Ms. Titswiggle's Helpful Hints

Fresh Air?

2009-04-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

Ms. T is walking along the avenue, going to pick up lunch and minding her own business. She is basking in the sunshine of one of the first genuinely warm spring day this year. It is glorious out and Ms. T is enjoying her walk until she gets stuck behind some guy who may or may not be homeless but is almost certainly quite a bit crazy. He is dressed head to toe in Montreal Canadiens gear and is pulling one of those crazy people carts along behind him. Ms. T. dodges left then right but there are other people on the sidewalk and her efforts are foiled. If you've read other posts here, you know that at this point, Ms. T. is going a bit crazy and is deeply annoyed that her natural pace is being compromised by all these people who can’t figure out how to use a sidewalk. Ms. T. takes a deep breath and tells herself to calm down. What's a few seconds more? Is she really in such a rush? Can she not just take a moment to slow down and enjoy the beautiful day? Why worry? Be happy. At this very moment, Ms. T. spots an opening and sees that she will shortly have passed the fellow and will be on her merry way. As she steps aside to pass the slow-walking nutter ahead of her, he suddenly unleashes a very loud, unmistakable toot. As she finally scoots past him through the wafting stench of his flatulence, Ms. T. reflects that at least when she is being her natural impatient and aggressive self, she doesn not get farted on by random loons. She promptly decides that is the last time she will try to talk herself out of her personality. The world just smells better at a faster pace.

Times is hard - do you have to make them harder?

2009-02-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

Ms. T. has been quiet lo these many years. You may ask yourself if it's because her life is now all sunshine and roses and she therefore has nothing to complain about. If you asked yourself that, then you probably don't know Ms. T.

No, her cynical ways have not been reformed. Ms. T is as bitter as ever. However, this week, Ms. T. is in recruiting mode and has been looking to hire someone and the results of this endeavour have driven Ms. T. back to this site where she may spew her rage into the ether.

Ms. T. was certain that in this economic climate, it would not be difficult to fill the position. Although the role requires specific skills, it isn't terribly senior and those skills don't require an extensive education. So Ms. T. polished off a job description and posted the job to a recruitment website. Within moments of posting the role, the resumes started pouring in and, consequently, Ms. T.'s vitriole started pouring out.

Now Ms. T. recognizes that these are difficult times and that you might be trying to distinguish yourself from the 45 other resumes received within the same hour as yours. However, Ms. T. suggests you spend a bit more time thinking about how you might be doing that. She suggests you not do it by being an ass. Ever helpful, Ms. T. will tell you what not to do based on some of the wonderful submissions she's received in the past few days.

Don't start your email with the line: "Do you have what it takes to be my next employer?" This may prompt your potential employer to think, as Ms. T. did, that they probably don't and to immediately delete your email without actually viewing your resume.
Don't send an email without an attached resume saying "tell me what the salary range is because I don't want to waste my time." Ms. T. doesn't want to either so she deleted your email without responding.
Don't have a ponderous quote at the base of your email expounding on your life philosophy. Ms. T. has "Quote of the Day" on her home page and has already read your sentimental drivel. She feels no more enlightened than she did before she opened your email except that she now knows you are an asshole. Try to remember that you are not better or smarter or kinder or more perceptive because you can quote Gandhi or Buddha. What you are, quite simply, is pretentious. The only helpful information Ms. T. has gleaned from this is that you have sufficient computer skills to cut and paste.
Don't sign your email with "Namaste" - see above - also, Ms. T. may schedule an interview with you simply so she can punch you in the stomach.
Don't submit a resume saying "I could really use the experience." If 3 years of experience is requested, what you need is of little import to Ms. T. or any other potential employer.
Get a professional sounding email address. Don't send your resume from ipeealot@X or mrs.smith@y or lovesex@z. These addresses say too much about you. They tell Ms. T. that you are a freak and that she doesn't want to talk to you once, let alone every day.
Don't send a short email and attach your cover letter forcing me to open a document just to find out why you think you are qualified. Why can't you just paste your brilliant thoughts into your email and save Ms. T. the extra step of opening your letter? Ms. T. thinks it might be because you can't think yourself out of a box and she therefore doesn't want to work with you.

Ms. T. realizes that this is a tough time and that you really want to find a job so she sympathizes. She is not completely immune to the trials of the long and occasionally devastating process of job hunting. She herself went through the process not long ago and the wounds inflicted are still fresh for her. Be assured she has your best interests at heart. Because of her warm feelings towards you, she wants to leave you with this helpful thought:

Keep the faith - Jon Bon Jovi

Sleep Study

2007-06-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

It’s pretty clear that Baby T has not read any sleep books. If she had, she’d know that she’s supposed to wake up in the morning between 6AM and 7AM. That she’s supposed to take a nice long nap at 9AM and then another nice long one at 1PM and then go to sleep without protest between 6PM and 8PM. To be fair to Baby T, she’s only five months old and I’m pretty certain she can’t read yet. But still, if the sleep book says that’s what is supposed to happen, then who am I, a mother for only five months, to question it?

And yet, I question it. The sleep book says not to be distracted by crying - to let the baby cry for up to an hour in protest over a nap. Have you ever heard a baby cry for an hour? To be honest, I haven’t. I can’t let it happen. Baby T doesn't cry that often, but when she does, it makes me jump. Sometimes, I fear I’m ruining my child. After all, the book says that if good sleep habits aren’t established early, that bad sleep habits like insomnia could persist throughout the child’s life and into adulthood. Babies who don’t sleep well can’t learn. Toddlers who don’t sleep well won’t be as intelligent as those who do. And so on and so on and so on goes the guilt of motherhood.

The other day, I heard a story about a mother who climbs into her daughter’s crib to help her fall asleep. Every night, she hands her daughter a special pillow and a special blanket and then climbs into bed with her. Her daughter is more than a year older than Baby T. The hardest part, the mom says, is getting back out.

So, while I may occasionally feel like I’m not doing the right thing when it comes to Baby T’s sleep schedule (or anything else for that matter), I try to remind myself that there are worse things I could do. And, the simple truth is, although I haven’t tried climbing into her crib, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t fit.

Bad Luck Clothes

2007-06-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

Before baby T was born, my sister, whose daughter is ten-months older than mine, gave me bags upon bags of baby clothes. There were girl clothes and boy clothes and either/or clothes. There were hats and shoes and sleepers and tights and dresses and overalls and diaper shirts and grobags and things I’d never even heard of. There were so many cute little things that it was a bit overwhelming. It didn’t seem possible that a baby could ever wear that many clothes. It didn’t seem possible until I actually had a baby and realized how many sleepers and diaper shirts a baby can dirty in one day. It didn’t seem possible until I discovered how often a new parent does laundry even with so many baby clothes to choose from.

One day, when Sasha was about eight weeks old, I put her in a sweet green sleeper and told my sister what baby T was wearing. Her response was “ah, yes, that was a bad luck outfit.” A what? What on earth is a bad luck outfit? I thought she was crazy.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that there is indeed such a thing as a bad luck outfit. Baby T’s bad luck outfit is the cutest little one piece shorts and t-shirt. It’s pale yellow and blue and has a green frog, a green turtle and a few butterflies on it. It’s adorable. The first time she wore it, she woke up from a nap covered from the edge of her diaper up to her neck. Mr. T was the one who went in to get her and he needed to call in reinforcements. It was a disaster. I soaked it and washed it and miraculously, the stains came out and the frog and turtle lived to see another day. The next time she wore it, she was sitting in her Bumbo looking super-cute while I put away the groceries. It occurred to me that it had been a while since I’d changed her diaper so I picked her up and went to the change table. When I got there, I realized that something awful had happened – something that can only be described as a shit storm. The change table was covered in the stuff, and the Bumbo was too, within seconds her foot was contaminated and before I could do anything to stop her, she’d grabbed her foot and then put her hand to her face. She had it on her chin, her hands, her thigh, and both feet. I used up a record number of wipes and wet face cloths to get her clean. I briefly considered throwing the whole change table in the garbage but stopped myself. I soaked and washed and, once more, the outfit was saved.

Today, it’s warm out and it’s the perfect day for shorts and a t-shirt. It’s the perfect day for the frog and turtle. So, this morning, after her first nap, I got ready to change her diaper and put her in the bad luck outfit. It turns out that the baby doesn’t even need to have the clothes on her body for the bad luck to rub off. As I removed the diaper and reached up to grab a new one, baby T started to poop, and poop and poop some more. The diaper shirt she’d been wearing was under her so it caught the mother load. The damage caused in those ten seconds was surreal. I had to stop and strategize. Clearly, something had to be done but it had to be the right thing. The wrong thing would only make things worse. I cleaned Baby T and threw all of the wipes into the diaper shirt. I wrapped it in a bundle and placed it on the edge of the change table. I then used some wet face cloths to make sure Baby T was decontaminated. I put her in a new diaper and then put her in her crib while I dealt with the rest of the mess. As I left the room, gingerly holding the offensive bundle in my hand and heading straight for the garbage, I swear I saw that frog wink at me. That's it, unless I can get myself a matching HazMat suit, she’s not wearing it again.

Noises Everywhere

2007-06-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

“Good night moon. Good night air. Good night noises everywhere.”

If only it were that simple. Having a baby is a magical, beautiful thing. Their cuteness is boundless and a new parent can spend hours on end staring into their baby’s eyes marveling at their perfection. But as much as you love your baby and as much as you treasure the time you spend with her, I can’t imagine any parent who doesn’t breathe a little sigh of relief when their baby is sleeping peacefully. Those precious moments when baby is sleeping and you can pee, brush your teeth, do laundry, or just sit and stare at the wall provide much needed rejuvenation. It takes a lot of energy to roll around on the floor, sing a million songs and play the same simple games over and over and over again.

So, you’ll understand why I’m a bit crazy about the naps. Baby T is a happy baby. She doesn’t cry very often and is generally a good-natured funny little girl. I like for her to stay that way. I like to respect her need to sleep and my need to stare at the wall. So why does the world want to screw with my peace? Why is it that as soon as I put her down for a nap, three ambulances and two fire trucks must drive by my window sirens wailing? Why does someone tie their dog up to a post outside my door while they go do their shopping? Their yippy, yapping dog who will bark incessantly until they return? Why do the hardwood floors outside her bedroom creak and squeak so loudly? I never noticed that we had the world’s loudest floor until she was born. How can we live in a home with such loud floors? Why are people having their roof re-shingled? Why so many nails? Why all the hammering, horn honking, dog-yapping, loud-laughing, chatting, music blaring, car alarm wailing, door slamming, phone ringing, interruptions? Why can’t everyone just shut up and let the baby sleep?!?!

I used to walk around the world oblivious to many of the noises that surrounded me. I’ll admit that I would get annoyed with loud talkers (as I’ve already discussed here) or with a noisy dog but for the most part, I just didn’t notice how loud the city is. It just was and I was a part of it. Now, whenever I hear a siren, or a particularly loud bang, I think that someone somewhere is trying to get their baby to sleep. So maybe the next time you are stuck on a busy street and someone is holding you up trying to parallel park, don’t honk your horn, don’t shout out the window. Just wait. Just be patient. Just be quiet.

Just. Don’t. Wake. The Baby.

On the Road

2007-06-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Close to the end of Ms. T’s first trimester, a conference she’s organized forces her to travel to Santa Barbara. Ms. T has always found that a business trip is hugely facilitated by the consumption of alcohol. However, on this trip, Ms. T, in deference to the small person growing inside her, abstains.

The flight to Santa Barbara is relatively uneventful. Ms T is now well practiced in the art of not throwing up in public. She has packed snacks, water, mints and a good book and handles the 7 hour trip with relative ease pausing to gag discreetly only a few times. On the first evening of the conference, Ms. T encounters her first challenge. Seated at a table of computer engineers, she engages in a stimulating conversation about various movies featuring superheroes, spaceships and/or monsters. However, when one of the dinner guests decides that he will spend the remainder of the meal speaking like Jar Jar Binks, Ms. T wonders if one or six drinks can really harm the baby. Despite the very dire circumstances, she refrains and makes an early exit claiming the need to catch up on some work.

The rest of the conference passes and Ms. T’s biggest challenge is brushing her teeth in the morning. She does her job and when the attendees are in session, she naps in her lovely room with an ocean view. Three days pass relatively quickly and she is thrilled when she heads off to the airport for her red eye flight after a very successful conference.

This time, she is traveling with a colleague – a well-meaning but neurotic engineer with very few social skills. Ms. T is tired and is feeling very sick. Her flight is delayed and lands in Vegas at midnight, exactly five minutes past the departure time of her flight to Toronto. She heads to the counter, engineer in tow to find out what her options are. The engineer is nervous; his wife is going to be upset because he will be late. What should they do now? What’s going to happen to them? Ms. T listens to his many complaints as she not-so-patiently waits her turn in line. She arrives at the counter to be told that she has been rescheduled on a flight leaving Vegas the following morning at 10AM - a flight that will go to Chicago and then Washington DC before arriving in Toronto, a flight that will land at 9PM the following night. Ms. T first argues, and then pleads with the attendants. She would like to play the pregnancy card for sympathy to see where that takes her but the engineer is hanging on her every word, standing at her shoulder and whimpering softly. She asks about a hotel room. They explain that they are not obligated to look after them because this was a weather delay. Ms T calmly shoots daggers out of her eyes at them and wishes them ill. After performing CPR on the engineer, she barks at him to stay calm and follow her. She finds a hotel, checks them in (to separate rooms on her credit card because the engineer is now catatonic with panic) and sends him off to bed. She tries to sleep but does not.

The next morning, the engineer calls her to ask what they should do. Ms. T explains that her breakfast has just been delivered and when she is done, they can head to the airport. The engineer was too afraid to order breakfast. He sounds forlorn. Ms. T invites him to share her breakfast. He does. They head to the airport and Ms. T gags every step of the way. She is exhausted and frustrated. The engineer walks two paces behind her asking questions about whether or not she thinks there will be further delays. Ms. T longs to burst into tears and tell him to leave her alone. Instead, she smiles and says she doesn’t know. More than 35 hours after she first arrived at the Santa Barbara airport, Ms. T arrives in Toronto. As she rides the final few kilometres home, she decides she deserves a very big raise.

Forty Weeks - Part I

2007-06-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Ms. Titswiggle has had a busy year and hasn't had time to write. What has she been up to, you ask? Many, many things and in order to tell them all to you, I’m going to have to go back almost a year to the beginning of Ms. T’s latest adventure: Motherhood. Now, clearly, in order to tell this story, I can’t simply start by sharing with you the magical stories of the giggling, spit bubble-blowing baby that I now know and love. I have to start at the beginning of the journey (well, maybe not the very beginning because, that, quite frankly, is none of your business). But I feel you must travel, as I did, through the many months of preparation to arrive at where I happily am today. So, without further ado, we must flashback to a period of time I now fondly think of as the days of whine and woe-ses.

One Saturday morning, about two weeks after a vacation Mr. T and I had taken up to the great white North to visit family, we saw a little pink line appear on a plastic stick and so begins our story. The first two weeks of my pregnancy were glorious. I walked around smiling with my little secret growing inside me. Then, at about week six, something terrible started to happen. I discovered that morning sickness is a lie. That it does not confine itself to morning and can hit at any time of the day or night. And when it would hit, I would gag. Here are some of the things that could stop me in my tracks, turn my face cold and clammy, force saliva to gather in my mouth and start my chest heaving:

Brushing my teeth.
The smell of coffee.
The taste of coffee.
Someone spitting on the sidewalk.
A dog doing his business.
A dog’s owner picking up said business.
Garbage day.
An old piece of discarded food.
Someone asking me: “how are you doing?”
Perfume.
Cigarette smoke.
Garlic.
The colour brown.
The television.
The radio.
Heat.
Cold.
Thirst.

Just about anything could set me off and, thankfully, most of the time I would just gag helplessly for a while and then regain control. Other times, actually, it’s better if I don’t talk about those other times. At about this point, it occurred to me that forty weeks is an awfully long time.

Silence is Golden

2006-01-05T10:21:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it? Shouldn’t everyone spend some time looking inwards, observing the world without making their many opinions about it known to all and sundry? Ms. T. has been silent for a while now, far too long really considering her judgmental nature. Do you know what happens to unexpressed opinions (particularly negative ones)? They don’t go away, you know. They stay right where they are, sucking the life out of your good times. The problem is, where to start after months of silence? Should I start by exploring my observations of uncertainty in the workplace? I could, but that would go on too long right now and I’d rather repress those fears a little longer. Should I talk about overeating and the holidays? Again, no. What's done is done. Where to begin when I’ve gone so long without saying anything at all?

This conundrum leaves me two choices: 1) Wait until something really funny/brilliant/poignant happens and then write about that; 2) Just write about anything and hope I’ll remember how to notice the funny/brilliant/poignant things again when they happen.

In the end, I’ve had to opt for option 2 because in the 6-8 months since I’ve posted regularly, many, many things have happened. Some funny, a few brilliant and at least as many poignant. Did I write about them? NO! Why not? Who knows? Better not to ask why. Better just to read this list and see what you might have heard about had Ms. T been in better writing form:

1) A weeklong business trip to Los Angeles fraught with theft, intrigue, chaos and, happily, also success. Good times, bad times, Ms T gets her share. Trials and tribulations include a crappy hotel room, technical difficulties, aggressive nerds and pushy geeks. Highlights include booze and landing back home in Toronto.
2) Three dashing women with alcoholic tendencies head to the Niagara Peninsula for a wine-tasting tour and manage not to get kicked out of any wineries. Much eating, drinking, antiquing and merriment ensue. In their travels, they notice a sign for “Balls Falls” which Ms. T decides is a retirement home for men only. They don’t visit.
3) Big company buys small company. Who stays, who goes? Enquiring minds want to know. But they don’t. They wait. Wait with Ms. T.
4) Intermittent gym participation and weight watching lead to few fluctuations in weight, to Ms. T’s great consternation. Ms. T consoles herself with the knowledge that if Oprah can’t do it with a personal trainer and chef, really, who can?
5) A weeklong business trip to Europe where Ms. T learns the limits of her organizational skills. Things go well, things go badly, but at the end of the day things go, and that’s what counts. Mr. T helps out and frequently saves the day earning him not much beyond the continued love and admiration of Ms. T (which, as he points out, he had anyway).

6) A new toy in the form of a fancy new computer enters the home of Mr. and Ms T. Gigs upon gigs lie at their disposal. Processors and monitors and graphics cards, oh my! They love it. They also fight for control of the mouse. It turns out playing at the computer isn’t really a group activity. The Ts resolve this by taking turns controlling the keyboard and saying “what are you doing now?” It's a tentative peace but, for now, it works.

Movie Magic

2005-09-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

Someone asked what my favorite movie was the other day and I couldn’t think of one. That might not sound strange for a lot of people, but I’m supposed to be a film fan. I’ve seen more movies than I could count. From silent films to CG bonanzas, from the French New Wave to Yakuza gangster flicks, I’ve loved a lot of movies. Some of the movies I love are so bad, that when I say the name out loud, I’m compelled to whisper it. Yet, even though I know that these movies are bad, I’ll gleefully watch them over and over again frequently shouting out lines from the script before the characters get a chance. Others, I vividly remember seeing for the first time, they may even be movies that changed the way I thought about movies, but I can’t necessarily face the prospect of seeing them again any time soon. Still others, are just great films that I love with all my heart and can watch any time they are on.

Anyway, I couldn’t have written this list if I’d made the “favorite” part the determining factor. Rather, I will call this list a randomly selected list of movies that popped into my head after I’d been asked what my favorite movie was. In no order whatsoever, here are ten:

Shag
My all-time favorite bad flick, this road trip/buddy movie features Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Annabeth Gish and Page Hannah – four southern belles on a last fling before college. Cheese doesn’t begin to cover it. See it, you’ll wish you hadn’t. But I can watch it over and over.

Hair
This movie has everything. It’s politically motivating, it’s funny, it has some cute guys in it and best of all, you can sing along the whole way. This is celluloid gold. And, no, I’m not kidding.

Lawrence of Arabia
Mr. T and I still run around calling each other “Orance” years after we watched this film together. Since we’d met in film class and both considered ourselves huge film buffs before we met, neither of us understands how we’d missed this one. It is a beautiful, meaty, film experience and if you’ve got a couple of hours on a rainy Sunday, I can’t imagine a better way to spend it.

Ghandi
This one is for another Sunday. It’s a long one, but it fills me with hope when I watch it. Like Lawrence of Arabia, this isn’t one I can watch over and over again but I’ll never forget it either.

Cool Hand Luke
There is, simply, no cooler film. I mean, he eats 50 eggs. FIFTY!

Buth Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Robert Redford and Paul Newman together on the screen in their best film. So beautiful. And the film’s great too.

Grease/Jesus Christ Superstar/42nd Street
I’ll only say that I grew up one of three sisters. We sang along to these movies so much and watched them so often that I have to lump them all in together. If one of us says something that sounds remotely like a lyric from any of the songs in any of the above films, it’s likely no one else will be able to talk for some time as the sisters will break out into loud, unabashed song.

The Princess Bride
Again, 3 girls, one house, what more can I say?

The Shining
This is Mr. T’s favorite movie. He’s watched it over 200 times. We’ve lived together for close to 10 years. I had two choices: love this movie or leave this man. Frankly, it was a pretty easy choice since it’s a great film and, luckily, it only gets better with multiple screenings.

GoodFellas
This is one of the most quotable movies of all time. I love it. I love it so much. The music is great, the language is colorful, the characters are brilliant. Scorcese at his absolute best. If you haven’t seen it, go do it now. I can’t believe how lucky you are.

High School Revisited

2005-06-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

He’s worked on some of the coolest films released in the past eight years. He’s got a great job and a great haircut. He’s smart, worldly and incredibly funny. He has achieved a level of cool in adulthood that his high school peers would not have believed – his love of math and physics branding him odd and unpopular in their eyes. Twenty years ago, those who noticed him thought he was a geek. They called him a nerd. Others simply didn’t know he was there. Yet, today, people will pay a decent amount of money just to hear him talk about what he does. At a gathering of industry peers, people feel lucky to be sitting at his table. His job has permitted him to live in Hawaii, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When he thinks back to his adolescence, he must doubtlessly feel vanquished, vindicated, validated.

He is in Santa Barbara, attending a conference. During a break, he takes a stroll along the garden path. He stares out at the Pacific Ocean and feels the warmth of the sun on his face. He smiles and then realizes that he should probably get back lest he miss the beginning of the next session - one he is eager to attend. He jogs back to the meeting room and speeds up a bit when he realizes the course is already in session. He runs across the back of the room heading towards his seat. And then, the unthinkable. The teenager he once was finds his way back into the adult’s stride. He thinks, “No, let this not happen” even as his feet betray him. He feels himself start to fall. His momentum is too great – he cannot correct his misstep.

Time slows painfully down as he feels himself sprawling to the floor. He pushes out his arms and breaks his fall, spinning himself onto his back. He looks up to see three faces frozen in horror, staring directly at him. He does not rush to get up. He lies back, propped upon one elbow, and slowly shakes his head. He smiles to indicate that he is not injured – three faces smile back sympathetically. He holds one hand over his eyes and sighs deeply. He picks himself up off the ground and walks slowly, deliberately towards his seat. The presenter raises a subject he has been struggling with at work. As his attention begins to shift from his embarrassment to the topic, he experiences a moment of gratitude to the speaker whose subject has kept 60 sets of eyes turned away from his spectacular fall. Before his attention is fully captivated by the presenter, he thinks, “Note to self: don’t run.”

Girls Just Wanna...

2005-06-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

They sit together in the living room. Their bellies full from the meal they’ve just shared, their spirits high from the wine they’ve enjoyed with it. They are a gathering of smart, sophisticated, professional women, brought together in celebration of friendship and birthdays shared. They are the kinds of women who go to work all week long and make important decisions. They are dependable and reliable. Some manage teams of employees who look to them for guidance. Most of them pay their bills on time. Some of them are parents and are responsible for guiding their children through life. All normally conduct themselves with grace and dignity. They are the kinds of people who appear to have it all together.

The hostess turns on the CD player and inserts a collection of 80s tunes for the group’s listening pleasure. Most of the women remember this music from high school dances or University pub-crawls. Madonna’s “Holiday” comes on and a few of them get up to dance goofily for the amusement of their friends. Holding imaginary microphones, they belt out the song while doing their best material girl imitations. Everyone laughs. “You spin me right ‘round” comes on, everyone says “oh, yeah!” and a few more get up to join the dancing. More wine is opened, more singing follows, more dance moves are broken out. Someone does the moonwalk. Someone does a bridge. Someone starts a congo line and everyone joins in.

Three have taken stripping classes and break out their stripper moves. A stripping lesson follows. Everyone participates with varying degrees of flexibility and ease. People fall. Someone leaves the room and comes back wearing a pair of hockey pants. Someone wraps a pashmina around her head like a turban and moves across the floor. Someone else thinks that’s the best thing she’s ever seen and does the same. Someone leaps onto the couch, arms spread wide and says, “look at me, I’m Tom Cruise!” Two women exit the bedroom wearing bikinis on top of their jeans and t-shirts. Everyone applauds.

Eight women are dancing with reckless abandon, sweating their hearts out and laughing so hard that each occasionally has to stop dancing to watch her friends reach new heights of silliness while she catches her breath. It is pure amusement. It is happiness unleashed. More than once, a dancer stops to shout out “I love my friends” and everyone agrees. It is a night that recalls memories decades old and yet is so different. Gone is the angst of the teenager. Gone is the self-consciousness of adolescence. Instead, there is only the joy of knowing who you are and how lucky you are to have people in your life who will shake their maracas with you for the sheer pleasure of it. Indeed, I love my friends.

Drive, She Said

2005-05-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

I’m a big supporter of public transit. I’ve never owned a car, and most of the time, I’m happy about that. It allows me to feel superior whenever I see a report about carbon emissions. And yet, every once in awhile, I have access to a car, and for that brief moment, I can appreciate the freedom and convenience a car can provide, and I like it. My parents are still off in Europe, walking 500 miles, so we’ve taken advantage of their car for running errands, buying plants, and getting around. This Friday, we met up after work and headed home via a familiar route. We’ve walked home this way and have traveled this road countless times in the back seat of a taxi. The route winds through a beautiful residential neighbourhood where only the very wealthy live. Huge, old homes line the streets and, in a few weeks, a tall canopy of green will make it even more pleasant. We know this route and we like it. It’s peaceful to head off the main avenues of Toronto and drive through a section that fills us with fantasies of what our lives will be like as soon as we win the lottery.

This was the first time we’d driven there, though. As we drove along, Mr. T noticed a sign that said, “No Through Traffic” and scoffed “Yeah right, watch me. How would they know, anyway?” We laughed and drove on along the quiet residential street. We turned the corner and arrived at a three-way stop. There was a lot of commotion at the intersection. Some bozo had decided to pull a u-turn and it was holding everyone up. We watched him in frustration thinking of his arrogance in forcing everyone to wait while he did his thing. As we waited to turn east, I noticed a man heading in our direction, waving. “Why is that guy waving at us?” I wondered aloud. “He’s probably just waving at someone else,” was Mr. T’s response. Hmm.

We turned the corner and started to make our way east. Within milliseconds, we spotted the cause of all the commotion. A police car was parked in the opposite lane, it’s officer out, waving us over to the side of the road. Everything suddenly made sense: the sign, the bozo, the wave. “So, that’s how they know!” exclaimed Mr. T as he pulled out his license and registration and lowered the window. Apparently, there are no right turns between 4PM-6PM. Only wrong turns. As we pulled away from our brush with the law, we reflected on the joys of public transit and plain old walking. Sometimes, you get stuck. Sometimes, you get soaked. But it rarely costs you ninety dollars. Thank you, officer. Thank you for reminding me that I haven’t got it so bad after all.

How's the Water?

2005-05-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

I was only 13 but it haunts me to this day. The haunting isn’t solely because of my actions, which admittedly were less than admirable, but because my sister, the only other witness, and the victim of my crime, won’t let me forget it.

We were standing in the kitchen and I’d just started the dishwasher. We were chatting and getting lunch when we noticed that I’d forgotten to unplug the drain. The sink was rapidly filling with hot, hot water, while my 11 year-old sister and I stared in horror. “What do we do?” she yelled at me (ostensibly the one in charge because I’m 2.5 years older). “We have to unplug the drain!” I shouted. I knew it had to be done. If we didn’t put a stop to this, we’d have a huge mess to clean up and possibly a flood. There was simply no alternative. And yet, I was afraid to burn myself. I admit it. The steam rising off the soapy water looked menacing and dangerous. Standing next to the sink as it filled with water at what appeared to be an impossibly fast speed, I could feel the heat rising off the surface. I reached my hand towards the sink. I turned my face away and willed myself to do it. I couldn’t. The sink was filling fast, the water line rising to the edge.

I quickly amended my statement. “You have to unplug the drain,” I screamed at my sister. “What?” she asked in horror. “Look, I’m really sensitive to heat” I bullied, “you’ve got to do it. Do it! DO IT!” I berated her for at least 4 seconds before she plunged her little hand into the water and pulled out the drain. She screamed as she did it and when she pulled her arm out of the water, it was bright red from the scalding she’d received for her efforts. “Why did you make me do that?” she asked me as she nursed her tender arm. “I’m sorry?” was the only response I could think to make. Why, indeed?

Since then, I think I’ve done some nice things for my sister. I think I’ve been a pretty supportive and caring older sibling. In fact, I’d buried the memory of what I hope was my one truly non-fraternal act towards my younger sister. Until a few weeks ago, that is. I was with my family out at my sister’s house. We were all gathered in the kitchen, talking while some of us cooked. I turned on the tap to rinse some dishes before putting them away in the dishwasher. As the water hit my hand, I couldn’t help but exclaim “shit, that’s hot!” My sister, from across the room, looked at me with a sly smile and said, “I guess you want me to do that?” Ouch. Burn.

Digging in the Dirt

2005-05-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve always liked the idea of a garden, but for a variety of different reasons in a variety of different rented homes, I have never taken that idea and made it a reality. Last year, Mr. T. and I dipped our toes into the land of living things by getting a few pre-potted plants to beautify our deck. The plants were pretty, we watered them, they bloomed, fall came, they died. All in all, it was an easy initiation into cohabitating with outdoor flora. This year, we decided to get a little more involved. We said to ourselves “won’t it feel good to get our fingers in the dirt and plant some things?” And, because we agreed with ourselves, we headed to the local greenhouse to investigate plants, flowers and herbs.

Armed with purpose and determination, we browsed the lines of mystery greenery. We bought bags of soil, we bought planters, we bought things to put planters on, we bought a spade and gardening gloves, and, most preciously, we bought a variety of things that came in little pots. Some were pretty (geraniums, dwarf dahlias, daisies), some just smelled great (rosemary, sweet basil), and others we just liked the sounds of (Gazanias – what a great word, it should be the title of a musical!).

We brought everything home and, in order to get into the right headspace, we cracked open some cold beers while we played with the pots. We put different things next to each other to see how they would look. We asked ourselves a lot of questions such as:

“Does that green look good with this one?”
“Do those flowers want to be alone with like-minded flowers, or should we encourage them to mingle with herbs?”
“What does full sun mean?”
“Does partial shade mean that it gets shade at some points of the day and not others, or does the plant actually have to be in a space that is always partially shady?”
“Does this need more soil?”
“Are these too crowded?”
“Did you just throw that dirt on my foot on purpose?”

And on and on to a variety of other questions to which we had no answers. Despite the many questions, we soldiered on undaunted. The plants all got planted and, in the end, we had 7 fun arrangements brightening spots where there had been no life. The deck looks great and it should do so for the next week before the fruits of our ignorance start to rear their dead heads. Although I’m not overly optimistic about the odds of some of our creations, I am looking forward to discovering what’s going to happen to our new little friends. I find myself thinking of my gazanias at odd times of the day and wondering how they look. Maybe I’ll install a webcam so that I don’t have to miss a minute of their growth? Maybe I’m taking this a little too seriously?

Lurking vs Working

2005-05-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

He wanders the halls, stopping as he can to chat about the weather, movies, or a new video game. He’s the first to respond to any email with a joke (albeit never a funny one) and if you should happen to wander into the kitchen, you’ll doubtless find him there, getting a cup of tea. The one place you’ll never find him, though, is seated at his desk. Yesterday, I was working on something and looked up to find him standing in my doorway. I didn’t hear his approach and he didn’t even announce his presence with a courtesy throat clearing. Instead, he stood there, waiting for me to look up. Eventually, I did. “I’m going to be sending you an email later today” he said. “Okay, great” I responded. What else was there to say? Apparently, a lot. The nature of the email, the expected result of sending it, and the estimated time of arrival of said email also had to be discussed. I got the email, I responded and that was the end of that. Or so I thought. I went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He was there. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly” he said before he went on to explain the thought process behind the reply he’d sent to my response. As I made my way back to my desk, harrowed by the 1000 items on my task list, it occurred to me that I might like his job.

Turf Wars

2005-05-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

My best friend Meg and I would meet at the top of the “mountain” before school. Everyone called it a mountain but it was really more of a hill. We had two choices to get to school: we could walk along the boring old sidewalk, or we could slide our way down the snow covered bumps of the hill together. Even better than the slide down was a sign at the top of the mountain stating “Private Property. Enter at your own risk!” This proclamation lent an element of danger to our walk down the hill with which the sidewalk simply couldn’t compete.

In truth, the risk wasn’t the mountain as much as the schoolyard at the base of it. Our French Catholic School shared its lot with an English Catholic Junior school and in order to get to our friends, we had to cross the St. Aloyisius schoolyard. For years, this hadn’t been an issue. We did, after all, know most of these kids from the neighbourhood and some of them were our friends. However, that winter, we’d been having a hard time with one particularly vociferous young girl named Pamela. Pamela was mean and would lead the others in chants of “French Frog” as we walked by. It was an unfair fight given that there wasn’t an English equivalent to their chant. “English Muffin” didn’t sound like much of an insult and since Meg was an Irish kid whose parents wanted her to speak French, the prospect of finding a better insult with which to slander the Anglo kids wasn’t terribly enticing.

Given the situation, we had no real choice. Failing to find a proper term for insulting Pamela’s entire culture left us with no alternative but to attack her personally. Each French frog was henceforth returned with a “Pamela Pig”. This happy alliteration rolled off our tongues and served well to quiet her for the remainder of the week. We’d won. Pamela pig was cowed and we could make our way through the schoolyard without harassment. It was such a good chant, that by Friday, despite Pamela’s noticeable silence, we continued to prance through the yard singing our merry song.

On Monday, however, we were surprised to see a bolder Pamela blocking our path through the schoolyard. Beside her stood a tall high school student wearing tight jeans, a white parka and pink mittens. I was only nine but I was tall so the older kid squared off in front of me, while Meg, tough from her years of gymnastics training, was facing mopey, doughy Pamela. “You’ve been calling my cousin Pamela Pig,” menaced the teenager as she held me firm by the jacket. “She called us French Frogs” I retorted, certain that she would understand that all was fair in schoolyard wars. I was ready to defend myself with justifications and evidence of Pamela’s own abusive behaviour, but this was a teenager of few words. Her rebuttal came at me in a flurry of fuzzy pink that was remarkably painful as it landed on my face. My head snapped back and I was powerless to stop the tears from flowing down my face as Meg and I bolted to the relative safety of our school where the nurse applied something cold to my rapidly swelling lip.

For the next few weeks, Meg and I got to know the joys of the sidewalk and I got to be the only member of my family with the dubious honour of having been punched in the face. It’s hard to like Mondays.

Have a Seat

2005-04-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

The benches, stoops and corners of my neighbourhood have largely all been claimed as the established territory of various homeless individuals. I’ve seen many an argument outside the liquor store for that prime location, and the spot in front of the theatre has been turf to the same guy for at least four years. These are the people in my neighbourhood. On my way home from work, I’ll smile or say hi to many of these individuals, regardless of whether or not I’ve got change to spare. After living in the same spot for four years and seeing many of these faces on a daily basis, these people are my neighbours and it’s hard not to feel the occasional pang at the difference in lifestyle a city block can encompass.

There is one individual, though, for whom I’ve rarely spared a smile. This isn’t a fact that I state with pride, but it is the truth. His desparation scares me and makes me want to turn and look in the opposite direction so that I can avoid imagining the reality of his life. He’s a huffer and he sits on a bench by the subway station. His face is stained from the constant inhalation of noxious fumes and his speech, when he bothers, is an incomprehensible mumble. He shakes constantly and can barely hold up the empty coffee can he uses to gather his earnings. I’ve never contributed. Not out of a moral indignation that any money I give him is likely to end up being sniffed away. I’m not really concerned what someone does with the alms I provide. I walk away feeling good and they do with it as they see fit. That’s the deal, no strings attached. With the huffer though, I just don’t want to get close enough to help out. I give him a wide berth.

Today, on my way to the TTC station, I noticed that he wasn’t at his usual spot. Rather, two teenagers were sitting on his bench, talking loudly and smoking cigarettes. They looked so sure of themselves, so above it all, that they instantly annoyed me. I could hear their vapid exchange of “what she said” punctuated by f-words and other colourful language and it grated on my nerves. Then, before the fire of annoyance could fully ignite itself in my belly, a memory rose to the surface. In my mind’s eye, I saw the huffer, only days ago, seated at that bench, a stream of urine pooling below him. I didn’t have to get annoyed. They were sitting in pee. I walked by and smiled to myself making a mental note to drop something into that coffee can the next time I see him.

Such a Perfect Day

2005-04-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

When spring shows up in the Great White North, everyone pays attention. The parks are full, the sidewalks are crowded, the sandals come out of storage and everyone is smiling. On early spring days, even I have been known to grace a complete stranger with a smile – that’s the power of warmth after 6 months of chill. Tuesday was such a day - a sunny high of 26 degrees (Celsius and that’s a beautiful thing) in a week of rain and cold. Without debate or even a hint of remorse over all the work we had to do, Mr. T. and I decided to take the day off and bask in the glory of the first truly warm day of the year.

Tuesday morning rose with sunshine and a lovely breeze. We took our cups of coffee outside and sat sipping the warmth of the beverage as the sun gradually heated our deck. We live on one of Toronto’s busiest streets. Restaurants and shops surround us, and stepping out our front door means stepping into the thick of city life. In contrast, we are incredibly privileged to have the best back deck ever. The best. The second-story deck stretches the entire width of the apartment, spanning both the kitchen and living room, and is almost as wide as it is long. It looks out onto a parking lot and an infrequently used back lane. Along one side is a tall wooden fence, which separates us from our next-door neighbours. Along the other end is a six-story building with no windows facing us, just an endless stretch of light gray concrete blocks. While a wide expanse of concrete blocks might not sound great, they afford us more privacy than anything else could. In addition, two huge sumac trees have grown alongside the building and stretch lazily across our staircase. When the leaves come out, they provide an extra level of privacy, so that seated at our patio table we are invisible to passersby.

We had a lot to do to get the deck back up to standard after having abandoned it for the winter months. Some of our deck-orations had suffered from the winds of winter and had to be replaced. Our propane tank was empty and we needed to rustle up a barbecue worthy meal. However, the warmth of the day and the prospect of not having to wear socks, made all of our errands that much more pleasant. We headed out into the world and got all the supplies we needed. New propane tank, new barbecue mat, new cooking utensils and, of course, beer. As two former vegetarians, we stood at the meat counter and debated whether or not we should give steak a try. After long deliberations and debate, we decided to throw caution to the wind and picked up two strip loin steaks that looked lean and fresh. We also added a wide variety of veggies for grilling as a nod to our former selves.

By 4 PM, we were back outside, Stella Artois in hand, grooving to summer tunes with a plan to move as little as possible until it was time for bed. We talked, we laughed, we barbecued, we ate (and looked back on our vegetarian days with wonder and curiosity – what, exactly, had we been thinking), we drank, and we added and removed sweaters according to the breeze. The feelings of summer overwhelmed us. That feeling that time won’t end, that the sun won’t go down and that you won’t have to go back to school for ages. We knew the next day would bring cooler temperatures, rain and the impossibility of eating outside, but we repressed that knowledge and thrilled in the moment.

While the rest of the week has proved disappointingly cold, Tuesday was a sneak preview to the months ahead of us. We’ve got the propane, we’ve got the right attitude, and all we need is more sun. Come on sun. We’ve got some grilling to do and we are waiting for you!

I Dream So Beanie!

2005-04-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

I had friends over for brunch this weekend and had planned a veritable feast with which to regale them. Among the various menu items, I’d included baked beans. I’m French Canadian so the idea of a brunch that wouldn’t include beans is simply unacceptable. However, if you’ve ever made baked beans, you’ll appreciate that this is not a quick endeavour. It involves much soaking and boiling and baking (oh my!). I bought the beans first thing on Saturday morning and was expecting my guests at 11am on Sunday. Piece of cake, right? Well, sort of.

Complicating my plan was the fact that my parents, oblivious to my needs, had gallivanted off to Europe on a hiking expedition. Which was great for them and all but what about my beans? I wouldn’t have expected my mom to bake them on my behalf (although I probably wouldn’t have turned her down if she’d offered) but it would have been nice to have her considerable coaching skills no further away than a phone call. Without my “Ma” to reassure me, I was adrift in a sea of beanie possibilities.

I came home from the grocery store and set the beans a-soaking. That much I could handle. I debated making a traditional batch of beans including either salt pork or bacon or the revised version my mom came up with when two of her three daughters became vegetarians (those days are over but the modified beans live on). Fearlessly, considering the lack of safety net, I opted for the traditional kind. You know, the kind I’ve never made. Phone calls to my sisters proved fruitless – while both supported the idea of beans, neither could help with the reality. Finally, I called my grandmother to save the day and, not content to provide me with one recipe, she called me back with a choice of six and gave me her sound counsel on how to work with the pork part of the picture. Thanks Grand-mere!

I followed the recipe she’d given me adding molasses, brown sugar, dry mustard, salt pepper and bacon to the mixture and put everything in the slow cooker to cook overnight. As a final touch, I laid three strips of bacon over the top of the beans so that the fat could seep through. (As one of the former pesky vegetarians who’d required the recipe modification in the first place, I find it as difficult to read that sentence as I found the action on Saturday). I turned on the slow cooker and set the alarm for 5AM when the beans would be done and then headed off to bed. As I lay there, trying to fall asleep, the smell of baking beans filled the air of our apartment. I tossed and turned with visions of fatty bacon filling my head. I could have agonized over the potatoes still to roast or the quiches to assemble. I could have saved some of my neurotic fixations for the salad but I did not. Instead, I lay there and dreamed of beans.

In my dreamy haze, I tried to talk myself out of what was clearly a waste of a good night’s sleep: “Self, if the beans don’t taste right, you don’t have to serve them.” Or “Self, you are nuts and I’m having you committed if you don’t stop thinking about those beans and go to sleep now!” I woke up every hour and would dazedly wander over to the kitchen to see what was happening. Were the beans burning? (No, not yet.) Would the bacon ruin them? (Hard to tell through the slow cooker’s steamy lid.) I rationalized that the smell was very much like I remembered the smell of baking beans so that had to be a good sign. Still, at 5am, it was a relief to turn off the beans and call the night over.

The rest of the brunch got made and by the time my guests arrived I was so hungry that there was no energy left for worrying about beans. We downed Bellinis by the gallon-full, gorged ourselves on quiche, salad, roasted potatoes, delicious, homemade baked beans and a sensational lemon tart contributed by one of the guests. It was divine! My guests left yesterday, almost eight hours after brunch had begun, drunk, full and happy. I may have foolishly lost a night’s sleep over beans, but the reward of sharing the fruits (or, in this case, legumes) of my labour with a group of good friends made it all worth it in the end. Here's to beans!

Your Box, Your Package

2005-04-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I think I have a very sophisticated sense of humour. I make a clever pun or I paraphrase Shakespeare and mentally pat myself on the back for my highbrow sensibilities. Then, there are other times where I am confronted with the reality that my sense of humour has changed very little since the age of thirteen. I like to giggle and the simple truth is that there is no place better to giggle than a place where you shouldn’t giggle at all.

I remember when I was a kid and our whole family would head off to church on Sundays. Three little girls dressed cutely, accompanied by their upstanding parents. We’d take our seats and, because they were no fools, my parents had arranged a seating system designed to minimize fights in public: one girl, one parent, another girl, another parent, and finally, the last of the girls. This would have worked brilliantly if my father hadn’t enjoyed torturing us and sending us into fits of giggles to my mother’s great frustration. He’d poke us, point out funny hats, stick a wet finger in one of our ears and then look deadly serious when we started laughing. These visits to church fell somewhere between torture and glee. While it was sheer joy to laugh at our own private jokes, it was also painful to hold in the giggles. The key was to laugh only enough that it wouldn’t get us all into trouble – only enough that my mother would not get annoyed with our father and put an end to that morning’s games.

I recently attended a meeting that reminded me of those long-ago mornings. The meeting was a cross-departmental one involving at least 20 of my esteemed colleagues. We’d hired an outside consultancy firm to talk to us about our product packaging. On the surface, there is very little to laugh at when discussing what your product will look like on a shelf. Yet underneath that veneer of seriousness, lay a veritable bomb of mirth, just waiting for the perfect level of immaturity to set it off. I was powerless to prevent it.

The speaker’s first sentence alerted me to the dangerous situation I was in. After introducing himself, he launched into the meat of his presentation by telling us, “If your package is large and heavy, your first job is to make sure your box can handle it.” I chuckled to myself and looked at my neighbours to see if they were similarly afflicted. Straight faces surrounded me. He continued with the following statements:

- What kind of value does your box communicate?
- How will your box be handled – can it bear that kind of activity without falling apart?
- Don’t forget to label your box and don’t forget that your competitor’s box will also be on display.
- What sets your box apart?
- What does your box convey to the end user?

I giggled into my hand. I squirmed in my chair. I wanted to shout to the room, “Am I the only one hearing double-entendre here?” I struggled to maintain outward composure despite the fact that my professional persona was quickly scrambling to hide behind a giggling ten-year old. The more I sought composure, the less I achieved it. It wasn’t the presenter’s fault. He was covering his topic seriously and thoroughly. He was giving us valuable advice that would help us sell our product. However, despite the helpfulness of the topic and the number of people in the room, I really wanted to interrupt him with the very sophisticated comment: “You said box. You said package.”

I’m pleased to say that I didn’t interrupt him nor did I chime in about what, exactly, my box could handle. Instead, I looked down at my notebook and wrote down his comments while quietly giggling to myself. I did make a note to dial in for such future meetings, though, because I’m not sure I’m up to the task. I know on some level, I have achieved the level of maturity and capability appropriate to my age and station (!), but such meetings do force one to re-examine oneself and come to certain conclusions. Mine is that I’m getting older, but I won’t hold my breath for the wiser part. I’ll need that oxygen on reserve for inappropriate fits of laughter.

Spring in my step

2005-03-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

It’s finally sunny out so I got to take you out today. You’d been hanging in my closet since we got together, teasing me with your cheerfulness. I wanted us to be out together. I wanted to shout our new relationship to the world. But it was too soon. I knew that if we went out together, we’d be greeted with nothing but cold indifference. You couldn’t keep me sheltered from that kind of reaction. You aren’t strong enough to stand up to the task. It’s not your fault, you just weren’t meant for that. You were meant to stroll along with me in the warmth of a spring sun. You were made for fair weather, not for the harsh winter of my discontent.

But today, a new day dawned. A day that rose without fog, rain or a cloud in the sky. A day that promised highs of 12 degrees. A day that screamed - you and me baby, together at last. I thought about what else I’d wear when I finally took you out for the world to see. I wanted us to look perfect together. I wanted everyone else to see us and know that we belonged. I chose a pink sweater with white cuffs, a swirly charcoal skirt, pink tights in the same shade as my sweater and a pair of ballerina slippers. And then, I carefully took you off the hanger and draped you over my shoulders. You soothed me with your bright colour and your light weight. Your calm cream base splashed with light and dark pink flowers wrapped me in happiness. I threw a scarf around my neck, my one concession to the slight breeze that hinted to the season just passed, but it was silk instead of wool and its brilliant colours complemented yours.

As I stepped out into the bright sunlight of the first true spring day, I breathed in the warm air and lightly stroked your side (my side). You felt good. You looked good. And I looked good because of you. I know it’s too soon to say for sure - we’ve only been out once and I’ve known you for less than two weeks - but I think I love you. I think you are the best spring coat I’ve ever had. It’s possible that the weather is getting to me. That the combination of the warmth of the sun, and the budding trees and flowers, have placed a bloom on you that won’t last until the summer sun makes you irrelevant. I might forget all about you when the weather turns again and I head out the door in nothing but shirtsleeves. But right now, you are the symbol of the end of my misery and I couldn’t be happier to have you in my life. Thank you spring coat. Thank you very much.

Brush with Stardom

2005-03-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

I was on TV last week plugging one of the books I’m involved with through work. It was for a local cable television show that has a viewing audience of about 1 million (okay, call it 1 million or 15, I’m not exactly sure). For all of my arrogance, I’m not actually a very vain person. I’m aware of where I stand on the beauty scale - Nicole Kidman is definitely hotter, but she gets paid to be so I’m okay with that. How I look isn’t something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I like nice clothes and I try to work with what I’ve got but I don’t spend a lot of time primping in front of my reflection. That said, there is something about knowing you’ll be on TV that can make even the most casual person start to think about what that’s going to look like and once you start thinking that way, you might find yourself caught in front of the mirror, critically inspecting the state of affairs. Thus occupied, I noticed three things I didn’t like (or, to be honest, three things I didn’t like that I could do something about in the week before the appearance). These were my long, unruly and somewhat split-ended hair, the gray roots on said hair (premature grayness is not a gift), and eyebrows that hadn’t been tweezed since last July.

I called and booked a haircut for the day of the interview so that it would have that perfect look that I can never repeat after the day of the haircut: smooth, straight, with a perfect little flip at the bottom. I thought about booking for colour too but I figured I’d have time to do that over the weekend. Of course, the weekend came and went and I didn’t get around to dyeing my hair. I’d also thought I’d make it to the mall to have the eyebrows done but that mission never happened either. However, because chance was on my side, the salon was able to take care of all three “problems” and by the time I left (almost three hours after I’d arrived) I was sporting a new haircut, a great dye job and the finest looking eyebrows north of Hollywood. I felt certain this was going to be the day I got discovered.

Thus prepared, I headed off to the studio with two colleagues: a demo artist who would be participating in the interview, and our PR person, who was along for moral support. I was a little nervous at the start but since I knew I looked smashing and was comfortable with the subject, my nerves did not get the better of me. The program host was friendly and sweet and her absolute lack of knowledge about the industry I work in made her less intimidating. We work in 3D entertainment and before the interview started, we had to explain that Spiderman is not actually a live character - that he is a 3D animation. I exercised great restraint and didn’t actually respond with “I realize it’s surprising but, funnily enough, Tobey Maguire can’t shoot webs out of his hands and leap from one tall building to the next. Crazy, isn’t it?” Despite that brilliant show of restraint, however, I did manage to cut her off mid-sentence twice over the course of the interview. I’d like to say I did it because I felt it was important that I assert myself just in case they wanted to give me her job but in reality, I just have a hard time letting other people talk.

In all, the interview lasted about eight minutes. I’d say something about my 15 minutes here, but I refuse to consider that my shot. If I’m going to get fame in this life, it better fill up the full 15. Anyway, I’m still waiting for Hollywood’s phone call. I’m sure they’ll be getting in touch any minute now. I’ll let you know when they do.

Chick Lit

2005-03-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

Despite the impression you may have of me, I have to admit that I did not become this wise and perceptive without the guidance of others in my life. One is not naturally born with the ability to judge what all others should be doing. Years of observation, interpretation and, most importantly, discussion with sage souls are necessary to reach the pinnacle of awareness where you, my reader, now finds me. I’ve been blessed with wise parents, gifted sisters, brilliant grandfathers and grandmothers for whom no superlatives are accurate enough to describe. I’ve got uncles, aunts and cousins who’ve contributed in a myriad of ways. And along the way, I’ve been incredibly lucky to amass a network of friends that continue to inform and amaze me. This mosaic of characters is my research base and a description of any of them would make a brilliant entry. However, for today, I’ll limit myself to one particular group of women who have been bringing great wisdom and laughter into my life for the past six years.

One day, in the winter of 1999, a friend said, “I think you should join my book club” and since I’ve been a bookworm my entire life, this seemed a brilliant plan. I remember being nervous the first meeting. I’d met many of the members before but didn’t really know anyone but the friend who’d invited me to join. Initially, I felt somewhat intimidated by this group of incredibly well read, educated and informed women. Until that point, I would have said that no one read more than I did, that I was the bookiest of anyone I knew. Upon entering my first meeting, I noticed the host’s bookshelves and quickly knew I’d found a place where I belonged. Hundreds of great books lined the shelves of her living room and office and we’d all read similar authors. We all agreed that “A Fine Balance” was one of the best books ever written and by the time the first book club meeting ended, my intimidation had turned to admiration and gratitude. This was going to be awesome.

Over the years, the book club has evolved into a supper club where the host (whoever chose the latest book) serves the rest of us dinner. Luckily, every one of the bookies loves food and that’s obvious from the feasts we’ve prepared for each other. We eat, we laugh, we debate, we sometimes argue (but always respectfully) and we learn from each other. For instance, I’ve learned about impacted milk glands and impacted anal glands (thankfully, the latter belonged to a dog and not one of the members). I’ve garnered helpful hints for the removal of wine stains in tablecloths (lots and lots of salt). I’ve been enlightened about the nature of a “Hot Carl” and a “Dirty Sanchez”. I’ve discovered new comedians, films, and authors. I’ve found workout partners and colleagues from among my fellow bookies. We’ve shared each other’s joys, successes and disappointments over glasses of wine and cups of tea. They’ve indulged and even encouraged (through their laughter) my opinionated rants, calmly asking, “but what do you really think?” at the end of a particularly violent tirade.

When I look forward in my life, I know these women will be there. That none of us would willingly dissolve this club because beyond the wonderful books we’ve read together, we are also writing the stories of our lives, meeting by meeting. And so far, that’s the best story of them all.

Interference

2005-03-18T07:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's hard to tune the rest of the world out so that you can really savour an experience. There probably are people out there who can stay focused in the moment without getting distracted by the noises and people who surround them, but I suspect that peace is reserved for the terribly self-absorbed. And they have other issues to deal with. I'm talking about those moments where you'd like to dig into the delicious meal you've just ordered and keep chatting with your dinner companion about the movie you saw last night but just as you are about to say something, your attention is captured by some occurrence at another table. Sometimes, observing the behaviours of others can prove torturous - the distraction pulling you out of your enjoyment and into annoyance. At other times, these diversions provide a voyeuristic form of entertainment.

It's possible I'm just short-tempered and neurotic but I also think there is some truth to my suspicion that some people are just terribly annoying. For example, I'm reading a book on the streetcar when a mother and her child board the car and take the seat behind mine. The mother starts to explain to her daughter why her behaviour that morning was unacceptable. She is speaking very loudly on the quiet streetcar as though this lesson is one that everyone needs to learn, not just her child. Her embarrassed eight-year old starts to whisper her responses but the mother continues to talk loudly, the disciplinary lecture lasting almost the entirety of my ride. While I'd love to go back to my book, the mother's voice, and my sympathy for the child (whose actions have provided her mother with an opportunity to show all of us what a great parent she is) are preventing the words on the page from penetrating the barrier of my distraction.

Last summer, I'm sitting on a patio, enjoying a beer and nachos with some friends when I notice the behaviour at the table in front of me. A man and a woman are dining together, yet the man has spent the bulk of the meal talking on his cell phone in a Slavic language. He's making deals, he's closing and buying and selling. He's obviously very important. When the waitress comes to their table, he does all the ordering, his companion says nothing and defers to him. They are eating lobster. In the few moments where he isn't on the phone, they chat briefly. She does not appear to speak English. At some point, I become convinced that she is a prostitute and he is her pimp. The conversation at our table becomes background while my attention is riveted, looking for additional clues to prove my theory. I share my thoughts with my dinner companions. They laugh. Their lobster barely eaten, the man and woman leave the patio, apparently summoned by one final phone call. We see them ride away on a motorcycle. "She's going to have sex with a fat middle-aged man now" I say as they ride off into the sunset. "Then he could have let her finish her lobster", responds my friend.

I guess it just comes down to the fact that if you live in this world, you have to share it with others: the good, the bad and the ugly. Loud talkers, slow walkers, know-it-alls, high-pitched laughers, all make up the mosaic of living in society. The idea of an island surrounded by a moat might be a nice fantasy. Meals would be uninterrupted, I wouldn't have to commute, I could live in peace with those of my choosing and never have to deal with the interference of strangers. But then whose stories would I invent? Peace and quiet might very well mean boredom. If I have to choose, I'll take all over nothing. But if I can make a suggestion to my fellow citizens, it would be this: Could you please keep it down? I'm trying to read here.

To Sleep Perchance to Dream

2005-03-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

You yawn and decide it’s time to head off to sleep. You’re tired and since you’ve got so much to do right now, you really need your rest. You cuddle under the blankets and start to doze off. Suddenly, you jolt up thinking “did I lock the door tonight?” It doesn’t matter that you always lock the door. That you’ve never once left it unlocked. For whatever reason, you are now convinced that the door is unlocked and that something evil is about to invade the peace of your home. You step out of your warm bed and into the cold air, pull on your robe and head to the front door. It’s locked. Just to be safe, you double-check all of the windows and doors on the off chance that you’ve forgotten to secure some other possible entryway. All locked. Okay, back to bed.

You return to the warmth of your bed and try to get comfortable again. You turn one way, then the other, adjust your pillow and the blankets and finally think that will do it. You start to doze off. “Did I pay the electrical bill?” You start to trace back the last bill payments you’ve made, mentally debiting and crediting your account with all of the month’s transactions. You can’t remember. You have a vague feeling that it’s done but what if it isn’t? What if the electrical company comes tomorrow and shuts off the electricity? They probably will. You could get up and check but it seems so far. You keep agonizing about the electrical bill until a new thought enters your head. You haven’t finalized an important contract at work. It really needs to get done this month and you forgot to send the lawyer your comments. It’s now 2AM. No one is at the office. There is nothing you can do but consider your comments and make mental notes. Actually, there is something you could do. You could get up and write it all down. You could leave yourself a voice-mail at the office. But it’s cold out there and it’s warm in here, so instead, you turn over once more and try to clear your head.

You begin calculations of how much sleep you may still be able to get if only you could fall asleep right now. Right now. Okay, right now. You turn over again. You nudge your partner hoping he might wake up too and then at least you’d have company. He mumbles something and turns over, blissfully asleep; unaware of the turmoil you are in. You resent him his peaceful slumber and turn over yet again. You go to the bathroom and drink a glass of water. You go back to bed thinking that now you’ll fall asleep. You remember an embarrassing incident from high school and start to wonder if others remember it too. You feel the same mortification you originally did when the cute guy whose locker was across the hall laughed at you. You wonder where he is now and think that he’s probably sleeping peacefully. Sleeping like everyone but you. Slowly, the hours go by. One after the other while you toss and turn and agonize over the fact that you are still awake. Random nonsense flits in and out of your mind. At some point, you doze off because it’s suddenly daylight and you need to get up for work. You drag your body out of bed and into the shower. You look at yourself in the mirror and see the evidence of your sleepless night etched upon your face and sagging under your eyes. You head out the door clutching your coffee cup in hand. It’s going to be a long day.

When I'm 64

2005-03-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

Because I live in the city and am a fairly high-strung individual, I tend to notice all of the annoying things that surround me - the faults of my fellow citizens rather than their virtues. My sister mentioned that I don’t tend to point out very positive things. Of course, to that I replied: what do sisters know? However, she happened to mention that today on the very day I saw something that made me stop, think and smile. Since I witnessed this occurrence on the TTC, I felt that was significant enough to warrant my attention.

I was waiting to board the streetcar at its terminus and a group of us were huddled outside the back doors waiting for the passengers to get off before we could embark. I could see an older couple making their slow progress to the back doors and, since I had nothing else to do while I waited, I watched them as they descended. The man came down first and appeared incredibly frail. The right side of his face was scarred and his eye was sealed shut. It looked as though someone had taken sand paper to his skin and rubbed it raw. He was bundled into his thick winter coat but even with the bulk of his coat, he was still a very slight man. As he stepped off the last step of the car, he turned to offer his wife his hand, sheltering her from the eager passengers who were waiting to get on the car. He guided her down the steps and the couple slowly walked away hand in hand.

I realize that may initially seem a fairly depressing sight. But what I thought as I saw them was that theirs was a partnership that was surviving illness, frailty and the mad scramble of the TTC. My first reaction was to cringe at the horrible scarring of his face and to feel embarrassed by his frailty. His weakness was what I initially noticed. But when he turned to offer his hand and support to his wife, he stopped looking weak as much as lucky. Despite the obvious challenges he faced, he wasn’t facing them alone and despite those challenges, he still had something to offer his partner.

Of course, they could not be married at all. They may very well be an older couple making their way to some low cost motel to conduct an illicit affair, stepping out on the spouses who’ve stood by them their whole lives. Or they could be siblings who, once out of the danger of patches of ice and rush hour commuters, would quickly stop supporting each other and resume the bickering that has defined their relationship for their entire lives. The loving couple I saw may have been a creation of my imagination on a Friday morning. But I don’t think so. The youthful arrogance of pitying the old often forgets that those we pity have already lived what we are going through. Once upon a time, the objects of my notice had been young and spry and had probably had two eyes with which to see the world. But now, at more than 40 years my seniors, these two still had each other. Not everyone gets that in life. Not everyone is that lucky.

Don't Talk to Strangers

2005-03-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

It’s one of the first lessons we are taught as children: don’t talk to strangers. As we get older, we learn to balance the logical reasons for the rule with the need to get by in the world. Need to know the time but don’t have your watch? Okay, ask a stranger. Trying to find a landmark in a foreign city? Fine, you can ask a stranger. There are numerous circumstances where engaging with a stranger is either necessary or simpler than the alternative. It can also periodically be a very rewarding rule to break. Some of us would still be single if we hadn’t warmed up to a stranger at some point. However, for every circumstance where it makes sense to open up and talk to a stranger, there are an equal and opposite number of circumstances. And these other circumstances can get particularly tricky when the stranger in question is talking to you.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had two encounters with strangers that have made me want to remind people of this cardinal rule. The first occurred while waiting for a streetcar with a fellow colleague. We were chatting about work and life and the local architecture when another would-be passenger decided to join our conversation. She began to tell us at length about a building she’d seen on Queen Street that had an old sign showing “Molson Bank”. She then segued into a history lesson on how banks of old were run. Despite the fact that neither my colleague nor I had anything to add to her conversation, she never seemed to get the hint that we’d rather just be left alone. She laughed at her own jokes as she presented us with the history of Canadian banking. She ignored the fact that neither one of us made eye contact with her, or that we intermittently tried to staunch the flow of her diatribe by resuming our former (private) conversation. It wasn’t until the streetcar arrived that we were able to make a break to a two-seater at the back of the car and get back to our idle chatter.

The second instance occurred while attending an early morning spin class at the gym. Juggsy and I were trying to get a real workout after the comedy of our stripping class and were struggling with the fact that although we were dressed and ready to spin, the sun had not yet risen. We were maintaining the type of conversation possible prior to coffee and a shower – brief and intermittent. As we waited for the other students, we spotted a man who had clearly just joined the gym. He was wandering about the room, looking for something to do while obviously unfamiliar with the variety of equipment he could choose from. He asked the instructor what we were doing and was told, “we’re about to start spinning, and you’re welcome to join.” Buddy walked over and took the bike next to mine and began to talk. “I’ve never spun before, is my bike okay?” “I’ve always liked cycling, ever since I was a kid, so this should be fun!” Throughout the class, I could catch him looking at me out of the corner of my eye. I knew that even the slightest turn of my head would prompt another spurt of “gosh, this is hard but working out is fun” so I kept my eyes dead ahead.

In either instance, it wasn’t the fact that a stranger wanted to engage in conversation that bothered me. I can understand the desire to want to be a part of something or to share your experience with another. That’s part of being human. But you cross the line into obnoxious when you refuse to read the signals others are giving you. If the person you are engaging in conversation won’t make eye contact, won’t respond, and is physically turning their body from yours, you should take the hint and keep your brilliant conversation for someone else. I suppose I could have said as much to my streetcar interloper and my spinning interrupter. But, I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable (instead, I allowed them to make me uncomfortable). Perhaps the addendum to the rule about talking to strangers should be: if you poke it and it doesn’t move, that conversation is dead.

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

2005-03-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

It starts with a tickle in your throat and progresses to a feeling that significant parts of your brain have been replaced with cotton. Gradually, your eyes begin to water and the tickle in your throat moves up to your nose. You pray for a sneeze to relieve you but it doesn’t come. You blow your nose, and five seconds later you blow it again. You blow it so often that you ask yourself where it all goes. How is it possible for the human sinus cavity to contain so much fluid? Your nose mutates into a raw, red pulp that aches at the very thought of a tissue. You’d love to sleep but you can’t breathe through your nose. You snore. You wake up with lips so dry and flaky that it looks as though someone has applied orange lip liner to the outside of your mouth. The combination of your raw lips and the flakiness of your nose ensure that you look the way you feel.

Your voice is nasal and you can’t pronounce hard consonants. You catch yourself breathing with your mouth open, and wonder if you look like Corky. Your appetite is fine but you can’t taste anything - the joy of eating lost in one of the many dozens of sopping tissues at your side. You start to cough and can’t stop for minutes at a time. Your body is convulsed and you can’t prevent the odd projectile from escaping the racking of your lungs.

You try to bargain with it. Maybe this is mostly in your sinuses and the coughing won’t last long. Or maybe if you take one afternoon off work, you’ll catch up on your sleep and it won’t get any worse. You tell yourself it isn’t that bad. That you can suck it up and just keep going. But what you really want to do is crawl under a thick blanket and have someone bring you a tray of soup, tea and tissues with lotion. You want to cry out for mommy and have her tell you how to make yourself all better. You take vitamin c, Echinacea, tea with lemon, and contact C. You do everything you can think of to make it go away, but you know it won’t. Not until it’s good and ready. And you realize that all you can do is stay home, take naps, drinks lots of fluids and wait. You have a cold and that’s all there is to it. It’s okay, you don’t suffer alone, I’ve got one too.

Who Are You Calling Crazy?

2005-03-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

There are days when cramming your body onto the TTC or waiting forever for someone to let you merge makes you feel as though you’ve reached the end of your tolerance and you are experiencing the last few lucid moments of your life before you lose it all. Or at least, there are days like that for me. When I’m in one of those moments of crisis, I often think with fondness of a situation I witnessed a few years ago on the subway at the height of rush hour. When the going gets rough, I picture this scene and inevitably feel slightly reassured that at least I’ve got options.

It was summer and far too many of us were crammed into the car on the Yonge line heading south from Bloor station. As usual, the train was packed to capacity with its eclectic mix of students, professionals, nutters and mutterers and we were all breathing the same stale, sweaty air. I was standing towards the middle of the car and since I wasn’t getting out for several stations, I wasn’t yet concerned about the mass of bodies that blocked my exit. We reached Wellesley and I observed the struggle of a few unfortunate individuals as they tried to make their way off the train – their paths blocked by pack sacs, readers and people getting on. It was violent, sweaty work and it didn’t look like any fun. I started some careful maneuvering because although my stop was still 3 stations away, it was obvious that no one on the train was in an accommodating mood and getting off was slow, if not impossible, going. As I twisted and shifted my body into open spaces, my internal monologue was attacking all of the inconsiderate riders who blocked the way for their fellow passengers. I enumerated their many sins and reflected on how someone really should explain the concept of letting people out before you get in. As I daydreamed about a Subway Justice League, I heard a loud shout and turned to see what was going on. A woman, whose appearance can generously be described as eccentric, was shouting “I’m going to get off at the next station if any of these assholes will get out of my way.”

That is when I witnessed a subway miracle - before this raving woman, a parting of the sea of bodies. Despite the pack sacs and books and plethora of riders, a navigable path opened up in front of her and when the doors opened at College, she walked out completely unencumbered. As she left, I could hear my fellow passengers muttering amongst themselves about crazy people and how they were glad she got off. There, on the TTC, with one woman’s purse pressing painfully into my chest and a man’s elbow poking me in the back, I experienced an epiphany. Maybe she was crazy, I thought, or just maybe, she was the sanest of us all. After all, she got off easy while I was still working my way to the front, politely saying “excuse me” anytime my body inadvertently connected with another. At each encounter, my fellow rider ignored me since that was far easier than actually making room for me. I shoved and I shunted and I squeezed my way out but I could no longer tell myself there was no other way. I’d seen it with my very eyes and I couldn’t argue with the results.

Since that day, whenever I find myself held upright by the lack of room on the subway, I think fondly of that lone rider and I keep her words on the tip of my tongue. I haven’t used them yet and perhaps I never will but I feel better knowing they are there.

It's over, Winter! It's over.

2005-03-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why you’re forcing me to write this all down. We could have ended this gracefully. It didn’t have to come to this. When you snuck your way back into my life last fall, I told myself it would be different this time; that you would be different this time. I foolishly looked forward to the new outfits: the tights, the wool turtlenecks and the sweaters. I bought myself a new hat and gloves - black with accents of hot pink. I tried to make myself cute for you because you’d laid yourself out at my feet in all of your alabaster beauty. I briefly thought your crispness and your indifference were a refreshing change from that clinging Summer. But now I realize that you aren’t any different. You’re exactly as you’ve always been and I just can’t deal with you anymore.

You could have left gracefully two weeks ago. We both knew then it was over. When you’d worn your way through my favourite wool mittens, and had pierced holes in my shiny pink gloves, you had to know I was losing interest in you. And yet you persisted. You tried to make yourself beautiful again. You draped the city in another white blanket and you dropped your flakes seductively all around me. But now it is I who has grown indifferent to you. And look at you now. You’re a disgrace. You are completely sullied. You’re dirty around the edges and your pretty flakes have turned into sharp points of ice. You’ve turned to slush in some areas and into treacherous patches of ice in others. No one thinks you are pretty now. And what’s worse, you’ve taken the city with you. You’ve turned its sidewalks into hazardous zones and you’ve cast a gray pall over everyone and everything.

I didn’t want to have to end this with any grand statements. I would have liked us to go our separate ways without demeaning ourselves but I see that you refuse to accept the truth. What did you think was happening when I was gazing at those flirty spring clothes? Couldn’t you tell I was ready to move on? Didn’t you hear me shouting in frustration that all I longed for was to leave the house in the shoes I would wear all day? You knew I was really talking about you. That what I was really saying is that I’m tired of you; that we are through. And yet you chose to persist. You’re still here. But now you’ve made yourself pathetic and I think you know you can’t woo me anymore. It’s over, Winter. You must accept this. Acknowledge defeat. Go away now and don’t bother me. Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t send me long letters professing your love. Just fade away. Perhaps someday, we can be together again. Perhaps I’ll forget the depths to which you’ve allowed yourself to sink. Maybe, when you come back, I won’t be here. But for now, I think we both just need some space.

The Art of Keeping a Straight Face II

2005-03-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

I attended my second “Art of Stripping” class yesterday and was disappointed to learn that the class doesn’t actually get any harder, sexier or funnier as you go along. With the exception of one minor move, we didn’t cover anything new this week. Of course, I realize I have some distance to travel before I’ve mastered the moves I’ve learned thus far, but I see no way I’ll make it to stripping artist status in the four remaining weeks of the class.

Last night, we worked on our belly roll (I thought I was taking the class to get rid of that but alas…), which involves a lot of kneeling followed by slithering around on the floor in uncomfortable positions. We worked on our wall slides, which, as I said last week, involve a lot of touching yourself while sliding up and down a wall trying to maintain a sexy look on your face. We worked on our sexy walk routine, which involves walking toward a mirror while crossing one leg over the other (sort of how you would walk if you really, really had to pee, only in this case, you are walking very slowly). Halfway across the room, you stop and strike a pose of which we have learned three: the Marilyn, the sideways Marilyn, and the one-legged plié. After posing and rubbing your hands along your thighs, you then continue up to the front of the class where you finally stop, move your hips from side to side in a straight legged-posture while you simultaneously walk your hands down your legs until you are holding your ankles. The grand finale is then a head snap to throw your sexy locks back from your face.

In theory, all of this is very sexy. In practice, it remains quite embarrassing. For one, it appears that when I concentrate, I have one of two facial expressions, neither of which is even remotely sexy. The first involves biting my lower lip until it almost disappears and the other involves compressing both lips together in a supremely prissy fashion. As I walk toward myself in the mirror and concentrate on the placement of my legs, I’ll think I’m dead sexy until my eyes travel up to my face where the cold shower of my intense concentration lies. It’s bad enough when I notice it, but if Juggsy sees it first, she’ll immediately mimic the expression on my face, which is guaranteed to set us both off. I suspect we are one laughing fit away from being asked to go stand outside the classroom until we’ve collected ourselves.

It’s interesting to watch how others deal with their embarrassment. Some women stop mid-move and appear to give up, ambling half-heartedly up to the front of the class deciding they’ll do better if they just start over completely. Others hoot and holler at each other throwing high-fives around as though they are the quarterbacks of burlesque. At this stage, Juggsy and I are in a quandary about whether or not we’ll actually keep going to the class. I think we’ve gotten the laughs we're going to get and since it isn’t a really great workout, I’m wondering what the point is. Of course, there is the fear that if I stop now, I’ll never unleash the true sex kitten within as I was promised by the instructor. Juggsy made a good point today saying that she felt way sexier lifting weights than she has thus far parading around the classroom like a lonely nymphomaniac. Perhaps, one’s true sex kitten can’t be unleashed by hair tossing, public masturbation or belly rolls but rather simply by getting comfortable in one’s own skin. I don’t know yet. I’ll give it another week and let you know.

We’ll Take the Bill, Please.

2005-03-02T06:19:00.000-08:00

There are few experiences in life equal to the pleasure of savouring a wonderful meal, and sharing a glass of wine with friends. Unfortunately, there are few experiences in life equal to the torture of bickering over the tab with those friends.

Making plans to dine out with friends for the first time is always a tricky proposition. There is no real way to predict what someone else will feel is acceptable in a restaurant until you share a meal with them. On the one hand, it can raise the friendship to another level. It might be a perfect outing with delicious food and flowing wine complementing lively conversation and laughter. Of course, the success of an evening doesn’t depend on one factor alone. It’s possible to prevail through terrible food and a lack of ambiance and still enjoy yourself. It’s harder, but it’s possible. I remember one notorious night in a small Northern Ontario town. The chairs were plastic; the food was unpalatable and overpriced - our salads (Catalina, Ranch or Italian?) coming to the table in old wooden bowls that belonged on a bridge table from the 70s. All of the ingredients for a horrible night were there. Yet from the moment the laser printed menus arrived at our table to today, the mention of “Cochrane Fine Dining” will send us into peels of laughter. So, regardless of the quality of the meal itself, your night out with new pals might be the kind of night that lays the foundation of a life-long friendship. On the other hand it might not.

There are several ways your other hand might play out and those could range from a mildly boring evening, to one that will live on in infamy through the remainder of your life. The really bad nights aren’t the ones where you realize that you don’t actually have that much in common with your tablemate(s). Those evenings might feel longer than they actually are and you may spend a good portion of them thinking up excuses why you’ll never be able to do anything with your dinner companion(s) again. But they probably won’t have you leaving the restaurant in a rage. Rage-inducing evenings are usually the result of a discovery at the end of your friendly encounter, a dawning awareness that your new pal is cheap.

I once attended a dinner with about eight other women. The evening was joyful, the food was delicious and the wine was shared by all but the two women at the table who were pregnant. Some women ordered appetizers while others did not. Some of us ordered dessert while others couldn’t stomach another bite. But regardless of who had ordered what, the night’s theme was “try this”. Plates of appetizers were passed around so that everyone could get a taste of something special. Desserts were brought to the table with multiple forks and everyone had a taste. It was a lovely experience, until the bill came. One of us suggested that we split the bill evenly with the exception of those who hadn’t had any wine. It seemed fair and most of us were nodding when another of the dinner guests said, “well, I didn’t have an appetizer and I only had one glass of wine.” Silly me, I hadn’t realized we were supposed to be counting. Of course, even though I hadn’t been keeping score, I’m self-aware enough to know that if a bottle of wine is open, odds are I’ve had my share of it. However, if we’d all only had one glass, would we have been able to return the remainder to the bar for a discount? The problem with settling the bill is that as soon as someone opens the floodgates of “I had this but I didn’t have that” they force everyone else at the table to go down the same road. Which means that the final part of your evening is spent doing calculations in your head (although, perhaps if I only had one glass of wine, I wouldn’t find this so difficult). Many of us would rather spend way more than we’d planned to avoid debating over money at the end of a pleasant meal and so, on this occasion, we did.

But we shouldn’t have had to. When you go out for a group celebration or a group meal (with the possible exception of work-related functions which are not always optional) you should split the bill evenly across the group. Don’t accept the invitation if you can’t afford to go – if you’ve only got $16.75 in your pocket and you are heading out for dinner, you should either bow out or find yourself a patron. Because ultimately, if you eat out often, sometimes you’ll come out on top and sometimes you won’t but it all comes out even in the end. Because the truth is that when you dine out in numbers, you aren’t just paying for the food, you are paying for the experience itself, so unless you don’t want to be invited back, cough up the cash, my friend. And, just for the hell of it, have another glass of wine.

Sidewalk Etiquette

2005-03-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

By choosing to live in a certain location, you form an unwritten contract with your fellow citizens. You agree to respect some basic guidelines of co-existence within your chosen context. This doesn’t mean that you’ll share the same politics, or gardening tastes as your neighbours, or that you’ll join the neighbourhood watch association. It doesn’t mean that if you live in the Bible belt, you’ll go to church on Sundays. It simply means that you’ll agree to consent to a few fundamental principles and try to get along. Of course, there are the exceptions that prove the rule: the certifiably and temporarily insane who, for one reason or another, are no longer aware of their surroundings. But for the rest of us, there really isn’t any excuse for rocking the boat.

If you live in a city, you benefit from a host of advantages absent from smaller locations. You don’t have to know your neighbours. You can probably walk down the street and find a butcher, a baker and a candle shop. You can feast on meals from a hundred different cultures and get to the restaurant on public transportation. You can see a play, a foreign film or a live band and you can buy almost anything. But you also have to share your space with millions of other human beings. And in that sharing comes some pain. However, that pain is manageable if we all just use a little common sense.

There are two areas in the city where civility is paramount: public transportation zones, and sidewalks. It isn’t possible to discuss both areas within one entry so, in order to give each area it’s due, I’m going to start by focusing on the sidewalk. After all, you can’t take the subway without getting there first. And as soon as you walk out your door into the streets of the city, you are bound to encounter some bad sidewalk etiquette.

For instance, as you make your way to the station, your first encounter may be a family of four, strolling along together, oblivious to your busy schedule. The father is pushing a running stroller with large protruding wheels, his two year-old toddler walks alongside, zig-zagging his way across the path. The mother appears lost in her own thoughts, at the other end of the sidewalk. Each time you try to pass, one of them edges in, blocking your way. You say, “excuse me” several times and still they don’t seem to notice you. You will wonder to yourself why neither parent is holding their child’s hand. You won’t want to risk making a break for it because a part of you knows that if you do, the toddler will come crashing into your legs, and will fall to the ground in tears. Perhaps you will get lucky and they will stop to look in a shop window.

You might also run into a group of friends who haven’t seen each other in days/weeks/months. They are all really happy to see one another again and they have so much to say. They’ll talk in the middle of the sidewalk, shrinking the width and forcing you to squeeze by them and the people walking in the other direction. You will share a brief moment of eye rolling with a woman coming toward you and it will briefly lessen your frustration but not enough that you won’t accidentally shoulder the last of the chatters.

If you are walking arm-in-arm with your beloved, you may encounter another couple coming towards you in a similar fashion. You will think, “if they move over a bit, and we move over a bit, we’ll all get by without skipping a step” and you will move to your right. You will then wonder why they aren’t moving to their right, why they continue to walk straight down the middle of the sidewalk. You will realize that they may be playing chicken with you. Perhaps you will ultimately discover that you are the chicken and you will fall into single-file to avoid a crash.

As you make your way along the sidewalks of the city, you’ll be forced to avoid piles that your fellow citizens have neglected to pick up after their dogs. You’ll meet people who stop in the middle of the way, people who walk out of stores without looking both ways to avoid stepping into oncoming pedestrians. You’ll have to negotiate groups of smoking, spitting teenagers “no you didn’t”-ing each other. These are the obstacles that will block your path as you stroll along trying desperately to hang on to your good mood.

If only everyone would just follow the guiding principles:

1) If there isn’t room, make room.
2) Pick up after yourself.
3) You are not alone.

Some days, it feels like a losing battle. As though everyone else around you is simply testing your patience by toying with you. But I believe there is hope that we can all get along. The other day, Mr. Titswiggle and I were walking along the sidewalk and we saw a sight that made me want to cheer. A couple was walking beside their toddler who was clearly just getting used to the idea of walking on his own. As they turned into our path, we slipped into single file suspecting we would be forced off the sidewalk and onto the street if we were to avoid a head-on collision with the little one. Instead, we witnessed a sidewalk miracle. The father softly said “honey, move in front of us, other people are coming”. The little boy wasn’t more than two but he understood his father and edged his drunken sailor shuffle over to his parents’ side of the path. No one had to stop in their tracks. No one had to step onto the street. No one ended up climbing a snowbank. We all passed each other with a smile and both Titswiggles thanked the little boy. If only everyone had his manners.

I Don't See Anyone Else Laughing...

2005-02-28T07:52:00.000-08:00

I watched the Oscars in their lengthy entirety last night for the first time in years. I can usually watch a couple of hours but eventually, the hypocrisy and the speeches just wear me down and I have to turn it off. I was excited about last night’s broadcast because, not only would we not have to deal with Billy Crystal’s shlocky musical numbers, but Chris Rock happens to be one of the funniest people ever and the sheer potential of what he might say was enough for me to sign up. From his first “sit your asses down” it was clear he wasn’t going to sell out completely. I liked his opening speech. It was by no means Chris Rock at his best, but it had his trademark edginess and it obviously made a lot of people uncomfortable. Essentially, he approached the entire event with a healthy sense of irony. The problem, of course, is that there is very little irony in Hollywood.

To a fan, it seemed the awards kept getting in the way of Rock’s stand-up. After the initial bit, his involvement was limited to brief introductions that, while funny, went largely unnoticed by the audience and the presenters. When he introduced Halle Berry saying that she was the star of the eagerly anticipated “Cat Woman II” she didn’t even crack a smile. When he introduced Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayek as the evening’s four hottest presenters, there was barely a titter. It seemed the problem wasn’t that the audience didn’t think his jokes were funny, they just didn’t notice they were jokes. For every Clint Eastwood chuckling, there was Renee Zellwegger trying desperately to breathe. For every Charlie Kaufmann rushing to get off the stage, there was a filibustering Jamie Foxx waiting in the wings.

It wasn’t all seriousness, when Chris Rock introduced Jeremy Irons as one of the great comedic talents of our time; Irons walked up to the mike and thanked Chris saying it was nice to finally be recognized. That’s what you do with a joke. You acknowledge it, you smile and you move on - because, after all, it’s only a joke. Someone really needs to pull Sean Penn aside and explain this concept to him because at some point, somewhere after Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sean Penn lost his sense of humour. Sean, everybody knows who Jude Law is. That’s why it’s funny. Get it? Come on. Sure you do. If he’d been talking about Ryan Gosseling, it wouldn’t have been funny. If he’d picked James Franco as his foil, it wouldn’t have worked. And that’s because a lot of people don’t know who they are. But everyone knows who Jude Law is and that makes it a joke. Now you get it, right?

Hilary Swank didn’t have time to laugh. She was far too busy reminding us that she grew up in a trailer park and that she had a dream of being an actor. She also had to remind us that she really, really loves her husband even if she didn’t thank him the last time she won. But I shouldn’t be too hard on her, she was wearing the evening’s ugliest dress and she might have known it.

Regardless of who hosts, the least funny parts of the evening are always the speeches for Best Actor and Best Actress. I think in future events, rather than the time clock, which none of the winners in these categories ever even glance at; the prompter should flash Nobel Prize winners and their accomplishments. Perhaps this would provide the Hilary Swanks and the Jamie Foxxs with a touch of perspective. Perhaps it would humble them enough that they would limit their acceptance speech to less than five minutes. But then again, they probably wouldn't notice.

There were plenty of other memorable moments throughout the night. Finally catching a recognizably French word somewhere toward the end of Beyoncé’s song was pretty funny. Seeing Side Show Bob signing Accidentally in Love was funny too. Natalie Portman’s dress (which I believe came off the set of Gladiator) was worthy of a chuckle. But, over all, despite Chris Rock, Robin Williams, and all of the other people who are able to maintain perspective, the Oscar’s just aren’t ever going to be funny. And that’s because you can’t make a show funny if your live audience is taking it all too seriously. The people (or at least those sitting in the front rows) at the Oscars are not interested in the show. They want to know if they are going to win. They want to show up on TV, in magazines, and in the best-dressed lists. They want to be seen and remembered. But above everything else, they want to avoid any whiff of controversy. They do not want to be seen laughing at something risqué and thus alienate their fan base. Luckily, many of them were at least successful in that. Ultimately, if you don’t know it’s a joke, you probably won’t catch yourself laughing.

As I turned off the television after the whole gory event, I found myself thinking that maybe that wasn’t the point. Despite all of my nasty asides throughout the evening, I realized that the Oscars did show me one thing: movies are unquestionably more than the sum of their parts. The fact that it is possible to take the Sean Penns and the Hilary Swanks of the world and still make something moving and entertaining is testimony to the fact that movies really are magical and maybe that is something to celebrate. All right then, let them have their night. But maybe next year, I’ll spare myself the agony and I just won’t watch.

Serenity Now!

2005-02-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

For many of us, the weekend stands as a precious oasis within a desert of routine and obligation. Alarm clocks, meetings, trains, car pools and a variety of other factors force us to be somewhere at a certain time from Monday to Friday. On bad weeks, by Friday, you’ve become exhausted with the routine of your commute and with the burden of your responsibilities. These are the days where the fact that you spend five days at work and only two at play seems like a cruel irony and a bitter injustice.

I’d like to be a Buddhist. I’d like to think of myself as a blade of grass - going through life allowing the wind to push me to and fro. Rising again as the rain falls upon me even after a shoe has trampled me into the ground. But I have to come to terms with the idea that my version of being a Buddhist may be somewhat narrow. Perhaps Buddhism is not limited to wishing bad karma on those who annoy me? Maybe asking someone to “get the hell out of my way” on the streetcar is not a Zen approach to life?

These are days when the distance between the person I’d like to be, and the person I am acting like feels very great indeed. When someone does something mean or stupid to me and instead of letting it go, I allow it to ruin my day. It would be nice if there were a magic bullet for not letting people get to you, for just letting it all wash over you. Yet instead of taking the high road all the time, I find myself sinking below the standard I’d like to think is mine. Where I call someone names or make rude allegations about their mother (and often, not even to their face where they could at least defend her honour).

Ultimately, I think that’s why we need the weekend - that two-day hiatus from dealing with other people’s problems. Knowing that tomorrow I’ll get up and hang out with Mr. Titswiggle in the sunshine (or not) of our living room, lingering over cups of coffee and making no great plans for the day makes it a little easier to bear the realities of public transit, sneaky colleagues and my insurmountable workload today. I hate to resort to clichés but thank god it's Friday!

The Art of Keeping a Straight Face

2005-02-24T09:53:00.000-08:00

If you live in a Northern Climate, this is about the time of year when you begin to lose your mind. When you can’t believe the cold it isn’t over yet and that it’s likely to keep going for at least another month. When your boots, scarf and mittens become your least favourite objects, and the weight of your winter coat makes you think Atlas had it easy. If you go shopping, pretty spring clothes surround you, tempting you with their carefree nature. Sure, you can buy that light pink silk t-shirt now, but it will just sit in your closet, mocking you as you once again don the turtlenecks and wool sweaters you’ve grown so tired of wearing. There isn’t a cure for the winter blues. You’ve got options for coping, but coping is the best you can hope for.

Some people play winter sports. They ski, snowboard or go snowshoeing. They own snowmobiles and speed drunkenly across frozen lakes and think bizarre thoughts like “why is winter only 4 months long” (that’s bizarre because those of us who don’t love the season think it lasts for six). Many will save their pennies to take off to warmer climes during the cold months. They gather in Florida, Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic desperately soaking up a week, or maybe two, of sunshine, which they hope will tide them over until the days lengthen again. For others, the solution lies in the idea that if only you could keep yourself occupied, you might not notice the weather as much - your busy schedule would somehow sweep you out of winter and into spring.

This winter has felt very long. It’s been hard to drag myself to the gym and do the things that keep me busy and away from the comfort of starchy foods and television. On Tuesday, I got a call from a friend suggesting a diversion from our winter blues “let’s take The Art of Stripping” said Juggsy Laroue. Stripping, of course, is the new fitness rage. Terri Hatcher’s been on every talk show strutting her stuff and Carmen Electra just launched a stripping fitness video so it’s officially the Pilates of 2005. Taking the class seemed a good idea since the cost wasn’t exorbitant and, if nothing else, we were guaranteed a laugh. Last night was our first class and I have to say, as far as fitness experiences go, stripping ranks pretty low on the pole. It turns out that slinking around on a floor and touching yourself constantly isn’t a cardio workout. However, I’m not sure that’s the point. Any class that starts with the instructor’s guarantee that “after this class, you’ll be a real sex kitten” isn’t necessarily implying tighter abs.

The class was an interesting blend of women of all ages and shapes. Most were clad in standard workout attire with some in baggy tracksuits and others in the latest LuLulemon gear. A few of the attendees took the stripping part really seriously and one woman wore a bra and hot pants to the class (I’m convinced she’s a real stripper just getting her certification up to date). With the exception of a very few, most of us were struggling to keep a straight face. It turns out that the hardest thing about stripping is avoiding falling into hysterics at the sight of yourself in the mirror. This is the only fitness class I’ve ever taken where the instructor says things like “now stick your chest and your ass out”, “don’t be afraid to touch yourself”, and “this is my boyfriend’s favourite.”

I, like many of the other attendees, spent the first fifteen minutes trying to control my laughter. Another attendee had apparently gotten serious about the class and turned to me in annoyance and shushed me. This, of course, sent Juggsy into peels of laughter, which didn’t help me to control myself. By the time we got to the part where we watched each other doing “wall slides” it was clear the best ab workout was going to result from the constant hysterics we were in, rather than the class itself. Wall slides consist of putting your “ass”, shoulders and head up against the wall with your feet slightly forward and your legs spread shoulder length apart while standing on the tips of your toes (aka the stiletto posture!). You then slither up and down the wall while touching yourself. For some reason, when the instructor did it, it looked dead sexy but whenever Juggsy or I took a turn, it was impossible for the slider, or the watcher, to maintain any type of control. Something was definitely getting lost in translation.
I don’t know if it will beat the winter blues but I do know that this class will be fodder for party jokes for the remainder of my life. I realized last night that where I thought I was completely at ease with the thought of myself as a sexual being, I’ve got some road to travel before I unleash my true sex kitten. At this point, I’m leaning more towards a sex-laughing hyena but I’m working on it.

Oh, Grow Up!

2005-02-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

One of the side effects of adulthood is that you stop believing that grown-ups know everything. You begin to recognize that life is not the straightforward picture you’d imagined as a child. Living happily ever after isn’t magically guaranteed when you get married (but thanks very much to all the fairy tales that perpetuated that story). Your dream job might, in fact, just be a job – great some days, annoying on others, peppered with peaks of enthusiasm and bouts of mild depression. You lose your ability to trust wholeheartedly in your leaders and begin to see the world through a filter informed by experience. For some of us, that filter is like cheesecloth - only the finest particles can squeak past our skepticism. For others, and I’m going to contend this results from a lack of imagination, the filter is like an old colander from the dollar store that someone should have thrown out years ago - everything gets through.

As children, many of us assume adults know everything and that they can help us resolve any situation. I remember one instance, when I was about eight, my friend and I had run home screaming in fear from “The Louis Street Gang.” We imagined the streets of our small Northern city were teeming with dangerous characters just waiting to pounce on us and on this particular sunny summer morning, two teenagers had shouted something at us as we crossed a street. We were convinced that they were coming after us. That the Louis Street Gang had our number and that we would be kidnapped and murdered momentarily. As we rushed up to the house and blurted out our fears to my mother, she smiled and said she would take care of us. I’m ashamed to admit that we said “but you’re a woman and there were two of them”. My mother, assuming a boxer’s stance, burst into a chorus of “I am woman, hear me roar” and all of our fears were assuaged. That was nice. But growing up brings with it a healthy dose of cynicism. At some point along the way, children encounter adults who make them realize that not all adults are kind, smart and funny. That sometimes, adults are mean, insecure or misguided. For me, it was one legendary teacher who rammed the point home in the fourth grade. I haven’t been quite the same since.

I’m not lamenting my loss of innocence. A healthy distrust of authority and of others is a great tool in life. You can’t really believe in yourself if you think someone else already has all the answers. Yet, occasionally, you encounter someone who just hasn’t had that moment yet - an adult who may never learn to filter the genuine from the fake. These people will always believe in the management team of the company they work for. They’ll watch Oprah and never once get annoyed. They’ll hear an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow and will think “what a nice person she is”. They’ll say things like “well the President knows things we don’t know so we should trust that he’ll make the right decision”. In some ways, it must be reassuring to feel that things are as they should be. But, at the same time, this is dangerous thinking. This is the thinking that leaves children in the hands of Michael Jackson or a “trusted’ priest overnight. I suppose there must be a happy medium somewhere, a way to remain skeptical without continually erring on the side of cynical. However, if I have to choose one or the other, I’ll leave my eyebrows raised and keep asking questions. Because, ultimately, you can trust in yourself and, as much as possible, you should also trust in the people you know and love. But don’t trust in someone because of his or her job title or function. You are woman (or man). Roar a bit. See what happens.

You Call that Work?

2005-02-22T06:18:00.000-08:00

There is an unwritten rule somewhere that a certain percentage of the time you spend at work doesn't involve working at all. We all know that no one can be productive for 8 hours straight without suffering some kind of a complete mental breakdown. The human mind needs diversion. A chat, a cup of coffee, a quick surf of the internet (every office worker's best friend). I'm not talking about an illegal amount of distraction, just enough to get you through your day. Some people smoke, others go for a walk. Some people spend all day emailing their friends while others wander the halls looking for office supplies and bothering their colleagues along the way. You can think of this time as unproductive, but that would be shortsighted. Sure, those fifteen minutes didn't close any deals, create any new opportunities, or cross anything off the task list, but (let's not lose sight of this) it was refreshing. It picked you up enough to keep going until you could safely turn off your monitor and head home. Employers should never overlook the benefits of "wasted" time.

However, that said, there are certain distractions that are difficult to justify. Yesterday, as I walked down a hallway, I saw a colleague rearranging the push pins on her corkboard. There was nothing on the corkboard save for about two-dozen multi-coloured pushpins. She was placing them into two neat rows at one end of the board. From what I could tell, there was no colour coding going on, the point seemed to be the alignment rather than any discernable pattern. Now, I've done my share of surfing, chatting, and emailing in my illustrious career. I've rearranged the papers on my desk to avoid making a difficult phone call. I know about avoidance techniques. But in all my years of gainful employment, pushpin art has never figured into my repertoire of diversionary tactics. Possibly because when someone walks by your office and you are surfing the net, they can’t really tell that you aren’t working. You could be doing research, looking up a number or a word or doing any number of the other work-related tasks that are facilitated by the web. It’s pretty hard to mistake playing with pushpins for anything else. Play at work, people. Play all you want as long as you can still get your job done. But, for your salary’s sake, if you are going to play, at least play smart.

Why do you ask?

2005-02-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

My nephew is an endlessly fascinating source of entertainment to me. He makes me think of the Talking Heads song where playing with a baby is described as "having fun with no money". The child can bob about when music is turned on and I will be overwhelmed with happiness at the appearance of his tiny body bouncing up and down to the rhythm. He can make me laugh by smiling and he is deemed a genius for repeating any sound I've made. He's going through a biting stage right now and even the agony of his vice-like grip on my hand can't make me angry with him. I choose, instead, to interpret his bites as marks of affection (deep, throbbing, red marks of affection).

Frankly, the job of an aunt is the easiest one in the world. I swoop in when I can, love him to bits, and swoop back out leaving diaper changes, teaching the difference between right and wrong and all the rest of the hard stuff to his parents. Someday, I can be "the one who teaches him to make fun of authority", or "the one who reveals that chocolate cake makes a great lunch". These are some of the legacies I look forward to passing on to him. It's hard for me to imagine that my sister can love this little guy more than I can but even while I struggle with the concept, I can look at her looking at him and know that it is true.

However, anyone who tells you that being an aunt (or an uncle) is good training for being a parent is a lying fool. There are a multitude of reasons why this is simply not true. Yes, you can practice changing a diaper. You can stay up all night with the sick child you are babysitting. You can share the emotions of the parents through a child’s successes or failures. There are many things that being an aunt or an uncle can help you to conceive, but as I observe the many mothers in my life, I am becoming painfully aware of the most difficult aspect of parenthood and the one that I, as an aunt, will never encounter. That is, of course, other people. Or, to be more specific, other people and their notions of how your child should be raised. Here are some of the questions that I just don’t have to deal with:

How long will you breastfeed? (You are, of course, breastfeeding aren’t you?)
Have you taught him/her sign language? (You realize that really helps them to learn faster and could impact their University admittance.)
Is he/she crawling/walking/talking yet? (Oh, really? Hmm, that’s interesting.)
Is he/she taking swimming lessons? (You know, it’s a very important skill for a six-month old!)
What does he/she eat? (Formula, whole milk, trans fats, refined sugars, garlic, tomatoes, peanut butter – name a food under the sun and someone out there will be able to tell you why your child should never/should always eat this food. Odds are that if you survey 20 people, you’ll have at least two who will completely contradict each other)
How does he/she sleep? (Through the night? How many naps? For how long?)

The underlying implication of every single question is that there is a right answer and a wrong answer and the questioner is simply waiting for your response in order to judge you more accurately. And judge you they will. We’ve all met people who lack a proper social filter. People who will ask the most inappropriate questions or make the most awkward comments. We get used to those individuals and try to ignore most of what they say. However, when you bring a baby into the equation, even the most rational, non-judgmental person can lose their perspective on what is, and isn’t, their business. From the colour of his pants to the flavour of his first birthday cake, people are going to weigh in on your child’s life whether you like it or not.
I can’t think of a real solution to this problem but I’ve got some suggestions. I’m not sure if they do or not, but I think all pre-natal classes should include a section on replying to invasive questions. Amongst the pushing strategies, breast-feeding information and alternate delivery method movies, there should be another section where expectant parents hold each other close and repeat to each other “Why do you ask?” over and over until the are engrained. Push. Push. Why do you ask? Push. Push. Why do you ask? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And for those of us who don’t have children and who are gazing down on the smiling face of someone else’s child, before we say anything at all, we should ask ourselves why we want to know. Nine times out of ten, we probably shouldn’t be asking at all.

Wherein Technology Lets Me Down

2005-02-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to work for a living. I think no matter how much you like your job there are days when you just don’t want to do it. Days when lying in bed and reading a book or spending all day watching movies just seems like a better use of your time. When dealing with other people’s insecurities, issues and needs just doesn’t inspire your passion. I used to have a colleague whose email signature read: “Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Bastard. Who needs to read that in the middle of a busy day? Who needs to be reminded that there is probably something out there you’d enjoy more, if only you could think of it? What colour, exactly, is your parachute?
Today, however, even such an annoying email would have been a welcome sight. Instead, I spent the better part of my day on the phone with our systems department trying to understand why my Outlook was completely crashed. Throughout the course of the day, I had to hear at length about how this wouldn’t have happened if my Inbox weren’t 1.3 gigs large. It took a lengthy self-flagellation session to convince our systems department that I was sufficiently repentant for my bad behaviour and that I deserved to be assisted. Frankly, I don’t want to know what a gig is. I don’t care. If they don’t involve a concert or a stand-up comedian, I’m just not interested in gigs. I would like to write something down and send it to the person who needs to read it. I want to look at a calendar and know what meeting I’m supposed to be in. If my mailbox, calendar, task list and everything else I depend on to do my job will crash when it gets past a certain size, why doesn’t it warn me? (Note that this is a rhetorical question. If you know the answer, please don’t send it to me.) These tools are supposed to make us more effective and efficient, and they often do. But at other times, our utter dependence on them makes us realize that without these tools, we don’t really have a job. There was a brief moment earlier today when it looked like the whole thing was irretrievable and it occurred to me that this was when I’d get to explore what else I’d like to do. Because if working for a living sometimes feels like torture, recreating and rebuilding the history of everything you’ve done within one company, trying to track down all of the contacts you’ve made over time, and dealing in perpetuity with the idea that “this would be so much easier if only I hadn’t lost…” would be more than I could bear. I’m glad I can keep my head in the sand just that much longer and leave my parachute tucked away in a corner. There is something to be said for the status quo. While I’m at it, though, maybe I’ll take tomorrow off and read a book…

These Boots are Made for Walking?

2005-02-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

The warm spell has passed and it's snowing outside which meant that I walked to work this morning through a veritable Christmas card. Picture the scene: the trees were covered in a light veil of snow, their dark trunks contrasting with the white blanket that covered the ground. As I walked, my footsteps made their marks on the untouched carpet leaving their evidence of my passing (yes, there was only one set of prints, no Jesus wasn't carrying me). It's nice to briefly enjoy winter because, frankly, living in a Northern Climate isn't easy - it carries its host of inconveniences and headaches. While I was comfortably clad in winter gear from head to toe, I observed pictures along the way of Winter gone horribly wrong. I know it's hard to put away the strappy sandals and the swirly summer skirts as the weather starts to cool. It's difficult to look in the mirror when you are covered in a hat, scarf, bulky winter coat, mittens, thick wool tights and water resistant footwear - "man, I look fine today!" are not the words that come to mind. Yet, there is something to be said about arriving safely at your destination without suffering the agony of frostbite or a bruised tailbone. My father used to harass my sisters and me with the phrase "style or comfort, girls" which he would repeat ad nauseum throughout the colder months. Today, I saw the poster girl for that phrase. I first noticed her coming towards me from a distance. She was clad from head to toe in the uniform of many Torontonians: black, black and more black. Her long dark hair was pulled back, her winter jacket was sleek and fitted and was only slightly shorter than her black pencil skirt. Below her skirt, only a small portion of her black stockings showed before leading into her knee-high, kitten-heeled boots. It was a fine outfit for a picture. It was a terrible ensemble for negotiating the snow-covered sidewalks. She clutched her coffee cup in one hand as she extended the other, maintaining a precarious balance as she hobbled along taking dangerous, flat-footed steps to avoid slipping. I don't think that was the effect she'd hoped to create as she'd dressed that morning. I don't think she'd pictured a tight-rope walking, black-clad clown as she stepped out into the snow that morning. Honey, those boots aren't made for walking, I thought smugly as I stomped past her. It isn't always a one or the other equation but if it had to be, she could take style, I thought, I'll take comfort.

Back of the Line Lady!

2005-02-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

This morning, I went to my local dinner to grab my regular breakfast: toasted tomato on whole-wheat bread. I'd placed my order and my bread was toasting when a woman in her 70s or 80s walked in. Even as I'm still talking to the woman behind the counter about my order, the elderly woman walks up to the counter and begins to place hers. "A small coffee and a toasted bagel with jam and butter on the side" she says over both the cook's and my voices. I can see the cook's dilemma, she wants to be polite to the old woman but she doesn't want to be rude to me. She compromises by nodding at me and then turning to the old woman who is saying "I'll pay now, and then you can bring it over to me." This is a lunch counter, not a restaurant. There is no table service in this establishement yet that doesn't seem to bother this woman. Now my toast is ready and the woman continues to explain in detail how she wants butter and jam "on the side". "Yeah, we heard you lady!" I shout in exasparation. Okay, that's not true, I said nothing at all. But know this: I wanted to shout it because I really didn't want my toast getting cold. The cook grabs my toast and brings it over to the counter. She's about to make my sandwich when the old woman starts to hand her money over. Keep in mind that the cook hasn't yet entered the woman's order - she's not even standing close to the register. She's standing in front of my toast where she belongs! Again, conflicted, the cook leaves my toast cooling on the counter and goes back to the lady who is about to drop her change on the floor if no one takes it from her. Again, she repeats her toasted bagel order. Now, clearly flummoxed, the cook pours a small cup of coffee which she hands to the woman before going back to the counter to slice and toast her bagel. All the while my toast sits abandoned on the counter. The old lady continues to explain to the woman behind the counter about how she can bring her "on the sides" and her "bagel" to her when she's done and heads slowly off to her seat. I'm aware that it isn't easy for this woman to move and that she requires a cane to walk over to her seat. I know she's lived a long life and probably deserves her breakfast before I do. But at the same time, aren't we Canadians? Are we not famous the world over for our respect of the queue? Don't we grow up with the ingrained understanding that if someone is in front of you, you must wait politely for your turn? Is this not the foundation of our society? I debate explaining this to her but decide against it for two reasons: 1) She might not hear me anyway; 2) Maybe her eyes are going and she just didn't see me in the first place.

Love is in the Air

2005-02-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day strikes me as the "make or break" day of all bad relationships. By bad relationships, I don't mean wife-beaters and abusers, or normally decent relationships going through a rough patch. By bad relationships I mean the legions of naive souls who got married because it was "the right time" or "the thing to do". Who married someone they had nothing in common with because that person matched their 23 year-old idea of what perfect was (or even worse, their parents' ideas of what perfect was). I mean those of you who share your lives with someone to whom you have little to say, someone with whom you have no desire to spend a concentrated amount of time alone. However, since you've got 2 kids, a mortgage and no imagination of a life that could be better, you go out for dinner and have sex on a few occasions throughout the year to prove to each other - and mostly to everyone else - that you are the perfect couple.

All year, he's been cheating on you with whoever will let him while you've been developing an addiction to online gambling and vicodin. But today is Valentine's day. So tonight, you'll don your La Senza/La Perla lingerie (depending upon your income bracket) and he'll present you with jewellery/flowers/a car (depending upon your income bracket) and you can pretend that everything is perfect.

Aah, Valentine's Day - it's so romantic!

I say out with six-dollar cards and foil-wrapped chocolate hearts. Out with over-priced long-stemmed roses that won't last out the week. Out with fighting for reservations or rushing through desert so you can be done on time for the second seating. Out with the heart-covered lingerie and the laced-covered thong (ah, that's a relief!). Tell your partner you love them every day you are with him or her. And if you find that hard to do, maybe you should find someone who makes you want to say it.

Meeting Etiquette

2005-02-11T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've decided to compile a list of helpful pointers for how to behave in work meetings. If you aren't a fool, you'll probably think that everything here is simple common sense. However, in just over six years of attending countless meetings, I've observed some very troublesome behaviour. I believe that if we all just try a little harder, we can avoid wasting everyone's time. (Note that by "we", I really mean you.)

It is not necessary to paraphrase what someone else has just said. Assume that if you understood it, your colleagues have also. Unless someone asks a question, once a point has been covered, it's been covered. Move on.
Do not feel the need to comment simply because you have been invited to attend a meeting. Listening carefully and ensuring your concerns are being addressed is active participation. For this reason, don't feel that you are contributing by asking stupid questions. As a guideline, you should know that if you begin any sentence with "I know this isn't what this meeting is about but..." you need to shut up.
Be on time. I realize that you are the most important person in the universe and that your issues are far more critical than everyone else's, but if the meeting begins at 10AM, be there for 10. There may be some occasions where circumstances beyond your control will force you to be late, but these should be the exceptions. Look at the clock when you walk into a meeting, if you are consistently more than 5 minutes late, you should know that the rest of the people in the room probably think you are an ass.
Don't bring up issues that affect only you in a meeting of more than 3 people. Just because something is annoying to you or making your life difficult, it doesn't mean the rest of the group wants to know about it. Catch up to people after the meeting and ask your questions then.
Don't interrupt. If you walk by a closed door and can tell that people are meeting within, don't walk in. Don't assume that because you think your issue is critical, that others will agree. I'll make it easy for you, you are allowed 3 walk-ins per calendar year. If you find yourself interrupting more often than that, you should know that you've got bad time-management skills. After all, everyone else already knows this.
Don't take care of personal hygiene in a meeting. Flossing your teeth, adjusting your package, clipping or biting your nails, picking your face, and a host of other such activities are disturbing to your fellow colleagues. Stop it. Stop it right now!
Shower. Pursuant to item #6, of course, you are not to shower in the meeting. However, if you do attend meetings on a frequent basis, do your colleagues a favour and use proper hygiene when outside the office. Wash your clothes, bathe, shampoo, rinse and repeat. Nobody likes to be in a meeting but people really don't want to be in a meeting with you because you stink!

What's the Buzz?

2005-02-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

Whatever industry you work in, you've probably got a language of your own. A list of terms that are understood throughout your organization to mean certain things. A new hire will have to spend their first few months on the job figuring out that lexicon. These words, acronyms, and terms become a virtual symbol of belonging and while they can be annoying, they are unavoidable. But then there are the buzz words. The backbone of bullshit bingo, if you will. Words or expressions that pop up in a meeting once or twice and then metastasize throughout the organization until they become ubiquitous. I actually once was in a meeting and heard someone utter the words "folks, we are living this in real time". Since then, I've heard this phrase repeated several times. How else, exactly, can one live something? Can you experience something in fake time? NO, YOU CAN'T. How does a thinking person with a reasonable mastery of the English language find themselves uttering such nonsense? Even worse, how does a person with a modicum of intelligence hear such a saying and think "I'm going to have to use that one"? Stop the madness! Say what you mean. Instead of telling people to "think outside the box" why not say "let's be creative" or, better yet, suggest an original idea. Don't "utilize" or "leverage" things. "Use" and "re-purpose" them, like the rest of the world does. You don't sound smarter through your parroting of every business book ever written. You sound like an ass and some of us are on to you.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2005-02-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

The storm had left yesterday's sidewalks a mess of snow and given the virtual carpet of shit that lay underneath, I decided not to walk to work and opted for the TTC instead. The TTC - my chariot and the thorn in my side. I bought tokens on the way in and after I'd handed over a 10 dollar bill, the transit worker pushed his little magic button and the tokens came down the shoot. Ten of them. Ten tokens for 10 dollars? That's not right. Now, these are the situations where even I falter. I can give back the tokens and "do the right thing", or I can keep them and enjoy the delicious feeling of having gotten away with 5 free tokens. There was a line behind me so I had to decide quickly. I took the moral high ground, pocketed my 5 tokens, and attempted to hand the others back to the attendant, "you gave me too many" I said. I was greeted with a total blank stare. "You gave me ten tokens" I repeated and was rewarded with an "uh?" Now, I have a choice to make, I can take the tokens back which will serve him right for his total lack of comprehension, or I can just walk away. Neither option felt right. Here I was, doing the honest thing and instead of being recognized and applauded for my integrity, I'm being stared at as though I've suddenly sprouted antlers. I dropped a token in the slot and returned 4 tokens to him. I figure that an honest soul, such as I clearly am, deserved at least one free ride.

The Walk of Shit

2005-02-09T06:20:00.000-08:00

I walked to work this morning and spent a good portion of that walk cursing dogs. "Fucking Dogs" I said as I avoided ice slicks and piles of shit. It's been warm lately and the melting snow has left its glaring evidence of dog owners too lazy to clean up after their beasts. I'll admit that the ice slicks have nothing to do with the dogs, but the combination of these two hazardous substances made the walk in something out of a bad, smelly video game. I can understand the human reluctance to pick up a steaming pile of excrement. This alone is the reason I will never own a dog. I will clean up only after myself (of course, I'll change my nephew's diaper in an emergency, but once that kid turns two, he's on his own). However, since you have made many proclamations about the joy and happiness this loving animal has brought into your life. Since you have shown around "cute" pictures of your dog in a Santa hat, or with reindeer antlers. Since you have shared with others how your beast is so "smart" and "loving" and really, really has his own "personality". Then you must place your delicate hand in a fucking plastic bag and pick up after your best friend. It's snowing out? It's cold? TOO BAD! On behalf of the citizens of Toronto the not-so-clean, I thank you in advance.

Love and the Workplace

2005-02-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

I saw the cheaters come in to work together today. He's married, she isn't and everyone seems to "know" that they are getting it on. Rumour has it someone once walked in on the act but as I have never witnessed it, I can't say for sure. Part of me thinks if you were having an affair, you wouldn't be so blatant to walk in together every morning. But, then again, my experience is limited here. Anyway, the worst part of it is that the idea of sleeping with either of them is really unappealing. I think only attractive people should have affairs. I mean, if you have bad posture, a lisp, glasses and a shit personality, shouldn't you thank the stars that you found a wife and keep your pants on? Conversely, is it so bad to be single that someone would chose to be a side dish to said slouching, lispy, bore rather than the main meal to someone with a limp? Hard to say. Of course, he probably doesn't know he has a bad personality and she might have lost faith that her limping prince is somewhere out there. I was going to ask but instead, I simply complimented her on her coat, and walked in to work.