can't think of a witty title

you'll note from the time stamp on this that i'm going to have a *very* long friday...

in other news, the best quote in a long time goes to john who said mere moments ago:

"you know you're getting old when you're so drunk you can barely walk, and yet you still manage to finish and fold the laundry"

gotta love that man o' mine...

this one goes out to my beautiful friend erin...

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me

Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C

owwwwwwwwwwwww!

last night at the grocery store they had the pop stacked like a game of jenga. it actually worked surprisingly well since they were all the 'fridgemate' 12 packs, which are rectangular. as you may know, i have an unhealthy love affair with diet coke. so, i was bound and determined to free a case of diet coke from the jenga tower.

now, i know you all think you know where this is going, but i'm going to preempt those thoughts and tell you that no, the tower did not come falling down. we did not follow the song. we did not take a block from the bottom and put it on top. we did not take a block from the middle and put it on top. we did not keep taking blocks and just didn't stop. no no no. we took one block, and we put it in our cart. no falling.

but this story (which is whiney by the way, be forewarned) is actually about my first attempt at taking a block.

when reaching forward for the case of sweet elixir of the gods i caught my fingernail on the thin cardboard of the case of pop next to it. i was reaching forward with some speed. thin cardboard was subsequently jammed up my index finger fingernail on my right hand. much bleeding and whining and pouting followed.

what i have learned today (after waking up with a swollen painful finger) is; apparently one uses one's right index finger in a great number of activities.

OWWW!

WHAAAA!

WHINE!!!!!!!!

i'm torn

i'm in a strange space. i can't seem to identify what i want. it's actually not uncommon for me, and it pretty much always is annoying on some level, but today it is very acute.

i am attributing this right now mostly to the fact that my period should be starting any day now.

so, right now i'm sitting at work, doing no work, and debating. debating about what i want to do after work.

part of me wants to snaggle someone to go out for a pint with, or maybe invite someone over for a game of scrabble.

part of me reminds myself that i have laundry and grocery shopping to do.

part of me wants to just go home and sleep.

the draw of the sleep is incredibly strong. i wouldn't be surprised if that's what i end up doing.

i do know that if i can find the energy for it then shopping and laundry will make me feel better. there is something about not getting the day to day things that sometimes make me feel even worse. plus it's all part of the unable to live in the moment. with the laundry and groceries hanging over me i am fraught with guilt and not doing these things that i *should* be doing.

plus there is always the bonus of clean clothes to wear and yummy fresh food to eat.

we'll see. i have my suspicions that i'll end up crashed in bed with a book...

'twas grand

spamalot was very fun.

it wasn't just a stage version of the movie, which was nice. i mean, basically it was a stage version of the movie, but with some other bits in it.

it was very enjoyable, and the nosebleed seats were just fine.

i reccomend it.

please send good vibes

i have a dear dear friend who has an interview in montreal today. please send as many positive vibes as possible in her direction...

from the random bits and bobs file...

why is it that people don't wear seat belts when they get into taxis?

i have seen so many people get into a taxi and not put on a seat belt.

what makes a taxi any different from your regular car?

oh, wait, i know what makes them different, the fact that taxi drivers are the most insane drivers on the bloody planet! i have been known to wish it was possible to put on a second seatbelt when in a taxi...

spur of the moment...

so, yesterday i decided on a whim to get tickets to a mega-musical for friday.

it's very strange for me because usually a trip to a mega-musical (which are few and far between for me because for the price of one ticket there i can get two or three tickets to a smaller theatre production) involves months of planning and anticipating.

but not this time.

this time it was three days in advance.

so, friday i'm taking the love of my life to go see spamalot.

...

somehow i can't resist linking to this. mostly because the linking is so out of character for me it sends me into peels of laughter...

alien invasion

i've figured it out.

this heat, i've figured out where it's coming from.

the heat is from the massive power source aliens are using while they are here in toronto, the power source of some complex and powerful energy and conciousness sucking machine.

you might ask me how i know, and so i present to you simple deductive reasoning...

since the blistering and the thick smog filled air has been with us, my brain has slowly been deteriorating, as has my energy level and ability to do complex things like walk upright. i have also become significantly more stupid.

so, obviously, whatever is sucking my energy and conciousness is causing lots of heat. and obviously humans do not have such technology.

hense the aliens...

this one is about my BOOB

Today at lunch there was a barbeque downstairs to raise money for charity. My friend Hari was playing guitar and singing to entertain the masses. It was great fun. (no, we haven't gotten to the boob part of the story yet, my boobs had nothing to do with entertaining the masses).

I am wearing a long thin cotton dress. It's black with big purple flowers on it. It's the coolest thing I own, which was important for today's 35 degrees (95 for you imperial folks out there) before the humidex, 45 in the 'feels like' department (that's 113 for the imperial ones) weather.

Apparently while I was downstairs, outside, in front of loads of people I don't know, but still work in the same building as, I tripped on my hem and ripped my dress.

Across my boob.

I'm not talking a little rip. The rip is about a foot long. This is a big rip.

So, for who knows how long, my right boob was sticking out of my ripped dress.

When I got back upsatirs a co-worker noticed it after I'd been in my office for a bit. We did some impromptu dress surgery with tape and I am no longer flashing my bra at my co-workers.

I'm hoping that since the dress has a lot of black, and the bra is black, that for the most part people didn't notice my right boop sticking out of my dress. If they did notice then I hope that they thought I was making a daring fashion statement. You know, something other than "I'm a clutz"

so far so good (another boring navel gazing post)

in the quest of enjoying the moment i'm moving forward in a way that i'm quite pleased with.

pleased because i see progress.

frustrated slightly because i seem to find other issues as i move forward. it's kind of like if you own an old house and you think you're going to fix that one thing. it always turns out to be several things.

well, this is several things.

in my quest to enjoy the moment i have discovered that i often have trouble figuring out what i want. i know that i want something, want to do something specific, but i don't for the life of me know what that something is. i sometimes get that with food to. i want a specific thing, i am having an intense craving, but i have no idea what it is for. the not knowing what i want to do is a challenge, first for the obvious reason that it's frustrating, but also because it's hard to enjoy what is going on if you know that what you *want* to be going on is something different.

the other thing that interferes is a feeling of responsiblity. if i am in the house i feel guilty if i'm reading, watching television, mucking around on the computer. i feel guilty because i know that there are closets to be sorted through, dishes to be done, laundry to be done, plants to be watered, and on and on and on... i have no doubt that this is a pretty common reaction. i also know it's silly. but this isn't about logic. if it was about logic i'd be just fine. i can deal with logic.

anyway, those are two things that have made themselves known as i peel back the layers.

in good news...

one of the things that i have started doing to help myself enjoy the moments of my life is to not only remind myself to do so and try and eschew thoughts of other future things (unless that is specifically part of my current activity), but also to do a mini self-check.

i stop and take stock of what is around me. note how things look and feel.

identify textures.

sunday i sat at breakfast and took note of the breeze blowing over my body, the crispness of the lettuce, the strength of the coffee, the face of the man i love, the hum of chatter all around me... i stopped to take it all in and reveled in it. it was great. there's hope for me yet...

step one

in my quest to learn to live in the 'now' i am working on being more aware of my feelings about specific activities at specific times.

one of the things about this living by waiting is that i am often restless and don't know what i want to do. i'm not entirely sure how they're connected, but i'm fairly certain that they are. i often will feel restless, like i want to do something, but i don't know what. i think it is somehow linked into the fact that i'm always waiting for something, so i'm never in touch with what i want in the moment as it is happening.

so, this is where my step one comes in. step one - pay attention to what i'm doing and how it feels.

yesterday i finished work and realised i did not want to go home. john had sent me an email saying he was going to buy a hard drive after work. so, i walked out of my office and called john to see if he wanted company. he did.

we met at college, then went and bought computer guck, and then decided to have dinner. after dinner we headed home and i read the toronto life that had arrived in our mailbox that day. then we sat together and had a drink and a cigarette, then i spent the rest of the evening finishing my book and then going to sleep.

the whole time i managed to just enjoy it for what it was.

i didn't make plans for the weekend.

i didn't talk about the things i wanted to get done around the house.

i didn't think about the laundry that needs to be done.

i didn't think about work.

i just focused on enjoying what i was doing.

the frustrating thing is it sounds so bloody simple, enjoy something as it is happening. but the truth is, i had to work hard at keeping those other things, the things that i plan for and wait for, out of the equation. i had to work at enjoying myself. it just seems so wrong that i should have to work at it, it seems like such a basic thing.

and before you ask, no, i haven't given up on planning. i haven't given up on lists (i couldn't imagine my life without lists). i'm just trying to find a way to compartmentalize the planning to specific times. the truth is, one of the things i enjoy in life is planning. i love going out for breakfast and making a list of what we're going to do/get that weekend. i love figuring out how i'm going to make something work. it's just that it's gone too far now, it's not fun anymore, now it's overtaken my life.

so, i'm planning to plan (heh) during specific times, as opposed to a more constant thought pattern.

speaking of waiting...

so, on doing some various searching and reading on the phenomenon of waiting and not living in the now i came across a good article. the irony is that it was on some weight loss site, which is not where my waiting is coming from, but i just wrote a big comment in the last post about how it is still a part of it.

anyway, the article is called "Weighing Some Tough Options, Turing Someday into Today"

here's a snippet:

It’s time for some cold, hard facts:

• You’re not going to be able to read every book that you want
• You’ll never have time to watch all of your favorite shows
• The house will never be clean enough
• There will always be another errand to run
• The grass will continue to grow
• Everything you buy will need to be dusted, repaired, maintained or disposed of in some way

This is not a critique of any lack of organizational skills on your part, or a reason to give up altogether. Rather, it’s a statement of freedom.When you know that life will still be waiting for you tomorrow—no matter what—it gives you the freedom to make today count as much as possible. "Someday" is right now. Anytime. And that can be exciting, if you let it.

Seems somehow appropriate doesn't it?

A forewarning...

i figure i should offer a bit of a forewarning here.

recently i discovered an issue that is proving to be a bit of an obstacle to enjoying my life as much as i could be. i posted about it, it was the piece about not being able to live in the moment and spending all my time 'waiting for something'.

well, i want to work through this. i want to find a way to enjoy moments as they happen. and this is where the forewarning is coming in. i think i'm going to try and work through this on my blog. which means my blog will likely get excruciatingly boring over the next couple weeks. so, you may want to come back in august if you don't want to deal with the mundane posts.

and i'll start it here.

i'm starting by listing the things that i am 'waiting for' and adding to it as i think of them.

• a permanent job
• john finishing the freelance job from hell so that i can actually spend time with him
• my mum visiting
• losing weight (i hate to admit it, but as i have started losing weight i have suddenly started focusing on size goals instead of health goals - which sucks, and is embarassing for me, because normally i am very health focused and this feels like a big step backwards)
• buying a house

i'm sure there are more, and i'll just add as i think of them. i figure this is the first step to tackling this, figuring out what i'm waiting for, and what i'm not doing because of the waiting.

diet coke passion

do you ever have anything you find hard to imagine living without?

you know, those things that if you don't have it you *really* miss it?

for me that thing is sweet alixer of the gods (aka diet coke).

now, some less generous folks might call this an addiction, but i know better, i know it's a passion.

i'm writing about it because mighty girl wrote about it (sort of) in her blog today.

the strange thing about diet coke is that people don't seem to realise how many other people feel the passion for the diet coke. if you go to a meeting where they're ordering in lunch, there are usually 2 diet cokes mixed in with the pop, they go very quickly, then 3 or 4 other people go out and buy their own diet coke from a store close by. given this phenomenon, one has to wonder why more diet coke isn't ordered from the get go.

my passion involves having one diet coke a day, at lunch, or with pizza, or with wings. the pairings are very important. it's a bit like a fine wine in that way...

and now for something completely frivolous

last night we went grocery shopping and i did something i've never done at the grocery store before. i bought a magazine.

you know how they have magazines and tabloids at the check out, appealing to the impulsive side of customers, vying for that last squeeze of money through the ubiquitous impulse buy...

yeah. well. apparently last night it worked. so i bought myself a copy of chatelaine.

the point of telling you of this particular moment of indulgence is to tell you about a recipe i found in said magazine...

there is a recipe for a baby spinach salad with peaches, pine nuts and proscuitto, with a dressing that is made in part with red wine vinegar and a puréed peach. now, we all know (or at least, you do now, 'cause i'm telling you) that i can rarely follow a recipe to the letter, and i can see myself making this with lemon juice instead of the vinegar, and sunflower seeds instead of the pine nuts. but still, YUM.

this will certainly be on the 'try making' list.

i need to learn about now

i came to a realisation on the weekend. one that i have been starting towards for a bit now, but hasn't come clear until now.

i don't live in the moment.

i spend my life waiting. waiting for something. lord only knows what.

i don't know if this is a new thing, or if this is something i've always done and i have just noticed it now.

truth be told, as i wrote that last sentence i realised, that at least to some degree, it has always been true. i spent my teen years wanting to be an adult. i spent my twenties wanting to be thirty. now i'm thirty. thirty is good. i don't have a need to be older. but really, it doesn't feel *that* different, is this what i was waiting for?

there have been times in my life where i have lived for the future, because it made the present bareable, knowing it wasn't going to be like that forever.

but now, now the present is pretty bloody nice. but i am still living for the future. it's almost like it's a habit i can't break. but i want to break it. i want to enjoy the moment.

the moment of clarity came yesterday while laying on the couch. i suddenly realised that instead of enjoying watching john fix his bass, listening to music i enjoy, and being very comfortable on the couch, all things that should have let to a sense of peacefullness and well being, i found myself worrying about monday.

i often don't like sundays, because of of mondays. but that makes no sense. it's rediculous to not enjoy a day off because the next day will not be a day off. it's a total waste of a day.

so, in an oh-so-happy way, it feels a bit like yesterday i came to the realisation that i'm wasting my life.

um... yeah. well, that was a rather depressing post, sorry. :(

Brush your teeth, round and round...

i'm as for dental hygiene as the next person, but today, today i saw a women in the bathroom brushing her teeth *before* lunch (that is to say, just before she ate, i mean, i guess techincally i brush my teeth before lunch 'cause i brush them at 8am, but this was at noon. okay, well, technically i may brush my teeth at noon on a weekend, if i haven't gotten up until 11, but this was noon on a workday. okay, good, i think that's covered...).

personally i thin the pre-meal brushing may be taking things just a wee bit too far...

familiarity breeds comfort

i know people say that familiarity breeds contempt, but really, it's a different c-word, it's comfort.

so, some quick background. when i lived in guelph, a city of 110,000 that felt at most times like a town (because i tended to hang out downtown, being and artsy and all, it was required), it would not be uncommon for me to strike up a conversation with a stranger. both waiting in line at the supermarket, let's chat. both waiting for the bus, let's chat. both in the waiting room at the chiropractor, let's chat.

now i live in toronto. in toronto every has achieved the practiced art of not seeing. no one looks at each other. no one nods hello on the street. no one talks to each other while in line. everyone lives in their little bubble where no strangeness shall enter.

background finished, on to the story...

yesterday i was waiting for the bus when a woman, who i see there probably twice a week or so (i am very unreliable on my timing), turned to me and said "i haven't seen you in quite a while, have you been away?"

what i noticed is that suddenly, because she was used to seeing me, she was okay with talking to me, even though, techincally, i'm still a stranger.

i've had this type of thing happen before, but never taken note of it in the same way.

it facinates me the safety people in the familiar.

what is it about summer?

what do you suppose it is about summer that makes it so that every second of every day is filled to the brim with activity?

i get exhausted thinking about my schedule. even at work things are crazy busy.

in the summer it is a distinct rarety to have a day without plans. but it seems that in the winter it is just as much of a rarety to have plans.

so, i'm putting forward a proposition. let us change what has heretofore been the situation, let us move to encourage winter-time socializing, and at the same time, find a way to add some more days to summer, so that we can have one free night a week...

who do you suppose i speak to about getting all this done?

do you swallow?

when you eat a pomegranate, do you swallow the seeds or spit them out?

i have always spit them out, because, well, they're seeds, you're not supposed to eat seeds, right?

it's a very slow and labourious way to eat a piece of fruit since pomegranates are nothing but seeds.

so what i'm wondering about is - is there a right way to eat a pomegranate? and does that right way include swallowing the seeds or spitting them out?

on a side note, while watching iron chef last night there was one point where they needed to get the pomegranate seed/flesh out of the skin, and they whacked the skin repeatedly with a spoon. personally, i was very impressed by the spanking of the pomegranate and plan to use that in the future.