Howl! A Musical, Starring Marvin

Various men have caused me trouble in my life, from unrequited crushes to condescending blowhards at parties, and yet my most consistent source of trouble is the male I call Marvin.

He's small, he's ginger, and he's a cat.

It's been about a year since I moved in with Dan, which means it's been about a year of regular howling from Marvin and equally consistent crying episodes from me. I tried the hormone spray, the hormone collar, and the hormone diffuser. I let him go outside, briefly, before forcing him back inside before a truck could turn him into an orange pancake, because his favourite outdoor pursuit was sunbathing on the road. Finally, there was the calming cat food and an endless parade of ever more expensive cat toys until I just turned to medication.

The first dosage level worked for a whole month.

But after the 3:30 am wakeup screeches resumed, I decided things had to change. I told my old roommate (she's responsible for my ownership of the cat, through a tale that's telenovela-complicated) that I was going to surrender him. She said she was sure that her cousin would take him in a week. The day before he was supposed to leave, the cousin backed out. Then, Marvin's previous owner was supposed to call me so he could go on a one-week trial with her. She never did. Finally, my friend's cousin expressed some interest, before cancelling the day she was supposed to visit him. I haven't heard from her since, and I have now resigned myself to the fact that we'll never be separated. I'll be dead in the cold, hard ground, while Marvin naps on my grave in the afternoon sun.

I still have the surrender forms I printed off the Toronto Humane Society website, and I fill parts out during idle moments at work. But I probably won't send them in. Though he still spends most of the day making sounds that are like the wail of a banshee crossed with the blare of a car alarm, he sleeps through the night. That's enough. And it only took one simple trick.

I doubled his medication dosage.

Pillow Blog: Thoughts I Had While Watching Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another. In this case, the thoughts I had while watching The Age of Ultron. Mild spoilers follow.

• "Remember when they used to hand the 3D glasses to you when they ripped your ticket? That was nice. It was almost as if you mattered, instead of having to root around in some battered cardboard boxes like a GARBAGE ANIMAL."
• "That freeze frame with all of the team members in action? Dumb. So very dumb."
• "Were movies always this loud?"
• "The next time Tony Stark makes a quip, I hope another character just walks up to him, swiftly kicks him in the nuts, and then walk away WITHOUT SAYING A WORD."
• "Hey, it's Linda Cardellini! Girl, you're everywhere this year!!"
• "This scene between Black Widow and the Hulk would be a lot more touching if the dialogue hadn't just implied that she was a monster because she was infertile. Guess the more birth control pills I take, the closer I tap dance over to the dark side."
• "I'm really concerned about all of these people in this African city that Iron Man and the Hulk are tearing apart, but I guess we can count on Tony to throw some money at the problem. Why did they ever give this guy a super suit? His most useful superpower is just great gobs of cash."
• "I'm sleepy. I want a nap."
• "Hawkeye is totally Giles and the Scarlet Witch is definitely a Buffy/Willow hybrid in this moment."
• "I hope I die like that, making a glib quip about my violent and impending death."
• "Won't the thousands of people displaced when Ultron turned their Eastern European city into a flying saucer need to be housed somewhere? Maybe one of the Avengers could superheroically monitor the water quality at the refugee camp??"
• "Ugh, I hope Vision saving Scarlet Witch doesn't mean we'll get a retread of their nutty love story from the comics in film form. Magic robot babies, and so on."
• "Can I still make the last train? No."

My Month-us Horribilis on the Bicycle

In happier times...

This winter felt like an endless concrete wasteland, with the exception of any time spent on the TTC, and then it was briefly a stinking jungle of sweat and GoreTex. So, you can imagine how happy I was to get my bike back a month or so ago. Bike freedom! The wind in my hair! Personal space! Being insulted by random drivers! Alright, the last one isn't so pleasant, but still. On the balance, cycling is better than transiting, and don't let a streetcar-themed hat or subway-printed tote bag fool you.

And then the universe decided to pop a squat on my happiness. First of all, I was horribly out of shape after a winter where my most active hobby was eating my feelings. My first ride was uphill, which quickly became a walk uphill. After a week of wondering if I was the slowest cyclist in Toronto (non-folding bike edition) I decided it needed a spring tuneup. 

But everyone else had decided the same thing, and so the bike spent a week in the shop. After I retrieved it, I had a glorious day and a half with my love. Everything was running perfectly, and the choir at the local Anglican church even burst into song as I pedalled by on my way to a friend's party via the Russell Hill bike path. I told Dan that, between the bicycle and the choral music, it was just like the opening of an Inspector Morse episode, and I half expected to turn up dead. 

Instead, on Monday, I had to solve The Mystery of Why the HELL Do I Have TWO Flat Tires? Because I live in Toronto, and I cycle, and the Sun and Star love publishing articles about the Menace II Society this makes me, my sense of persecution is overdeveloped. I called sabotage. Dan was less dramatic. His idea was that the shop just overfilled the tires.

We wheeled it to the local shop (a different one). There, three nice, young, and probably stoned men got really excited by my situation. "Double flaaaaaaaats" they drawled to each other. "Double fllaaaaats!" Twenty minutes later they were both fixed, the culprit identified as a piece of glass. From then on, I vowed never to call this shop "That Shifty Place", as I had done before, but "The Place that Looks Shifty, But Isn't."

A week later, I was texting my friend that I was late, but on my way, and should be there soon. "All hail the power of the bicycle!" I wrote, before I jumped on the bicycle and... nothing much happened. My chain was off, as another cyclist helpfully yelled out as he pedalled by. The chain guard, so helpful most days, wasn't being all that conducive to a roadside fix, which didn't stop me from trying. Instead, I gave up, walked it and my greasy hands to the closest bike shop (this would be yet another one) and threw myself on their mercy.

The heroes fixed it for free. "I'm not a hero," the guy insisted, "just a guy who works in a shop." Nope, he was a hero to me, and anyone else so inept with mechanics that they should probably just buy a car that's under warranty, and give up this cycling thing entirely. Oh well. There's always May. 

Pillow Blog: Paired Pros and Cons of Cohabitation

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

Dan and I have been living together for about nine months, and Marvin has still not stopped bitching about it. Like my extremely annoying but rather cute cat, cohabitation has been a mixed experience. In no particular order, here are some of the pros and cons of living together I've experienced so far:

• Dan works from home, so I can get him to pick up my holds at the library
• I have basically recreated my parents' relationship dynamics, which is weird and gross
• I now have access to Dan's impressive collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays
• My living room now has a shelf that functions as a shrine to dying technology, and I would really like to put an armchair there instead
• Regular warm body to cuddle up next to
• Regular obstacle to complete bed domination during sleep
• Dan's feelings towards the cat have improved
• Marvin's feelings towards us have worsened, and he now believes Dan and I have banded together to annoy him
• I now have a deep fryer, microwave, and popcorn popper
• Our kitchen isn't big enough for all of our kitchen crap
• Someone to talk to
• Someone who tries to kiss me when I'm trying to think
• Shared living costs
• Financial decisions must now also be shared
• Someone to watch Mad Men with
• Someone who refuses to watch Game of Thrones with me
• We can team up to make doughnuts together on a Sunday morning
• ... 
• ...
• There's no cons for that one

Overall, the pros are somewhat stronger than the cons, though the cat would beg to disagree.

The TMI Post: My Unreliable Body

I have never really trusted my body, but at least I felt like I knew it. That knowledge sometimes seemed like a collection of limitations, where I catalogued the things I couldn't reach, the dance moves I couldn't do, and the many yoga poses my body refused to hold. But there was something reliable about its many quirks and failings. I rarely thought about what was below my skin, but when I did, it was along the lines of a classroom anatomical model; the cutaway kind, where you can take the organs out and snap them back in again. Though the skin itself was idiosyncratic (a classy way of saying imperfect), I figured that the organs beneath were ideally shaped, all in their place, and practically made of plastic.

So it was disconcerting to find out last Monday that part of this system had gone rogue.

But let's start a few days before that, when you would find me on my back in a windowless basement room. An efficient Eastern European technician is in the middle of jimmying a rod back and forth in my vagina. I feel like a human joystick; the indignity of having to wear one of those stupid backless hospital robes compounded by the fact that I have to do so while an ultrasound wand is shoved up my hoo-ha. I am somewhat convinced that there will be a fire alarm, and I will have to waddle out into the street with the equipment in situ. This doesn't make any sense, of course, but that irrational fear is soon eclipsed when Magda the Impaler lets out an "hmmm."

A hmm when you're getting an ultrasound is never a comforting sound. Perhaps the technician can't get the ultrasound to work, or she's letting her mind wander towards dinner, but there's one word you start to think of when she grunts, and that word is cancer. "You're being irrational," you think, "it's far more likely just to be fibroids, or cysts, so stop being a drama queen- OH MY GOD, I did wait too long to write that novel."

But I won't hear that from Magda. Instead, the analysis will come from my family doctor a few days after, when I'm trying to shop for groceries on my lunch break. And the news is good! They don't think it's cancer at all. Trying to compare prices on tomato paste while fielding this call didn't seem so foolish when I heard that. But then the news turns good-ish, quickly. There's an it, and it's a cyst that's about 4-5cm in size. I foolishly tell myself that's really not that large--we're not talking 4-5 inches here--until I actually take out a ruler back at the office, and realize that 4-5cm is bigger than any mystery growth in my body has any right to be.

With the knowledge of my >4cm hop-on ("you're gonna get some hop-ons"), I've started to wonder what else my body could hide. For the first few days after that call, I had trouble sleeping. I would imagine the cyst industriously growing as I rested, and my body started to seem alien, like somebody had sewn a Lovecraftian horror into a people suit. Or perhaps I was just feeling alienated. This sac made me confront how little I really knew about my body, though I lived in it and operated it. My mind suddenly felt like a guest.

Since then, my conversations with other folks have assured me that large cysts or even multiple cysts are not uncommon. Some are even functional. I have another one of those invasive ultrasounds scheduled a few weeks from now, and I'm sure that after they'll either decide to excise my hop-on or leave it in peace. What should be comforting is that it's not what that I first thought when the technician went "hmm." My plans and goals, although a little fuzzy, still require the use of a body that's fairly healthy. I still have that, at least for now. I thought of a proverb when I left the medical imaging centre: "Man plans, God laughs." But more applicable to me then was a small edit: "Man plans, cells divide."

Domestic Sunday: Beer and Cookies

I've decided to spare you all another knitting post, since the blue baby sweater has already been yanked out once, so progress on that front is sadly minimal.

Instead, here are some cookies. I've been stringing Dan along with the promise of more of these maple pecan buttons, after I had made some for an office cookie exchange in December. Thursday I finally made good on that promise, and here they are:

The recipe is delicious, simple, and yet somewhat tedious, which is probably why I delayed making them. However, if you have the time, to make the dough, chill it, roll it into balls, bake those, cool them a little bit, roll the balls around in icing sugar, cool them completely, and then roll those suckers around in icing sugar again; well, you can find the recipe in Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen. I had typed up a condensed version yesterday, but then Blogger ate my post, and I'm too bitter to try again. The book isn't out of print, like I once thought; Amazon has some paperback copies available, so you should really buy one now.

But if anyone asks nicely, I'll try to send the recipe via email.

This week's beer is actually from last Tuesday. I had no commitments that night (except to the cat), so I decided to stop by Thirsty and Miserable on my way home. There's a short list of bars I keep that are free from pretension, without falling over the line into crusty. Thirsty and Miserable is on that list; so are Hole in the Wall, Wise Bar, and Dave's. These are the sort of places where you can read a book at the bar, as I did with a pint of Kensington Brewing Company's Hops & The Grain Merchant. I really liked this beer, and if it's still on draught somewhere near you, give it a try. It has a hoppy profile, but the rye and dark malts keep it complex and quite drinkable. There's a danger in that though. I'm not sure what the ABV is, but I do know I was feeling pretty good when I left the bar, and this was just after one pint.

Big City Blues

I never really stuck to one dream job in my youth, but my ultimate goal was constant: get the hell out of Guelph and live in a big city. That Guelph was, comparatively, not all that small or boring was a discovery I was not prepared to make. It wouldn't have fit into the narrative I was attempting to write for myself, of a provincial, lumpy girl about to transform into a sleek and extremely cosmopolitan woman.

This meant going to school in Montreal and eventually moving to Toronto, though I've remained ever-lumpen throughout all of those moves. And yet, with my three year anniversary of Toronto residence having come and gone, I can confidently say that I've achieved my goal.

AND, OH DEAR GOD, I NEED TO LEAVE.

Why? Because Toronto is making me into a bad person. Or rather, Toronto is stripping away the veneer of sweetness I built up in smaller spaces, to reveal the angry hosebeast within.

Almost everything I experience in the city seems to go into my ledger of disrespect. People who walk two abreast and expect me to press myself against parked cars just so that they can pass. People who block the doors on subways. People who sit on the outside seat of public transit so their purse can have a window view, even during rush hour. TTC people who are rude. In fact, let's just say that the entire TTC experience is generally a giant checkmark in the "Go to Hell" column.

Because I'm young, female, and evidently unwealthy, I'm easy to ignore. However, because of most of those things I am also not actively avoided, and so the daily friction of interaction in this city is starting to take its toll. I've even found myself preparing to be irritated by someone, taking a certain gleeful joy in the thought that this time--THIS TIME--I am going to assert myself and stand up for my right to occupy space in this city! And then I'm actually disappointed when they step aside, and hold the door open for me, or even say sorry.

I started to reflect on my fermenting rage-ahol last Thursday, after an encounter with a TTC employee. I was trying to get to an appointment, was told my one TTC employee to use one gate only to get yelled out by another. While I would like to say that I responded with both kindness and yet an unwavering sense of self-respect, I did not. Instead, I was rather rude and snippy. 

And then the rest of my ride was filled with guilt.

See, the issue is that I have all of the rage inside me, but not quite enough self-confidence to keep the flames a-burning. Instead, I'm tossed between resentment and regret. "Oh! That person thought I could just be bodychecked off the sidewalk! OH! But now they think I'm mean because I glared at them. There's a stranger that thinks poorly of me. WHATEVER SHALL I DO?" What I should do: move to a smaller town. I'll have wide open spaces, homes I could potentially afford, and neighbours who express their aggression with savage gossip instead of face-to-face confrontation. Hooray!

Domestic Wednesday: More Knitting, Some Hometown Brewing

With the baby blanket winging its way to Colorado, I decided to try some new baby knitting. I already had some yarn on hand, six balls of the now-discontinued Patons Baby Bamboo, so I just had to pick a pattern. Generally, I like to knit baby stuff in bright, gender-neutral colours. This is a matter of personal aesthetics and, to a lesser degree, personal politics. I'm ambivalent enough about the gender binary to find the choice between colour-blasting your baby pink or blue to be a little... stark.

BUT. I also didn't want my friend to have to field any sass from strangers who assumed her baby had to be a boy because of the colour of their wee cardigan. So I'm trying to find middle ground with the Baby Valentine sweater, though so far I've only managed to screw up the increase rounds. This makes me wary of the lace that's coming. We'll see.

I also went back to my hometown, Guelph, this past weekend. They have a new-ish craft brewery, Royal City Brewing, which warranted a field trip. I had tried some of their beers at previous Society of Beer Drinking Ladies events though, and had mixed results. But the brewery surprised me. I enjoyed everything they poured from the taps, even the one fermented with kombucha. Which, as an aside, I can't imagine a more Guelph-like beer than one with freaking kombucha in it, unless they also threw in some grass from Hillside and a loaf of With the Grain bread during the mash.

A particular standout was the Smoked Honey, which found the right balance between smokey and sweet, and was tasty both from the cask and from the keg. I bought a bottle of it, along with a bottle of the 100 Step Stout, which I poured for myself on St. Patrick's Day. I didn't like it as much as the honey beer--this one was a little too thin--but it was fine too. And now I have another reason to go back to Guelph, besides my dad's coffee and my mom's advice.

Domestic Monday: Big Bad Baby Blanket and Endless Cider

After endless rows of stockinette and seed stitch, the Big Bad Baby Blanket is done and ready for a trip to Colorado.

And the baby isn't even born yet! This almost never happens when I knit for a baby. Usually they're saying their first words just as I'm casting off.

In spite of the time crunch, I loved knitting this. I knew the Koigu would be soft and squishy knit with a single strand, but doubled? Its texture makes me want to knit an adult-sized version, then quit my job so I can spend all day rolling around on it. Fortunately, the cost of Koigu keeps that dream out of reach. My only frustration was realizing, after too many rows had gone by to easily fix it, that one strand of yarn had been dropped on at least two stitches. The mistakes are barely noticeable; they're tearing me up inside.

As for this week's local beverage selection, bottle after green plastic bottle of u-brew cider kept me hydrated while knitting. My Christmas gift to my brother was booking cider-making at Fermentations! (exclamation point theirs.) It was less hands-on than I expected, but I'm not going to complain when we were left with 44 half-litre bottles of the stuff, which we split equally. We chose a Normandy-style cider, and it is very dry and wine-like. It reminds me a bit of the Brickworks cider you can find around Toronto. Sadly, it looks like Dan and I have almost finished off our stash. We have one last bottle to drink. Then I should probably borrow that juicer, get my one gallon fermenter back, and try some experimental small batches of cider. If the experiments don't kill me, I'll report back to you.

BC Dreamin'

If you haven't gathered from the sheer level of bitching on social media, parts of North America have been really, really cold over the past few weeks. Seasonal lows. Frozen pipes. A pale rider: and his name that sat on him was Death, and so on.

I've been surviving as best I can, with wool socks, subway tokens, and warm thoughts of a return to British Columbia. It didn't help that Quill and Quire seemed to present the perfect out a few weeks ago. Galliano Island Books wanted a part-time bookseller.

Why, I thought, I could be that part-time slinger of literature!

While going from a full-time to part-time job may seem like a demotion to some, this one isn't. At least not in my mind. It would be going to a part-time job on Galliano-freaking Island. That's like working cash in paradise. Not quite perfection, but as close as you can get without also having health benefits or an RRSP contribution plan. There would also be books and, one would hope, a discount on those books.

I even started to develop a plan to supplement my part-time income. Rent would be fairly inexpensive, as I was planning to purchase and then live out of a Delica van. Even if the Delica was more expensive than a cozy little apartment. Would that apartment be able to drive me to the beach, or come with a rocking bullbar? Doubtful.

The Delica could also become the manufacturing centre of my second source of income, Marty's Foraged Jams and Preserves. BC loves that stuff. All I would have to do was to come up with a full line of flavours that forced local delicacies into increasingly bizarre couplings and retailed for $15 (open to a barter system though). Suggested varieties: blackberry and seaweed, cattail and spruce tips, currant and pot from the neighbour's grow operation.

I described this plan to people. They laughed, I laughed. I was emphasizing a certain BC skillshare mania for effect, though it probably applies to about 3% of the BC population. I never applied for the job. But. But, underneath the absurdity of the foraged jam operation (which would probably lead to a Delica-shaped inferno in the middle of Galliano Island) is a genuine longing for British Columbia. I've always wondered if I made a mistake moving back east. I wonder a little more when it's the coldest February in Toronto in over a century, of course. But, even in spring, I would probably move back if I was given reason enough to do it, or full-time hours.