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Steep Stairs, Time Warps and Lucky Little Kids
Steep Stairs:
Why am I never ever fit enough for the Museum steps? I’m wheezing by the top.
Time Warps:
I love how every morning, when I check the time on the transfer machine at the subway, I think “that’s okay, add a few minutes to that, and I’ll still be on time when I get to my stop”. Then I get to my stop, and it is *exactly* the same time as when I got on. I mean, it works in my favour, and it’s a nice surprise, but it makes me feel like time stops when I’m underground. Maybe that’s why moles look so youthful…
Lucky Little Kids:
Near where I work, there is a semi-private school where the kids come out into a field and plays games every morning. It is both awesome and sad. Awesome because that is the way it should be. Sad, cuz I have to walk past the hula hoops, coloured cones, and beanbag games every morning to go sit in a cube… Our priorities are wrong.
The beautiful terrible day. Words by Rinjava, Illustrated by Tomie dePaola.
After a three day hiatus I biked in today. And might I add – yuck. It’s rainy and bleeky out there. I almost got hit 3 times on my way in – cars not only drive worse on rainy days, they forget there are cyclists on the road. So on the way in 3 cars (2 cars and 1 ChairMan Mills truck) just waddled into my lane to make their right hand turns, forcing me to jam on my brakes. I ding-a-linged them with my bell. But frankly, ding-a-linging doesn’t scare anybody.
Pretty wet, tired and unhappy by the time I got to work. Realized that I may be close to calling biking season over. I’ll bike on the occasional rainy day, but it’s just not safe when the roads are slick. And if we’re heading into a wet tail end of fall, I think my self-preservation might beat out happy riding. I was very aware today that soppy late fall weather doesn’t just mean early stopping – the cold wind will skid you out of your lane, or skid your bike out from under you. Crisp fall wind – it’s not just about romance anymore.
And speaking of romance. I was sitting at my desk at noon today. Usual lunching companions are in meetings or sick. Boss is out of the office. Forgot my cross-stitching at home. Hmmm…thinking outside of the lunch box… What would I most like? Dim Sum! A lovely long dim sum with my bunny (CPwr, not the cat). Two phone calls, a little persuasive asking later, and CPwr is en route (an especially lovely gesture given that he’s feeling a little sick and it turns out to be absolutely pissing down with rain).
And then in the middle of my day and thanks to CPwr and a little serendipity, I got to have The Perfect Lunch:
-quiet day at work with the boss away
-seats for two up against a giant 2nd floor window overlooking a busy street
-a radiator right beside the window
-the company of the best person I know
-standards playing just in the background (“I’ve got the world on a string”…)
-excellent dim sum, all delivered fast and at the same time
-plenty of green tea
-a wet first snowfall, enjoyed from this warm and snuggly vantage point
_[ ]_ ( ) ( : ) ( ) J L
Deflated or Debunked?
Three unrelated thoughts for today:
1) Pet Peeve
I was trying to compile a list of my pet peeves (it feels like the sort of thing I should know about myself), but it’s so hard to remember them outside of them moment when they bother me.
Anywho, I remembered one today, so it will be the first on my list. Ready?
Okay, my first recorded pet peeve: washrooms where the door is really far away from the toilet. So like, a giant room with a toilet in it. I hate those.
I didn’t say they’d be lofty peeves.
2) Sprightly old men
I was biking home today, and feeling particularly speedy, when I noticed that I had a tail. Well, not like *I* had a tail like some sort of biking monkey, but I had a cyclist who seemed to be following me. Not passing, not dropping behind, but shadowing me. So when I turned left, I looked to see who was pacing me.
I didn’t see much and I’m not sure if it was the same guy. But it was a man with a long grey beard.
This did not make me feel good. Huh, I thought, am I slower than I believed? Is my speediness just an illusion, the byproduct of passing so many middle aged women with baskets on the fronts of their bikes?
And THEN I thought, huh, perhaps this is actually not all about you (you egomaniac), maybe what you should be learning from this is that old != infirm. And that this should give me hope that I’ll be as go-get-em fit as this guy when I am old and have a long grey beard…
3) CPwr and the kittens
If it hasn’t come up here before, I tell you now. CPwr loves cats. LOVES. CATS. It is not possible for us to pass a cat on the street, because CPwr has to befriend it. Or at least try.
As I was locking up my bike today, I saw that the skittish grey kitty from downstairs was sitting on the ledge. So I said “Hi kitty”, but left him alone. Then I thought about what CPwr would have done. Even if he was super-tired, he would have put down his bag, and cooed and clicked his tongue, and bent down and made petting motions with his hand, until the kitten had been at least partially won over. Then he would try and make further progress the next time they met. And I thought about how key this personality trait was to our coupling. 4+ years ago, I was very much the skittish kitten, wanting to be close, but still running up emotional trees when I got scared. And he sat there, put his bag down, and just kept offering love until I was coaxed back down. Perfect. 🙂
Three thoughts. No more. No less. 🙂
I am going to take offense. I will store it in a tiny box and think of it often.
The subject line is unrelated to today’s entry. I just said it over the weekend and I think it’s funny 🙂
I had one of those mornings at work where I had to do what a friend calls “work-osmosis”. It’s based on an ancient idea that every object has a memory. So when you arrive at work on a Monday morning and you can’t remember what your job is, you sort of touch the documents on your desk and hope somehow you’ll suck in an explanation of why you’re there and what in god’s name you’re supposed to be doing. I do this a lot. A LOT.
In other news, I am not as insightful as I once thought. I thought I had a good radar for people’s reactions to me. But apparently I am mistaken. Recently a couple of now-friend office colleagues told me that they felt a tremendous amount of pressure to make me like them when we first met. One of them told me that when I came by her cube to chat with her about something for the first time, when I left, she did a little “YEEESSS!”. That’s sick. Apparently, I’m a bit of an ice queen – but the kind of ice queen that people want to get to know.
Now, I think of myself as pretty personable. But in a work context, I’ll admit that instead of making sure everyone likes me all the time, I’d rather just get to know people individually as it comes up. If we get along, that’s great. But I’m not busting my hump over it. Because that’s when you become “the office friend” and wind up having lunch with people 5 months in that you really didn’t like from the first moment you met them. And my lunches are precious dangnabbit. Precious… Mine. My own. *cough* Right.
So, anywho, massive disjoint between how I think I’m perceived and how I am perceived. There’s a woman at work who I’ve always thought didn’t like me, and it turns out she’s been trying to strike up a conversation with me for 3 months. Good lord. I must be sneezing hail…
Opposite day.
It’s raining in Toronto today. The CBC weather guy said that there might even be some flurries overnight. I love the first flurries 🙂
But I’m trying to keep a nasty head cold at bay. I can feel it lurking at the back of my throat, and I have that weird hot scratchy feeling up the roof of my mouth. Buh.
I’ve also had two consecutively unpleasant work days. A bit of pressure, some testy coworkers, and more frustrating re-writes to the team workplan (MS Project can bite my ass).
So you’d think that coming home with a serious rain going on, would really be the icing on my cake of sadness.
It turned out to be quite the opposite. Getting out there in a crisp weather rainfall felt… well, fantastic. I felt refreshed. It’s drilled into you from kindergarten flashcards onwards that rain equals sad. Making it feel so very counter-intuitive to be delighted to be rained on. And while biking no less. But my chilly arms, soaking legs and working muscles got me home feeling rejuvenated and pleasantly quiet. Maybe it’s the cosmic connectivity of having your inner self manifested in the weather… maybe I needed a bath? Whatever it was, it was just what tired little me needed.
In other news, I finally got on mapquest today to see how far I ride to work: 3.77 miles (6.07 km), each way. Feels pretty darn good. Much better than what I thought might happen…
(Me: Plug in the start and stop point. Mapquest: “You bike 2 kilometres.” Me: “DOH!”)
Current food: Cocoa Camino Hot Chocolate and a butter cookie (Thanks Mudsy!!)
You can’t curl up in aesthetics.
I was talking to our buddy Slicktastic last night. His friend recently bought a condo and got it featured on one of those ‘Have A Designer Decorate Your Condo’ shows. He was telling us how amazing her bathroom fixtures were, and how they still had the little rented touches around (like plastic flowers).
Which led to a bit of a brain dump by me (which he was on board with btw – so I wasn’t *just* ranting), about how while I like capital D Design in theory, it doesn’t work for me in practice. I can walk into a space and admire lines and style and form. But it almost never looks *comfy* to me. As in, yes, that is a beautiful bar stool and it really goes with your granite counter, but I wouldn’t want to eat my french toast there. Or, yes, that recliner is a nice modern urban take on a traditional recliner, but I don’t think it would work for sprawling out with the paper on a Saturday.
Often “well-designed” furniture just plain looks too small. I need to look at a chair and be able to say to myself “yes, that could generously accomodate my ass”. My home furnishings and “style” are built around bad posture and lying down. If I can’t lie down in it – or slouch really badly, I’ll probably never want to sit in it. Pretty much if I don’t want to be on my feet, I want to reeeallly not be on my feet. I don’t want to be perched on the edge of a beautiful plastic doohickey of a chair. Other than the once a month I’m dressed up and headed out the door and need to perch on something pristine while CPwr grabs his wallet, I don’t need that Piece Of Style in my home.
Home is a big part of this idea. I don’t identify these immaculate spaces as Home. They are where you live, your condo, your flat even, but not a Home. Home is mismashed – it has knickknacks and mementos that don’t “go” with anything, it has blankets that don’t all match and tables that are worn from putting your feet up on them. I feel sad for people who feel they have to hide away all the bits and pieces of their lives because they don’t fit a theme. And that’s the first thing they do on these design shows – “remove the clutter”. I say if your granny’s teapot has to be put in a cupboard to make room for a decorative bowl filled with wicker balls from Ikea, it may be time to take a step back.
Because we are social creatures and like herds.
The fountain of wisdom that is CPwr used this to explain why he likes having me in the room with him, even when we’re not being particularly interactive (dirty or otherwise).
For instance, I’ve been sitting in the study with him, doing petit point and listening to music, while he does the Blender (3D art) tutorial. When he said that it’s because we like to be in herds, I had a very pleasant image of us as a couple of cows, chewing our cud, just hanging out in the corner of a field.
In other herding behaviour, I almost laughed out loud at a uniquely Toronto-brunch-scene phenomenon today. CPwr and I headed out for a late brunch – which meant that we were going to hit the second seating bump. If you don’t get to your restaurant of choice by absolutely no later than 10:30, it’s a crapshoot whether there will be seats left. Another seating opens up around 12 as the 10:30s turn over, but if you hit your timing right, you’ll never have to be those poor saps jammed in a clump at the door drooling on yourself as you watch other people laughing and enjoying YOUR pancakes [and dying a little inside when they order another round of coffee].
Anywho, we were trying to eat right at the peak of brunchers. Walked past the corner eatery – packed. Decided to keep walking and go past one place we were sure would be full on our way to another (just to check). As we walked past it, it was so full that it spit a group of 6 brunchers out onto the street – about to move on and try somewhere else. This is the uniquely Toronto-brunch-scene bit. We all brunch so often and at the same places, that we know where these guys are headed. The stink of desire for pancakes and french toast is thick in the air, and I suddenly become very aware that these people are no longer just fellow pedestrians – they are enemies in my quest for a seat and a menu. The sidewalk becomes a moving lineup – everyone heading east to the next possible feeding hole. CPwr and I are in the lead, but he sees a book he wants in a bookstore – There is No Window Shopping When You are in the Queue! 2 of the 6 pass us, but fortunately, being the long-legged beasts we are, we quickly outpace them – and back to the front of the line we go…
and…HaHA! Victory! I sip my coffee at you sir! Brunch, it’s not for the weak.
Recent Food: The most amazing rumball from St. Lawrence market; Braised Chicken (Ficken) Pie with Caramelized Onions Mushrooms and Chestnuts (see the Chestnut entry from the other day); A fantastic breakfast at Fresh of scrambled tofu, beans, toast, facon and french fries with an Americano on the side.
It’s from Futurama…
It’s come up here before that I bike into work. And it may have come up that I have bike clothes specifically for this activity. A fleecy wicking long-sleeved top, my ‘samurai’ jacket, gloves, cropped sweatpants…
And I enjoy this dedicated clothing. It gives me an excuse to pick up more ‘sweats’ instead of buying real clothes.
However.
I wear my grubbiest sneakers into work. They’re really old, worn out, mesh and I think they were once white, although they’re now more of a brownish grey (only their mamma remembers their real colour). But will I replace them with a pair of new sneaks to go with the rest of my snazzy gear? Nope, nuh-uh, no way. “Dirty and Stinky?! I love these guys!”
Have a popover froggie.
Recent Food:
Saturday Dinner – Cheese and Spinach Pie, Veggies with Italian Dressing, Grape Juice
Sunday Breakfast – Irish Soda Bread
Sunday Dinner – Butternut Squash Soup, Popovers
Almond Crunch Cereal in the oven…
Recent Movies: Margaret Cho – Revolution
Recent Reading: Shameless magazine, The World Is Not for Sale – Jose Bove
With CPwr doing all the behind the scenes work, I’m making a concentrated effort to really commit to a “slower” food lifestyle. Planning out the weeks meals, going shopping either that weekend or the day of, and prepping real food from scratch (aka not frozen/instant/takeout).
We’re heading into week two and doing pretty well. Last week included Chickpea Melts, fresh veggies and Apple-Beet salad. We’re helped along by a new organic grocery store opening in the area, although I’ve decided they have a weird vibe and their prices are about $1 more than they should be. But today we went there and PriceChopper, so I figure we probably broke even.
Now it’s off for a little Sunday night cross-stitching (the same 5″x5″ pattern I’ve been working on for the past 3 years…) and putting my feet up on CPwr as he resurrects all his old DOS games.
Life, she is good no?