Ted Leo’s Drummer Is Having my Baby!

I made sweet love to him with my eyes at Friday night’s show at Richard’s on Richards and through the fakesmoke haze and beer fumes, he looked right at me, past the spotlights and bopping hipsters who knew all the words to all the songs, he grinned a little and his eyes went wide, just before his drumsticks blurred and so did my eyes and then my heart. His beard seemed soft as a freshly cleaned carpet and his polo shirt was dotted with sweat and I swear he nodded slightly when I smiled from the balcony and I just know that in a few months – I don’t know the exact gestation for sweet drummer + long-distance laser impregnation – he’ll come calling and wanting more but I won’t be able to give it to him because 1. I’m taken and 2. he’s probably on the road a lot and 3. sometimes moments that take place across a crowded bar are best left there to become part of the furniture and the moment for the next time.

Seriously though, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are super duper talented and I haven’t had so much fun at a show in a long time. Also, he has done a cover of “Since U Been Gone,” which was not played on Friday but which has been on repeat in my head for about a billion days now. You can find it here if you’re interested. Trust me. You are.

Some people embrace January as a time for new beginnings; others choose their birthdays; I choose September. 18 years of school has set a precedent for starting anew after Labour Day. New Year’s Day is often a let-down; a rainy, chip-sodden sleep inducing day. My birthday is usually a day like any other – sometimes with cake. But Labour Day, it has a whole movement around it. People stop doing one thing and start doing another. Even though I will just go to work on Tuesday, it’ll be different because the world has all started doing different things around me. The flipflops get packed away and I grow my leg hair. Fall! Blessed fall!

To do – Fall:

1. Brown corduroy pants. I jumped the gun on this one and found the Perfect Brown Corduroy Pants yesterday. Check.
2. School. I’ve been involved for two months, somewhat passively, in an introductory editing class through SFU’s distance education program. I say passively because it’s distance education which means it’s self-led which means I’m behind. Plus, sometime this month I start French classes! Vive les deux langues officiales du Canada!
3. Wine. Check.
4. Second draft of novel. It’s almost one year since I finished the first draft and I really hoped I would be further along in the revisions by now. But I’m not. All hope is not lost. I very nearly participated in the 3-day novel writing contest this weekend but I’m glad I didn’t because my head is very muzzy with snot.
5. Fun stuff. I need to do more fun stuff. Does anyone have any fun stuff?
6. Flannel sheets. I might not have bought these if I wasn’t so muzzy with snot and all I wanted the minute I walked into Costco was to be in bed. But there they were, tucked between the Halloween candy and the Christmas wrap. So I bought them. Early this afternoon when the clouds were dark and mean and it was cold and I was trying to read the globe and mail in bed but it was just so fucking twee (why does that man keep writing rhyming couplets about current events? why is Leah McLaren telling me to wear black? isn’t that like a snake eating its tail? shouldn’t someone fire her?) my eyes kept closing, then I was glad about the flannel sheets.
7. Th’Apprentice and Th’Martha Stewart Apprentice. Even just one episode each.
8. I am going to be nice to my co-workers and respectful of authority while I compose gritty tell-all bestsellers in my head.
9. And eat more spinach.