It’s Humour That Saves us From Eating our Fellow Humans

Posted on 11/22/2007 by cheesefairy

American Thanksgiving or this writer’s strike I’ve been hearing about ate my 30 Rock. 30 Rock is not on. I was sad, momentarily, to note this. But then I realized that The Incredibles is on in its place and now I’m watching it and I might make popcorn and stay up till it’s over because The Incredibles is a funny, funny movie. It’s clever and sweet and the characters have more personality than all the people I talked to today put together.

See, if I wasn’t blogging every day, this entry would not be here and you would have no idea that I am so boring. I am doing the world a great service by blogging every day because otherwise, you would only see the best of me, the thoughtful, well-constructed posts about important, amusing or bittersweet topics and you would think I was some kind of goddamn genius. Rest assured I am boring as hell – as ever – and frantically looking for inspiration for the next 10 days. 9 days. Whatever.

The commercials for Christmas are a bit much and I am intrigued by the movie called “The Water Horse.” There’s a scene where the people are looking into a bathtub and this creature looks back at them, a slimy, grey creature and the man says, Britishly,”It looks like….a water horse!” Of course. A water horse. Of which I have seen many, so I recognize it immediately!

Tonight before bed, I asked Trombone where my baby is. He poked me – hard – in the belly button, hopefully not hitting his sibling’s fontenelle in the process. I guess he has some idea that there’s a baby in my belly, which is pretty weird, actually. I mean, I totally didn’t believe I had a baby in my gut until I saw that first ultrasound. I guess Trombone is either more gullible or else he still remembers being in there clearly enough to have permanently suspended disbelief.

OK. The moon is full and I am hopeful something interesting will happen to me tomorrow or else you’re all getting a very accurate transcript of every single conversation I have all day long and you KNOW that’s gonna hurt.

Posted in babby, bloggity!, movies, trombone | 2 Comments

Who’s a Clever Monkey, Then?

Posted on 11/21/2007 by cheesefairy

I went to see the boots yesterday at House Of Tall and Freaky. I liked the boots. I bought the boots. They are knee-high and shiny and someone today told me they make my feet look big but you know what? My feet ARE big. I wouldn’t try to disguise my height by slouching. I wouldn’t try to hide my big hands. I am PROUD of my giant feet. They keep me upright and for this I am grateful beyond measure.

I wore the boots today to work because it was Big Meeting Day and as I am the one at Big Meeting who gets up from her chair every two minutes to turn the lights down, start the Powerpoint, turn on the TV and VCR, turn off the TV and VCR, turn the lights up, not to mention frequent trips to the coffee and snack station for the free food I am earning, I like to look presentable.

Finished the meeting with my brain mostly intact. Carried the hideously heavy laptop back to the office (Dear Dell, Why are you making your computers out of stainless steel and cement? Try using modern plastics like Apple! Seriously, my Apple laptop weighs 5 lbs and the Dell I was hauling all over town weighs more than my 16.5 month old toddler, the child of a woman with very large feet. That shit ain’t right, Dell.) I took the train to the bus to the daycare and got not-so-wee Trombone fastened in the car over his pleas for “cackoo! cackoo!” (cookie), made it home without having too much trouble breathing, let us into the house, greeted the catt, set Trombone free to find whatever he was looking for in the living room – probably the remote control – and removed my coat and

…almost eviscerated myself with my own flesh when I tried to bend double to remove my boot.

‘Cause. Y’know. I have this belly? And it makes it kind of hard to BEND OVER, like, say, to remove a boot. And here I had completely blocked out the reason all the shoes that actually fit me are SLIP ON SHOES.

Sometimes I wonder why they pay me the big bucks and then I remember: I am a genius!

Oh well. There’s always 2009. In 2009 I look forward to having brand new boots without having to spend any money.

Posted in babby, idiots, shoes | 2 Comments

15 Minutes Till Chips

Posted on 11/20/2007 by cheesefairy

I used to write every day in a spiral bound notebook. I used to write 3 longhand, single-spaced pages every morning, before I did anything else. I started doing this when I started reading “The Artist’s Way,” a book Sarah’s mum loaned or gave her when we were young and living in a basement suite, between shit jobs and growing fungus in our bathtub. One of the first things the Artist’s Way tells you to do is to do these “morning pages” because the act of centering your mind in this way, by freeing it to spill out on the page without the influence of the powerful inner critic erasing every second word you write, is a valuable step towards allowing yourself to create all and how you want to create.

I have always been someone who writes in a journal. Since I was 6, I think? I have an old, pink diary with a lock that I pick with a ballpoint pen because I lost the key long ago. Early entries were brief and sporadic but when I got older, I wrote more and in more detail. I took the time, sometimes, to craft journal entries that I would have been pleased to see published after my death. But nothing compared to the magic of morning pages.

Before – or while – drinking the first cup of coffee of the day, my mind was still dreaming, still finishing the conversation with the mystery minotaur about the price of pork bellies. And when I wrote it down, as fast as I could, without thinking about it or reading back over the sentence I’d just scribbled, everything sorted out and I was able to come to consciousness gracefully. I found that at the halfway mark, at 15 minutes or 1.5 pages, my mind would take a turn from the mundane – or surreal – into my actual subconscious and I would often have my awareness shifted, I would realize suddenly the answer to what might have been puzzling me for days or weeks. Every few months I’d go back and read old morning pages and would be stunned to see that I had had the same realizations many times over; but confined to the quiet, private space of morning, I had not felt the need to act on those realizations or bring them into the world any further than that notebook, that day. Each realization was a step or a building block towards a greater idea or epiphany or the ability to stand up and say, “enough, I have been thinking enough; it is time to act.”

I have not done morning pages in more than a year. I think the habit fell down when I was pregnant with Trombone; I simply needed that half hour of sleep more than just about anything. Then, with the baby in the house, there was nothing predictable about my days and I certainly couldn’t count on a morning routine that could be augmented with 30 minutes of writing time. No matter how good it is for me, no matter how good it feels, it just wasn’t getting done.

Now, of course, I am getting up at 5:30 every day. 5:30 – 6 am is my waking up time and I have been using it to drink tea, read email and blogs, after rolling out of bed usually 5 minutes after the alarm. But this week I have re-introduced morning pages – not half an hour because I can’t spare that time yet, but 15 minutes per morning. Free-form scribble and babble in a spiral notebook I bought years ago that is not even close to half-full.

15 minutes at a time I will build these muscles back.

Posted in bloggity!, writing | 3 Comments

9 Truths I Have Observed and Might Even Venture to Call Universal

Posted on 11/19/2007 by cheesefairy

OK first, does it seem odd that the plural of “truth” is just “truth”S, without an “e” or something in there? It’s pronounced “troothes.” I think there should be an “e.” TRUTHES. But when I write that, I feel like Britney Spears. “Can you handle my truthes?”

1. If you lose your lip balm and you look for your lip balm everywhere and you are sure you didn’t accidentally launder your lip balm, the sure way to make it re-appear is to buy a new lip balm.
2. There is always one hidden tissue in a load of laundry.
3. As soon as you decide you are going to ignore rather than react to the Crazy, the Crazy will apologize to you for being Crazy and you will reconsider your slaphazard diagnosis of her as such. So – apology accepted and enjoy your salad dressing that you hauled out of the stinky fridge garbage, oh wait, that’s still The Crazy. Nevermind.
4. If you replace your carpet with hardwood floors, your toddler will start dropping things on it because WOW WHAT A NEAT NOISE!
5. Step on a crack [lose your balance; your mother dives to catch you] break your mother’s back. I get it now.
6. Nickelback will never stop sucking.
7. If your baby starts acting funny, it’s probably a growth spurt.
8. If you’re pregnant and YOU start acting funny, it’s probably a growth spurt.
9. If you set out writing a list of 9 things because you like the number 9, 8 of the items will come easily.

Posted in babby, food, music, trombone | 3 Comments

My Annual Boot Post

Posted on 11/18/2007 by cheesefairy

In November, 2004, I bought a new pair of boots. I think they cost $50. They looked like this and they were perfect. Shiny, man-made materials made them stretch around my foot and calf and also repel water. Rubber sole that was not the kind of rubber sole that gives me electric shocks in the office. Tall to the knee. Suitable for skirts long or short. Low heel. Comfortable enough to walk to and from work and also during it or, if need be, to stand for 35 minutes on the train.

I wore them through 2004 and 2005. I skipped 2006 because I was wearing these boots in 2006, boots which are as awesome but not as office-appropriate, unless your office is a fishing boat.

A few days into fall boot season 2007, tragedy struck. The sole of the right boot began to detach from the upper. For the first day, it was just a little seam. By the second day I had my first comment from a co-worker. The third time I wore them I actually tripped myself on the gaping maw. I bought rubber cement and rubber cemented them, which worked for one day. Then I lived days 2 and 3 all over again.

I sadly started looking for a new pair. I even went back to Shoe Warehouse and looked for the same style, which they still sell. But I can no longer squeeze into a 10 and there are no 11s. I started looking other places and quickly realized that the perfect boot simply does not exist for me this year. The stores are full of booties, of ankle-highs, of “trouser boots” – peh! The knee-high boots have huge stacked or wedge or spike heels. The flat soled boots are slouchy, or suede, or have pom poms hanging from them. And the two pair that I liked didn’t come in my size because women with huge feet should suck it up and wear orthopedia already. Yes, I got the memo.

I came so close today. So close. On the top rack in the discount section, where all the excess stock is, I spied a box marked “11.” A boot sized box! Because I am tall enough to have size 11 feet, I took the box down and noted gleefully that they were marked down to $35 plus 50% off! Eeeek!

In my former life, this would have been it, the perfect moment, the sweet slowdown of the cameras to focus on me fitting my foot into this perfect $17.50-plus-tax boot. Alas. It was a style of boot that is made for size 6 feet, where the toe of the boot extends two inches past the toe of the foot. They fit great. The heel was walkable. But I looked like a champion downhill skiier.

Regrettably, they went back in the box and I continued on to the watch store where I bought myself a $10 jingly charm watch instead. It jingles! Ah, New Westminster mall. You provide me no way to impulse-buy my way into debt and for that I thank you.

Do not pity me! The other day on a leisurely stroll through downtown, I was in the vicinity of the Tall Girl Shoe Store (size 10 – 13; god bless you people for doing what you do) and I did try a fetching pair of boots on; they were of the ankle-high variety but the saleslady assured me the knee-high version, though not in stock at that precise moment, was Perfect In Every Way (TM) and wrote down my phone number to call when they arrive in the store, probably this Thursday.

Perfect enough to last 3 – or more – seasons? I won’t know till Thursday. Until then, I’ll just have to eat enough cookie dough ice cream (with brownie pieces) to stifle my anxiety.

Posted in shoes | 9 Comments