Initially I had written an entire post about Penelope Trunk and being introverted and feminism, but it didn’t flow as well as I had hoped, so I scrapped it and am now just writing via stream of consciousness.
Anyway.
So I started a course in Project Management in January and I don’t quite know what to make of it. Before it began, I kept having nightmares about school and it got to a point where I didn’t want to go to sleep. Every night it would be something different and equally terrible.
Those have now subsided, and I sort of chalked it up to falling into old habits of being an academic masochist and wanting to get over 90% all the time. I had to talk myself down from that cliff and commit to the understanding that my life is different and I have a 40+ hour workweek and friends and family and a boyfriend who wouldn’t appreciate it if I spent every other night in the library.
One thing it has definitely highlighted in my mind though, is that I really love art in comparison to business (boy am I ever glad I never took commerce!). I like making things beautiful. I like shot composition and people’s stories.
I remember going to a career services counselor in the first year of my undergrad, and she was a very hippie-esque crunchy granola type. She asked me what I love, and I told her that I was curious/fascinated by people and their life stories. I don’t remember where she took that from there, if it were me I’d probably be like “Well you’re screwed kid. Take commerce.” (… why I’m not and should never be a career counselor).
But now looking back, I can see why I love documenting things in video form. It can be non-invasive in some ways, and you can capture great moments, great snippets of people and get a glimpse into who they really are.
It’s probably also why I love reading good blogs, and keeping one myself.
I can be a pretty guarded person, I guess. And I can be a little too good at respecting people’s boundaries, so it’s nice to have an alternate channel into lives of interesting people.
When we first moved into our own place {sans roommate(s)} -we had a great set of neighbours. They were an amazing, friendly couple from Nova Scotia, who -as an added bonus -brought us food on a regular basis.
To find nice people like that in the downtown core is pretty much impossible. So you can imagine how devastated I was when I found out that they were moving out only four months later. Little did I know then, it would get much worse.
At the beginning of the year our new neighbours moved in… with dog.
Now I should take a time out to say that I absolutely love dogs. I can’t make it through a day without thinking how much my life would be better if I had one. But I’m aware that my life can’t accommodate a dog. I live in an apartment downtown and that in itself means NO big animals.
I guess these neighbours find themselves exempt from this basic logic, because they have a HUGE dog which I have not seen, but have definitely heard on multiple occasions. This leads me to conclude that they neglect their dog. This thing barked all weekend. Unless the owners are deaf I think it’s safe to assume they were away for those two days.
During the weekend howl-fest going on one wall over, I made the best brownies of ever. I will forever call these “The Best Brownies of EVER” because that’s what they are. Some people like their brownies extra fudgey. I am not one of those people. A brownie purist knows that brownies are supposed to be somewhere between cake and fudge. I like mine 60% towards cake, and not too sweet. If your palette is anything like mine, I strongly suggest you make these. Trust. They are perfect. Even more so if you are living through trying times –auditory or otherwise.
The Best Brownies of EVER
Ingredients:
4 oz Unsweetened Chocolate Squares (4 Bakers Squares)
1/2 cup of Butter
1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup of flour
No mixer allowed. This is easily done with a bowl & spatula.
Method:
1. Preheat Oven to 350 F (180 C)
2. Melt chocolate squares and butter over medium heat
3. Stir until completely melted
4. Transfer melted chocolate mixture to a bowl. Add sugar and mix.
5. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix again until incorporated.
6. Add flour. Mix only until the flour disappears completely.
7. Transfer to a greased glass dish (I used 9 x 9 lined with parchment paper).
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick test comes clean.
Let cool and dig in. Invite some friends over to do the same.
Christmas this year was great. When I was selecting the pictures above, I initially thought that I should do some colour correction, but all of them were so warm and captured the essence of spending time with family that I decided to leave them as they were.
Christmas day I:
- got pummeled by bouncy balls in the basement by R and my nephew. They’ve already learned to gang up on me.
- played hungry hungry hippos. Something I never knew - each hippo has a name and one of them is called “bottomless potamus”.
- decorated gingerbread men (one of the 4 is mine, guess which one!)
- had an amazing dinner c.o. my sister, brother in law and mom!
- hunted their cat
- took a million pictures of their beautiful centerpiece
- played Catan and lost… no surprise!
- got farmopoly - total surprise!
I got a cold shortly after Christmas and now I’m trying to get better while watching “Canada’s Worst Driver 5″ Best. Show. Ever. Angelina is nuts. I can’t believe someone like that exists. Arun should be stripped of his license for public safety. Father Giles seems sweet and hilarious and I would probably go to Church if I had someone like him giving a sermon.
I have a lot of laundry to do. I have a lot of Neo Citran to drink.
At a dinner party this weekend I let it slip that I like animals more than I like people. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but it really is a rule. I trust animals more than I do humans, and they are almost always more entertaining.
The picture on the left is of a lamb snoozing all curled up. The purpose of the blue on his head was to identify which lamb belonged to which ewe. It was hilarious to see all these adorable lambs with colors on their day old heads, especially considering the babies stuck close to their moms at all times. But I loved the contrast between the fluffy white and the bright blues and reds all the same.
Speaking of sheep, I found a woman who has sheep and donkeys and blogs here. She made the lifestyle switch at 26. That is insanely courageous and amazing and I am jealous of her 200+ acres. I ended up reading a large portion of her entries, and there are sometimes equal parts sadness and joy in farming. It would be extremely difficult for me to find one of the animals hurt or killed (as she experienced many times) but I think I would appreciate the world that much more. It’s strange to think that several decades ago a disproportionate amount of people -compared to today -experienced that lifestyle.
We’ve lost an amazing amount of knowledge with the migration to cities. For example, did you know you can soften brown sugar with a piece of bread? A certain farm kid told me that. True story, and trust me… it works.
I have a hard time with this season. Sure the colours are beautiful, and my favorite holiday (Halloween) can be found around this time of year, but let’s be honest. Fall has some serious baggage. For one thing, there’s less sunlight, the days are never crisp and warm like we imagine, and somehow, despite a lack of snow, reminders of the impending holiday season creep in and smother us whole.
Well, maybe it’s not that bad. I can still bike around the city… even in the rain. But this morning, when I saw a drenched squirrel run up a tree, it occurred to me that the branches were bare and he would have no shelter from the storm.
That’s just not right people.
The food of Fall is one of the few saving graces. Thanksgiving and its turkey and stuffing, pumpkin pie, squash and Ontario harvest apples. How can anyone write off the season entirely?
I finally (finally!) started baking artisan bread, an endeavor I vowed to embark upon a mere eight months ago. You can’t blame me for the delay. Bread baking is best in the Fall. I also made my Thanksgiving apple pie topped with a turkey shape that looks less pigeon like than last year’s. The butternut squash soup was an adaptation of this recipe… and admittedly that is a bay leaf I placed at the last minute for decoration. And finally, some delicious home made jams made by a friend of R’s mom. I suppose all of the above makes the 10-20 degree drop in temperature worthwhile after all.
I love trees. I love the way they provide shelter to creatures/critters. I love the way they beautify nature. And I love the way they provide protection and privacy.
I lived in the same house until I moved away for university. My parents moved in just before I was born, and they chose it in part because of the huge tree that was on the front lawn. An enormous fir tree that would eventually hide most of our house. The neighbours hated it. They constantly harassed my mom to get it chopped down, but she refused. They tried to convince her to at least prune the skirt, but she stood her ground. No saw would touch any surface of that tree.
I understand that concept now. I understand that stubbornness. The fir was beautiful. But, as always, it went beyond the desire to preserve the tree. The need for a cover in a suburban setting makes total sense. The safety of a shield can be a necessity for someone who feels vulnerable.
I haven’t been posting here, in part because what I say is read by people who know me in real life, but who may not acknowledge to me in person that they read this blog. I think I’ve come to terms with that now. On the flip side, I’m sure I’ve said things on this site that I’ve wanted to convey to some of these people. I think I’m OK with that now. I think I owe it to myself to go through life without the need for a cover.
That said, I intend to post here more often (I’m serious this time). I’ve had some sort of a blog for over ten years now, and when I try to put it aside, I miss it in a very big way.
That said, I intend to post entries here with information that you might not want to know. I can’t take responsibility for this. Your choice to come here is a conscious one, and I don’t plan on filtering or censoring these posts.
To those in my life who come here and don’t lurk… thank you. To those I know in “real life” who let me know that they visit my website… thank you! I really do appreciate your honesty.
Anyway, I’m going to try to post at least a few times a week now. Thanks for your patience.
Every time I go to write a new post, I think to myself, OK that really didn’t take a whole lot of effort. I can do this more frequently… and then a month passes and I get busy and forget. So the cycle begins.
The past 40 days have been pretty busy though. We:
- Had a TV show film near us. The first time we heard gunshots, we dropped to the floor. Then they re-did the scene 10 times and it got old fast.
- Built a bed out of thin air. OK that’s not 100% true. R. built a bed out of thin air. Thin air and 2×4s… which might as well be thin air. I am sitting on the king size bed right now, and it looks like it was made by Mennonites. This bed was nothing but 800 dollars of oak boards a month and a half ago. CRAZY.
- Celebrated my nephew’s fifth birthday. I can’t believe he’s five already. Time flies. Today is also my younger nephew’s first birthday. He made a cooing sound over the phone to me. I think it loosely translated as “Why didn’t you come over for my birthday? I will hold this against you forever.”
- Moved everything out of the old place. Moved everything into the new place. I painted 5 rooms in two days. I got maybe three hours of sleep a night during the week of the move. I was a wreck. ETC. A lot of crying was involved.
- Did an overnight sleep study at a sleep clinic. Electrodes and wires are not fun to sleep with. Knowing that someone is watching and filming you sleep is extremely weird.
- I fed a donkey an apple. It made his lifetime. For real. I had never seen this particular donkey happy until that day.
- Longed over a farm. Two actually. One six hours north, and one three hours east. I dedicate probably two hours of my day thinking about owning a farm.
- Went to my good friend Meg’s wedding. HER wedding. It is still crazy.
- Visited Niagara Falls for two days. Stayed at a Hilton hotel. They give out cookies on check-in. I approve!
- Watched the end of season four of House and cried my eyes out. R thought I was a loser because of it.
Back in June, we babysat my nephew for 5 hours so my sister could do normal human things… The kinds of things you don’t do when you have two boys under the age of 5, I imagine. Things like sleeping, and staring at the wall for a few uninterrupted minutes.
Dear audience, a 4.8 year old is hard work. We made a few science experiments for him, and this video is the result of the volcano we engineered. This video was made from part 1 of the volcano explosion, and part two when I cut in closer to get the detail of the bubbles.
Each time we did this, X-man was all “I wanna do it again!” Towards the end, I said “Welcome to year four…. of life.” Because the whole day was like that. Case in point: After the seventeenth time alternatively hiding/seeking, I could have been passed out from exhaustion on the living room floor and he’d be all like “I wanna do it aaaagain!”
I have no idea how my sister does this.
But wow, isn’t he adorable? It’s totally worth it.
BIG ENORMOUS WONDERFUL NEWS: R & I are moving out on our own. Just the two of us. I am elated. If there was a picture version of the happiness this manifests in my brain, it would be the picture above. Flowers and sun and beauty. That’s what would come out of the printer attached to my brain.
You know that movie with Brad Pitt - The curious case of Benjamin Button? I KNOW YOU DO. It’s the one where he’s born an old man, and he reverses in time until he’s a child.
Well the last year of my life with my former roommate would follow a similar chronological order… When I moved in he was probably 17. Still immature enough not to clean up after himself, but JUST mature enough to be able to carry on a conversation. A year goes by, and suddenly he’s 10 years old. The really annoying 10 year old who screws everyone else over but refuses to take any accountability for his own actions.
IT. WAS. HELL.
I really could care less about him. Unfortunately, he’s R’s friend and that just made me want him to keel over and die EVEN MORE. Because he kept being a jerk to R. And I can’t handle when people hurt those I love.
I’m surprised my subconscious didn’t kick in at night and allow me to sleepwalk to his car & slash his tires. So I’ll thank my frontal lobe RIGHT NOW, because it stopped me from doing such a thing while I was awake, even though the thoughts were definitely there.
OK, so when I was three I stole my older sister’s only tube of lipstick. I smeared it over myself and many of her belongings. Someone thought it was cute and took a picture. My sister didn’t, and I can guarantee she was fuming behind said picture-taker.
The long(er) story: Looking back, this behavior probably shouldn’t have been reinforced… for a number of reasons, including the least important of all: Not much has changed. I can say this because some twenty years later, I am still this irresponsible and careless with makeup. It’s not that I don’t want to be, but I can’t really bring myself to work hard at something as trivial as form when function cannot (in my world) supersede it.
I do try. I try to put on makeup in the mornings …sometimes… when the desire comes over me and in the rare instances where I’ve had a sufficient amount of sleep. Because my eyelashes are fair, every couple of months, I’ll get them tinted (see definition here). When I found out about eyelash tinting, I thought it was the best thing ever. Mainly because I was (at the time) swimming daily and mostly because I couldn’t be bothered to reapply mascara. I also rub my eyes on an hourly basis -which I know is not the best habit, but one I cannot stop doing. Rubbing eyes + mascara or eyeliner = black raccoon eyes.
If possible, this is worse than it sounds.
It’s a lot worse.
The frustrating thing is that I encounter people who have mastered the “well-put together” skill perfectly. It’s one of the many downsides of living in a big city. I don’t get it. Do these people not have to go to work? Do they not have dishes and laundry? Most of my day is taken up by these things, and I have maybe 1.558 percent of free time left.
