Kippered Snacks

because wine lubricates social intercourse and who doesn't like well lubricated intercourse?

2012-01-25T00:17:00.002-07:00

numbers rule (except words rule more):

3. when it's -45C with windchill and you're wearing no hat and your sexy little coat is open and your shoes have stiletto heels, you don't look lovely: you look like a complete moron.

7. when it's -45C with windchill, furry earflap hats are sexy.

1. why? i'm still not sure but the guessing keeps life interesting.

3/4. apparently some people do not realise that fractions denote dividing one number into another. i have it on good authority that some of these people will be administering your chemotherapy drugs in the near future. time to invest in a good solid firearm, non?

25. i am in the middle of changing my life dramatically. once i get shit done, i will tell you all about it. but - it's not divorce (dudes! i LOVE my mister monkey!) and it's not a goddamn baby.

57721.4 i am sitting on my couch, listening to my music and it feels good. as i said to crusty juggler earlier "really, all one needs for true happiness is the right chemical cocktail floating through your blood stream!"

9. who doesn't like baby animals? even though sometimes the cuteness makes you want to kick someone. hard.

18. can i be done now? ok, then. i'm done now.

[free-floating asterisked bit removed by author]

edit. note: the asterisked bit at the end that meant nothing can be attributed to one thing and one thing only: drinking and writing (wait, that's two things! i always said i was bad at math.) i have now erased it to avoid confusion, thank you to crusty juggler whose sharp eye and quick wit have saved the day. phew!

another crusty juggler chat (don't worry, c.j., all the embarrassing bits have been deleted!)

2012-01-24T23:43:00.002-07:00

moi: i only like to embarrass myself...and stupid people (regarding the whole portugal debacle*)

yay! my show is on!

crusty juggler: which?

moi: the signal, on the radio, my first love!

crusty juggler: ah, i naturally assumed tv.

moi: you would.

crusty juggler: i can't seem to bring myself to listen to the radio without anything visual going on...like the tv on mute or something. it's a sickness.

moi: you are a strange one. you can do shadow puppets!

crusty juggler: i'm very visual. like a dude. dude's need constant visual stimulation according to the studies. why did i put that apostrophe there? nevermind.

moi: YOU!!! bad girl! your so dumb, lol.**

crusty juggler: hey!

moi: that's ok, once when talking to g i said "for mr. monkey and i" and then just about had a coronary.

crusty juggler: but you were likely the only one who noticed.

moi: nope. i made such a stink about it the entire restaurant noticed. had i been japanese i would have fallen on my sword... or fork, as the case may be.

*mr. monkey's facebook status tonight: "where is portugal? does anybody know?" to which those out of the loop responded earnestly, while those in the know (crazy joan, i'm looking at you, dahling!) referred the reader back to my book club for answers.

**i certainly hope that at this point in the proceedings i need not tell you that neither the "your" nor the "lol" were seriously meant, right? good, i thought not.

an emoticon for a banana ) (or (, depending on which way it is facing)

2012-01-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

i don't see why i ought feel bad about being an intellectual snob - you don't see the vociferous ignoramuses of the world expressing any kind of shame, do you?

i'm sorry, what did you just say?

2012-01-21T22:58:00.003-07:00

on facebook, on our private book club group chat, but a few short hours ago:

ms. implants: hmmmm. the book is not available at chapters ....

moi: but it is at the library.

ms. ten thousand dollar chest: i don't do library.

and then my head exploded again because this woman is a teacher. of children. she doesn't "do" library but is willing to spend 5K per breast (what? me? judge? mais oui! everyone needs a hobby!)? thank christ my ovaries are shrivelled up and dusty because... well, because... sorry, interwebs, i'm stumped. to have to explain to a grown woman that portugal is not exactly in south america is bad enough; to have to find out that a teacher doesn't "do" library is grounds for immediate removal of self from society of said teacher. book club, i think this is good bye.

oh book club, book club, book club, what shall we do with you?

2012-01-15T21:56:00.001-07:00

at book club this saturday:

moi: blah blah blah something totally irrelevant blah blah blah, blather blather blather so we're going to be spending almost 3 weeks in portugal this summer blah blah blah
book club hostess: where is portugal? is that in south america?
moi: ... um... no, it is in europe.
book club attendee: yeah, where is it? i totally missed social 20.
moi: ... it's next to spain. it's in the south. warmish bit of europe.

and then my head exploded, because, motherfucking fuckety fuck, we're not talking about social 20 here: we're talking about GODDAMN GEOGRAPHY!!! sweet jesus on a pogo stick, it took all of my self-control (the reserves that were not being used on not drinking, seeing as i was driving and we were in the midst of a 10 metre snow dump that night) not to look around and ask them if they were fucking retarded or what. i didn't. but only just.

honestly, i think i need another book club.

p.s. the rest of the night was spent talking about one attendee's brand new breast implants. like i said, i need another book club.

merry, merry, merry!

2011-12-24T11:29:00.001-07:00

hey, all my wonderful poultries - i love knowing you are hovering around this here virtual gathering spot.

may your days be merry and bright and filled with all manner of love, delicious victuals, laughter and polyester reindeer sweaters and may the coming new year make all your dreams come true! may you be healthy, wealthy and wise and may it just keep getting better and better!

(thanks to crusty juggler for the festive pictorial contribution, courtesy of andrew bell)

why i possibly need to ease off the wine or never ever chat/skype with friends when drinking

2011-12-20T19:53:00.005-07:00

moi: hi, i'm here with my friend and we're having wine. how you is/ crusty juggler: what the what? thought you were out!
moi: back here now. showed your pic to my roman friend/  want to say hi? crusty juggler: ok, errrr Hi! moi: get om sjkyle
crusty juggler: i'm not familair with S.J. Kyle, but I'll try moi: skjyle?  what the fuck? crusty juggler: that's the guy!
then we talked on skype (apprently) then 10 more minutes elapsed.
moi: sorry dude, i'm drunk. she's gone now and i have no recollection of phoning you.  god, bboze is bad  or good  it makes you think happy unicorn thoughtsand rainbows out the ass crusty juggler: when did you phone me? you mean skype? if you mean skype which we just spoke on, then I think you should get thee to a hospital for alcohol poisoning moi: shut up!!!  phone/skype  whatevs!
is all techonlololology crusty juggler: okay! you do remembe the past 10 minutes though, no? moi: what?  why?  what happened? crusty juggler: we conversed on skype  we said important things moi: oooh!  imporrant thangs  !
crusty juggler: dude! you are so wasted! moi: that sounds... impirrant  possibly  i haven't had much to drink lately crusty juggler: maybe that's why T was ignoring your calls... moi: so we only had 1.5 bottle of wine, IF that crusty juggler: sometimes it only takes a wee bit!
moi: especially if you haven't had any booze in like a week  which is moi  hard to believe, i know  i like my roma friend, she is nice crusty juggler: EXXactly. anyway, Rome friend sounds nice - although I hope you only showed her the good photos of me moi: also, she is not drinkig as much as usual. you only take GOOD photos  fuck! crusty juggler: Right!  anyway, i hope she's not a bad drink influcence moi: you is seriously nice looking what with your metabolism and blue eys and all crusty juggler: i am pretty great. moi: don't know which way that goes. you are!!!
crusty juggler: uh-huh. moi: uh0h crusty juggler: what'd you do? moi: uh - HUH crusty juggler: oh moi: whaddya mean? crusty juggler: this is a great conversation. transcripts please! moi: wanna talk like for realz?  oh yes. crusty juggler: ok, lemme get on it moi: fuck.  call?  skjpeuuueee? crusty juggler: yarp  yarp again moi: yarp

cookies for hitler

2011-12-16T22:33:00.004-07:00

and so another yuletide season is upon us and that means only one thing. well, two things. well, okay, a whole bunch of things like sparkly balls in trees (or reasonable plastic facsimiles thereof (the trees, not the balls)), drinking hot spiced alcoholic beverages, getting warm hugs from drunk co-workers ("i love you, man!") and baking cookies! christmas is the only time of the year when i bake cookies but i bake them with a vengeance*.

imagine my disappointment, then, when i gather my ingredients, mix, whip, froth, swish, shake and gently fold things into other things, only to discover that the recipe generates a teeny tiny little cake or a mere half dozen cookies (i'm looking at you, smitten kitchen! i realise you cook your wondrous comestibles in a teeny tiny little new york kitchen, but give me a bloody break! i'm browning multiple cups of butter, vast bubbling vats of golden buttery goodness expecting mounds of cookies. mounds!!! you hear me? and what do i get (time and time again)? six fucking cookies. what am i supposed to do with six cookies? six cookies is an appetizer before one gets into the serious business of eating cookies. six cookies is nothing to a woman like me: NOTHING! mere crumbs in my dentition! a not particularly amusing amuse bouche. especially if they are delicious. and with that amount of brown butter, how can they not be? but you're messing with me, aren't ya? because just last week i made delicious mac'n cheese from one of your 2 recipes, and the other one, the one i didn't use, was for 12 people. really? you feed mac'n cheese to 12 people and then what? you give them six fucking cookies. that just doesn't make any sense.)

and lest all you daily bakers look scornfully down at me and wonder why i cannot tell how many cookies this amount of ingredients will generate, i'll tell you why: because i bake once a year and also, i have no imagination when it comes to measurements. of any kind. if mr. monkey doesn't explain it to me in football fields and tea-cups, then i don't get it. is it a little? is it a lot? i don't fucking know. but i do know that it is pure hitlerian evil to publish recipes for 6 cookies. especially around christmas.

as an aside: salted butter is a motherfucking bitch to brown, don't do it! i used only the tiny amount i needed to make up the difference (i used up all my sweet butter reserves! for 6 goddamn cookies!!!) and it still messed me up. but i set out to brown it and brown it i did. and why the hell is salted butter cheaper than unsalted? same with pistachios. why do i have to pay a dollar extra to have the salt removed? do they hire small expensive children from elite private schools to lick off the salt? these are the things that keep me up at night.

*great tagline for a movie, eh? "vengeance is back in town, and this time, she's packing a silpat®!"

the girl, she is a genyooos!

2011-12-16T22:12:00.000-07:00

in preparation for tomorrow's pierogi making marathon, i spent the day making pierogi filling. this involved boiling things, cooling things, chopping things, sauteeing things, squeezing excess liquid out of cooled things and a vast amount of processing the hell out of things so that they became smaller, more manageable things. this last bit was hard. it was hard, frustrating, annoying and very very angryfying*. the mushrooms were not yielding as well as i wanted them to, the filling was looking far more fibrous and chunky that it needed to be and i started to give the evil eye to my cuisinart. you bastard (i thought bitterly to myself). you cost me a whole bunch of ~~money~~ airmiles** and now you're acting like the spoiled little french bitch that you are.

it was when i put a batch of sauerkraut into the cuisinart and it failed to do a thing other than faff about ineffectually that i realised that perhaps something mechanically serious was amiss. perhaps its motor was getting on in years (it's not that old, but then again neither am i and i can quite often be found faffing about ineffectually). perhaps its blade needed sharpening. oh yes, its blade. i dumped the contents, took out the blade and realised that the reason i've been making a bloody mess of all the things i have been using my cuisinart for for the past several months is because (wait for it) i've been using the dough blade. not the sharp cutting blade that cuts things with its sharpness but the dull dough blade that, to put it bluntly, does not. i have been handing my kitchen surgeon a plastic fork and asking her to do an open heart surgery. so dumb. so very very dumb.

correct blade in place, everything was reduced to the correct consistency in mere seconds (oh, the wasted minutes! oh, the chunks of beet in the lesbian dip! oh, the frustration! oh, the fucking stupidity!)

when mr. monkey came into the kitchen i promptly told him about my idiocy. oh, i knew that, quoth he, i was wondering why you were using the dough blade, but i figured you knew what you were doing.

christ. i always tell him when he does something stupid, i cannot, for the life of me, understand why he doesn't return the favour.

*why the hell isn't that a word? huh? it should be! let's petition the government! let's paint large banners! let's... let's get back to the story at hand, shall we?

** the only thing those things are good for, as far as i'm concerned. the one time i used airmiles to fly us to vegas was such a bloody hassle, it would have been better to just pay with cash. but i digress. again.

let's clarify things a bit

2011-12-14T21:12:00.002-07:00

ok, some of you know me, some of you only know me through this here thing. in the interest of full disclosure, i must admit that i took some artistic license with that there last angry post. because while yes, i was indeed sitting and sweating and burbling over with the kind of anger that only comes from paying someone to make you hurt, i also want you to know that i am an avid walker (i know few people who walk as much or as enthusiastically as i do on as regular a basis), i do not subsist on cheezee puffs™, coca cola and a jar of mr. mallard's marshmallow fluff™. i do not live the kind of sedentary lifestyle that characterises a scary portion of north america where the day's exertion comes from a scooter ride between couch and refrigerator. i eat chips roughly once a year, mcdonald's once every two and the worst thing you can find in my pantry is polish chocolate covered prunes. i do indeed hoover seasonal fruits with a dedication that is akin to obsession, and i love salad, for which i make my own vinaigrette. so please don't picture me as one of the latest denizens of wal-mart because although i do wear sweat pants around the house, they are of the kind that make my ass look FAH!bulous (g will back me up on this, won't you, g?). and also, red wine has anti-oxidants in it.

just so we all know where we all stand. ok?

also, jesus christ, my ass sure does hurt today. i love you, zumbitch!

huh?

2011-12-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

in the parking lot of a big box reno store, i am telling mr. monkey all about a co-worker who was stressed out because her daughter's letter to santa was filled with strange and difficult-to-find items:

moi: so she's freaking out about not being able to buy everything on her daughter's letter! can you imagine? who knew that a letter to santa was something that you had to follow to religiously? i always figured it was just a guideline. you know: they ask for a macbook, you get them a calculator; they ask for a pony, you get them a hamster sort of thing.

mr. monkey (slightly confused look on his face): ...

moi: isn't that odd? that she's getting everything on this letter to santa?

mr. monkey: what?

moi: letter to santa.

mr. monkey (increasing look of incomprehension): what?!

moi: her daughter's letter to santa!

mr. monkey (frankly horrified): WHAT? a letter of placenta?!?

moi: yes. a letter to placenta: "dear placenta, this year under the uterus i'd like a vulva." christ.

i (really don't) like to move it, move it

2011-12-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

i am sitting here sweating sweaty ass sweat into my couch sheep following an intense hour of zumba. as i hopped, jumped, skipped and shimmied up and down the dance studio, i realised again just how much i fucking hate exercise. yes, dear poultries, i hate exercise. intense physical exertion makes me very very angry and being forced to look at myself in floor-to-ceiling mirrors is detrimental to my closely guarded life of self-delusion: is that really my waist? really? that's what i look like when i think i'm being sexy? sweet lord, it hurts. it hurts here and it hurts there and, i'm ashamed to admit, it also very much hurts over here. and the thing that hurts the most is my pride - there are several very large women in my class and they keep on coming back week after week while i spectacularly fail to do so. i show up here and there and spend the rest of the time hating myself and watching "castle." *

i recently started going to yoga with a bunch of kick-ass elderly polish women, who also make me feel like a pathetic loser as per my inability to hold the downward dog without my arms turning to jello and my ass wobbling all over the place, not to mention the instructor drawing attention (gently, lovingly, but still...) to my crooked painful crotchety hip. and while i search for the inner peace that yoga is supposed to bring, i must admit to myself that i fucking hate yoga.

so, what to do?

i am currently following my annual christmas orange diet (not so much a diet as a seasonal obsession - i'm on my fourth box in a month and i tend to eat up to 10 per day - is this normal? wait, don't answer that) but god knows the days of seasonal gorging are coming and i really really would rather not enter my fortieth year the way i entered the preceding bunch (with the notable exception of those 5 or so years in which i dramatically cut back my carbs, lost weight, kept it off and singlehandedly stopped all of my gastrointestinal issues**). i want to get in shape. i need to get in shape. and how does one do that when one fucking hates exercise?

ideas? pointers? speed? i'm willing to try anything (short of a regular exercise regimen coupled with responsible eating and reduced wine consumption, of course; that'd be crazy!!!)

* who is so delicious i'm sure the calories are simply piling up!

** i know, i know, you're wondering if this worked so spectacularly for me in the past why not repeat the experiment. and well may you wonder. i often wonder that very thing myself...

the one about the way we do it and the way they do it and the way it ought to be done

2011-11-30T00:28:00.001-07:00

i love canada. it is a country that is law-abiding, peaceful, calm and its citizens tend to follow rules and obey signs. all this i like, because it is a reflection of my own obsessive-compulsive, orderly personality*. i always wear a seatbelt and will refuse to drive if you don't put one on. i am that person who will never trespass if there is a "no trespassing" sign. it makes me physically uncomfortable to even stand too close to one much to the amusement and chagrin of certain friends and family.

i love mexico. it is a country that is vibrant, loud, chaotic and its citizens seemingly take their life in their hands every day when they ride in the backs of trucks careening down cobblestone streets or let their children walk to and from school unsupervised or eat food cooked by some guy on the street using his hands (!).

the sidewalks of puerto vallarta, usually patchy, often 1-2 feet above street level, typically narrow and wonky, are a desecration of a thousand and one canadian laws, bylaws and occupational health and safety codes. in north america, a sidewalk like that would simply not be built**. or, if built, it would quickly become embroiled multiple personal injury lawsuits. after all, it is simply an accident waiting to happen. so why do i love it? i love it because in mexico, there is an assumption that we in canada and the US have long since forgotten - the assumption that the citizens have that most precious of unlegislatable commodities called common sense. americans fall and sue. canadians fall and write angry letters to the municipality. mexicans look where they walk, see a potentially unsafe sidewalk and act accordingly.

what i also love in mexico, sadly missing from most canadian and american cities, is a real sense of community. in the evenings, whole families bring out plastic chairs and sit around tiny restaurants, kids run around playing with their friends, parents take their little ones for walks on the oceanside promenade - what a difference from the sterile deserted suburbia where every house is a equipped with every electronic device money can buy to ensure that their children never ever go out to play. we live isolated lives, reaching out to friends and family occasionally and sporadically; they live as an integral part of their neighbourhood, extended family and circle of friends.

as nice as it was to come back to the quiet of our life here in canada, i feel like there's something missing - that street-level engagement with the rest of the human race. and granted, our 6-7 months of ridiculously unreasonable winter has a lot to do with it, there are ways we could get around it: we have malls, pedways, libraries and public spaces, but sadly even there we are most often walking around in our own little bubbles, and, even more sadly, what we're typically doing is shopping, and the acquisition of unnecessary items is not exactly the most social activity out there, now is it?

*my wine-drinking personality is a bit of loophole that we will not discuss, however, let it be known that even drunkedy drunk i will obey most rules of orderly conduct (although i have been known to fall down and spill stuff, but, again, we will not discuss this)

**with the notable exception of new orleans. and other places where poor people live. because who cares about the poor?

a horse is a horse, of course, of course

2011-11-29T23:09:00.001-07:00

we just spent a glorious week in puerto vallarta and seemed to have hit a time of many parades. one night as we left our favourite watering place* we saw that the boardwalk had again been set up for a parade. we turned to the friendly bouncer to find out what was going on. obviously his english wasn't perfect:

mr. monkey: what's going on here tonight?
bouncer: parade of dancing horse.
mr. monkey (to me): awesome! it's a parade of dancing whores!
moi: look! there's one! (there was a young woman in an excessively short skirt and equally excessively high heels looking on with a bored look on her even more excessively made-up face)

sadly it was horses. twice as sadly, really, because i think mexican dancing whores would have been totally awesome and because i hate it when animals are made to do stupid things.

*delicious and boozy margaritas for a buck - what's not to like?

must be the moon

2011-11-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

you know, i really ought to do the nomoblogomofo or whatever it's called, because i seem to be posting once a month and i tend to do well with deadlines, even self imposed ones. perhaps next november, then. if i live, that is.

tonight, mr. monkey and i were coming home from a pizza dinner, it was a lovely mild* moonlit night and my mind was... well, not sure really, but not here. not here at all.

we walked along a major downtown street, the traffic still fairly heavy and i decided to cross. i looked at the ground and lo, saw two stripes indicating a pedestrian crossing. and so i started to cross, feeling all warm and fuzzy thinking how lovely it was to live here where people are so very polite and (almost) always stop for pedestrians** and thus i made it almost halfway across the street before being yanked back by mr. monkey who grabbed my hood and yelled, "what the hell?!" or something suchlike. turns out that along with the lovely painted crosswalk lines, there were also traffic lights. which were most distinctly not in my favour. right there and then i became one of those annoying people who cross wherever and whenever they feel like. thing is, usually they're scruffy street people high on glue or mouthwash.

now, boys and girls, i know that in large metropolitan areas like manhattan and chicago, people cross when they reach critical mass, and traffic lights have very little to do with it. we're not like that here. in fact, after living in chicago i found it charmingly quaint, this standing around and waiting for a crosswalk light to change when there wasn't a single car around. but for the most part, i'm all law-abiding and shit. except today. today, i took my life in my hands and stepped out into the chasm and the city let me live.

i have no idea what happened and why but i'll blame the moon.

*by our sub-arctic standards that is, all you europeans out there would have frozen your buns off, but we's made of sterner stuff. also, we're fucking mad to live here.

**they most certainly did not in chicago. even at a crosswalk. festooned with large fluorescent "YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS" signs. and flashing lights. nope. not even a little bit.

i don't gots the skillz

2011-11-05T00:42:00.002-07:00

you know, sometimes i really wish i could see better through binoculars. like right now, for instance. there's a couple making out in the building across the back alley from us and everything i see is blurry. damn!

update: went to mr. monkey to complain and he came and sharpened the focus for me. sadly, they seem to be doing more talking than getting it on. come on, people! life is short! can your conversation be that good?

epilogue: when they really got busy, they turned off the lights. selfish bastards!

me, only better(er)

2011-11-05T00:12:00.001-07:00

how can you not lose respect for yourself when it's almost 1am and you've just spent the last three hours watching back episodes of cougar town*, haven't had a drop of wine** and suddenly find yourself thinking that your life would have surely been so much better if you had only decided to grow your bangs out sooner.

because yes, my life is so much more awesome now that i've grown out my bangs. oh yes. whereas i used to be a wreck, now i am strong. whereas i used to fall apart under the tiniest bit of stress, now i am a rock and cruise right through all the vicissitudes that life chooses to drop in my way***. whereas i knew not who i was and where i was heading, now i have a firm sense of both self and direction. all because i no longer have to worry about my bangs. oh yes.

um, not really. but wouldn't it be nice?

this, if i choose to take it as such, is a little lesson that i ought to internalise and apply to my dreams of the brilliant magical future i will inhabit once i have lost those annoying 20lbs. oh yes, then i will really be somebody!

um, not really. but wouldn't it be nice?

*LOVE that show. really. it's my crack.
**well, just half a glass, much earlier on but then i lost my will to ~~live~~ open another bottle.
*** a cruising sort of rock. surely there is such a thing!

think first, speak second... or the other way around!

2011-10-25T07:39:00.002-07:00

last night in bed:

moi: so, crusty juggler just told me she's flying down to see us for christmas!

mr. monkey: great! is she flying down... on a plane?

moi: ... yes, i imagine she will be using a plane.

mr. monkey: good, good.

so you has shoes issues, has you?

2011-10-21T23:10:00.017-07:00

we have moved 7 or 8 times in the last 7 or 8 years (pardon the vagueness, but you must admit that's pretty damn exhausting which is my excuse) so a large portion of our Stuff has been living out their nomadic existence encased in large rubbermaid bins. since we've arrived in edmonton to some degree of stability and permanence, one of my projects has been to find an official spot for all but our least often used items (yoga mats, i'm (sadly) looking at you). this has proven to be a challenge i have met with skill and aplomb (in fact, this kind of challenge is the pretty much the only kind of challenge i enjoy. all others can please go away and leave me to my drinking.)

until we reached the shoes, that is. oh yes. the shoes.

whilst mister monkey traipsed along the shiny avenues of chicago this last week* i decided to Face the Challenge of the Shoes. the bin containing them is a mess filled with various plastic and fabric bags and baggies and digging out the perfect pair of pumps for that dressy soiree can be a heartbreaking affair (purely imaginary, that. our soirees, such as they are, are conducted largely barefoot. also, i'm fairly certain i don't own any pumps and neither does mr. monkey, which might explain the difficulty).

so, how hard can it be for an intelligent capable woman to find, buy, construct and fill a small simple shoe shelf? you don't wanna know.

wednesday at lunch, i purchased two different shelving units, thinking that one would work if the other one did not. wednesday night after work i cursed, swore, whacked, pushed and shoved my way through a minor construction project. during this physically and psychologically draining endeavour, i learned The Importance Of Reading Instructions Prior To Commencing Project (Or At The Very Least Looking At The Picture On The Box Really Closely) (although SPOILER ALERT i did not carry this lesson with me into the future). i also learned that what manufacturers call "shelving for shoes" tends to mean "shelving for flip-flops, ballet slippers and other flat objects because that extra centimetre of thermosetting polymer tubing seriously cuts into profits" which, in turn, means that hiking boots are out. because most of the footwear that was to be inhabiting the shelving unit in question was to be, in fact, hiking boots, this meant that i now entered phase two of the project: deconstruction.

deconstruction was marginally easier than construction, keeping in mind that despite my fondest fantasies, i could not merely take a baseball bat to the shelves, smiting my enemies into dust, but had to return them unscathed to their point of origin. more swearing ensued. (much more.)( though less than before.)( but still a fair amount.) tubes that previously refused to pop into slots, now resolutely refused to pop out. a hammer was taken out and used judiciously despite the very clear sign on the box that indicated that no tools were required. whatever.

thursday i took a mental break (also, my fingers were too numb and bruised to do anything constructive) and went to zumba after work. it didn't work that well as far as breaks go, in that my ass still hurts today, but at least there were no shelves to de/construct.

friday morning i revisited various stores and returned various shelving units, one elegantly repackaged in the original box, and one shoved haphazardly into a beaten-up box in much the same way one deals with a plastic christmas tree that first year**. while shopping, i came across a brand new exciting (and, more importantly, simple looking) set of shelves. i bought them. i took them to my mom-in-law's and, because i am occasionally logical and forward thinking, i opened up the box and found a flimsy piece of crap. i returned it right after brunch. this brought my total to 3 purchases, 2 constructions, 2 deconstructions, 3 returns, 100% fail. but hey, the day was young!

friday afternoon, i walked into wal-mart determined to find what i needed at that mecca of cheap shoddy sweatshop-produced garbage. my determination paid off. i came home with a set of shelves that were inexpensive, just the right size and ridiculously easy to put together.

right.

what ensued looked like an old charlie chaplin film. i put things into slots, i pulled, i wiggled, i shoved and it just wasn't going the right way. then i looked at the package photo again. oh. oh, i see. i swore and spent the next 5 minutes taking it apart again, seeing as i put it together wrong in every possible way short of turning it upside down. i started again. this time i was determined to do it the right way. except it wouldn't go. i held up one bit, the other fell down. i leaned one bit against a wall, held the other under my chin and attempted to hook the little hooks on the metal part. it fell apart. this went on for a longish while. i'm fairy certain my octogenarian neighbours are very curious as to the meaning of "KURWA!!!***"

there came a low point at which i was kneeling with my head down on the floor, sobbing and swearing and feeling like the back end of a not particularly bright donkey. eventually, after i gave myself a very stern talking to regarding the segment of the population that wal-mart products are generally aimed at vis-à-vis my perceived intellectual prowess etc. etc. and after several more minutes of clatterings, clangs and much muted swearing, i had myself a shelf.

it's not perfect: it could be bigger, it could be sturdier, it could be better quality. but i'll be fucked before i go another round: my ego cannot take it.

*surprisingly, i chose not to accompany him. i love chicago but i thought it was perhaps my chance to be a bread winning bacon homebringer for a change, and thus it was.

** they really ought to have a team of physicists and other quantum mechanics types working on this problem - how is it that a christmas tree never ever fits back into the box it came out of, no matter what you do to it short of setting it on fire.

*** very very bad word in polish. if you know one word in polish, chances are this is the word you know. do not use it in public.

tv on the radio (with apologies to crusty juggler)

2011-10-20T16:23:00.002-07:00

a day or two ago, on skype with crusty juggler:

moi: we don't generally watch tv in the summer.

c.j.: why not? what do you do?

moi: i don't know, it gets dark late, and i like watching tv in the dark.

c.j.: not me! i turn it on first thing in the morning! i like the noise.

moi: ugh, i cannot stand tv on an empty stomach but i like noise too, so i turn on the radio.

c.j.: i could listen to the radio. but i'd like to see them, you know, sitting there and talking.

moi: um... that's called television.

c.j.: oh yeah.

occupy this!

2011-10-16T09:10:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a perfect fall day - sunshine, a light breeze, the sort of crystalline aerial clarity that alberta is famous for, in a word, a perfect day for an anti-capitalist rally. i grabbed my library books* and off i went.

it was a decent turn-out. there was a nice range of people, from scruffy youths with purple hair who, i think, will pretty much protest anything, to disgruntled grandmothers to families with kids (you know the kind of families with kids i mean, right? the kinds whose kids wear delightfully daring colour combinations and hand-knit hemp hats and snack on home made granola bars (i loves me a good left-wing family, they're so aesthetically pleasing!)). there were silly signs, pompous placards and the odd witticism (toddler in a stroller had this sign taped to the front "i spit up on corporate greed," while his little sister held up one that said "even i know how to share"). ah, that feeling of togetherness, belonging, standing up for something, or against something, or something. you know, it was good.

but there i stood in the middle of all this, listening to an earnest choir sing "oh freedom" followed by the raging grannies who warbled some revolutionary ditties with an equal earnestness and i suddenly felt completely disconnected. disconnected from this earnestness, this purity of feeling and hope, these ideals. don't get me wrong, i think it is time we got angry at the growing economic disparity and the ridiculous amount of power corporations have in politics, angry at what is essentially the dissolution of any kind of meaningful democracy, but i felt i no longer have it in me to think anything will change. i guess my cynicism got the better of me, but hey, i was one more body to be counted among the 99%.

so once my sense of disconnectedness grew nice and strong, i walked away and... went shopping. but worry not, gentle poultries, i felt absolutely wretched as i perused the isles filled with glittering sweat-shop produced trinkets that i absolutely do not need, and then i bought nothing at all. take that, capitalism, you bloated swine!

*not for a any nefarious violent anti-capitalist purposes or even as a social commentary on the benefits of communal ownership, but because the public library just happens to be right there. two birds, one stone, you know...

rrrring!

2011-10-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

the phone rang during the early part of the dinner party. because you never know, i picked it up.

moi: hello?

person: hello, may i talk to mister monkey?

moi: may i ask who's calling?

person: i am calling from your bank XXX.

moi: is this important? we are in the middle of a dinner party.

person: oh, is this a cellular phone?

moi: yes. yes it is. we have no other phone.

person: our regulations do not allow us to call you on a cellular phone. we will not be calling you again.

moi: oh. ok. bye.

person: good bye.

and that's that.

aaah...

2011-10-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

caramelised onion mozzarella crostini, home-made pickled beets and plums, sorrel soup with hard-boiled eggs, wild mushroom risotto and roast pork loin in mushroom sauce and a dessert of cherries jubilee with vanilla ice cream and maple pizzelle, great wine, home-made fruit liqueurs and, above all else, fantastic conversation, laughter and good, good company.

i must say that coming back to edmonton has brought us many good friends, old, new and in-between.

the dishwasher is burbling away in the background, music is playing, candles are finishing their bit as another really good night comes to an end.

i am thankful to be home.

oh christ.

2011-10-07T16:56:00.002-07:00

yet another dinner party in about a half an hour. i feel a drunk post coming on and i'm only half a glass into the "pre-dinner jitters" drink. could be the forgotten breakfast (and lunch). let's try to remain upright until the guests arrive, shall we?

what's on your platter this weekend, my beloved poultries?

isn't it romantic?

2011-09-29T20:15:00.002-07:00

september first marked our tenth wedding anniversary. being us, we talked for ever about doing something Big, something Special, something Romantic and then promptly failed to plan anything at all. when the long weekend crept up we decided to drive to the kootenays because we'd never been and it seemed like a reasonable drive with the good rewards of mountains, beaches, hot springs in a cave and orchards dripping with fruit, not to mention a winery or two.

we packed up the volvo beast, intending to camp within its spacious swedish interior and headed off at the crack of dawn... ok, i was ready to go at the crack of dawn but mister monkey is made of softer stuff and so we left the city limits a smallish while before noon. the drive was filled with gorgeousness of all kinds - there were rolling foothills, rolling clouds, rolling grasses and other things that were rolling. overall, it as nice.

having had a late start, we did not reach our intended destination but had to find a campground on the way. it was a small, family-run operation and the woman who took our money had a strong italian accent. bingo, we thought. surely here, in the middle of nowhere, the gods were going to reward us with an anniversary dinner as supreme as it is unexpected. right? wrong, motherfuckers. you want minestrone of dry beans and flaccid overcooked pasta, thickened by time into a glutinous solidity? i know just the place! how about a caesar salad drowning in store-bought dressing sprinkled liberally with desiccated corporate croutons? ditto! luckily the wine was both cheap and good, so that's that. let's never mention this again.

and so, having washed our dirty bits and gotten into the belly of the volvo beast, we got ready to slumber. and that's when the adventure truly began:

mr. monkey, fearing the dextrous and eternally greedy paws of the kootenay bears, decided to lock the car. suddenly, and for no apparent reason, i decided to get a little more air and opened the door. this set off the alarm - you know, lights flashing, clamourous siren shattering the crystalline mountain silence, whoop whoop whoop whoop! mr. monkey jumps out of the vehicle in his underoos, runs to the front seat and attempts to put the key in the ignition. alas, he cannot. the ignition is blocked and the volvo beast continues its howling. with shaking hands, mr. monkey throws me the manual and, with equally shaking hands, i attempt to find something, anything, about the alarm system. i fail.

suddenly, it stops.

the silence is a thing of glory, beauty and much relief.

wilted with exhaustion and nerves, mr. monkey gets out of the car.

the alarm starts again with a vengeance. whoop whoop whoop whoop! lights flashing! siren blaring! our neighbours' hate is palpable. my mortification deep, dark and sticky. my hatred for the volvo beast complete.

mr. monkey (still in nothing but his underoos, augmented now by a headlamp) desperately pops open the hood and starts to violently pull cables out of the machinery of noise and eventually succeeds.

at nearly the same moment, with my husband kneeling nearly naked in mud and pine needles, i finally find the manual's solution to our woes: put the key into the driver's door. the end.

mister monkey crawls into the nearby stream to wash his soil-encrusted limbs and eventually comes to bed. we decide to brave the bears and sleep with the doors unlocked. the rest of the night is uneventful but when we leave the campground in the morning, we carefully avoid the eyes of our camp-mates.

so yeah, the whole romance thing? we're not so good at it. however, the next night, at our intended campground, we have a lovely dinner of things roasted on the fire, a candle blazing away in a holder fashioned out of a beer can, a bottle of a carefully hoarded and utterly incredible '98 shiraz salving our psychological wounds under a sky thick with stars and it is perfect.

escalating violence

2011-09-25T09:47:00.001-07:00

i used to get endlessly frustrated with edmonton's crowds for not being able to grasp the very simple concept that places like chicago and vancouver have down pat - on an escalator, you stand on the right and walk on the left. the end. not that hard a concept to grasp, but i suppose we're only now becoming a big big city (for years we were a small big city) and don't have all that crowd management thing internalised yet.

then a week or so ago i was in toronto and came to the shocking realisation that toronto, despite being a very big big city, has no clue about escalator etiquette.

yes, in the context of the economic melt-down of the EU, the looming collapse of the US, not to mention all that africa and the middle east have on offer as far as disasters, human rights violations and tyranny, this may not be much, but it's my blog and i can write about those little things if i want to.

so, where do you stand on the escalator?

lesbian dip

2011-09-24T21:51:00.001-07:00

although the majority of the food i had made for book club remained untouched ("oh what a dainty bunch we are!"), one menu item was eaten into utter oblivion: lesbian dip. oh yes, let me tell you, lesbian dip is DEEElicious! it is actually a greek dip that comprises beets, walnuts, garlic, olive oil and breadcrumbs, but because the recipe was given to me by one of a bunch of neat-o academic feminist studies lesbians, it shall forever be known as lesbian dip. yum!

and then a unicorn flew out of my ass and shat sparkles upon the land

2011-09-24T21:44:00.003-07:00

last night i hosted book club. although the night was mainly good, the end result was several levels of anger. anger because the food i spent two days preparing was barely picked at, including a brown butter sour cherry tart that was quite lovely, if i do say so myself. anger, because two people thought that one of the awesomest books ever written was... too long. and finally, anger because i discovered that the cult of positivity is alive and well and trying to convert me. and i bloody hate that.

what is the cult of positivity, you ask? well, it is but one of the symptoms of western civilisation's malaise: that utterly ridiculous belief that Things Have A Meaning. like fuck they do. the acolytes of the cult of positivity also believe that Everything Happens For A Reason and that Each One Of Us Has A Path. what i say to this, is give me a goddamn break. things often have no meaning. life is random. shit happens and, if we are really good at this sort of thing, we can try to make a reason out of it. we wander mapless and if there is a path, it is one made by us, not some random sky-fairy. and please, for the love of the god in whom i most emphatically fail to believe, do not tell me that an 8 year old's aggressive leukaemia diagnosis is some sort of a learning path for either her or her parents. if i have to believe in god, then a god who would let this happen just to Make Us Stronger And Better People is a complete asshole and can go to hell.

my book club ladies are nice and intelligent and interesting to talk to, but increasingly i see that they are not really my people. they tell me that i need to read books that are uplifting. books, by the way, in which i shall have to (i quote) "ignore dangling participles" and shush my inner grammarian. well, if something is worth saying, i believe it is worth saying well. if i have to drown in swooning ellipses and misguided pseudo-poeticisms, then the message becomes irrelevant. besides which, i find that most of these so called uplifting books are produced for (and by) people severely lacking in imagination - people who make up the bulk of western civilisation and are willing to vote for sarah palin and her ilk.

we are a civilisation that eschews instilling a work ethic in its youth, focusing instead on an ethereal and largely baseless self esteem (i know you've hear me rant on this here topic before). we change hans christian andersen's lovely but tragic tales and turn the little mermaid into a feisty red-head in a mollusk bikini who bloody well lives happily ever after just so that our children will never have to face one moment of ugliness and truth. we make cancer patients feel guilty if they aren't able to muster up a cheerful demeanour in the face of a truly horrific diagnosis ("oh! she's going to do great! she's so positive!" as if that has anything to do with it!*). we mass produce ridiculous literature (and i mean it with a small tiny little "l" much like the literature that jehovah's witnesses drop off at your house) like "the secret" and "celestine prophecy" and other such poorly written drivel that teaches Truths to sheep unable to muster up one single solitary drop of originality. we have achieved logic-defying feats of linguistic prestidigitation just so that we never have to call a spade a spade, because that would hurt its feelings. and on and on and on...

now i know that when i write like this, i make myself fairly open to accusations of cynicism, bitterness and excessive anger, but you see, i think my way is freeing: things are the way they are, i need to be the best that i can be in the face of this (and boy, do i fail spectacularly), i need to sift the good from the bad and shape it into meaning myself, and if i fail, i need to take the responsibility squarely onto my own shoulders and not blame society, my low self esteem or worse, some ridiculous deity for trying to teach me something that if i have an ounce of imagination, i can figure out for myself.

now all anger aside, i happen to believe that a healthy dose of cynicism is not a bad thing. there's nothing wrong with looking at the world and seeing it as it is, instead of visualising unicorns in the hope that they come flying out of your ass - all the power of positive thinking will not change the fabric of the universe. oh sure, let's hope and dream and all that other fluffy stuff, because it is important, but it is ok to say that there are no unicorns, no matter how mean it may sound.

and that's that.

*if you say it does - well, positivity is, i'm sure, easier to live within than the alternative, but studies by reputable organisations have repeatedly debunked the feel-good-means-better-survival-odds myth, but tend not to get published because they aren't very nice.

bdbdbdbdbdbdddddd...

2011-09-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

when you find yourself having a peppy conversation with the furniture, that might be the moment to reconsider the place caffeine has in your life. just sayin'.

today my face has:

2011-08-29T21:53:00.002-07:00

tired fishy eyes, still arguably my best feature (if you ignore my brain, which i kinda like but, for now, it remains encased in bone and skin and hair and blood and stuff so you can't see how swell it is, you just have to imagine).
zits. lots and lots of zits. i think that when i said/wrote/thought that i have lately been pining for the carefree days of childhood, some evil bourbon-swilling fairy unsteadily waved her magic wand in my direction and gave me the complexion of a 14 year old. she did not take away my wrinkles, the bitch.
a vague sense of something about to change, whether it's me or the world around me. it is not any sort of wooo-oooo presentiment or anything, more of a shift in the air, a feeling that perhaps one day in the near future i will make a decision and possibly start walking down a different path. i am not being cryptic: i have no idea what i mean. i could be wrong. perhaps it's just the vague discomfort of my premenstrual ovaries that i've taken to be something more. who the hell knows? not me, that's who.
not had a drink. no, really.

hey, listen!

2011-08-29T21:44:00.002-07:00

i hate to leave you all nervous about making any kind of noise when you are being dentally manipulated. what i meant, when i said what i said about the thing that i said it about, is the kind of sustained and guttural grunting generally associated with naked sweaty ass action, not dental discomfort, so unless you make naked sweaty ass action grunting noises whilst under the care of your dental professional (and if you do - what is wrong with you?), don't worry about it.

hm...

2011-08-27T01:05:00.001-07:00

the more i drink, the prettier i get.

still here and as happy as ever

2011-08-19T22:25:00.002-07:00

1. if there's one thing i hate* it's patients who grunt. honey, i am fairly certain i am not giving you oral pleasure. yes, it's oral, but no, it's not pleasure (although i do like me a good teeth cleaning), so please quit it with the grunting and the little tiny moans. it is disturbing. it is gross. it makes me feel even more unclean than all the blood i carry home on my skin. so QUIT IT!

2. today was a work day, followed by laundry, followed by a walk to the fringe whereupon i was assaulted by such an overwhelming feeling of ennui that i called everyone i knew. ok, i only called two people, but it felt like i was sitting by my phone for hours, grounded by my evil parents, forbidden from doing anything fun ever again ever. and nobody was home. i left messages and went for a vietnamese sub, because where else can you get such a delicious conglomeration of flavours for only four dollars? sadly, they were out of pearls for bubble tea, but such was the sadness of my afternoon that i was not at all surprised and put it down on the already teetering pile of my white privileged middle class tragedies.

3. suddenly! out of the woodwork! people! phone calls! chit chats! films with catherine deneuve with seriously weird disjointed song and dance numbers! (gerard depardieu! not peeing but dancing!)

4. then an i-pod enhanced walk home, because again nobody answered their phone thus saving me from what would surely have been far too many beer garden beverages, then some home-made pickle sandwiches (it's a polish thing, and when the pickles are home made, as mine are, then it's a thing of much culinary beauty) and a new william gibson novel in which i wish i was every single character. are there people that cool? why can't i meet them (no offence, pals, you're all pretty damn special and all, but come on! william gibson's peeps are the bee's knees!)? and where does a gal go for an anime haircut? these are things i need to know.

5. now i'm waiting for mr. monkey who is either at his parents' place turning pieces of metal into magical bits of the recumbent tricycle he's building, or screwing his mistress. at this point, the wine having nicely massaged my brain cortex into mellow insensibility, it matters not one whit.

6. still, i have wasted the last 7 years of my life and i deserve to be taken out back and whacked repeatedly on the noggin with something that'll wake me the hell up.

6a. these last few months i have been having a mid-life crisis, the main theme of which is: oh, for my lost youth, which was filled with so many possibilities. of course, and this is immediately obvious to anyone with even several functioning brain cells, i still have a hell of a lot of time left to me (if you are clairvoyant and know otherwise, keep it to yourself) (or maybe not, maybe i need the kick in the pants which an impending death my provide) (unless it's really soon, in which case i'd rather spend my remaining days (hours?minutes?) in blissful ignorance) and i can still do stuff. so do stuff already. DO IT! (you know it's bad when you bore even yourself with this unending whine of "what shall i be when i grow up?).

7. and so we come to an end of another wine-fuelled post. if you've missed me, i know what you'll say: hey! woman! drink more! write more! but you see, i am drinking more but this usually results in early sleep, inappropriate fanfic fantasies involving handsome men in tight pants on horses, and a headache the next day. creativity? not so much.

*yes, yes, YES. i know there are many things i hate. this is one of them, and, when it happens, it overshadows all the other things i hate. but when i'm complaining about this, i haven't forgotten world hunger or hitler, ok? ok.

sweet oblivion

2011-08-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

several nights ago at the monkey household

moi: aren't you going to put that laptop away? it's bloody late!
mr. monkey: i'm counting sheep... using excel™.

this whole thing about bums and rather smallish elephants

2011-08-02T21:57:00.002-07:00

monday afternoon mister monkey dragged me to a mall on a small but significant quest. yup, the mister wanted to get hisself some swimming shorts unlike the gigantic voluminous ankle-length type seen on most young bucks out there. oh no, mister monkey wanted to get hisself some ass-huggery in the form of speedos. now, lest all y'all close your wee little piggy eyes and imagine this, that is not at all what he was after (i admit i also closed my wee little piggy eyes and imagined this*) i believe he was looking for something more like this (and aren't we all, girls? huh? huh? am i right? nudge, nudge, wink, wink (what?! every girl wants a cute gay friend!)).

exhausted and crushed by both the futility of our quest and the nearly palpable miasma of mall despair, we decided to get something to eat and headed for our second favourite ethiopian restaurant (our favourite having burned down recently). the sign was off but the door was open. we walked in: could they, would they feed us? no, they could not, would not, on account of ramadan said the guy behind the counter just as another guy came out of the kitchen with a plate piled high with sandwiches. um, happy ramadan...

we ended up eating at the local T&T supermarket where mister monkey was ousted out of his place in line by a minuscule old asian lady who apparently really wanted her steam bbq pork bun NOW. i do prefer impatient old people, though, (they get it: they get the shortness of the time allotted to them) to the ones who drive like all their tomorrows are spawning in the corner of the unwashed hamster cage of time.

and thus we spent the better part of heritage day long weekend monday: from the swaying steppes of ethiopia through the haunting highlands of china to the short shorts of europe, though not exactly in that order or geographical accuracy.

the rest of the day was taken up with elephant removal. you think i'm kidding, but i am not, however, in an effort to be mysterious and shit, i will leave it at that.

* not that mister monkey looks anything like that: it's just that we are neurologically hard-wired to see visions like that when we hear the word "speedo", it's inevitable.

so, like...

2011-07-23T20:43:00.007-07:00

y'all know i'm in a book club. overall, the books we've read have ranged anywhere from "oh christ, please make it stop, make it stop now before i gouge out my eyeballs with whatever implement happens to be handy" to quite enjoyable. this month's selection (no, not mine, not fucking mine) is a total fluff bunny of a romance novel. however, the book has brought into sharp relief two very interesting facts:

1. god, i wish i was filthy rich. sadly, the desire comes at a time when i no longer have the body/looks to gain wealth in the ~~time-honoured~~ non-respectable way, nor the energy to gain it the ~~hard and slow~~ respectable way.

2. romance novels are for women, what porn is to men - a dangerous path leading to ridiculously high expectations and consequently disillusionment. why, just now, i chided my beloved husband for not possessing either a chiselled chest nor the ability to bring me hourly to the brink of well lubricated madness. and also, for not driving a maybach (to which he level-headedly replied that hitler drove a maybach. (i knew that. but still...))

to return to the whole porn/romance novel thing, though, i find it curious that we (both boyses and girlses) choose to entertain and titillate ourselves in a way that is pretty damn close to impossible to replicate in real life. after all, few women are so cock-hungry that they'll enthusiastically devour a plastic dildo as the perky-chested heroines of many a pornographic cinematic feature, and few cold hard distant men reveal themselves to be vulnerable and loving providers who know all about foreplay and are willing to joyfully engage in it for hours at a time until the woman faints from sexual exhaustion and full emotional satiation as they are wont to do in romance novels.

christ, who picked this book* anyway?

p.s. and why is it that in romance novels every sexually charged relationship starts with animosity? wouldn't it be nice to actually like the guy you are aching to bed?

p.p.s. and furthermore, why is it that they never ever progress to that tragically underrepresented but glorious part of the relationship where one can fart in the beloved's presence? i, for one, would be nothing but a grey faced spectre of my current self if i had to live in the gasless wasteland of nothing but ripped clothing and heavy breathing. just sayin'.

p.p.p.s. and another thing, why is it that romance novel heroes always have names like hardy and gage and slade? what is it about your run-of-the-mill bob or floyd that makes him eminently unsexy, huh? unfair, is what i say.

p.p.p.p.s. and finally, why, for the love of pete, does the woman have to get pregnant in the end? a. with all the hot fucking that they do, you'd think birth control would have popped up on their to-do list and b. since when are babies romantic? especially in the first 2 months of a relationship? jesus!

* a teacher did: one more reason to savour childlessness.

tits in tulsa and tales of sexual lactation

2011-07-22T22:39:00.001-07:00

we have just returned from a pot luck gathering at which we learned that, given enough time, patience, and correct pressure, any woman's breast can be persuaded to produce milk. the young man who shared this little scientific tidbit with us, was dead serious. apparently 15 minutes of vigorous breast palpitation can generate milk. the girl in question was moaning whilst being milked, and no, it was not moans of pain and discomfort from being thus manually stimulated for a full quarter of an hour. and no, she was neither pregnant nor recently delivered of a child, just a random sexual encounter. apparently, said our talented guide to the world of sex and dairy products, he can make any woman bring forth milk.

how did we come to this rather unusual topic? our host had recently returned from a month-long company-sponsored trip to oklahoma where he visited a strip joint in which the lap dancer kindly allowed him to touch her c-section scar, and, like the rest of the girls, wore tasseled pasties to discourage public lactation. she had two children and a sad life. she was 19. kinda makes you want to go to tulsa, no?

a young couple in love leaving the party:

he: tonight, i'm gonna milk the shit out of you, baby!
she: let's go!

p.s. did you miss me? i'd say i was too busy doing fun summery stuff in the great outdoors, but that'd be a big fat lie, since it's been cold, raining and bloody miserable here more often than not. unusually hot and dry summer, my ass!

things that are beautiful (drunk? moi? whatever makes you think so?)

2011-06-23T20:00:00.002-07:00

these are things that are beautiful:

sitting on the balcony listening over and over and over to this and crying because of one small death in a book which brings my whole fear of death into sharp relief, no, not my death, who cares about that? i mean the death of those near and dear and even those a little further away, because it is the whole multitudinous multifaceted knotty colourful interrelated glorious mess of all the people that makes this place ok, that makes me want to continue to breathe, including those of you in the blogosphere whom i've never met, and those of you whom i met and loved and no longer see and miss, and those of you whom i only started to get to know and now will have a chance to get to know better, and those who knocked me out with your wit and wisdom, and those who ate and drank with me and listened to my endless tales, and those of you whom i like, and those of you have annoyed me lately but whom i still consider friends, and those of you whom i've neglected, and those who do not read this, and those who do, and everyone really, (not including the assholes in trucks who made me want to do murder today), and those who made my day by thanking me for making them bleed and talking them through it, and those who smiled at the crosswalk and well, hell, everyone (except for those truck driving assholes - you are the mosquitoes in my ecosystem, most likely necessary but, fuck, so annoying!). so there's that.
spinning and spinning on my beautiful new honey-coloured floor to that same song, knowing that my inner ear will not be pleased but spinning like a five year old just because this song makes me want to run through grass, do cartwheels and spin, spin, spin until i fall down, and how often does a song like that come along? not often enough, i tell you!
knowing, as i cry, that i am crying for the death of a good, talented, warm, sweet man at whose funeral i was on monday
being more broke than we've been in a good long while and somehow knowing it'll be ok
eating a whole half of a watermelon for supper
getting seemingly smashed on 1.5 glasses of red wine (what gives? long week at work? 2 whole days' worth? really?)
watching the storm clouds roll in (few things beat a prairie storm)
looking forward to a trip to vancouver soon to see old friends, and new friends and the sea
looking in the mirror and seeing my face, make-up running, nose grotesquely swollen, rapidly greying hair frizzy as hell and knowing that it is my face and it shall continue to be my face until i cease to be me, and that it's ok, all ok, the rapidly expanding mid-section, and frizzy hair, and strangely caprine days, and seeing the shy peeking out of maternal grandmother and others who have come before and thinking that come what may, this is who i am and it's been good and, i hope, shall continue to be good
thinking that perhaps this life was all i was ever capable of living, that this isn't some failure of potential, some stupendous failure of mine to be the best that i can be, but, simply, the best that i can be. how freeing, how lovely, how nice to think that this, here, is what i am and what i ought to be.
thinking that perhaps i ought to have a breathalyzer hooked up to this here thing, but hey, i don't and it's all good!

pescadolicious

2011-06-18T11:42:00.001-07:00

crusty juggler and i were busy in the kitchen preparing fish tacos and pico de gallo for dinner. she was chopping a large fragrant pile of cilantro.

crusty juggler: god, this smells so good i want to just stick your face in it!
moi: ?
crusty juggler:... um, i mean i want to stick my face in it.
moi: that makes more sense, yes.

and now, for something completely different

2011-06-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

i have been absent not merely because of sad adult drudgery. oh no! also, there was a lovely visit from crusty juggler, who left the stunning natural beauty of vancouver in order to come visit me, have the car window explode upon her head en route from the airport, help me iron things, hem things, teach me to make salad rolls and also vacuum my floor. for fun, we sat on the balcony and drank vast quantities of campari and tonic, because we're ladies and these are ladies' drinks. we walked and talked and had a fabulous time - an easy guest is a thing of beauty and take my word for it, you can invite crusty juggler to your house any time!

whilst relaxing on the chesterfield with our lap-sized computational machines one evening:

crusty juggler: it says here that these shelves are 16" long. do you have one of those measuring things about the house?
moi: yeah, i can never visualise measurements either. mr. monkey! can you please show crusty juggler what 16" looks like?
mr. monkey (blushing furiously): ...
crusty juggler: well, you are a lucky girl!

there followed a bawdy exchange the likes of which i would not put down upon these here pages, since, as previously mentioned, i'm a lady and shit.

computer says no

2011-06-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

so, as i was saying before i was rudely interrupted by moving out, moving in, getting a place ready for sale and all the myriad attendant details, adulthood sucks.

today we went, for what i really really hope is the very last time, to see our banker, max. max, if you feel inclined to visualise our little fiscal adventure, is like a small hairy italian ferret on some kind of twitch-inducing meds. the man is absolutely brilliant at making me feel placid, zen and radiating the kind of calm typically seen on stoned hippies and my cousin's wife. it's all relative, you say, and i say, put me next to a twitching ferret and i will be relaxed the rest of my days. of course the twitching ferret might get old rather quickly, but that's another tale for another day.

so, back to the bank - max always makes an appointment during the majority of which we end up sitting staring at him, while he shuffles vast piles of papers, filling in forms in triplicate and, alternately, banging on his keyboard. in the end, in what takes all of 5 minutes, he makes us put down several signatures on various pieces of paper. the whole thing usually lasts well over an hour. why he cannot have the mass of documents filled out prior to our actual arrival boggles my mind, but perhaps it is The Way Of The Ferret and one cannot question that.

today, while max was pounding away on the computer keyboard, a loud beep sounded. then another one, and some time later, another one still. it was obvious that the computer was not happy with whatever input it had just received. unfortunately i was instantly reminded of this, and so i turned to mr. monkey and said, computer says no. we then had to work really hard not to collapse in paroxysms of giggles. as it is, we find it endlessly amusing watching max do his paper-waving, keyboard-pounding magic while we sit and stare but adding little britain to the equation was just too much. thanks a lot, crusty juggler!

earlier in the appointment i had to soundlessly convince the man i love that the breath issuing forth from his mouth was particularly vile and that he should indeed take the gum i was offering him surreptitiously under the table. not an easy thing to do using only one's eyebrows. luckily for all, i succeeded.

whilst out on our daily walkies

2011-05-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

moi (about something whose importance has been lost in the mists of time): i've loved you almost 13 years now!

mr. monkey: almost 13 years? almost? obviously i loved you longer!

moi: what? we met and you loved me immediately?

mr. monkey (defiantly): yes!

moi: you didn't even remember my name!!! "i don't know who that bitch is, but i love her!"

mr. monkey: yes! you'll have to make it up to me that i loved you longer. in fact, i might have to die sooner so you can make it up to me!

moi: bastard!

um...not exactly

2011-05-16T09:20:00.001-07:00

last night at the monkey house:

mr. monkey: so, when you get a facial, they put wet rags on your face and then squeeze out your blackheads, right?

moi: uncontrollable laughter

mr. monkey: what? no?

moi: um...not exactly. why, you want a facial?

mr. monkey: yes.

that's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) i like it (uh-huh, uh-huh)

2011-05-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

just wanted to share with you that even as i write this, mr. monkey is scrubbing the toilet wearing nothing more than red heart-covered shorts and teal gloves. ain't this the life?

no, not dead, just shopping for houses

2011-05-10T20:37:00.002-07:00

well, dear poultries, the mister and i have done it. we have shopped and shopped and shopped and at the end of it all, we bought our dream home. let's just hope the bastard lives up to our expectations. what? what do you mean didn't we see it? of course we saw it. for all of 15 minutes. that's normal, no?

what i always come back to is the ridiculousness of how one goes about shopping for various items. say you want to buy a pair of jeans. you walk into your local purveyor of all things denim and try on a pair. wait, does this one make your ass look big? how about this pair? not sure about the crotch area embroidery... hey! what about these? well... maybe. the next day you return, armed with a girlfriend of discerning taste or (if you're lucky) a mouthy but charming gay friend. (s)he tells it like it is and you decide... well... almost. the following day you return yet again. you can do this for weeks. and, if the pair you choose do indeed make your ass gargantuan, why, the following day you return them. all in all, if you're a real jean snob, you're out, what, maybe, 200* bucks.

whilst shopping for a home, a purchase (if you're very very lucky, or live in a shithole) roughly 1000-2000x pricier, you walk in, like the look of a place, find out that there's another offer and scramble like a mad(wo)man to decide if it's a yay, a nay, or a nervous breakdown. shit, fuck, shit, what do we do? do we take it? is it perfect? and then BAM! you decide, sign an excessive amount of papers and then find that you have not a fucking clue whether the tiles in the bathroom were blue, chartreuse or purple. and if the drawers on your sexy new kitchen stick, you can hardly blame yourself, since you made this momentous decision based on a 15 minute perusal of the property. as for returns? do not make me laugh.

still, once we've moved and the tequila that's being hidden from mr. monkey's greedy little maw comes back to us, y'all can come over and i'll make you a margarita. how's that sound?

* i'm not so i'm out a whole lot less than that. especially if there's a sweet sale going on.

p.s. no, we didn't go for the marble clad foyer with fountains. but there is cool retro stone on the walls of the lobby and if you really want a fountain, you can bring a glass of water and a straw. still, that kitchen... oh, that kitchen!

what's so fucking funny?

2011-04-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

last night:

moi: why can't you do this one tiny little thing for me? it's not like i ever ask you to do anything for me!

mr. monkey: uncontrollable laughter

"herbert, the purple chesterfield would look simply LOVELY in this space, dontcha think?"

2011-04-19T08:25:00.004-07:00

yes, we've been shopping for a new monkey home and we are demoralised, overwhelmed, tired, and rather disappointed with ourselves.

having looked at countless (ok, 6) new condos, we have noticed a disturbing trend or two: first of all, the dining area is gone. no longer are you allowed to sit with your friends and family* at a table to partake of the lord's bounty in the form of kraft dinner doctored with some louisiana hot sauce. nay, from hencewith (forthwith? henceforth? what?) you shall dine, north american style, perched half-assed atop a bar stool at your breakfast bar. if you should crave the company of someone other than your spouse, you shall have your dinners on your laps, on the couch, eyes dully staring at the large screen tv, precluding any kind of conversation. your kitchen will be shiny, new and will remain virginal. damn it, that's why god invented mcdonald's. (or so it seems).

second of all, no matter how large (or, more likely, small) a place is, it is made that much smaller by the inadvertent mosaic of floorings. look! in the living room! wood! or a (more or less) reasonable facsimile thereof! look! in the foyer and kitchen! tile! and look! in the bedrooms! carpet! oh yes! sometimes even shag! because north americans are apparently morally opposed to the cold hard reality of a hardwood floor first thing in the morning and are more than happy to alleviate this with dust mites, allergens and filth! because area rugs are of the devil! (or so it seems).

last night, we saw two condos in a building that boggles the mind. unlike some, where a vegas style theme is created with little concern for taste or quality (i'm looking at you, venetian), this place was shiny and cool and tasteful (bits of it were covered in the kind of wallpaper i imagine adorns god's lounge - i could not stop fondling it fondly). there was marble where there ought to be marble**, there was subtle play of light and dark, there was a shiny glass elevator, there were gleaming expanses of things that gleam. in a word: wow.

our reaction to it, although initially one of awe and desire, soon gave way to a strange mix of guilt and unworthiness: imagine the heady mix of catholic guilt, middle class guilt*** and minimal-footprint guilt, layered with a pervasive sense of fiscal responsibility that makes us think and rethink and re-rethink every single solitary purchase until it becomes easier to just walk away (blame the immigrant experience for that, methinks). yes, perhaps it's a tad too much, perhaps the courtyard with the (very tasteful) fake palm-trees and the gentle murmur of the (very real) indoor fountain aren't really us. i'm fine with that. but why in the hell do we feel like we need to live in a hole? is it our hard assed reaction to the overwhelming consumerist message of "you deserve it!"? or are we really just closet hair-shirt self-flagellating types?

*perhaps it is assumed that condo dwellers are either the forgotten elderly (looming death!) or the carefree gay (eternal damnation!) and thus have no friends or family, and subsist on packets of crisps and bourbon.

**tastefully done, i assure you.

***upon coming home, mr. monkey even made a weak reference to "the children in africa" at which point i kicked him and told him that even this, our humble temporary lodgings, rotting floors and all, would be like balm to the sun scorched "children in africa" and not to be stupid.

tubesteak!

2011-04-10T19:20:00.003-07:00

it's been a week! what the hell happened? who ate my time? where have the minutes gotten to? huh? what?

ok, here's a story you've been dying to hear, except it's not so much a story as a dialogue* with some explanatory back story without which you wouldn't get the joke and, worse still, you'd think i was some kind of a sicko with strange perversions and questionable ethics as well as pathetic moral judgment, all of which might incidentally be true, but that's neither here nor there.

ok, here goes:

mr. monkey and i have never bought a barbecue. each barbecue we have ever owned (we have owned several) had been given to us by someone or found in a dark alley or liberated from a suburban backyard (kidding, kidding!). our last barbecue was an industrial sized stainless steel beast large enough to roast a mid sized pig or enough hamburgers for a junior high baseball team (no idea how many that is, but it does the job of conjuring up violently disturbing images of ravenous hordes of pimply teenage boys and that is precisely what i'm aiming for here). this barbecue had had a place of honour at mr. monkey's fort mcmurray job site and had fed multitudes for two years but when the project came to an end, the company, like most huge multi-million dollar corporations, went about disposing of this, and many other fully useful items (ladders, drills, safety glasses, janitorial staff). mr. monkey, unable to watch useful items becoming landfill fodder, brought home the barbecue and for several years it served us well. sadly, when we left vancouver island, we left the beast behind to await our return one glorious day: we simply didn't know if we'd have the room for it. it turns out to have been a good decision because when we arrived at the apartment we are now renting from ~~our slumlords~~ my parents, lo and behold, there was a barbecue abandoned by the previous tenants.

mr. monkey: once the ice melts, i'll wheel this down to the dumpster.

moi: why? maybe it works! we should see if it works first, so we can use it!

mr. monkey: ew, no!

moi: why not?

mr. monkey: because it's used, it is not virginal, that's why not.

moi: oh, and what about our last barbecue? was that one virginal? no! that one had been gang-banged by rig pigs for over 2 years!

mr. monkey: true that.

so we decided that we'll lube'er up, hook'er up to some fuel and see if it'll do for some tasty summertime tubesteak!

* or "dialog" as the kids seem to be spelling it these days - first blondes became blonds, then dialogues became dialogs, what is the world coming to? and don't tell me that language evolves naturally, because this ain't no evolution, it's a travesty of massive proportions!!! (!!!!!!!!!)

blerkydablerk (drnk posts!!! yaar!)

2011-04-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

hi. it's been far too long. what has been getting in the way is my ego. oh yes, my little pathetic ego. more and more, as i get older, i think of myself thusly: here is a girl (woman? i don't think of myself as a woman because that seems ridiculously old, but girl, i am told is possibly seen as somehow pejorative or whatnot even though i think of myself as a girl and in the best possible way, what? am i not 20 anymore? when did that happen? bastards!) who could have been so many things and who isn't necessarily sad about losing out on the being of (say) the editor of the new york times or some such shit (because, really, how much happier would i have been as the editor of the new york times? maybe a million times more, or maybe not at all, or maybe much much sadder what with the new work dating scene and all) but who is a little pissed off about the whole urban planning thing not really being on the radar during her impressionable schooling years which resulted in her going into something so ridiculously pragmatic and uninspired like the whole teeth cleaning bullshit and the problem isn't so much the cleaning of teeth (because, admit it, it is fucking NICE to have clean teeth, come on! ADMIT IT!) but the problem is finding something you are good at and interested in and i think that i am really really interested in is urban planning and i can read about bylaws and zonings and all manner of boring dull things pertaining to this and actually remain alert and i am almost forty and it's better to discover something you like late rather than never but hot damn, it sure would have been nice to have spent the last 15 years banging my head against municipal bylaws rather than teeth for rather obvious reasons.

and that's what i think when i'm drunk.

also, what i think, when i have been consuming wine in the presence of my family, is that it is goddamn nice to be sitting around up the stairs from a sleeping cool baby (who could be anything one day, even a kick-ass urban planner or the editor of the new york times!) and talk about the two world wars and the appeasement policy prior to WW2 and the whole african question with people i really really love and that it more than makes up for the supremely shitty weather of this place we are now (again) calling home. it also helps that my cousin is now making absolutely incredible bread and is offering lots to us merely because we share some genes. yay!

am i making sense? am i going to delete this tomorrow? who knows!?

open letter

2011-03-27T09:08:00.004-07:00

dear american apparel,

please stop with your ads already. they make me profoundly uncomfortable in a way i am unable to articulate properly which just adds to the discomfort. at their best they're ugly and at their worst they bring to mind the sort of second rate porn from third world countries where the end result, rather than arousal, is pity. your clothes are poorly made, unforgivably unattractive, deeply unflattering and let me tell you, if i want to see "real" people in tight ugly clothes, why, i can just go to wal-mart, or, in a pinch, strip down to my plain jane underwear, strike an awkward pose, make a "don't give a fuck" face and look in the mirror - yes, i realise i am not 21 and an aspiring mime in new york city, but it'll be close enough.

please and thank you,

moi

p.s. obviously, i'm not the only one who feels this way. sorry to be obvious, but something about ironic hipster nipples in my face first thing in the morning just threw me off.

not dead or anything

2011-03-27T08:30:00.003-07:00

since we last talked i have watched packers pack and loaders load, scrubbed every surface of our little abode, been fed and housed by the incomparable r&k and then more of the same by the ever patient b&l, been driven across vast mountain ranges in a broken volvo-beast, fed rather unexpectedly amazing frites* in the middle of mountainous nowhere, gazed with fond affection at the fuzzy cattle on highway 1a west of cochrane, embraced the soothing familiarity of the southern alberta foothills, arrived in edmonton to a gloriously sunny spring day and then was kicked right in the ass by a return of a winter so vicious and unpalatable that it spurred me to a buddhist-like** one-with-the-weather thing, in which i am learning not to kick at that which is unkickable.

we have moved into our transitional housing unit. unlike our former ocean-view home, this one boasts a charming vista of a parking lot, under-lino rot in the bathroom, a fridge whose shelving conspires to dump my liquid dairy products on the floor with punishing regularity, a kitchen cabinet door that fell on my head and a mental institution bathroom wall colour so utterly horrific that i repainted it the following day***. luckily, the place kicks ass in the location department, being mere steps from pretty much everything that counts, like a year-round indoor farmers' market, a repertory movie theatre, cafes, pubs, shops, an organic supermarket where one can purchase very very expensive pears, roughly seventeen new vietnamese restaurants where one can be fed well for very little, a jazz club and half a dozen theatres. also, the rent is cheap and the landlord gave birth to me almost 40 years ago. granted, this can be a blessing or a curse. will keep you posted.

i am now running around and getting us organized while squeezing in as much baby time as i can (yes, my aunternal instincts are in full swing). despite our sadness at leaving one of the most beautiful places on the planet and our amazing friends, old and new, there is a great degree of comfort in coming back to a place i know so well. and so, with all its goods and its bads, i am home.

* they were so good they transcended mere french fries

** one can still aim high while failing spectacularly, no?

*** the colour of choice was a warm pretty grey called for some random reason 'chinchilla white' proving once and for all that chinchilla are indeed colour blind.

the one about the dream about a very small ape and a very sexy man and some beets for roughage

2011-03-16T22:34:00.002-07:00

last night i dreamed two things of some importance.

one, was a very small gorilla. it was roughly 5 inches tall fully grown and it climbed all over my hand, tickling me with its fur. it was adorable and gave teacup pigs a run for their money (do teacup pigs have money? if not, why not?).

the second thing was nathan fillion serving me what he called porridge, but what actually consisted of oats, soba noodles and big slices of pickled beets. it tasted exactly like what you'd expect a mixture of oats, soba noodles and big slices of pickled beets to taste, i.e. not very good.

unsurprisingly, i was rather angry at Night Brain for bringing in the extremely delicious nathan fillion, and then having him serve me odd and rather disturbing foodstuffs, and doing it fully clothed. Night Brain, you've aced casting, but you really need to hire some better script writers, because this thing was worse than avatar, and that, my friends, is saying something. yes, Night Brain - next time you blow the budget on the big guns, i want to be able to walk away with something other than a wondrously bizarre breakfast recipe, if you know what i mean, and i think that you do, what with being my brain and all.

strap on a pig, and let's head for the hills

2011-03-07T23:37:00.005-07:00

have you ever visited the sartorialist? it's essentially a blog by a guy (i think it's a guy, from rumours and hints i have picked up through my aimless flâneusey wanderings through the blogosphere (also, i just checked his bio)) who takes pictures of the fashionable folk in their natural habitat. sometimes he posts pictures of actual fashion shows in which, invariably angry teenage models are made to wear kitchen appliances wrapped in purple fur and stick-on eyebrows of blue patent leather (or, better yet, no eyebrows at all, because eyebrows are so circa '83) because, presumably, designers want to see how far they can take this shit before someone stops and says, "now hang on a minute! that looks like rubbish! and it costs more than i make in a year! what the...?" most of the time, however, the pictures are of "real" people if by real you mean the entitled rich bastards who think it beneath them to buy discounted last season's prada purse because it is so last season.

these people are not just rich, though! oh no! they are also dead stylish! they wear yellow tights with teal pumps and a twinkle in their eye. they wear furry hats with earflaps with a versace suit. they drape their bodies with several artfully mismatched oversized sweaters over a vintage urine-splashed tutu with rubber boots. they are hip. you can tell they are hip because they rarely smile. smiling is a dead give-away of being madly unhip. unless, of course, you are smiling ironically, appropriating the technicolour facial expression of mccarthy era united states, all "cocktails before noon" sort of happy hausfrau type of thing, if you know what i mean.

there are women in large sunglasses and very very high heels pretending to get on bicycles, because they are french and nothing stops the french from getting on a bicycle. there are people wearing things six sizes too large just to fuck with your mind. there are women pairing hideous acrylic suits from the 80's with chunky knitted hats to show how daring they are with their fashion choices. there are women in bathrobes heading off to a job in the factory while their men go to war. there are bemused hasidic jews. there are men in suits whose sleeves and pantlegs are too short because some clothing designer ran out of fabric and started a trend that makes everybody out there look like a fucking hobbit. there are even what appear to be to my untutored eyes actual street people.

granted, there are some pretty neat and original looking folks on these pages as well (you can go find them yourself, do i have to do everything around here?), but the thing that gets me (ooh, ooh, tell us the thing! tell us the thing! very well, i shall tell you the thing) is that every post has close to a hundred comments, some more, some less, and all of them (well close to 98.74% at last count) are gushing and superlative: "magnificent!", "stellar!" "a brave statement about world poverty and crime using three kinds of plaid and a beanie!", "gorgeous, simply gorgeous!" even when the picture is of someone who apparently removed the insides from a camel, wove a gown out of the remains, dyed it chartreuse, covered it in sequins and wore it with a black fedora and 70's disco roller-skates. i mean, COME ON!

is this a giant joke that the fashion industry is playing on us, aided by the sartorialist and all of the audience is going along with it for fear of being seen as fashion black holes who actually like their sleeves to cover their wrists? or is it the other way? is the fashion industry dead serious? is it the sartorialist who is exposing their idiocy and the audience goes along to be cool? or is it a third way (don't worry, this is my last option, i'm getting sleepy) is it the audience who is engaging in some fairly complex and subtle social critique and all of their "splendid use of corduroy!" comments are really sleekly ironic and darkly condemning of the whole consumerist nature of the whole game? yeah, i didn't think so either, but to see nearly 100 comments of such enthusiastic praise makes me somehow feel that i'm being let down by my audience. come on, you lazy bastards! tell me how awesome i am! to help get you in the mood, i shall end with a gorgeously lit photo of mr. monkey, sporting the latest in orange latex headwear, spring 2011 - it keeps the rain out and makes your hair fall out of your head, and if that ain't fashion, i don't know what is:

thank you.

p.s. yes, i have the sartorialist bookmarked. what can i say? i loves me some fashion!

and that's how it is.

2011-03-05T23:19:00.001-07:00

5 minutes ago on skype:

moi: you have to watch this. it's hilarious. a gave it to me.

mr. monkey: she's into british humour, is she?

moi: yes, most definitely. we watched hot fuzz together. it was hilarious.

mr. monkey: yes, i saw it. it was very good.

moi: you saw it and never told me about it? if i see a good movie i tell you about it!

mr. monkey: yes. generally, i'm a bastard.

sweet lord, is it hot in here or is it just the sheep?

2011-03-05T22:19:00.001-07:00

1. i still feel the need to dance. jools, wait for me, i'm coming soon and when i do, you can take me out. then again, going out dancing in the midst of an edmonton winter (yes, i am aware that it's march. ever been to edmonton in march? exactly.) can be a trifle challenging: attempting to unearth a sexy sleek booty-shaking self from under several layers of sorrel boots, drymax socks, moisture-wicking long johns, fur-lined pants and hats with earflaps is not easy.

2. i have had one glass of wine and feel totally hooped. you can hardly blame it on lack of practice. hey! i know! let's blame the fact that i spent all day on an open-computer exam on jurisprudence. no, i don't know what that is either, and i got 97% on the exam! and it only took me 7 hours! 7 hours of perusing government websites, dental hygiene publications on ethics, continuing competence (i promise to continue to be competent!), restricted duties and all manner of fun and exciting things that are even duller than teeth. imagine that: duller. than. teeth. i know!

3. i have (re)discovered a sympathetic soul recently who not only has a strikingly similar taste in music, films and highly inappropriate humour, but also manages to lust after the exact same fictional men. there is also the bonus of her being a hoot and then some! this sort of thing is rare and i appreciate it. i really, really do. she got me addicted to black books and i strongly encourage you to go and get yourself a fix. seriously now. GO!

4. a and i have come up with a couple of things that hipsters have failed to appropriate in their annoying ironic way: acid-wash jeans and comb-overs. if you're a hipster who's had it with the 80's glasses and tiny john deere t-shirts, have at'er. and i'm not talking about skinny acid-wash jeans either (a just informed me she spied one in vancouver on a recent outing): it's got to be the real thing, all tapered and acidy and hideous. as for the ironic comb-over, i think it's an idea whose time has come. come on, COME ON!!!

5. this. (tony, the vocalist is martina sorbara. go figure! she's shaved her armpits too!) i cannot stop listening to it. see 1. above. i can totally see myself rhythmically shedding my mukluks to this tune. in fact, once you go away, i will crank up my i-pod and rock out in the kitchen. oh yeah.

boys of summer (and other seasonal afflictions)

2011-03-04T22:47:00.002-07:00

i was a late bloomer. my first boyfriend and my first kiss was...whoa! wait a minute! my actual first boyfriend and my actual first kiss were actually in kindergarten, so i suppose i was more of a junior hussy than a late bloomer, but then many many years passed before it happened again, so you can take it any way you will. here, for your reading enjoyment, is a crash course in my love life. enjoy.

after my high school boyfriend j broke my heart, i recovered by bawling a-plenty, staring at walls and giving up jesus. don't know if the latter two really did much for me, but the first was a great help: my sinuses have never been cleaner.

then came my wild years.

first, there was that guy who was a friend of a friend and damn sexy he seemed. he wore a great big furry hat with a sense of panache and what girl can resist a furry hat or sense of panache? not this one, apparently. he also kept a stuffed wombat in his car.

then there was the one who looked like this (still does, i imagine; that kind of look does not go away with age). we got along great and when we passed the two week mark, he dumped me unceremoniously (i found out later he had a two week limit). whatevs, who wants to be dating jafar for any length of time? i imagine the parrot would get annoying.

after this came a profusion of meaningless ~~sex~~ relationships. some even with musicians. i strongly discourage you, my poultries, from dating musicians. their egos are dangerously large and their attention spans dangerously short. also, they think they are very sexy. they are sexy but never as sexy as they think. in unrelated news, it was at this time that i learned to get sound out of a saxophone.

there were scotsmen and irishmen, and men who used black garbage bags as their shower curtains (that didn't last long). there were men who turned out to be great friends, and men who turned out to be something else entirely. there was even a frenchman who "forgot" to bring a wallet to the date and still figured he'd get some; he didn't. let's be honest, it was a fun bunch of years.

one cannot forget the men i let take me out to dinner during my lean years. i am not proud but i was very poor. i suppose i ought to have simply carried a sandwich board that said "WILL DATE FOR FOOD". just so you know, though, that is all i did. this girl has ~~some~~ standards. i figured what they got was an evening out with a pretty young thing, and what i got was a hot meal. no other currency was exchanged, if you know what i mean, and i think that you do.

then came the day that i walked into a repertory movie theatre and locked eyes with the handsome man behind the concession counter. i looked at him, and knew then and there that he was The One. he was indeed: The One guy i truly regret dating. he was handsome, intelligent, almost twice my age, and absolutely insane in the medical sense of the word. a decade later he was still stalking me and he is The One reason i have had an unlisted phone number and the highest privacy settings on facebook for years. as you can imagine, i no longer believe in love at first sight.

after this, for safety reasons, i dated a man with a gun. a mountie's life was not for me so after 3 years of fun, driving around in police cruisers and much drama, i ran away and went back to school. there i met mr. monkey who's not a musician, not certifiable and does not own a gun. it was not love at first sight, but i suppose i just sort of grew on him. we've just passed our 13th dating anniversary and are in our tenth year as mr. and mrs.

your turn.

if punctation and grammar are not your secret lovers, skip this one

2011-02-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

having done some research about punctuation (yes, i know, i know), i have become aware of the disturbing fact that for years now i have been using american punctuation specifically in relation to commas, periods and quotation marks. and since i am a stickler for british spelling, i think it only fitting that i get my punctuation in line with the british way. if this bothers you, feel free to tell me and i will free to listen or ignore you. the last sentence in body of the previous post uses british punctuation rules. it'll be our little experiment, ok? let's see how we like it.

i realise that the majority of you do not give a shit, but some might. i know i do.

carry on, then.

this is your captain speaking, we have reached cruising altitude and... holy crap! flying monkeys!!!

2011-02-18T17:47:00.003-07:00

ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for impact. i think i might be entering a full blown midlife crisis. no, dreaming about sexy men is not the symptom. if it were, i'd have been institutionalised years ago. what i mean is that i am totally and completely overpowered by the need to go dancing. i haven't felt this way in years and i think i might need help. in fact, i am now beginning to understand what women mean when they say they really really want children*. except, i don't want children; i want to go dancing but it's a deep seated physiological need. i really very badly need to shake my tookus to some hip and happening tuneage. the fact that i am using words like "tookus", "hip", and "tuneage" ought to give you a pretty good idea how long it's been.

please, someone, anyone, take me dancing.

*except my desire is less environmentally demanding, easier to satisfy and much quicker to get out of the system: win-win-win all around, then, no?

i reads'em as i sees'em

2011-02-18T14:23:00.006-07:00

with the upcoming move and packing, i've been thinking about my books lately and this post by lucy finally pushed me to write a little something.

my mom and i have always been avid readers and, for the most part, share a similar taste in literature. she once said something to me that has stayed with me over the years: "there are authors who love people, and authors who think humanity worthless." this is a rather loose translation/paraphrase but you get the idea. it tends to linger in the back of my head and pops up unexpectedly from time to time when i try to come up with reasons for loving or hating a book.

i remember listening to a recent interview with p.d. james and being astounded by how warm and witty she sounded. after all, her books, to me, demonstrate a deep seated misanthropy and i find them uniformly depressing, very well written, yes, but god, so depressing. my beloved dorothy sayers, on the other hand, coloured the same genre with the blush of love and tolerance for our imperfections. perhaps this is why i adore dorothy sayers and have all but given up on p.d. james.

i have just started to read jonathan franzen's freedom and although, like his previous work, this one is fairly well written, well told and reasonably interesting, i have found myself emotionally detached, and let's just say that is not my typical state. it was only when i remembered my mom's idea that i realised that yes, mr. franzen does not like people. he didn't like them in the corrections, and he sure hasn't changed his opinion since.

it seems that most of the books on my shelves, books i am committed to packing up every couple of years and unpacking with matching frequency, are mostly books by people who like people, which makes me question my self-proclaimed misanthropy. perhaps i'm not as misanthropic as i like to think i am (surely that little bit of psychic darkness is a more interesting character trait than constant pollyannic optimism?) or perhaps it's as i've always said: i may hate people but individuals are another story.

of course that is not the only way to categorise a book, and i do believe some authors/books defy categorisation, but overall, most of my favourite authors seem to be in the tolerant, humanity-loving camp (including, imagine that, eleanor h. porter's pollyanna).

i wanted to close by sharing some more of my favourites to illustrate my point, but found myself feeling entirely too exposed. sure, i can talk at length about fecal occult blood tests and syphilis, but i can't bring myself to tell you my favourite authors. go figure.

girls in cars and boys who are stars

2011-02-15T09:07:00.008-07:00

allow me to be self-indulgent for a minute, i have to share this one with y'all:

let me set the scene: there's a movie. i'm in it. in it, i drive a small old red car (hyundai? dodge neon? some kind of shit car, anyways) really really really fast. it's a car chase and it's FUN! my role is small, but it's a role in a hollywood film filled with famous sexy people.

after the car chase, as i walk off the set i run into yummy, yummy colin firth.

moi: colin firth! i shall call you colin firth! because that is your name!

yummy, yummy, colin firth: yes!

moi: hi! we've met before!

y. y. c. f. : yes, we had. i thought you were a servant.

moi: a servant? no! i am a star! i have literally several scenes in this film!

y. y. c. f. : ah! well, nice to meet you!

moi: nice to meet you, colin firth!

and then the bloody alarm went off which was a pity, because you can be certain that if i was faced with the yummy, yummy colin firth in a dream, i would have taken full ~~sexual~~ advantage of the ~~man~~ situation. instead, i had to get up, eat a bowl of cottage cheese and now i'm off to zumba. oh, the humanity!

the true face of insanity

2011-02-15T08:59:00.001-07:00

last night, mr. monkey found an online map of europe that was labelled with all the places from tolkien's lord of the rings. russia, of course, was mordor. i believe the scandinavian countries were rohan, spain/portugal made up lothlorien, middle-europe was gondor, and poland was ithilien.

mr. monkey: what's ithilien?

moi: it's the no man's land between gondor and mordor.

mr. m: gondor is which one?

moi: the one with minas tirith. where the big battle takes place.

mr. m: ok, and mordor is the bad guys, right?

moi: ... right.

mr. m: and ithilien is...

moi: where oh sam and oh mr. frodo see the oliphants.

mr. m: i don't remember that part.

moi: it's where faramir's rangers do their guerilla thing.

mr. m: i don't know who that is.

moi: it's where faramir captures oh sam and oh mr. frodo.

mr. m: i don't remember that part.

moi (increasingly frustrated): how many times have you seen this film?

mr. monkey (meekly): once.

moi: WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!!

you see, gentle reader, i have seen this film so many times that if i were to tell you, you would not only stop playing with me but you would back away slowly and likely call for a tranquiliser gun. let' just say: many, and be done with it. the fact that my beloved has only managed to see it once... well, it's incomprehensible to me.

yelling at a charity again (i also kick puppy dogs and trip old people)

2011-02-10T08:59:00.003-07:00

dear red cross,

come on, now, we've been through this before so i really don't see why we have to go through this again. you're a worthy charity, your running costs don't outweigh your charitable expenditures, you are well respected in the world and your marketing must be doing something right because that logo recognition thing? damn good! so why do i have to be right back where i started, threatening to cut you off, huh? shall i tell you again what it is that bugs me? you really ought to know by now, seeing as i've cut you off before, but you seem to be suffering from some kind of selective memory loss. either that or you've been watching too many mad men episodes, slurping back old-fashioneds like they're going out of style, convincing yourself that it's the 1950's all over again. after all, how else can i explain your dogged insistence on addressing your mail to mr. and mrs. albert monkey, when you know damn well my name is not, and has never been, albert.

let's recap: yes, i am married to mr. albert monkey, but everyone knows my name is matilda monkey and, last i checked, the 50's were over, and i was allowed to get my own name on an envelope, especially in light of the fact that it is i, matilda monkey, who makes the charitable donation decisions in this household. yes, red cross, i know it's very very hard to wrap your whiskey-sodden little brain around that strange new-fangled concept, but it is fact. mr. monkey has relinquished his god given manly rights to that particular decision-making process and it is i who decide. and, like the time before, when you ignored my initially polite, and then increasingly irate letters asking you to remedy the situation, i think i shall have to cut you off again. that's right, mrs. monkey over here, has had enough of your misogyny and is saying: no more.

but don't worry, red cross, i won't spend the money i'd have given to you on hookers and blow, tempted though i may be. no, red cross, you can rest easy in the knowledge that your loss, is médecins sans frontières' gain. last i checked, they were totally cool with my existence as a human being in her own right. don't call me, please, and for god's sake, don't write: it's over.

on stating the obvious (i think i was really really tired)

2011-02-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

driving home last night:

moi: (à propos nothing*) i don't like ice cream cakes.

mr. monkey: oh yeah?

moi: uh-hm.

mr.monkey: ...

moi: i don't like ice cream much either.

mr. monkey: hm.

moi: ...

mr.monkey: ...

moi: ice cream cakes are made of ice cream.

mr. monkey: ah.

*ok, we had just driven past dairy queen with its pink advert for a valentine heart-shaped ice cream cake and i can't imagine anything worse... except maybe a dozen red long stemmed roses sent to my place of employment to trumpet my partner's love for me to the unwashed masses. gack.

ker-POW!

2011-02-08T17:52:00.002-07:00

on the ferry, watching UFC* in the car:

mr. monkey: wow! he just kicked that guy right in the liver! he's DOWN!

moi: where is the liver, anyway**?

mr. monkey: in the stomach somewhere...

moi: ah. i suspected as much.

* the polish film*** we had watched earlier had left such deep emotional scar tissue on both our souls that we needed some clear-cut blood and violence to cleanse our metaphorical palate, if you'll allow me to awkwardly mix my metaphors.

** there's one thing one can say about UFC - it's a great way to learn a little about the human anatomy.

***if you do not speak polish and cannot read the synopsis, ask someone to kick you repeatedly in the nether regions, as this will give you a fair approximation of the film's emotional effect.

crazy little thing called onomatopoeia

2011-02-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

hi. i've been away for a while and i know you're worried that contrary to my assurances in the previous post, i have been expiring from both syphilis and tuberculosis, plus other ailments which i might have left unspoken because, you know, they're embarrassing... unlike syphilis.

but no. no, what i have been doing is sorting through my (impressive) internal collection of Very Bad Words, trying to figure out which would be most fitting for mr. monkey's organization which, as is its wont, has exercised its typical care and usual thoughtfulness and given us our marching orders 4 days after the date had passed for giving legal notice to our landlords. oh, how i love that company. our marching orders are to leave the island, bundle up our belongings and ride a donkey over the snow-covered mountain passes into alberta in less than 2 weeks, because who needs more than 2 weeks to tie up all manner of loose ends, find a place to live (well before the end of the month, natch) and hire movers? why, we certainly don't.

still, before i unleash an honest to goodness bitch-storm, i must admit that it ain't all bad: they're moving us, start to finish. and the job that's waiting for mr. monkey out east* will be a typical 8h day, something he has not had these last 7 years or so. also, my parents' tenants just gave notice and will vacate a handy and extremely well located condo right in time for our laden donkey's arrival.

and so, we're coming back to edmonton sooner than planned. sure, it's not what i had hoped for (i had hoped for april, so that my winter would be cut a little shorter), but it's all good. edmonton is like an old pair of pants, familiar and comfortable. they may not be the nicest pants, but they're my pants and they feel nice on. plus, i suspect they make my ass look good.

*god, it's weird to call alberta "east," all maps be damned.

return of the black death

2011-01-27T15:47:00.014-07:00

if you are sitting there all snug and warm, thinking quietly to yourself how glad you are that my tales of health woes are over, i shall have to smack that cup of ~~bourbon~~ tea right out of your hand and tell you you are wrong. yes, wrong! after all that, there was more! and yea, verily i say unto you, it was entertaining!

over christmas i received not one, not two, but three phone calls from my doctor's receptionist, the last of which was a polite request for one more blood test. ok. no problem. what's one more blood test to me? nothing! HAH! i scoff at blood tests! i do blood tests for fun! why, some mornings i drain as much as 0.73 deciliters of blood before breakfast! just for the sheer joy of it!

as the nice lab tech started to tourniquet my arm, i thought, hey! let's ask what this one is about. boy, do i wish i hadn't.

lab tech (looking sheepish? nervous? suspicious? disgusted? underneath her professional veneer): um... it's for syphilis.

moi: ...

lab tech (awkwardly avoiding my eyes while trying to look both non-judgmental and supportive while syphoning blood from my diseased arm, which can't have been easy): ...

moi: WHY?!

lab tech (clearly grasping at straws): we... sometimes see dr. cheung order these... because... for different reasons (implied: you skanky whore*)

i left the lab and tried very hard not to panic, knowing i'd see my doctor in the next couple of days. what i did do, because i am a rational, calm human being, is give mr. monkey shit, just in case it was his little gift to me. being a loving, analytical, rational (i know, i know, i keep saying it) person, i lovingly told him that if i did indeed have syphilis, i would make sure he would pay for the rest of his natural life, which would not be long, if i had anything to say about it. he took it well (he actually is rational).

several days later, my doctor explained that it was one of the standard tests required by the infectious diseases specialist, but he'd forgotten to put it on the lab requisition. this was the guy who told me i was 100% ok, tb free,** officially off the medically most wanted lists, free to go forth and breathe on the world at large.

epilogue:

i haven't heard back from them, but it's been weeks, so i assume that not only am i tuberculosis free, i am also syphilis free, which, admit it, would look GREAT on a t-shirt! i think congratulations are in order.

NOTE FOR NEW READERS:
i do not, nor have i ever had either tuberculosis or syphilis. that's the funny bit. i am not "better" because i was never ill; the whole adventure was ridiculous in the extreme for that very reason.

*i never once got that from her, honest. she was perfectly nice about it which is pretty impressive, because, come ON! syphilis? does it get skankier than that? i think not.

** kinda ironic, no? here's a clean bill of health, you do not have tuberculosis, oh, but let's get you tested for syphilis, just for the pure unadulterated fun of it, ok?

irony is not on the periodic table of elements, but it should be

2011-01-27T10:14:00.006-07:00

here's an email i have just received:

Hello,

I just came across your entertaining blog. I'm interested in advertising on the following page by having the words "Fort McMurray Jobs" added to the bottom of the post as a link leading to a page on my clients site (a provider of internet recruiting and career support services). This link could have the text "This post is supported by..." to show that my client supports your blog.

http://mytwocentscanadian.blogspot.com/2011/01/and-there-it-was-xanadu.html

If you can help us out we would be happy to compensate you. Please email me back and let me know how we can make this work.

Sandy

here is my response:

hi,

i think that given my general attitude towards fort mcmurray (that it is the worst place on earth), i hardly think this would make sense. but thank you for the offer.

a.d.

do you think they even read the damn post? followed the links? no, i didn't think so either.

oh well, here go the big bucks. let it be known: i am not* for sale!

*well, i could be, but we are talking more money than the average person could rustle up. in fact we're talking vast wads of cash, the kind of money, in fact, available to the oil industry...oh. shit.

llamas? they went that-a-way!

2011-01-27T09:45:00.005-07:00

gah! this is the third week in a row that i've forgotten to put out the recycling/garbage + compost* and i hope this isn't evidence of some kind of mental break-down, because you know that i am naturally anal-retentive, super-organized (i was going to write über-organized but didn't feel like hunting around for ümlauts, and yet, look, i've done it twice now!) and i hate it when i act like a forgetful early onset alzheimers type. and i have been, i really have.

you don't know this, because all you get is the finished product (riddled with asides and asterisks though it might be), but i spend countless hours looking up words that i sort of remember the sound or shape of but cannot place exactly. words like "the" or "and" and "pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism." it's pretty scary, actually, how badly i feel i've deteriorated. and having 2.5 languages in my head ain't helping either, 'cause what you get is this polinglish fusion floating through my brainwaves and then nikt nic nie rozumie, no nie? that's what i thought, too.

oh well, here i am, fighting the good fight with my fall-aparty brain (i'm fairly certain there's a better word than "fall-aparty" but damned if i can remember it, and i'm getting pretty sick of googling things like "a word that means fall-aparty but more technical sounding") and you're forced to lap up the results, poor, poor poultries. hey, i won't be mad if you go read something brilliant or funny. really, i won't!

*we have compost pick-up every week, with alternating garbage and recycling. i rarely have any garbage, what with the compost and recycling, but i have A LOT of recycling and having missed it yet again, i am forced to drive to the recycling depot and hand sort all the tiny pieces of paper and yogurt tubs** and plastic tomato containers*** while knee deep in mud surrounded by (nice recycling) idiots who can't decide whether it's angle parking or parallel parking and hey, let's do a little bit of each, thus effectively rendering the parking lot useless to anything more than 3 vehicles, oh yes.

**i eat a lot of yogurt. no, i mean, A LOT. i eat so much yogurt that i think it's a little odd and i am almost embarrassed but i really, really love yogurt. a lot.

***is it my bloody fault that the only tomatoes that taste like anything even vaguely tomato-like come in overpackaged dolphin-murdering oil-slick-perpetrating abominations? is it? yes, yes, i realise it's not tomato season and i could wait until june but i need my fucking lycopene, people, OK?!?!?!? (it calms me down.)

attack of the giant corporate lizards

2011-01-26T18:09:00.002-07:00

i'm gonna go out on a limb here and tell you about something that i've been doing. anyone who's been reading this here thing for any length of time knows that my attitude towards the dental hygiene... ahem, profession* of which i am a part, is, shall we say a little negative? you might be moved to ask, hey, polish chick! what's not to like about your profession? and if that's the question you're formulating right now, let me just respond with the degree of professionalism that is expected from me: are you shitting me? really? sure, the money's not bad, but what i do, day in and day out (well, more day in once a month the way it's been going lately) is scrape. calcified. shit. off. people's. teeth. are you with me? there's blood. there are rogue tongues. there are infected suppurating tissues. sometimes there's expired broccoli. or chicken even. there's cigarette breath. there's coffee breath. there's i-brush-whenever-i-get-around-to-it breath. there's... wait, did i mention the blood? yeah. like i said.

so, i have spent the better part of the past five years wasting time and brain cells. this was called "soul-searching" and involved boring my friends to tears with "what should i do with my life" stuck on endless repeat (many thanks, g and t). i kept expecting a monty pythonesque hand to come from the heavens and tell me "THIS SHALT BE THY LOT IN LIFE HENCEFORTH" but no such luck. and so, feeling sick to death of myself and my constant whining and starting to pick up signs of frustration from the ever-patient mr. monkey, i decided to just eeny-miney-moe it, just like i did 17 years ago, minus the possibility of blood.

so, what i'm getting to, in an ~~uncharacteristically~~ typically long-winded way is that, darling poultries, i have decided to requalify and, to that end, have enrolled in an online course called... (wait, i have to look it up; it's that exciting)... Project Management Fundamentals. i know! i know! and believe me, the course is every bit as exciting as its name would suggest. maybe more! i force myself to stay awake through each and every class, quiz and assignment, and the only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that when i entered the dental hygiene... ahem... profession... i was just as bored. plus there was blood. so there. it's a win-win!

*am i the only one who throws up a little in her mouth when she has to utter that word and its revolting corollaries "professional" and "professionalism" and... "professionisticism"**

** i may or may not have made that last one up. i'm not telling. it wouldn't be professional.

shake that thang, shake it, shake it, shake it!

2011-01-26T09:10:00.003-07:00

well, another day and nothing to see here. i am getting a little pissed, people! can't someone break in here, "hack-in" in the parlance of our times, and write something? jesus! do i have to do everything myself? what?! whaddya mean this is my blog? who asked you anyway?

so, what's been new with you? moi? i've started taking the zumba class at curves. it's a hoot. it is taught by a rather rotund latina who can do things with her hips that, i swear, ought not be legal. imagine, if you will, a class filled to the brim with proper elderly white ladies all staring lasciviously at the hypnotic ass shaking it up in our midst. it's a bit odd.

what's odder still is how absolutely terrible all these proper elderly white ladies are at shaking their thing. it's all i can do to keep a straight face when i see the random arm wavings and leg steppings that have little, if anything, to do with either the steps being taught or, more importantly, the music. now i know i have issues with the whole right-left differentiation, but i just let the music do its thing, and i move. i figure it's more important to move (and the music demands that i move) than to get the right leg-arm combination.

i love zumba. love it. love it for the sweat-inducing fun that doesn't feel like exercise, love it for the fast pace, and love it for the sheer entertainment value it provides for my desiccated grey soul. i suspect a class taught in an immigrant-rich neighbourhood would not provide me so much comedic fodder. i suspect that there is no social group quite as uncoordinated and out of touch with their bodies as the be-permed women of the 50's generation. which begs the question - weren't these the girls who shrieked over the beatles? what deep seated sexual anxieties removed their ability to wiggle their rumps?

in other news, day three of fog begins. i think i shall miss its velvety enfolding when i go.

monkeys on the move

2011-01-20T21:12:00.006-07:00

i'm browsing mls.ca, looking for a possible new monkey abode when i find this gem.

moi: hey! listen to this! 2 bedrooms and FIVE bathrooms! you think it's a typo?

mr. monkey: i don't know, that's pretty much standard these days, isn't it?

moi: we have to buy it! we have to! then we can invite a bunch of people over for dinner and give them food poisoning!

and there it was: xanadu!

2011-01-20T08:58:00.009-07:00

it's 7:58 am, i'm watching what passes for a sunrise on a rainy day, that gradual, water-colour brightening of the sky, all tie-dyed and gloomy, and i am thinking that perhaps i ought to just open up this here old thing and type something, anything. perhaps it'll be worth the effort it takes you to read it, perhaps not. let's see...

so, we're leaving. true, we still don't know when, although the where has become more concrete. mr. monkey came home last week and, in the middle of dinner, asked me if i wanted to hear the good news or the bad news first. my stomach immediately plummeted to the general toe vicinity, and, without thinking too much about it, i asked to hear the bad news* first. he chuckled and said he was just kidding, there was no bad news. after i managed to suppress the urge to throttle the monster, and after my stomach slowly and painfully crawled its way back up to its rightful place, i found out that we were going back to alberta, but not back to fort mcmurray.

it's astonishing how much of a sweetener that last bit can be. i suspect it could be used to take the edge off any number of atrocious news:

"i've just killed your mother with an axe... but on the upside, we're not moving to fort mcmurray!"

"i've cheated on you with both your brother and your best friend, but hey! we're not going to fort mcmurray!"

"the meteor is going to crash in 24 hours and there's no hope of survival for humanity! thank god, we're not in fort mcmurray!"

"i'm sorry: it's incurable, terminal and exceedingly painful, but at least you're not going to die in fort mcmurray."

and so, there it is. not long after that, i had lunch with g who asked me how i was taking the news. i'm taking it well. perhaps it was the 3 weeks spent back home with family, or the 3 weeks spent being charmed by one of the world's greatest infants, or the fact that edmonton has my favourite ethiopian place AND an amazing pizza joint AND anthropologie AND no provincial sales tax... well, you might say i'm lying to myself or trying to talk myself into a good place. first of all, even if that were the case - what's wrong with that? and second of all, no, i'm good. i'm genuinely happy to be going back home.

does that mean that i won't be sad to leave vancouver island? not a chance. the fact that last weekend we planted seedlings in the sunshine, wearing nothing but long sleeve t-shirts; the fact that buds are starting to thicken on some trees already; the fact that tulips are poking their way out of the earth and it's january, cannot be discounted. in fact, aside from the breathtaking beauty of this place, its main attraction is its short, mild winter. and, as i always say about edmonton: i love the river valley, i love the city, i love the restaurant scene and the music scene, in fact, i love it all... except for the dreary grey 7 months of winter, and not much can be done to change that.

so, my little poultries, here am i. on the cusp of change yet again and finally learning to embrace it. maybe it's just stockholm syndrome, but i think i'm getting used to all this moving around... provided we're not moving to fort mcmurray.

*i always ask to hear the bad news first. you?

parental discretion is advised (a small sample of my art)

2011-01-16T19:44:00.005-07:00

well, now that i'm on a roll...

2011-01-15T21:49:00.004-07:00

let's talk about the weather, because there's nothing quite as exciting as talking about the weather, is there? why, i could go on about the weather for hours!

having just spent 3 weeks in alberta, i have winter on my mind. in alberta, winter is not in any way theoretical. it is not a concept; it is real. snow comes (and this year, keeps on coming) and stays way past its best by date. it is not uncommon to be wearing shorts in may, looking at piles of snow still slowly melting in shady areas. but the snow! oh how i love alberta snow (insomuch as i can even speak of loving snow) compared to the watery slush of british columbia or eastern canada. i love the fact that in alberta it is physically impossible to make a snow man (unless you bring out a hose and douse your creation liberally with water). forget having snowball fights. it simply does not stick. the snow there sparkles, crunches underfoot, whispers like sand and is generally gorgeous...except, you know, not for seven fucking months...

when i got off the plane on vancouver island and saw all the sad wet snow here, i was instantly depressed. overwhelmed by the dirty sadness of an ill-fitting precipitation. here, rain feels right. here, in this place, winter is a green, damp, pine-scented season, marked with the glistening red of arbutus bark, mists swirling, mosses doing their furry thing, things budding already in january. oh, i shall miss it when i go. funny, how we were warned about the grey and rain of coastal british columbia, and we have not minded it one bit. but the four days of snow? i could barely stand to look out the window. and do not get me started on what an atrocious job the local snow plow operators do around here. then again, one can easily blame their lack of practice...lucky bastards.

so: winter. here, you can smell its imminent end. in alberta, it'll be months yet. if we do go back there, i'll just have to get my warm boots out, together with my sense of moral superiority (i suspect all northern peoples have it: that ill-disguised scorn for all those softies, those warm-climate wusses who would not dance at an outdoors new year's celebration in -30°C like we did last year) and get ready to shovel. still, i'll miss the green.

a new year's resolution of sorts

2011-01-15T21:26:00.006-07:00

i'm posting because i feel that i ought to say something, to fill this space, this void, both spatial and temporal. i still sometimes check my blog hoping against hope that someone has posted something. alas, it never happens, and so it is up to me to pick up my writing tools (fingers, that is. i pick them up with my toes. it is not easy, let me tell you), lube up the cortex and the cerebellum, gird my loins and face that void, while it crouches there grinning maniacally, as voids are wont to do.

i don't know when i became such a coward. i suppose i could say that time has whittled away whatever creative juicy bits that were once a part of moi, but i don't know if it's merely time, or a sustained diet of intellectual laziness. sigh...did you know that when i was younger (and not that much younger at that, this disease goes back no more than 15 years or thereabouts) i used to draw all the time? all the bloody time. if i didn't have a sketchbook around, i'd open up the paper envelope that tea bags come in and draw on that. really. i have material evidence.

as angry as this makes me, it is an anger steeped in lassitude and spiked regularly with cloves of regret, all pomander-like, and really, what else can i do? i've set up a table with paints and paper and canvases and still i'd rather while away the afternoon on this here contraption, to my everlasting shame, and gee, even so, you get an update only sporadically.

i'm not one for new year's resolutions, but i think it might be time to make some sort of proclamation in the town square, forcing my audience (hint: that's you) to become partner in the criminal negligence of any kind of talent that had once been granted to me by an alcoholic fairy godmother. (if the convolutions of the previous few sentences managed to leave you in the dark, worry not, i feel the same way, and am still feeling my way through a maze of ideas, verbs and, because i am who i am, far too many adjectives) i.e. you must hold me up to account. ok? so on occasion, ask me if i'm doing stuff, drawing things, if i've faced the fear and vanquished the blank page. please.

and thank you.

hey hey! una cerveza por favor!

2011-01-14T09:52:00.002-07:00

having just spent large swathes of time at the airport, i have become reacquainted with that most idiotic of airport denizens: the sun seeker. no, gentle reader, there is nothing idiotic about seeking the sun, especially when one normally resides in the northern reaches of alberta, where winter enters stage left sometime in early october, and exits stage right in mid may.* what is idiotic is the silent call emitted by some sun seekers that goes something like this: "HEY! I'M GOING TO MEXICO, Y'ALL!!!" and its alternate version: "HEY! I'VE JUST BEEN TO MEXICO, Y'ALL!!!!"

how does this silent call manifest itself, gentle reader? well, while the temperature hovers around the -20°C mark and windchill takes it down a couple notches just for the fun of it, while snowdrifts reach up to 2m and navigating even major thoroughfares is treacherous, while normal folk reach for their sorrel boots and down filled parkas, the sun seeker of whom i speak leaves all intelligent forms of clothing in the car, at the parking lot and then proceeds to walk to (or, alternately, from) the airport clad only in flip-flops, shorts and a t-shirt that proclaims its cheap sweat-shop produced sun destination origins.** to them i invariably say (in my head, i'm not mean!), "honey, nobody cares you're going (alternately: coming from) the bahamas. you look like a frozen moron and those purple legs are not particularly attractive."

i understand that bringing a parka on a tropical trip is not really an option either, but there are sweaters and long pants and even shoes that might prevent hypothermia and still look appropriate in both the edmonton international airport in december and the streets of havana.

*those of you from the ontario region who think you know what i'm talking about: no, you absolutely don't. march means spring to you; to albertans, march means 1.5 - 2 more months of snow...or more, so please just shut it.

**please, someone, please explain to me why people insist on buying t-shirts that say things like "señor frog's, puerto vallarta" or "planet hollywood: CANCUN" ? and then...then they actually wear them! out in public, no less! these items are tacky, ridiculous and proclaim a complete and total lack of imagination on the part of the buyer/wearer. really? you feel the need to proclaim that you went to another country and then utterly and completely failed to immerse yourself in any semblance of the local culture, eating exclusively at north american chains and shopping for t-shirts? waaa!

celine dion versus the universe

2010-12-17T09:21:00.003-07:00

blame the extended pre-christmas line-ups at the grocery store, but my eyes were drawn to a people magazine cover featuring celine dion and her brand new twins. the quote on the cover made me do a double take:

"...what we have accomplished...it's bigger than life itself."

wow, ms.dion, way to put things in perspective. and here i thought that having babies was a natural part of our existence.

holiday decor ideas

2010-12-15T20:49:00.002-07:00

i think i might have missed something, but apparently it is now not enough to merely decorate your house, both inside and out, to pop in those flashing christmas earrings, and sport that dashing rudolph pin, now it is also necessary to decorate your car.

yes. you heard it here first (or, given my track record with the latest trends, last). in the last week, i have seen several cars bedecked with ribbons and bows in festive polyester burn-your-eyes-out red and green and today, well, my little poultries, today i saw a car with reindeer antlers, in pure joyful celebration of our lord's northern roots...or something.

oh sure, now the inspiration comes...

2010-12-14T21:24:00.005-07:00

just as i suspected, as soon as i made my grand exit stage left in come The Thoughts. ok, here goes nothing:

since i am now 1 whole inch (possibly even 2!) shorter, i got to thinking about what else isn't as it ought to be. perhaps i'm not as witty as i like to think. perhaps my cooking is unpalatable. maybe my IQ is only barely making the double digits instead of floating way up there.* what if i am where i am, professionally speaking, not because i am lazy and lack ambition, but because i am stupid and this is the best i can do? perhaps things are much much worse than i imagine, and, being a paranoid hypochondriac, i often think they are pretty bad. what if my whole self image is entirely imaginary and has nothing to do with reality?

all this, because i have suddenly lost an inch.

but then again, the pants i try on while shopping persist in being too short, so maybe, just maybe, things are still right with the world.

*when you are doing nothing much, it is very heartening to think that you are a really really intelligent person doing nothing much and not just another dumbass doing nothing much. the difference is staggering to the self, although it is imperceptible to the world at large.

it's not you, it's me

2010-12-13T16:29:00.006-07:00

listen, it's becoming obvious that i don't have much to say. this whole writing thing goes in waves, much like childbirth (so they tell me) or nausea. and right now? i'm having a bit of a dry spell. my posts are pulled out of me kicking and screaming and yet, despite the noise and violence, are strangely not entertaining at all. perhaps, as i get ready to fly to much colder climes for the upcoming birthday of the little beby jebus, i should just take some time off and let my brain stew up some literary winners for my new year's repertoire. what i'm really trying to say, and i am trying to be gentle here, is that perhaps we should see other people for a while. you know, until i figure things out.

and let me just add, it's not you, it's me. you've been fabulous: finally giving me all the feedback i have been wanting and crying for for years, new people popping in to say hello (sweet lord, new people, i am profoundly sorry for the lack of interesting content; may i suggest 2007? i think i was entertaining back then, although i could be wrong), regulars becoming friends, the interwebs spinning their magical thread of international communication...etc. etc.

so, have yourselves a merry little nondenominational winter holiday of your choice, enjoy your feasts and family time, have a drink or three, sing some festive songs and i shall see you here in the new year.

p.s. here's my loophole - if i am hit by sudden inspiration, i will write, although it seems unlikely. but seriously: try 2008. i think that was a decent vintage as well. i might as well warn you - if you hit the years i was living up north, there will be even more drinking and swearing than usual. and lots and lots of bitterness.

the incredible shrinking woman

2010-12-13T11:52:00.005-07:00

for various clandestine reasons, i decided to measure my height today, and because i happen to know my weight in pounds and not civilised kilograms (don't ask), i had to measure myself in inches to match. well, dear poultries, either i've been lied to for years, or i'm shrinking.

all these years i've been going around proclaiming to all and sundry that i am 5'10" (even 5'11" on a good day!) and it turns out that i am only 5'9". how did this happen? when did this happen? and why? WHY?! my BMI is now utterly fucked up and i am but a shadow of my former self (in the height, if not in the weight, department).

comment now, before i disappear entirely.

UPDATE: mr. monkey measured me as soon as he came home from work, and it's official. i'm 5'9". that's not the worst part. the worst part is that i have always been the same height as mr. monkey and now he's 1.5" taller than i am and visibly so. what is happening to me?

hey! it's holiday time!

2010-12-12T14:25:00.003-07:00

actually, hey! it's holiday road christmas party time, or was, last night.

holiday road is the neighbourhood where we bought our land last year, and every year the neighbourhood gathers once in the summer bbq season, and once for christmas. this was our first gathering in our new neighbourhood (actually, aside from a couple of block parties i crashed back in my early 20's (thanks crazy joan!), this was our first neighbourhood party anywhere ever) and it was a blast.

it took place in an musty little out of the way community hall, included several courses of pot-luck deliciousness, enthusiastic carol singing, even more enthusiastic wine drinking, and a massive crazy chinese gift exchange in which gifts were given, taken, re-taken, strategised over, lost and won again*. my newbie status did not bestow any sort of immunity upon me and the double bag of wine i went straight for was taken from me time and again, but i was nothing if not persistent. in the end, i ended up with only one bottle but two new neighbours came by and shared their spoils - didn't take them any time at all to find out what makes me tick.

and if you think that it didn't take me any time at all to show my drunk and disorderly side, i will put your minds at ease and tell you that while on my one side at the table was our very pregnant neighbour, on the other sat a woman who made me seem restrained, quiet and not much of a drinker. thank you, a; i owe you one (mr. monkey whispered that he already had visions of a crawl path being quickly established between our two houses).

even before last night, we had already met more of our holiday road neighbours than we had ever met anywhere we'd lived before; now we have met them all. although some people are clearly doing pretty well financially, the majority look like regular folk living simple ordinary lives. many asked about the fruit trees we'd planted. most wanted to know when we would join the neighbourhood for real. all of them were welcoming, warm, and friendly. whatever doubts i might have had about the land (doubts brought on, no doubt, by thinking of how far we actually are from being firmly established there: hard to picture a warm little house when you're knee deep in mud, piling branches in the rain) dissipated last night.

all in all, well worth the little bit of a headache i seem to be nursing today for whatever reason.

*essentially, it was a bunch of people fighting over several bottles of wine and one fleece blanket.

in which i compare myself to a high ranking religious figure and the world responds with an awed hush

2010-12-09T10:27:00.007-07:00

in light of the previous post: lest you think i am a bitter black-hearted bag who shoots reindeer and spits on the joyousness of the season, let me tell you: this bitter black-hearted bag LOVES christmas, i just don't love the massive marketing aspect of it.

i love the smell of cookies baking; i am like a little kid when it comes to twinkling lights; i even love schmaltzy christmas music (as long as it is played responsibly, within the confines of december). overall, christmas is my all time absolute favourite holiday, filled with my favourite foods and the only time of year when i get frequent and multiple opportunities to wear sparkly clothes!

i realise the previous post might have sounded a little...cold, but, much like our lord jesus christ* who kicked down the market that had sprung up on the temple steps, i am kicking at the materialistic idiocy that has taken the place of family- and food- centered warm fuzzies. take that, capitalism!

*enjoy, you are unlikely to ever hear such a comparison again.

*my internal voice deepened when i spoke these words, all solemn-like.

*in whom i do not believe. yes, alanis, isn't it ironic?

the definitive christmas gift guide 2010

2010-12-07T20:45:00.008-07:00

i don't do gifts. i don't like to receive* them, either. but all the bloggers are doing it so i thought to myself, hey! free topic! and that's why, after much forethought and deep meditation, mentation and analysis, as well as some not quite as deep contemplation, deliberation and reflection, i have come up with the Definitive 2010 Christmas Gift Guide:

stuff: guaranteed to make those on your list happy as a pig in shit.

shiny stuff: increases the recipient's satisfaction tenfold (scientifically proven FACT).

put an i in front of it (i-stuff™): you will be their favourite family member for ~~years~~ weeks to come.

blatantly expensive stuff: oh yeah, baby! now you're talking. nookie guaranteed (unless wildly inappropriate.)

regifted stuff: the only kind of stuff i can honestly get behind (i like to call it, "finding a loving home for the monstrosity which makes me weep in the night but brings tears of joy to your eyes") but is likely to have you labelled cheap and/or lazy

i hope this has helped you as much as it has helped me. now get out there, and get yourself a sparkly little smidgeon of happiness while supporting the economy! that's right! why be a minimalist left leaning part of the problem, when you can be a consumerist right thinking part of the solution?

*loophole - that which can be drunk or eaten or in any other way made to go away quickly is entirely acceptable.

à la lewinsky

2010-12-06T20:51:00.004-07:00

saturday last was our christmas party night. a couple days before, i went through all of my sparkly party schmattes and came up with a rather fetching ensemble. its biggest appeal (aside from its sex appeal, obv) was its flowiness, able to accommodate the vast quantities of seafood i was planning to consume. i ironed the top, i ironed the bottom, i took out my jewellery from its ~~box~~ vault, made sure the silver hose were in top notch condition and that my shoes still fit.

on the day in question, i did my make-up, my hair, put on the outfit and liked what i saw. only one thing was missing: a little holiday glow. i waltzed into the bathroom where mr. monkey was showering, spun off a jaunty little pirouette for him, dug out the sparkly lotion, shook it up and went to apply. except that the bastard had a dried up plug in the cap and when the plug finally went, so did approximately half the bottle all over my top. and my bottom. and the floor. and my shoes. i swore loudly, plentifully and bilingually. then i ran back to the bedroom to rustle up another party frock.

the runner-up still looked good, but it lacked the requisite ~~elastic waistband~~ flowiness, and so i spent the evening wavering in and out of semi-consciousness from the pressure exerted on my innards by my industrial strength undergarments. the seafood was decent, the wine divine, overall, a nice night out for les monkeys.

beauty

2010-11-30T20:01:00.010-07:00

one rainy night a couple of weeks ago i was driving on the highway on my way to pick up mr. monkey when i was arrested by the sudden bloom of red lights reflected on the wet pavement. i felt hypnotised by this entirely unexpected beauty: lowly, utilitarian, quotidian and utterly irresistible. since then, each time i pull up to an intersection, i fall under the spell of the ruby blooms all over again.

this sudden emergence of beauty makes me nervous. last time it happened, i feared i was about to die and the universe was handing me a going-away gift, a little something to ease the passing: we were living in the northern wastelands at the time and drove the 430km south to civilisation twice a month. we had lived there for a good long while already when i suddenly became aware of the beauty of the drive. it was the wrong season: nothing was blooming, nothing was singing forth its spring verdure or summer bounty. it was simply one more day on the highway and out of nowhere, i was charmed. here was this road i had driven back and forth on, filled to the brim with resentment, depression and hopelessness, when lo, it became beautiful. it had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with some inner joy, since i was shriveled up and dry; it came from outside of me, shocked me into awareness and remained quietly in the corner of my mind.

since i didn't die that time, i am assuming i am not about to die now (not that the universe is a well ordered place, but i do like to surround myself with the comfort of patterns, so please bear with me), although i must force myself to pay a little more attention to my driving - the hypnotic bloom of red reflections can be quite distracting.

[by the way, i have deleted the culling post and its corollary because in no way, shape, or form did it get across what i wanted to say. it just made me sound like an asshole and while that may be true from time to time, i am not a full time asshole and do not want to be seen as one. thanks for your patience.]

[for those of you who have missed the posts i am referring to, and are now consumed with curiosity, just imagine me sounding like an asshole, and there you have it. you didn't miss much.]

bum foot and parasites

2010-11-29T21:55:00.005-07:00

you might remember the hijinks and japes of my medical escapades in weeks past wherein i had an ultrasound, a biopsy, a CT scan and more blood taken out of my body than is generally considered polite, all to find out that my enlarged lymph nodes, far from being a symptom of the cancer, are merely the passing blurb of toxoplasmosis.

the thing that made me chuckle quietly to myself as i sat in a series of dismal waiting rooms* at the local hospital/medical laboratory/the ENT doctor's office/my GP's office, was that the joke was on them: they might think i was worried about my possible cancer/tuberculosis/unspecified medical badness but what really killed, was my foot. my plantar fasciitis has now reached a level of personal dedication and devotion that i would expect from a loving family pet: it is with me always, from waking to sleeping, and even that magical time in between as i take my midnight tinkle. i hobble. i limp. i galumph. and i finally went to see my GP about it. we had a fun conversation.

moi: the foot. it hurts. i wear my orthotics. i stretch it. i massage it. i ice it. it is getting worse. help.

GP: having exhausted all other possibilities, the thing to do next is an incredibly painful injection of a steroid into the heel.

moi: ok! how many do i need?

GP: only one ... i've only ever had to do one ... ... ... of course i'm not certain if it's because one was effective or if the patients didn't want to come back for a second one ... but i think one ought to do it.

moi: i'm in!

(like i said, the foot hurts like a sonofobitch)

*to be perfectly honest and factual and truthful, it was, for the most part, the same three waiting rooms during a series of days, but whatever.

snow day

2010-11-24T22:01:00.008-07:00

monday morning, we woke up to great big heaps of wet snow and much more on the way. the landlord knocked on my door and told me that i'd best move the car off the street since there were vehicles weaving all over the place. better yet, he said, casting a glance at my morning hair, bright orange bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, give me the keys and i'll move it. when he came back to return the keys, he informed me that it was pretty bad out there and we'd best stay in until the afternoon. sure thing!

as soon as i showered, i asked my new orleanian guests (clearly, resident experts on winter) if they thought we ought to go out anyway. sure, they said, enthusiastically. after all, t had agreed to teach me how to make apple pie, and we needed butter. and bread. and other essential pantry items i had neglected to stock prior to their arrival. so not 30 minutes after being warned to stay off the streets, we put on our wooly hats and boots and off we went.

we made it out of the driveway and slid gently out of control down to the stop sign, which was the first sign that the gods had other plans. being either stupid or eternally optimistic, i turned up the hill, only to slide down awkwardly, weaving all over the road. attempt number two produced similar results. i tried to turn the car around to no avail, and ended up backing up part way up the hill towards our driveway until the ice won and i shuddered to a stop halfway up. as we sat there wondering what to do, we were passed on the right (i.e. half way up the sidewalk) by an apparent moron in a SUV with alberta plates. figures.

when it became obvious we weren't going either up or down, i got out, walked the 15 feet back to the house, rang the landlord's door and waited with a sheepish grin. hi, i said, i'm an idiot. you were right. help.

shovels and a bucket of salt were produced and while p and the landlord shoveled a track for the volvo, t and i sprinkled it daintily with salt, falling spectacularly every once in a while and chortling maniacally upon the icy road. once the track was laid down, i managed to turn the car around and drive it back to its little home. we then took the bus, got groceries and made two apple pies, one of which was proudly taken upstairs as a heartfelt thank you for not having once said "i told you so."

victim of statistics

2010-11-19T11:24:00.008-07:00

we all like to think we are different, that we, unlike the unwashed masses, will beat the statistics and somehow rise above society's expectations, rise up, phoenix-like, from the ashes of mediocrity...or something. i admit, i thought so too. turns out i was wrong.

for the dozen or so years that mr. monkey and i have been together, and for the 9 years we have been married, we, too, thought that, unlike our friends, neighbours and co-workers, we would rise above, "make it," as it were and be different. now we have had to face the fact that we are not quite immune to society's diseased expectations: we have fallen, we have failed, we have, in fact, become nothing more than a statistic, a depressing statistic at that.

yes, my little poultries, i am devastated to have to inform you that mr. monkey and i...well...we bought a second car. now i know this goes against every single thing we stand for but before you pick up a stone and start tossing it speculatively from hand to hand whilst checking the atmospheric conditions* let me tell you that it is second hand and it is a volvo. that ought to count for something, no? i mean, come on! it's swedish! it's fuel efficient AND has a standard transmission. also, did i mention that it's swedish? those people are leading the world in environmentalism and social responsibility, not to mention kick-ass design!

whereas dodge rams appear to come with a free lobotomy,** volvos come with a serious intellectual cachet. at least there seem to be a whole lot of them parked around university campuses, so hopefully some of the smarts will rub off on us.

forgive us, please: mr. monkey's year-long (plus) carpooling deal recently collapsed in a heap of egos, light sociopathy and scheduling conflicts, and it was either that, or moi driving him to work every day (50km), driving to my own sporadic places of employment (5-40km each way), then driving back to pick him up (still 50km), which would not have been good. not for me, not for him, not for the marriage, not for the planet.

also, did i mention the car's swedish?

p.s. don't hate me, but i am madly in love with my butt warmer. too bad the stereo is blocked despite the best efforts of volvo dealers all over vancouver island...

*what? wind direction and speed has a huge effect on how you throw a rock at someone. just ask a golfer.

**chances are the ijit who cut you off earlier today was driving a dodge ram. it's just the way it is, i cannot help it!

november

2010-11-18T21:22:00.005-07:00

who knew that a month so lowly and dim, so dingy and depressing could be so very very important? not only is november the month to write a novel (NaNoWriMo), it is the month of daily blogging(NaBloPoMo), and now, apparently also the month for growing a mustache(Movember).

well, i'm fairly certain i don't have a novel in me. nope. i'm more of one-facebook-status-update-per-day-punctuated-by-the-occasional-swear-studded-rant type of a person. daily blogging sounds like too much bloody work and the less said about my mustache growing ability the better. so. what can november be for moi? hmmmm...

november:

NaEOWiMo - national ease off the wine month (in preparation for the upcoming celebrations of the birth of little beby jebus)

CAFASTDWINETIRWHAIHRBYMo - cold as fuck and sick to death of winter even though it isn't really winter here and it hasn't really begun yet month

SlODaWODishMo - slacking on daily washing of dishes month

PlaFruTNoAYBloKidMeAYITrAWeSsDoItMo - planting fruit trees in november, are you bloody kidding me? and yet it's true and we shall do it! month

BuLarPiWOAGetFilInTProMo - burning large piles of wood and getting filthy in the process month

DriCheBeWYoMo - drinking cheap beer with yokels month (see above)(and i don't mean my friends, in case y'all are reading this, i mean the party crashers, obv.)

SpenVaQuaOMoIOWIWComUnToChriMo - spending vast quantities of money in one week in a way completely unrelated to christmas month (more on that later)

and thus ends my post. if you think any of the above are fine ideas that need to be spread unto the masses like so much well aged manure, go forth, i dare ya!

le weekend

2010-11-15T12:40:00.004-07:00

friday: elitist snobbery (self proclaimed, joyously and repeatedly) over a delicious dinner with r & k (several bottles of plummy southern italian red might or might not have been consumed) followed by a cab ride home and as much emergency rehydration as possible in preparation for:

saturday and sunday: rubber boots, soot, ash, big piles of wood and scrub, cans of pork'n beans and some cheap beer. turns out our elitist snobbery makes for poor clothing choices when facing a large fire. who knew big name gore-tex and polar fleece were highly flammable? thank god for neighbours who lent us their farming clothes which were not. flammable that is.

all day saturday and sunday we tended to flames, logs, brush and all manner of smelly dirty things, knee deep in mud. there was something gloriously liberating in allowing myself to get absolutely filthy.

saturday night, we needed to stop in at wal-mart to pick up a pair of rubber boots for mr. monkey, and in one of the low points of the evening, i caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and had to burst out laughing. you know things are bad when you feel like you're underdressed for wal-mart. alas, there i was, covered in mud (top to bottom, quite literally), greasy hair mostly hidden under a stupendously ugly fleece cap, various colours of mud, beans and soot on my face, and...well...a trifle smelly.

today? muscle pain. a lot of muscle pain. and how was your weekend?

so...

2010-11-09T19:07:00.002-07:00

...should i write something? even if i have nothing to write?

oh, what the hell, something is bound to leak out of my brain and onto the keyboard if i just whack it enthusiastically enough. surely i have better chances (statistically, at least) than those monkeys we are waiting for to produce another shakespearean* oeuvre.

oh hell, i'm beat. i think this is all you'll get out of me tonight, but if anyone has any idea how to take two actual sugar pumpkins and turn them into an edible product (like pie, for instance), i'd be thrilled to hear about it. right now i have fallen in thrall to their rotund orange cuteness and am using them in a purely decorative manner. sooner or later, however, i must face my fear, scalp and eviscerate them and turn them into that very best of autumnal desserts. help.

*english, as much as i love you, i must say that one of these days i will leave you for a phonetic language. who the hell needs so many a's and e's in his name? who? and why?

now it all makes sense!

2010-11-04T21:27:00.003-07:00

read it and weep.

aggression - check!

speeding - check!

reduced inhibition (in the form of running off at the mouth or inappropriately sharing my innermost secrets with the interwebs) - check!

rocking at soccer - um...not so much.

babies, i think i've just figured out why i am the way i am.

thanks a lot, kitten!

polish is as polish does

2010-11-03T16:59:00.002-07:00

having had some time to lick my wounds and mend my broken pride, on friday last i girded my loins, screwed my courage to the sticking place, and made one more (and hopefully final) attempt to get the polish consulate to get my marriage to mr. monkey officially recognized in poland.

as i rode the bus to the ferry, death got on, but as it was nearing halloween, i did not take this as a bad sign. and indeed, all went well.

the bureauwench sported a bright blue wig, on which i commented brightly, the consulate was also entering into the spirit of the season by offering a large platter of one of my favourite polish confections, bird's milk (don't knock it till you tried it: it is a sort of chocolate covered better-than-a-marshmallow centre). more importantly, however, the papers i had with me proved to finally be the correct ones. hurray!

once the marriage is officially recognized in poland, i will be able to apply for a polish passport and the whole fantastic paperlicious bureau-rama can begin all over again. thank the good lord above the polish passport is good for a decade. i really would rather not have to spend any more time at the consulate than is absolutely necessary, bird's milk notwithstanding.

that whole autumnal thing

2010-11-02T23:00:00.005-07:00

the word for november, in polish, means something like "the month of falling leaves," a fact that was endlessly depressing to someone who spent almost 27 years living in northern alberta, a land where the month of falling leaves is september. late september, if you're lucky; early september, if it's real life we're talking about. hell, sometimes even late august, but we won't talk about that.

this is my second november on vancouver island and i must say i am utterly charmed by the idea of leaves falling in the month of falling leaves. true, some have already fallen during the sunny days of october, but many remain, and it is a glorious thing to have real leisurely autumn to enjoy and real spring to look forward to, one with crocuses in february and cherry blossoms in may, the way it ought to be.

don't get me wrong, i love alberta, and edmonton will always be my home, but i think there is something inherently wrong about living in a place so fundamentally unsuited to human habitation. and yes, there is the possibility that we will again find ourselves there in the near future (who the hell knows, what with mr. monkey's job), but i can tell you that having lived through 27 years of 6-month winters, i am through with snow. i am also done with autumn lasting a weekend and summer pouncing on the heels of a week-long spring, shorts-weather steamrolling through the streets where huge piles of snow are still sedately melting.

so for now, while we wait to hear about their plans for us, i will kick the fallen leaves, enjoying their toast-like scent; i will look at the sky peeking through the mosaic of golden maple leaves; i will marvel at the fact that one layer of clothing is still very much adequate and i will try to be philosophical about this whole seasonal thing.

what is the point?

2010-11-02T21:14:00.005-07:00

what is the point of the reverse phone number look up, to be precise.

mr. monkey took over my third world phone and got himself a new number with a third world plan* to match and allegedly gave the number to nobody. within two days he got two text messages. one was a poetic sidereal declaration of love, rife with misspellings. the second seemed to be a mangled marriage proposal. i certainly hope they were random: i'd be severely disappointed if mr. monkey had a thing going with some chick with poor spelling. (fake tits** and bad spelling would be unforgivable in my book.)

we attempted to reverse look up the number and got nothing. we called using our gtalk phone and got the voicemail of some guy. oooh..kay. (mr. monkey, is there something i should know?)

today, i have just received this text "come down to mr. mike's" by a mystery person to which i replied, understandably, "?"

their answer: "the bar at the hotel"

oh, ok. that makes it all clear. i have no idea who it is i would be meeting, in which bar, in which hotel, in which city, or even in which country. but hey, i'm taking the cold cream off my face and rushing out the door.

reverse phone number look-up? nothing.

(ok, i just googled it and it could be in duncan, coquitlam, red deer or detroit. so, whaddya think? should i? the closest one is only 45 minutes away from here and i'm certain the wine has already worked its way out of my system.)

by the way, if you have been texting me anonymously to invite me to mr. mike's for a drink, and are feeling ignored and unloved, i'm sorry.

*a bowl of rice a week and all the muddy cholera-riddled water you can fit in a rusty can

**not that i can tell from a text if someone has fake tits, but i would be extra disappointed to be abandoned for a pair of silicone hooters.

if i only had a brain!

2010-10-27T19:40:00.004-07:00

one of the problems couples encounter (at least i certainly hope other couples encounter this problem) is that once one partner exhibits a gift in a certain direction, the other partner feels liberated to completely slack off.

take me, for instance. since mr. monkey has a natural way with numbers, historical events and geography (i.e. how many poles killed in world war two or the population of vancouver) i have completely abdicated responsibility in this area. what's the population of canada, you might ask me. somewhere between 50 thousand and 32.5 billion. i mean, i know that's not precisely the case, and i know i really ought to have at least a general idea (ok, i have the general idea that canada's population is roughly that of poland, which always freaks out north americans who cannot conceive of that many people living that close together: "what do you mean not everyone has their own lawn mower? how can they live in such barbarity!?"). still, when you have your own personal google-man next to you, in some areas you tend to stop thinking for yourself.*

add to that my complete inability to make my brain remember certain things (i once had to make up a file on my desktop entitled fennel.txt, because i could not, for the life of me, remember the name of fennel. why i needed to is beyond me, since i have only recently started using it in my kitchen, but the frustration was very very real.)

case in point: we have a purveyor of fine quality sausages in our neighbourhood. he is a handsome young man from the former yugoslavia. and here is where it ends. all i know is that he is from that there part of the world. which particular part of yugoslavia he is from escapes me completely. i know i once made a monumental faux pas by asking him if he was from one and he, rather gently, told me he was from the other. you know, as in the mortal enemy side. like i'd just asked a jew if he was a nazi german. or something. and you'd think that being mortified by this would have indelibly etched his ethnicity in my brain. no such luck. mr. monkey, a lover of history, has had to (repeatedly) give me a crash course in the who's who of the serbian/croatian/bosnian thing, and all i have managed to internalise so far is that the bosnians are (~~i'm certain~~ ~~i think~~ ~~probably~~ possibly) muslim. and that's that. i know he's not bosnian. he's one of the other two. whatever he is, his sausages are amazing!

the thing is that i get so annoyed by the geographical/historical ignorance often exhibited by north americans ("belgium...that's in europe, right?"**) that i really hate exhibiting it myself. so i just buy my sausages and shut the hell up.

*and lest you think this is all one sided, just ask mr. monkey where the coffee grinder lives. no, really, ask him. he has NO idea.

**actual quote, i kid you not, from one studying education. another reason to be thankful for childlessness.

the old soap trick

2010-10-25T19:02:00.004-07:00

while watching a disturbing scene on twin peaks* last night wherein a man put a bar of soap in a sock, in preparation for beating his wife:

mr. monkey: you watch out, woman! i've just gotten my inspiration! you misbehave and i'll put soap in a sock, too!

moi: ...

mr. monkey: ...except i'll use liquid soap.

*yes, i realise i am the only person of my generation who did not watch it when it came out due, most likely, to some ridiculous born-again-christian** qualms.

**yes, i do realise it's hard to believe. still, it's true.

october kippered pics

2010-10-24T20:00:00.008-07:00

this is the one about the things

2010-10-24T16:34:00.005-07:00

on friday, i drove my parents to the airport after a week-long visit. for all my fears and trepidations,* the visit was a joyous one, filled with much passionate conversation,** generous wine consumption, walks, day trips, cookery and fantastic sunny weather. we showed them some of our favourite places and even managed to stare with wonder at a river filled with hundreds of spawning salmon. they, as pretty much all first time visitors to vancouver island, knew it would be nice, but had absolutely no idea at how spectacularly gorgeous this place really is.

i really do wish they lived closer and not more than halfway across canada. the perfect length for a visit is 4-5 days and with that distance it is hard to have a trip of less than a week before the end of which i get antsy. i get a craving for my own space, my own house, my own time. one of the nasty side-effects of being an only child...or my growing misanthropy.

it felt really good to cook and bake for my mom for once. her last visit to me was early last summer when i was all alone with a barely finished kitchen, after a year without, and i felt overwhelmed with the expectations of hosting not just a guest but a parental guest of the motherly variety. i fed her good fresh bread and very good cheese but i am fairly certain i did not cook once, and i have felt guilty over it for a while. now that i have my kitchen mojo back again, it was a breeze.

the weather, which had been stunning, deteriorated sharply after their departure, and i have been cocooning inside, listening to the sound of the rain, enjoying the feeling of autumnal grayness contrasted with the warmth of our quiet home. today i baked a banana-nut bread and mr. monkey has a big pot of chicken stock percolating on the stove. life is good.

*my mother and mr. monkey have a long fraught history that seems to be mostly over, but there are flashes on occasion and it twists me into an emotional pretzel. oh, family...

**driving on the highway and having a screaming fight about my father's perceived homophobia, thereby introducing him to that endearing phrase "jesus fucking christ" is, in most likelihood, not a safe thing to do. still, we got over it rather quickly.