the way we were

Recently my old Hotmail account was hacked and The Spaminator sent a grammatically errored message to everyone I've known since I was eighteen (my husband fault's my easy-to-figure-out passwords: "A computer figured it out."). While using my crack skills to change my password to another noun I disovered my old MSN profile, including this saavy shot:

and this telling profile:
Things I enjoy about this discovery:

• I look goth. I was, in fact, never a goth.
  
• The photo taken at the Oakvillian home of my university friend, Nik, probably in 2001. Back in the age of land lines.
  
• I owned leather pants. I remember submitting this picture to "Hot or Not" around the same time, and a separate photo of a close-up of my face, as a social experiment. The leather pants scored supremely "hotter" even though my face is barely visible. What that thin shine will do to boys...
• I just remembered what inspired the purchase of leather pants.
• This is one of the few shots of my short hair phase. It was shorter than this at one point, but nearly all proof has been lost.
  
• I think I'm opening some sort of chocolate snack. Since I'm at Nik's house, not my own, I was allowed.
• Chances are, I'm on the phone with my mother which means that I was keeping the chocolate snack a secret.
• Although my profile seems scattered (was I 25? was I 23?) it probably has something to do with the dates that I updated it. "Suffering from acute joy and hope"? Really?
• The Keats quote is from La Belle Dame sans Merci. I was studying Romantic Poetry in university and had fallen quite madly in love with Keats. Which was nothing compared to my love of Longfellow.
• La Belle Dame inspired famous paintings by Sir Frank Dicsee and John William Waterhouse. Incidentally, Waterhouse's painting is a fairly accurate depiction of how I try to kiss Andrew.
• I still have many of the same interests.
• I feel much older and much happier now than I did then.
  

drunk on spring

It's 11:30 a.m.

I'm perched on a dining room chair, albeit removed from the dining room, on my very own back porch. Our backyard isn't much to look at yet: cracked slabs of concrete delineating a patio, a 10 square foot patch of tired, brown grass with tire tracks etched in it from or car's attempt to park during the thaw, and two-by-fours slapped together to form a quick porch.

But it's our patio, it's our yard, it's our porch.

I should also add to this touching memoir the fact that I haven't yet showered, my hair is in a hasty bun (...should that be a name for a bakery?...), and I'm in my housecoat. Our brown "puppy blanket" (made of muppet-like material that feels like a...puppy), a wedding gift from an Italian aunt on Andrew's side, is over my lap. The whole image, I would expect, must give the appearance of an invalid except for my iBook which, perched on my knee, and in alliance with a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea alters my brand to "crazy writer".

My neighbour has let out her yappy Pomeranian, Rocky, out into her yard to terrorize the people strolling along our back alley. She informs me that he was raised with much bigger dogs, so thinks he is one. "Cookie?" she bellows. Rocky, silenced, gallops to the back door expectantly. The trick has a 30-second time lapse.

My neighbour, Rocky, the sound of someone sweeping, a buzz saw from four (five?) houses down, the fat sparrows' committee meeting, the azure sky, the nip of under 10 degrees, a touqued child being pulled down the lane in a wagon, 11:51 a.m. with no pressing engagements for the rest of the day.

Shaken, not stirred.

putting the recess in recession

So far, I've had very little to complain about.

Sure, I'm on a salary freeze but, then again, I still have a salary. I haven't yet put enough space between me and the eight-month unemployment phase of 2007/2008 (*shudder*) that I can't recall a balance preceded by "-" so I'm quite content with my salary, frozen as it is.

Andrew and I have been able to buy a house. Not just any house, but a newly gutted and renovated house in a nice neighbourhood, for $36,000 less than the asking price. Still in our late twenties and not yet married a year...yeah, we're doing OK.

Did I mention our mortgage rate? Maybe I shouldn't. Lusting is a sin.

Overspending is out of fashion, creative money-saving techniques are in. Since last week coworkers of mine ran an impromptu slide-to-Polaroid transfer workshop and Googled how to press flowers. Did I mention the flowers were left over from what we collected together, as an office, to help support CANFAR's "Spring For Life" campaign?

Stores are vying to host the best sales, brown-paper-bagging is hip, bartering is back, political parties are getting back to the basics, international cooperation trumps imperialism, and we're beginning to realize that money doesn't grow on trees, debt is not our friend, and short-term sacrifice can equal long-term gain.

"recession": ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Latin recessio(n-), from recess- ‘gone back’

"I feel like the only thing that will save us, is if something huge that we never thought could be taken away from us, is suddenly gone. I just think it's our time to struggle. This is what will save us from ourselves. Families will dig deeper to connect in ways we have forgotten. We will value work and money in important ways again. We will be quick to help others because we will have known what it means to struggle. We will put focus on our communities to keep them safe and look out for our neighbors that might be reaching their end. We will remember to save. In the end if things get bad enough and the struggle is long, we will take back our country from greed. We have to struggle long enough to get past the mindset that if we just keep spending money everything will be okay again."

- Pacing the Panic Room

animal farm

I was sent this link by my mom, via my brother. Does anyone remember Harry the Horse from Sesame Street? Does anyone else have vivid memories of their mother, doubled over with laughter, half-impersonating Harry trying to talk:

Harcophrophrollackarlophmopol...

I do. Twenty-five years later.

In keeping with the animal theme I must honour the oath I swore to my husband last night to post a conversation we had regarding pets. We've decided to get a puppy since we both love them and, yes, I'm sure it will prove to be baby-training-wheels for us newlyweds. I cringe at the predictability of it all: married, house, puppy... I (notice: not we) also want to get a kitten. I love dogs, but I adore cats.

Andrew: "We'll get a lab puppy, but not an expensive one."
Me: "And a kitten?"
Andrew: "Yes, and a kitten. That won't be expensive. We'll find one on the street or something. They're like...leaves."

Which, sadly, is true. I was on Kijiji the other day, scanning multiple postings for adorable labs going for $400-$900 each. Kittens? $20 O.B.O.

writer's block

There's an inspirational gauge, I'm convinced. I'm feeling pretty sure that every artist, musician, writer and performer can attest to it. At either extremity of this spectrum lies creativity's nemesis, mediocrity.

On one side, you have utterly convinced yourself that your art is far superior to anything else you've seen. Recently, anyway. This illusion is generally accompanied with phrases such as "these days". I myself have been lurking in this camp for a while, sagely droning, "Well, it's not as if writing is even the same these days. Text messaging? Kids don't even understand grammatical structure anymore..." If you can correctly pronounce nuclear, for example, you are elevated to an intellectual state above a national leader. Why, then, write when the audience at large is so simple, so dull, so below your intelligence?

The other end of the spectrum are the days weeks months seasons when all you are aware of is the brilliance of your fellow artists. Being caught up in a brilliant novel, reading a crystalline couplet of poetry, scrolling through a witty blog post, recognizing that even your sixteen year old brother is writing lines such as:

I've know a few roses that are guilty of hurting little children's innocent fingers. Now I've also know little children's fingers are guilty of taking an innocent cookie out of a jar without parents permission. But also, cookies are guilty of making innocent people a few pounds heavier than usual. When do we stop with the innocent chain? Probably never, seeing as we live in a fallen world.

Reading J.D. Salinger will do this to me. Why even attempt writing when there's Salinger?

I'm writing a book. Well, in theory. And that theory lies somewhere between assuming I'm better than everyone else and worrying I'm a lunatic for attempting publication. There. I said it.

irish girls

Sean, I'd say the best one came
from Tupelo, Mississippi
I'll tell you now that grown men cry
and Irish girls are pretty
- The Proclaimers, "Sean"

My maternal great-grandfather was Irish and this, along with many Canadian mutts, gives me the right to claim that I, too, am Irish. Grampa Sam and I shared a love of classic literature (he would read every volume that his nine children would bring home as part of their school curriculum) and wit. He passed away before I was born but I grew up in the Muskoka cottage he built from scratch and have visited the gravesite of his little sister, Ellen (or "Ellie" as she was affectionately dubbed; a name so affectionate, Sam had a habit of accidentally using it for my mother, Lois), in Donegal, Ireland.

Despite being pale, freckled, and predisposed to quarreling, my only personal tie to Ireland was a 10-day visit in 2000. For most of the trip my friends and I camped out at Laurie's house, who was a resident of Newtownards, a suburb ten miles from Belfast. My most vivid memories are of her kitchen and living room as we didn't leave the house for three days due to the infamous Orangemen Parade 'celebrations' that year. Several cars in the neighbourhood were missing when we ventured out of the house on the third day, replaced with blackened pavement and debris.

When nearby relatives of mine heard that I was in the area they offered a tour of Donegal and a meal. Although I forgot to ask them for distinguishable traits (colour of car, stature, age, or any other method of telling them apart from other Irish) I recognized the entire family at the bus depot by their round, snubbed noses. They looked like Uncle Foster's nose. They looked like grandma's nose. They looked like my mom's nose. They looked like my nose. A "ski jump", my father calls it.

Donegal stretches wide, long, windy and seaswept along Ireland's northeast coast, many of its thatched-roofed and whitewashed cottages are still intact. The grass really is greener and the sea, although sun-shiney, looked and felt chilled. Even on that cloudless, midsummer afternoon my cheeks and Irish nose flushed pink in the wind.

Ellie's grave lay in a quiet church plot, a simple stone plaque. Around it grew miniature daisies and sparse, very green Irish grass. I pressed a few daisies in my passport before I left the gravesite.

Since my mother secured her Irish citizenship a few months ago through her grandfather's line (her - real - Irish friends are unimpressed), the possibility of getting my own is one step closer. The only draw would be flaunting rights, a shorter waiting line at customs when I decide to visit again, and perhaps a drink on the house on St. Patrick's Day. I think Sam would wink his approval.

kutiman

I'm sure there's more to this than I musically understand, but I one of the reasons I keep watching these videos is their sense of community. Gender, age, race, class, situation, skill - none of them seem to matter. Kutiman makes a strong case for music being the universal language.

www.thru-you.com