on in my life and this trailer is no longer even that new, but...

Apocalyptic sf makes me flaily.

The first Terminator movie made deep deep grooves in my brain when I saw it as a kid, and I am similarly excited about this, Christian Bale's douchebaggery notwithstanding. And how excited am I? I'm wondering whether it would even be possible to get in to see it on Thursday, and if not, how soon thereafter we could go, given our work schedules.

I am full of squee.

Oof.

2009-05-08T15:40:00.002-05:00

At lunch today, shrimpbaby kicked me in the ribs so vigourously that I made an involuntary "huh" noise, and then stared down at my treacherous belly.
"Those are my ribs!" I told him. He kicked me again. "And I am currently using them!"

I can see that this is just preparation for things to come, for example the foolish notion that sleeping through the night is worthy of consideration.

the basics

2009-04-20T09:26:00.002-05:00

"Put a pillow between your knees when you're sleeping," my midwife said. I do, faithfully, gradually getting used to the weirdness of sleeping on my side. This morning it feels like my femurs might just pop out of my hip joints, bitey crescents of pain.

On the other hand, the shrimpbaby is doing flips, occasionally booting me with an elbow or a foot. Hi, buddy. Fifteen more weeks. I woke thinking about how I was hungry, was suddenly worried that he would be hungry, and then thought "No, no, that doesn't come until later." And then I thought about how freaky it must be to be born, and then to be suddenly cold, and hungry, for the first time in your life, with no idea what it is or if it will ever go away. I realize this is not a new thought, but it was new to me, or new to me in a way--in the sense that it was the first time I'd ever gotten inside the thought. Little dude, I can't save you from the scary feeling of getting hungry, but I will always feed you.

irrational fear

2009-04-15T14:49:00.001-05:00

I must keep reminding myself: my uterus is not a water balloon, and no matter how weird it feels when I bend over, it is not going to pop.

Eeugh.

oh, now that's just embarrassing

2009-04-12T19:43:00.006-05:00

In a time of economic uncertainty, you know what a really great idea is? Doing something so stupid that you piss off half your customer base.

Amazon, massive online book retailer, has removed a whole whack of titles from their sales rankings because of "adult content." In many cases, this means those books don't show up in a search of the Amazon site, either. One wonders how Amazon plans to sell these phantom books. One also wonders how Amazon defines adult content. The answer? "As poorly as everyone else who's ever tried it." In one of the more ridiculous examples, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho (complete with horrific serial killings) still shows up, but Unfriendly Fire, a book about queers and American military policy, is apparently too racy for us.

Books with queer content are disproportionately represented (or unrepresented, I guess) in this new system, regardless of whether that content consists of frolicsome fisting threeways or the mere mention of our existence. Also missing in action are romance and erotica titles (though which ones appears to be a crapshoot), and I'm sure there's more.

The internets are already ablaze with fury, and I think some fury is warranted. But you know what else is warranted? Hysterical laughter. Seriously, Amazon? Seriously? What were you thinking?

I'm with the Smart Bitches on this one. I say we Google Bomb them. Click for a new definition:

Amazon Rank

ETA: Apparently Amazon is now claiming that it's a glitch and not a new policy. And you know, if they had offered this as the first explanation, I'd've been willing to believe it, because the alternative is just so mindbogglingly dumb. But here are a couple of points to consider.

she's a jukebox with a knack for fighting

2009-04-06T09:54:00.002-05:00

Oh, the things I would like to blog about--I would like to tell you that I'm methodically working my way through my packing, making sensible decisions, scheduling the cleaning that needs to be done around here--but that's spook. I am mostly staring in dismay at the boxes, bereft of any sense of what needs to go in them or how to go about it. Or, in the rare occasion when I know exactly what needs to be packed and how, void of motivation to do it.

I hate transition periods. I want to be in the new place, already, and then we could unpack things. That part is not so bad.

Similarly, I'm impatient with my pregnancy. I should say that things have gotten better. Both the nausea and the dizziness have passed, and it wasn't until they were both gone that I really knew how exhausted I've been for the last four months. I have a personality again, and the resources to look for the positive in things, whereas when I look back I can see that I was coasting on the habit of cracking jokes about the things that make me want to cry. Now I'm happy to see people. I can think about something other than how wretched I've been feeling. So aside from the fact that all my connective tissues are loosening up, which means that if I stand for any length of time it feels like someone is taking a chisel to my pelvis, I'm doing pretty well. (For those of you who wonder about it: try not to be working in retail sales when you're pregnant. Every frustrating limitation will directly impact your ability to do every aspect of your job. I'm just saying.) I think it's a good sign that I feel better enough to feel antsy. I want to meet the shrimpbaby--on the outside. We have seventeen weeks to go. (I checked; I keep screwing up the count and thinking we're farther along than we are.) I am trying to be grateful that we've got the time; after all, there are nine million things to do between now and then.

my family just got bigger

2009-03-12T08:30:00.002-05:00

This is Nico, second of my World's Most Gorgeous Nieces.

nom nom nom

2009-03-10T14:16:00.002-05:00

It's not all throwing up and fainting and complaining about how my clothes fit, 'round here at Newly Human--some of it is waxing rhapsodic about the grocery store near our new apartment. We went over today to measure some room sizes and sign our lease, and on our way home we stopped by to do a sample shop.

From a neighbourhood grocery where icing sugar and veggie burgers have both been known to qualify as a "frill," we are moving to one where the No Frills has live Tilapia, a butcher's counter, and seven kinds of ready-to-bake pies (four if you want them in the "pie for two" size). They have bean curd in hot chili oil, they have Mole in jars, and cans of tomatillos, they have fancy snack nuts. About halfway through our shopping spook started giggling helplessly and widening his eyes at me, like can you believe this shit?

This in addition to a Sobey's right around the corner and about six fruit stands within a ten-minute walk, two coffee shops selling fair trade beans, a cheese shop and an organic meat store. It is food heaven.

needles ahoy

2009-02-24T16:27:00.002-06:00

Daniel: "We've done bloodwork together before, haven't we?"
Me: "Yes."
Daniel: "I remember your vein."

Way to make me laugh in a stressful situation, dude.

how you are in the world

2009-02-23T16:41:00.004-06:00

This was not the most successful day ever, from a keeping-the-nice-lady-calm perspective. Having learned my lesson from my first ultrasound, I belatedly took the advice my friends gave me six weeks ago ("You are a tiny woman. You do not need to drink the entire litre of water they're telling you to drink. That's ridiculous.") and so I was at least not as uncomfortable this time.

Not so good was getting into the little room and having the woman who was supposed to do my ultrasound tell me that I was only seventeen weeks pregnant, and therefore it was too early to run an anatomy scan. Now, I have done the math on this several times, and had a number of different other people do the math, and come up with a different answer (and so had my doctor) but do you know, people? She was right. Except I had fucked it up somewhere along the way and thought this last Saturday marked eighteen weeks. Well, hell.

The good news is that the systems for determining how pregnant you are are so nonspecific that when she did the ultrasound, she said to ignore the math because based on the baby's measurements, my addled calculations were actually closer. She did, however, move our due date back into late July from early August. (Relax, Team Leo--barring something unexpected, the shrimpbaby is still one of yours.)

We then went upstairs to get the accompanying bloodwork done. While I waited at the counter, spook went out to put more money in the meter. The guy at the desk looked at my paperwork and said "We need the form for this. This isn't the right form. Go back downstairs and tell them you need the right form." I went. Downstairs, the very nice woman at the desk said "They always do this. Wait a sec, I'm gonna send you up with a note. They don't need a form for this. They need a form for the first part of this test, which they did six weeks ago." She wrote a note, including her phone number in case the guy had any questions, and the instruction "DO NOT send patient back down." Upstairs, the guy was all, "This isn't the right form." As calmly as I could, I said
"Well, the people on six say you don't need a form."
"We can't do anything without a form." He tried to hand it back to me. I didn't take it.
"Perhaps you could call the people on six and sort this out with them." I watched him think about refusing, then put in a perfunctory call. He hung up immediately.
"It's their answering machine. We're not associated with the radiology department. They're a different company. We need a form, we won't do anything without--"

I walked away on him. Not politely.

Went back downstairs. The nice lady, April, was just getting on the elevator as I got off.

"The guy up on eight says they won't do a damn thing without a form." I told her, and burst into tears.
"Oh, no. Okay. I'm going to fix this for you. You need to get that test done. Come with me."

She called my doctor's office, was transferred around a bit, explained the situation to them. Told me that my doctor's office was going to call upstairs to wrangle unpleasant guy. "I'll come with you." she said, and did.

When we got back up to the eighth floor, we ran into spook, who had been frantically searching for me for some minutes now. "What happened?" he asked. "I'll tell you later," I said, grimly wiping away tears. Stupid pregnancy hormones.

April went through the same routine with surly guy, who by now I think disliked me almost as much as I disliked him. Then she turned to me and said "If your doctor hasn't called in half an hour, you come down and see me, and I'll call them again."

We sat for twenty minutes and then determined that even if my doctor's office did call at this point, we were going to get towed waiting for my blood work, because we were flat out of change. spook went back downstairs to confer with April, who reassured him that in fact we could go to another lab, one where they were not assholes, so long as we went soon. As we were gathering up our stuff to leave, another woman in the waiting room asked if we'd been there a long time. I said no, but there was some paperwork mixup. She said "Yeah, I've been here before. These people are not nice."

In the lobby, spook called my doctor's office and told them our story again, asked if we could come in and get my blood drawn by the sweet nurse there instead. "Because here they were mean to my wife and made her cry." So we're going in tomorrow morning, and Daniel will tell me a funny story and reassure me that my terrible fear of needles is just an extreme response to very old programming that tells our bodies not to let other people stick things in us.

This is a thing I will remember in my work, when I have the opportunity to make something easier for someone. The guy at the desk could have said the very same thing to me without being an asshole about it, could have suggested that we call my doctor, or, y'know, offered me the phone so I could do it. And while my job does not involve facilitating important medical tests for people, I still think it matters how I do it.

Thanks, April.

the Time Traveller's Fife

2009-02-14T16:55:00.004-06:00

...okay. More like the Time Traveller's Harmonica, but that does not a witty book title reference make.

When I was in university, my friend and sometime room-mate Adam was in a band called Aardvark and the Crumpled Sleeve. They played punk-blues: loud, fast, and with uneven levels of proficiency (the band got better over time, but there were other factors, such as the drummer's tendency to speed up with every beer, that cannot be overlooked). They were a wall of noise, which I usually hate.

I went to every show they played, except for the ones which happened while I was out of the province, and many of their rehearsals.

Understand, at that point in my life, music was What I Was Doing (which is one of the reasons I don't have a degree, but I digress). Adam was in another band, with me, many of our other friends were musicians, we were all writing music all the time, and listening to it, and performing it. So going to another band's rehearsals didn't seem as crazy in that context as it sounds in this one. Besides, you never knew when something incredible might happen, like the time Nathan's amp spontaneously caught fire mid-song. You can't pay for that kind of entertainment.

They played a reunion show last night, which I really ought not to have attended. They didn't even go on until 10:45, which is an hour after I have usually gone to bed, and I had to work today. But miss it? No way. Dude, I still remember the words, at least all of the words I could understand over the general blare. Before their set, Adam looked around the room and said "Huh. This is way more pregnant than our audience used to be." But what I was surprised by was how much it seemed like no time at all had passed. Looking at them under the stage lights, no one even looked older. Of course, offstage, we're all older. Eleven years older, in fact, with jobs and kids and better glasses. But it was a kind of magic--time travel--and I'm glad I went.

kooky adaptation? or kookiest adaptation?

2009-02-01T13:20:00.002-06:00

So...assuming that you don't live under a rock, you may have heard about the book He's Just Not That Into You. Working in a bookstore, it was impossible to avoid. The authors made multiple appearances on Oprah. People swarmed the store. After much, much head-shaking, I caved and read it.

And you know what? It was pretty good. I was expecting to find it condescending and awful, poking fun at women for the bad behavior of men, and in fact the whole thing reads like this: "You are an awesome lady. This thing that your crush is doing? This is an asshole thing. Do not waste any more of your awesome lady time on this asshole. Out there is someone who wants to treat you like the queen that you are. I hear that you like this guy and would like to make excuses for his assholery, but seriously, best case scenario, what's that going to get you? A half-hearted relationship with an asshole. Run, don't walk." Um. Loosely paraphrasing.

I would like to go back in time and give my 17-year-old self a copy of this book. Hell, I would recommend this book to women my own age now. And while I think it's depressing that there are so many women who have lowered their expectations into nothingness that this book could become a runaway best-seller, I think it's maybe heartening that it did.

All that said, I have vocally expressed the opinion that a self-help book is not a good basis for a feature film, even though a large number of people with enough money to make it happen disagree. But I may be proven wrong yet again, if this is anything to go by:

ICYMI - 10 Chick Flick Cliches That Are Not In "He's Just Not That Into You" @ Yahoo! Video

mama said knock you out

2009-01-28T19:40:00.002-06:00

The maternity shop--the same shop where a scarily enthusiastic woman told me three weeks ago "Come back when you grow out of your bra! Don't just buy a size bigger! We'll help you find one that you'll get more use of out!"--does not carry a bra in the size that I am. Does not carry one. At all.

I am told by one of my similarly-built friends that I can look forward to continuing this fun trend when I need to buy nursing bras, which also may not exist in my size.

A trip to a regular-old bra retailer did not turn up anything that was going to remotely work either, although they did have a range of sizes, one of which you would think would have to fit me, but no. I am a freak of nature, and nothing fits.

I suppose I will continue to wear uncomfortable and ill-fitting bras, while ever increasing numbers of my co-workers point out my ever-increasing rack.

AAAAAAAAAAH!

there were Vikings and boats and some plans for a furniture store

2009-01-26T16:29:00.002-06:00

spook and I decided that a nice thing to do today would be to go to Ikea and wander around, look at their displays, eat some meatballs. (I will confess that the meatball thing was more my motivation than his.) We've got a move coming up in the spring, and I thought that maybe it would be fun to look at their room displays, their unbelievably well-laid-out and tiny apartments full of Ikea goodness. I'm still tired a lot (okay, all) of the time, and this seemed like it would get us out of the house without being too strenuous. The basic soundness of this plan lasted until I stepped out of the car, and my knee went -enh-.
"Ow." I said. Then, more emphatically, "Ow!" I had decided to leave my coat in the car so that I wouldn't have to carry it, so I hobbled across the frigid parking lot as quickly as I could, sort of cursing, mostly bewildered. My knee was just fine when I got into the car. I don't get it.

After a few minutes, it became clear that this was not a "walk it off" situation. spook went off, as he does, and returned with a wheelchair. Apparently Ikea does have some, for this sort of eventuality.

Let me tell you that the experience of being pushed around in a wheelchair is a little frightening, for a newbie. I kept making "eep!" noises and putting up my hands to fend off possible collisions. Also I got motion sick. Finally, I told spook that I wanted to steer myself.

Bravo, Ikea. Even a wheelchair idiot like me could make the thing go where I wanted it to, and the Ikea layout mostly allows you to go all the places in a wheelchair that you could go without one (I did not test this theory in the bathrooms, so my data is not complete). I now want to borrow one of the mall wheelchairs and try this out in my store. (I may have to, if I'm still limping on Wednesday.) In fact, I think this should be a requirement for people who are designing a store layout: go through the whole thing in a wheelchair or on a scooter and find out where you get stuck.

I bet my arms are gonna be sore tomorrow though. Not to mention my thrice-cursed knee. What the hell!?

(not my) parenting story

2009-01-21T18:24:00.001-06:00

Jen and I were friends in university, and stay in a sporadic sort of touch via facebook, so I was excited to see this story about her family featured in Toronto Life. Go read. It's cool.

Call for submissions (a newly human first!)

2009-01-14T16:47:00.002-06:00

Despite the giant pain in the ass that drafting and signing a donor contract turned out to be (a saga which I may someday relate, because it seems like it might be useful to somebody out there), I have to say that I really like my lawyer. I would happily and confidently recommend her to anyone in Toronto looking for a queer-friendly family lawyer. She is the bomb.

I'm aware that there's a whole bunch of stuff I want to tell you guys about our decision to have a baby and our process for getting there, actually, because when we started trying to do it I realized that I could find all kinds of stories about queer families, but no Canadian ones. I know a handful of queerfolk my age who have kids, but either I don't know them well enough to ask a bunch of crazily intrusive questions, or I failed to connect with them when we were in our information-gathering stage, and it was...kind of a crappy, alienating, lonely experience. If putting my story out in the world would make it less that way for other people, that would be a good thing to do.

So, writing about intending to write about something is a bit peculiar, but if I put it out there on the internet, I have to make it happen. It also allows me to petition you folks for your stories. Did your family come about in a way that was off the beaten path? D'you want to tell that story? If so, leave me a comment and I will figure out how to feature you as a guest blogger (or link to your blog, if you've already written about it.) I'm hoping for some specifically Canadian stories, 'cause our law is different, but I'm happy to hear from everyone. Tell your friends!

the sound that wonder makes

2009-01-08T19:23:00.002-06:00

Casually, near the end of our appointment today, our midwife said "We might be able to hear the baby's heartbeat, if you're interested." spook and I were both like "Uh, yes." So I laid back on the sofa in her practice room and pulled my shirt up. "We might not be able to hear it, so I'm sorry if this takes forever." She put goo on the end of the doppler rod and placed it much lower than I would have guessed, over to the side toward my hipbones and then working toward the middle. There was a weird, echoey thup noise. "That's your heartbeat." she said. "That's the kind of sound we're listening for, but faster. Oh! There it is!" And there it was.

A tiny thupthupthupthupthupthupthup, like something small beating its wings.

grumble grumble grumble...huzzah!

2009-01-05T09:51:00.002-06:00

Well, I seem to be feeling...marginally better. I'll take marginally; any margin is an improvement. It makes me laugh that I can tell I'm feeling better because I've started to be cross about all the mess at work. (Dear Christmas Shoppers, thank you for keeping me in a job through this early, scary bit of recession. Now do you suppose you could go away, just for a few days, so that I can clean up? With luck, by the time you come back I may be able to find your books on the shelves where they belong.)

Other things I was cross about this weekend: the fact that the Indianapolis Colts were replaced by clowns in their playoff game and lost like fools to San Diego. The Chargers played very well, but I'm unable to sit back and admire them because their quarterback is a douchebag, and now they're going to play my beloved Steelers so I have to watch his awful smarmy face for a whole other game. Peyton Manning could have saved me from all this.

I choose to view my crankiness as a good sign.

food, why are you my enemy?

2008-12-30T17:16:00.003-06:00

Today, I threw up Cheerios, the most innocuous of the breakfast foods. Yep. I'm definitely pregnant.

I'd like to apologize for my weeks-long absence from the blog world. It's just that I feel like I've had a stomach bug for almost a month, and I'm so damn tired it's an effort just to sit up in the mornings. Sitting in front of the computer and stringing my words together into sentences has been way, way beyond me. So, does this blog entry represent a new, better feeling? Mostly, it represents my desperation to do something other than dry-heave or demand that poor spook drive me around the corner so that I can get a caesar salad right now. (Pregnancy nausea does not conform to the rules of nausea that we can all usually count on. Just one of the many fun quirks I've been learning all about.) I am just beginning to understand the outrage of my friend M., who spent her entire first pregnancy saying "Nobody tells you it's going to be like this!" This is substantially true. But also? Even if they did tell you, you wouldn't believe it. I know, because I really thought I was listening to her, and I'm shocked and horrified. So let me add my voice to the chorus of ignored women's voices to say: pregnancy sucks.

Yes, I'm happy to be having a baby, yes, I'm aware of how lucky I am, given that some women struggle for years just to get pregnant. I just don't think that means I have any obligation to sugarcoat four weeks of barfing.

Let's all hope I feel better before I bore everyone to death with my whining.

p.s. Aunties! Uncles! Your enthusiasm is welcome! It helps me remember why I thought this was a good idea in the first place.

postcard from the edge (of the bed)

2008-12-24T19:44:00.003-06:00

I have not forgotten you, I still love you all, I'm out here thinking about how I long to blog once more. But the holidays have eaten me. I'll 'splain all about it soon.

In the meantime, Merry Merry.

instant karma

2008-11-28T18:11:00.002-06:00

One of the people who was rude to me yesterday got arrested in our store today for shoplifting. This pleases me maybe a little more than it should.

cheerful, calm and helpful

2008-11-27T15:56:00.006-06:00

I am heartily sick of the general public, and it's only November 27th.

"I just hit the wall." I told Geoffrey.
"Don't say that! We have six more weeks!" Liar. It's...well, okay, by the time you factor in Boxing Day sales, it's almost six weeks. I remind myself that 75% of the exasperating behavior I witness is not the result of people being jerks, it is the result of people being in a crowded, overwhelming, unfamiliar environment. It's the other twenty-five percent I have trouble with. Lady, I have explained in a clear and friendly manner why you cannot sit in front of the shelves. I have even invoked wheelchair access. You know, access? So that people can move around as freely as possible in the mall which at the best of times is challenging but during holidays takes on a nightmare quality? That. People might want to look at those books that you're leaning on. Don't be mean about it.

In fact, here's my new rule for how adults should behave (also known as "Why I will never be Empress of the world"): if you can't measure up to the standards I would have for a toddler in my care, you should have to take a timeout. If it's good enough for a three-year-old, it's good enough for you. Say please. Say thank you. Share the toys. Wash your hands. Don't wait for re-election to say that you won't scream at people in Parliament any more. You know, the basics.

Since this also applies to me, I am going to spend my evening doing something soothing, so that tomorrow I'll be ready to go back and face people again, the majority of whom are actually much nicer than you'd think. Just--thank god I get a break till tomorrow.

p.s. Thanks to Ben and Jillian for bringing cookies to us retail drudges. It warms a girl's heart.

ZOMG, THIS DUDE HAS A NAME

2008-11-21T17:20:00.002-06:00

...and it is Nathan Kamp. Okay, okay, I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have realized that of course he has a name--but it's so surreal to think of him as having a life outside of the cover of oh, every romance novel published for the last five years, that it never occurred to me. And now I'm weirded out.

For those of you who haven't seen him, wander this way for a refresher. I think I see this guy's face more often than the faces of my dearest friends. I'm going to go and have a little lie down now.

quiet/loud

2008-11-18T19:19:00.004-06:00

Two things you must know in order to appreciate this story: one, Lucy is obsessed with dogs. She has that toddler gift of spotting a dog at a hundred paces, on a leash, in an advertisement, going by in a passing car, and she remarks on all of them. She does not seem to have any trouble with the idea that a Chihuahua and a Great Dane are the same kind of animal, and I can't discern any preference for one or the other. They're all dogs. Uuf uuf. Two, there is a little white dog who lives next door to Lucy, and this dog excites much interest, especially since she can sometimes see him from the window of her living room. You'll catch her peering out the window, standing on tiptoe to get her little chin clear of the sill for a better view. Frequently our conversations on the matter go like this:
"Are you looking for the dog, Lucy?"
"Uuf." [signs DOG]
"Where do you think that doggie is?"
"Homa." [signs HOME]
"That's right. The dog is in his home."
Last Tuesday I looked over to see her standing at the window for the third time in an hour. "Whatcha doin', Lucy?" Without taking her eyes off the yard, she signed WAITING.

***

"Has she been playing the game where she gives you nothing?" Adam asked me this morning. Apparently, one of Lucy's new things has been to go down the hall and pretend to pick up the light from the digital readout on the carbon monoxide detector. Then she'll deposit the light in your hand, proclaiming "Ta ta." Lather, rinse, repeat.

She did this several times at top Lucy-speed, bolting down the hallway in her staggering run to grab at the light and place it carefully in my open palm, laughing. (On the cuteometer, this is at least a seven out of ten, edging into the eights when her laugh turns into a chortle.) The one thing this game had not taken into account, however, was the reset/test button, located a mere centimeter or two below the glow of the display.

I can now say definitively that Adam and Chelle's carbon monoxide detector works.

Lu is a pretty laid-back kid. When the piercing shriek of the alarm screeched through the hall, she didn't cry. I thought I might, for a few seconds, frantically looking to see if I needed to do something to make it stop. Several earsplitting tones later, it stopped on its own. I looked at Lu. Her eyes were perfectly round. Solemnly, she intoned "Beep beep."
"Yep, it went beep beep. It was quite--" don't say scary-- "alarming."
"Beep beep," she said, a little more certainly, and then signed "All done."

There was no more carbon monoxide detector frolic today. We are all done with that terrible noise, apparently. (Other things Lu is "all done" with: the inhaler she has to use to treat her cough, her last several lunches, donkeys. All done with donkeys.)

baby, baby, it looks like it's gonna hail

2008-11-14T16:40:00.002-06:00

At one point this week, I was considering joining the "shelving party" at my store on Sunday night. Sunday, which is my birthday. (We could get a cake!) I think I am...not considering this any more. It's just that this birthday has crept up on me, and I have made absolutely no plans, and trying to plan mostly makes me want to close my eyes in exhaustion, so hey, why not shelve? And make some money? And possibly get cake out of it?

The first thing in ages that's made me feel energetic is accidentally rediscovering the Louis Prima/Keely Smith version of "Jump Jive an' Wail." That is because swing is awesome, and makes me want to dance even when I'm so tired I can hardly think. Huzzah, swing music! Now I am poking around the internets for more songs that make me want to dance. Suggestions? Happy birthday to me!

exhale

2008-11-12T19:22:00.004-06:00

"I'm not good at failure!" I sobbed. Greg kept rubbing my back, giving me space for my abject, snotty misery.
"It's not your failure."
"I'm not that good at other people's failure, either. In case you hadn't noticed." There was a hiccup, and then we both started laughing, and I got up to get a kleenex, and now, my belly full of reassurances and the pasta that Lizbeth made for dinner, I can finally breathe again, air this time and not the stale sense of disappointment in myself I was suffocating on all day.

I'll be glad when the Christmas season is over this year. It is not going well. I can hardly get my bearings for bailing out the boat. What is going well, though, is that there seems to always be someone there to pick me up and put me on my feet again, and I am very grateful.

my milkweed brings butterflies to the yard

2008-11-07T19:20:00.004-06:00

spook and I went for a walk in the woods on Monday. We saw a fuzzy caterpillar, a porcupine, and:

"Look at that! Slime!"
"It's probably algae."
"It's slime."
"It's algaenous slime."
"But it's like the platonic ideal of slime, it's so green, and--"
"--exactly what Plato was thinking of when he talked about slime--"
"--and banned it from the Republic. Yeah."

***

In case you're one of the three people on earth who still hasn't seen this, you should also go and check out yet another reason I'm fond of Barack Obama.

endurance training

2008-10-28T19:25:00.004-05:00

One thing that children require: stamina. Today I read Dennis Lee's poem "Alligator Pie" nine times in a row. When Lucy said "More!" (or more accurately, "Muh!") for what seemed like the zillionth time I resolved to teach her to say "Again!" and so that was the lesson for the afternoon. Along with repeating "Can you say 'please'?" over and over, to be rewarded with her little voice piping "Peez!"

Oh, I love her. I love her so much.

So that was my today, Lu's head pressed hard against my breastbone as she leaned back into my lap while I read stories and picked out important words when she got impatient and turned the pages really fast and repeated and repeated and repeated.

p.s. "Eg!" Success? You decide.

never let 'em see you sweat

2008-10-25T17:21:00.002-05:00

Today, a day that included both slamming my hand into the corner of a table hard enough to leave visible bruising and falling off a ladder, was the best day of my week. This is, in part, due to Greg's motivational speaking skills--apparently I just needed someone to tell me "You will have a good day tomorrow" in a confident manner. I did not finish all the things that needed to be finished, largely because finishing them would have defied all laws of nature, but I did knock out a few things that had been bothering me. There was a terrible Oh Hell No moment, but Mathabo swooped in and rescued me. I think the rest of my calm came from knowing that no matter what I did or didn't accomplish, my workday would be over at two, and I would get to go home to my snuggly sheets and my room-mate and my boy and my cats.

My cats who are very busy auditioning for a buddy cop movie. Tish is the hardbitten veteran who doesn't want a new partner, dammit, Max is her fresh-faced rookie sidekick and Roo is...maybe the dispatcher. Or that woman in the office who hands them the right file at the critical moment. In support of this theory, Roo has been trying to operate the remote control, walking over it to change the channel to "Lethal Weapon" while Elizabeth was trying to watch "Jon and Kate Plus 8."

what is "I have lost the will to live," Alex,

2008-10-21T17:31:00.002-05:00

This cold is slowly sapping my will to live. I'm tired. All the time. I don't even remember the last time I was not tired, like, so tired that if I lay down I could go right to sleep and wake up sore from having stayed in one exhausted position for hours. On that cheerful note, here are some things that are making me happy:

1. New flannel sheets
2. Robin McKinley's new YA novel, Chalice
3. Lucy
4. When I came home today and came in out of the pelting sleet, my house was warm.

2008-10-12T10:38:00.002-05:00

I had a dream that I was stuck talking with scary were-moose, a discussion that rapidly made its way to quilting and stuck there. You can take folksy too far. Sarah Palin, I'm looking at you.

public health warning

2008-10-08T12:44:00.001-05:00

All of my friends who are out of Toronto right now, or who live somewhere other than Toronto, here's a tip: STAY OUT OF TORONTO. Toronto has the plague, in the form of this year's fall cold, and it is a doozy. A lose a week of your life, cry because your joints hurt so much, go through several boxes of tissue doozy. And it's a crazy cold, the kind that's talking to you in your head all the time. "You can go out," it says, "what do you want to be cooped up in here for? Go to the store. Shake hands with a lot of people. Touch everything." So I must have sounded plaintive when I called my job yesterday to tell them I was not coming to work today.

"I have trainees!" I told my manager. Fortunately, she knows from colds.
"You can't cough on new people! Are you mad?!"

Um, yes? Only it's from sleep deprivation because of not being able to breathe? Right. Okay. Carry on.

Bitch, please.

2008-09-17T16:49:00.005-05:00

Lately, in a way that hasn't been the case since I was a much younger woman, I have been needing to read about people like me. I have the privilege of an awesome network of friends who nurture and support me, and so most of the time the fact that I don't see myself reflected in the wider culture isn't that troubling. The people who love me are a good mirror. They argue without deriding; they empathize rather than sympathizing. Most of the time, that's enough to keep me afloat. But every once in a while, I go to fill out a form and discover that none of the boxes reflect my answer. Sometimes it's something the people I know can't help with, because they haven't been through it, and it's important to know that I'm not crazy, not the only person who's ever experienced it, not the only person who hated 300.

I was thinking about this while reading Megan's article about cohousing in Xtra, not because we are buying a house any time soon, but because reading it gave me the pleasure of recognition--if we ever do own, it is unlikely to be in the traditional configuration of man + woman + optional kid and picket fence. (I was thinking about it, too, when I read her blog post about how she and her co-housers had purchased a car together, the three of them, and then discovered that it was legally impossible to list all of them as owners. That's what I'm talking about.)

It's ironic, then, that the next link I clicked told me that Bitch magazine is in serious danger of folding. For those of you who don't know Bitch ("Feminist Response to Pop Culture!"), you should check it out while you still have the chance. And if you feel compelled, donate. I already have, because I have been reminded of the worth of seeing my values make it to print.

in which I get concussed, drown, and am crushed by beer bottles

2008-09-16T17:51:00.005-05:00

We're back from the cottage. I love cottages, because what I really want to do on vacation is lie around reading my book, swim, cook, and argue with my friends. It's true. I'm funny that way.

It's also neat what things you learn when you spend a few days living in the same space with people. For example my friend Greg, who is much admired among those of us who know him from work for his handiness at any number of tasks, built the most crazy-ass incompetent fire I have ever seen. Sorry, dear, but you know it's true. Some kindling, and then some juniper branches, and then a giant log plopped right on top.

Greg: "I'm waiting for all the apologies I'm going to get when this burns."
Thea: "I'm rehearsing, wait: 'You got lucky.'"
Peter: "If that actually catches fire, I will walk into town, buy the ingredients, walk back here and make you a pie."

Alas, I foiled my own chances to get pie when he kept adding more and more and more juniper, and cardboard, and then some juniper branches approximately four feet long, draped over the fire with their ends dangling.

alex [quiet, but incredulous]: "On top?"
Me [laughing hysterically, intervening]: "Oh my god, stop. Stop. Stop."
Greg: "It would have worked."
Me [stuffing kindling into the hot part at the bottom]: "Seriously, no."

It rained all of Sunday, so of course we had to go get in the lake and toss a frisbee and a miniature football back and forth. I can neither throw nor catch, which caused no end of trauma in gym class, but it was very pleasant to play with people who didn't care. Eventually Greg and Peter started throwing rocks at each other again (Me: "Use your words!") and I got cold and got out and went back to reading my book.

The hijinks did not extend to the food, the brilliant food, at least not unless you include the addition of copious volumes of butter. So it was with a heavy heart (but grateful arteries) that I got in the car to come home yesterday morning. I was shaken out of my melancholy by the necessity of fitting myself into the front seat with the better part of the 120 beer bottles we were returning. I'm glad to be home. I missed Lizbeth, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. But you can bet I'm plotting next year's trip already.

not a fan

2008-09-09T10:23:00.003-05:00

Operation Pave the World continues apace on my block. I hadn't noticed it so much until Paul and Sarah came over, and Sarah said "What is up with your street? I've never seen so much front-yard parking in my life!" And I had to admit that indeed, there was a lot of front-yard parking. Now I can't stop noticing. Up the street one way, three houses got together and covered their entire fronts with asphalt. Yesterday it was the house a couple doors up from us.

"I can't even remember," Lizbeth said, "was it--"
"I'm pretty sure it was lawn." Now it is an expanse of shiny blackness. As you all know, I am not a fan of grass, but I am now freaking out about runoff and water pollution. Stop the insanity! Try interlocking pavers or something! Geez!

Also, it smells funny.

Right now I'm listening to one of the guys doing construction next door shouting about how these other guys "don't appreciate him or value his experience!" I'm like, um, I'm sorry they hurt your feelings, but could you not wake up the baby? 'Kay, thanks.

happy Thursday!

2008-09-04T20:04:00.001-05:00

Dear Diary, tonight for dinner I had pork ribs and a piece of watermelon, and it was awesome.

Confidential to Eli Manning: you look like a cupcake. Get a haircut.

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting Pirate.
Interrupting P--
ARRRR!

more things I ought to have grasped by now, but somehow hadn't

2008-09-02T09:43:00.003-05:00

Dudes, Lucy is sick. Not, like, horrifically sick--like "summer cold" sick, which seems to leave her 95% her usual even-tempered self, thank you god. But it's so sad to hear her make all these little snorgully noises trying to breathe through her nose, and also, it's about the baby snot. So. Much. Snot. Which she helpfully wipes away, getting it all over her hands and face and the next twelve things she touches. I am now one of those hovery grownups with an ever-ready diaper wipe, trying to swoop in and clean her little walrus-tusks of snot away at the first appearance without traumatizing her with actual swooping. Because seriously, if someone kept lurching at me with a wetwipe, I would find it freaky and annoying pretty fast.

I know you're glad I shared. I just. Eep. Now that I am surveying Parenthood as though it is a country I might live in sooner rather than later, I'm amazed all over again at what kind of stuff isn't on the label. Babies are sweet, magical little beings who will get snot on your clothes!

keep calm and carry on

2008-08-27T18:43:00.007-05:00

My friend Geoffrey, in his capacity as my boss, keeps taking my hand and earnestly repeating "Not more than the usual amount of fretting," until I say it back to him. Not more than the usual amount of fretting. What I failed to take into account is the equation for "how much is the usual amount of fretting" in regard to what's actually going on in my life right now.

Work, although it is much more under control on my front since I started working the early shift, is in all other respects a runaway train: we're undergoing a renovation that hasn't even started yet and is already a week behind schedule. During this period we need to be hiring and training roughly fifty seasonal staff. The Christmas product will be arriving any moment. We're down two managers, although I did learn today that we've hired a general manager who will get to start in early October, lucky her. (I did put out a general call this morning over unpacking to ask could we please, please, not put on our judgypants for the first few weeks while she adjusts to working with new people in a new company at the worst possible time of year to start a retail management position--pretty please?--and after that, I don't care, judge away! Go nuts! But if I have to listen to my beloved and generally quite awesome co-workers display their worst, pettiest behavior in the middle of the rest of this I will go batshit crazy and start screaming, fret-levels be damned.)

Then there's the ongoing conversation with the dear friend who's offered to be my sperm donor. The conversation isn't a problem, it's finding the time to sit down and have it. Granted, negotiating the use of someone's semen is awkward, even if you thought you'd got all the possible awkward out of the way in university by doing hideously insensitive things to one another and then processing for months. (Writing songs about your feelings optional.) It's not like it's a prerequisite, but there is probably no better preparation for this kind of awkward than having shared a decade of overearnest and yes, strangely literal friendship peppered with conversation about the big things: values, ideas, girls. But the hideous stress-taffy that is emailing about something important makes me feel bad, and feel bad about adding stress to my friend's busy life, and in the meantime I'm full of crazy anxiety-born thoughts about my age, and my reproductive health, and my dubious qualifications for parenthood. It feels like the stress is sitting on my brain and squishing it out my ears, such that my response to a most recent email in which he says that we could possibly talk on "the non-zoo day" caused this moment of panic:

wait, there's a zoo day now? what about the zoo? am I going to the zoo? is this a metaphorical thing, like "things are a zoo around here?" how can I possibly not know if zoo-related activites are going on? why did I buy a damn daytimer anyway, if not to help me out of this kind of confusion? is there any way to ask about this without sounding like a total crazy person?

Uh, no.

In an apparent non-sequitir, we just got back from visiting Jennifer in Ottawa. Jen is one of those friends that overwrought maniacs like me cherish due to her ability to calm me down by treating me like a lovable doofus and giving me advice in short, easily understood sentences*. In this case, I am ordering for myself the very poster that hangs in Jen's living room

although I may order it in a seafoam colour. More calming still.

* I cherish Jennifer for other reasons as well, as she knows, but it just looked a little cold sitting there. I thought I'd clarify.

Sixth annual Elvis Wake

2008-08-17T20:09:00.009-05:00

The tragedy of this is that I have no pictures of the food. THE FOOD. Nor, for some unexplained reason, will Blogger allow me to add more photos just at the moment--and there are more. But oh, an Elvissey time was had by all.

This year's theme? Blue Hawai'i. The madcap hijinks got so bad that at one point I had to cover my eyes and ears and make little squeaky noises to drown out the dialogue--and that was before Elvis reformed the bratty teenage girl with a spanking which somehow convinced her that she was a worthwhile human being. We, the audience, remain skeptical.

Never mind. It was nothing compared to the year that we watched Change of Habit, a movie starring Elvis and Mary Tyler Moore. I know, sounds awesome, right? Mary Tyler Moore plays a nun. Elvis plays an inner-city doctor. This movie is now referred to only as "The Incident," as in, "We prescreen them now, ever since The Incident."

More pictures to follow, when the internets stop foiling me at every turn.

"Up!"

2008-08-05T19:04:00.004-05:00

This new imperative brought to you by my niece, the incomparable Miss Lucy. It's one of the apparently gazillion things she's learned to do since last Tuesday.

No, seriously.

Today she said "ball," which as far as I know she's never said before. She's started laughing in this abrupt, hilarious "ha!", every syllable its own world. I spent our walk home from the early years centre composing a goofy song around the sentence "Nobody rocks the house down like Lucy's marching band," and then when I sang it later she banged toys together more-or-less in time. When I do something she thinks is funny she will lean toward me to get her face close to mine before favouring me with her giant grin. She blows my mind, is what I'm trying to say here, people.

eaten by wolves

2008-08-03T18:20:00.001-05:00

Hey, y'all--our internets were broken for a whole week, so if you've been wondering why you haven't heard from me at all, now you know. Postyness later.

2008-07-24T16:09:00.003-05:00

Grrr. Argh.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little

2008-07-18T16:07:00.003-05:00

You know what's even more irritating than someone with only mediocre talent becoming somehow representative of my entire demographic, at least as far as Canadian media is concerned?

It's when that person is a smart woman who trades on acting stupider than she is.

Therefore, this:

"CBC has also ordered Abroad, a back-door pilot about the romantic misadventures of a Canadian woman in London, based on the experiences of Globe and Mail columnist Leah McLaren."

causes me to shake my head in weary dismay.

my fandom can carry a tune

2008-07-17T16:42:00.004-05:00

"He's a really good-looking guy and I thought he was kind of cheesy at first--"
"Trust your instincts!"
"--but he turned out to be totally sweet. Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface."
"And sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one."
"...Huh?"
"Like with pie. So are you going to see him again?"

Oh, I know, I know I'm behind the curve on Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, but--it's just so--awesome. Like an awesome thing with awesome sauce. :sigh:

those garden pictures I've been promising you

2008-07-15T17:30:00.004-05:00

Well, some of 'em.

the best part of my new job

2008-07-13T17:53:00.002-05:00

just called to say it's good to be alive in such a small world

2008-07-04T19:24:00.003-05:00

Guh.

D'you ever hear a song for the first time and have it knock the wind right out of you? The Flobots "Handlebars" just killed me dead. It doesn't hurt that I heard it for the first time over a brilliant BSG fanvid (spoilers for season four, y'all), which makes me want to make videos. Except that I don't have the patience to learn vidding software.

Also five-thirty in the morning has not been kind to me this week, and I have to go to bed now even though it is still light out.

you broke my heart at the FunPlex

2008-07-03T16:24:00.005-05:00

"Have you talked to Steve lately?"
"No, why?" [a suspiciously familiar silence falls] "Wait, why?"

It seems my erstwhile co-worker Steve is leaving to volunteer at a newspaper in Romania. Or at least, that's what he says--there might be some other, more sinister explanation. This latest defection from the Geek Squad is surprisingly hard on my morale. Of course, some of our departing geeks come back (hi, Thea!), but I live in fear of being surrounded by people who stare blankly when I talk about building my doomsday machine. Who's going to accuse me of moral bankruptcy and/or irrational jingoism? Who's going to slander Joss Whedon? Who's going to bring me magazine articles about zombies, or create tiny dinosaurs out of modeling foam and make them talk to me in squeaky voices when I'm having a bad day?

Normally this is where I would issue a decree about how no one else is allowed to go anywhere, for any reason, for the rest of our natural lives, but so many people have moved on in the last little while that the joke doesn't make me feel any better. So, uh, fly free little birds, or something. I love that people I am fond of are testing their limits, bravely stretching themselves into the world. I just hate that it takes them away from me.

defense against the dark arts

2008-06-27T09:42:00.001-05:00

My manager is leaving. This would not be such a big deal except that she is awesome, and also, she is the third person to hold this position since February. I have changed my manager more than I have changed my hair this year.

Perhaps it's time for a mohawk.

you and I know/ if Weezer can go/ on holiday then so/ can we, let's go

2008-06-17T19:46:00.007-05:00

Some random thoughts about my vacation:

now my seat back is up, tray table stowed and there’s nothing to do

Pearson Airport will suckerpunch you every time. There is nothing to eat in Terminal Three, at least once you're through the gate, with the exception of Tim Hortons. (There are also the kinds of airport cafe which charge ten dollars for a crappy roast beef sandwich, but I refuse to acknowledge these.) But think about what this means: there is a place on earth where the fast food burger has no foothold. This is amazing.

sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell

I saw fewer animals on this trip out. Some of this was no doubt the weird spring they're having in Alberta (wet, cold). Some of this was (new vocabulary alert) that we weren't out much at the crepuscular hour so popular with wildlife. The animals I did see, however, were exciting: two black bears, several elk, numerous deer, and a mountain goat. Some of my excitement was probably trepidation, as they were all so close to the road as to cause the kind of useless shouting that I am known to engage in during times of stress. "This is a terrible place for a bear! What are you doing here? Isn't there something tasty a little farther from the whizzing cars!?" The only exceptions to the close-to-the-road experience were an elk we saw on our walk across the Larch Islands, and a deer and coyote which were actually on the road--both, happily, ambulatory and remaining so after what I considered to be their brushes with death. :hyperventilates:

Above 3,000 feet in altitude the lower atmospheric pressure will affect cakes.

We did a beautiful hike by Lake Louise, up the mountain to the Lake Agnes teahouse. The views were breathtaking, as was the hike itself. Literally. You would think that when you agree to walk up a mountain it would be self-evident that it was going to be uphill the whole way, but my mind somehow skims over this every time. Probably because if I remembered it, I would never agree to it. Fifteen minutes in, I said to spook in a carefully not-whiny voice "it's not all going to be like this, is it?"
and he said "No, no." And paused. "I mean, I don't think so." The grade did become less alarming, but I was still puffing like a toy engine by the time we got toward the top. The only thing that kept me going was the embarrassment of seeing happy elderly couples coming down, and knowing that there was only one way up, and I was currently on it. I am no paragon of physical fitness, but I'm damned if I'm going to be shown up by seventy-year-old tourists. So when the switchbacks got abruptly steeper after almost two hours on the trail, I may or may not have made a sound like a terribly distressed puppy. "We're almost there!" spook chirped unconvincingly as we came around a last bend. I looked up and saw stairs. Not just any stairs. Stairs of a steepness that constitutes profound marital betrayal.

"I forgot about the stairs," spook said. I stared at him in mute horror for several long moments, but somehow the stairs were still there when I looked again. What kind of person forgets about the stairs? Moreover, what did this imply about the athleticism of my partner's early life? It was like finding out that he was secretly captain of the high school volleyball team. At the teahouse I was distracted from the horror of those last sixty feet by the world's most shameless chipmunks. Is there anything that would keep you from feeding them some of your cookie? I mean, besides the facts that a) it is a bad idea, and probably illegal, to feed animals in provincial parks and b) that cookie cost four dollars?

"Something else. Also terrible."

I saw Cloverfield, and despite its iffy reviews, I really liked it, shaky-cam and all. It was creepy, and featured people behaving in ways I could believe, both for good and ill. I liked the intercutting of the "date" footage from the month before. There were one or two silly moments where I don't mean "silly" in a good way, but overall I thought it was a solid piece of work.

I promised random, you get random.

"Who? What? Who?" "All excellent questions."

2008-06-08T13:20:00.005-05:00

If you don't know who Jodi Picoult is, this image is not causing your brain to short-circuit the way it did mine. Let me remedy the situation with brief plot synopses from some of her novels:

Change of Heart is about a man on death row who discovers that the living daughter of his victim needs a heart transplant, and decides to offer his.

The Pact is about two families trying to cope with the tragic aftermath of their teenage kids' suicide pact.

My Sister's Keeper is about a young girl who was conceived as a bone marrow donor for her sister, who is battling leukemia, and the decisions she makes after years of hospitalizations and surgeries to control her own body.

I could go on, but I think you're getting the gist. It's like discovering that Nicholas Sparks had been tapped to write a series of Spider-man comics.

bad bad bad bad boys, you make me feel so good

2008-06-03T20:26:00.009-05:00

Me: "So, how was Iron Man?"
Friend: "Good! I liked it a lot. It was a bit weird realizing that Tony Stark is basically my brother..."

At the time, we shared a knowing laugh about the brother in question, so you can imagine how I felt sitting in the theatre and thinking it's wrong that I suddenly understand howcome your brother gets laid a lot.

I think I've talked about thinking that Stephen Colbert is hot. And that's... uncomfortable... because in general my tastes (and my politics) run more to freaky girls with a lot of tattoos or feminist boys with blue hair than a fortysomething white guy spouting right-wing ideology in a Brooks Brothers suit. (Yes, I get that it's satire. Can we just say for the sake of this point that satire only makes it a bit better? Seriously! Brooks Brothers does his wardrobe! I could not make this up!) Through patient work and possibly some therapy, I've expanded my worldview to include this aberrant crush. I'm okay with it.

But now I have to factor in Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark. Um. IMDb says he was born in 1965. White guy? Check. Badly behaved? Uh-huh. And there are suits--oh, are there suits. And he is easily the prettiest thing I've laid eyes on (present company excluded) in ages. Oh, god. Is this my new thing? Because that's just disturbing. Couldn't I develop a fetish about shoes, or food, or people dressed in plushy animal costumes?

witness my new bangs.

2008-05-27T11:11:00.003-05:00

I had a dream that I went to the hairdresser, and she was like "So, you basically have no idea what you're doing with this, right?" Um, yeah. Girl As Performance Art strikes again.

It's a beautiful sunny day, if a little cool, and I'm at the computer. This can't be good; I'm going outside in two seconds. But first, an appeal to you, my dears: do you know any good breakup songs? Specifically I'm looking for songs whose message is either "We broke up and I feel...better, actually." (The Waitresses "No Guilt" is my best example,) or "We broke up and it was the best thing we ever did for our relationship." I have no examples of this, but surely someone somewhere has written these songs, since I can't be the only person to ever have that experience.

"This tone in my voice? I dislike it more than you do. And I'm closer to it."

2008-05-18T20:46:00.002-05:00

You know what I'm sick of? The sound of my own voice, whining. A number of work-related nonsenses have just dragged on and on and on and on and on over the last year, and I have tried pretty much everything in my power (a sadly limited range of options) to change them. And there hasn't really been a lot of change. This makes me sad, because I love my job, at least I used to. And just like stepping on a rake, it occurs me how very very closely this parallels a completely unrelated scenario I have been giving advice about. Oh, Nicole. How do they say among my people? Duh.

And here's my stellar advice: I can take a deep breath (realistically, probably a lot of them), realize it's out of my hands, and try to figure out whether I can develop a sense of joy about this job the way it is. Not the way I wish it was. Not the way it would be if certain other people fell on their heads and/or received miraculous personality transplants. But in the current circumstances, can I reconnect to the sense of fun and purpose I want to have in my life?

If yes, I've solved my problem. If no, I can look for another job. I can also hang around pretending to be powerless for another year, but having put it that way to myself, my friends, and the entire internet, it doesn't sound like a very good choice. And I did kind of promise myself (remember being nineteen and arrogant, A.? We were smart back then) that my life was not going to be just something that happened to me.

Nothing you can say that can't be sung.

2008-05-14T22:24:00.002-05:00

Yeah, that meltdown I was so successfully sidestepping in my last blog entry got bitter about it and tripped me. So I have not been posting, due to being flat on my face in a puddle of meltdown. It's a bit better now. You want to know part of what's making it better?

This.

itinerary

2008-05-03T17:13:00.003-05:00

Despite being wakened by my cats somewhere in the dismal realm of 5:30 this morning, today started out pretty strong. (Although, cats? If you find yourselves listed for sale on Ebay, you know why. And don't try to pretend you don't surf the internet, I'm on to you. Ahem.) I ran through my traditional Saturday start: Tim Hortons for a Coffee As Big As My Head and some sugary thing that will eventually kill me, swing upstairs through the back hall, sit at the staff room table for a few minutes, go survey the damage and start work.

Oh, and damage there is. I was sick for a week, so my section's been down a body, and we have ten carts of shelving. Ten. Ten. I realize this may be hard to conceptualize if you don't work in a bookstore, but to put it in some terms that make sense, two carts of shelving, the way we stack 'em, is a feasible amount to get through in a day. That's a day that starts at seven o' clock in the morning and ends at ten o'clock at night. There's some give in this formula--sometimes you can whip through three or maybe even four, and some days getting through half of one is the Labours of Hercules, but--you get the picture. Roughly. Also, someone or someones have gone completely insane and thrown the merchandising rules to the wind, so things are in the wrong sections, shelved incorrectly in the right sections, shelved according to some new and exciting alphabet known only to its originator, sitting in random stacks under tables they bear no relation to. Your basic nightmare. Today, I was finding it all strangely undaunting.

What I had not accounted for, in my grand spirit of rolling up my sleeves and digging in, was the rain. My bookstore is in a mall, you see, and bad weather means we get an exponentially larger than normal number of people either shopping or milling around aimlessly in the aisles. This...happened.

Gentle readers, I am exhausted. It's six thirty and I'm thinking about when I can reasonably go to bed.

In the meantime, though, I'm watching the gray, romantic rain through my bedroom window. My semi-forgiven cat is practicing her yoga just past my knees. I'm contemplating trying my hand at fanfiction. Things are basically good in the world.

Books rule!

2008-05-02T12:03:00.000-05:00

...as does this excellent video about reading.

best thing I found on the internets today

2008-04-30T17:12:00.001-05:00

"Chick Lit isn’t just shoes and weight loss any more than romance is about adverbs and rape." - SB Sarah, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books.

Marry me, Sarah.

wicked pouty

2008-04-29T16:45:00.001-05:00

This is how I feel.

2008-04-28T21:26:00.003-05:00

Have I mentioned lately that I love my house? I love my house.

I love spook, and I love Lizbeth, and I love the Many And Irritating Cats of Disaster.

Also, dudes, I am so sick, and I should really be in bed, so I'm gonna go do that now.

p.s. for your amusement, a recipe for Schadenfreude Pie.

things that grow

2008-04-21T17:55:00.002-05:00

I am sunburned and dirty, but perhaps ready to try posting a little more. No, I have not fallen down a hole; no, I have not been eaten by wolves; no, I have not been abducted by aliens--you all know I just disappear for weeks on end sometimes. This has been one of those times.

spook and I have been gardening, or pre-gardening, really--turning over the soil and sprouting seeds for things that have to germinate inside first before you put them in the unforgiving earth, and digging up a whole new bed along the other side of our backyard. For a yard with a pitiful, uneven scratch of grass in it, there sure are a lot of root systems. We will be growing tomatoes and zucchini, spinach, basil, thyme, rosemary, lavender, peas, sweetpeas, phlox, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and raspberries, as well as taking a stab at corn because we thought it would be hilarious. Well. I should say we'll be attempting to grow these things. I am under no illusions that they will all grow, but I'm trying to remain optimistic.

I'm also having conversations with the kids next door as I diligently but inexpertly prune raspberry canes, weed, etc. We've talked about compost and when/why it's not stinky anymore and vitamins in the soil and how I'm not sure about all the things I'm doing but I'm reading books to learn about them. So far, so good.

"I want more options!" "Don't we all?"

2008-04-04T09:57:00.007-05:00

Random dude: "I'm looking for Neil Strauss."
Me: "Oh. The Game." [stands up, brushes dust off pantlegs, heads in direction of book]
RD: "You know it."
Me: "Yep."
RD: "Does it work on you?"
Me: "Lemme see: sad men trying to make a connection with women and sabotaging themselves because they chose manipulation as their opening gambit?" [two beats] "No."
RD: "Come on, you can't lie to a woman, I mean, if she falls for it..."
Me: [rounding on the dude with that smile that's more like showing my teeth] "Let me ask you this: if you lie to a woman and she believes you, who exactly is at fault there?"
RD: "You can go away now."
Me: [customer service smile] "Have a nice afternoon!"

There was a much less amusing story featured in one of our local weeklies about pickup artists (or, as they're apparently called, PUAs--pwahs?--am I the only person who thinks that acronym should be avoided at all costs?) and the pickup scene, which is apparently big in my city. Huh. For the record, I am not against the notion of picking up, or the idea of casual sex. All I ask is that all parties give informed consent, (which, duh, means that you can't lie to each other about what you're looking for out of the experience) and that everybody tries to make sure that everybody else is having a good time. If that seems like an unreasonably stringent standard to you, then don't bother commenting, because we have nothing to say to each other.

(I'm not going to link to the article, because frankly I don't have time or energy to handle the trolls and all the tedious, tedious things I know they'd call me, but if you would like to throw up in your mouth a little, you can find it by googling "pickup artist" along with "worship the cock." Yeah.)

One of the discussions we had at my place about it was about whether the author had a responsibility to frame the discussion a bit more around the guy she was profiling. My opinion on the subject is that while there's a valid critique about whether you want to give this man a lot of airtime, framing the discussion would have been a mistake, because it implies that there's a discussion to be had. There isn't. Not with this guy. Because he fucking hates women. There's no discussion possible with that level of pathology. The guys you want to discuss with, they're the guys who end up in pickup workshops because they'd just like to meet girls. Maybe for a long-term relationship, maybe for sex. I think there's a hole in the culture where we could be talking about the challenges that men face in meeting women, and an article about that and where/whether the pickup wave falls into that would be...interesting.

Based solely on a short trip down the relationship aisle in the bookstore I can tell you--newsflash--that folks looking for love, sex, and romance have no clue how to go about it. Well, there's no shame in that. Our culture, gender roles, and expectations continue to evolve, and they're damn confusing. I long, however, for strategies which are less depressing; for every book about how to have sex with women you met in bars by being an asshole, there's at least one about how to get some guy (apparently, any guy will do,) to marry you. Also by being an asshole. The Mystery Method, meet The Rules. You totally deserve each other.

"I just hallucinated that the pump truck was a really big skateboard..."

2008-03-28T19:31:00.002-05:00

After three days of getting up at 5:30 in the morning for the early shift at work, I think we can safely say that I am not a morning person. The experiment has produced a result: tired. I had lunch with Adam--always good, because the Wondertwin powers operate even when I am stupid with exhaustion--and then came home and went to bed with my cats and my laptop and my Galactica season 3 DVDs. spook will be home soon--is home now, judging by the door sounds and the response of the cats. And since my wacky schedule means I've only spent an hour with him since Tuesday morning, I'm going to go hang out. But I still love you, internets.

another post about stuff.

2008-03-25T11:29:00.003-05:00

An amazing thing has happened. Our mattress arrived yesterday, and so we set up the bed (which is now hilariously tall, by the way--when did mattresses become so excessive?), and slept on it. I woke up this morning not sore.

I don't even remember the last time I woke up without feeling like dreamkill, run down in my sleep by the 18-wheelers of my subconscious. Wow. Life is a beautiful place of restful sleep and internet surfing and coffee. I may even survive my series of 5:30 a.m. starts this week. Rejoice!

the country where we sleep, hopefully better

2008-03-18T18:50:00.002-05:00

We bought a mattress! We kind of didn't intend to--we just went in to Sleep Country "to look." But realistically, who "looks" at mattresses? We lay down on a lot of them at the behest of our very enthusiastic salesperson. And, eerie moment, after the first one she said "I love the communication, the way you're looking at each other right there, but I want to know what each of you think. It's important that you're both comfortable." Uh, dude, that's totally what our marriage counsellor said. She was some kind of Mattress Jedi. And then she found us the model we liked which had been ordered for a floor model for another store, but was too big. So it was brand new, but being sold at the floor model price, which was four hundred dollars cheaper.

So yeah, we're gonna have a real bed. Woohoo!

2008-03-09T17:58:00.002-05:00

I bought another dress today. I think this makes it official: unless I figure out some way to wear nothing but dresses when I'm not at work, I have a dress problem. It's impractical. But it was so pretty! This is how they get me.

It's not as ridiculous as spook's jeans problem, though. Perspective is everything.

Time Traveller's Wife: the gateway drug

2008-03-05T11:29:00.004-06:00

It is possible that I have not had my genre-fiction bitch here at the blog. There are all kinds of erudite things I could say about genre snobbery, but at the moment I'm stuck at my first point of reference, which is: if you say to me "Oh, I don't read fantasy," in a voice dripping with contempt, right after you've finished telling me how much you loved Gregory Maguire's Wicked, a novel based on the freaking Wizard of Oz, you richly deserve the dressing-down you'll be getting in the staff room later on.

Luckily, I've been following not one but several spirited discussions about how genre fiction is denigrated by folks who don't read the genre in a variety of sexist, class-based ways. So if you're interested in losing a whole afternoon learning the intracacies of these arguments: what they said.
*

I've been thinking about whether there is a non-snarky way to address this in my job, say, with a clever display. There's got to be some way for me to say "Look, I'm not saying that if you loved the Time Traveller's Wife you're going to love a book with dragons in it. But you might enjoy some other well-written time travel fiction. What do you say you give it a whirl?" Um, in fifty words or less, on a placard.

Any ideas for books I should be linking up? I'll take suggestions in mystery, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The thing I'm the weakest on is what literary fiction works I could be using as examples. It just--more things to like in the world, you know? That's got to be a good thing.

*I freely admit that only a tiny bit of the Robin McKinley discussion is about genre, but it ranges freely into people's book prejudices, and I adore Robin McKinley, so any chance to direct people to her is a chance I'll take.

I love the way she makes me feel

2008-02-28T17:55:00.002-06:00

Oh...ow. The laughing, it hurts me.

2008-02-24T17:22:00.002-06:00

Blogger informs me that this is post #201. Two hundred blatherings about nothing, hopefully in a fashion that puts no one in mind of Seinfeld. Because I hate Seinfeld.

To celebrate, this video about Alan Moore. It's a no-hoper if you're not a comic geek, but really, how many people do I even know who don't have at least a passing relationship with comics? Don't answer that.

the germs win again

2008-02-21T19:29:00.002-06:00

Okay. I am armed with a playlist of happy music on my ipod, Advil Cold & Sinus tablets, grapefruit and enough pocket money to buy a coffee the size of my head. Despite the fact that I still feel like persons unknown have been amusing themselves with exploratory drilling in my skull, I am going to work tomorrow morning.

And it's not just the poverty of all those unpaid hours piling up, or my work ethic driving me back--it's boredom. I am ready to eat my fucking desk just for something to do, and there's only so many hours one can spend playing internet Boggle, especially when one is too sick to be any good at it.

I promise to wash my hands a lot, but y'all, don't hug me.

hot water and Kitty Jesus. never a dull moment.

2008-02-18T11:14:00.002-06:00

Hot water update: spook came home and looked at it with me, and he managed to find--get this--a youtube video explaining where the pilot light was located and how to light it. Who says the internets can't teach you anything? So, several hours later, we had hot water again.

I was also supposed to tell you about the dream I had wherein Bird (one of our many cats) was playing the role of Jesus Christ in a pageant. To that end, he was towing a little wagon full of buckets of goulash. ("Was he feeding the poor with it?" E asked, incredulously. Yes. Yes he was. My subconscious is like that, okay?) This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been worried he was going to wake up Adam and Miche and their many, many children...who were apparently already up to surprise their parents by installing the shelves that they had built with my grandfather...

house of plague

2008-02-17T12:09:00.002-06:00

...hmm.

It is just possible that part of my mood over the last few days was the approaching stormclouds of a truly awful cold. By nine-thirty on Friday night, I knew I wasn't going to work on Saturday. By sometime mid-Saturday I started to feel like I was never going anywhere again. This wouldn't be such a problem if we hadn't run out of cold medication. Valiantly, spook has gone out to get some more in the lovely freezing rain (depicted, accurately, by the weather network as little triangles of doom falling from the heavens).

The hot water heater has stopped making the water hot. My theory is that the pilot light is out, but I can't for the life of me work out where I could look and see whether this theory is correct. I have followed the destructions on the side of the machine. It didn't sound quite right but I guess I'll see in the next hour or so when we either do or do not have hot water. It could be worse. It could be the furnace. :touches wood:

I forecast lots of sitting around wrapped in blankets with a moderate chance of whining.

'col loses her shit. news at eleven.

2008-02-14T18:38:00.002-06:00

Waaaaaah!

For a day in which nothing terrible happened, this sure was a crappy day. It was my second day in a row of recognizing a series of thoughts that go something like: I am stupid, and clumsy, and ugly, and a bad friend, and--wait just a gosh-darn minute. I have PMS. I can tell because while I might feel like any one of those things on a given day, it is so unlikely that they are all true together at the same time that there just has to be some other factor in play.

I got to work and everything was chaos, and no one had responded to either of the questions I'd asked, and I went straight down the hole: Cookie's gone and now I'm not part of a team any more, I'm just supposed to do all of my job and all of his job and all of everything, plus nobody thinks I can do it, hell, even I don't think I can do it... never mind that no one has said any such thing.

I just needed to take two steps to the side and look at the girl having the meltdown and think, aww, poor dear. She just needs a bath and a cup of tea. Tragically I could only accomplish one and a half steps to the side, and so while I can see quite clearly that I'm being ridiculous, I can't stop feeling like everything's awful and bursting into tears.

I apologize for my worse-than-usual abuse of italics. Throw me a pity party?

HAY

2008-02-13T09:14:00.002-06:00

"Oh--I hate it when this happens."
"What?"
"Every once in a while my blackberry decides that it's going to type everything backwards in all capitals, so I just tried to say 'yah' and instead..."

Fortunately, her mom can craft...

2008-02-11T20:12:00.000-06:00

Tonight I finally got up the nerve to try sewing together the sweater that I knit for my niece. I think we can safely say that she will not be wearing this sweater any time in the forseeable future, unless she has some freaky incident with a bicycle pump.

It may, with a little tweaking, work as a shortie jacket for me.

"It fits me. It's my size."
"Yeah, but you're really small."
"Okay, but--let's say for the sake of argument that I'm the size of a six year old child..."

Ah, crafting failures: how would I know who I am without you? It's okay, I'm regrouping, principally by...burning dinner.

she's crafty and she's just my type

2008-02-06T18:16:00.000-06:00

Welcome to newly human's first shameless commercial plug. Looking for a unique gift for your paramour, or perhaps just a bit of wittiness you can stuff into your pocket? Look no further! The lovely and talented Shanghai Cowgirl brings you porn-embroidered hankies:

"Boldax Industries' hankies will be making their debut appearance at Toronto's Erotic Arts Festival Saturday February 9th and 10th, from 12noon until 5pm. http://www.torontoeroticartsfestival.com/ The Ax in Boldax will be in attendance all weekend, with an appearance by Mr. Bold and baby Boldax as well."

Right about here is where I wanted to insert a picture of the fabulous hankies in question, up till the moment I realized they a) are NSFW and b) possibly violate blogger's terms of use, what with the porn and all. Also consider option c) that I realized my mom reads this blog and got a little self-conscious. What with the porn and all. So instead I present you with a link:

link!

clicky clicky.

If you do not live in Toronto, Canada you can check out the Boldax Industries etsy site at http://boldax.etsy.com which will be open for business on February 15th, 2008.

THE TRIUMPH OF GOOD OVER EVIL

2008-02-03T21:08:00.000-06:00

Giants win! Giants win! Giants win!

Overheard in my living room:

"Now Peyton Manning can call Tom Brady up and be like 'My little brother kicked your ass! Do you want to play my mom now?'"

I am lightheaded with joy.

2008-02-03T12:13:00.001-06:00

swear I way more than half-believe it
when I say
somewhere love and justice shine
cynicism falls asleep
tyranny talks to itself
sappy slogans all come true
we forget to feed our fear

The Weakerthans, Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist

Last night we went to Nathan Phillips Square to attend the Winter City festival. I love Toronto's sneaky paganism. It was wonderful to go to city hall and celebrate Imbolc in a manner which far outstrips my own little candles at home. I am having some technical issues with uploading my crappy pictures from my phone (oh, if only I'd known I would have brought a camera...) but when I can, I'll add them and you too can see. It was beautiful. There were giant sculptural spheres set up bestudded with pots of open flame. There were flame pots set at regular intervals all along the balustrade. There was even one sculpture which moved, giant flame-laden spokes which raised and lowered, surrounded by a circle of little fires in, you guessed it, more pots. At the apex of this movement the sculpture would spew some misty liquid--water? fuel?--and all the fires would ripple, causing mingled delight and alarm in the onlookers. There were skaters in the rink, and musicians, and tents set up as warming stations.

We went and ate dinner and came back to watch the Weakerthans play an hour-long set.

I've pretty much given up live music, because a thing I do not love about Toronto is that so many of our venues suck. Too big, floors too hard, bad sound. The nail in the coffin was going to see Le Tigre, nearly passing out, and getting variously ignored and/or stepped on by the other members of the audience, an experience which left me thinking "I love the band, but this scene is so dead." And those are the feminists. Yeah, count me out.

In all my cranking, though, I'd forgotten how much I love watching a band. Part way into their first song, I started to cry, big stupid grin on my face, tears streaming. This often happens with musicians I really love. The couple standing in front of us knew all the lyrics, danced the whole time. They helped to restore my faith in the music-loving public. They were also ferociously cute (spook pronounced them "adorable").

I had very odd dreams--I blame the fuel for that and for the fact that all of last night's clothes smell like lighter fluid. In one of them, I was one of the Spice Girls, and we were playing a benefit show. Everyone else was onstage already, and I realized I didn't know the words to the song we were performing. There was a computer by the stage door, and when I frantically googled the lyrics, the verse I came up with had distressing colonial overtones*.

"I have to sing about Indians?" I squeaked. Meredith, who was suddenly there, looked at me in disdain.
"No. Nobody sings that verse."

*For this bit, I blame Cassie Edwards.

just put your hands in the air and back away slowly

2008-02-01T18:52:00.000-06:00

I am not the world's greatest cook. Despite this, I've had some minor successes recently, and plan to go on having them. Tonight, however, I have been completely defeated by pork souvlaki, which might not be embarrassing if it was not the kind that comes already set up.

How does one go about fucking up pre-marinated meat on sticks?

Everyone has a skill.

unseasonal thoughts

2008-01-31T09:34:00.000-06:00

This just occurred to me:

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen/ Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen/ But do you recall/ The most famous reindeer of all?

Seriously, people, if I know the names of all the un-famous reindeer, under what circumstances do you imagine I would suddenly forget Rudolph? Cheating for an easy rhyme.

I had the same problem with Jim Cuddy. He wrote a song called "Married Again" that we played over. and over. and over. again. You know, local musician, not too much cussing, famous, it's the perfect formula for retail. I digress. The point is this line from the chorus:

Sixteen bottles and a wedding trunk/ Oughta be a law against marrying drunk

It made me insane.

In order to marry, or to enter into any other legally binding contract in Canada, one must have the capacity to give consent, which, dude, if you're that drunk, you don't. So in effect, there is a law. I was greeting at the front door during the Christmas rush that year, and Jim Cuddy actually came in. I had to restrain myself from shouting "There is a law!" while shaking my fist at him. When I told Steve about this, he said

"So...let me get this straight. Jim Cuddy comes in and your first impulse is to yell at him."
"Yes."
"And you're okay with that."
"Yes."

Yes.

"It's my job to make sure you don't grow up stupid, Tim. It's bad for the world."

2008-01-23T13:53:00.000-06:00

This post is links-a-go-go, I know, but they're all worth clicking. I swear.

Remember my complaining about Cassie Edwards? Cassie Edwards, star perpetrator of racist tropes in romance novels such as Savage Arrow, Savage Darkness, Savage Paradise, Savage Lies, Savage Wrongs, Savage Touch, Savage Glory, Savage Wind, Savage Storm, Savage Wonder, Savage Obsession, Savage Innocence, Savage Promise, Savage Quest and Savage Haircut*? You may or may not have heard around the blogosphere that she's embroiled in a plagiarism controversy. To wit: she plagiarized. Does the romance-reading public care? Will her publisher do anything about it? Did she actually write the incredibly poor defense of her work published on MySpace, or did she have to rip that off too?

You can read the whole story on the Smart Bitches website (a must-visit in any case), and I also encourage you to check out this story from one of the writers whose work she stole. Because ferrets + hot sex = meh?

*I regret to inform you that the last title is the only one I made up.

I was always brave and kind of righteous/ now I find I'm wavering...

2008-01-22T13:10:00.000-06:00

Sigh.

Maybe it's just the long, long, long string of days with little to no sunlight. Maybe it's the realizing that there were a few key things that I thought were going pretty well which it turns out I have Seriously Fucked Up. Maybe it's the being sick. Maybe I'm just gonna live a very long time and it's my quarterlife crisis. (That's great, eh? We extend the human lifespan and it just provides more opportunities for freakout. And the first one of you to give me that bullshit proverb about the character for "crisis" and the character for "opportunity" being the same in Chinese gets a withering glare and a chocolate bar. What can I say? I have ambivalence.)

I have ambivalence. I have ambivalence, in fact, about so many things that I find myself looking forward to things I hate because at least then I know.

This is the thing, I suppose, about having a comprehensive worldview. When it takes a nosedive, it tends to do so comprehensively. I'm babbling. Look, the crux of it is that everything I'm doing now is about sticking with something--my marriage, my job, my friendships. And I certainly don't mean to imply that there's anything bad about those things; in fact, the opposite. I have found a life that holds deep value for me, things I want to stick with. What I am coming to realize, though, is that I have very few sticking with it skills. I can look back over my life, and see that every five or six years I throw everything in the air and shoot it full of holes. I have several very, very patient friends who have got the knack of waiting for everything to land again and then telephoning. I am very, very lucky in this regard. But what do you do when you have a life you're not interested in throwing away?

In my case, sit and have a good long look at the things I ought to have done differently if I wasn't going to scrap the lot. And think about that. Perhaps a bit too much.

I promise I'll stop moaning and carrying on soon--it's going to be spring eventually, right? Stupid January.

sometimes the news is bad

2008-01-11T15:55:00.000-06:00

"If you have anything of any importance to tell me, for god's sake start at the end."
-Robin McKinley

spook is mostly okay. He's sore and unhappy, but he's back at work, and he's going to be all right.

On Wednesday night he woke me up by saying my name. It was pretty late; he'd been out and I'd been asleep for a couple of hours. I could tell something was wrong, but I was still sort of swimming up from sleep, and he had to say my name again. I sat up.

"What? What is it? Are you okay?"

One of us turned the lights on, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. There was blood on his face and shirt, and one of his eyes was swelling up. I must have been staring, because he said "I got beat up," and I, full of first aid training, promptly burst into tears.

Yeah, I wasn't impressed either.

He told me the story while I sponged blood off his temple and upper lip and sobbed: he was walking home, there were a couple of guys behind him, he turned up a street to get away from them. They followed him. When he cut across the park to get back to a busier street, they hit him, muttering something about fags to each other and laughing. "It was sort of like getting beaten up by Beavis and Butthead," he said wryly. No, we didn't call the police. He didn't really see them and no one thought that 'a couple of white guys in hoodies' was much of a description.

You know that song 'Today I Hate Everyone'?

p.s. Expressions of sympathy are welcome, but spook does not wish to talk about it right now--please do not ask him. Your love is the important thing.

get your ass on the dance floor

2008-01-04T16:53:00.000-06:00

After much reviewing of my goals for 2008, I think that pretty much sums it up.

I have lots of sub-goals: take a social dance class with spook, give boxing a try, work on the new Excel system for conquering the universe with book orders, get pregnant. But get your ass on the dance floor seems to capture the spirit of what I'm wanting to do this year.

(An aside: I know half of you are thinking "Wait, 'get pregnant' is a sub-goal? Seriously?" Yes. Seriously. Although I did consider "Knocked Up 2008!" as an alternate heading for this blog entry, and it is one of the more consequential goals I've ever set for myself, it does tuck itself neatly into the less talk more rock model I'm envisioning for this year.)

This year is about more yes. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

how to say I love you in no words at all

2007-12-29T13:15:00.001-06:00

"What do you suppose she was trying to say?"
"My guess? 'This way maybe you'll still be able to find one of them come February.'"

Thanks, Jen.

Jingle, the Christmas Shrimp

2007-12-22T14:19:00.000-06:00

Steve: "How are you?"

Me: [vague flailing gestures in the direction of piles of books] "You know. But you sound really calm."

Steve: "Yeah. I don't have any control over any of this, so..." [shrugs]

Me: "That's a really useful place to be in. I wish I was there."

Steve: "It's a little weird. Dan's been leaving these notes that say things like 'CHAOS. TOTAL CHAOS.' and then they just trail off. And Tom's left one underneath it that said 'Serenity now.' And I left one that said 'Guys. Chill.'"

[beat. Steve and I look at one another.]

Me: "Do you suppose we've slipped into an alternate universe?"

Steve: "It seems really possible, doesn't it? 'Cause personal growth, not likely, but alternate universe? Sure."

Me: "Ooh! Yeah. Like a world without shrimp."

Steve: "What's wrong with shrimp? I like shrimp."

Me: [shuddering] "They're all--they--nothing should have it's eyes on stalks."

[beat.]

Steve: "I am not going to argue with you about shrimp right before Christmas!"

* * * * *

Me: "...so I'm like 'Why? Because it's not seasonal? What if the shrimp were wearing little hats?'"

alex: [deadpan] "Nicole, have you forgotten Jingle the Christmas Shrimp?"

Me: "Christmas Shrimp."

alex: "Yes. You know, you leave a little dish of shrimp sauce by the bathtub drain and he visits you."

Me: "Shrimp sauce? That is so wrong."

alex: "Yes. It's sauce for shrimps."

Elizabeth: "There has been a grotesque cultural misunderstanding about the uses of shrimp sauce."

alex: "And that right there is the history of colonization and oppression."

Gallows Hill and Andersonville / it could be, it could be worse

2007-12-19T10:35:00.000-06:00

My friend Geoffrey is quitting smoking. This is a major achievement, as his nicotine habit is older than some of the people we work with, and I am super-proud of him. One might legitimately wonder why, however, someone who works in retail would decide that Christmas was a good choice of timing. My theory? It gets lost in the melee. When the threshold of chaos is so high, what's one more thing? Sure, sure, you'd like a cigarette, but you need to be in twelve places at once, the store has been ravaged by jackals, and you're not completely sure whether the person having a meltdown in the middle of the second floor is a customer or staff. Bring it, I can take it. Besides, there's still coffee.

A little bit macho and/or stupid? Perhaps, but it's how I'm getting through. I, apparently, have chosen this time for some serious revisions of my own, including rewiring a couple of important relationships. Which, and I don't think I can emphasize this enough, sucks. But hey. More piling product onto displays, less crying until I throw up.

foiled again

2007-12-13T16:47:00.000-06:00

I was going to bring carrot cake for tomorrow's work potluck. I really was. But somehow my grocery store has neither confectioner's sugar nor coconut. This is probably the gods' way of ensuring that my carrot cake remains the province of the bakeoff challenge my general manager has laid before me. I'll have to think of something else, I suppose. Like Timbits.