Yule fool!

Each Christmas, we have a drink of choice. Last year, it was brandy, lime & soda in honour of SJ's grandma. This year, it was the Chicago and the Old Fashioned. The first has brandy, Cointreau, a splash of bitters, topped with champers; the latter contains a magnificently muddled orange, maraschino cherry and sugar cube, topped with whiskey and soda. 
I can solidly attest that both are delicious. T can solidly attest that both got the better of him. We were all chatting happily after dessert, when T wandered away from the dining table. A while later, he still hadn't come back. I went exploring to make sure he was feeling alright. And there he was, tucked up in bed, still fully clothed and wearing his Santa hat. He had totally sneaked off, and won't live it down until next Christmas!

Three Chicagos

(like the Three Amigos, but tastier. ;)

Our Christmas menu was:

Hors d'ouevres: Smoked salmon and melba toasts with cream cheese, capers and lemon; smoked Applewood cheddar, 7-year-old cheddar, and Old Speckled Hen ale cheeses, crackers, mixed dried fruit and olives.

Starter: Spicy carrot and capsicum soup with onion and herb bread.

Main: Stuffed roast squash (aka pumpkin), with roast vegetables, mash and peas.

Dessert: Orange-and-candied-cherry cup cakes.

Drinks: Chicago, Old Fashioned, Mawson's Cabernet Sauvignon, Yalumba Shiraz Viognier.

And you know, after all the planning and frantic preparation, it's funny how Christmas always turns out to be such a chilled, wonderful day. Hope yours was too!

Beautiful day

It's Christmas Eve, and I just received the most wonderful gift I could have ever hoped for: A card from my big brother.
Through all the years you were gone, I looked for you, and loved you, and knew you'd come back to us when you were ready.
And if it helps any, your card made me cry too. So we're even on that front. 


Merry Christmas, everyone. Put your faith in Christmas magic. It does exist.

A new low

Today, I reached new depths of penny-pinching. I cut my own hair.
It's not as bad as it sounds. I only cut my fringe, because frankly, I refuse to go pay someone $20 to do it for me. However I am still wracked by memories of the last time I tried to cut my fringe. I was in Grade 9, and was running late for a band performance at my high school. Frustrated with my hair, I took at it with some scissors. In a sequence of events fit for the daggiest of TV shows, it turned out slightly crooked. So I cut it some more. And it was still crooked. So I cut it some more. In the end, I turned up to the band room in the knick of time, to be greeted with slightly confused looks from my friends and repeated "What did you do to your hair?"
Today, though, I was determined to move beyond my wayward teen efforts. Results below. I'm embracing the slight jaggedness as a fashion statement. ;)


Am I the only one who's tried this?

Foto Follies

It was -6 today, with a wind chill of -13. So I decided to go for a jog. Naturally. 
Suitably layered, I set out along the lakeshore near our home. But the jog ended up being more good-intention than good-exercise, because I kept getting distracted by the utter gorgeousness of the day. The light here in winter is astonishing. It whets your vision and gives the world an almost unnatural sharpness, as if tearing away the usual layers and filters through which I see the world, to reveal its very essence. Either that, or the cold was making me delusional.
Faced with the fierce beauty of ice buildup along Lake Ontario, all I could do was jog home to get my camera and bicycle, and head back to the lake.

Whither the tree?

Christmas has finally arrived here in Toronto, as has winter. Both have been looming for a while, but gentle snow falling outside and a flurry of cooking activity in my kitchen have marked today as my official start of the yuletide. 
But there's one significant absence: We don't have a Christmas tree. 
It was a decision made by happenstance as much as it was by bank balance (good trees cost $25 or more). For the last couple of years, we have gone with the boys to choose a tree, then brought it home to decorate. But A. and E. are now fully-fledged teenagers, and frankly, they'd rather hang with their friends in KW than come and visit us in Toronto. So that means we spend our weekends with them in KW, and never got around to addressing the whole 'tree' issue in T-dot.


Until today! In the antithesis of a Christmas miracle, I have made possibly the lamest pseudo-tree in the history of pathetic last-minute attempts by taping a string of Christmas lights to our lounge room wall, in the shape of a Christmas tree silhouette. Yes, this time it's even more lame than the cardboard tree I made out of a wine carton in Edinburgh. 


And it turned out to be even more pathetic than even I expected. I just brought my laptop to the lounge room to photograph my monstrosity, only to find it has completely fallen down. So please, witness what is left of my ultra lame effort to create a Christmas Tree Silhouette in tree lights on our wall.

Sigh.

Haiku me this, Batman

For no good reason, recently I decided to start writing all of my facebook status updates in haiku. Things I have learned so far:

- Americanisation fits perfectly, as it is lovely and neat and has seven syllables.
- Harper jokes are easy to fit in, but it gets more difficult when I try to add Ignatieff. (Seems a fair summation of the situation as a whole, really.)
- I've started reflexively counting syllables while thinking my idle thoughts. I do this on my fingers. The subsequent twitching, I'm now realizing, could be making me look a little insane.
- It's rather reduced my number of posts. I like to think this is a good thing.


Poetry buffs may also be interested to know I wrote my first pantoum yesterday. The first quatrain came to me while I was walking home in a drizzling rain that wafted nicely under the streetlights. The strictures of the form, though, took me to rather unexpected places during the actual writing. It was really fascinating. 


If anyone's played with this sort of thing, I'd love to know about it.

...

Oh, and here, for no good reason, is the Twinkie-and-Joe-Louis cake I made for my friends' combo birthday party. You know you want it...

Dutch

Newton's third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I'm starting to believe it also pertains to happiness, and that for every ounce of joy in this world, there's a corresponding amount of pain.
Less than six hours after writing my previous fairytale-post about lifetime friendships, I was informed that a friend of mine from years ago was killed in an horrendous workplace accident that day. 


I don't profess to be a close or integral part of Danny Cheney's life. I was dating one of his best mates back in the post-university days, so for about three years I was welcomed into their tight-knit, vodka-swilling, club-dancing group. (I like to think I added a certain cynical Brisbane air to their usual Gold Coast vibe.) 


After the inevitable break-up, I stayed in touch with a couple of the guys, but not Dutch. Still, I was impressed to hear about his career as a globe-trotting engineer, and totally pumped for him when he got married in April. Then, on the weekend, he went to work and didn't go home.


I know of death. I've lost relatives, some colleagues. People I consider friends. Indeed, Dutch is the second person in my life to be electrocuted in a cherry-picker-type machine. (At least Dutch died relatively within hours. It took a month for Tim to die.)


But this is the first time it's been someone from any of my crews (I've been lucky enough to have a few). Having now experienced the beauty of marriage, and to be nudging the deep joy of living as a fully established self, it breaks my heart to imagine losing any of it. The sentiment seems so trite, but the fragility and randomness of life has hit me in the gut.


So my heart goes out to Dutch's wife and step-daughter, his friends, his family. Everyone who knew the big guy with the huge grin. And I will do what everyone else does when loss darkens their landscape: I'll hold my loved ones that much closer, and cherish everything they bring to my world.


If you're reading this, you're one of them.
x

What flows from Sapa wine...

I was chatting to my lovely Irish mate R. on skype this morning, and suddenly an eagle-eye view of our friendship-as-landscape rose within me.


I was surprised. The path so far looked so very short, weaving down the muddy hillside from the Vietnamese town where we met, to this place six years on. Indeed, from that sudden vantage point above it all - earth laid bare - the track barely registered. Instead, it was surrounded by a vast expanse of untravelled ground, fresh and new and awaiting exploration.


For he is an old friend, and this morning I saw that such friendships work both in forwards and reverse: Not only is there ground behind you, but a world ahead. A world shared.


And it is beautiful!

Hark! Tis the siren song of procrastination

It's a beautiful Monday, a sunny end to a totally snow-free November here in Toronto, and I'm discovering there are many reasons to udpate this blog. 

1: My lovely friend at home actually does check it sometimes, so I feel I should give her something new to read.

2: It fills my time while I wait for the Purolator people to deliver my new running shoes! (My cash-strappedness has led me to order last year's model online, for $50 less than a newer version in stores. Hurrah to thrifty webness!)

3: It helps me avoid my other writing project, which sits open in another window of my laptop impatiently whining for my attention. My new novel is a playful, chirpy little thing that likes to nip my heels at random moments. It's a small beast, but it looms large to me because of its obvious neglect. So I've taken today off from my painting efforts to bestow some love and attention on the poor critter.

And so far all I've done is update my facebook page, and decide to write my status updates in haiku.

That shall end now. I'm coming, little one!

The author of this blog

has gone awol. 


That shall be rectified soon.


Apologies for the interruption in transmission.


Peace out.

So tired...

... from painting. All of my best intentions drain from my limbs the moment I stand under a hot shower and start scrubbing away the paint specks. And I end up doing nothing. Not even updating this blog.
For shame.

Today's silly aside

Is brought to you by the number 1 (coffees I had today) and the letter A (for the Avoidance of Actual Accomplishments).


The fug girls are now running a Friday competition where people can comment on photos in the poetic style chosen for that week. After giggling at the last couple of weeks, I submitted my own humble effort today, because frankly, the alternative is actually working on the new novella I've started writing. 
So behold, a song in honour of Katy Perry's peach-prom-wreck dress at the MTV awards, in the style of another Perry:

Oh Holy Night, a la Perry Como:

Oh holy fug,
The light is shining brightly
Through the holes in Katy Perry's skirt.
Long may her stylist, in sin and error pining,
Be reviled, for horror such as this.
A thrill of shock. A weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious fug.

Fall on your knees
Oh witness new excesses
On MTV
In peach satin and tulle
Oh fug.
Oh holey fug.

Thank you, Mr Miyagi

Mr. Miyaga taught an entire generation to paint, and for that I thank him. As does the house I'm slathering right now. Up, down, from the wrist. 
Now, to perfect my crane pose...

Life lessons

My recent disappearance has been mainly due to pride, namely the swallowing and surprise regaining of it. 


I'm now a manual labourer, painting the interior of a Globe colleague's house because a) I have nothing to do, and b) he has lots of bare walls. But what began as a grand idea turned into stark reality on Tuesday, when I went with T. to work so said colleague could give me the key.


We go up the ramp, and I wince as T. sails by the empty parking spots at the lot's periphery. "Can't we just stop here?" I ask, but he says no, he's meant to park in his allotted spot, just steps from the door. The fact that the car will be there for only a couple of minutes doesn't seem to occur to him.
I couldn't go inside the building, though. Having been in there as an award-winning journo, I couldn't bring myself to walk in as a manual labourer (in suitably daggy painting clothes).
So I hunched in the car to wait for my colleague. And naturally, that's when the National editors walk out to have a smoke. As I sit in a car just metres away. Trying to be invisible. Didn't work.


Despite my deep belief in the value of manual work and in the people who do it, I am a bit ashamed to admit I had to swallow my pride to go there myself. Do I think myself above it? If so, is that warranted?
These were the questions flitting through my mind as I sanded, washed, taped and painted the trim and doors on the second floor this week. 
And part way though, as I carefully slapped on the white gloss and assiduously cleaned up after myself, I realised why I was making such an effort: pride. I want to be proud of this, as proud as I am of anything I do.


I need to believe in the value of what I do, instead of judging my efforts by the world's pecking order. Methinks this is a good lesson for a whatever adventures are ahead.

Road etiquette

Warning to all useless drivers: If you continue to ineptly park in front of my house, taking up two spots with your willful inconsideration, I will write a polite rebuke and place it under your windscreen wiper blade, where I hope it will initially look like a parking ticket and thereby give you a double-shock.

Learn to park, people!!!

(Could I get away with a small traffic-crusader cape to wear at such times?)

Rainy Friday afternoon (I got no mind for worry)

So I visited the newsroom yesterday. It was a bit weird to contemplate, but great in actuality. A bit like ripping off the proverbial band-aid.


While I can be proud of that, I must humbly admit that my 'free thing a day' project is over before it even began. Schade!! Turns out, I'll be spending too much time this month helping people out, so my karma bank will be growing even if my blogging record doesn't. 
First up: help a friend paint the inside of his house. 
Then, later in October: Go and help run a super-nerd tent at a Waterloo nerd gathering called Quantum2Cosmos. Sure, all the lectures I wanted to attend are full, and the movies are sold out, but T rightly pointed out (read: slightly guilted me into agreeing) that I'd offered to help, and really shouldn't go back on my word.


So I'm going to be a handywoman, and a geek extraordinaire, all in a matter of weeks. Huzzah!
In the meantime, it's raining in Toronto, and the wonderful umbrella given to me by my fantastic bridesmaid on my rainy wedding day is getting many compliments. As it should.

And so it is

Shortly after 11am today, I was informed that The Globe and Mail will not be offering me my old job. 
It was, they said, purely a matter of paperwork. They felt they could not rightly address the visa paperwork required, nor soundly argue a Canadian couldn't do the job. Thus, my future is entirely open.


Four hours later, it hit me. Ten years of effort, in six cities, for five newspapers, has come to this. I've been dumped.

I look at my Walkley on the mantel and think back to all those stories, to all those people and lives, the murk of courtrooms, the frustration of politics, the heartache of trying to do the world justice. So much poured into it, and this is where I end up?


I know I should see it as an opportunity: to create something better; to reapply at the paper once my residency arrives; to build a life of my choosing. I should harness the discipline and drive that has helped me start and restart and restart my life over and over, as I built what I thought was a career to make a life around.


But the honest truth is, I'm tired. I'm tired of everything this job has demanded of me, with so little -- lately -- in return. This game here, it's not one I want to play any more.


It's not procrastination that has me so meek and homely of late.
I've lost the will to fight.

Give me a B! Give me an R!

Give me an E-A-D! I'm back to making bread, this time combining T's mum's recipe with the sage advice of Edna Staebler, an awesome Canadian author and seriously down-home cook whose cookbook we were given for our engagement. I suspect my last loaves were overly dense due to a) not enough kneading at early stages of preparation, and too much at the end; and b) insufficient warmth during the dough-rising time. The experimentation begins. A massive bowl of dough is in a warm oven, rising as I type.


During a recent wine-soaked evening at the WWF (Women's Wine Federation, for the uninitiated), it was suggested I create a blog listing a free activity or outing that I do each day. I am considering making that my project for October. Stay tuned!

Myers Briggs and Me

This enforced housewifery has got me doing two things: Experimenting with my newfound favourite cookbook, The Produce Bible, and deeply contemplating my career direction. 


The first helps create yummy things like the fennel and tomato gratin T and I devoured last night.
The second highlights my latent discontent with journalism, or at least journalism as I was being made practice it. Art, fiction, science, politics... I'm toying with many ideas right now. (I'm also open to suggestions, if you want to send me some.)


To that end I borrowed a library book called 'Do What You Are' recommended to my by T's big brother. After a few hours of doing pseudo-Myers-Briggs personality tests, and slotting myself into one of 16 personality profiles (I am apparently an 'ENFP' Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving type, who runs mostly on intuition), I turned to the long list of recommended career pursuits to see the first one listed is...
Journalism.


Hmmph. 


The 'creative' list also includes such things as Screenwriter, Character actor, Artist and Community Theatre Director. Could I combine them all, and write a character piece for myself to perform in the local playhouse? 


There's also some waffle about marketing and PR, ombudsman/social scientist/anthropologist (which sounds all right, although the last may be due to a mental link to pretty dresses...), and some optimal health and business pathways.


But creativity leads the way. Now, if only I could harness some of that good stuff myself to create a dashing way out of this career malaise!

Making myself useful

I'm tempted to rename this blog to 'What I Did Today: One woman's bid to justify her existence'.


Today's installment would include this amateurish drawing of an imaginary waterworld, inked into existence on a park bench beside Lake Ontario:

... and three loaves of Marg Bread, so named because the recipe comes from T's mum. There was an hilarious spill-over of yeast, and I forgot to add the vanilla, but if you won't tell, neither will I. ;)

I know which I think looks better....

H2O

There is one immediate, obvious difference between Canada and my beloved Aus: There is water here. Lots of it. Lake-loads. About one-fifth of the world's fresh water is apparently Canadian (or so said a random article I read once, and now quote to anyone who'll listen).
What that means is Canadians will turn the basin tap on before they even put soap on their hands, will wash dishes under a running faucet, and don't get a guilt complex for using a lawn sprinkler.
It also means they do not have any need for ingenious inventions like the Shower Timer.


For the uninitiated, it's basically a small four-minute egg timer with a suction cap attached. The shower timer acts as the angel on your shoulder, telling you to get out of the shower after four minutes.
One arrived in my mail box today, sent by my wonderful Aussie friend as part of a birthday gift of uber-funky reusable shopping bags. (They, needless to say, are almost as awesome as the gal who sent 'em to me.) My wee egg timer is now stuck on the wall of my shower, waiting for morning so I can start recapturing my Aussie water frugality. 

          

Tea time!

I can no longer resist the siren song of my adorable wedding tea set, completed this week with the arrival of four saucers. This is my first mini tea party. I'm happy to host more, should anyone wish to pop by.

 

(And a big shout out to Gini and Sheila, the grandmas of our friend Virginia, who made shortbreads for the favour bags. Yum!)

Other high points of today: 

- Contritely apologizing to the huffy policeman  for running a red light on my bicycle this morning. That was fun.

- I get to take Tony's broken shoe to the cobbler, which is exciting because I actually get to use the word 'cobbler'.

This is what my life has become.

Long enough to lose

Most Canadians probably don't know Margaret Philp beyond her byline and insightful reporting. They wouldn't know she stole my practical heart with her love of flat shoes, always wore the most individually stylish clothing, and was warm and generous as well as being a fearsomely good reporter.
They also probably don't know that she died this morning after a years-long battle with cancer.


I didn't get to know Margaret all that well (unlike Talbert Walters, a wonderful colleague who disappeared before our eyes last year and whom I was lucky enough to call my friend). But her death, like her work, has got me thinking deeply about what surrounds me.


When you arrive in a new place, it's hard to comprehend that as you start meeting people, knowing them and loving them, you'll start losing them too.

Lily of the Valley

It's ironic that I'm having trouble finding the words to start this post. After all, I wrote 23,893 of them over the weekend.


On a whim of foolhardy bravery, I took part in the 3-Day Novel Contest from Sept 5-7. I hadn't even heard of it until last week, and entered two days before deadline. I had a vague plot idea, and then sat down at midnight Friday to get started.
And it was AWESOME! I've never had such fun writing in my life! I wrote the opening 10 pages on the first night, then barely move throughout Saturday. (T wisely dragged me out for a walk in the neighbourhood at 9pm.)   Woke up on Sunday itching to get back to it. 


For those outside Toronto, the Labour Day weekend also happens to include the annual Toronto Air Show, and T and I live directly in its flight path. So for four hours on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I sat here typing as huge fighter jets buzzed our house. (Mental note: next year, write a novel set in war time.)
I couldn't wipe the smile off my face, though. Beer o'clock hit at 4 p.m. on the dot. I took lots of little snack breaks, and would wander around the house staring at some imagined horizon, trying to work out what was going to happen next. 


In the novel, something goes missing and I sat here for about 45 minutes wracking my brains trying to work out which character had it.  Not which character I would make have it, mind you, but which one actually did. I was all but interrogating them to work out why they would have taken it, and what implications it had. When I finally realized who it was, I let out a whoop of excitement, and was laughing aloud as I typed.
So if entering wasn't mad enough, I certainly was doing a good job of looking nuts.


In the end, I had usual 8 hour sleeps each night, and finished writing the novella on Sunday night. I spent Monday editing, and fleshing it out, then printed it up at 9pm -- three hours before I even had to stop writing! T was very proud, and a little frightened by my productivity. Actually, so was I!


Things I learned in the writing of Lily of the Valley (99 pages, now in the post en route to the 3-Day Novel judges):
- Characters live, but only if I actually write them down. I've had so many people come and go in my mind. I must stop being embarrassed of or flippant to my urges to write these imagined things.
- It's actually really easy to do, once you become obsessed with it.
- I don't have to know the plot before I write. After a while, the world itself and the characters in it dictate what goes on.
- I now have no excuses for not trying this again. Darnit.
- It's frickin FUN!

The Writahhh at work.

Tippety tippety type

35 hours, 44 pages, 10,695 words. 
About half way, I guess.
I'm having so much fun!!

So I guess this is growing up

I've had costume parties, hamburger cakes, coffee martinis and schmoo pie misadventures. But this year, all I wanted for my birthday was peace.


I fell silent as we sat under the magnolia tree at the Fat Cat Wine Bar, me sipping a delightful Gewurtztraminer (I'm intent on squeezing the most out of what white-wine-weather remains), T a "bold and manly" red. 
After a moment, I began ruminating on the power of birthdays in making one quietly take stock of one's life.
"Are you sitting there with a list of what you should be doing, or should have achieved by now?" T asked. It's an appropriate question. Heaven knows, I've pounded him with such doubts and assertions plenty of times before now.
I looked inside myself, and discovered what had been puzzling me throughout the day.
The yardstick is gone.
I smiled with a newly-acknowledged serenity. He smiled back. "I'm so glad to hear it."


As we I strolled through the early-evening sunshine, hand in hand, it was exactly, utterly perfect. No big celebration. No demanding party. Just he and me. 
Birthdays rock.

Humming a new tune

If you haven't had a chance to hear Tony's older brother Michael in person, treat yourself to a few moments on his Myspace page. www.myspace.com/michaelreinhartmusic.
My current favourite is Woman in the Window.


Which is kind of suitable. I changed all my passwords this week, erasing sweet nicknames from yesterdays, replacing them with touchstones of today. Funny how these things can linger.

Photo: Tory Zimmerman

A cleaning dervish

Wracked by hayfever, I unleashed a torrent of housework on our wee abode today. Sadly, it doesn't look that much different. It seems so unfair.


Some truths I learned about parenthood this weekend:
- Even the smartest teenagers can be astoundingly dumb.
- It's hard not to take their cluelessness personally. In a span of three weeks, we'll have seen A for a total of 15 minutes (the amount of time it took to pick him up at his friend's house -- where he'd spent the entire weekend -- and take him back to M's). Ouch.
- Anything but equal custody leaves the 'other' parent as a bit-player. T knows he's active in the boys' parenting, but being a peripheral figure in daily life makes him really sad.
- I feel like an outsider, still. That makes me really sad.


I'm not naive enough to expect the boys to want to hang with us all the time (although E is amazingly willing to do the most boring stuff with us). 
But is it naive to think it common courtesy to spend a little part of your weekend with the folks, if only because they're daggy enough to  want to spend time with you? Is this situation exacerbated by the fact we're dealing with two boys? 

'In Peril'

Apparently my status on the newspaper's daily staff roster is 'In Peril'. I totally want that on a t-shirt, perhaps alongside a photo of me in an ill-fitting rhino suit.
Judging by the amount of coffee I've consumed this morning, the pronouncement is not far wrong.


Successfully completed today:
- Did some writing assistance for my swing-dance-school-operating friend, which was TOTALLY VOLUNTARY AND UNPAID thank-you very much, Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
- Um. I made the bed.
That's about it, unless I can also count drinking coffee.

Meanwhile, T and I are in the midst of an escalating battle between our good selves (henceforth to be referred to as "The Good Guys") and the mice that somehow wriggle into the cupboard below our sink to scrimmage in our green-waste bin (to be known as "Those Little Bastards").

We were quite impressed when our first volley - a tray of evil poison pellets placed beckoningly beside some water - was entirely consumed.

We became a little frightened when the second offering was downed as well. During daylight hours. While I was in the house.

I'm heading out shortly to stock up on more evil poisonous stuff. Who knows how many of Those Little Bastards are in our walls?

I hope none of them are Mighty Mouse.

One month and one week

To say we were stunned would be an understatement. Exactly one month after marrying my love, I had to walk into the newsroom and tell my editors that I was no longer allowed to work. Nor study. Nor collect Employment Insurance, into which I've paid for three years. Huzzah.


Things I've considered doing in the meantime:
- Write a novel one sentence at a time as Twitter tweets.
- Be active every day to become a doyenne of litheness.
- Teach myself French by reading only the French side of Canadian product packaging and visiting lots of coffee shops.
- Swan about my local shopping strip collecting fresh, exotic ingredients with which to make delicious, unusual meals for my darling husband.
- Update this blog.


One out of five ain't a bad start.