arugula and prosciutto quiche for 30 = done.
mushroom and truffle soup for 30 = done.
balcony, tinkling reward nightcap in hand, stone-faced, staring at slick queen street and sunday night club goers, queen's 'don't stop me now' on the headphones.
at some point, i realize that i'm smiling.
at some point, i realize that i'm sort of dancing.
at some point, i realize that i'm pretty content.
when those moments happen, in a dirty plaid shirt and vintage stewardess' hat from the 60s, i realize that this whole thing is what i make it.
and then, 'we are the champions' comes on.
and i laugh so hard that i choke on an ice cube, and have to give myself the heimlich on the balcony railing.
life and death and food and internet. my life.
sigh.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
delete
i've been deleting myself all over the place of late.
untagging.
un-posting.
deleting.
culling.
i'm not going anywhere, just being quieter. i prefer quiet and stillness.
but don't worry, i'm not going anywhere. i'm just turning the volume down.
untagging.
un-posting.
deleting.
culling.
i'm not going anywhere, just being quieter. i prefer quiet and stillness.
but don't worry, i'm not going anywhere. i'm just turning the volume down.
Stay Classy, Saturday.
I am working overnight, making forfty or so sandwiches, among other things. Between the hours of 4 and 6 am, I received no fewer than THREE bootycalls. I've only kissed one of these three people, and quite some time ago, I might add. My favourite was an IM that read, "Bootycall? Ha ha. I'm high. I'm just riffing."
I don't really "get" bootycalls. By "get", I mean "understand". Because...I get bootycalls. In clusters like this. One night in June, TWO people buzzed my apartment after 3:30 am. Maybe I'm showing my age here, but when did this become a "thing"? Technology has officially gone too far.
I would be flattered, but the whole thing just smacks of such laziness that more often than not, I find myself a wee bit insulted. But...thanks for trying?
In the meantime, I'll be over here. Listening to Queen and slicing roast pork.
I don't really "get" bootycalls. By "get", I mean "understand". Because...I get bootycalls. In clusters like this. One night in June, TWO people buzzed my apartment after 3:30 am. Maybe I'm showing my age here, but when did this become a "thing"? Technology has officially gone too far.
I would be flattered, but the whole thing just smacks of such laziness that more often than not, I find myself a wee bit insulted. But...thanks for trying?
In the meantime, I'll be over here. Listening to Queen and slicing roast pork.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Drive'er, MacGyver
I don’t drive. I got my learner’s permit just before my mother fell ill. Before her diagnosis, the teaching sessions with my father were tedious but short. We would go to a parking lot—he would drive there, though I was legally allowed--and he would only let me work on one “skill”, and I had to do it until he was satisfied. An hour of 3-point turns, and then we would silently walk counterclockwise around the car. Me, around the back, from driver’s side to passenger’s, and my father around the front. Then my father would drive home. Often, these parking lots were less than a ten-minute drive from our house. During my mother’s illness and treatment, the sessions became understandably infrequent, and generally devolved into thinly veiled exchanges about our mutual disapproval of how the other was dealing with my mother’s inevitable and imminent death. Somewhere in there, my learner’s permit expired.
One way or the other, I just never managed to get my license. This has only rarely been an inconvenience; I moved to the big city 6 months after my mother died and never looked back. You don’t need a car in the city. Not having a car in the city allows you to pretend that you’re some kind of environmental hero or political activist, when really you’re either just poor or lazy. Or both. I don’t drive. Make of that what you will.
ANYWAY.
Not driving became a bit of an issue when I worked in Nunavut, where 5 months a year it’s not just difficult to walk, but actually dangerous. And so it became necessary for the office to ensure that at least one person in the office drove, so I wouldn’t get lost in a whiteout and freeze to death while trundling 200 metres down the dirt road for a $28 can of Tim Horton’s coffee. Eventually, the driver job was expanded to a kind of long-haul taxi driver to and from the mine site. The drive to site was, at best, a seven hour round trip, made twice a day in two shifts, day and night. It was a highly desirable job. Prior to the construction of the road (which took years, and cost approximately a bazillion dollars), the longest drive in town was a 3km stretch between town and the airport, with a very exciting speed limit of 70km/hr. It became slightly less coveted once we banned smoking in company vehicles, but was still sought-after nonetheless.
The second shift generally finished around 9 pm, and despite starting my workday at 7 am, I was usually still in the office when the second shift ended. I worked a minimum of 14 hours a day, the average was 16, and I once worked 20 hours a day for nearly two weeks straight. I lived on red bull and beef jerky for the better part of a year. I was, to put it mildly, on edge 99% of the time. Wow, this is a lot of backstory.
It was a long day. They always were, but this one was particularly long, owing to a communications failure along the road, several vehicular strandings on the tundra, a lack of water in the office, and an abundance of unpumped sewage at the crew house (basically rendering the toilets unusable and shutting down all running water). So it was 10pm, I was still in the office, and I couldn’t lock the doors until every worker staying at the crew house had come to use the washroom and gone to bed. Several contractors were also in my office, trying to sort out the communications failure. One of them went to the reception desk to use the phone. Seated at the reception desk, he yelled to me, “Hey, this is a pretty good picture. Who drew this?” I couldn’t see the picture from where I sat, and mumbled that it was likely the 4 year-old niece of the receptionist—several of her drawings were taped to the wall. The contractor said that it couldn’t have been drawn by a 4 year old, and held the drawing up so his coworker could see it. The coworker, seated across from me, nodded enthusiastically that indeed, it could not have been drawn by a 4 year old. Still unable to see the drawing and irritated by the chatter while I was CLEARLY still hard at work, I quickly said that perhaps it had been drawn by the community liaison officer’s 8 year old, and shut down the topic of conversation in order to, you know, talk about THE WORK THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. The two contractors giggled for another 10 minutes, and eventually left the building to FINALLY deal with whatever generator had failed, causing the communications failure. It was close to midnight by the time they left, so I ended my 16-hour workday and went home.
The next morning, I arrived to find my day driver already in the office, seated at the reception desk. He was chuckling to himself, and as soon as I was settled at my desk, he came in, a piece of paper in his hand. “I forgot I left this here,” he said, extending the paper in my direction. “Ha ha,” he said, with a forced laugh. I took the paper and looked down. It was quite obviously the drawing the contractors had been discussing the night before. The page was divided horizontally in two by a pencil-drawn dashed line. On the left was a blue ballpoint pen drawing of a naked woman on her back. Her knees were bent, and her genitals were exposed to the artist. Her face was not visible. Knees, breasts, and crotch. The end. It was, in all senses of the word, incredibly crude, but a lot of time seemed to have been spent filling in her voluminous and very curly pubic hair. Think Phil Spector’s murder trial hair, before the blond blowout. The right side of the page was a drawing of a man, penetrating a woman from behind. He was grinning. He had jack-o-lantern teeth and was very, very clearly my day driver. The woman, well, she was not his girlfriend. I was a little uncomfortable at this point, as one might expect. I couldn’t make eye contact with the driver, so I continued to stare at the drawing. And that’s when I realized that the woman had curly hair. She had hair on her head like Phil Spector’s murder trial hair before the blond blowout. She was built like a cartoon character, and had very round not-Inuit eyes. The woman, I realized, was me. That’s when I went from being moderately uncomfortable to, let’s say, very uncomfortable? That sounds about right. I think I made a very small squeaking sound in that moment of realization (as I sometimes do, because I am a cartoon character, after all), which then tipped him off to the fact that I’d figured it all out. He yanked the drawing from my hands and ripped it up into many, many little pieces.
I can’t tell you how often I wish I’d been able to save that drawing from destruction. I mean, how often does a coworker leave explicit fanart—FEATURING YOU—lying casually around your workplace? The answer, kids, is not often. But actually, as I type these words, I realize that this has happened to me once before. I was on tour in a show when I was 18, my learner’s driving permit nearing expiration, in the first month following my mother’s diagnosis. About 3 weeks into the tour, a devoutly Christian castmate woke me up in the middle of the night to tearfully confess to having drawn a series of very un-Christian images of me. Which is pretty amazing, now that I think of it. Huh. This ended up being like the story version definition of ouroborous. Rush would be proud. Now, if the driver for this movie I’m running craft services for sketches up a little something involving me, him, a crappy ancient Camry and nudity on a 100l cooler, this story is going to be a whole lot better the next time I think to tell it. I’ll keep you posted.
One way or the other, I just never managed to get my license. This has only rarely been an inconvenience; I moved to the big city 6 months after my mother died and never looked back. You don’t need a car in the city. Not having a car in the city allows you to pretend that you’re some kind of environmental hero or political activist, when really you’re either just poor or lazy. Or both. I don’t drive. Make of that what you will.
ANYWAY.
Not driving became a bit of an issue when I worked in Nunavut, where 5 months a year it’s not just difficult to walk, but actually dangerous. And so it became necessary for the office to ensure that at least one person in the office drove, so I wouldn’t get lost in a whiteout and freeze to death while trundling 200 metres down the dirt road for a $28 can of Tim Horton’s coffee. Eventually, the driver job was expanded to a kind of long-haul taxi driver to and from the mine site. The drive to site was, at best, a seven hour round trip, made twice a day in two shifts, day and night. It was a highly desirable job. Prior to the construction of the road (which took years, and cost approximately a bazillion dollars), the longest drive in town was a 3km stretch between town and the airport, with a very exciting speed limit of 70km/hr. It became slightly less coveted once we banned smoking in company vehicles, but was still sought-after nonetheless.
The second shift generally finished around 9 pm, and despite starting my workday at 7 am, I was usually still in the office when the second shift ended. I worked a minimum of 14 hours a day, the average was 16, and I once worked 20 hours a day for nearly two weeks straight. I lived on red bull and beef jerky for the better part of a year. I was, to put it mildly, on edge 99% of the time. Wow, this is a lot of backstory.
It was a long day. They always were, but this one was particularly long, owing to a communications failure along the road, several vehicular strandings on the tundra, a lack of water in the office, and an abundance of unpumped sewage at the crew house (basically rendering the toilets unusable and shutting down all running water). So it was 10pm, I was still in the office, and I couldn’t lock the doors until every worker staying at the crew house had come to use the washroom and gone to bed. Several contractors were also in my office, trying to sort out the communications failure. One of them went to the reception desk to use the phone. Seated at the reception desk, he yelled to me, “Hey, this is a pretty good picture. Who drew this?” I couldn’t see the picture from where I sat, and mumbled that it was likely the 4 year-old niece of the receptionist—several of her drawings were taped to the wall. The contractor said that it couldn’t have been drawn by a 4 year old, and held the drawing up so his coworker could see it. The coworker, seated across from me, nodded enthusiastically that indeed, it could not have been drawn by a 4 year old. Still unable to see the drawing and irritated by the chatter while I was CLEARLY still hard at work, I quickly said that perhaps it had been drawn by the community liaison officer’s 8 year old, and shut down the topic of conversation in order to, you know, talk about THE WORK THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. The two contractors giggled for another 10 minutes, and eventually left the building to FINALLY deal with whatever generator had failed, causing the communications failure. It was close to midnight by the time they left, so I ended my 16-hour workday and went home.
The next morning, I arrived to find my day driver already in the office, seated at the reception desk. He was chuckling to himself, and as soon as I was settled at my desk, he came in, a piece of paper in his hand. “I forgot I left this here,” he said, extending the paper in my direction. “Ha ha,” he said, with a forced laugh. I took the paper and looked down. It was quite obviously the drawing the contractors had been discussing the night before. The page was divided horizontally in two by a pencil-drawn dashed line. On the left was a blue ballpoint pen drawing of a naked woman on her back. Her knees were bent, and her genitals were exposed to the artist. Her face was not visible. Knees, breasts, and crotch. The end. It was, in all senses of the word, incredibly crude, but a lot of time seemed to have been spent filling in her voluminous and very curly pubic hair. Think Phil Spector’s murder trial hair, before the blond blowout. The right side of the page was a drawing of a man, penetrating a woman from behind. He was grinning. He had jack-o-lantern teeth and was very, very clearly my day driver. The woman, well, she was not his girlfriend. I was a little uncomfortable at this point, as one might expect. I couldn’t make eye contact with the driver, so I continued to stare at the drawing. And that’s when I realized that the woman had curly hair. She had hair on her head like Phil Spector’s murder trial hair before the blond blowout. She was built like a cartoon character, and had very round not-Inuit eyes. The woman, I realized, was me. That’s when I went from being moderately uncomfortable to, let’s say, very uncomfortable? That sounds about right. I think I made a very small squeaking sound in that moment of realization (as I sometimes do, because I am a cartoon character, after all), which then tipped him off to the fact that I’d figured it all out. He yanked the drawing from my hands and ripped it up into many, many little pieces.
I can’t tell you how often I wish I’d been able to save that drawing from destruction. I mean, how often does a coworker leave explicit fanart—FEATURING YOU—lying casually around your workplace? The answer, kids, is not often. But actually, as I type these words, I realize that this has happened to me once before. I was on tour in a show when I was 18, my learner’s driving permit nearing expiration, in the first month following my mother’s diagnosis. About 3 weeks into the tour, a devoutly Christian castmate woke me up in the middle of the night to tearfully confess to having drawn a series of very un-Christian images of me. Which is pretty amazing, now that I think of it. Huh. This ended up being like the story version definition of ouroborous. Rush would be proud. Now, if the driver for this movie I’m running craft services for sketches up a little something involving me, him, a crappy ancient Camry and nudity on a 100l cooler, this story is going to be a whole lot better the next time I think to tell it. I’ll keep you posted.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Muse Sick
when you turn off the music, there is ringing in your ears.
eventually, the ringing stops.
and then it's quiet. too quiet.
you miss the noise, or even just the ringing. you don't remember that silence can be a nice change. you smack your ears with your hands to try and recreate the ringing. you clear your throat to hear sound.
you get used to the silence. you collect your thoughts.
and then you are surprised to hear a song in the air that you like. so you find out what it is, and you turn on the stereo.
at a volume that does not bring to mind the torture of manuel noriega in 1989*.
at a volume that does not cause you pain or give you headaches or ruin your speakers.
so you start listening to music again, and it's good.
*(although there WAS a lot of sabbath and maiden and zeppelin on that playlist, which is awesome)
eventually, the ringing stops.
and then it's quiet. too quiet.
you miss the noise, or even just the ringing. you don't remember that silence can be a nice change. you smack your ears with your hands to try and recreate the ringing. you clear your throat to hear sound.
you get used to the silence. you collect your thoughts.
and then you are surprised to hear a song in the air that you like. so you find out what it is, and you turn on the stereo.
at a volume that does not bring to mind the torture of manuel noriega in 1989*.
at a volume that does not cause you pain or give you headaches or ruin your speakers.
so you start listening to music again, and it's good.
*(although there WAS a lot of sabbath and maiden and zeppelin on that playlist, which is awesome)
Friday, October 1, 2010
My Stupid Blog
A year ago today, in a leather jacket, plaid dress, yellow tights and knee-high boots, I quit my job.
I had no idea what I was doing when I burned my life to the ground three years ago, but you can't stop a chain of dominoes. When the last domino falls, you have to set about picking them up. I guess that's what I was trying to do this last year. That was the plan, at least.
As this year dragged on, I began to dread the last week of September, the thought of having to take stock of it all, what with my introspective nature...ugh. I was pretty convinced that I wouldn't like what I figured out. At times, I really felt like this year was just another abstraction I was failing at quantifying.
And then the last week of September came.
My best friend from high school traveled 10 hours to spend 12 with me.
I had an epic chat with an old friend that began in tears, and ended with hysterical laughter.
I reconciled with a dear friend after a 2 year estrangement.
I had a perfect adventure day.
Investments in people will be rewarded.
Everything gets better.
Time is the only answer.
I like being happy.
*******************
I am pretty comfortable in my skin. I learn from my mistakes. I love and am loved. I am very, very lucky.
(and glad that i quit that stupid job)
NEXT.
I had no idea what I was doing when I burned my life to the ground three years ago, but you can't stop a chain of dominoes. When the last domino falls, you have to set about picking them up. I guess that's what I was trying to do this last year. That was the plan, at least.
As this year dragged on, I began to dread the last week of September, the thought of having to take stock of it all, what with my introspective nature...ugh. I was pretty convinced that I wouldn't like what I figured out. At times, I really felt like this year was just another abstraction I was failing at quantifying.
And then the last week of September came.
My best friend from high school traveled 10 hours to spend 12 with me.
I had an epic chat with an old friend that began in tears, and ended with hysterical laughter.
I reconciled with a dear friend after a 2 year estrangement.
I had a perfect adventure day.
Investments in people will be rewarded.
Everything gets better.
Time is the only answer.
I like being happy.
*******************
I am pretty comfortable in my skin. I learn from my mistakes. I love and am loved. I am very, very lucky.
(and glad that i quit that stupid job)
NEXT.
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