Le Thief, C'est Chic

For the past few days, I've been on the cusp of a cold. Maybe a flu. It's not enough to be any one thing (and therefore keep me off work.) Instead it's just enough to make me feel mostly cruddy, even though I've tried to smother it with NeoCitran.

So I am medicating before Muay Thai with tea and a book. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, a collection of short mysteries by Maurice Leblanc, was purchased on Dan's recommendation. It's the perfect thing for this kind of mood. Lupin appeared in 1905 as a sort of French, deliciously felonious counterpoint to Sherlock Holmes, who so far has made at least one appearance in the stories. Holmes' abruptness - perhaps, to Leblanc, his quintessential Britishness - does not contrast favourably with Lupin's élan. 

I feel like I ought to read these with macarons in hand. Unfortunately the cafe only has muffins. How very Holmes-y of them.

Cats Vs Dogs

I never understood why parents hit their children until my current cat, Marvin, came into my life.

Aww, look at that face, the anime-large eyes, the little pink gumdrop nose... the only thing that's not pictured are his concentration-shattering howls of need. I am paying attention to him: this is awful. I am not paying attention to him: this is WORSE.

Now here's my dog, Smitty, calm and content in the knowledge that his is the best life. EVER. Food, companionship, more food for providing companionship: it's all great. His biggest concern was when the phone would ring, and he would vociferously defend his flock from the cordless menace. But now my parents have cellphones. The threat is over. It is time to rest, and sleep, and occasionally sigh.

My cat would prefer to continue meow-howling - meowling - forever. I bought a spray bottle and now his favourite game is to meow, wait for me to grab the bottle, then see if he can sprint faster than the spray. Guess what: he can.

So it would seem that I have a clear favourite in the eternal battle between cat and dog. Sweet, selfless dog, vs. selfish, possible mentally unstable cat. Dog is god.

Just as I was writing this post though, Marvin hopped up on the end of my bed and quietly watched me type. Every morning I wake up to find him spooning me, content to be dragged into my arms like a bag of cat parts and squeezed like a stuffed bear. His cuddly nature is the one thing that has stopped me from punting him out of the window on oh so many sleepless nights. I'm not a dog person, or a cat person, I'm an animal person. And I'm in desperate need of a really good lint brush.

Domestic Tuesday: Oktobock

I love fall, or at least I do once the fall rush is over. When my customers ebb from complaining that their textbooks or coursepacks aren’t in the store, to complaining to other people that they can’t finish their papers on time, I can finally enjoy the season. Fall colours, wool-wearing weather, and so many exciting new beers on the shelves.

I had my eye on the Beau’s All Natural Oktoberfest Pack for a while. Can you tell why?

No, it’s not because I need an iron. See a few tentacles? Perhaps 24 of them? Unusually intelligent, sometimes poisonous, with two-thirds of their nervous system in their arms instead of their head, the octopus is my favourite animal. The pack’s Oktobock featured a red one on the label (I'm holding it in my left hand.) I had missed the Oktobock last year, but I wouldn’t let it get away this year, and so I picked up a pack for a friend’s board game party.

The Oktobock was the first thing I poured. To be worthy of the octopus, it had to be good, right?

Well, imagine my disappointment when it tasted of… jujubes. Wine and jujubes. But as somebody pointed out, I was pouring it into a wine glass, which had just been drained of red wine.

Yes, I am the least classy glassware user out there.

So I drained that glass and gave it a second shot. It still tasted fruity, and not in a way I appreciated. I love the complexity of beers with fruit notes, but this one ended up somewhere between medicinal and candy-like. With enough glasses (no one wanted to share), the 7% ABV eventually kicked in and my opinion improved marginally. I'm willing to give it a second chance, but I suspect it will never be my favourite Beau's offering.

And so I’ve learned: never judge a beer by its label. No matter how cute it may be.

Code Red: Of Periods and Stupidity

If you’re one of my male relatives, please stop reading now. You know who you are, and you know that you once had to be educated on the differences between a pad and a tampon, so save yourself while you still have the chance.

Other people: DEAR GOD, MENOPAUSE CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH.

I used to be a pad-only girl, having always been a little wary of the little white torpedoes. Nine out of 10 health food store clerks would have agreed with my stance. Read some of their literature, and I may as well be sticking a lit cigarette up my cooter, cancer-wise. Not that they like pads any more. If tampons are like cigarettes for your vadge to the Diva Cup and Lunapad-ers, then wearing pads is like sitting on top of ultra-absorbant uranium.

 Still, I’ll plug it up before exercise, their advice be damned.

And when a grocery store was inexplicably out of my preferred brand, OB, I ended up with some ridiculous Kotex product, complete with colourful plastic applicators. I guess my vagina has a preference. OB doesn’t even have applicators, but I had used them before. And yet I couldn’t work these. Day 1: FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Day 1, Take 2: FAILURE TO LAUNCH. And on, and on, with me grumbling all the while about the (likely cisgendered male) idiot who had designed these useless plastic monstrosities, when I would just have to nudge the tampon in there with my fingers ANYWAY, so why not just skip the MIDDLE WOMAN, because it's not like my vagina is more of a blue than a green.

And then, as I used the sixth-to-last tampon, it dawned on me. I had to pull one part of the applicator out until it clicked, and then I would finally have a useful product. SUCCESSFUL DEPLOYMENT.

Hopefully this is the last grade 6 sex ed lesson I'll have to learn this year.

Cold Hands, Warm Wool

This year, summer didn't slowly fade to fall. Instead, one night somebody went in and switched the heat off. I went to bed wearing shorts, and woke up searching for my wool socks and flannel pyjamas. 

Productivity has plummeted. The only place I can stand to be in the house is in my bed, as the bean filling in a blanket burrito. I want to keep my hands under the covers at all times, so typing is hard. Saying I'm worried about frostbite is hyperbole, but Christ- you can tell it's cold when the cats huddle with me for warmth, instead of howling outside of my door like the fuzzy little monsters they are. 

And so there hasn't been that much writing happening at my house lately. However, I've finally picked up the knitting needles after a long, long hiatus. What made me put them down for months remains a mystery, but I know what's prompting me to pick them back up: my ice block feet.

Protagitron at 26

I turned 26 on Wednesday, got far too drunk, and decided that my life needed to change in some nebulous, yet major, way.

In other words: a standard birthday when you're in your 20s, life crisis and all.

When I was looking to the future on Wednesday night, I was convinced that this undefined shift would cause my apartments to always be perfectly curated and my wit forever sparkling. Now in the sober light of a Friday night, I'm beginning to think I was wrong to wish for that. Because now I'm thinking about the past. As in the past year, in which I:

• watched two of my friends get married
• moved twice
• switched jobs
• ended up in the hospital for two weeks
• threw myself into dating with all of the frenzied pace of an 80s training montage
• finally slowed that down
• got over my fear of Toronto biking
• had a falling out with one of my best friends

Perhaps it's better that this major shift never happens. Or waits until I'm thirty. Twenty-five felt like all I could handle and more, like a turning point that will mark my life into a "before" and "after" point, no matter how much I tell myself that mine - like anyone's - is just a continuum. And so I hope my apartment continues to be a bit of a sty, and my wit often lacking. Because I hope this year doesn't throw me - too much.

Biking in Toronto: The Much Better Way

A few weeks ago, I started commuting by bike to work on a semi-regular basis. And every time I leave the bike to squeeze myself onto the TTC, I regret it. On my bike, I bike with danger. Cars hate me, pedestrians are indifferent to my presence, and I know so little about my bike I rode three times on an open quick release. The only thing between me and an early death is a charmingly awkward helmet which makes me look I have encephalitis. 

And yet - I love it. Here I am, riding down the hill near Dupont and Bathurst. Riding? I meant flying. I am a flying mushroom in my giant grey helmet, look at me go. And yes, there I am lurching off my bike to walk it up a hill, because my legs stubbornly refuse to do that thing where you stand up and ride for extra power. I don't care. Because there I am not: getting a purse to a face on the streetcar, waiting for a bus that will never come, or peeling myself out of somebody's armpit to disembark at St. Andrew station. I support public transit in the same theoretical way I support open relationships and vegan diets. It's a good thing. But it is also a terribly annoying, smelly good thing, at least as implemented in Toronto. 

That Toronto's public transit is craptacular is not an original thought. And yet, an entire industry of TTC-themed swag exists. T-shirts with streetcars on them! Button pins of the subway walls!! Art with more streetcars on it!!! Bus-themed... well, buses get no love because they're buses. And yet, I'm sure I've spoken too soon, and somewhere someone is crocheting a TTC bus to stuff and sell. I refuse to remind myself of what is often the worst part of my day, and so I am left button-less. Though I also don't buy any of the bike-themed tchotchkes either, because I don't feel like I've earned it yet. I'll get the cruiser-printed skirt when I know how to pump air into my own tires.

I guess that makes me a cyclist, though I'll never change in some ways. A few weeks ago an Audi (of course: it's always an Audi or an Acura) really crowded me on Bathurst. When I caught them at a red light, I did not hit their car with my bike lock, or yell, or do anything except tap politely on their window and say - once the driver had rolled it down: "Um, you kind of really crowded me back there, so if you could give cyclists more space next time, that would be nice. Yeah..." And then I biked away, into the day, the mushroom-headed cycling avenger.

I Love Bloodsport

I introduced Dan to Bloodsport last night, which might just be my favourite movie. I'll say that The Life and Death and Colonel Blimp or Raiders of the Lost Ark on dating profiles and in public, but secretly my heart beats only for Bloodsport, and its amazing montages:

Watching Bloodsport always makes me want to do two things. First, take up muay thai, because even though the muay thai guy (Paco) doesn't win, he looks like he has a lot of fun losing:

I have always been more of a kicker than a lover, or an anything-else-kind of fighter, and so muay thai really appeals to me. Particularly if it offers me the chance to kick JCVD repeatedly in the ribs. Oh, and second: ban all of these briefs so that JCVD can never assault my eyes again:

Yikes. Sadly, my first dream has never come to pass, probably because no invitations to highly secretive underground martial arts competitions seem to be forthcoming. But the second dream lives on.

Pillow Blog: Supposedly Healthy Things I've Done Recently, and their Worrisome Side Effects

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another.

1. Commuter biking: In spite of (hopefully) increased physical health, my mental health has taken a dip as I'm now convinced everyone either hates me (best case scenario) or wants me dead (taxi cab driver scenario)
2. Reducing coffee intake: Productivity down to historic lows; I may, in fact, be sleepworking through the first three hours of my job every day now
3. Meditating before sleep: Oh look, I'm learning to centre myself after a long day at work. Oh look my blood pressure's dropping. Oh look, I'm somewhere else and NOW I CAN'T SLEEP BECAUSE THERE'S NO STRANGER TALKING IN MY EAR

Thoughts on a Wedding

After a busy week, and today's civic holiday, I finally have time to sit down, finish an opened beer leftover from, God knows, Saturday, and tell you all about my best friend's wedding. 

Spoiler: I didn't try and break it up so I could marry the best friend myself. Any similarities between me and Julia Roberts stop at the curly hair. Also, my friend Katie is a great person, and her now-husband Martin is a lovely guy, and they're so perfect together, they finally made me understand why Shakespearean comedies have to end with a wedding. 

I left Canada at 9am in the morning on a Thursday, managing to get on a plane with my bridesmaids dress even though my mother was convinced one, or all of the following things would happen: I would forget to wake up, I would forget my passport, I would forget my dress or I would pack it in my checked luggage and the airline would forget to put it on the plane. None of that happened. The flight was all of ten minutes late, and my greatest concern during the time was why Last Tango in Paris was one of the movies you could choose to watch in your seat - did international flights get the Salo: 120 Days of Sodom option? 

Katie met me at the airport, like the world's most adorable argument against the accuracy of the Bridezilla stereotype. She was excited for the ceremony, because who doesn't like cake and sparkly shit (raw vegans; the Amish.) But she also didn't approach it like we were storming the beaches of Normandy, and one flubbed toast would mean the fascists won. Though I finally appreciated the idea of a wedding rehearsal. Before, I figured they were just for people who had worked dry ice and live doves into proceedings, and you could just stumble up to the altar otherwise. No. At least not with bridesmaids, and not in a church, where hymns are going to be sung. I appreciated knowing when I was supposed to return to my pew, and when I was supposed to march up the aisle, or else there would have been a lot of awkward grinning. 

Though that did come later, at the groom's dinner. Katie and I used to be roommates in university, and our "relationship" was also the most satisfying one I had then, everything else being hilariously, cosmically stunted. Like, crushes-on-profs stunted. I would have gladly been a part of that hookup culture the media is frenzied for, but no one would drunkenly bang me, no matter how much flavoured vodka I drank. The closest I got to anything was with this boy named J, where it was 100% emotional and, now, 100% embarrassing. 

And there he was, next to me and the pasta dishes, asking if I wanted a hug. It came with a gingerly administered back pat, courtesy of yours truly. I laughed about it with Katie later, though there was a bitter taste of nostalgia in my mouth. Years years back, when I was running up my phone bill talking to this guy, I was convinced I would run into him and his girlfriend at Katie's wedding. Except at the time I thought it would be a different groom, and I would still be in love with this guy. And here we were. Some of it had come true, but not the essential parts, and we were older, wiser and so much happier. 

The next day was a blur of hairstyling and photographs, until the ceremony. Katie looked beautiful, wearing a spectacular beaded dress, a veil from her great-grandmother, and her glasses. I'm not religious, and I'm also probably not the marrying kind, but I almost cried when the priest introduced Martin and Katie as a married couple. The ceremony might not be for you, and the political and sociological freight of a wedding is imposing, but the idea of commitment and growth is still there, under everything. And so I smiled instead, and even danced with J at the reception.