It Works Every Time

Southwestern Ontario has been enjoying unseasonal summer weather, with temperatures in the mid-20's up to low 30's* for the past few weeks.

I don't remember a summer that arrived in early May since the one between 2nd and 3rd year.  Not to reminisce about my university days... again.  But I'm going to do it anyway.

One roommate (to protect her identity, let's call her "Saucy") and I were finished exams in late April.  Some restrained, "kick off the summer" celebrations were had, but nothing too elaborate, because the other roommate (let's call her "CM") didn't have her last exam until the first week of May.  On this long anticipated day, Saucy and I splurged on a 12 of Sleeman's Honey Brown and sat around drinking it and listening to Ani DiFranco, waiting for CM to get back so that we could properly mark the end of a long winter of toil and study/ the advent of summer, ie, pickle ourselves with liquor.  When, at last, CM burst through the door, she came packing a 40 of Colt 45.  She bought it primarily because it cost $3**.  We were starving students, after all.  If you are thinking that this was maybe a bad decision on her part, you are dead wrong.  As the afternoon unfolded, we learned that $3 worth of Colt 45 was the perfect amount of malt liquor to achieve the perfect level of intoxication (ie, euphoric, but with fine motor skills*** largely intact).  As if that wasn't amazing enough, three dollars was practically free, even for starving students like ourselves.

The summer that followed went sort of like this: 

Well, maybe not exactly like that.  But for the next 8 weeks, we lived in a strange world where Colt 45 was the means by which we measured both time and money.  The time value of one Colt was about 3 hours, so plans were made around the question "how many Colts till then?"   No purchases were made without a quick tally of how many Colts they would cost.

Naturally, we thought we were the first people since the 80's to enjoy Colt 45****, until one day an acquaintance thoughtfully corrected us, saying something like "Colt 45?  That's what homeless people drink."

We didn't let that ruin our good times, of course.  However, the Colt era met its end in early July, when Saucy left town for a summer job.  We never really got back into after that:  as a moment in time, it had passed. 

So, the heat has me thinking about days gone by.  And time passes quickly these days.  For example, it seems like last month that Saucy sent an email to announce that she was knocked up and expecting in mid-July.  This was actually November, and now mid-July is only 7 weeks away.  I haven't been drinking-for-her on purpose, necessarily, but this weekend, I'll be glad to drink a 40 of Colt in honour of her and in honour of the summer-after-second-year, if I can get anyone to join me.  Actually, scratch that.  I'll be glad to drink a 40 of Colt in her honour this weekend, period.  I don't anticipate anyone wanting to join me in that particular endeavour, so they can drink what they damn well please.


*that's mid 70's to low 90's for my American friends.  Not that I mean to imply that you are slow and/or don't know these things and/or can't figure it out on your own.  But I grew up near the border (American news broadcasts) with an American dad, and once removed from those situations, I remember a summer doing math in my head to figure out what people were talking about when they said "28".  It was simple math, but still.  I'm trying to be helpful.

**in those days, in Quebec.

***not that I escaped entirely from mishap.  There was one night, after each savouring a Colt, Saucy and I wisely decided to ride our bikes down to the Fouf*****...

****sort of in the same way that, on the previous Thanksgiving, we thought we were the first to discover that canned whipped cream contained nitrous oxide, until an acquaintance thoughtfully informed us that what we'd discovered were whippets, which she used to do in grade 7.  In my defense, I come from Chatham, where, as gateway drugs are concerned, the youth bypassed things like whippets and went straight for more insidious things like dime bags and Robitussin.

*****Les Foufounes Electriques, which, roughly translated from Quebec French, means "Electric Asses".  No, this is not one of Montreal's many adult entertainment facilities (like Pussy Corps).  But it was a good 15 minutes outside what we considered reasonable walking distance, so our bikes made perfect sense - at the time.  My sparkly pink, purple and yellow miniskirt maybe wasn't the best clothing choice for a bike ride.  To give you a better idea, see below.  I still have the clothes, of course; these are self-portraits taken today:

If this isn't questionable enough, I had also opted to wear a pair of underwear that Saucy had fashioned out of a pair of Tommy Hilfiger sports socks, discarded by a former roommate (let's call him "The Mike Machine").  Beyond the obvious reasons, the trouble with this underwear was that they were somewhat lacking in coverage.  They served more as push-up underwear, if you get what I mean (if you don't, there was some nice lift from the bottom, but nothing up top).

Montreal is an island, and also basically a hill.  It was downhill all the way from our apartment to the bar.  Our bikes picked up more and more speed.  I got more and more nervous.  Traffic lights had been in our favour, but I soon reached the point where I knew that any faster and there would be no way for me to stop if I needed to.  Rather than slow down and brake, I slammed both feet on the ground.  The force of the impact catapulted me over the handlebars, my bike did a full forward flip over my head, and I skidded onto the pavement, arms and face first, exactly like I was trying to slide into home base.  Bike came to rest some distance in front of me.

Fate landed me on the road right outside a church, where a Portugese youth group event was just letting out.  Within seconds, I was surrounded by a group of 13 and 14 year old Christians, who were all pointing at me on the ground, asking, "heyy... are you okay??"

I couldn't respond.  The wind was knocked out of me when I hit the pavement.  Even if it hadn't been, I was laughing too hard to communicate:  my sparkly mini-skirt landed somewhere near my neck, exposing my Tommy Hilfiger sock underwear for all to see. 

My efforts to photograph myself face-down with my skirt around my head proved mechanically impossible.  Efforts to trace a life-size version of my naked body on paper also proved ineffective:  especially after I tried to dress the cut-out and realized that I needed musculoskeletal structure to hold the clothing in place (either that or reinforce the cutout with cardboard, but the former was the more obvious choice).  In short, you are all saved from images of my foufoune electrique - real or reasonable facsimile.  For today, anyway.

Bigfoot

To return to my previous thoughts on shoes, my first Fluevog purchase wasn't entirely a success. Fluevogs are crafted in limited quantities. I rashly bought a half size up when I learned that the pair I'd been salivating over for nearly two years was not available in my size, and it could be months before any more were available, if ever. They seemed okay when I tried them on in the store, but proved, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be one half size too large after the leather softened, which was roughly one day. They were wickedly comfortable even with the extra room in the toe. And I got compliments on them everywhere. I was not accustomed to having anyone compliment my shoes. It was an odd sensation.

If I were a completely different  person, I might've held onto them forever.  But for my mom, who wears a size ten, at height five-foot-three. Staring at her abnormally large feet in my younger years left me terrified of having big feet when I grew up, or even the appearance of big feet. My parents haven't been any help.  During my pre-teen awkward phase, I was less than five feet tall, Ethiopia skinny, had an overbite, and adult size feet.   I've been size 7.5 since I was eleven.  To my prejudiced eyes, they seemed like scuba fins.  It was horrendous.  I don't know if the pre-pubescent bigfoot phase only happens to girls?  My parents, being thrifty, spent my childhood buying me shoes a size up, on the assumption that I'd wear thick socks until I grew into them, and by the time I outgrew them, they'd be worn out anyway.  They started buying me size 8s at age eleven, and are convinced that's my size to this day, as they have proven when buying me thoughtful Christmas gifts like new snowboard boots. 

Anyway, every time I looked down at my feet in those beautiful boots I could not help but see someone afflicted with gigantism of the metatarsals. I left the slightly oversized Fluevogs at Chris and Sara's house after I moved out, because I planned to sell them on eBay and use the money to partially finance another pair - and Sara had an eBay account.  At that point, I didn't even have an internet conection. 

I eventually bought a different pair in the proper size, and have never looked back.  But I lamented the first pair.  It wasn't so much buyer's remorse as sorrow that such a magnificent pair of boots was going unused. Sara liked the look of them very much and tried them on - but they were impossibly large.  This was in the first trimester.  Her feet expanded to a size 8 during her pregnancy, and since I never got around to selling them, she is now the owner*. Which is nice, but did nothing to cure my bigfoot phobia, especially when I remember Nancy Botwin announcing in the first season of Weeds that her feet grew a size with each pregnancy.  Puzzle pieces started coming together.  My mom probably started adulthood with a size seven. And then had three kids.  Poor thing.  I've been so critical.  I'd previously understood that one's feet would swell during pregnancy, which made sense considering the extra weight, but I assumed they'd shrink back to size along with the rest of you.   Not so.

I thought that the pain of childbirth was our punishment for eating the apple. Physical disfigurements - such as vaginas stretched beyond the point of recovery and the swollen and loose-skinned post pregnancy cat belly - which sometimes doesn't go away - weren't part of the deal. Please, you've taken enough. Leave our shoes alone.

I can't close this topic without pointing out that two full posts about footwear has me kind of disgusted with myself.  Shoe obsession has always struck me as ridiculously girly, which I've never seen as a good quality.  I used to go out to bars with a male friend of mine and he would try to pick up**.  We several times discussed that he would only talk to girls who looked like they were wearing comfortable shoes - girls wearing heels or anything at all impractical may as well be wearing sandwich boards that read "High Maintenance".  I was a jeans and sneakers kind of girl, and emphatically agreed.  When Carrie Bradshaw used "shoegal" as her e-mail username, I was embarrassed for her. 

Crap.  First I go on and on about shoes, but a Sex and the City reference?  When I'm trying to redeem myself?  I'm not helping my case.  Grrr.

Hockey.
Wrath of Khan.
PBR.  Tall boys.
Emotionally detached sex.

That's better.

 
*She wears them all the time.  I think it must be love.

**Note:  girls do not make good wing-men for boys.  Especially a girl as adorable as myself.  I expect that his male friends were already settled and not interested in going out to alternative rock dance bars while he tried to meet girls, and as a wing-man, I was preferable to staying home by himself.  Maybe he got some pity attention when single ladies thought I was his girlfriend and would go express their disgust after I did a bunch of shots and then slipped away to make out with someone else?  Actually, scratch that.  Girls make magnificent wing-men.  Think about it.  I don't know that it ever worked, but what a way to get a girl to talk to you.  You don't approach her and come across as awkward or dirty (either way, just some guy trying to get laid).  She comes to you, with sympathetic feelings.  Once she finds out I'm not your girlfriend, you're already talking.

I also tried to convince this friend to use one-liners from Army of Darkness as pick-up lines***.  He refused, saying he'd get slapped.  I insisted that yes, he might take a few hits, but there was a girl out there who would find it hilarious, and she'd be a keeper. 

He's engaged now, and no longer requires my wise counsel or my service as an unlikely wing-man.  I take some credit for the engagement, however.  Had Sara and I not started a fake Lavalife profile**** so we could help him troll for girls, he and his fiancee may never have met.

***

"Yo.  She-bitch.  Let's go."

"You know, in my own way, I am king.  Hail to the king, baby."

"I've got plans for you, girly girl!"

"First you wanna kill me.  Now you wanna kiss me.  Blow."

"Slip me some sugar baby."

To name a few.

****sexpanther69

Do you have any Grey Poupon?

I have a confession to make.  I've never seen Wayne's World.  Wayne's World 2, several times (it's on TV on Saturday afternoons sometimes), but not the original.

It doesn't mean that the Wayne's World-isms of early 90's pop culture escapd my notice, and it certainly hasn't stopped me from enjoying related merchandise.  My Wayne's World ball cap* is one of my favourite hats.

There's also the Wayne's World companion reader, a book sadly not in my possession.  It doesn't even register on indigo.ca, which leads me to believe it's so long out of print** it basically never even existed.  There is something called Wayne's World:  Extreme Close Up available on Amazon (used for $.01) which might be what I'm thinking of, but the description is a little lacking.  The one review describes it as a "verry funny book", and celebrates that it teaches you how to fish-hook.  I may have to invest one cent***, plus shipping, to confirm. 

I have no need of having the book at my disposal, however, because the poetry section has been committed to memory.  This came to mind the other day for no apparent reason (maybe because I heard Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio), and I feel like sharing.  I give you, "Am I a Man":


If I feel pain

Am I a man?

If I appreciate beauty

Am I a man?

If I abhor intolerance

Am I a man?

If I see harmony

Am I a man?

If I choose to love instead of hate

If I choose to unite instead of divide

If I choose peace over war...

Am I a man?

If I have a vagina and two lactating breasts

Am I a man?

I guess not

Splash.



*

Cabbage Patch doll recent acquisition from my parent's house.  I wonder if they still have Philomina Hyacinth's birth certificate.


**The thought of one great Canadian and books now out of print reminds me of something else.  I am sometimes a nerd for Canadiana and was very pleased to happen upon an old copy of a Catherine Parr Traill book, Pearls and Pebbles, formerly property of Omemee High School, when second-hand browsing on the weekend.  Omemee High School has been closed so long I couldn't even find it on Google.  I only know Omemee exists because it's the town where Neil Young spent his first 7 years of life, and his song Helpless is partially based on it (see?  Canadiana nerd). Catherine Parr Traill is a notable Canadian naturalist of the 19th century.  I bought the book intending to read it - which I did, and enjoyed, for a couple of other nerdy reasons I won't go into.  Out of curiosity, I also Googled it, and it appears that I paid $3.99 for a first edition worth several hundred dollars in its imperfect condition.  It's not that I care about the idea that I could turn around and sell it for at least 50 times more than it cost me, because I plan to keep it.  I mention this experience only because other items that cost $3.99 at Value Village that day included an Old Navy tank top, which probably cost 4 bucks when it was new, and a Ziploc bag full of half-used crayons. 

***RIP to the penny.  The last Canadian penny was minted earlier this month, and they're going to start taking it out of circulation later this year. 

Family Rituals

When recounting stories from my childhood, I have often been told that my dad did some things that were kind of awesome.  Some of which I think Chris already took note of in preparation for fatherhood - not to copy, just as examples of little things a dad can do to make memories of one's early years kind of nice.  Here's a refresher, in case he's forgotten:

My father would pick us up on the last day of school each June and take us for an all-you-can-eat extravaganza at Dairy Queen.  I could keep ordering whatever I wanted until stuffed full of soft-serve like a messy, melty, sticky pinata.  With a sugar buzz.

He would wake us up on Sunday mornings by blasting one of four records:  Queen Greatest Hits, Abba Gold, Fleetwood Mac Rumours or Meatloaf Bat Out of Hell.  And he'd make pancakes.

On Friday nights he would make a big production of letting us stay up late to watch Dukes of Hazzard, and we would eat popcorn out of a large red ceramic bowl.  Which he still uses, exclusively when watching movies on Friday nights, when he has pulled out the old air-pop machine rather than taking the easy, microwaveable way out.

My mom was there, too, if you're wondering, but as more of a participant than an organizer.

As a single girl, I have a few rituals of my own. 

I always use some rectangular side plates with weiner dogs on them when I have frozen burritos for dinner, while sitting alone on the couch watching nature shows.  This is often.

I treat myself to a latte to congratulate myself and celebrate the money I've saved if I've been a responsible enough person to both take the streetcar AND be on time for work, rather than taking a taxi and being late*.  This is infrequent.

When drinking wine alone in my apartment, I exclusively use an old plastic Empire Strikes Back mug that was given to me for free at an antique store.  The guy said he felt bad charging me for it when I was so excited to find it.  And it doesn't break if it gets inexplicably knocked over.  This is (ahem)... sometimes?

I celebrate Fluevog Day**.  This is every May 15.

Up until a few years ago, I never would have described myself as one of those girls obsessed with shoes.  I was all about economy and functionality, and usually only had two pairs, a casual shoe and a non-casual shoe.  Spending money on shoes seemed frivolous when I could use my income in useful ways, such as patron of the arts***.

My casual shoe was, unwaveringly, a pair of Converse high tops.  These were replenished annually, because after about one year the rubber on the soles was almost worn through, and the rips in canvas threatened to tear the tops clean off if I made just one more false move.  I would get a different colour every year****.

For my non-casual shoe, I strived to find something that was under $100 and a rare combination of being suitable for both for work and for formal occasions.  I would wear them until they literally fell to pieces, which wasn't often, since outside of work I wore only my sneakers unless attending a formal event, which wasn't often. 

The trouble was that try as I might, I was never really successful at closing the workwear-formalwear gap, and would go years at a time brandishing something not entirely appropriate for either.  It would have been helpful to have a girl friend with the same shoe size so I could borrow for weddings and funerals and not have to worry about this, but I was not so lucky.  Sara would have been the only candidate, and she wore a size six or six-and- a-half to my seven-and-a-half.  Which sounds like it should be close, but it really isn't at all.

Everything changed several years ago when I wandered into the Fluevog store and found the perfect ankle boot solution.  They seemed prohibitively expensive, so I looked at them from afar for a long time until one day I happened by the store with a Christmas bonus fresh in my bank account.  I've since been an addict*****. 


On Fluevog Day, every regular priced item in the store is 15% off, which probably doesn't seem like much, except when you remember that one pair can cost as much as a dishwasher******.  Also, they give out cupcakes. 

I like to be right about these things, so before I wrote this post I did a little research into the difference between "rituals" and "traditions".  I have a horror of finding myself guilty of errors of semantics.

If you're going to differentiate "rituals" from "traditions", it would appear that "rituals" are ceremonial acts, which can either be repeated or be random and new, and "traditions", while similar, are usually practices which are passed down through generations.

It seems a bit sad that unless I one day produce young, none of the above examples will ever evolve to tradition status.  Even if I do release spawn, some of these rituals simply aren't going to make it through to the next generation.  Unless my kids wake me up Sunday mornings blaring Fleetwood Mac and serving pancakes - because that will never, ever be me unless said kids are content to wait in bed until mid-afternoon.  Fluevog Day will also die with me, as far as any potential family is concerned, because that would involve having a fuck of a lot of money to spend on family footwear. 


*Total cost of TTC and grande latte - about $8. Total cost of taxi - about $10.


**http://www.fluevog.com/


***money spent generously on T-shirts and beer when watching musicians perform at bars.


****I still do this, so I guess this probably also counts as a ritual.  Do I really have more than one shoe-related ritual? Lame.


*****As footnotes go, elaborating on this borders on ridiculous.  Stay tuned for "Bigfoot", the next installment in drinking-for-two.

******I got out of the store for a mere $250 this year, which seemed like quite the bargain.  This photo doesn't do them justice.  Even so... anyone wanna grab a milkshake after the sock hop?



If anyone is looking for another reason to prove that I'm functionally retarded, I have two.

First, I have believed since 1984 that Huey Lewis was singing that the Heart of Rock n' Roll is in Cleveland.  This seems logical, since that's where the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame is, and that he goes through the names of many other cities over the course of the song. 

You may question whether I have already expressed both reasons why I am functionally retarded - first, that I've been so wrong for 28 years, and second, that I think it at all important that I have full and accurate knowledge of the lyrics of any of the songs of Huey Lewis and the News.

No, the other reason is this. 

But first, I'll digress.

With the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a few years ago... and the subsequent success of a number of copy cats, I thought to myself, "that seems easy", and wrote the first three chapters of Anne of Green Gables... with Werewolves over the course of a weekend.  It was so easy.  I just substituted any of the community women's organizations as anti-werewolf committees, and Anne Shirley's experience caring for young children as werewolf hunting success.  When she saves Minnie May Barry from choking to death on her own phlegm with what probably should have been a lethal dose of ipecac, instead, she saves her from the jaws of a werewolf, and even though Minnie May had already been bitten, Anne happens to know of a surefire way to counteract the werewolf venom.  (I know that's not in the first three chapters, but I had it all planned out).  And then I just stopped.  While it seemed like it could have been easy to capitalize on a literary fad, I decided that I didn't want to build a writing career by copying someone else.  I could've used a pseudonym, sure, but how long would it be before Wikipedia was letting everyone knew that Korn Nuts Kapow and The Granken were the same person.  No.  I was above that.

Actually, never mind.  I've decided to keep the rest to myself.

Happy Mother's Day

Leave it to me to assume the worst of people.  I've had a recent spike in traffic from people googling "Mother's Day Mimosas".  I sat down to write this, prepared to be appalled by the number of people wanting to find out if it was okay to drink mimosas while pregnant.  I mean, it's just a mimosa.  But, um, no.

But as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard I figured out that people were not looking to see if pregnant women can ignore the no-drinking clause just under this one circumstance.  Not that I haven't had plenty of hits from people searching "mimosas while pregnant".  But that isn't what's been happening.  Probably.

Under the assumption that what people are really looking for is a mimosa how-to, allow me to shed some light.  It's a little late this year, buy maybe you could bookmark this page for easy reference next year. 

These should probably only be prepared by a skilled mixologist, but hopefully this will prevent you from making too much of a mess of things. 

Step 1:

Take champagne flutes out of cupboard.  Regular wine glasses work just fine if you don't have that much glassware.

Step 2:

Fill each glass half-way with your champagne/sparkling wine of choice*. 

Step 3:

Top off with your orange juice of choice.**. 

Step 4:

Drink.


*I'd like to say it's important to spring for the good stuff, but it really isn't. Once it's mixed with juice, I doubt most people will be able to tell the difference between Dom Perignon and Freixenet.

**Freshly squeezed is probably better than not.  But if Five Alive or Sunny Delight is what makes you happy, go for it.  You could experiment with different varieties of citrus fruits if you want to get creative.  Maybe don't use blood oranges if your mom of honour has recently been in a terrible car accident or suffered a miscarriage.

Toys!

My parents are on the verge of retirement.  I'm not sure whether it is retirement, the eventual sale of my childhood home, and the desire to start clearing some clutter - or bitterness that she has no grandchildren - that inspired my mom to pull out a box of my old toys and hand them over.  I think maybe the latter, since she said out loud something about having held onto them so that she'd have stuff for her grandchildren to play with.  Or, you know, just in case I wanted them someday. 

I was super-excited to find my Kermit the Frog handpuppet, not to mention my Popple.  I wasn't just being too much of a pretentious jerk when I said that I was never a huge Barbie fan and only had one -although it turns out I had two.  Plus Ken.

Don't judge the picture quality.  These pictures were not sent from my iPhone.  Just a regular poor person phone.

To be clear, Ken was wearing only his shoes and a sparkly silver loin cloth when I found him.  Let's see how that works out for him with the ladies.

(when did Barbie start shopping at American Apparel?  no, wait, it was just 1985)

(the hole in her hand means she's single.  divorced, more likely.  or maybe this picture is for her Ashley Madison profile)

(I was going to drape evening gown Barbie in a martini glass like a Bond girl. but then I remembered I don't have any martini glasses, so I propped her up in these shot glasses I got in Mexico instead)