Natalie Zed: Defying Gravity

The Further Adventures of Natalie Zed

2010-04-30T18:29:00.003-04:00

Just setting up my new home: http://nataliezed.wordpress.com

I write concert and CD reviews for Hellbound: http://www.hellbound.ca

I blog and review for Metallus Maximus as well: http://www.metallusmaximus.com/blogs/nataliezed-chewing-aluminum-foil

Twitter: http://twitter.com/NatalieZed

last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/NatalieZed

Tumblr: http://nataliezed.tumblr.com/

Bricks and Roads and Things

2010-04-06T13:51:00.002-04:00

This blog is done.

My contributions to it have been dwindling over time. Where once I posted multiple times a week, now I'm lucky if I can manage a single post a month.

It isn't laziness. I have written more in the last few months, both in volume and regularity, than ever before. But this place, this page, this mode of being no longer fits.

As the url suggests, I started this blog as a very young woman, the month after I married my ex-husband. I intended it to be a exploration of my married life, the balancing act of being an academic as well as a member of a permanent partnership.

In the space of a very few years, there was a great deal of change, and death, and bad weather. I lost friends and family and, finally, I lost my partner.

The purpose of this blog shifted; I retitled it (though the url remained the same). What began as a chronicle of my professional and married life became a record of my own personal disaster, and the aftermath. I used this space, partly, to write myself back together. Every post represented a moment that I felt a little bit better, a little bit brighter. Now, I feel like the bandages are off, the reconstructive surgery is complete. And while I am unrecognizable, I am whole again.

Now, this space feels like a monument. It is here, and it is done. There is nothing more I can possibly add to what began as the public journal of a girl, barely an adult, who believed that she would be married for the rest of her life. I can no longer define myself by either that partnership or by its end.

Thanks, everyone. This trip has been long and strange. See you soon, somewhere new.

On Criticism

2010-02-07T19:54:00.003-05:00

I don't like to run; I don't like to smoke; I don't like pop music.

Running
There is only on moment in my adult life when I ran like I did as a child -- tirelessly, joyfully, without a thought for how much I fucking hated it. I lived in Stratford, Ontario for the summer of 2003, taking a Shakespeare in Performance course. On the second last day of the course, the 2003 Blackout hit. About 15 of my classmates and I assembled in the hallway, trying to study for our exam the next day by the hallway's emergency lights.

My friend Dan burst into the hallway, gasping. He leaned against the wall, impossibly out of breath. We all leapt up, expecting news of the Zombie Apocalypse. Finally he managed to wheeze: "Ice cream parlour." As one, we ran several kilometers into town, never even feeling the burn. We spent the rest of the night eating huge vats of free ice cream in the park, agreeing that this was certainly the best possible scenario for the end of the world.

That particular experience is the one exception to my complete disdain for running. I can see how it is a valuable activity, and how pleasure can be derived from it. Many of my friends are runners, updating their facebook statuses with their training schedules, their best 5k times. Their hearts and lungs stay strong; their knees sometimes ache. It seems like something I could invest in: the pleasure/pain of the activity, the combination of focus and serenity, the calming influence of exercise. And yet, whenever I am called upon to go for a run (or decide to prove to myself that it can't possibly be as bad as I remember), I can do nothing to shut out the mantra "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this" that plays in my heard until I eventually go home is disgust.

Smoking
My personality is definitely of the addictive/obsessive variety, and goodness knows I have enough bad habits. I drink too much and don't sleep enough, and will consume a ridiculous amount of coffee if I'm not paying attention. I will certainly never lead anyone away from any temptation, and frequently leap into it head first myself. I'm also more anxious and high-strung than any one person really ought to me. An addiction that's bad for you and calms your nerves? It might as well be tailor made for me.

And yet, on the very few occasions I've ever had a cigarette, I've been left completely cold by it. I dislike the scratchy feel in my throat, the film in my mouth, the way my hair and skin suddenly feels tight and ill-fitting. I hate the way my nails taste afterwards, too. I've also noticed that my hangovers become infinitely worse the next day when I've smoked, and I am rather fond of my mercifully mild day-afters.

So it's not something I've ever picked up; not something I've ever longed for or wrestled with. Certainly not something I've craved.

Pop Music
Lily The Pirate: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN you don't like pop music?"
Me: "I don't!"
LTP: "Come ON."
Me: "It just does nothing for me."
LTP: *blustering*
Me: "Listen, I am not saying that I think it is stupid or wrong to like pop music!"
LTP: "...okay."
Me: "I understand, intellectually, how it can be appreciated. I hear that it is catchy and hooky. I understand and appreciate the theatricality. I understand it as a shared phenomenon -- that when you're in a room full of people you don't know and a song comes on that you all love, it's an important social moment."
LTP: "Right!"
Me: "I just don't like it, personally. I hear it all over the damn place, hear other people enjoying it, but it is never something I have had any desire to seek out or indulge in."
LTP: "Huh."
Me: "It's like...it's like how I hate to run! or how I dislike smoking. I understand why poeple enjoy those things, why they do them -- but they're just not for me."
LTP: "...alright. You're still nuts."
Me: "Well, yes."
LTP: "Rah rah ah-ah-ah! Ro mah ro-mah-mah! Gaga Ooh-la-la!"
Me: *sighs*

Vast Oceans Lachrymose

2010-01-20T00:32:00.003-05:00

It hit me today that I know exactly how many times I have cried in the last year.

I've never been one to shed tears. Even as a very small child, I'd have a bad fall and adult would wince or suck in an alarmed breath, ready to swoop in, only to see me pop right back up and keep running. If I did cry, it was heart-stopping for my parents, since it meant I had managed to badly hurt myself. Even the time I split my scalp open falling against the sharp angle of a wall, I calmly walked downstairs and told my mom I'd hurt my head, covered in blood, sniffling slightly. "If you'd just have cried," she told me once, "you'd have saved me about a dozen heart-attacks."

Physical pain doesn't really do much to stimulate my tear ducts, but media can really get to me. Every now and again a scene in a movie will hit me in the right spot, or, more likely, a song. Suddenly I'll be blubbering away in a darkened theatre -- or, much more embarassingly, in the bathroom of a bar, because a song came on and a sick wave hit my stomach and now I have to wait in the stall until the swelling in my face goes down.

I suppose this is a round-about way of saying that I would much rather break my arm than my heart. Not having much practice being miserable -- and even less practice crying -- I don't know how to manage it. I feel like my face has suddenly sprung a leak. I am afraid to leave my house, knowing that at any moment a sound or a smell can leave me losing fluids. The rational part of my brain might be sitting back exasperated, even offended by the fact that some fucking John Mayr song has such power over me. My face becomes a traitor.

Happiness holds a return to stoicism. I can trust myself, knowing that I might be moved, even knocked breathless by something, I might squeeze out a tear or two, but I will probably be able to keep from becoming dehydrated.

As the ball drops

2009-12-31T17:43:00.003-05:00

Tonight, my plans include eating greasy food, watching Evil Dead, and listening to a lot of metal (mostly courtesy of Coatsworth). My plans *also* include being awfully bloody happy that this year has finally gotten over itself and ENDED.

A friend of mine told me recently that, had he only read my blog and not known me in person, he would take me for a far less happy person than I am. And truth be told, I am ferociously, obnoxiously positive most of the time. But there is something about having this little island of electronic publishing all my own that creatively inspires me to bitch.

2009 was not horrible. After the mangled trainwreck of a shitshow that was 2008, The Worst Year Of All Time, 2009 couldn't *possibly* be that bad. And it wasn't -- a lot of lovely things happened. However, a lot of very challenging, unexpected things happened too, and despite my ridiculous reserves of energy and stubbornness, by the end I confess I am worn down. I am ready for something fresh. I am ready for a beginning.

So, to commemorate the end of a difficult year (and a difficult, wonderful, strange decade), I've decided to balance my whiny-ness and positivity, and generate a pair of lists.

6 Awesome Things That Actually Happened in 2009

- I traveled around Canada quite a bit, visiting Calgary, Vancouver (twice!) and even Northern Ontario. Vancouver in the summer is shockingly beautiful.

- I spent a full month in Los Angeles, teaching, sightseeing, and getting the first real tan of my blond, pasty life.

- I finished a full draft of my next book, Supervillains, and managed to talk the astonishingly talented (and just plain cool dude) Evan Munday into illustrating it.

- I attended Chris and Sandy's awesome wedding and the Calgary reunion that sprang up around it, reconnecting with people I care about deeply. I also got to stand in Emily ad Jim's wedding. I've known Emily since we were both three years old, and it was an incredible honour to be at her side that day.

- My younger brother received a SSHRC, started his MA, traveled to Europe, and moved in with his delightful girlfriend. Basically, he managed to become and even cooler human being, and made me even prouder of him.

- I got better. I cannot overstate and enormity of this positive thing. Late in 2008, I started to consider myself well on the way to being healed, if only because I was so much better than I had been. Then something incredible happened: I KEPT FEELING BETTER AND BETTER. It did give me pause, wondering exactly how long it had been since I was really happy. But then I stopped being all philosophical, because this year I became really fucking happy, and I could not ask for a greater gift from the universe.

6 Cartoonishly Awful Things That Also Actually Happened in 2009

- I got laid off, got rehired to teach a workshop abroad, lost my job again (permanently), and nearly found replacement jobs twice only to have them fall through at the eleventh hour. All told, I spent nearly five months without any income.

- I was served with divorce papers, received my judgment a full four months late, and got my Certificate of Divorce in the mail. Getting my certificate was actually a great relief, as that was the last bit of paperwork that will every have to be processed around my own personal disaster. However, it was still a part of The Thing That Happened, and therefore counts as Cartoonishly Awful.

- I came down with H1N1 at the exact same moment as one of my roommates, meaning that for a solid week all the two of us could do was moan, drink tea, and be nonsensically feverish while my other, saintly roommate got us to drink warm, nourishing liquids and silently cursed us for being human petri dishes.

- My uncle Ron, dear friend of my parents, who officiated both at my baptism and my wedding, died after a long battle with illness. His passing was a very hard one.

- I may have finally had The Falling Out To End All Falling Outs, something that has been brewing on my life's horizon for a very long time. While it is a decision as much as it was an occurrence, and I know it is a correct decision besides, is has still been incredibly difficult and draining.

- My ability to sleep, which has always been fickle, has taken to deserting me again this year. While it does help me get things done, it has done nothing to alleviate the rather impressive dark circles developing under my eyes.

So it's been a year of recovery and travel and celebration. It's also been a year of sleeplessness, death, poverty, and loss. While it was never simply wonderful, or simply horrendous, the rollercoaster did get overwhelming by the end. For that alone, I will be glad to see this year draw to a close.

Though, neither is that fully a complaint. In a line in a Kimya Dawson song that I love, she sings "my rollercoaster's got the biggest ups and downs/ as long as it keeps going 'round it's unbelievable."

So here's to 2010: may the coming year, and the coming decade, be even more ridiculous than the last.

p.s. I want a hovercar.

Metal Show Etiquette

2009-11-05T18:36:00.005-05:00

Inspired by Heathenfest (with Eluveitie, Belphegor, Alestorm, Kivimetsan Druidi, and Vreid) here are some rough guidelines Lily and I came up with while not screaming, drinking, or getting kicked in the back. These are not really instructions, since most people at metal shows already follow these guidelines and are shockingly nice, but rather observations based on the average cordial metalhead's show behaviour.

-- Be friendly! Everyone here is probably awesome.

-- Identify your needs for the evening and situate yourself accordingly. If you just want to chill against the wall and listen, find that area. If you feel like going completely batshit insane, there's an area for you, too!

-- Don't be too sensitive. Even if you're on the calmest sideline, you might be accosted by someone's elbow. They probably didn't mean it.

-- Watch out for girls

-- Some girls want to be in the very centre of the craziest section of the pit. Watch out for them anyway.

-- People in the pit want to be on the pit; people who don't want to in the pit aren't in the pit. Don't shove someone in against their will (unless they're saying no with their lips but yes with their eyes).

-- People on the very edge of the pit should be treated like the bumpers in a pinball game.

-- If a dude goes down while in the pit, at least two, and preferably four, other dudes nearest to him must stop what they are doing and help him up.

-- If a girl goes down in the pit, everyone stops what they are doing until she is safely returned to an upright position.

--If a girl gets sucked into the pit against her will, use any means necessary to get her back out again, up to and including bodily throwing her to safely. (This actually happened to me).

-- Official security guards are almost invariably dicks. Don't incur their wrath.

-- Metal dudes who are working security are awesome. Buy them a drink.

-- If you're the biggest dude around and there's no security in sight, congratulations. You are now security. Sorry about that.

-- This is a tricky one, and hard to manage, but we appreciate it so much when it happens: pay attention to your comrade's footwear. Some are wearing steel-toed boots; some threadbare chucks. Try not to land directly on the feet of the poorer shod.

-- And finally, thank you all for taking the time to carefully groom before the show. While Lily and I were getting crushed and kicked and elbowed in the face during Alestorm, all we could smell was clean shampoo, deodorant, and fresh sweat. Awesome. Keep up the good work.

The Day of the Dead

2009-11-02T20:11:00.003-05:00

Way back in the middle of June, I got a shit-ton of paperwork from my ex-husband's lawyer. After the agonizing wait for the year-long separation to run out, the time had officially come to file for divorce. I read through all the forms, scrawled my illegible signature across each one, and got them notarized. I sent them off the day before I left to spend a month in Los Angeles. While away, my ex sent me an email to let me know that the papers had been received and formally filed on July 12th, my twenty-sixth birthday. In a mere six weeks, the process should have been complete.

Four months passed. Because he had to file in the summer, most people working for the family court system were on vacation. This led to a huge backlog of paperwork and ridiculous wait times. All because every judge in that godforsaken city decided to spend six weeks at the cottage instead of placing three stamps and a signature on my divorce papers. Every day I would check the mailbox, and no matter what other goodies might be in there for me, I'd always swear a little under my breath when once again, my divorce judgment failed to show up.

And then, today, the Day of the Dead, after a very full weekend of Halloween-related debauchery, it finally arrived in a nondescript white envelope. The paperwork that officially severed my last remaining legal connection to my ex-husband.
I proceeded to pour myself an awful lot of bourbon over ice and am going to get blazing drunk. I can't imagine a more logical or appropriate course of action.

The process not completely over. 31 days after the judgment was granted, I can request a copy of my Certificate of Divorce, the last bit of paperwork that will ever need to be processed in the matter and something I will need if I ever want to get married again (ha. ha.). But the judgment is the important thing, the formal degree that the marriage I once had has been dissolved.

Because here's the thing: while I've been using the term ex-husband since Ed and I separated, we've still been married. We've been completely autonomous, completely apart, since I got on a plane at the end of June last year, and as more time and geographical distance elapsed and I started to scab and scar over. But the feeling of being somehow still being bound to another person that I would be perfectly content to never see or speak to again was deeply uncomfortable, and the wait has been awful.

I expected to want to celebrate. I expected to do an undignified dance and invite everyone I know out to drink with me. It's a kind of freedom, to be sure, but even more so it feels like a cauterization. An old wound that might have eventually gone bad has been reopened so it can finally heal. This is good; it also hurts like a motherfucker.

I have a high pain tolerance. Winter is almost here. Its the Day of the Dead. I'm ready.

hot under the collar

2009-10-30T00:03:00.004-04:00

cinnamon-flavoured gum, black dress shirts, chili sauce, pine needles, brown sugar, cool glass, fountain pens, wasabi, raw silk, tactile sound, whiskey, leather, shaving cream, fresh sheets, dark chocolate, aloe, melted wax, melted butter, bare wrists, damp temples, cedar, bourbon, rubber, tall black boots, a long black coat.

the darkest evening of the year

2009-09-28T19:43:00.004-04:00

You're not going to believe what I am about to tell you. I don't mind. In fact, it's probably for the best if you don't believe me. It'll make your life a lot simpler.

I can tell the future.

See?

I can already feel you casting your doubt, just as I've cast mine countless times. But all the disbelief in the world cannot alter the fact that were you to ask me, I could tell you exactly how some aspect of your life is going to resolve.

There are boundaries, of course. There are so many variables, so many possible unfoldings of the universe, that is becomes impossible to see anything accurate past a certain distance. A year and half is about as far as I can reasonably reach, and at that point the best I can do is present two options. It will either happen this way or it will happen that way. Anything beyond that and the multiple choice gets too vague to really be of any use to anyone.

I would prefer it if you didn't believe I can see your future. A very few of my friends do, but they are the ones who know me inside and out, knew me before I was me, and never doubt. Only one of my friends, my muggle friends, ever believed me. I told him his future regularly. Then, one day, he asked me a hard question, a far question, one that would not resolve itself for a year and a half. Because I loved him, I reached, and I told him how it would end -- either this way, or that way. For a long time, it looked as though I was wrong, and though he never said anything, I knew he was angry. After the situation fell in place and one of those two possibilities did come to be, he asked me again if I could really tell the future. I refused to answer him. It seemed like a stupid question. Not long after he stopped speaking to me altogether.

I don't often tell people the futures I reach anymore, though if I am asked directly I will answer. I love my friends and can deny them little, but since the future is always strange and never easy, it is better for you all to continue not to believe me. You probably don't want to know.

I often, however, reach into my own future. The older I get, and the better I know myself, the further I can reach and the easier it becomes. It's still difficult for me to process and accept, so I often ignore my own prescience (and at my own peril). Sometimes the future is too difficult and painful for me to properly see (since I cannot imagine it). Sometimes I flatly refuse to believe what I see because for all that I am I can be very stubborn. And sometimes I stop looking entirely because I'd rather not know. I'd rather cover my eyes and hope I miss the scary bits.

So I have to get sneaky with myself. The best way that I have found to talk to myself about anything, though especially the future, is through my notebooks. I always have one on me, and I am forever jotting down lines of poetry and doodling and keeping a pseudo-journal of thoughts and smells and memories and complaints. So when something occurs to my deep, powerful, future-sensing mind, it tends to get folded in to whatever I am writing at the time. Scrying amid the scribbling.

It can take some time for these love letters from the past about the future to finally reach me. But inevitably I'll be looking for an early draft of a piece or a phone number I wrote down, and suddenly find myself winded, sucker punched in the gut by a future that is already clearer that it was when I first called it out.

I say all of this so I can tell you one small thing: something is happening. The day that everything came undone a year and a quarter ago, I saw the future ahead of me more clearly than I ever have before. This future was warm, light hitting a white stucco wall on a late, fat summer afternoon. This future was easy in a way that things only are after you've fought for them longer and harder than you believed you were capable of. This future was a cup running over, and now I feel like the first drops have finally dropped down on parched lips.

I will tell you more when I can. I would tell you everything now, and how it is going to resolve. I would happily tell you the future. But you wouldn't believe me. And soon, I will have forgotten again too. We'll both just have to find out as time slowly unfolds at its own pace.

I don't mind. After all, the woods are lovely, dark and deep.

Tips for Surviving a Weekend in Essex County

2009-09-07T21:18:00.005-04:00

Dos!

-- Eat all the delicious, free food offered to you regardless of the meat content or calorie count. You need those precious nutrients for the long winter ahead.

-- Make sure you have an awesome friend who will invite you to drink beer and hang out on her family's dock into the small hours.

-- Spend at least one night at your little brother's kickass new apartment playing Harry Potter: the Trivia Game.

-- Steal your neighbour's wireless internet. They're nice; the probably don't mind.

-- Bring a flask. That way, the line "This man whan to die for his country; OBLIGE HIM" is even more awesome than you could have imagined.

Don'ts!

-- Do not watch more than four hours of true crime documentaries with Harry Walschots, lest you find yourself in a heated conversation about blood spatter and ballistics.

-- Do not engage in debates with surly former schoolmates who now work at the local Walmart. It is so tempting to try and rescue them but it will only make you crazy.

-- Don't believe your sadistic parents when they try to convince you that you've slept in past 4pm. It's barely noon.

let the right one in

2009-08-28T00:03:00.003-04:00

Some part of me is still surprised when I hang out with a couple who really works together. Granted, this might be me speaking from the twisted lump of scar tissue where my heart should be, but I find it's a rare thing. Every now again again, though, even I have to admit that a certain couple is just smashing. They think the other person is just the coolest. They genuinely try not to hurt each other. And while I might not have ever put them together in my mind had I met or known them separately, once I see them together it makes perfect sense.

Chris and Sandy are one of those couples. They're endlessly patient with one another. Both of them want the other to succeed as an artist. They're also two hilarious, tough, one-of-a-kind people who haven't lost a shred of their identities in sharing their lives with each other. They've always been a pleasure to know and a hoot to hang out with.

This past weekend I was honoured to attend their wedding. It took place in Vancouver, and the Calgary people poured in to town to celebrate with them. Local friends had their couches and floors and spare rooms filled with friends. We barbecued and and danced, argued and drank. The feeling of goodwill, of vicarious joy, was absolutely overwhelming. There was not a cynic unmoved. We all agreed that someone should get married every year out West, if only so we can have a smashing reunion.

There was sushi at night and delightfully greasy breakfast at noon. There was hiking and catching crabs and falling into a blackberry patch at Lighthouse Park. There was beer and wine and beer again, and pitchers and pitchers of mojitos. There was exquisite weather and a view of the mountains. There was even some metal.

Thank you Jordan and Summer for letting me (and GoVo and Jill and Paul) crash at your place. Thank you to all my friends from afar and before for reminding me that my time in Calgary was pretty fucking awesome. And thank you most of all to Chris and Sandy, for being wonderful together. Nostrovia.

a shovel and a big backyard

2009-08-16T19:49:00.002-04:00

Dear Douchebags on the Patio,

I give up. I have absolutely no idea what attracts you anymore.

On this particular Sunday, I was suffering from both a slight hangover and a headbangover, and was certainly not at my best. Walking down Bloor, on my way to water a friend's plants while he was out of town, I felt pretty invisible. Apparently not. Who knew that the combination of metal t-shirt, floor-length skirt, x-tra large coffee in hand, and makeup-less face would be such a draw to you?

I am not sure what exactly you said to me -- it sounded a lot like "GrrrAUWwwwAHHH TITS RAWrgggg." All I could do in response was throw my hands over my head in defeat. If there was something about the dark circles under my eyes that made you think I would in any way respond favourably to your overtures, there is really nothing more I can do.

Lovely, Dark and Deep

2009-08-06T17:33:00.005-04:00

This weekend kicked ass. Here are some highlights:

-- Meeting a group of excellent friends at C'est What.

-- Discovering the scotch menu at C'est What (Laphroaig!)

-- Watching Julie Wilson's sunburn develop, like a polaroid, over the period of a couple of hours.

-- Attending a secret "Skullfist" show and hanging out in the parking lot, drinking beer from Mark Coatsworth's Enormous Messenger Bag of Awesome

-- Mishearing the band's name and referring to them as "Skullfish" in front of some very cool metal dudes that I totally just met.

-- Attending a Metal BBQ (I didn't even know they had Metal BBQs) and watching an huge Iranian man grill lamb while smoking a cigar.

-- Playing badminton with a bunch of metal dudes, who all talked excellent trash and made fun of each other when their wrist spikes got caught in the net.

-- Seeing "Moon" and the Carleton, and then sitting around drinking coffee at the Golden Griddle so we could talk about claustrophobia, hallucinations and Windsor, Ontario.

-- Eating my very first roti from Ghandi Roti. My life (and relationship to mutter paneer) will never be the same.

-- Watching the Bruce MacDonald opus Hard Core Logo. "So don't tell us that Bucky Haight wasn't shot, 'cause we were there. We touched his stump."

-- 2:30pm breakfast at Fran's.

13 x 2

2009-07-12T23:55:00.003-04:00

The last time I wrote an entry on my birthday, it took the form of a catalogue of everything fucked-up and horrible about the previous year. It was also a defiant announcement that I was not yet beaten; that I was starting over.

This past year has been immeasurably, inconceivably better. When I told myself last year that this was the start of something, that things were about to change, I had no idea how drastic and universally positive that change would be. I have a loving, supportive, crazy family and the best friends in the entire world. My roommates have improved my quality of life more that I could have imagined. I am happier than I could have imagined. The people in my life stun me every day with their generosity and loveliness.

Right now, I am in Los Angeles, where I have been teaching a workshop for the past two weeks. I have also been having one of the best times of my life. I got a sunburn in Santa Monica, went on every ride and saw every show at Universal Studios, and bungee-jumped off a 150-foot bridge in the middle of the Angeles National Forest. Next week I'll see Harry Potter on opening night at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, tour Beverley Hills, and then head off to San Francisco. Today, I wentto the Getty Centre and saw some of the most amazing illuminated manuscripts. Now I am sitting in my hotel with a glass of white wine and some leftover strawberry cake. It has been wonderful.

It has also made me fall even more deeply in love with my life at home. I can't wait to get back to Toronto and keep going. I can't wait to see my family and friends. I can't wait to hug my roommates and snorgle the animals. I can't wait to knock my twenty-sixth year right out of the park.

a wretched anniversary

2009-06-04T17:50:00.004-04:00

I am breaking a rule by writing this post. In addition to not writing about my job, I have stalwartly avoided writing about my sex life. I have several reasons for this, including: I have already written a book about my sex life, so revisiting the topic seems somewhat indulgent; I do have some personal boundaries; and, until June 28th 2008, my sex life was not only mine but my ex-husband's, and I respected his privacy; and, perhaps most importantly, my family reads my blog. This last point is key. My family are lovely people who've had to endure a lot from me over the years. They don't need to see details of my orgasms on the internet.

Since last summer, however, my sex life has been mine and mine alone (remember that key word ALONE), and I've still avoided bringing it up. Now, however, as one horrifying date has past and another approaches, I am breaking this particular blog-rule of mine and talking about it.

So, Family Members who Read This Blog: you've been warned.

I have not had sex for year.

Actually, a little over a year. In April of 2008, my ex and I went on a trip that was supposed to be our honeymoon and ended up effectively being the end of the relationship (though we were not formally separated for another few months). While on that trip, we had sex for what would be the very last time in our marriage. Prior to that, we'd not done anything approaching sex for a good six weeks (a length of time I considered horrifying, but which my ex seemed to have no problem with whatsoever). That one fateful time I got some action on my honeymoon also marked the occasion when I may have been the drunkest I ever managed to get in my life. We both drank a lot; I know I had at least a bottle and a half of white wine myself, and that I needed a lot of help walking back to the hotel, and what once we got to the hotel I couldn't actually take my shoes off my myself and actually laid down on the bed crying and begging for help. I didn't actually remember the sex until weeks later, when my ex brought it up, and I managed to unearth a very hazy memory of something possibly happening. So, really, that last time barely counts, but it was still The Last Time Sex Happened during my marriage.

Initially, I had absolutely no desire to get any action. I was fucked up and sad all the time, and I was aware of myself just enough to know that even something uncomplicated would be a terrible idea. Then, a the very few romantic-ish encounters I did have ended up either fizzling out before they really began, or by ending up being rather terrible ideas. I realize I haven't really written about my love life (ha!) such as its been either, as I certainly haven't wanted to offend or embarrass or even just bug anyone. In any event, what few opportunities I have had have either not worked out, or were opportunities I ultimately did not want to pursue.

But then Spring came, and sometime in mid-May I realized, to my absolute horror, that I'd gone over a year without so much as a shag. There have been longer droughts than this, to be sure. But this realization has brought with it a ravening pack of insecurities gnawing at everything from my body image to my saleability as a hausfrau. While Spring has been a season of love for everyone else, it's simultaneously made me want to get out meet someone and bust this slump, and made me want to never leave my house again.

But it wasn't just the One Year of Nada passing that made me break down and finally write this post. It was the slow and horrifying creep of another anniversary. Whereas I the one year mark snuck up on me, and I only realized it has passed weeks after it actually happened, I can see this point from afar. On my next birthday, in the middle of July, I will have gone my entire twenty-fifth year, my quarter-century year, without a single bit of action. If that's not a terrifying prospect, I don't know what is.

This post is not an invitation. I am sure that I could go out and find myself a straightforward shag if I really needed to prove something to myself. But what is really behind this my own terror at being single again and, for the last year, not really having any idea what to do. Having time to myself, time to heal and grow and have a really great time, actually, has been both awesome and necessary. But lately I've been feeling to pinch of it, and found myself at a loss for what to do about it.

I haven't brought up my single-and-actionlessness as an issue to many people, but on one of the I think two occasions it has come up, a friend said, "Well. What are we going to do about that?" I joked that I'm not sure I'd even remember what to do at this point, which is both hilarious and a little bit horribly true. As a serial monogamist, I've dated very little, and never really got very competent at noticing when someone was interested in me or knowing what to do if there were (whether I returned the feelings or not). As always, I am sure something fantastic and unavoidable and life-changing will happen. I just need to relax, invest in a plunging neckline or two, and forget about the damn date.

Ontario Town

2009-06-02T10:30:00.001-04:00

My mom visited me for a whole week right at the end of May, and that week was full of an amazing number of activities. We went to the movies, trekked all over the city, and shopped like pros. We drank ice wine and very good coffee. We went out for breakfast and sushi. We even attended B.K.'s Knee Surgery/Jordan's in town party, and my mom was a very good sport.

My mom even gave me an unexpected present: a one-way first-class ticket back to Windsor, so I could ride home on the train with her (because Margaret Walschots only travels first class =)) and spend the weekend visiting my family. I hadn't been home since Easter, and happily took her up on her offer. I napped on the train, ate some surprisingly delicious salmon, had my rye-and-coke refilled at will, and looked forward to a quiet weekend around my family.

First of all, I did have a really nice time. I did some quality visiting, got to indulge in my favourite ice-cream at my favourite ice-cream parlour (hurrah for the Waterfront!), and mate much delicious home cooking.

Now that that's established, here is a list of events that took place in the 72 goddamn hours that I was away from home in Toronto:

- My dad and I got into several heated conversations about: nature v. nurture as it applied to the upbringing of serial killers; bullet entry- and exit-wounds; the type of person who's out at 2am anyway (I responded that "I am!" and my dad was scandalized); the purpose, function, and moral standing of Unions; and who ate the last bag of Cadbury mini-eggs someone had stockpiled in a rather poor hiding spot.

- Regarding Unions: Windsor City works are currently on strike (legitimately -- the two-tiered retirement benefits proposal from City Council is complete bullshit) over a retirement/pension benefits issue. This means that none of Windsor's parks or public spaces have been maintained, and garbage has not been collected, for, at the time of my visit, six weeks. This made the sick, crumbling city look even more post-apocalyptic than usual, with the garbage everywhere, knots of angry people gathered under tarps and around the entrances to public places, and weeds growing so tall it looked like nature was already starting to reclaim a space abandoned by humanity.

- While is a local discount grocery store, helping my grandmother do a little shopping, I felt the unmistakable sensation of a hand patting my ass. Wheeling around, I found the STORE MANAGER standing immediately behind me. When our eyes met, before I could begin the tirade I had waiting for him, he raised a hand to his brow, tipped his imaginary hat in an"afternoon, little lady" fashion, winked, and went back to pricing some produce. I exhaled my angry breath and could only shake my head in wonder.

DESPITE THIS, I managed to get a little nostalgic. Not for Windsor, which has long ago become a place that I happily escaped; I will never live there again. However, the time I spent in Amherstburg was nearly idyllic (maybe in contrast?). The weather was beautiful, all the flowers were out, and the breeze coming off the water was so sweet and cool. For a moment, just a moment, I was won over by its simple wholesomeness.

The universe must have heard my nostalgia, and decided that a reminder was in order. A reminder of how I came to loathe my surroundings during the two months I lived there last summer, when I was stranded and separated and clinically depressed. So just as I was thinking about the prettiness and cheap real estate of the town, sitting in the back of my dad's Jag, when the unmistakable throaty growl of a Harley pulled up next to us.

My dad owned a string of motorcycles over the course of his life, and still knows a lot of aging motorcycle dudes. One such dude had come up next to us at a red light, and started waving to my dad, who rolled the window down. The two yelled greetings over their respective engines. Then, Aging Motorcycle Dude spotted me. I was only about 7-11 when I rode about with my dad, but since my hair is blond again right now he recognized me.

"Hey sweetie! Given your dad any grandchildren yet? Got a bun in the oven?"

I was silent, and my dad managed to blurt out something helpful:

"She's working on it!"

Then the light turned green and the Harley roared away.

My Sunday, I was back in Toronto and felt this enormous rush of happiness to be home.

Gainful

2009-05-08T11:56:00.003-04:00

Both of my parents retired early. My dad decided to retire the summer when I was between seventh and eighth grade, and my mom was offered a killer package while I was in grade ten. Also, more than once when I was growing up, my dad took a year off (once when I was in kindergarten, and again when I was in grade four). While I certainly have a lot of memories of my parents working -- babysitters, my own house key, calling them at work to complain about my brother -- I have an equal amount of experience with my parents not working.

Shortly after both my parents through in the towel on the whole working thing, I remember a conversation. We were sitting outside having a cup of tea on a rather glorious day, and they both remarked on how unbelievably busy they were since they retired. I remember distinctly my dad saying "How did we ever find time to work?"

I feel a bit of that right now. Barring one day when I think I was awake for a grand total of eight hours, it's been crazy around here. Last weekend was a mission. Trash Palace on Friday (Christopher Plummer! John Candy! the Eaton Centre! pulled pork sandwich stains!), Free Comic Book Day/Dinner/Wolverine Saturday, the Clothing Show and a BBQ on Sunday. Then there was sleeping for sixteen hours and poetry reading (hearing Jen Currin, Christine LeClerc, Kim Mikus and Kevin Connolly read at the National Poetry Month Hangover was spectacular) and OMG I ACTUALLY WROTE SOMETHING I DON'T HATE. There have been cleaning missions and a day of cooking (mm..carrot cake). I've actually no idea how on earth I structured my time before.

This weekend is shaping up to be a dozy too. Not only is it the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, but the Trash Palace is celebrating it's second anniversary with a dusk-til-dawn 5-feature extravaganza. It's like the world's coolest, smelliest slumber party. Cactus Press is also having a launch tonight, and there's some black metal happening at Smiling Buddha Bar. I don't really even see enough time for sleeping in there.

For the last several months, BK has been teasing me about my lack of party. He found my going-to-bed-early and getting-up-in-the-morning and not-drinking-all-the-time schedule somewhat at odds to the person who made grilled cheese in his kitchen at 4:30 am. The other day, I got teased for my endless string of "let's do this cool thing!" facebook invitations (I believe he suggested I put together a weekly Natalie Zed Activities Newsletter). While I did feel a little sheepish, it also made me feel like I was doing something right with this time.

Outside it is gloriously sunny. The trees have finally broken. Everything is warm and green, and I think I hear a patio calling to me.

Unemployment is awesome

2009-04-23T16:41:00.004-04:00

After my initial "I am going to starve and get evicted and have to pan-handle *weep*" freak-out when I was first laid off, being unemployed started to look okay. Today, as I handed in the last of my class materials and said a temporary goodbye to my coworkers, unemployment started to look AWESOME.

Here are a few reasons why:

1) Movies

In May alone, I have X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Biceps!), Terminator: Salvation ("Do I go around messing with your lights?!"), Star Trek (Sylar and Spock!), Up (Pixar!), and Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi!) all making me squee with joy. I Plan to see most on opening night or thereabouts, which I could have done while still being gainfully employed. But, after the opening-night nerdfest experience, I might want to review certain points, so as to participate more effectively in a deep conversation about the size of Hugh Jackmans's biceps. And for that, there's nothing like a matinee (avec flask).

2) Comic Books

Free Comic Book Day and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival are also both rocking in May, and I am going to need days to prepare. Also, I'll now have all the time int he world to read my new acquisitions.

3) Patios

Spring seemed to be giving us all the collective finger. Then, I taught my last class at Hogwarts, and something miraculous happened: it got freaking beautiful out. The next three days feature highs in the mid-twenties. I plan of ordering me some coronas, planting myself on a patio, and not moving for several hours.

4) Reading

I just picked up the first Definitive Edition of Y: The Last Man, both trades of Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E, the first two trades of Sam Keith's The Maxx, and assorted other goodies from the Hobby Star Fan Appreciation Event last weekend. I am also working my way through K. J. Parker's Devices and Desires. In addition, there's a ton of kickass poetry coming out this season, so I think I am going to had to set myself up with some seasonal subscriptions too. Comic books, fantasy novels, and experimental poetry. That's how I roll.

5) Not Having to Go To Bed

This point is key. Poets, you see, see no problem with having an amazing event with tons of cool people and cheap beer on a Tuesday. That has meant that if I could go (sometimes marking DADA reports took precedence) I'd have to teetotal and leave early, which goes against my party style entirely. Now, however, it can be a bloody Monday and I won't have to worry about feeling like death the next day if I have some gin and tonics and close the place down.

Not being a productive member of society isn't such a bad thing after all. I think I'm going to go sit in the sun with some Warren Ellis and start being useless.

keeping eyes wide

2009-04-05T21:06:00.005-04:00

(First, a note about my job: I teach in private high school. It is impossible to write this entry without writing a bit about my job, which I have thus far avoided. In order to maintain a suitable barrier of confidentiality [and because my job is weird enough that the metaphor is entirely appropriate], I will refer to my school as Hogwarts and to the classes that I teach as Defense Against the Dark Arts.)

Saturday morning, I woke up to a hangover. I also woke up to an email. My boss, heretofore known as The Headmaster, wrote me to say that a meeting with his boss, The Founder, had not gone as expected. Last week, I was told that I would be teaching at least one DADA class, and would probably be able to pick up a second course in another subject (Potions, perhaps). After spending the week ironing out a schedule, The Headmaster presented his work to The Founder, and was told it had to be drastically rewritten. And by rewritten, he meant cut down. One of the many cuts that was made happened to be to Defense Against the Dark Arts. I went from certainly teaching one class, and probably two, to suddenly teaching nothing this term. As of April 20th, I am effectively unemployed until the end of June.

Up until yesterday, the recession hadn't hit me particularly hard. I am generally poor and underemployed, so an economic situation defined by poverty and underemployment seemed pretty par for the course. Besides, my job seemed removed enough, and strange enough, that no downturn could possibly effect it. I knew that it was a possibility that I would be teaching less (I've even fretted about it on this blog), but I still found myself shocked when I was told to effectively find a way to manage without an income for twelve weeks until Hogwarts could find its way clear to employing me again.

It's not a disaster. I have an incredibly supportive family who are, in a fit of breathtaking generosity, helping to support my unemployment. I also knew that there was the possibility of a layoff, and so for months have been squirreling away cash like a WWII housewife. I will be able to manage. But finding myself in the same situation has made me realize just how many of my friends and colleagues are here with me.

In June, I will be working again. Hogwarts has an amazing contract available for me, teaching a class abroad for a month, and I'll definitely be back into the regular swing for next year's DADA program. But for the next 12 weeks, I am officially laid off.

I'm terrified and poor and not sure what to do with myself. I am also getting excited. I can see a full draft of this manuscript getting finished. I can taste the sleeping in. And above all, I am going to take some very, very good advice and do something spectacular with this time, so that wen my generation finally becomes prosperous again, I'll have something to be damn proud of.

what the cat dragged in

2009-03-22T23:58:00.002-04:00

Every now and then, in a fit of vanity, I scan the internet for any personal detritus that might be clogging up the interweb. There's the usual glut of tour and book stuff, a few pictures and cameos on friends blogs. Today, I happened to find a doozy.

When I was about sixteen or so, I participated in an online poetry/critique message board called Poetry Tonight. The site has long since been confined to an electronic graveyard. One piece I posted on Poetry Tonight attracted the attention of another frequent contributor, Papa Yolk, who included it in an online zine he put together. And wouldn't you know it still exists.

Here's a poem by sixteen-year-old me, complete with bonus author pic. Please look at how skinny I am.

around the world in

2009-03-21T21:10:00.001-04:00

Just got back from a week-long trip to Calgary and Vancouver. I managed to get some sort of mutant cold/flu thing, and may still have a fever. Aside from that small (though vaguely hallucinogenic) annoyance, My trip was absolutely wonderful.

I was nervous to be returning to Calgary. This was my first trip back since I left in July, nearly nine months ago. I was not sure how I would feel. I didn't know if I would be numb or hysterical or joyous. I was almost shocked to see it still standing.

I had a damn good time. I stayed with Natalee and Jeremy and the babies. Natalee's family was visiting as well, and it was a wonderful loud happy place to stay. Staying with them absolutely made the trip. The kids are talking up a storm and so beautiful and loving I felt like the Grinch, my heart stretching almost beyond tolerance.

It was so good to see ryan, whose company I had missed more than I can express. He's one of the good ones, the best ones. It was inexpressibly good to see Ian again, to see him walking and happy and whole. It was great to go to the KP and drink a little, see Paul and Jill, James Dangerous and Jocelyn, to be surprised by Steve. I saw Chris Blais for a special supplemental Sabbath, remembered how much I loved destroying my friends at a completely unfair video game. I had a great lunch with Prof. X and Jonathan Ball, where I was tormented for my inability to come up with decent titles, and introduced to the joys of the Special Containment Procedures project. There was very good wine and excellent company. It was better than I could have hoped or planned. It is no longer home, but it is a place I can go back to, and that is comforting.

The quality of sunlight is so good there -- a bit waterier than the light in California, as if it were skim instead of homogenized, but still so good and clean. I could feel myself photosynthesizing. I had almost forgotten how beautiful the bow river is. How good the air.

After the sun, it was time for some rain. After a few days in Calgary, I spend another handful in Vancouver. It rained nearly the whole time I was there, as it does every time I visit. The dampness on my face made me feel like an orchid, some lush green thing. It was spring, and I needed it. It was wonderful to spend so much time with Jason and Andrea, watching lethal amount of television and laughing my ass off at youtube videos. Andre joined us for Watchmen, which was possibly more awesome the second time. I had breakfast with JSamp and Costa, and chatted with Jordan about drifter's diaries.

My last night in town, we gathered at Chris and Sandy's to watch the Battlestar Galatica series finale (which was ass. but anyway). I had a fever by then, and was strange and vague I am sure. But there was a moment when I looked up and saw all my friends, and I realized that this place, this other city, could be a home too.

Home again now, my current Toronto base of operations. I wish all of my friends could live in the same, magical city. Or that there was a way I could teleport and visit them all whenever I wanted. But having many places to go, many possible simultaneous homes, is never a bad thing. After all, I've never been the settling-down sort.

A Call for Submissions

2009-03-13T00:30:00.000-04:00

Announcing the formation of a new Canadian literary magazine!

STEPHEN HARPER: a journal of the literary arts

Dedicated to the publication of Canadian literary talent, STEPHEN
HARPER is looking for said talent to bombard our inbox with your best
writing. We are looking for submissions from across Canada in both
official languages.

Submissions should be made via email to
stephen.harper.literary.concern@gmail.com. Submissions should remain
under 1 page as budget constraints are also size restraints. Deadline
is as soon as possible! We will start reading as soon as submissions
start rolling in!

We look forward to reading your submissions!

ryan fitzpatrick & Natalie Zina Walschots
STEPHEN HARPER Managing Editors

About STEPHEN HARPER:

STEPHEN HARPER was started as the first magazine under new funding
guidelines made by the Canadian Periodical Fund. We believe that the
best response to these new guidelines is to try to produce a literary
journal streamlined enough to meet the new realities of today’s
publishing industry. STEPHEN HARPER has an official subscription base
of 413 – each MP and senator in the Canadian government is a
subscriber, including our namesake! As well, STEPHEN HARPER will be
starting a list of unsubscribers (the SH! list) of people not quite
lucky enough to be members of Canada’s own government, but who still
wish to receive the light of STEPHEN HARPER into their heart.

an oozing pile of me

2009-02-24T08:05:00.003-05:00

The last 12 hours would have been absolutely hilarious if they didn't happen to me.

The weekend was amazing. Friday night was a very late night filled with very good scotch and very good company. Saturday was a pleasant blur of wandering in and out of comic shops, excellent late breakfast, spicy thai, a Trash Palace special feature that could have been subtitled "The World's Most Boring Orgy," and then more drinks and more great company and a last call and a cab ride. Sunday I was useless, but still managed to drag myself to a breathtaking performance the Element Choir and dinner at Pho Hung before mercifully calling it an early night.

That much awesome just couldn't be sustained. Something had to break, and break it did.

Firstly, my job. That thing I don't talk about here at all. I am making an exception here, using no specifics. My job is awesome. I love the work and the hours generally suit me and it pays well enough and everything is just about ideal. I was prepared to be unemployed over the summer, when they most likely would not need me, and that was absolutely fine with me. They I find out that they're most likely sending me on The Mother of All Business Trips in July, and so my unemployment will only be a month long. It was perfect.

And then I learned that the work does not slow down at the end of June, as I had thought. It slows down at the end of April. Meaning I might be unemployed, or underemployed at least, a lot sooner and fore a lot longer than I had planned. Eep

Gertrude, my lovely 4-year-old supercomputer, has been showing signs of illness lately. She's been running loud and having some startup issues. Yesterday, she flatly refused to boot. She just makes a sad noise and the monitor remains blank. I tried everything in my limited repertoire to get her back online, all to no avail. I am going to take her in, but I am not optimistic.

My lovely roomies are allowing me access to their computers, but the situation cannot continue indefinitely. I May have access to a loaner, thanks to the incredible a-raw, but eventually I am going to need a computer of my own. Hopefully I can managed for a while, as maybe not having much of a job is not really conducive to dropping $1400 on a new Macbook.

And finally: this morning, I woke up with pink eye. I am confined to the house, less I become Pink Eye Patient Zero.

I think that's three. Time for my luck to right itself.

reflections on a particular M

2009-02-23T18:45:00.003-05:00

As far as this blog is concerned, all the information that exists about my job is: I have one. Since I don't want to get fired, that's usually where the discussion ends.

In many ways my job is absolutely bizarre and unique. In others, it's shockingly stereotypical. For example, everyone acts as though Mondays are about as bad as having a root canal followed by lethal injection. While Monday mornings always make me want weep, as I've just spent a weekend merrily fucking up my sleep cycle again, Monday evenings are actually quite lovely. Mondays are the one day of the week I flatly refuse to go anywhere. I need that time to catch up, to recover, to stay in and do some work or just watch a movie and be at peace with my little corner of the world.

remember

2009-02-14T17:45:00.001-05:00

it will happen before the trees break.

a shift in alignment

2009-02-08T15:34:00.003-05:00

I think I might be becoming left handed.

In late October 2007, I was about to go on tour for a month, and my then-husband bought guitar hero to keep him company while I was gone. When I played it for the first time, I felt like I was having a stroke. My hands seemed broken. I could not get the game to work. My brain knew what it wanted to do, but my hands just refused to cooperate. Then, on an impulse, I tried to play on lefty-flip, and suddenly it made sense to me. My hands knew what to do, and I actually got pretty good at it. I chalked it up to another innumerable little odd thing about me and moved on.

In the last couple of months, my hands have started getting weird again. It's not that my right hand is getting dumber, it's just that my left seems to be reaching up, grabbing nerve impulses, and taking over. I've caught myself mousing, opening the front door lock, and eating with my left hand. It's been neat.

Then, a week or so ago, I remembered a conversation. I was in the 2nd grade (I was in a grade 2-3 split), 7 years old, and at a time when things were still very nebulous. I wrote forwards and backwards (my parents often had to hold my notes up to a mirror to read then), I could read upside down...and I wrote using both hands. When one hand got tired, the other would take over. I was learning cursive at the time, and found I had to practice twice as much to make it neat because both hands needed their chance to commit the new shapes of the letters to muscle memory.

And Mrs. Jubenville, a kind Catholic woman a few years shy of retirement, suggested I write exclusively with my right hand. Whenever she saw me using my left hand, she would very gently take my pencil and place it in my right. I learned cursive more quickly. I kept using my left hand a bit longer, when no one could see me, but it was slower than my right and I soon gave up.

I had completely forgotten this had even happened until a couple of weeks ago, when, for a lark, I tried to write using my left hand, and the memory returned. The feeling of wanting to be correct, to do it "right." And while the memory is not violent or traumatic, it carried with it a great sense of loss.

I've been seeing a homeopath, who suggested I start brushing my teeth with my other hand, to give it something to do. I have chosen a notebook and, like a child, practice writing again. the letters are a little shaky and squashed still but it is coming quickly. My right hands holds the paper steady and seems grateful for the break.

I wonder what my left voice will be life. I wonder if there is a whole other half to my life, a buried lunar twin to all my thought, that suddenly wants out. I wonder how my name looks, my signature, when signed left.

My finishing move is in development

2009-01-25T12:51:00.003-05:00

Getting served was not actually all that bad. A portly blond asshole with an earpiece handed me a bundle of papers, asked if my last name was Dutch (at least I come by my crazy honestly), and I went back upstairs to read and plot. The papers themselves are very straightforward. I have scheduled a consultation and will proceed, no meltdown required.

The day was rescued by my absolutely awesome and amazing and incomparable friends. LTP did not leave my side the whole time. a raw came over and made sandwiches to sustain me while we awaited the delivery. Gennie and Em came over with sparking wine, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate chip cookies. We watched Obama speeches until my faith and joy in the remaking of the world was restored. It was, actually, an almost wonderful day.

The following night, Menagerie House decided to go out to dinner and a movie. It had all the makings of another fabulous night. We had delicious sushi. I almost stole a giant sign form Chapters that read "Smarten Up," but was caught at the last second and had to pretend I only wanted my picture taken with it. Then, we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That's when things started to go downhill.

The movie was fantastic. From the opening scene, featuring a dying mother and her daughter in hospital in New Orleans while Hurricane Katrina was about to hit, I knew I was in trouble. The film isn't moving at all, really, providing you have never known loss or true love or aren't ever saddened by things like the impermanence of the world. I, of course, bawled for over half of that bullshit three-hour film. Gennie had to teach me to release tension in my face and buy me a shot of Maker's Mark at the Rex before I felt restored enough to make it home.

Yesterday was an absolute symphony of uselessness. Lily and I staged a mini Battlestar Galatica marathon and managed to have brunch before it was somehow 7pm. WE had just enough time to grab some Thai takeout, pick up tickets from Eyesore Cinema (which, between the hot indie boys and proliferation of European horror films, may be my new favourite video store), and make our way to the Trash Palace to meet Bill K. We watched an amazing film called The Massacre up North (the drill-bit-to-the-brain scene was beaten only by the bubbling-pitch-and-crossbow-and-kidnapped-girl-in-medieval-garb scene) and bought Luchedor masks. Apparently Stacey is an ardent Mexican wrestling fan and buys up authentic masks all the time. Lily and I wore ours to the mini post-movie party at Bill K's place, where there was South Park and cheese and scotch.

So getting served sucked, and getting divorced in general sucks, and sometimes it still makes me very sad sometimes. But it's hard to stay sad for long when food is delicious, the luchedor masks plentiful, and my friends are more awesome than I could possibly deserve.

getting served

2009-01-22T12:13:00.003-05:00

I don't want this blog to become Natale Whines about her Divorce Central. That said, a little bit of whining is necessary today.

I received a call today that I have been anticipating, occasionally impatiently, for some time. My divorce papers have been prepared and, sometime this afternoon, I will be served. Someone will come to my house, along with a witness, to personally hand me a bundle of papers stating that the process of ending my marriage has formally begun. If I do not contest (which I will not) or complicate matters (ditto), the divorce will be finalized as soon as we've officially been separated for a year. Sometime between early July and mid-August, I'll receive some more papers, stating that my marriage has been completely dissolved.

This sounds very boring and official and bureaucratic, and it is. It's also a miserable process. No matter how much I want this over and I know that ending my marriage is right, it still feels awful.

There is a melting feeling in my stomach. This is final. It's very much the end of something. It is time to let that other way of living go. If I am honest with myself, I have to admit I have had occasional fantasies of reconciliation. I have been lonely. I have questioned. But now that is happening and I feel so certain that it is right, I have to let that go. No more balancing between the old life and the new. Just being. Present. Here.

I am getting served today. I am getting a bundle of papers that represent the end of another life. What happens now? Do I return to a maiden state? Am I free? Am I tethered? What will I look like now?

Dear 2009

2009-01-01T17:30:00.002-05:00

Let's be friends.

2008 and I never managed to get things right between us. After an amazing 2007, 2008 seemed like ti would be a great years' quieter foil. Instead, it was a marathon of me getting kicked in the head over and over again. I was rejected from PhD programs. My marriage failed. I was more ill in more ways than I had ever been before. I lost friends. I failed, over and over again.

The only triumph, only success I can claim as my own is that I continued to get up again after each blow. Somehow, after some new horrible things happened, I resisted the temptation ( it often seemed like wisdom) to just lay down. My own stubbornness saved me. Each time a little bloodier, a little less steady, I found my feet, nodded to the ref and went another round.

By the end of the year, 2008 and I seemed to have come to a truce. It stopped trying actively to kill me every few minutes, and I settled down some. Or, at least, started over, started building rather than just struggling to endure. By the end, I found an apartment in my city, moved in with the best friends imaginable, and got an amazing job, and started actually having a little bit of fun. I got to spend he first holiday season with my family since 2005. And, right at the very end there, I remembered that once upon a time, I actually enjoyed Winter, and am learning to do so again.

2009, let's not have such a hate-hate relationship. Let's be friends. We can take up crochet and enjoy some of the quieter past times. I will pledge to be less of a psychopath if you keep the Major Life Changes to a bare minimum. Deal?

Okay. Let's rock this town.

Proof that I am Profoundly Broken, Thursday Edition.

2008-12-05T19:23:00.005-05:00

Part 1: At the Toronto One of a Kind Show with Gennie C, Bill K and Lily the Pirate.

We passed a stall labeled Abel's Canes, which featured a wide away of canes, walking sticks, and other ambulatory aids.
Me: *pointing at one* Wow, that would hurt.
Gennie, LTP and Bill: *blank*
Gennie: *moving from blankness to shock* You mean...if you were beaten with it??!!
Me: Well, yes. What else would you use a cane for?
Gennie, LTP and Bill: *expressions of total horror*
Me: Oh. Oh! For walking. Right.

Later, I was perusing a very cool indie jewelry booth.
Me: Can I see that heart pendant?
Sales Rep: Sure. *reaches for a pretty heart pendant with a pearl set in it*
Me: No, the other heart pendant. The one shaped like a real heart.
Sales Rep: The one shaped like the real organ. With the rivets.
Me: Yeah, the cool Ugly Heart.
Sales Rep: ...okay.
Me: The aorta is really well done. I'll take it.
Sales rep: ...

Part 2: While watching Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera with Lily the Pirate and a.raw.

Me: Wow, he really just grabbed her throat right there.
*pause*
That's alright.
a.raw and LTP: *horrified laughter*

a.raw: The Phantom is so much sexier than Raoul.
Me: Damn straight.
a.raw: The mask only makes him sexier.
Me: And the cape. And the gloves. Can't forget the gloves.
a.raw: He is totally about to take advantage of Christine.
Me: He can take advantage of me anytime he wants. Especially if he leaves the mask, cape, and gloves on.
a.raw: Heh. Can you imagine having sex with a guy wearing only a mask, cape and gloves?
Me: YES. YES I CAN.

some skin remains intact

2008-11-25T23:04:00.003-05:00

My cat has raging dandruff.

Ever since I moved from an arid climate to a humid one, Lydia's skin has had trouble adjusting. Initially, she got kind of oily and clumpy in the humidity, and so I took to occasionally wiping her down with a pet wipe , and that seemed to take care of it. In the last month, however, she has gotten quite flaky. Theories for the cause of her dander have included a reaction to the smog and a return to drier atmosphere (not that it's cooler and the heat in the building has been turned on). Whatever the reason, my cat has been distributing skin cells all over the place, and since Gennie C is allergic to cats, this is especially problematic.

After a lot of advice-seeking and hilarious google searches, I came to the sad conclusion that there was no way to get out of it: I would have to give Lydia a bath. I'd also be starting her on a regimen of fish oil (which she loves). But first: the dreaded cat shampoo.

Lily the Pirate bravely offered to assist. I quietly went about turning the water on in the shower, getting it nice and warm, and laying out every towel in the house. Then, quietly, I picked Lydia up, carried her to the bathroom, and popped her in the tub, and hoped I could get the process over with before she realized what had happened.

Well, she realized it, alright. Getting her feet wet was more that she could bear. She crawler up my whole body twice in an attempt to get away from an entire inch of water. In the end, I quickly got her wet, sudsed her outside of the tub, and rinsed her by holding her over the sink while Lily poured warm water over her. She stopped panicking as soon as she was actually out of the tub, but the entire time she wailed like her toenails were being pulled out. George was convinced she was being tortured and hit under the bed in despair.

In the end, I ended up with only half of the skin on my back flayed off, Lydia cleaned herself for two hours, and peace again reigns in Menagerie House. I just hope that we have defeated the Mutant Dandruff, because round two might require a tranquilizer dart and some body armour.

your ontario town is a burial ground

2008-11-23T13:36:00.004-05:00

I have just woken up. I am still partly deaf. My throat is raw and I feel like I have been worked over with a lead pipe. On my right thigh is a bruise the exact size and shape of a men's size 13 combat boot.

Friday night Lily, Gennie, Sampucker and I headed out to the Trash Palace for some debauchery. We watched 13 Frightened Girls, a William Castle film that intended to cash in on the James Bond craze. It was a heartwarming tale of a 16-year-old girl, home form her Swiss boarding school trying to save the 40-year-old dude she has a crush on (blech) from being fired by donning the guise of the superspy "Kitten." There were vigorous spankings, ridiculous accents and one pair of supertight tennis shorts that made me lose my shit entirely.

Later on that night, Bill K came over to Menagerie House for drinks.Things got a bit vague for a while. When we finally came to early Saturday afternoon, Bill mentioned a rock show he was going to see that evening with good friend and fellow metalhead Dani C. Now, when I say "rock show," I of course mean a black metal show that involved two bands called Wolven Ancestry and Woods of Ypres. He mentioned, in passing, how there might still be tickets available. Despite possibly seeming very gauche and inviting myself along, I announced that I would absolutely love to go. Lily the Pirate seconded the motion. a quick ipone/facebook check later and my plans for the evening were solidified. I donned all the black eyeliner and after some pre-concert bourbon the four of us headed off to Kipling.

It turned out that the concert was technically in Etobicoke, and the directions included gems like "go under the bridge, past some powers lines, and down an alley." In the West end. We wandered around in the dark for a while, losing feeling in our extremities, certain we were either going to be knifed or run into a troll. Finally, down a very sketchy side street, the bass began to swell. We passed a wreaking yard, turned a corner, and encountered a warehouse. A very rickety door, out which furious trashing blared, was propped open and bore a sign that read: "No In & Out." After we were all ID'd and out presence on the guest list confirmed, we were in.

We arrived just before Wolven Ancestry took the stage, and so got to see them hoist their drum kit, a monstrosity that needed no less than six men to lift. The frontman was wearing white and black makeup and a silver fur cloak. It was then that I knew it was going to be awesome.

Wolven Ancestry killed it. I found myself having a particular affection for the keyboardist. In their second to last song, a proper mosh finally broke out. It only took a body check or two to make me wonder where metal shows had been all my life.

Dani C knew the frontman for Woods of Ypres, and so we got to meet him during the break between the two bands. He had on a black toque and was surreptitiously sipping something from Tim Horton's. He shook my hand and smiled and struck me immediately as someone I could develop a dreadful crush on. Then he got onstage. And revealed his mohawk and sweet trillium tattoo. And began the opening chords of a song called "Your Ontario Town is a Burial Ground."

I can't remember the last time I screamed like that. My underused headbanging muscles got a hell of a work out. Something in my chest took over, and after my first bout of mosh shyness I started throwing elbows with a glee and surprised me. I was happily shocked at the good-naturedness of the scene, the friendliness to the violence. Even when a crowdsurfer came down on my leg, I was overcome with a feeling of well-being and benevolence.

Now I am a complete wreak. Bill K, the self-proclaimed Stately Guardian of the Mosh Pit, blew out his knee, and is faring even worse. We are moaning and sore and tired and sound like we gargled iron filings.

I can't wait to do it again.

fumbling towards

2008-11-14T10:53:00.004-05:00

Jordan Scott is in town; the chat I had with him Wedneday night after Influency did wonders to dissipate the general cloud of blarg that has been hovering over me for the past week and a half. Hearing that someone stood up for me made me feel human again.

Jordan and Meredith Quartermain tie, I think, for the best experiences I've had in Influency so far. I took the class because I didn't recognize all of the authors on the curriculum (4 out of 9 were familiar, I think), but the chance to see Jordan read was a huge draw as well. Watching him fight through the words is excruciatingly beautiful. I am not sure I'll ever get tired of it.

I've also had to bury myself in work a bit lately, since we're in the midst of one of the four small crunches that happen each year, and nothing lets me slip into intellectual oblivion like pushing myself to produce. At least, that's what I though. But the work, while absorbing, has a bit of a pattern to it. Unlike composing, my higher lobes are often left free to wander, and as a result I end up working though a lot in my mind while my hands adn discursive, surface mind are busy. It's a lot like knitting or crochet, the latter of which I'd like to pick up again.

I am picking up things again. I am starting to see myself, slowly and tentatively, looking for new projects, planning things, even being slightly eager to pitch in. It's an exciting prospect, as it means I've healed even more, but it also makes me nervous. It's an impulse I have to keep carefully in check. I am finally sleeping a bit at night, like humans do, and I don't want to go wrecking any newly-sprouted healthy patterns just yet.

pincushion girl

2008-11-08T22:38:00.007-05:00

It's been many years since I was properly single. Ed and I were together for six all together. We started dating when I was only nineteen; we met, in fact, while I was still messily extracting myself from a nearly-three-year relationship. I don't really count the time between the end of that experience and the beginning of my relationship with Ed as being "single," but rather more a mad dash to put myself back together, to sew up all my seams and reattach all the limbs I'd lost in the process. That means, honestly, that in the past nine years I have no experience being single.

I am enjoying it. There is so much time, so much space, a great big world to explore and very few tethers preventing me from spiraling out into orbit. I am responsible only for my cats and friends. I love the ownership that I have over my choices, the sense of being beholden to nothing.

That said, the experience is also terrifying. A dull fear has been building at the back of my mind, but in the first few months of this separation it was easily drowned out by the wailing panic and screaming, searing pain that dominated most of my emotional register. As I got better, the sheer excitement of the move to My City and life with my friends shut it out. But now, as I am starting, just a little, to test my wings and interact with new people a bit, the fear has suddenly picked up a megaphone and started a terrifying monologue.

The thing is, I am afraid I won't find anyone else. This probably sounds incredibly stupid, since I've been single for five months and am still a basketcase and shouldn't even begin to be concerned over it, but there it is. Seeing Ed last weekend at The Wedding only intensified this irrational terror of dying alone and eventually being eaten by the cats. I found myself in the same room with a man who could not only deal with me, but with some cajoling actually agreed to marry me. That marriage was broken. And now, as I pick my way through the wreckage of the relationship, I find myself increasingly terrified that it was a fluke. That I am somehow intrinsically unlovable, and that I blew my one shot at happiness by not being able to make it work with that one person who could do more than tolerate me.

The rational part of my knows I am being utterly ridiculous at best and dangerously emo at worst. The self mockery doesn't seem to be alleviating the fear, however.

So this has been my state of mind of late. Not that peachy. I've been trying to prove myself wrong by actively pursuing interactions with the opposite sex. I am certainly not looking for anything -- quite the contrary -- but it seemed like a good way to show myself how stupid I was being would be to have some positive, mildly flirtatious encounters that would hopefully provide a bit of a confidence boost.

Instead, I have come to the only somewhat startling revelation that people are actually afraid of me.

It started with the little old ladies in Yorkdale and Forst Hill who clutch their purses tighter to their sides when I approach. I do have very short pink hair and dress like Tank Girl, so I wasn't initially shocked by their nervousness. I am probably the weirdest thing they see all day, poor loves. Then, a clerk in a comic book store actually scurried out of my way after I simply stood my ground in an argument about the writer behind a certain run of Constantine. And finally, in a conversation that marked the end of what I had hoped was a fun little flirtation with a co-worker, I had the singular pleasure of making a man several inches taller and a full decade older than me take two full steps back and then flee my presence by merely uttering the phrase "I am not most women." I wasn't even angry at all; just intense.

Forgive the whining; this week's been a bit tough on me, to put it mildly.

Wanted: Someone who is not afraid of a 5'2" gypsy-punk who might just be smarter than you. Handlebar mustache, top hat, and penchant for the circus not mandatory but desirable. Must like cats.

after the war

2008-11-03T22:39:00.003-05:00

Tara and Neil were married this weekend. There ceremony was performed by the same pastor who baptized Tara and her family. The weather could not have been more perfect, the mood was incredibly joyous, and no couple has ever been lovelier than "the dashing bride and the blushing groom."

I've been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading The Wedding for weeks. Ed and I introduced Tara and Neil to each other, and so I've had the unique privileged of watching a relationship from the very very beginning. I've also been very close to both of them, so watching them marry was very much watching the union of two people I've loved very deeply. For these reasons, I was thrilled to be there.

However, this was also the first time Ed and I were in the same room since we separated. Also, there was going to be quite a few people in attendance whom I've also lost, and seeing them was going to be difficult to varying degrees. And, of course, it was a wedding. For these reasons, I was terrified to be there.

The weekend was, in the end, relatively peaceful. I did not have a psychotic breakdown, though my hands shook so badly throughout the ceremony I was certain I was going to drop my bouquet. Everyone was polite, no matter how distant. and seeing Ed was like getting hit in the chest with a blast of wet concrete, but I made it through. I did not fall apart.

And today, when I got home, I found that the very first bit of paperwork had come in, The process has started. Is the worst, maybe, over?

A history of this type of behaviour

2008-10-26T17:11:00.004-04:00

This past Thanksgiving was the that I've been able to spend with my family in four years. I've missed a lot of holidays, even a couple of Christmases, and there was a wonderful ordinariness of being about to spend a Turkey Day around relatives. This was also the first time I'd managed to come home since I moved at the beginning of September, and it was great to be able to spend time together now that I am officially Feeling Better (sponsored by Big Pharma!). When I was home in the summer, I was actually incapable of really enjoying their company. I was all miserable, all the time. Now, with a little time and a lot of psychotropics to the good, a small shaky happiness sprouting somewhere in the compost of my heart, I was much better company.

My brother's lovely girlfriedn, Kacy, was also in attendance, even though she's just undergone oral surgery and had her jaw wried shut. I had a great deal of fun with my mother, figuring out how to liquify meat (unsuccessfully) and pumpkin pie (successfully!). Since my parents were in a giddy mood, and I seemed unlikely to slip into the Black Abyss My Own Fucking Angst, my parents through that this joyous occasion would be a great opportunity to bring out a couple of family albums and to show Kacy what Michael and I were like as children.

I am usually not very fond of pictures of myself from when I was a child. I have an Ugly Complex, something I have chronicled on this blog before. I am greadually getting better, slowly shifting my mental weight from Ugly into merely Very Fucking Weird territory. Still, looking at pictures of myself from when I was small reminds me of the absolute horror I went through during that time as a quantum magnet for bullying, and taps into my Ugly complex in ways that tend to make me very uncomfortable.

There are two pictures of me, though, that I rather like, and it just so happened that the book my parents brought out contained it. The pictures were taken on my brother's fifth birthday, which would make me seven. My borther and I, along with about ten party guests, are doing some kind of crafty activity in the basement. All the of the other kids are engaged in what they are doing, attacking peices of contruction paper or trying to glue sequins to each other. I am sitting at one end of a small table by myself, my feet propped up, holding a marker as though it were a cigarette in long holder, twirling it between two fingers. In the first picture, I am staring into space, in my own world, as I bring the marker to my lips and pretend to inhale. In the second picture, I have noticed the camera and am the only one staring into it directly, now pretending to blow smoke rings at whoever is behind it (probably my dad).

I love the strangeness of this picture. By seven I already had a rich inner life that often felt more vivid and varied than my real one, and was perfectly content to escape into it anywhere and anytime. Even a child's birthday party could be transmuted into the bustle of a Parisian cafe. I also love the comfortableness I exude in it. I love how perfectly content I am to do my own thing, no matter how it looks to anyone else. My skin might be strange, but it is mine and in those pictures, I own it.

It's only now, only very lately, that I can say I feel that comfortable again. That's not to say I am still not wrestling with my Ugly complex, but even through this fight, I am finding something that feels like peace. It started, oddly enough, when I got rid of the last of my oldest clothes and started to really love just about everything that I wore. I've gotten bolder with my hair, and my new, very pink, very very punky 'do makes me happier than I can express. Yesterday, I caught myself singing aloud on the subway, caring not a whit for who heard me, and then actually startling myself with how comfortable I was in that moment.

I feel like I am seven again, reinventing myself every moment and fearlessly living in my own internal ladnscape. This time around, however, anyone who trties to beat my strangeness out of me is going to have a bit more trouble on their hands.

Welcome to my Garbage Kingdom

2008-10-25T12:46:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I turned my hair pink again, ate an almond dream bar from Live ( a kickass raw-vegan restaurant), and spent my evening hanging out at the Trash Palace. The Trash Palace is an absolutely amazing underground cinema that I discovered when it was used as the venue for the launch of Derek McCormack's The Smow that Smells. Last night, we watched Flatfoot, a dubbed, 16mm cop movie equivalent of a speghtetti western. It was 3 amazing reels of a very fat man slap-fighting skinny criminals, eating spaghetti, and dispaying his hairy chest for all to see. Then, as a bonus, we watched an ancient episode of Hammy the Hamster.

All this takes place in a crazy little basement cinema that doubles as a printing studio and seems to be made, papier-mache style, out of old movie posters, decaying props, and action figures. The two guys who appeat to be in charge are called Stacey and The Mouth. There is popcorn, Pabst Blue Ribbon, shots of JD, even homemade chocolate chip cookies. It's a place that seems to have been pulled directly out of the darker, MST3K-er recesses of my brain.

Now I'm mildly hungover -- one of those hangovers that has more to do with a vague feeling of delicacy rather than pukiness or a pounding headache, and as such is almost pleasant. I am trying to determine how much of a suck I am -- do I stay in my pajamas, do my marking early, and take a series of naps today? Or do I actually put on some pants and venture out into the world, maybe become better acquainted with a new neighbouthood? Either way, I really need to get this pink off my forehead. The dye never stays exactly where you need it to.

I've been neglecting this blog a bit, which is a shame, something I'd like to correct. The last few weeks have been important in a thousand tiny ways. My bosses seem to love me and my contract was renewed, which means that I not only have an income guaranteed until the end of January, but also that I am succeeding (in whatever small way) at the most rewarding job I've ever had.

The job joy helps, of course, but it's more than that. Little wonderful things have been happening every day. My roommates are some of the best friends I have ever had, and are more loving and considerate and supportive than I knew was possible. The leaves are toasted all buttery warm and I can still get by with my lightest jacket. Yesterday, while leaving work, I found a dragonfly on the sidewalk, probably nearing the end of its life. I picked it up for a moment, let's its prickly feet grip my skin, felt the cellophane delicacy of its wings. A young man walked by me, pink-haired and punky and holding a huge bug, and actually smiled at me. There is so much smiling.

Surrealism in point form

2008-10-06T23:54:00.003-04:00

I've fallen behind a bit in my updating. What could be keeping me so busy? In reverse chronological order:

Sunday, Oct 5th: twitched, moaned, and stayed in my pajamas.

Saturday, Oct 4th: bought a 3'x4' canvas, acrylic paint, and drop cloths. supervised the the inflation of 1000 helium baloons. laughed hysterically at my boss' voice under the influence of helium. attended Nuit Blanche festivities, where I witnessed a chorys of poets at St. Thomas' church, a man dressed as Elvis eating a watermelon, and pig heads mounted in potted plants. Ate an entire soft shelled crab at 3am.

Friday, Oct. 3rd: Spent the evening with very old friend. Discovered Thumb Cats, a pair of very cute kittens that weren't just polydactyl but in possession of full-on opposable thumbs, in a sketchy pet store in chinatown. drank at the Victory.

Thursday, October 2nd: got lost on king and bought a beautiful pair of boots. attended the launch of Derek MacCormack's The Show That Smells at the Trash Palace with Bill and Lily. ate a hotdog and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon; had a shot of JDwith the bartender. Watched the last third of Tod Browning's The Unknown. Went to Disgraceland and ate a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich. Was accused of treating eating as an extreme sport. Came home at 2am and ate another meal, prepared by a apron-wearing Gennie.

Wednesday, October 1st: attended Influency. met a man named Omaha Rising. studied Meredith Quartermain's Matter. Learned that Roget was the president of the Royal Society of Britain just before Darwin. Talked about poetry and rhisomes andw riggling things.

Tuesday, September 30th: Went to Staples with Gennie and bought a red Swingline stapler and a pack of cinnamon gum.

Monday, September 29th: watched MST3K and tried to stay off my feet.

Sunday, September 28th: went to the Clothing Show with angela and Lily. walked around for 5 hours in New Shoes (eeep) and bought a ton of beautiful stuff. Mostly tweed. ate crepes and ice cream. cleaned out my closet until sweet oblivion embraced me.

Saturday, September 27th: attended a chili-and-bladerunner party at Sampucker's. Bill brought a spectacularly smelly cheese that various people mistook for the aroma of a) their own body odour, b) their own breath, c) someone else breath, or d) crotch sweat. Walked home with Lily at 3am, all the way up St. Clair.

It's always so strange to point-form my days. Really, all this was happening? It seems surreal, and helps me fall in love with my life by tiny increments.

charred a shard of

2008-09-18T22:00:00.007-04:00

So I drank the chardonnay.

I hate chardonnay. It's is my least favourite grape, scourge of the house white, feet-like and over-oaked and not for me. I've never found one that did anything for me. At best, I was left unmoved; at worst, openly repelled.

On our second-last day in Paris, Ed and I spent the day going around to various open-air markets. We'd had a series of very, very bad days at that point, and after an epic meltdown the day before were trying to reclaim what joy might be left in the trip. We went to the market that stretches for half a kilometer around the Bastille metro station, filled with incomparable produce and spices and beautiful things. I didn't buy much when I was in Paris. On that day, I bough some herbes de provence and lavender, a kilogram of the best strawberries I had ever encountered, scarves for my mother and grandmother, and a bottle of chardonnay.

There was a very small stall set up between a cheesemonger and a woman selling asparagus. The man behind the stand was a ruddy-faced, portly fellow with wire-framed glasses and an apron. nearby, a man with an impossibly theatrical moustache smoked a pipe played the accordion. Ed, tired already, sat down. I sidled to the stall when I noticed the man was both selling wine and, more importantly, offering samples. I arrived in time to hear a fat businessman order several cases of the 2005.

The wineseller, it turned out, owned a very small vineyard in the village of Chardonnay and made some of the only name-controlled chardonnay on the planet. I confessed that I generally didin't like it and begged him to reeducate me. He took pity on my Canadian-ness (apparently the North American climate is completely unsuited to the grape, and we over-oak the shit out of it) and offered me sips if the 2004, 2005, and 2006 vintages. Each was life-changing. I had very little money left, so after a seroius deliberation process I bought a single bottle of the 2005. I brought my prize over to where Ed was sitting. He was impressed with the novelty and we made plans to drink the bottle once we got home, on our 3rd anniversary, a few months away.

On the flight home, Ed and I filled out a customs form and realized that we had brought back too much alcohol (some vodka for Ed and several bottles of wine exceeded the unexpected small per-person limit). We got into a fight about how to handle it that ended extremely badly. We ended up telling the border patrol exactly what we had, and they let us keep it. The wine was saved, but it seemed then that maybe we couldn't be. It would, in fact, only be a few days before Ed asked to separate for the first time.

I actually don't know what happened in May and June. I really can't remember what happened during those months at all, save for a few days. I must have left The Print Shop; I must have started my job at Pages and worked there for many shifts. I must have visited with friends and worked on the magazine and written poems. All I really remember from that time, though, is the morning I begged Ed to try, and punched the glass sliding door in grief when he refused to answer me. Later, I went to a late breakfast with friends, in a complete daze, and dimly realized that I could no longer use my right hand (It was distinctly broken, I now believe, though I never sought medical attention, like a complete idiot. eventually the swelling and bruising reduced, I began to move it again. recently, the ache even went away). Sometime later (a few days? a few weeks?), Ed asked me to move out. I remember weeping all night, actually all night and into the next day, begging to stay. To try. The next afternoon, swollen and probably unrecognizable, I went to a poetry salon and acted like a complete basketcase. Ryan and Jonathan and Kaylan consoled me; Ian walked me home. Late that afternoon, Ed agreed to let me stay. An indeterminate amount of time after that, on the night of Markapalooza, Ed told me over the phone that he wanted to separate, but knew I couldn't afford to leave, so we could live in the same apartment, as roommates. I refused. This time, I still wept, but not as much, or as long. and I begged less. But I still begged.

I remember almost nothing at all about visiting Ontario at the end of June other than, right at the end, there was an ultimatum. Shortly after I returned, ultimatum was called. Things got even stranger. On June 28th, I finally gave up. I agreed to leave.

Then Ian fell, and everything changed.

I intended to drink the bottle of Chardonnay on what would have been our third anniversary. I would uphold my end of the bargain, at least. Instead, I had dinner with my brother at The Cook's Shop. The tortellini was fantastic. I drank most of a bottle of Valpolicella instead, and fell asleep early, like the sad bastard that I was.

Finally, I moved to Toronto. I carried to bottle with me like a totem, in and out of more than one party. The moment never seemed right, and so it remained unopened. Then, at the end of my first weekend here, there was a moment. Gennie, Bill, Lily the Pirate and I were all sitting in the living room. There was a pause, and a moment of peace like I could not remember feeling for a very long time. Bill then suggested, very gently, if the time was right. I stood up and found a corkscrew.

The wine was a golden colour, not pissy like most Chardonnays I have tried. Bill commented on the forwardness of the flavour, then it's unexpected mellowness in the middle. We agreed that it had a muskiness to it, a delicate kind of complexity.

And I could feel in my mouth the same golden light that I had felt in my eyes that morning at the Bastille market. The smells of fresh meet and cheese and produce all competing, the sun and the dusk and the sweat under that. Somewhere, a fruitseller cut open a mango, a tropical high note above it all. I could feel the tightness in my throat that day, felt again the knowing that even this, even this place, might not be enough. In my right hand, I clutched a bag of leaking strawberries, soaking and staining their paper bag. Like blood. Like I was holding my damn heart in a blood-soaked paper bag.

So we drank it, and when all I had left was the strong green bottle, the white and gold label, I felt lighter. I don't have to carry the bottle with me any longer, waiting for the right moment, or just waiting. I am learning to put things down, to stop carrying them. To drink them. To drink deep.

Things that have actually happened in the last 5 days

2008-09-08T15:55:00.003-04:00

- attended a Cheap Trick/ Heart/ Journey concert with a raw, Connor Green and Aaron Tucker

- watched a very drunk dude play air-guitar and spill his beer on someone while trying to kick his leg over his head, then drop his pants and declare very loudly that he'd always wanted to get a blow-job while listening to Journey's "Faithfully"

- turned down weed offered to me by a very sketchy dude. Sketchy Dude then tried to convince me to take the weed by saying that it was laced with cocaine. When I was still (shockingly!) not interested, he stormed off, angry at these kids nowadays who just didn't know how to party properly

- found my way to Scarberia all by myself

- attended an estate sale and bought a killer coffee table, a gorgeous hand-crocheted table cloth, and a bottle of 1974 Canadian whisky

- ate great fish and chips at Duckworth's

- ate deep fried camembert, parpadelle with duck confit and shitake mushrooms, and tarte au citron at La Palette

- listened to Sigor Ross, recoiled at a picture of a geoduck, and almost stole a canister made of cinnamon bark at a-raw's 30th birthday party

- got up very, very early and very hungover to go to Ikea

- put together a lot of furniture

- ate taco meatloaf

- drank the Chardonnay I bought from the village of Chardonnay while on Honeymoon in Paris this April

- attended my first day of work and overheard the phrase "I can't have any pizza; I have this thing? I lack something? Wait, I remember now. I can't have the cheese because I'm a lactard!"

More Achy Than Breaky

2008-09-06T15:12:00.002-04:00

So the move went better than I could have ever hoped. My family were an incredible, amazing, glorious help. There is now way I could have done it without them, no way I could have carried my couches up the 4 flights of stairs or built all my own furniture. My mom, dad and brother were absolute troopers, world moving champions, and my heart has brimmed and overflowed with gratitude.Emily McDowall also almost burst my heart with her awesome by showing up and unpacking every single one of my books.

Miraculously, a few days in I am almost unpacked. The house is really starting to come together and look like a home. Living with Lily the Pirate and my right-hand lady Gennie C is everything I thought it would be and more.

Perhaps most miraculously of all in the settling-in process has been how well our animals have all gotten along. Gennie has a little bichon frise, Merlin, and I of course have my two psycho jungle cats. I bought a baby gate, fully prepared to segregate them as long as necessary, and worried about how they would get along rather obsessively, knowing they'd already been through so many changes and not wanting them to be unhappy. Within an hour of my arrivla, however, the cats had crossed the threshold of the babygate and were hanging out with Merlin like they'd all been best friends for years. George playfully bodyslams Merlin in the hallway and Lydia gives him nose-kisses. It warms my black little heart every time.

Regarding my Availability

2008-08-31T15:21:00.003-04:00

Once again, Amherstburg has managed to completely astound me. This town has to be, in the immortal words of Mariko Tamaki, "a goldfish tank of stupid (Skim)."

Yesterday was a Very Bad Day. I have good days and bad days. Over the last 10 weeks, the proportion of good days to bad has grown gradually. But this past week I had a string of bad days, culminating in a couple of Very Bad Days, days epic in their badness, complete with wailing and gnashing of teeth. By the second Very Bad Day, I had cried so much that the skin around my nose and the corners of my eyes have actually gone all scaly and dry from the tears and dripping and wiping. I call them my face scabs. I am so attractive.

It was on this day feeling like I was the most repulsive human being on earth and that nothing would ever be good again, that some punk ass ray of sunshine in the goddamn Walmart actually tried to console me by saying "well, at least you'll have fun dating again in Toronto!"

Breathtakingly Responsible

2008-08-29T13:03:00.004-04:00

The internet has taught me many -- nay, innumerable valuable lessons. Just a few of these crucial tidbits of knowledge are as follows:

- Any website devoted to girls and seemingly innocent receptacles -- such as cups or tubs, of any number -- should be avoided at all costs.

- There is always someone who can beat your favourite video game faster, fancier and more completely than you.

- Cory Doctorow wears a cape and rides around in a hot air balloon.

- Yahtzee, the genius behind Zero Punctuation over at the Escapist, is the sexiest man alive.

- It is always unwise to talk about you job on the internet.

It is this last point that brings us to the subject of today's blog post. As part of the Project Natalie Relocates to Toronto Project, I have managed to get myself hooked up with a great new job. Said job has be unreasonably, almost embarassingly excited by its awesomeness. I have a couple of dear friends to thank for hooking me up with the opportunity, going out of their way to prod and encourage and recommend the opportunity along, and really in every possible way gone above and beyond the call of duty. I would love to thank them explicitly here for all to see. I would love to talk about all the prep I am doing for this job, for the specific duties the job entails, and to eventually regale you all with Tales from the Job.

However, I think I have to make the conscious decision here, right now, not to talk about my job on the internet, because I like my job and really don't want to get fired for, say, talking about my job on the internet (see: Dooce). Talking about print and cheese shop jobs was one thing; talking about my job at Pages was also something different, as I could use this blog to advertise for events. This job is something else all together, more of a Job than anything I've probably had before, so it seems as though I'll have to stick to generalizations.

However: thus far, everything is awesome. Everything that was still up in the air has been settled, and I canot express how trhilled I am with what they're offering me. While I will have to be obtuse, I can at least say that things are unfolding as they should, and I am positively beaming in nerdy glee over it all. I've never been so happy to have something to prove.

That Girl

2008-08-25T20:51:00.003-04:00

One of the things I am really looking forward to, after I leave my parents' place and am able to live my life as an adult again, is drinking. Barring the very occasional glass of wine with dinner and a pair of G&Ts at the Scream Gala, I have had no alcohol since I left Calgary. In fact, I don't think I drank at all in the last few weeks leading up to my departure form Calgary, either because I wanted to avoid an ugly alcohol-fueled argument or because I didn't want to say something in an inebriated state that I would regret (and I was watching what I said very, very carefully by the end). Yes, those are two different things.

Since I left, there has been no blazingly obvious reason to continue teetotaling. My parents are not exactly prohibitionists; my mother is Russian, for goodness' sake. However, my father no longer drinks at all (it would interact negatively with his medication), and my mom confines her indulgences to the very occasional cocktail after he has gone to bed. Essentially, this means that I would be drinking alone. Since I am enough of a basket case all on my own, and the one night I did have more than a single drink (the scream gala) I felt myself getting a bit weird and potentially weepy around the edges, I've avoided alcohol and with it any potential of becoming a crying drunk living with her parents. *I* would even be embarrassed to be around me at that point.

But I miss cooking dinner with a glass of white wine, then finishing the bottle with a friend over dinner. I miss spending very lazy Sundays watching football or tv-on-dvd and combining various other liquids with gin. Most of all, I miss bourbon and coke with lime, my most favourite drink on earth, whether ordered or mixed myself (or by another kind soul when my sense of ratio got a bit garbled). I miss it, I think, because drinking has always been a very social activity for me, and an extremely pleasant one at that. Ed and I spent a lot of hilarious evenings getting very drunk and yelling at the television. I had a lot of excellent conversations with brilliant friends in pubs.

So I suppose when I say I miss drinking, I am really saying that I am looking forward to having fun again -- and, more specifically, having adult fun again. I can't wait to do things like stay out late, order a few drinks, and swear in mixed company. I want to wake up with a terrible headache and mascara smeared on my pillow. I want to hear my voice drowned by bass and slurred inside my own head. I want to enjoy my adulthood, my valid ID, my wildness again.

I know that this reclamation, this joyous return of my former, modest state of depravity, means that I will occasionally be That Girl again. Perhaps on a birthday, or a book launch, or some other suitable excuse, I'll not stop when my warning light starts blinking around the 5-ounce mark. I'll want to keep going, keep dancing, keep swimming through the hazy brown and gold light. And so I will end up in the men's bathroom sticking my fingers down my throat, or leaning out a car door while the driver idles, foot on the brake, puking onto the curb. I will make up with a sore throat and scraped knees, feeling like crap.

And I will not regret a moment.

Unexpected

2008-08-24T21:31:00.006-04:00

1. I did not think I would cry this much. I expected that this would be a very emotionally turbulent time for me, of course, but I did not expect that any human being could cry this much. It's really kind of embarrassing. I have to actively hide now to keep people from assuming I am actually a walking waterbed that has sprung a leak. There has not been a movie (of any genre) that hasn't made me cry, including Wall-E and Batman. There has not been a single night that I have not cried as I was falling asleep. Usually, now, it's just a tear or two, not a full-fledged torrent. I can't actually remember what life was like before I cried all the time.

2. I very rarely want to talk to anyone about anything. Seeing people, even (especially?) old family friends who I dearly miss and under any other circumstances would be dying to see, is incredibly difficult. In some cases, I've blurted out the events of the past few weeks just to get it over with. Sometimes, I've been ridiculous enough to actually pretend I've gone selectively deaf to avoid answering a question. I've variously entertained the ideas of never coming out of the house again, and wearing a t-shirt that says "separated," and handing everyone I see a sheet with a bullet-point summary of the past 10 weeks or so.

3. People really want to pick a side. Someone, clearly, must have done something terribly wrong. It really seems unfathomable that there could not be a villain.

4. I am far more comfortable being the villain, if a side must be picked. I dearly wish I could just call Ed an asshole along with the people who have proclaimed him so mere seconds after learning about our separation and long before they ask what actually happened. It would make my life a lot easier, and would mean that I didn't have to deal with point 5 nearly as much. Instead, I find myself talking about what a marvelous human being he was, what a good man, and assure them it just didn't work out (also I am very difficult). If they press (and they often do!) then I mention that well, he did have the regrettably stuffy habit of chastising me when I dined on kittens, and that really would never do.

5. Many people are much more comfortable with me being the villain than our separation being relatively quiet and amicable. I have been asked, to my face, and usually in that falsely comforting "you can tell *me* the truth now" tone, if we are separating because I had someone else on no less than five separate occasions. I've also had people, to my face and with not even a hint of apology, immediately ascribe the separation to my career, ambition, activity level, or all of the above -- and not in a "could this have been a contributing factor?" kind of way, but in a "if you'd have stayed home and been a better wife this wouldn't be happening" kind of way. On one memorable occasion, I was told simply "Well, I am not surprised -- I imagine you're very difficult to live with."

6. I realize that I really had no idea who and how would be by my side during this time. In many cases, I was not surprised. My family has been tirelessly supportive. My best friends, my girls, my Toronto coven, have stood by me. Another of my best friends has kept phone dates with me despite being in the midst of buying a house and planning a wedding. The literary communities in TO and Calgary, as well as further afield, have been awesome. I was, perhaps, simply amazed by how much love, how much support they offered, and how unconditionally. However, there were some, friends, acquaintances, and family alike, who surprised me with their support. People I was afraid to tell about the separation shocked me with their sound advice and unquestioning acceptance. People I certainly knew and whom I though liked me well enough surprised me )often to tears) with their love. There are a few, as well, who I expected would be here with me, who I expected would always be here with me, who are conspicuously absent. I miss them.

7. I miss absolutely everything. I miss the mountains. I miss the air. I miss the sunlight on the carpet in the late morning. I miss walking to Nellie's to write for a couple of hours. I miss walking up 8th. I miss meeting friends for breakfast at Dairy Lane or Take 10. I miss the farmer's market. I miss my bedspread. I miss riding the C-Train to the University. I miss the sabbath. I miss the babies. I miss my job. I miss everyone and everything with an intensity that shocks me.

8. I am beginning to realize that if I stayed in Calgary I would have done myself serious harm. I certainly had a place to go and a way to support myself, and it is not as though I was without a support system. But I am not sure I could have made it through the winter without something very bad happening. I feel like I narrowly escaped something.

9. There are some things I am just never going to learn. I am that goldfish that just keeps slamming its face against the side of the tank, despite the fact the glass was there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. There is something in me, even when I know something is a horrible idea and going to end badly, that sometimes just cannot resist.

10. There is a part of me that wishes things could be different, even if I were lessened by it. This part wishes I could have been quieter, softer, easier. It wishes I chose differently or not at all. It wishes I could have felt less and handled more, even if this meant I was blunted or dulled. There is a part of me that wishes I were still there, because it would be easier and this is very, very hard.

11. I had no idea this was going to be so hard. I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done, and I am neither interested in an easy life nor likely to shy from a challenge. This is still harder than anything I could have imagined. This is the kind of difficulty that makes taking a shower an unbearable prospect, that feels far less heroic than grossly masochistic or just plain stupid. It makes me wonder what is wrong with me, that I can't just admit defeat and go home.

12. From somewhere impossible (and maybe rather ridiculous) I've managed to find an unshakable little spark of optimism. I get genuinely excited whenever I contemplate moving in to my new place, starting my new job, even simply unpacking. I will be reading as part of a new series, Decadent Rare, in TO on September 17th, and I am as giddy as if it is the first time I've been on stage. Somehow, when I think of my impending move, instead of every organ shuddering and clenching like a sane person, I am looking forward to starting over, beginning again. Whenever I forget for a moment or two exactly how miserable I am, an odd film of cheerfulness clouds my vision and I can't help but look at the great unknown ahead of me as some kind of ridiculous adventure. That feeling, that little bit of tenacious joy, keeps me going.

Two Weeks

2008-08-20T21:07:00.006-04:00

While there has been an unofficial countdown going on for a little while now, as of today I have begun formally counting the sleeps until me, my cats, and a big old rented cargo van pull up to our new apartment in Toronto. Gennie C, LTP and Merlin will already be there, unpacking and celebrating and shedding. I will unload all my worldly possessions, wave my parents goodbye, crack open a bottle of wine and make my new roommates promise me that if I ever again speak of staying with my parents for more than 48 hours, they will shoot a blow-dart soaked in tranquilizer into my neck and duct-tape me to the wall until I regain my senses.

Do not mistake me: I am deeply grateful to my parents for taking in their tangerine-haired wastrel of a daughter. They have fed me, clothed me, and bought me necessities for seven weeks now. They helped me get my boxes home when I ran out of money to ship them. Hell, my mom flew to Calgary to help me *pack* those boxes (she also made me the best soup I have ever tasted). I would never, not for an instant, want to imply that I am anything less than speechless with appreciation at how awesome they have been.

But there's always a however. And when one's wastrel daughter is a twenty-five-year-old poet and professional shit-disturber, and when one's parents are the very traditional European sort prone to fits of antiquing and early rising, and when one's father in particular is blessed with a streak of quaint sexism with a healthy side of racism...yeah. Seven weeks can be a long time.

I have not forgotten all of the survival techniques that I learned as a young woman. I listen to my ipod when trapped in the car and flatly refuse to watch any programming on the Fox network. I try to keep from pointing out the underlying messages of violence in the commercials. I bite the insides of my cheeks and dug my nails into my palms.

I am ready now. I am ready to rebuild my fortress, retreat into a universe of my own making where I will not be reprimanded for refusing to wear a skirt and makeup every day or called a "fallen woman" without irony. I am looking forward to being able to discuss anything faintly resembling politics without being told to adjust my tinfoil hat. I am looking forward to life with my friends in my city.

and counting.

What kind, exactly?

2008-08-12T19:59:00.003-04:00

Interior: Day. Public Bathroom.

Adorable Little Girl: look mom, that lady has pink hair!

Extremely Overweight and Grouchy Woman Wearing Very Very Tight Pink Stretchpants: Well, she must be some kinda weirdo.

On Anger

2008-08-06T17:33:00.003-04:00

I've rarely felt this way. My usual explosions or fits of temper are really me writhing in pain, or lashing out like an injured cat who can't think beyond being hurt and protecting itself form further hurt with all its strength and pointy bits. Rarely do I get genuinely angry.

This morning, however, I happened to have that rare experience. The inside of my chest is filled with a hot, slow, wet feeling, like magma welling to the surface. My mouth is full of sparks. My hands shake. I feel like I must be radiating, shining out an ugly kind of light. Radiant.

The surprising thing is that I am grateful for the experience. It was incredibly illuminating. I can see clearly now the character of those around me. I see more of what has happened in my wake, and a little bit more of what lies ahead. I have seen my way through a couple of conversations that needed to take place, that were very murky only a day ago. I can see through more that I could before.

Above all, however, I am grateful for the challenge. Anyone who knows me, really knows me, knows what happens to me when someone tells me a thing cannot be done, that I am incapable of it.

So. Thank you for saying what you did. Do not apologize. I am glad, deeply glad that I saw it. Don't worry, you have said nothing that has not been said before and worse, and to my face. I have certainly been accused of being crazy before, and I have always looked carefully at those levelling the accusation and taken it with a grain of salt. No harm done.

I must tell you, though: you are mistaken. I do not "fold." I do not give in. I couldn't care less what you think, really, but you told me I could not. You've levelled a challenge.

Thank you.

Watch me. Just watch.

Watson: A Game

2008-07-26T10:53:00.006-04:00

Ah, small town. I now remember how I came to hate you.

My parents are very quiet people. My mom is the exact opposite of a gossiper, but she does have her few confidants. And one of said confidants hasn't grasped the meaning of her title and it's relationship to the word 'confidential.'

I was at a drug store yesterday, purchasing no less that three separate types of feminine hygeine product (if that's not a Do Not Disturb warning I don't know what is) when the cashier asked me if I had found a solution to my problem.

I stared blankly for a moment.

"You know, how you're going to move all your stuff to Toronto! I hear you were having some trouble moving. How are you doing, anyway?"

I mumbled something about a cargo van and blood loss, and fled.

That encounter was a little odd, but by far not the worst I have had. A few days ago, I went into a local coffee shop that may or may not rhyme with Tim Morton's, and ordered an XL triple-triple. Once again, this very obious Leave Me Be hint was not heeded and the cashier pounced.

"Hey, I was sorry to hear you left your husband."

Blink. "Yeah, that's not exactly -- yeah. Alright."

"We've all been wondering -- what are you going to do about your name?"

"My -- what?"

"Well, when J. got divorced, she changed her name back right away, but S. just kept hers for, you know, the kids. And E. has like twelve names. What are you gonna do?"

"Well, I kept my name. So I am going to continue to keep it."

Despite the hassle that I get every single damn time I say this, I insist on telling people that I kept my name. It is important. I had a name and I kept it. It is mine to publish under, to sully, to squander or to see in lights.

"Oh."

And then, anotehr employee, who had been taking orders from the drive-through (spelled "drive-threw" on the sign, incidentally) covers her headset mic with one hand and calls over her shoulder:

"You must have not been that committed then, eh?"

I left.

But I have been thinking, dammit. Thinking a lot about my name. It's the one thing that I haven't had to change, and I am deeply grateful for its constancy through this experience. And having a name that was half someone else's right now would be unbearable. Taking my name off the utilities, looking at pictures, and staying in the city where we met has been awful enough. Having to use a name that was really Ed's name every day, and decide to deal with teh pain of keeping it or deal with the pain of changing it again, losing identity again, might just been the straw that put me in the hospital.

But beyond that, I have been thinking about my initial decision not to change my name, the endless bullshit I had to out up with becauseof that decision, and how I have not regretted it for a second.

When Ed and I first started talking about getting married, long before we were even engaged, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. I'd grown up in a world where women took their husband's names, and thought I might follow suit, save me the hassle, though that never felt right. Then my mother suggested, in jest, that we should both change our names, combine Walschots and Schmutz and become the Walschmutzes (which endured as a nickname for ever). I was actually quite taken with this idea -- the two of us conbining what we had to make something new seemed an appropriate meaphor ofr a marriage and a family -- but when I brought it up as a real option Ed flatly refused to consider it seriously. When pressed, he said that he had a name, he liked it, and he was keeping it.

I thought about that for a very long time. I too, had a name. I hadn't always liked it; I had tried on a few new ones, accumulated nicknames and titles and insults, but we'd eventually warmed to each other, my name and I. I liked the sharpness of my initials, the three consonants all angled lines. I had even published a little under that name.

So I kept it -- and the act of keeping it both made me fall in love with it, and seemed to invite the whole wide world's disapproval and input.

I did not keep my name to be contrary. I did not keep it because I was not committed to the man I believed I would spend the rest of my life with. I did not keep it because I wanted to invite all this trouble or rile up the locals. I kept it because it was mine. It was my name, what I was called, and it had the power of twenty (now twenty-five) years of being my name behind it, reinforced every time I was called. My name had the magic of being my name.

Dark Night

2008-07-18T22:20:00.003-04:00

14. On one blanket and under another in High Park. The quality of light sinks away. The smell of incense, pot, chocolate chip cookies, greenery, dirt, skin. pebbles and grass through the blanket. eyelids over corneas, eyelashes resting on cheeks. slow breathing. someone at a microphone and listen. listen. eyes slid.

15. the train is one swaying nervous hum. trying to sleep through the numbness. there is cream cheese smeared on a gray duffle bag. across the aisle: she in blond and tanned, gesturing with an iphone, her sunglasses reflective as a Louisiana cop's. Telling the older woman next to her about her early period, hormones in the beef. I keep very still, hope no one notices I am spreading like an oil slick, leaking everywhere, getting into everything. hazmat.

16. something obey me. electron, electrolyte, cabling, crux, helpdesk, highspeed, something. please.

17. I just brought chips; I didn't know UZIs were an option. face cut into shape, a mass of stringyness and smears, just enough of the carnival to be menacing and I think yeah. my face has been caught in that rat trap. cut into a smile. snapped into place by cellphones, paparazzi without the flash. sugar builds bridges and skyscrapers on my teeth. the theatre is one giant mouth. breathing. abject.

18. sick cat on the porch, fireflies from blade to brush. chirps, eerie laps, a bonfire smell, gravel crunch. circle of milky tea. my skin is angry, red bubbles break the surface. soon I will be liquified. drink.

Defying Gravity

2008-07-11T23:50:00.008-04:00

In nine minutes, I will be 25 years old. Three weeks ago, my marriage ended and I watched a dear friend jump off my 7th-story balcony. Two weeks ago, I quit my beautiful new job, packed all of my things into a few boxes, and left the city that has been my home for the past four years. This week, I may have lost another dear friend and I am not sure why.

In the past week, I have also reconnected with my oldest, dearest friends and have a real sense of hope, of possibility for a future here. I have begun to look at apartments, and may even have some leads on potential employment. Today, I have received possibly the best birthday present ever.

A month ago, I went to Book Expo and learned about my industry from the other side, at the same time that I was fighting to hang on to my marriage and slowly, steadily losing my grip.To months ago, I was in Paris and saw the Opera House for the very first time. Three months ago, I began treatment for post-traumatic stress. Four months ago, I first learned that all of my PhD applications had been rejected. Five months ago, I was first diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and began a round of medication that would eventually cure my migraines and let me sleep for the first time in months. Six months ago, I began going to couples counseling with Ed. Seven months ago, I have fought with an every-increasing sense of loneliness and separateness from my family and old friends. Eight months ago, I launched my first book and toured across Canada promoting it; then I got the news that my mother-in-law had suddenly passed away. Nine months ago, I started to suspect that there was something terribly wrong with me. Ten months ago, I had my first nervous breakdown. About one year ago, I successfully defended and handed in my thesis and thought that at long last all my trials were over; I handed in the project, waited for my degree to arrive in the mail and believed that now all I would have to do was enjoy a year off to get my life and my head in order before starting in on my next grand adventure.

So here I am, having just turned 25 (it's just past midnight now), starting over again from the very beginning. In the morning, my official birthday, I will start looking at apartments with my soon-to-be-roommates: Gennie C and Lily the Pirate. I will call my brother to make sure my glorious jungle cats are still happy and growing fatter in his care. I will breathe in the smoke and the honeysuckle here, and drink coffee with my friends, and pet Tess, my new magical familiar and circus rat.

I will not make any more apologies for who I am. I am Natalie Zed. I am here to live and to write and to wreak havoc.

One quarter of a century down. Breathe. Begin again.

Anchors Away

2008-05-30T11:02:00.003-04:00

So I have a secret that really isn't a secret at all, but one that I didn't want to put in writing until it manifested fully. And manifest did it ever.

About two months ago, word came out that the Calgary branch of McNally Robinson was closing. I This meant that the city was losing a huge, great independent books store, and the literary community was losing a friendly, receptive, FREE venue for events. Specifically, McNally Robinson has always (since 2003) been the home of flywheel, the reading series I currently co-organize. And now we all needed to find new homes. Blech.

A few weeks ago, maybe 2 days after I got back from Paris, I was at the Talon launch at Art Gallery of Calgary, jetlageed out the wazoo. When everyone else was going to the Joyce to drink and schmooze, just wanted to go home. Simone, one of the Overlords of Pages Books, was heading out, and so I helped her load books into her car and asked for a ride home. She happily obliged, and while driving presented me with a truly ridiculously awesome offer:

She asked if I would take over her position as Pages' events coordinator.

After nearly having an aneurysm due to excess awesome, I accepted. There was an odd period where I couldn't tell anybody, because I still had to meet the other owner of Pages, Ben. That went incredibly well. Then there was an additional odd period because the reason I am taking over for Simone is a conbination of McNally's closing (which has caused the demand for Pages as both a venue and a bookseller to skyrocket) and the fact ythat Simone is pregnant and, at the time, was still in her first trimester and not telling anyone. Then there was about two weeks when my mom was here, and I had quit the old Print Shop job but not started the new job yet, so felt a bit like a fraud talking about it.

Wednesday, I worked my veyr first event: I sold books at the launch of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was a great night busy but not overwhelming. Simone was kind, Katerina was a blast, my mom got to do something cool, and I had officially started my new life of awesome.

Last night was my first night in the store (the previous event was attended by around 700 people at Knox United Church), and it was another book launch: Rebecca Bradley's The Lateral Truth. Bradley has written a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, but this she described as "pure blasphemy." Bradley read to a packed house, circulated many hors d'euvres and poured a lot of wine while I leanred to work the cash machine and check things in the inventory (though I did manange to wrangle a smoken salmon canape). I also learned about a literary community in Calgary I'd had nearly no contact with at all: the sci-fi fantasy community. Apprently it's very active here in the city, which I suppose shouldn't be suprising considering all the conferences that come through town and the publisher, Edge Books, being based here. Still, it was something I really didn't know about, and it was really cool to be able to peek into that community and hopefully be more connected to it in the future.

I am wokring 6-9 again tonight. It will actually be my first night on the job that isn't working an event, but rather is just learning the ropes in the store. Simone is doing a great job of easing me in, letting me hang back when I need to or jump in when I feel confident. I am just beginning to see how immense, and how potentially excellent, this job actually is.

Ever sine The Rejection, I've felt lost. I've tried to stay busy, be as upbeat as possible, engage is positive self-talk. But when I really got quiet and listened, I had to admit I feld groundless. Working a job that was pleasant and easy for another year was actually a terrifying prospect. This, however, is going to be hard. I am going to flounder, and fuck up, and lay awake at night fretting. It's going to be wonderful.

10 reasons I almost stayed in Paris

2008-05-11T21:04:00.004-04:00

1) It is impossible to find bad wine. The $5 it as worst mediocre; at best delicious. Also, it is cheaper to order a bottle of wine in a restaurant than it is to order a couple of cans of coke and some filtered water.

2) Boulangeries. I ate so many creme-angliase-and-apricot pastries (called Oranais) that I needed to buy new pants.

3) The museums and galleries. In the nine days we were there, not one went my that I didn't see something that caused my brain to short circuit and leak out of my ear. I still can't believe I saw Beuys' 'Peau,' Dali's 'Alice' bronze, and two late (from Arles) Van Gogh self portraits int he span of a week.

4) The museum attendance. I expected to have my mind blown at the Centre Pompidou; my expectations were met and exceeded. I did not expect that people would line up an hour before opening to get in to see the Lousie Bourgeouis exhibit. Every museum we went to was absolutely packed, even on a weekday morning.

5) The Opera House. It was nice to be home for an afternoon.

6) The markets. On our second-last day, we went to an open-air market that stretch for half a kilometer, starting at the Bastille station. There, I bought Chardonnay from the actual village of Chardonnay, a beautiful little bag of dried lavender, and half a kilo of strawberries that changed my life (and were eaten in one sitting).

7) The food in general. Every little cafe and brasserie serves food that puts anything in this country to shame. Our first full day, we walked into a brasseries and had onion soup with croûtons and cheese, duck confit, and a creme brullee, all of which were mind-blowing.

8) Cemeteries. They're lovely, both solemn and friendly, and the workers look after feral cats that guard the dead.

9) The Metro. Speaking as someone who does not and never will drive, being able to get anywhere in minutes and never be farther than 500m from a metro station was incredible.

10) The architecture. It would be difficult not to find a place to live that wasn't in some refurbished Haussmann-era apartment building overlooking some stunning view.

These were just ten of the moments when I looked around me and wondered how, how I could stay, how I could make it happen. Come on, Calgary, remind me why I am here. It'd mid-May already -- would a *little* bit of green kill you?

Shock and Follicle

2008-04-14T10:21:00.004-04:00

There was a point when I was sick that I got very, very bored. After about 3-4 days, I was still too weak and achy to do very much, but I could finally think clearly and my brain didn't have anything to do. Ed recognized the signs of a Bored Natalie brewing and, knowing this to be one of the most dangerous forces on the planet, took the precaution of keeping many books and video games at hand, and even bought me a copy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to keep my brain from turning in on itself.

Despite his best efforts, I still mounted every piece of jewelery I own to the wall with push pins, alphabetized the canned goods, and did this:

The colour of my hair is somewhere between that of a coke can and a fire engine, and I love it. It makes me look even paler, matches my new shoes, and causes very small children to squeal at me in absolute delight.

Dyeing my hair has reminded me of something that I find my turns amusing, fascinating, frightening, and (mostly) absolutely fucking maddening: that most of the world seems to believe that I am public property. I don't know what it is about the way I look that invites people to sneer, touch, and pontificate, but it occurs with alarming frequency. I have heard many pregnant women and women with small children complain about a similar affliction: people feel they have the absolute right to touch a woman's pregnant belly (or her baby!), give her advice, and criticize every aspect of her parenting. I can only imagine what liberties polite society will take when I choose to reproduce; for now, they just focus on my hair.

Here are just a few of the responses I've had to deal with. Please keep in mind I have had my hair like this for less than two weeks.

-- My first day back at work, still feeling queasy, my direct supervisor came up behind me and touched my hair. When I gave him my best Violation Face, he muttered that he "just wanted to see if it was real."

-- An older gentleman actually stopped me on the street to tell me that I would never get a job looking like this. I was on my lunch break at the time.

-- A woman openly stared at me for several minutes as Neil, Tara and I waited to be seated at Red Lobster.When I caught her eye and smiled at her, she became flustered and said "Well, my, don't you look interesting...in that outfit."

-- On the day of the snowstorm, my hair was wet by the time I got to work. A coworkers said I looked like a "drowned, unholy candy cane."

-- More than one person has looked at me, sneered, and then turned to Ed to ask him either how he feels about the way or look, or how he could possibily allow me to do such a thing.

It hasn't all been negative, though. Babies love it. And the day I dyed it, waiting on a street corner by the Palliser for Ed to pick me up, a group of young men walked by. They were wearing very expensive looking hoodies and very bog pants. This was during the Juno awards. As they approached, I had the vague itchy feeling that I knew them from somewhere, but couldn't place exactly where. I smiled at them, they smiled back, and one young man told me he loved the hair.

They passed, and then it hit me: I recognized them because they were the members of Finger 11. If Finger 11 likes my hair, what more can I really ask from the world?

A Timeline of Extraordinary Gastrointensinal Distress

2008-04-06T22:21:00.003-04:00

or: How to lose 10 pounds in 5 days!

or: April Fool's!

Saturday/Sunday, March 29th/30th, 12:30am. I have been drinking at the KP for several hours, and have just had 2 shots of wild turkey, one shot of tequila, and one shot of...something in less than an hour. I ooze down the stairs and into the men's bathroom. After clutching the toilet bowl and dry heaving for a few minutes, I decide to take matters in hand and and stick my fingers down my throat. Just in case you missed that: the same fingers that had just had a desperate grip on the TOILET BOWL in the MEN'S BATHROOM at a PUB just went into my MOUTH. I throw up and, for the time being, I feel much better. Ed and Belinda take me home.

Sunday, March 30th, noon. I am hung over. I cure my hangover with a lot of coffee and a big breakfast at Nellie's.

Tuesday, April 1st, noon. Ed and I eat lunch at this sketchy little diner near my place of work that doesn't seem to have a name. I make the decision (a poor decision, I readily admit) to have a crab salad sandwich and poutine. Deep within me, something stirs.

1pm. I go back to work, and immediately feel unwell. I feel crampy and bloaty and just...not good. I begin to rethink the crab salad.

1:20pm. I cut off one of my coworkers in mid-sentence and flee to the bathroom. Things go...poorly.

2:20pm. My coworker comes to check on me. I apologize for suddenly leaving. She takes it all in stride and reassures me that what is happening to me is perfectly natural, that everybody poops and I will feel better soon. She is also good enough to being me my cellphone and every magazine she can find.

2:30pm. I call Ed to tell him I am pooping to death. He laughs at me. I also complain that I am horrifically bored, since the only magazines my coworkers could find are Dreamhome Calgary and Luxury Bullshit Monthly. He pities me, and makes fun of me for ordering crab salad.

3:00pm. I cannot possibly poop anymore.

3:15pm. Is that...blood?

3:20pm. Yep, that's blood. Quite a lot of it.

3:25pm. I call Ed back. Things are now serious. We formulate a plan.

3:30pm. I call Neil at his desk and explain my dilemma. He was about to leave for the day anyway, and agrees to tell my boss what's happening, call me a cab, take me home, get our car and drive me to a clinic.

3:45pm. A cab arrives. I bolt out of the bathroom and into the cab, where Neil is waiting with all my stuff.

3:47pm. We make it home and I barricade myself in the bathroom again. Neil gets a registered nurse on the phone, who tells us to get to urgent care ASAP. I call Ed to let him know and he agrees to meet us there.

4:15pm. Neil and I meet Ed in triage. Neil has been a true friend and even got me some gatorade. His duty done, he leaves me in the waiting room of the new Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre. Due to a shortage of beds and confused staff, there is a huge line to that I have to wait in to even see a triage nurse.

4:45pm. I start to fade in and out of consciousness. My vision gets very strange -- I can only fix on certain things, like the buttons on E's shirt of blue flecks in the tile floor. I am also in terrible pain at this point. Every ten minutes or so, a security guard has to let me in to one of the PERMANENTLY LOCKED BATHROOMS so I can bleed into a toilet. I am afraid of passing out and not being able to call for help.

5:15pm. I finally see a triage nurse, who is very surly and bitches at me for not being able to describe my condition as clearly as she would like. I am finally allowed to register and BEGIN my wait.

6:00pm. My name is called! I go behind the curtain. Ed stays behind, as per a nurse's instructions.

6:15. I describe my condition again to a much nicer nurse. I give a urine and stool sample, change into a hospital gown, lay down on a cot and shake. Occasionally, I hobble to the bathroom. Several nurses come in to bring me blankets, and stare at my stool sample is abject horror.

6:45pm. I see a doctor for the first time. She is very businesslike, but warm. She gives me a full physical (a remarkable intrusive process) and orders a bunch of tests be done. She also tells me I am critically dehydrated and will need to be given intravenous fluids.

7:00pm. a nurse comes by again to check my blood pressure and I ask if someone can get my husband.

7:30pm. A nurse comes by to take some blood and get me ready for an IV. She tried three times to put the IV in my hand before giving up and popping it in at the elbow.

7:45pm. Someone finally goes to fetch Ed. He tells me I am doing fine, while looking at me with his Very Concerned Husband face on.

8:00pm. I am hooked up to an IV. I am given fluids and drugs to reduce the HORRIFICALLY PAINFUL CRAMPING.

9:15pm. The IV is drained and I am unhooked. As soon as I can, I hobble to the bathroom again.

9:45pm. The doctor comes back to tell me that my blood test is back and that it looks like I have an e. coli infection. She also tells me that the treatment for e. coli is...nothing. Apparently, prescribing antibiotics can lead a SEIZURES in e.coli sufferers, so all I can do is wait it out. She does tell me that, just in case, she wants me to have an x-ray to make sure I don't have a perforated bowel.

10:00pm. I have a series of x-rays.

10:10pm. I fall asleep.

11:15pm. My doctor comes back in to tell me I don't have a perforated bowel! Huzzah! I still have e. coli, though. She prescribes me more medication for the horrible cramps and agrees to send me home.

11:55pm. I am finally unhooked form all the instruments and allowed to go home.

The Aftermath: I have spent most of the last 5 days in my pajamas, either in the bathroom on on the couch, taking small sips of various warm and nourishing liquids. In the last two days, I have managed to start on solid food, though at a price (more pain). I've been told it takes 7-10 days to recover fully, and I believe it. Never, never have I been brought so low by a stomach bug.

The Moral: Be ye not so stupid. If you're going to drink to excess, at least be sure to puke in the girl's bathroom.

Department of Uncreativity

2008-03-31T15:12:00.004-04:00

Two years ago, I received an interdepartmental email wishing my current thesis adviser well as she was about to embark on a year's leave. This was the first I had heard of her departure, and I was shocked. Neither she nor anyone else had ever mentioned to me that she'd be leaving. In the weeks that followed, she became increasingly difficult to get a hold of, as she repeatedly left the city to and went through an inter-provincial move. I would give her material, and it would take weeks for her to get back to me. It soon became clear that defending on time was going to be impossible. She agreed. I had applied to the PhD program, and when I got in with a very generous package, I applied for a one-year deferral.

My deferral was denied. The official reason I got for this denial was that I was in my second year, that i had completed all of the other requirements for my degree and the committee saw no reason that I should not be able to complete my thesis on time. I looked in to other options (switching advisers, etc.) but nothing would actually solve the problem. When my adviser left, and I had no choice but to turn down my offer of acceptance.

One of the committee members tried to reassure me by saying that when I did reapply, I'd have an even stronger application and was certain to get it.

Somewhere along the line, I started thinking in terms of "when" rather than "if" in regards to my PhD applications. So three weeks ago, when I found out that I was on the waiting list for the U of C, it was a blow. My application was much stronger than it had been two years ago, when I was not only accepted but offered a very generous four-year funding package. When I turned that acceptance and package down, I consoled myself with the knowledge that I would only be a stronger applicant the next time around. And I was: I had a book out, additional publications, a degree in hand. Being told I was not chosen in the first round was difficult, but far from a defeat.

When I got that news, I called University B. the U of C and University B were the only two schools I'd applied to because that was where I wanted to go. I would happily live in either city, be a part of either academic and literary community, and either place worked for Ed. At first, I was cagey. I said that I'd started to hear back from other schools, and wanted to know when I might hear back. I was then told that while the selection process was still underway, it did not look like I'd be receiving an offer.

Two weeks after I'd been put on the U of C's waiting list, I was taken off. They had chosen to accept seven PhD students this year, and I was not one of them.

(As aside, possibly fuel for another rant: the U of C is the one school in Canada where you can do a creative PhD. Creative Writing has been identified as one of the U of C's official "Pillars of Excellence." Number of creative-stream PhDs accepted last year: zero. Number of creative-stream PhDs accepted this year: maybe one.)

I called University B back, and was not cagey at all. I laid out my situation and I asked for an explanation for their earlier "maybe -- but no" response. I had a number of conversations that ranged from the friendly and supportive to the very odd. At one point, I was told that my application was strong, I was clearly a very talented but that University B was "a decidedly uncreative place" and they just didn't think I'd be happy there. After that, stunned, I stropped trying to wrangle out a decisive answer.

So as of this moment, I have been rejected by both PhD programs I applied to. I've been showered with praise, and yet had the door closed firmly in my face. I will not be going to school in the fall.

I am not sure what to make of the situation. I was deeply disappointed; but I was also completely baffled. I don't fell like I am owed anything, but there is something about this situation that didn't seem right.

So, naturally, On Saturday I went out and got very drunk. My friends proved their awesomeness once again by all coming out, buying me drinks, saying very nice things, and not even making fun of me when I threw up. Well, not much.

This morning, still smarting both from the rejection and the hangover, things are much clearer. I now have this time, this raw potential time that can be filled with anything. Suddenly going to Sideshow School is easier. Suddenly I have time to finish a third manuscript. Suddenly I can study video games in Texas. Suddenly, rejection seems just a little delicious. I am a villain -- maybe I've just been given the freedom I need to build a death ray.

Feed Our Addiction

2008-03-24T12:18:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, Ed and I threw a housewarming party. It was a most excellent event that featured an all-day rock band marathon that almost crippled Mike Davy's right leg. It was the kids of party that kep me veyr busy cooking and serving drinks and visiting briefly with everyone, but I had a blast.

Before we moved, we made a point of not buying much alcohol, not wanting to move dozens of bottles. As a result, our wine rack was completely bare. When we the the housewarming, we asked people to being us a bottle of white wine to replenish our stores.

1 full wine rack + Ed and I + lots of visiting and movies this weekend = I have woken up with a hangover for 5 days in a row. I think I need to change my lifestyle.

Print Shop Girl

2008-03-07T16:19:00.005-05:00

Through a truly hilarious series of events, I am now employed again. I did not expect nor intend, really, to be employed. The short version of these events is that Ed and I had a small freakout about money a couple of weeks ago. Even with a team The Best Friends On Earth, moving was still a very expensive undertaking. Our rent is also going up, our car needed a lot of unexpected work, we're going on our Honeymoon in April, and we want to keep our debt under control. We talked about it a little, and I brought up the possibility of going back to work. Ed was initially opposed to the idea, but softened after a day or so. I had it in mind that after the move, I'd look for something temporary, something part-time, something that would just get us over this financial hump.

A day or two later, Neil mentioned some changes that were going on at his place of employment, Big Oil Campany. Apparently, a few people left in the middle of a project. They needed someone to fill in a bit, just for six weeks until the project ended. I spent ten minutes putting together a resume and a cover letter with one egregious spelling error and sent it off.

Within a day, The Friday Before the Move, I received a phone call and had an interview scheduled for Monday. This interview might have to go down as the Silliest Interview Ever. I came in, wearing my one Acceptable Corporate Outfit (grey slacks and a black blouse), and had the job described to me and offered to me before I could get a word in edgewise. The job paid well, and seemed to be easy and relatively stress free, so I accepted.

Thus far, my job is hilarious. Neil and I now work on the same floor, so there are certainly hijinks, but so far even more silly than the hijinks in the job itself.

I print things. Seriously. I queue up documents and print them. Then I collate the prints and put an elastic around the bundles I collate so they can be checked and mailed out.

That's it.

There is no way i could do this full time forever. Six weeks is perfectly reasonable. Much longer, and I think my face would fall off if this was all I did every day. But as a temp position, with cool coworkers, it's almost unbelievably perfect as a solution to our current financial crunch. it also strikes me as a near a great job to keep around as a very-part-time gig in my back pocket -- and they're already making noise about retaining me in exactly that capacity, maybe coming in a day or two a week to help out in the print centre at the busiest times.

I have a new job. I print things. This is going to be an adventure.

Moving

2008-03-02T16:18:00.003-05:00

I can't believe how easy that was.

Don't get me wrong; we'd planned the absolute crap out of this move. We were more prepared to move than any two people had any right to be. We'd made spreadsheets in excel. We were so ahead in terms of packing it was kind of silly. We'd sent out pleas for help and gotten many generous responses. We'd done all we could to ensure that the move went as smoothly as possible, and braced ourselves for the inevitable disaster.

Despite all this, I was still completely shocked by how well it all went, even considering how well we'd prepared.

When we awoke Saturday morning, we had two major tasks: go to the new apartment to sign the lease and get the keys, and get mattress bags. Completing the first task turned out to be the most aggravating part of the day. We were up early enough to have a leisurely breakfast at the galaxy (now mere minutes on foot from our new place!) before heading over to our new apartment building for our 9am appointment.

Where we waited. For 45 minutes.

Eventually, having many things to do on moving day, we went home, left some passive-aggressive messages on the Bigwig's answering machine, and kept ourselves busy. It was 10:30am when we finally got a phone call from Bigwig, asking us why we hadn't waited, since she was only running a little behind and was there "no later than 9:30" (lies!). We weren't having it, and eventually it was agreed that we were to meet Building Manager instead of Bigwig at 11am.

We arrived at the specified location at the specified time, and were promptly met by Building Manager, who unlike Bigwig seriously had her shit together, despite being new to this particular building. We went up to the new apartment to sign all the paperwork, get the keys, and do the inspection.

It wasn't very long into said inspection that another problem emerged. The apartment very clearly was not clean. There was dust, a but of grime, a dirty fridge, dirty oven, and general uncleanliness throughout the place. Building Manager was horrified. Apparently Bigwig has assured her this was all done in advance, and it was not. We were sent off with out keys and the assurance that by the time we returned with our moving truck, the place would be immaculate.

On our way home, fuming a little, we decided to try and acquire mattress bags. This had been a surprisingly difficult undertaking, so much so that we hadn't managed to track one down in the entire week leading up to the move. On a lark, we dropped into a Sears, thinking that if they sold mattresses, surely they had some bags lying around. I went straight to the furniture department, and Ed went to the front desk. I learned later that Ed was told that they probably had none, that the bags were thrown out straight away and they never had any lying around.

In the mean time, upstairs in the mattress section of the furniture department, I found a queen sized mattress bag, neatly folded, sitting atop a display mattress. After several minutes of pointedly waiting while the three salesmen served other customers before me (who were all 30+, white, and male), I got annoyed, picked up the bag, and strode out of the department.

Ed came upstairs just in time to witness my theft and began to bluster. As I continued to walk off with my prize, I spotted another queen-sized mattress bag (perfect for our box spring) draped over a chair. I told ed to grab it. Being a weenie, we refused, so I had to wrestle the thing off myself. Now with two giant stolen pieces of plastic in my arms, I proudly left the store, Ed freaking out behind me and all the way home, convinced the fuzz was going to be after us for taking two pieces of plastic destined for a dumpster. He is the moral compass in the relationship =)

We finally get home, envelop our mattress and boxspring in plastic, and discover...that's it's maybe 1:30 in the afternoon. And we have absolutely nothing to do. We ended up watching QI for about an hour, waiting for our movers (The Best Friends in the Universe).

By 3pm, most people were here and positively chomping at the bit to get going. EVERYONE who said they would come showed up, meaning we suddenly had seven eager movers. With Ed and I, that made NINE. We didn't have the truck yet, so everyone just started hauling all our furniture up the stairs. This took a ridiculously short period of time. As luck would have it, our truck was available early, so were were able to get it here before the movers got bored with just moving the contents of the house and just moved the whole house itself a brick at a time.

In the end, it took us a little under four hours to get everything in the truck, across town, and in the new place. FOUR HOURS. That's it. And by "in the new place," I mean everything in the correct room, bookshelves against walls, boxes neatly stacked 3 exactly where they were supposed to go. It was incredible. Then, we had booze and pizza and played guitar hero to the small hours. IT was absolutely fantastic.

Tara, Neil, Mike Davy, ryan, Steve, Katie, and Chris Blais: you are officially the Best Friends Ever. You have earned all the moving karma there is.

The Day Before

2008-02-29T11:37:00.001-05:00

So of course we run out of boxes and nearly run out of packing tape.

I am going to chew my own face off.

Would you be willing to take part in a short survey?

2008-02-26T23:49:00.002-05:00

Me: Hello?
Them: Hi there. I'm making phone calls on behalf of Ed Stelmach for the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party?
Me: I see.
Them: Might I ask if you intend to vote for Mr. Stelmach and the Progressive Conservative Party in the upcoming election?
Me: No. I plan to vote NDP.
Them: Alright, thank you for your time. Though might I ask why?
Me: Because my partner calls out Ed Stelmach's name at the moment of orgasm.

Me: Hello?
Them: Hello, is Mr. Schmutz home?
Me: Nope; he's at work. Can I take a message?
Them: Well, perhaps you can help us, Mrs. Schmutz. Would you be willing to take a short survey on behalf of the Progressive Conservative party?
Me: Sure.
Them: Will you be voting PC?
Me: Nah; I'm voting for whichever party's health care platform includes coverage for trepanation.

Me: Hello?
Them: Hi, I'm looking for the man of the house.
Me: He's currently slaving away under the yoke of capitalist oppression.
Them: I...see. Well, um, Mrs. Schmutz, I'm conducting a short survey on behalf of the Progressive Conservative party.
Me: Of course.
Them: Do you know if you and your husband are planning to vote PC?
Me: Indeed not; we're all fetus-eating socialists in this household.

Thumbscrews Roundup

2008-02-22T21:30:00.000-05:00

ryan and I were most recently reviewed by Christian Bok on The Poetry Foundation website.

ryan and I had our book reviewed in the Herald .

Rob Mclennan just published two excellent reviews on his blog, one of Thumbscrews and one on Jill Hartman and Brea Burton's Booty. Check them out here.

The Norwegian online magazine nypoesi has published a selection from Thumbscrews as well as a review by derek beaulieu -- the same review that recently appeared in FFWD.

Sina Queyras conducted an interview with me and published a selection from Thumbscrews on her blog, Lemon Hound.

FFWD interviewed ryan and I about the tour.

Pearl Pirie reviewed our Ottawa performance.

The Edmonton Journal did an article on the tour.

The Calgary Herald did a feature on us and the tour.

Amanda Earl also reviewed our performance in Ottawa.

Here's a great pic of my tattoo by Charles Earl.

here's a thing about the Calgary Extravaganza.

We showed up in the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter.

I'll add to the list as I continue to google myself in a shameless display of narcissism.

Sideshow Skills

2008-02-19T11:59:00.003-05:00

I was reading an article on Coney Island sideshows the other day. The Sideshow by the Seashore is, in fact, the last official sideshow left in the States. The article was about the phenomenon of self-made freaks. There was a point in the early 20th century when people started to get uncomfortable with the idea of staring at people with disabilities. The notion that these people were being exploited dawned upon the masses and most sideshows shut down.

Or, in the case of the Sideshow by the Seashore, transformed. The acts changed. Suddenly, the stages were populated by self-made freaks: geeks, blockheads, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters, escape artists, illustrated men and women -- people willing to do horrible, awesome things to themselves on stage. The Sideshow by the Seashore thrives.

The article was interesting, certainly feeding my long time interest in sideshow culture, but then I got to the end.

And my life may have just changed forever.

Traditionally, a sideshow performer teaches their skill to one person and one person only. Often a family member, this apprentice works with them, absorbs their skills, and eventually goes on to perform themselves. This system ensured that the skills did not die with the performer, but also protected said skills from becoming common knowledge. Not that most people would want to stick nails up their nose or set off a mousetrap with their tongue, but you get the drift.

But, like everything else about the sideshow, to survive this system had to change.

The Sideshow by the Seashore offers classes.

I found this and immediately wrote the professor. It is, indeed, absolutely true. I, too, can learn to be a blockhead. I have all the course info and registration information. It is really a question of when.

And I will. Oh, I will. Ed and I are going on our honeymoon this April, meaning that the Spring classes are probably out. However, I have been assured that the same curriculum will be offered this fall, most likely in the first week of November. I'll be gone for a week and come back with the most invaluable collection of skills ever.

I've always been a freak. I've hidden, I've fought against it, I've camouflaged myself. Dying my hair and getting a tattoo was the first step to embracing my ugliness, my oddness, and it was one of the most freeing things I've ever done. The time for me to burst out of my little human cocoon may finally have come. And hilariously, I'll be able to do it in a classroom, my natural habitat.

I'm going to Sideshow School.

The Other Move

2008-02-18T11:38:00.003-05:00

When you relocate, you actually move twice: first, you move out of the old place, and then you move into the new place. These can actually be regarded as two separate moves that happen to occur at the same time, often on the very same day. I, foolishly, thought that the moving out process would be the easy part, as we had time to pack and organize and go through stuff. Looking for apartment and then actually acquiring the apartment I wanted seemed like the hardest part of the process, and then it was all a lovely denoument until the moving truck arrived.

You may all laugh at me now.

In order to take the Dream Apartment, we had to give our current landlords short notice of our departure. When I first relayed the happy news, they dismayed. They were really counting on the income from our continued occupation of the suite to help them get through the very involved process of selling their house. Us giving short notice meant we were still on the hook here for March, and it briefly seemed that we were going to have to pay rent for two separate apartments that month. And they wouldn't take it out of our damage deposit. But we'd get our damage deposit back, so it might be a wash. Well, if there weren't any repairs they had to make. So maybe.

As it turned out, this most recent kick in the financial ballsack has turned out to be a bit gentler than originally advertised. Our landlords have agreed to split March's rent with us, and if I clean as I have never cleaned before to get this place in shape before the inspection, we might just get our damage deposit back. Once again, our landlords are awesome. We will miss them.

Only a gigantic kitchen with a dishwasher and a new island can assuage the loss. =)

The Pre-Brokening

2008-02-17T11:39:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, Ed and I went to Ikea to figure out exactly how we're going to spend a sizable chunk of our life savings the weekend after we move. There's a lot of furniture that is old, second- or third-hand when we got it, and is just not worth moving. This is because we're certain some will fall apart in transit or we're just flat our not willing to lift and carry a, say, shelving unit that wobbles like a drunk with vertigo or a dresser that sheds sawdust onto your underpants every time you open a damn drawer. We're freecycling the vast majority of it, and throwing out what can't be salvaged or even given away in good conscience.

So we need to replace some crap furniture with some decent furniture. We also need some more shelving to accommodate the ever-expanding book collection (taking into account I am starting my PhD in the fall, so we need some room for growth), some kitchen storage, and maybe a bedspread that doesn't have a hole in it.

We'd gone through the outdated catalogue we had, made a few notes, flagged some pages with stickies, and consulted the website. However, in the end, there was no getting around it: a visit to Ikea was necessary to complete the planning. So Ed and I grabbed out clipboards and measuring tape and various writing instruments and headed to Ikea.

After our fabulous $1 breakfasts, we hit the store.

We didn't buy anything.

Somehow we managed to avoid the hypnotic gas that usually floods Ikea, rendering all shoppers within unable to sense either the passage of time or the passage of money out of their chequing accounts. We kept moving, made meticulous notes, and fled before the fumes overcame us.

In the end, we've decided to pick up an Udden, a Beddinge Lovas, a Leksvik, a Molgar, a Norden, an Expedit, and a laundry bun whose name escapes me. And maybe some extra sheets. =)

Stupid Cats

2008-02-15T17:15:00.004-05:00

The first suck thing about the new apartment has surfaced.

When we were first filling out our application, I was very honest about the fact that we have 2 cats. We knew that pets were allowed in the building, and so had no problem declaring the fact that two felines would be occupying the space as well. We filled out the initial paperwork, signed the preliminary agreement, and paid the deposit, all without incident.

Today, I get a call from our new landlord, D, who sounds jumpy. Apparently she missed the line of the application where I stated that we had two cats. She assures me cats are allowed, but that there are certain provisions that need to be built into the lease.

Provisions like a $250 deposit. That's NONREFUNDABLE. Per animal.

D does apologize, and says that if it means we're no longer interested in the place, she completely understands, we can cancel everything without penalty. Ed and I talk it over and decide that looking for a new place is not an option either. We love the apartment, we have no desire to look at other horrible places, and we've already given our current landlords notice, so we have to be out by the end of the month. So we're planning to suck it up and pay.

This is coming 2 days after all 4 of our brakes had to either be replaced or retooled, which came in at a mere $502. There's also all the boxes and moving supplies, and we still have to pay for the move itself. Oh, and make that trip to Ikea where we blow all our savings.

Damn stupid cats. First they break a limb and max out your debt, then they add untold hundreds to your damage deposit. Seriously folks: get a fish.

Sumo

2008-02-14T10:51:00.008-05:00

About 6 months ago, we got rid of our very old futon. It had served us long and well, been there for may friends and guests who stayed with us, but it was time to move on. I freecycled it and started looking for something new. I promptly came across a plaid, tweedy little pull-out couch that looked like it might just be the thing. When Ed picked the couch up and brough it home, though, I was dismayed to discover it was in far worse condition than advertised. It was clean, but very old. The mattress was poky, the cushions very worn. It was also just uglier than I'd hoped. We put up with is until we could find another solution.

And oh, did another solution ever present itself.

When Ed and I went to PAX last year, we discovered a company called Sumo. Sumo does one thing: make huge, ultra comfy, ultra durable...things. They're like enormous bean bag chairs, 4.5' by 5.5'. Ed may have mentioned these things in his post--PAX post here. Every hallway, every gaming room at PAX was filled with the things.

I napped on them twice, and spent untold hours crashed out on them playing multiplayer Picross. We always joked about getting some for our own place, but we really didn't have room for them. Also, we were still pretending to be grown-ups.

Now we're moving. We are not moving the couch; it is either being donated or going to the dumpster. We talked about it, gave in to our own ridiculous, and purchased 3 Sumo Omni super-pillows to serve as our living room set in the new place.

They just arrived.

We were going to wait until we were proper moved to unpack them. Instead, we tossed the couch in the garage, opened them immediately and dove on them.

Holy crap are these things comfortable. First of all, they're huge. I can fit all on me into one if it's laying flat. They also completely suck out all the tension and energy from your limbs, which might make you too weak with comfort to even reach for the remote or properly work a controller. As well, they offer a surprising amount of support, do to their infinitely reconfigurable properties.

They also appear to be indestructible. Liquid just slides off, repelled. Lydia, Princess of the Pointy Feet, hasn't been able to so much pull a thread, let alone rip it.
We've unpacked the orange and brown pillows, but don't yet have room for the red one. Soon, though, very soon, on our new place, all three will be displayed in all their ridiculous glory. We are considering making some sort of gesture toward being adults and getting a Normal Chair for the room as well.

Probably not though.

You're Just My Type

2008-02-11T10:20:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, I participated in the "You're Just My Type!" event and Arts Central, hosted and organized by the lovely Janine Van Gool of Uppercase gallery. At 2pm, there was a reading in the Pallette coffee shop. The reading was attended by a modest but very enthusiastic audience. It was particularly interesting for me to hear Paulina Constancia read -- I was completely unfamiliar with her work, and the bilingual pieces she performed were lovely to listen to. This was also the first time I'd heard ryan fitzpatrick read from his newest series, and I was very pleased by how well they can off. I've been reading them as they've appeared on facebook, and I expected them to go over well, but the vulnerability that ryan infused them with -- or perhaps that the pieces infused ryan with -- was unexpected and extremely effective. I think he's really got something here, and I can't wait to see where they go.

After the reading, for the rest of the afternoon the readers milled bout as poets for hire. The idea was that we were to write poems for anyone who asked, which they could then turn in to cards with all the awesome stationary Janine supplied. However, it seems our potential hirers were typewriter-shy, so most of us began to make our own cards and poems and other poetic doohickies for each other. I was particularly proud of the card I made for Ed, which has crushed pieces of potato chips glued to the cover that soaked ominously through the envelope on the way home.

Acquisition

2008-02-08T15:05:00.002-05:00

So we went to see the 5th potential apartment on Tuesday night, and it was a big fat no. It was new, had hardwood floor in the kitchen, all new appliances and ensuite laundry, just as advertised.

What was not advertised was that the washer and dryer and been hooked up incorrectly and didn't work yet, that the bedrooms were small and shaped badly and one DIDN'T HAVE HEAT, and that there was no living room. No. Living. Room. Just a kitchen, tiny bathroom, and 2 weird bedrooms. Once again, deeply disappointed, we fled.

With every disappointment, the stakes for us getting the Dream Apartment got higher in my mind. It increasingly felt like if that fell through, we were doomed to live in discomfort or squalor or both. As far as I knew, our application was being processed, and with each hour and day that crept by without us hearing anything, my stress level grew. I got the occasional bit of news from A, the current tenant who showed us the apartment, but it was all vague and second hand. I was starting to get genuinely worried.

This morning, I got an odd message from A, who seemed concerned, asking if we'd ever gotten an email from D, our prospective new landlord. I hadn't, and even scanned my trash and span folders to check. Nada. Befuddled and worried, I asked Ed.

Me: Did you get an email from D?
Ed: Today? No.
Me: Um...ever?
Ed: I got something Wednesday, but it didn't look important.
Me: FORWARD IT TO ME NOW.

Turns out the email that Ed barely glanced at and summarily dismissed was, in fact, directly from D. Not only did it clarify our position and answer many of the questions I'd been fretting about, it contained EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS telling us how to drop off the deposit and finish the application process. Things that could have been done DAYS AGO and saved me untold hours of stress.

Needless to say, I considered beating my husband to death with a rolling pin. I am better now.

We frantically contacted D, apologized, and made arrangements to make the deposit and complete the necessary paperwork. I took the World's Fastest Shower and hightailed it downtown in -30. I met Ed and threatened him with many horrible things if he ever did this to me again. We got a money order and sprinted in the direction of the rental office.

It was at this point that I nearly killed myself.

I spotted a #2 bus pulling in to a stop across the street. Catching it would shave precious minutes off travel time and increase our likelihood of being there on time. Traffic seemed to have stopped, so I took a chance and ran. As it turns out, traffic had not completely stopped. The car missed me by a good margin, but it came a bit closer to Ed, as he was behind me. He yipped in alarm, and I turned to see if he was okay.

Looking behind me, I didn't see the patch of ice I hit at a dead run. My feet flew up so that for one instant I was perfectly parallel to the ground, then fall flat on my back. I took all the impact on my lower back and the back of my head, which ricocheted off the pavement. There was a very strange yelping sound which I learned later was Ed, convinced I had just fractured my skull.

A very nice and very alarmed bystander helped me up. I was a bit wobbly, but felt completely fine. Not even...sore. Just a bit shaken. We could the bus and Ed stared at me for the duration of the ride to make sure I wasn't going to start bleeding out my ears. Then he giggled and commented on how awesome the fall was. Sigh.

D was waiting for us, and very sympathetic. We signed the lease, handed over a deposit, got our move in date, and shook hands. Everything was checking out fine. Less than half an hour after we left, the last of the background check was completed and I got a call saying that we do, indeed, have the Dream Apartment for sure by March 1st, maybe even earlier if we can arrange it with the current tenants.

I HAVE MY DREAM APARTMENT.

The saga of the Walschmutz Housing Crisis is far from over. We just informed the current landlords, who were surprisingly dismayed at our early departure. We have to actually move into the place. This is going to be a huge and expensive and ridiculous process, if what has happened so far in any indication. But at the very least, we are moving in to an excellent place in 3 weeks.

Holy shit. I am moving in 3 weeks. Should I, like, maybe get some boxes or something?

Tour Retrospective: phrases most commonly uttered in my direction

2008-02-07T17:01:00.001-05:00

I hate you so much.

I am going to punch you in the face, kick him in the balls, say goodbye to Gennie, and fly away.

Shut your filthy mouth.

Don't make me get the belt.

I am going to hit you in the face with this phonebook.

Come here.

Now I am going to punch you in the throat, because I don't want to kill you, and you have to perform tonight, but I want you to stop talking.

That's one.

I am going to kick you until you stop moving.

Screw writing. Your feet alone are freakish enough to make me rich. Rich! I'll take you down to the Southern Sates and display you. I'll make a fortune!
*rubs hands together gleefully*

With my bare hands.

Just wait until we get home.

The Walschmutz Housing Crisis of 2008

2008-02-05T09:58:00.001-05:00

So Ed and I love our little basement apartment. We've been here a smidge over 3 1/2 years now and never had any reason to move. The place it cute, we love our landlords, and the location has always been awesome. The place isn't flawless by any means. The insulation is horrible, which means our heating bills are always high and the apartment is always cold. In the bathroom, the tile is placed directly over the cinder block, so that if the temperature drops below -20, we get a shower full of ice in the morning. It's also wee -- we finally measured it and discovered we had just a hair over 500 square feet of living space. But all in all, we love it here. Also, the rent has never gone up. EVER. Anyone familiar with how rent prices in Calgary have changed over the past few years knows how rare such a situation is. I often joked that I would move when our landlords pried me out with a crowbar.

Our landlords had talked to us in the fall, and mentioned that with one of them going back to school, they were thinking of maybe selling their current home and moving into the house we occupy. But it was abstract, and vague, and full of maybes. We were unconcerned, though I did start keeping and eye out for places in Kensington.

A week and a half ago, right after I got back from Ontario, we finally got The Letter. Our landlords had decided to sell the house we currently live in. Within 12 hours of the announcement there was a sign out front announcing the house's availability. They gave us mas much time as they could: 3 full months. We have to be out by April 30th. This is a lot of time. However, with Calgary's housing market as it is, it's also not much time at all. It took my brother over 3 months to find his apartment when he first moved to the city. With that in mind, Ed and I started looking for a place to live -- if not frantically, then with a healthy sense or urgency.

We've seen 4 places so far, and have a 5th appointment tonight.

Hoo boy.

The second place that we saw was horrifying. It smelled weird, the kitchen was a poorly lit tile island surrounded by a sea of moist, dingy carpet. The "living room" was in fact a strip or carpeting that ran around the kitchen, a useless space that could hold no furniture or tv. All the appliances looked to be on their last legs and Ed was certain he saw blood stains. We looked briefly in each room to be polite, then fled.

The third apartment, under other circumstances, could have been lovely. The house was new and really beautiful, the people upstairs who owned the place were super cool, and it was spitting distance form the LRT. However, that LRT was the Andersen stop, and it was just too far. Also, while most of the apartment was excellent, there wasn't a stove, just a cook top and a toaster oven, and even with permission to use the upstairs kitchen I don't think it would have worked for me. And, finally, Ed managed to offend the landlords with a joke about George being gay for him. It just wasn't a good fit.

The fourth apartment we saw was...iffy. There were good things: gorgeous location in Parkdale, main floor, lots of light, hardwood in the bedrooms, big kitchen. Nothing was well maintained, though. The rug was very stained, the walls scuffed and peeling, the cabinets all askew and handles broken. There was also lots of visible mold in the bathroom, which we were assured would be painted over. We agreed it might have done is a desperate situation, but we're a long way off that.

The first place we saw, though.

Oh, the first place.

It's right downtown. The kitchen is huge and beautiful, all lovely warm tile, with new appliances and a DISHWASHER. The living room is big and bright, almost all of one wall taken up by sliding glass doors that let out onto the balcony. There's a ton of storage space in the form of a discreet storage room with lots of built-in shelves in the hallway. Both bedrooms are huge and bright with enormous closets. The bathroom is lovely, same very light tile as the kitchen, the colour of tea with too much milk, and a huge soaker tub. The previous occupants, who we met, were lovely, one being a self-affirmed neat freak who has kept the place absolutely immaculate. They also had nothing but nice things to say about the landlord.

And it's within our price range. Somehow, miraculously, not even the very high end of our price range.

I want it so bad I've been a tense sniveling wreak for a day and a half already.

We're seeing another place tonight that might compete, just because it's brand-new, never been lived in, and also has a dishwasher (which Ed loves, of course). It's also an easy walk from the U or transit, which is a huge bonus.

However, MOMENTS AGO, I got a message that the landlord of Dream Apartment favours our application, and if our references check out when she follows up on Thursday, the place is ours.

I have to wait until THURSDAY or FRIDAY to know for sure.

I am going to be one open sore of nerves by then.

So if someone happens to call you, asking you personal questions about Ed and I, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD say nice things.

I resolve

2008-01-02T00:55:00.002-05:00

to put out 3 issues of filling Station at reasonable intervals and secure all our funding for one more year

to go on a kick ass honeymoon to Paris and the South of France, and maybe even return to the Canada afterwards

to send out ms. #2 and hopefully have is accepted by a press

to start a PhD

to meditate

to give various therapies and treatments a fair shot

to sleep more

to freak out less

academic bellyache

2007-12-21T10:40:00.001-05:00

Because I have a poor sense of pattern recognition, I am applying to PhD programs. Because I am a masochist, I am actually looking forward to going back to school. I love taking classes. The Idea of comprehensive exams is actually appealing -- I test well and obviously love to read. The idea of writing a dissertation is enough send me into a panic attack, but it's the furthest mental hurdle to overcome and therefore the easiest to manage.

I remember feeling nebulous and unsure when applying for my MA. I had not settled completely on a city and a school, so deciding where to go was a slow and agonizing process. Now, there really is only one choice. And while I am giving myself options, playing there field, there is definitely something specific that I want.

Being certain does not give me peace. There is something that I want, and therefore something to be nervous about.

It makes me sound naive and unaware of myself, but only recently have I realized that I have a serious anxiety problem. It's robbed me of sleep for years, caused a slew of stomach problems, made me less than the person and partner I want to be. Then last night I was a tense, hysterical, nauseated mess, because I realized a package I mailed might not get to Ontario in time. Not an application, not a necessary document, an ordinary package to someone who would completely understand if it showed up a day or two late. I was in tears. I still have a headache from the tightness in my jaw and neck.

This is not just silly. This is something I genuinely need to take care of. Maybe before I start a PhD and my head actually explodes.

post-extravaganza update

2007-12-14T11:08:00.001-05:00

There are two kinds of events. Both types can be wildly successful or complete disasters or anywhere in between, but no matter where they fall on the success-o-meter they will inevitably reveal themselves to be one of these two event types.

First, you have those events that you carry every inch of the way. In order for the event to actually happen, the planner my fight, claw, threaten, and cajole everything and everyone in to place. Nothing comes easily, and if the planner isn't there every step of the way coaxing or flogging it along, the event will collapse in on itself and not happen.

Then there are events that develop their own momentum. Somewhere along the line, these events take over, and even if you tried you couldn't stop them from happening. Like the Grindery in Lunar Knights, they become these huge things thundering across the landscape, and you couldn't stop them happening event if you threw yourself in their path.

The Calgary Extravaganza fell squarely into the latter category. Somewhere around the time that the Herald approached Neil and I for an interview (arranged by the indomitable Tiffany Regaudie over at NeWest) about the tour and the upcoming event, I lost control of the momentum completely. If I did nothing else, if I even tried to stop it, I am fairly certain the event would have happened anyway.

As it was, I couldn't be more pleased with the way it went. We had well over a hundred people in attendance -- even some out-of-towners, like rob mclennan, who loaded up a van and came down from Edmonton for the event. All the performers were excellent. We sold a decent amount of alcohol and a truly obscene amount of books. Ian Kinney bartended and wore a gold bow-tie. Tara and Ed manned the merch table. The space was great and everyone at Lunchbox Theatre was a complete dream to work with. It was also over too quickly.

Afterwards, Prof X, Tara, Ed, Shelley and I ended up at Singapore Sam's (look, I know. Soba 10 was closed.) for some late-night ginger beef. Prof. X and Ed got into a very involved conversation about poetry and programming. I wanted to listen more closely than I could, but around the periphery of my brain a cold grey creep was starting, exhaustion's fog closing in, and before 1am I was dead to the world with a pillow wrapped around my head while most of the attendees continued to drink at the Bear & Kilt.

I'm applying to PhD programs now. Calgary is my first choice, but not my only option. I might have to leave. The more events I do, the less I want to go, and the more I wonder if extravaganzas and blow-outs can really happen any place else.

The Calgary Extravanganza

2007-11-19T17:36:00.002-05:00

filling Station Magazine and the Snaring the New West Tour are thrilled to announce:

The Calgary Extravanganza!

This fall has been an incredible season for Calgary authors. No less than twelve local authors have launched books just in the last few weeks. Please join us as we celebrate all the recent success in the Calgary literary community with a marathon reading.

The Calgary Extravaganza will take place from 7pm to 10pm on December 8th at Lunchbox Theatre ( 2nd Level, Bow Valley Square, 229, 205-5th Ave SW).

Readers include:

derek beaulieu -- Flatland (Information as Material)
Brea Burton and Jill Hartman - Booty: Hurricane Jane and Typhoon Mary (The Mercury Press)
Glen Dresser - Correction Road (Oberon Press)
ryan fitzpatrick - Fake Math (Snare Books)
Diane Guichon - Birch Split Bark (Nightwood Editions)
Cara Hedley - Twenty Miles (Coach House Books)
Claire Huot - The Prison Tangram (The Mercury Press)
Robert Majzels - The Humbugs Diet (The Mercury Press)
Riley Rossmo - Proof (Image)
William Neil Scott - Wonderfull (NeWest Press)
Natalie Zina Walschots - Thumbscrews (Snare Books)

Thank you for all your support and we can't wait to see you there.

Reply to all

Forward

Launched

2007-10-27T17:06:00.002-04:00

Calgary, Pages, and Everyone,

The Calgary launch of Thumbscrews may have been the best night of my life.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for laughing at the right parts and tittering at the best parts. Thank you for saying nice things to me, whether from behind a podium or behind a glass. Thank you for forgiving me when the reading ran short. Thank you for refilling my glass of white wine. Thank you for signing my book. Thank you for buying my book. Thank you for all coming out to celebrate with me. That you for your love and your positive energy and your genuine fucking happiness.

Thank you Pages or being as excited as I was. Thank you Christian for introducing me. Thank you everyone for taking all of my best-case-scenarios and blowing them out of the fucking water.

I can't properly express the amount of love I have for my city and my friends. Thank you.

This book's been launched proper. I'm off on the tour now; I hope the next month is even an either as fabulous as last night.

an open letter

2007-10-18T12:29:00.001-04:00

Dear Women With Enormous Fake Boobs,

Congratulations. Your breasts now look like a pair of googly eyes.

Best of luck,

NzW

Thumbscrewed

2007-10-08T12:30:00.001-04:00

Early this week, a box arrived. George took to it immediately.

When we eventually managed to extract George from his new nest, the box's delicious contents could finally be drooled over.

Thumbscrews is here, and it's beautiful. The cover, which I knew was sexy to begin with, is even lovelier in person. I am wild about the typesetting. The size is perfect. All in all, it is a tight text package that I am genuinely proud of. Snare did an excellent job; I couldn't be more pleased.

Holy shit, that's my name. I have a book.

A few reasons my future children will hate me

2007-09-28T14:34:00.001-04:00

For writing books their friends' parents call obscene, for never keeping ordinary hours, for having friends and students and visiting writers coming and going at all hours, for going to battle with teachers and principals, for going crazy now and again, for refusing to purchase Lunchables, for my clothes, for my pink or green or blue hair, for my tattoos, for not being bland, for not being serene, for traveling all the time, for correcting their spelling or grammar or pronunciation, for supplementing their insufficient curriculae, for terrorizing the PTA, for the books on every wall, for knowing their secrets, for never relaxing, for making things up, for knowing things, for their vocabulary, for all the second hand clothing, for painting murals in their bedrooms, for cooking, for questioning everything, for their teachers expecting more form them, for never letting them off easy, for wearing sandals and combat boots, for singing, for drinking, for critically thinking, for screaming at the television, for all the aunts and uncles that aren't related to them at all, for refusing to tow the line, for having my won space, for making my own rules, for locking my doors, for locking my closets, for refusing to compromise, for being immune to whining, for not caring about popularity (mine or theirs), for making their friends' mothers cry, for making their friends' mothers furious, for getting along with their friends' fathers, for fixing things rather than buying new ones, for refusing to be thin, for calling them on their bullshit, for calling their friends' parents bullshit, for calling their school's bullshit, for bringing up pedagogy at parent-teacher interviews, for being tactless, for being sarcastic, for being crude when it gets
my point across, for refusing to be prudish, for making fun of everyone, for making light of tragedy, for taking strange things very seriously, for adopting stray animals, for healing baby birds, for taking in kids who are going through a rough time, for having an open door, for having an open kitchen, for flatly refusing to get out of bed, for making them give everything a fair shot before they're allowed to quit, for laughing at things they don't understand and refusing to explain, for bursting into tears and refusing to explain, for kissing their father in front of them, for grabbing their father's ass in from of the, for calling their father a jackass, for breaking dishes,
for buying cheap dishes at yard sales for the express purpose of breaking them to relieve stress, for taking them to museums and galleries, for taking them to endless readings, for their names in print, for being militant about personal hygiene, for being crazy about food safety and cleanliness, for not giving a hoot about how anything looks, for buying thing for myself form their book fair, for wearing costumes on Halloween, for talking dirty in public, for making them eat vegetables, for rarely buying candy, for reading food labels, for caring about chickens, for telling disgusting stories at dinner time, for singing the "wake up song," for kissing them, for snorgling them, for embarrassing them at the supermarket, for embarrassing them at school, for leaving the lights on, for not being able to drive, for baking rather than buying, for the other mothers' resentment, for the friends I cost them because the other mother's won't let their kids play with my kids, for never taking them to McDonald's, for always running in to get a coffee, for giving them cucumbers as a snack, for telling dildo jokes at their Play Group, for rolling my eyes, for yelling at parents who mistreat their kids, for yelling at people who mistreat their animals, for never minding my own business, for marshaling the troops to rescue a friend, for missing a recital and not being able to explain why, for migraines, for finding me asleep in the bathtub, for finding me asleep on the couch, for finding me asleep in the middle of the kitchen floor, for working sporadically, for never having a normal job, for not being a housewife, for getting excited about small and stupid things, for never leaving well enough alone, for spontaneously painting the walls, for buying girls cars and action figures, for buying boys dolls, for teaching their friends about heteronormativity, for being a klutz, for not being pretty, for not wearing make-up, for taking risks, for not being able to sneeze properly, for overhearing me and their father having sex, for overhearing their friends' parents speculate about what goes on in my house, for weeping, for singing, for disappearing for hours at a time, for being fiercely protective, for being fiercely loyal, for being stubborn, for never getting a manicure, for using bad words, for calling their teacher stupid, for laughing at them when then get in trouble for repeating that I called their teacher stupid, for tidying their stuff away, for arguing, for arguing well, for wearing their younger sibling in a sling, for finding the righteous indignation of those around me hilarious, for losing my shit, for loving them openly, for wearing offensive t-shirts, for asking perfume-sprayers in department stores if they received any training about migraine triggers, asking waitresses if they feel their youth and sexuality are being exploited, for challenging the patriarchy, for racing shopping carts in the aisles of the grocery store, for making them responsible for their own actions, for making them face the consequences, for making them self-sufficient, for still crying when they seem grown up, for sending them to bed when we';re still up and having fun, for sending them to bed so I can work, for sending them to bed because mom and dad need to settle some shit, for giving up nothing, for giving everything, for making them gifts, for resisting commercial holidays, for kicking them off the computer so I can work, for kicking them off the video game console because it's my turn, for making them look things up, for not doing it for them, for encouraging them to be better than me, for refusing to accept 'good enough,' for freezing fruit juice instead of buying Popsicles, for staying up all night and then sleeping all afternoon so when they come home from school (after letting themselves in with their own key) they make their own snack and start to watch cartoons which finally wake me up so I shuffle out of the bedroom swearing and tell them its pizza night because mommy hates everyone and they'd better get their father on the phone and tell him if he doesn't show up with a Blizzard in one hand and a bottle of JD in the other he's not allowed in the house.

Blow-Out! #3

2007-09-17T11:43:00.001-04:00

Wow. Proper post soon. Today, sleep and Gatorade.

The Ballad of the World's Saddest Cat

2007-09-11T18:04:00.002-04:00

One Monday night, almost exactly 3 weeks ago, there was a filling Station meeting. On my way out the door, the cats escaped. I was cranky and running late, so I yelled for Ed to come and herd them back in the apartment, and left. The meeting went very well, as the Blow-Out planning was well underway and issue #39 has just arrived, so after some delegating and a few beer Tara and I called it a night and went to get some gelato.

Ed had decided to let the cats stay outside for an hour or so -- something we often do, as our back yard is fully fenced in and they love being outside. An hour after they'd escaped, he went to get them back in the house and discovered that George had already come in and appeared to be snoozing on the couch. After hunting Lydia down and hauling her growly petiteness downstairs, he settled into Resident Evil 4 on the Wii.

It wasn't until I got home around 9:30pm that we realized anything was wrong.

I walked in the door and George got up to say hello. But then he stopped and held up his left paw. He wouldn't out any weight on it. His eyes were wide and he seemed to be confused. I tried to look at his paw, but he got very distressed when I tried to touch it. It was clearly quite swollen and looked to me to be at an odd angle. Ed was just as stunned as I was and had absolutely no idea what might have happened to him. We had a very short conversation, grabbed the cat carrier and headed downtown to the 24-hour emergency vet.

After waiting about half an hour, a doctor was finally able to look at him. I had to hold him down and when she felt his paw, he screamed. Not meowed in protest. Screamed. By now it was so swollen that she couldn't tell by feeling if anything was broken, but said it honestly looked like a bee sting to her.. Just to be safe, though, she'd give him an x-ray.

Ten minutes later Ed and I were crowded up behind the doctor in the lab as she showed us the two bones that were badly fractured in his left foot. They'd have to keep him overnight, and in the morning a surgeon would see him. If they had to operate, we were told as gently as possible to prepare for a $5000 bill. George was by now sedated and loopy, but they let me say goodbye for a few minutes before we left him for the night. I wept in the car all the way back to Parkdale.

In the morning I got a very positive phone call: George didn't need surgery! They were able to anesthetize him and realign the bones manually, so once the cast was completely set and he had come down off the drugs somewhat, he could go home, probably right after dinner.

We got to the vet around 7pm and were immediately greeting by a very apologetic vet tech, which had apparently been trying to reach us while we were driving over.

Tech: There's...been a problem with George.
Me: What's worng?
Tech: You can't take him home.
Me: [imagining my cat in emergency surgery or dead]
Tech: [sees the look on my face] Oh, he's just fine!
Me: [pees in releif] What happened?
Tech: Well...

She proceeds to explain that while the alignment was a success, the casting process was not. George, my sweet, dumb, docile cat, apparently becomes some sort of Houdini/McGuyver hybrid under pressure. He managed to chew through 4 fibreglass casts and remove 3 splints, all while doped up. He tore up his paw pads and broke some of his claws form all the struggling. As she told me this, her face became very solemn.

Tech: We've never seen anything like it.

So we had to leave him there overnight again. I managed not to cry until I was in bed that night, still missing a cat.

By the next morning they'd finally managed to get a splint on him that he seemed content to leave on, and they called up to come pick him up. By now he was well on his way to becoming the Saddest Cat in the World. They had a cone on him to keep him from chewing his 8th cast off. His leg was encased in a splint and lots of yellow self-adhesive gauze. There was a shaved and bruised patch of skin on his right foreleg where he's yanked out his IV, and another shaved spot on his right thigh where they'd had to reposition the IV. His eyes were squinty from the drugs and his voice was hoarse.

We took him home, gave him his first painkiller as instructed, and then I nearly had a panic attack when he bit into the pill instead of swallowing it and started FOAMING AT THE MOUTH. I made the first of dozens of calls to the emergency vet, who reassured me (as they always reassured me) that it was just because it tasted bad. After dry heaving and cleaning up cat spit, we sat George on the couch between us and tried to keep him as comfortable and still as possible while he healed.

But The World's Saddest Cat had other plans. Two days after we brought him home, we had to take him back to the vet because one of his toes was bleeding. He'd stubbed it, we were assured, and they re-splinted it just to be safe. As the weekend, and out trip to PAX, approached, he seemed to get better, stumping around the house a little, eating some kibble. Neil came to catsit for us and we left for Seattle, assured that there would be no further complications.

When Neil came to get us at the airport, on Monday, he hugged Ed and I hello and then broke the news that George's toes were looking a little off, and still bleeding, so he'd taken him back to the vet. Again. They once again kept him overnight, and when they took the splint off discovered that he'd managed to ulcerate between 2 of his toes and the whole thing would have to be redone. He managed to get out of a couple more casts before they finally got a new plaster cast on, as well as a new cone. In order to get the new cast to stay on, they'd shaved his leg and stuck it to him with surgical adhesive. It also, extended a good inch past the end of his foot to let his toes heal.

He mooed pathetically when we came to pick him up. He had now fully transformed into the World's Saddest Cat.

For the first few days, we kept him in the bathroom for the majority of the time, just like our vet told us, to limit his movement. We held him as much as we could, but whenever we were gone into the bathroom he went. Which was fine...until nigh fell. We had to put him in the bathroom to sleep, and he hated it.

He howled. All. Night. Long.

By the fourth night of not sleeping, even with earplugs, we both broke and brought him into bed. IN his agitation, we reasoned that he was stumping around and jumping on and off the toilet so much that it was probably worse for him to be in thee than it was to just have him still in bed. It may be an excuse, but he did (and does) stay in bed with us all night.

Then. Ah, then. Then he figured out how to get his cone off.

I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it, but what he managed to do was balance himself with his cast, sit, and use all 3 functioning legs to shimmy the come off his head. It was a feat of acrobatic wonder. I called the vet for the millionth time and they said were it any other cat they wouldn't believe me either, but this was Houdini cat, the Stubbornest Cat Ever to Live, so they said as long as he didn't chew his cast, it was okay.

Over the last week or so, George has settled in. He stumps around a little, but walking is hard on a leg too long so most of the time he just lounges and tries to look as miserable as possible so we'll feel bad for him and give him human food. He ran out of painkillers, but he doesn't seem to be in may real discomfort aside form the awkwardness of hopping around. He's confined his destructive urges to moderate fretful licking, so this cast seems to be staying in place.

But he hates it all. He is so sad. He lays there, sighs deeply, and they utters a long, trembling "mooooooo" to let you knowhow sad he is about every 20 minutes. He'll take a few steps, fall over with a dramatic Floomp and put his head down, because he is so miserable he cannot bear to keep his head up and instant longer.

You too can own the Saddest Cat In All the Land. Ours cost us a mere $1500.

I hope you feel better buddy.

Blow-Out! #3

2007-09-07T12:16:00.001-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

is thrilled to announce...

The Third Annual

CALGARY BLOW-OUT!

Friday, September 14 – 7:00 PM

Saturday, September 15 – 1:00 PM

Saturday, September 15 – 7:00 PM

All Events at the Carpenter’s Union Hall

(310 10^th St NW)

FREE!

This explosive literary festival puts the spotlight on Calgary’s talented writing community, featuring over twenty poets, playwrights and fiction writers that are either locally-based, or who have strong ties to the city.

Friday night: September 14^th, 7pm

host: Natalie Simpson
readers: Emily Elder, Helen Hajnoczky, Mark Hopkins, Brea Burton, Shane Rhodes, Jani Krulc, Jaspreet Singh, Robert Majzels
music: The Lonely Hunters

Saturday afternoon: September 15^th 1pm
host: ryan fitzpatrick
readers: Ian Kinney, Ross Priddle, Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff, Chris Ewart, Weyman Chan
music: Heather Blush

Saturday night: September 15^th, 7pm
host: derek beaulieu
readers: Emily Carr, Bronwyn Haslam, Peter Norman, Laurie Fuhr, Aaron Giovannone, William Neil Scott, Sina Queyras
film: Garth Whelan

Of course, there’ll also be books, booze and the long-awaited launch of filling Station #39!

All events are absolutely FREE and open to the public. Join us in celebration of Calgary’s booming literary talent!

CONTACT:

Natalie Zina Walschots

Managing Editor, filling Station

403.283.7212

nzwalschots@gmail.com

calgaryblowout.blogspot.com

EVENT HISTORY

The Calgary Blow-Out! was founded in 2005 as a celebration of Calgary’s vibrant literary community. The former Managing Editor of filling Station, derek beaulieu, founded the event out of good-natured frustration when he realized there was simply too much happening in the Calgary literary scene to see it all, and so he created the Blow-Out! as a fête for the community at large. This is filling Station’s third annual Calgary Blow-Out!

ABOUT filling Station

filling Station is a literary magazine based in Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and to promotion local and international arts communities. This year’s Calgary Blow-Out! will see the launch of filling Station’s 39^th issue.

shameless self-promotion

2007-08-30T13:58:00.001-04:00

Sina Queyras, incoming Markin-Flanagan Writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary and keeper of the fabulous blog Lemon Hound has just posted some excerpts from Thumbscrews as well as an interview with me about the book here.

BEHOLD!

2007-08-16T12:27:00.001-04:00

Twice Upon a Time

2007-07-30T02:25:00.001-04:00

Today -- well, technically yesterday, now -- is our second anniversary. Two years ago today, Ed and I got married in the tiny chapel next to the University of Windsor campus, the same place my own parents were married in 1969. When we describe our wedding, we tend to say that we eloped. While this is not completely technically true, as our immediate families were present and there was a pseudo-reception at a nearby restaurant, our wedding was certainly much, much smaller than any other I've attended. The total number of people present, including us and the officiator, was 36. This number is only as high as it it because Ed is the youngest of 8 siblings.

Saying that we eloped also feels right because it gets across exactly how quickly the while thing came together. We got engaged in the middle of May, and were married 2 1/2 months later in Ontario. In that time, we had to plan the wedding long distance, go to marriage prep and take care of all the paperwork, and keep the whole thing a secret. We wanted something small, and we knew our families. Loving and well-meaning, the entire thing could have exploded into a weddingstravaganza. So we went through 2 months of covert planning, showed up in Ontario, then called everyone to say we were getting married, and if they wanted to come, they'd better show up at this place and time in a week.

So, in spirit if not in fact, Ed and I eloped two years ago. To celebrate, I made us blinchiki for breakfast, then went to work for 6 hellish hours. I came home and promptly made myself a lethal bourbon and coke with lime to take some of the pain away. Buzzing, we showed up at the restaurant an hour and a half early because we were hungry and it's, like, right there up the hill. They were very nice and sat us anyway. We had prosecco, because every celebration needs some bubbles. The meal was very good, and dessert was very good, and the 30-year Portugese port was excellent.

We got home and our apartment was the temperature of a furnace. Both cats were spread-eagled n the linoleum in the kitchen, complaining. The combination of the heat, of of red meat in my belly, the motherfucking period that will never end, and the fact that I'd made myself good and drunk by then, conspired to make me fall completely asleep almost instantly. At 8:30pm. When we were supposed to go see Die Hard: Dying the Hardest. I woke up at 11:30pm and Ed was reading Harry Potter on the couch, and I felt like a shit. So we snuggled and checked our email on the borrowed laptop, and went to bed a little after midnight. In other words, or anniversary celebrations were rather low-key.

Despite the quiet and my narcolepsy, I have a lot to celebrate. Ed is my favourite person in the world. And, miraculously, he is still at my side. The first year of our marriage was very dark time for me. During that year, I made myself ill trying to finish my coursework, teach classes, run a magazine, apply for my PhD, and finish my thesis in the same year. It was impossible, but I drove myself crazy trying. I was inconsolably upset a lot of the time when I was around Ed. I could hold my shit together in public, but once it was just the two of us I would implode. I couldn't always articulate the real reason that I was upset, that the idea of not finishing my thesis on time and all the rest was killing me and was psychologically tormenting me on a minute by minute basis, keeping me form falling asleep at night. Often, I was just upset, and I couldn't tell him why, and he'd get frustrated, which would make me more upset. Deeply buried neuroses made their appearances. On one memorable occasion, crockery was thrown.
The first year of our marriage was difficult. It's hard, even painful to admit, but I have made my peace with it. We did not have a honeymoon year; we had a challenge.

The second year, I am thrilled to report, has been unbelievably, inexpressibly better. Last September, when I finally had to turn down PhD offers and associated funding, I realized I could either have a breakdown or slow the fuck down, take my time, and just finish the thing when I finished. I developed a work schedule that was sane. Ed left the job that was making him miserable, and really blossomed in a more positive environment. We picked apart some of our insecurities. We learned to spend time apart. Ed and I often have to travel separately because of different commitments and vast differences in vacation time, and we learned to do this. We learned to be supportive of each other and still remain independent. This year, we've grown into two people who are actually better for each other than we were when we met.

Standing at the beginning of our third year as a married couple, it's already shaping up to be a doozy. My book is coming out, and I'll be going on the Great Canadian Literary Disaster of 2007 that will be the tour. I'll be reapplying to the PhD program. I am the Managing Editor of filling Station now, which is going to be crazy. Ed had some potential, and significant, career changes coming up. There's going to be a lot of travelling and working and general craziness. To cap off our third year, we'll finally be going on the honeymoon that has so far been out of reach. By then, by some miracle, we may even be better for each other than we are now. I can't imagine it yet, but if anyone can do it, we can.

Plans

2007-07-28T10:48:00.001-04:00

Between the Christening, Holy Beep!, Deathly Hallows, the Great Cheese Refrigeration Crisis 2007, and Ed's Network Plus Extravaganza, too much has happened. Instead, I am going to write about what is coming. Because nothing spells doom quite like trying to dictate the future. Seeing as I have a crush on Doom, I'd say it's worth the risk.

In 72 hours, I will be on a plane heading for Ontario. I'll be in Windsor/Amherstburg from August 1st til the 9th and in Toronto from the 10th until the 15th. For the first 10 days or so, I'll be staying with my parents, eating my mother's excellent cooking, taking long walks, and fending off mosquitoes. I'll also be visiting everyone I haven't seen in WAY TOO LONG, meeting some babies for the first time, seeing some kids that I haven't seen since they were babies. At least once, I'll be going to Bubi's and eating a deadly amount of garlic and deep fried dough. I intend to recharge.

In TO, I'll be staying with Gennie, spending all the time I can with my girls, glorying in the heat and humidity. I can't wait to see Gennie's new apartment. I can't wait to see Em and congratulate her, really and in person, on the huge positive life change she's made and how much happier and healthier I know she is. I can't wait to see Tiff and thanks her, from the bottom of my heart, for my socks. I can't wait to see Jess and Tom and meet Rohan for the first time.

Just before I leave, with a little luck, I'll be taking care of the very last bits of paper work associated with my thesis. If luck is not on my side, it'll have to wait until I return from my biannual Ontario recharge. Either way, my thesis is in it's epilogue stage. For how well my defense went and how rockin' the associated party was, there was something anticlimactic about the experience. Once the hangover wore off, there were still revisions to make forms to get signed and copies to be bound. Now, very soon, it'll be completely over. When that happens, I have a feeling I am either going to settle down on the couch with a few ounces of Scotch and feel very proud of myself, or gulp back a few ounces of Scotch and have a good cry. Either way, it is almost over.

I am also starting to plan the Book Tour, which was originally going to be fun, breathlessly exciting, but pretty standard for a first book reading-and-drinking-extravaganza. Now, however, it's gotten completely out of hand, and completely awesome. The plan, as it stands, is for William Neil Scott, ryan fitzpatrick, and I to load ourselves, out books, and survival gear into a retro-fitted short bus and drive across the breadth of Canada for 4 weeks, promoting the books and touring the literary landscape, while a documentary is made of our trip. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be insane. I may or may not survive.

Beware of Attack Womb

2007-07-27T16:20:00.001-04:00

We forewarned: this post contains a somewhat graphic account of menstruation and the phychosis that accompanies it. If you're squeamish, you might want to skip this one.

I am currently suffering from the worst period in memory. No one likes being on their period. This is not an ordinary, crampy-and-grumpy, going-to-bed-early, solved-by-chocolate period, however. I am horrifically bloated, I've had a headache for 6 days straight, I am bone-weary all day long and too uncomfortable to sleep through the night, I am swelling in places no one should swell, and I have the emotional constitution of a piece of wet tissue paper. Oh, and my uterus itself has turned into the vicious enforcer of my biological clock, reminding me through STABBING PAIN every 20 minutes or so that I really should be procreating RIGHT NOW. If I'd only get pregnant, it wouldn't be taking this lead pipe to my kneecaps.

To give you an idea how ridiculous I am, and how SAINTLY Ed is to out up with me, here is a list of things that have either caused me to weep hysterically, have a temper tantrum, or both. On some of these occasions, I may have also thrown something.

1) Not being able to fit into the jeans I really wanted to wear that morning.

2) Poking myself in the thumb with a staple.

3) Ed interrupting the song I was singing along to and skipping ahead a few tracks on the CD.

4) Realizing I only had enough whisky for 2 mixed drinks.

5) Getting a blister from my awesome gold skull shoes. It felt like such a betrayal.

6) Forgetting to switch over the laundry before I left the house, and having to think about the damp laundry sitting in the machine all day.

7) Rereading the Prince's Tale chapter in Deathly Hallows.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me...

2007-07-15T00:00:00.001-04:00

...when I'm twenty-four?

Yesterday was my birthday. With everything else that's happened lately, I barely had time to even think about it coming up. It was an ambush birthday. Suddenly I had a day off, and before I could even get out of my pajamas two beautiful bouquets had arrived from my father-in-law and my Gennie. The newest, super-slick issue of Foursquare happened tp show up in the mail that morning too. My brother, Fiddy, and Meaghan soon dropped by to take me out to breakfast and book shopping. Fiddy even let me buy the copy of Of Grammatology the he was lucky enough to fine.

Neil came by around noon, still nursing a hangover, and we saw Transformers. While I agree that Michael Bay is a courge of contemporary cinema, and seeing his movies will only enocurage him, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It was beautifully shot, the effects were great (especially the sound and foley work), and the baby geek in me squee'ed for joy every time Optimus Prime was on screen. There were robots and explosions. I really can't complain.

That evening, Ed and I went to dinner at Big Fish. The service was exceptional and the fod very good, though I know I would have enjoyed my grilled salmon more if Alberta wasn't the temperature of the surface of the sun right now. I held icecubes in my hands and put them in my shoes in a vain attempt to keep cool. The steamed clams with lemongrass were particularly awesome. Even Ed tried one.

The highlight of the meal, though, was unquestionably the scotch I had after dinner: A 21-year-old Springbank that was supple and leathery with just a hint of smoke, with a really suprising fresh, exotic note (green apples and lychee) running though it. That freshness made it perfect for summer and for a meal featuring fish. I really, really wanted to run out and buy a bottle. I wonder if I should just give in and start a Scotch collection.

After I returned from alcohol nirvana, we hopped across town to have dinner at Nectar in Inglewood. I've had Rebekah Pearse's desserts before, but never visited her new space. Ed had the Chocolate Experience, and I had a darjeeling-tea flavoured creme brulee. Both were exceptional. I want to shedule a reading in the space, maybe in October, and pair some poetry with the spicy hot chocolate.

Afterwards, fat and happy, we stumbled home, recollected Neil, and stayed up far too late drinking wine and chatting with Natalee, Jeremy, Angela and Jonathan, sitting on the linoleum of the upstairs kitchen the coolest place in the house) talking about sharks and bears and families. By the time I fell in to bed, I hallucinated that I could see the faintest glimmer of blue outside, but managed to convince myself I as making it up.

Today still felt like my birthday. Despite having to work, I got a glass of very good shiraz fromt he folks next door, a chalkboard was decforated in my honour, and the Cheese Overlords rewarded me with a Cookbook Company gift certificate. Afterwards, Tara and I popped in to see Neil at the drunkening Part 2, and watched an episode of Planet Earth. Now, because I am young and cool and in the prime of my life, I am going to bed by 10 pm and hopefully sleeping for at least 12 hours. Also, my pajamas have frogs on them.

I can't be too grown up, after all.

Slingshot Wedding

2007-07-10T11:44:00.001-04:00

I was up at 6am Yesterday, and finally collapsed a little after midnight. In between, I ate an elephant ear and cheese fries and boneless chicken wings, nearly threw up on the octopus ride, had my hand crushed by my very nervous husband, wore a snazzy pink dress, and got shot out of a giant slingshot.

It all started a few weeks ago. Natalee and Jeremy, our good friends who live in the apartment above us with their one-year-old twins, entered a contest on the internet. They'd been talking about getting married, but had no interest whatsoever in paying for or planning a wedding. Then, one day, they stumbled across a contest called Marriage on the Midway whose prize was a free, pre-planned, completely awesome wedding. At the Calgary Stampede. They immediately entered, and quickly found out they'd made it to the top then.

In order to win, they'd have to earn the most online votes. They turned to their friends and the internet for help. Ed and I would sit in front of the television with borrowed laptops, voting. Often, Jeremy voted for hours. There were calls over the local radio station and facebook groups and mass emails. In the end, the internet came through. With over 177,000 votes (a number that had to be repeatedly recounted and source-checked before the contest people could believe it was legitimate) Natalee and Jeremy won by a landslide.

11 days later, I strolled down the aisle in a fabulous, tasseled pink bridesmaid dress, my arm threaded through Colin's, grinning like an idiot. The flower girl's pink boots lit up whenever she took a step. Jeremy looked every inch a Dashing Riverboat Gambler in his knee-length coat and handlebar moustache. Natalee was absolutely gorgeous. Mo looked like a wild rose in a tiny pink dress, and Casey was every inch a miniature James Bond in his tux. There was a swarm of media and risers full of friends and family blowing bubbles, stomping their feet, and cheering.

After the ceremony and some pictures, everyone broke up and attacked the midway. Neil and I had made a pact to conquer the Slingshot together. As we approached, I almost chickened out. After some embarassing humming and hawing, during which a crowd of people who'd never let me live my cowardice down gathered, I finally agreed. Then the ride and groom arrived, and Jeremy wanted to do it with me too. There was no helping it: I'd have to ride the Slingshot twice.

There is a moment, at the apex of the ride, when the bungee is stretched as far as it will go, when the orb you're strapped into rotates. You can feel all your organs moving independently. It was AWESOME. I actually RAN to get in line to do it a second time. they gave me a t-shirt, which I wore over my dress for the rest of the day (and probably saved myself a nasty sunburn).

Ed has a notorious hatred for rides, stemming from some childhood trauma, but even he got into the spirit of the day and rode the Crazy Mouse (which was silly) and the Polar Express with me. On the Polar Express, I had my hands on the bar; Ed had his hand on mine. The faster the ride spun, the more nervous he became. He was also giggling, because despite his nervousness he was also having fun. I was also giggling because he was giggling; I was also giggling because he was crushing my hand and it was really funny despite being painful.

We stayed on the rides for hours, missing Nashville North. To cap off the day, we rode the bumper cars, which was the only ride I was really disappointed to get off. Watching my brother drive toward me like a maniac, his tongue sticking out in delicious anticipation of out cars colliding, is still one of the funniest things on the planet.

We met up with Natalee and Jeremy at the end of the day, just long enough to wish them well and hug them one last time. I met Ed at the house (I'd stayed much longer than he); Neil and my brother joined us shortly. We planned to go out! To drink! I party it up!

...then I promptly fell asleep on the couch, still wearing my Slingshot t-shirt. We finally settled on fast food and watching Fist of Legend.

This morning, Ed's forehead is peeling. I am trying to decide of my t-shirt belong in my closet or on my wall. Natalee and Jeremy's wedding stands as one of the highlights of the summer; I couldn't imagine an event more perfectly suited to them and their crazy neon midway love.

Mistress of the Arts

2007-07-08T10:46:00.001-04:00

I didn't even throw up before my defense.

It went really well. My committee was positive and supportive and asked good questions. I brought a huge stack of notes with me that I didn't refer to once. There as once question I KNEW I was going to be asked about my use of the abject; I was a little bit uncomfortable about my ability to answer this particular question, and of course it was asked first. It lasted about an hour and a half, which flew by. Waiting afterward while they deliberated felt much longer.

I passed. They asked for minor revisions, all of which I agree with. I've started making them already; I'll be done before the end of the month. I passed, and they all liked the project and wanted me to continue it.

I wanted, so badly, for it all to be over. I imagined that I'd defend and never want to look at Tonsil Hockey again. I wouldn't have to; I'd be free. All this experience did was make me want to keep working on it. It feels anticlimactic to be working on it a little more, but also a relief; I was not ready to let it go. Even when the final copy is handed in to Grad Studies, I can't see myself ever leaving it completely. Serves me right for starting an open ended project. Or serves me write.

Of course I got drunk. My mother had asked that I keep myself out of the hospital, and that I managed. That's about all I can say. Shelley and derek and Belinda all met me and the committee in the grad lounge for champagne. My external committee member and I talked about our cats and her art show.I was still plenty coherent then, just happy. Then at about 6, we wandered down to the Kensington pub. A small crowd, including Ed and my brother, were already there.

It went so fast. It seemed just about everyone came, even if they stayed just a few minutes. Even the people from work came out. I remember laughing a lot. There were nachos and 5-cent chicken wings, rye-and-cokes and rockstars. It was, inevitably, Paul Kennett who ended things. He and I did a shot of tequila. I felt much better after I threw up.

I almost fell asleep in a doorway at 2am, curled up on the cement steps, waiting for a cab to come. When we got home, I fell in bed and called for Ed to help me because my shoes were making me hot and I couldn't get them off by myself.

I felt surprisingly okay the next day. My brother, Natalee, Jeremy, Casey, Mo and I all went to Dairy Lane for the Best Breakfast Ever. Mike and I then went to The Farmer's Market for fruit. Mike finally had to go to work. I spent the afternoon in the back yard, letting the cats eat grass and chase moths in the sunshine. I thought about the work I had to do, and it made me happy.

Meatball Jr.

2007-07-07T15:22:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday, I spent a good portion of the day at home. I had a brief meeting in the afternoon, but for most of the day I just read and lounged and basked in being Mostly Done.

My cats, however, were restless. They spent the day meowing and pawing and circling the floor around the hot water tanks. They were on Birdwatch 2007.

Once again, and bird had gotten in to one of the vents. This had hapened once or twice before. A sparrow would accidentally fall in, cheep for a bit, eventually find its way out or, on one occasion, find it's way out the wrong way and flap around my living room until we could escort it outside.

This bird was just not coming out. It fluttered and cheeped and seemed to be hvaing a really hard time. I went to my metting and returned. The bird was still there. The cats were rivetted. When the bird finally did emerge, they were determined To Be There.

At about 4pm, I heard a great commotion form the hallway. I assumed the bird had made its way out and the cats were having a fit. Then I heard the screaming.

I got to the hallway in time to see Lydia with the bird in her mouth, triumphant. the bird was pecking at her and sheiking with all it's tiny bird might. She dropped it; it ran (ran?) into the office. I shut the door, herded the cats into the apartment and went to see if the bird was okay.

The bird was nowhere to be found. An hour and a half later, when Ed came home, I was still looking. I'd pulled books off shelves, looked ebhind furniture, even gone through the closet. Nothing.

Edm who was exhausted, helped me look for a few minutes. Then he spotted my subwoofer. Cautiously he picked it up and tilted it; something inside fluttered. It had found a very small hole and hid inside.

Ed, exhausted and overcome with the surreality of it all, handed me a screwdriver, and shook his head, and went to bed.

I eventually succeeded in taking my woofer apart, and pulled out the bird. It was uninjured. It was also a baby. It would be flying soon, but not just yet.

Of course, we adopted it.

Just this morning, after a few short practice flights, it was strong and confident enough to fly up into a pine tree. It hasn't come down, so hopefully it's strong enough to rejoin it's flighted bretheren.

the cats are still somewhat disappointed that their snack reached maturity and escaped, but they're keeping a close eye on the vents in case another opportunity presents itself.

I'd like to talk about liberation

2007-06-25T20:04:00.001-04:00

Dear Charles Burkowski,

I have never carried a mirror with me.

Poets vs. the Perp

2007-06-20T13:27:00.001-04:00

Hawk: So what did you do on the weekend?

Me: I went to my friends' wedding on Saturday. It was great.

Hawk: Cool.

Me: Then Sunday I had to work.

Hawk: Drag.

Me: Then it got interesting.

Hawk: Yeah?

Me: Well, the bride, groom, best man, maid of honour, and one of the ushers all went out to dinner Sunday night. You know Soba Ten?

Hawk: Maybe.

Me: So we're eating dinner. My seat is facing the dinner. I am about to put some yakitori into my mouth when I see a guy attack a homeless man.

Hawk: What?

Me: It was crazy. This big dude grabbed the homeless guy by the jacket and started shaking him. I told my friends what was going on and the bride looked, then called 911.

Hawk: Holy shit.

Me: So I watched the guy hit the homeless man in the side of the head, then I ran outside and --

Hawk: You what?

Me: I'm a moron. Anyway, I ran outside just as this guy was dragging the the homeless man into traffic. I yelled something at him -- probably "stop" or something -- and he didin't even look up, but let the guy go and started walking really casually away.

Hawk: You went outside.

Me: I said it was stupid. So we helped the guy to the curb and the police showed up. They were very cordial to us and surprisingly polite to the homeless man -- one was a little grumpy, but in general they were great. We had to fill out witness statements and everything.

Hawk: Your life is far more interesting than mine.

Me: It was pretty crazy.

Hawk: So are you going to have to go to court?

Me: Probably not. They picked the attacker up right away -- He was just walking down the street. Very casual. Apparently he didn't think beating up a homeless man was a big deal.

Hawk: Wow.

Me: The hilarious part was really out statemets.

Hawk: Why's that?

Me: They were given by two English grad students and a librarian. We all filled the whole page and then when the cop was going over them, were all keen about it -- asking if our descriptions were good, if they were helpful -- you'd have thought we were being graded on them.

Hawk: Cute.

Me: We also learned what a peace bond was. Our cop had to go check for us. It was actually really interesting.

Hawk: Only you would manage to turn an assault into an educational experience.

Congratulations to Jason and Andrea

2007-06-18T10:51:00.001-04:00

from the depths of my black little heart.

I am honoured to have been there at your wedding. It was a beautiful thing to be a part of a community so overjoyed for the two of you.

You're wonderful people and you deserve each other. I wish you all the happiness in the world.

You're going to have a blast =)

Clown Shoes

2007-06-13T19:16:00.001-04:00

While looking at my brother's Facebook profile this afternoon, I came across a term with which I was unfamiliar. One of Mike's friends had called him 'clown shoes.' Befuddled, I asked my brother if this was a nickname, or a more general term of affection/insult.

This was his reply:

"'Clown shoes' is part of the vocabulary, only occaisionally an appropriate word. It's defined in the Mike Walschots Advanced Learner's Dictionary as, quote "pronoun: variation of the pronoun 'clown' which is used as a derogatory term against one who acts like the said type of entertainer. 'Clown shoes' is an improvement on such a term by implying that the individual being referred to has gotten to such a point of 'clowniness' that their character is manifested in all aspects of their appearance, presentation, etc. hence the conjuct term 'shoes' symbolizing here an aspect of one's 'clowny' personality being embodied in outward appearance.""

He is not allowed to move away.

Cords and bead chains

2007-06-12T13:19:00.002-04:00

~ a found poem

Cords and bead chains can loop around a child's neck and
STRANGLE
Young children can STRANGLE in cord and
bead chain loops and in the loop above a
cord stop. They can also wrap cords around
their necks and STRANGLE.

Move away from cords and bead
chains.
Children can climb furniture to get to cords.

Make sure cords
do not twist together and create a loop.

moments of weakness

2007-06-12T11:12:00.002-04:00

For the first and last time in a while, Ed and I had a quiet night at home last night. After watching Jeopardy, we flicked through 500 channels of Nothing On (thanks Bell ExprerssVu!) and finally settled on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Ed tolerates the show occasionally. I try to avoid watching it, but last night I was sucked in.

They have scientists that run this show. Scientists who can calculate the exact combination of factors required to completely and utterly break the viewing public. The mother of the young family featured was a recent cancer survivor. Years ago, she'd become very active in raising money for breast cancer research after her own mother was diagnosed, only to be diagnosed herself. She's undergone a bilateral mastectomy and a hysterectomy before she was finally pronounced to be in remission. She and her husband had three little kids -- 8, 6 and 4 -- and were only 26 themselves. In addition to completely rebuilding their house, they organized a 7-day marathon walk to raise money for cancer research.

Sometime around the point when one of the design team -- the guy with thick plastic glasses -- started to cry, Ed became aware that I'd beens sniffing and wiping my eyes on my sleeve. He looked at me and grinned.

Me: Watch the damn show.

Ed: It finally broke you, eh?

Me: I can't help it. This show targets me exactly where I am most vulnerable.

Ed: Was it the construction guy crying?

Me: No. It's the combination of my two weaknesses: tales of great personal struggle and triumph, and fantastic appliances.

a strange history

2007-06-11T09:25:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure I'll keep it, but here's a new look. Better than the green (sans nerd berd), anyway. One day, I'll learn to code like a grown up.

I made a discovery yesterday: a blog that I was keeping when I was, oh, around 18-20 (from 2002 to 2003) is still online. Gathering intertubular dust, but still intact. I was writing almost daily for a long time, so there's a lot of material to slog through. Much of it is painful. It's amazing how much I'd forgotten. Most significantly, it records the time that I met my husband, and the first year or so of our relationship together.

I've no idea what to do with it. And I wonder what other historical nuggets are floating around out there like meteors.

Wheelie

2007-06-08T11:08:00.001-04:00

Last night's Flywheel was excellent. I am used to attending events where one or two of the readers are new to me, especially if they're form out of town, since I am still relatively newish to the Calgary scene. Last night, though, three of the four local writers (Tom Muir, Emily Cargan, and Emily Elder) I'd never seen perform before. Emily Elder has just moved back into town and both Emily Cargan and Tom Muir have been hiding out since before I arrived in town. Sharanpal Ruprai, the only reader I'd been lucky enough to see perform before, read all new material as well.

What struck me about this particular reading was how different the styles of the four readers are. Tom's work was the most lyric, and his pieces tended to be longer. I found myself often listening more to the cadence of his voice, the sound of the words rather than their sense, the pattern that they made in his voice. Emily Cargan did something I haven't seen in a while: she actively played with point of view. Her pieces were all written in different voices, almost characters, which affected the way she wrote and performed the pieces. Emily Elder performed her pieces more than she read them, changing her voice as well as her body depending on the piece. She mixed up poetry and fiction as well, all under the guise of a (life?) long project called Working Thru the Minotaur. Sharanpal's work had the feel of a ceremony to it. She held all the words in her mouth carefully, as though they must be released just so and with proper reverence for her performance to work. Her pieces have the feel of little ceremonies too, all the smaller pieces coming together to make something.

If only I could work a mic properly. Damn my shortness.

Names have been Changed to Protect the Fluffy

2007-06-05T11:09:00.001-04:00

It was an otherwise quiet day at work yesterday. Polly and I had cleaned all there was to clean and amused ourselves for a little while by playing badminton with a crumpled up cheese wrapper. We were talking about movies at about 4:30pm when Polly suddenly yelled "Holy Shit!" and ran out of the store.

From his alarmed tone, I thought he'd just seen an accident happen in from of the store. I ran out after him to see what was going on and got outside just in time to see Polly dart into traffic to scoop up a tiny, bewildered, white puppy.

It had fur like a dandelion gone to seed and black, buggy eyes that stared beseechingly at us for help. We immediately took it in, gave it water, and tried to calm it down a little. It clung to Polly and shook.

Polly told me that he'd watched a car almost hit the puppy and swerve at the last second, which was why he bolted. The puppy was clean and immaculately groomed -- clearly a loved, indoor dog. There was no sign of an owner anywhere.

After a little while, I called the number on his tag -- his name was Puffball -- and left a message on the answering machine with our address and number. I offered to take him home if no one came to claim him by 7pm, and top keep trying to contact the owner. Once puffball was feeling better, we asked the very nice girls at the tanning salon to watch him for a little while, since puppies and cheese don't mix.

About an hour later, Just as Polly was getting ready to leave, a man walked into the store. He had at least a foot and a hundred pounds on me, and was wearing the steel-toed boots and orange vest of a construction worker. He was livid; his eyes were a little red, as though he'd been crying or was furious, or both.

He strode up to the counter, took a deep breath, and said in a quavering voice: "I think you have my dog?"

I assured him we did, that Puffball was fine, and took him next door to be reunited.

As soon as we walked in the tanning salon and Puffball caught sight of his daddy, the puppy freaked out. The big guy dropped onto both knees. His voice broke as he yelled "Puffy!" and the little dog dove at him. They kissed each other for several minutes.

Finally, the man stood up, cradling the puppy in one hand. He thanked us repeatedly, his voice hoarse.

I suddenly noticed that his knuckles were bleeding. I asked him if he needed a bandage.

He seemed confused, then followed my line of sight. His face hardened a little.

"Nah, it's fine. I just had a little conversation with my roommate about what to do when Puffy barks and I'm not home in the future." He kissed the puppy again. "Puffy is NOT an outdoor dog."

And he was gone.

Do not mess with Puffball's daddy.