kayaking, and nature

On lake ontario this eve. perfect night for kayaks. i'm along as a fill-in at k's weekly staff event, in attendance at the harbourfront kayak and canoe club's 'social night'. there are easily 70 kayaks, singles and tandem, on the water.

after a bumpy start (i'm too short for the steering pedals which, though a cheat, are a total godsend), k and i hit our stride, get good, and i can start enjoying the sunset, the birds, the hilarity of 100 people in plastic cups on the water.

we pass drunken teens singing nickelback songs, i spot a night heron in a tree, the common ontario cigarette butt (white tip is male, the female is less showy with a brown butt), etc. we see a cluster of tents. k says, 'look, campers.' 'yeah,' i say, 'boy scouts?' k says 'i see a neckerchief. so it's either boy scouts, or an asshole convention." it turns out to be the former. boy scouts. one yells out to the cluster of kayaks. 'hey! where did you come from?'

loudly enough for k (but hopefully nobody else), i say, 'your mother's asshole'.

we laughed for about 10 minutes. i snorted.

i am a monster.

Cleaning

I hate tidying.

There, I've said it. Everything was fine in the new apartment until I acquired 'stuff', and now I just can't be bothered to put it away most of the time. I find reasons not to put things away, like, "I'll need this sooner rather than later", or "there was something I needed this for, and when I remember, I will need it out immediately," or "I will just lose this if I put it away". I am not visually oriented; my mind can't figure out where items should 'live', so I just leave them about.

I read an article in the New Yorker years ago about people who need objects in front of them to function, in order to work. I remember smugly feeling validated after reading that people who leave things lying around have greater memory capacity than those who do not. It may be true, but people who put things away probably entertain more at home than I do because they can find a place to put The Six Million Dollar Man board game, and I can't.

My apartment isn't dirty, and it's not even that messy. But somehow, tidying up just isn't a priority for me, and I can't help feel that something is wrong with me because of it. I rarely sleep well, but as soon as I contemplate cleaning up, I immediately become incredibly drowsy, as if drugged by the boredom I feel when cleaning.

I'll fold that laundry. After a nap, perhaps.

white is the new gold. scar is the new tattoo. in is the new out.

i hope you're having a good time. i am not.

I need a globe.

When I was 20, I applied for a job with Canada Post. There was a breezy interview, where I got to tell charming anecdotes about my adventures in customer service. After the interview, I was left alone in the conference room to fill out a lengthy questionnaire. The questionnaire covered much of the same ground as the interview (strengths, weaknesses, etc.), and concluded with a single page that simply asked for the names of all the provinces and the capitals thereof. I smugly filled in the answers, and was just about to call the examiner back in when I realized that...I was missing a province. And capital.

And I sat for 20 minutes.

And I was never, ever able to remember: Manitoba. Winnipeg.

Tonight, I looked at a map and thought, "Huh. What's that? What IS that landmass?". I stared at it for the longest 30 seconds of my life. I had to click to another page, where the countries were identified. Asia. It was FUCKING ASIA. A CONTINENT. I FORGOT A CONTINENT.

In my defence, I've been stripping paint for the last week. With a heat gun. In a heat wave. And for the last 36 hours, I've been stripping paint with industrial paint solvents. And it was 4 am when I looked at the map.

But still.

I think I'm going to wear a face mask next time. You know, just to be sure.

At least once a week, I get a certain kind of email. I can often tell it's going to be one of 'those' emails by the subject line alone, something like, "Hey!" or "Long Time!" or "Craaaaaazy!".

They are almost always riddled with spelling errors, and make liberal use of internet shorthand.

The emails generally read something like this:

"Hey girl! I know it's been a long time, but damn! When did u get so hot!? LOL!!! I wish I had known u would have turned out like this back in high school! LOL! JK! I'm going to be in you're (sic) city soon for work. We should def. have drinks and catch up!"

There is a slight variant on this that i refer to as the "when did you get cool" email. But it's basically the same thing.

I'd be lying if I said that these emails weren't somehow vaguely rewarding to me. I very much wanted to be pretty/cool in high school, and wasn't, based on how those things were quantified at the time.

But.

I haven't changed. I did the running man at the grocery store yesterday. I ate so many mini sloppy joes last night that I woke up at 4 am and vomited. When I'm walking somewhere with purpose, I hear the Dr. Who theme song in my head. I sleep with cookbooks in my bed, and am very interested in ornithology.

So, thanks. Thanks for coming around to Team Sociopath. We aren't currently recruiting at the moment, but we'll keep your information on file in the event that Hell freezes over. Try to remember how you've treated me, now and then, when you're sending your kids off to school. Hopefully, they won't have to sit next to people like you were, and seem to still be. Keep posting your horrible photos to Facebook, though. They bring me a lot of joy. Man, you have bad taste in furniture.

Love,

GS