Category Archives: Hanging Around

05

Mar. ’16

Mastering the Art of Shopping for the Perfect Couch

AMqLoOY

Sweet Jesus, I saw this photo taken in Portland, Oregon because of course it was, while I was laying on my couch because naturally, that’s where you can find me between the hours of 5pm and the end of of the second episode of Seinfeld on Peachtree, surfing the Reddit dot com as I am hourly, and thought: “Yes, I totally want to fuck my couch.” I love my couch so much it hurts. It’s a masterpiece of form and function. I can move its pieces and it’s a regular “Chesterfield” (as per my mom)  and matching ottoman (what, why? wiki here) then I can get up off my ass and turn it into an L-shape settee thing, or better yet shove it all together and make a giant bed, yes. Which is what it is most of the time. It’s sturdy and dark brown and hard and firm and big and hard but! Its skin is soft and plush like a teddy bear. It’s definitely a man couch and totally fuckable. If it were to manifest in human form, it would be my tv boyfriend, Michael Strahan. You know how he has the super cute adorable perfectly nipple-sized gap in his front teeth? Well that’s the cushions that split open and swallow all the couch accoutrements like the tv wand, cellphones, and chopsticks. I think of it as more playful than annoying on most days. Like the innards of my couch are scrapbooking, archiving all my antics. Oh, look, there’s a Swedish condom wrapper from that time when ginger beards were my thing.

Also I took a lot of time looking for my couch which had to be my soul mate. It’s my part of my marital separation collection of furniture. I swear to God it took my ex-husband less time to find a new wife than it took me to find this fucking couch. And please don’t get me wrong, he did well in his search, she’s awesome and I love her, but me finding the perfect couch would have to be matching my criteria precisely from tits to tail.  My inspirational couch belongs to my brother and his wife which lives in their “tv room.” Tv room, lol, right? Every room is a tv room in my house, greasy laptop + Netfix = Toilet hour. The couch they have is so the embodiment of comfort that it’s virtually non-descript and metaphysical in its form. What it does is it turns into a bed and there’s all these pillows and the softest blankie and it truly is the best place ever that you want to be, not even an ocean front coconut shaped pod in Bali could compete. It’s more like a  womb, not a room. So I had to find one like it but somewhat bigger because of scale and math and it had to fit the room just so. I finally found it at Philz on Queen Street, one of those mid-century junk places in Riverside that also sells modern furniture that costs zillions of dollars. I don’t even know if it’s still there anymore, it’s a scary place to visit because it had all this great stuff and you want everything but don’t have space to put it. Same reason I have to avoid puppy adoption fairs and certain internet websites.

But! I remember the first time I laid eyes on the floor model which was the same one I chose. It came in custom colours and fabric and I could have had it in leather but got talked out of it by someone (who shall remain nameless) giving me a visual of what it’s like to lay on a leather couch naked. Just no. And aside from that, it was smart to go in furry bear fabric because the wretched dog I ended up adopting later is one of those primal beasts that must violently dig out a spot before she twirls around and lies on it like a sweet little angel baby croissant. Don’t worry,  it’s okay, the couch is strong and can take her paw gouging, in fact her scratching kind of rakes up the upholstery and makes it fluffier.  Can you imagine scratching Michael Strahan while he is watching his favourite tv show? Oy. Betty has it right.

Anyway, I saw the couch, I fell in lust! Which of course, I mistook for love because that has been a recurring problem in my life. I ordered the couch in furry dark brown, paid a zillion dollars because I had a line of credit back then, and waited them to make it and deliver it three weeks later. Well, well, wouldn’t you know, when it arrived, it didn’t fit up the stairs, even with the legs taken off. It had to come in from the back balcony by hoisting it up to the second floor with rope and manpower and some yelling and beers and more yelling and regret. And then I had to get some rubber placemats for his soles so he wouldn’t keep slipping all over the floor like a sloppy mess, defence men who play for the NFL need to stay put. But yeah, that was almost eleven years ago and couch and I are still banging, so it must be love. Or long lived lust. What is the difference again?

The other day, one of my best buds called me and asked me to come with her over March Break to buy a new couch. I was floored, pardon the pun, because I was with her when she got her current couch which was around the same time I got mine….like a decade ago….oh my…. times flies, kids, so go forth and fuck your bunk beds and keep moving, that’s my best advice at this point. Also: Don’t fucking worry about feng shui either, just let energy flow where it wants to go, it will find a way in and out whether or not you put a mirror at the north east corner in front of a rock soaking in a bowl of water or not. DO NOT SPEND $500 FOR A SAGE CLEANSE! Spend it on weed instead.

Anyway, I had shopped so long and hard for my couch, I was known as the couch whisperer so I was the perfect person to go hunting with. Plus I wasn’t going to talk her out of spending money she wanted to spend but was afraid to, because in my mind, couches are an investment. She found hers at Biltmore, so fucking fancy there that they call their feather-stuffed couches “sofas.” Also a zillion dollars required but we were living large back then and felt we deserved a place to park our lady arses on to drink wine on, fart our lady farts into with impunity, and watch Gilmore Girls. No Ikea for weary old broads.

Her couch is so beautiful that if it were to come to life in human form it would be Nigella Lawson but before she lost so much weight after she dumped that fucking Saatchi prick. Her couch was and still is gorgeous! It’s plump and full and bodacious and thick and curly and juicy and soft and lush. When you walk into her apartment and see her sofa, all you want to do is dive on top of it and stick your fingers in it, lick it and then ask how she does her eyebrows with such an exquisite arch. And then let her make you whipped creamy pea mash and tell her all your secrets while you wiggle your toes in her butt crack.

So when she told me she wanted a new couch, I was like WHAT?

And she: “I’m sick of it. It’s old and so dirty now, the cushions spread open and there’s crumbs stuck in there, ugh.” She is dissing Nigella’s vagina basically. I will not have it.

So I, channeling my inner Martha because she is in there, farming her own weed an making popsicles out of vodka:  “Jesus Christie Brinkley! Sprinkle that baking soda stuff on it, leave it on for 2 hours, and then vacuum it up! It just needs a spa treatment.”

This conversation went on with me championing her sofa and her slowly changing her mind that she could salvage it, perhaps get it re-upolstered (dumb) or put a blanket on it (smart) and then through all the flippy-floppy I started getting excited to shop for a couch again. Is there is sofa out there that looks like that glassy eyed dude from The Vikings? I love him! I bet if he was a couch he could pull out into a bed. And have a wet spot that you’re cool with. And have a rough patch that you can exfoliate on. I think that’s key anyway. Your couch is your raft in the sea of life that you should be able to surf the internet and watch your dumb ass shows on perfect peace and don’t let anyone, least of all some judgmental graffiti tweeter in Portland, tell you what to do. Yes, fuck your couch, and then make it breakfast in the morning.

 

 

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29

Dec. ’11

Gretzky Twitter Family Photos

I can’t get enough of this!  The Gretzky Family Christmas card! It’s my screen saver.  It’s like Vanity Fair meets  Awkward Family Photos all riddled with the sub-text of dysfunctional family issues. No one is actually smiling, the mama is really just showing her teeth, the way mamas do when they are about to bark out an order. The glum little one in the middle is the star of the show, a world-weary 8 year-old whose expression seems to say:  “Beautiful people have problems, too.”  Lol.

Like most Canadians, I have an affinity to Wayne Gretzky.  I think of him as an older brother because he reminds me of my own. The Golden Child archetype who has to carry the all the hopes and dreams of the rest family in his shoulders. I could never have sibling rivalry with my brother, The Other Great One, as I am completely content living in a shadow. In fact, because I was born way behind the rest of the lot, I always felt like a pet which was awesome. More Milkbones for me!

Anyway, this photo was on the cover of the Toronto Star today with an actual article that went along with it. Paulina Gretzky, the oldest daughter, tweeted it out and then it got REMOVED FROM TWITTER!  Media brouhaha ensued! They are like the Khardashians!  A family of pimps and hos, exploiting themselves for fame and…more fame. And now that it is removed from The Twitter and the bottom-feeding bloggers are posting it, it is a news story. They accuse Paulina of being a Twitter slut. And I am in love with her. She has the untrammeled mojo of  a woman twice her age.  Imagine what she’ll be like when she’s in her cougar years. I bow to her to Greatness. I am following her Twitter and maybe I’ll learn a thing or two.  Buzzkill Wayne made her to close her account in November for a nano second so in case it happens again, luckily there is a gallery of her best Instagrams that you can click on here.

And aside from that, we are on Day Four of Orgy Week and I am hell-bent by this time next year, “#orgyweek” will be a hashtag on Twitter and part of the popular vernacular in general.  In case you are new to this blog, Orgy Week is the week between Christmas and New Years where you do what you want, not what you think you should do.  You would be surprised how much you learn about yourself when you let yourself “be.”  My revelations so far: I am a hermit!  I actually like cole slaw!

And speaking of dysfunction families, Evangeline and I went to see “The Descendants” which made me cry. I like crying, I’m always on the verge anyway.  All is not what it seems from the outside, as George Clooney says in the beginning:

“My friends think just because we live in Hawaii, we live in paradise.  We’re all just out here sipping Mai Tai’s, shaking our hips, and catching waves.  They say we are immune to life.  How could they possibly think our families are less screwed up…our heartaches less painful?”

Maybe it’s the same with the Gretzkys.  Maybe Paulina’s Twitter account is just a cry for help, that kind of hunger for attention is destined for doom. The need for validation is a bottomless pit when you are seeking it from outside yourself.  All that having to suck your stomach in to take a headless shot of yourself in a bikini in a mirror from a hotel room is really kind of pathetic….no, it’s awesome, who am I kidding? That’s just the Orgy Week Cheetos talking.

3 more sleeps and Orgy Week is over, thank God.  I think too much the rest of year and now I am over-thinking everything.  Also I need to put on some lipstick. Soon things will be normal, N*O*R*M*A*L!  Until then, here’s the trailer to ‘The Descendants,” go see it:

Draft
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27

Dec. ’11

7 Days of Orgy Week

I told you I did not make this up.  I’m not sure Whit Stlllman made it up either when making “Metropolitain” but I’m telling you, it exists:  The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is called “Orgy Week” and it is _bar none_ the greatest week of the year.  Today is the day after Christmas, some of you are Boxing Day shopping, others are cleaning up while the rest of you are “going for a walk” just to get out of the house and sneak a cigarette.  Clearly you all need some help.

When it comes to “Orgy Week,” if you are at a loss as to what to do, just think of what it is you want to do.  Most of you are probably thinking:  WWCD? (What Would Caligula Do?)  But don’t fret, you don’t have to run to salon and get waxed, that is extreme orgy.  Personally, on Day One (Boxing Day) while some of you were trolling the aisles of the malls, all sweaty in your winter coats, carrying bags of crap, praying for a meteor to hit, I was in my pyjamas.  All day!  I shopped on-line!  I don’t care what anyone says, it’s cheaper to shop on-line because you focus on what you want, not the extra crap that catches your eye when you are at the check-out.  All the stores have on-line shopping and you don’t even have to travel to other cities to get there.  Simons, the coveted department store in Montreal, has on-line shopping and Boxing Day sales, check it out here.  I spent the morning perusing, while drinking mimomas.  And then I watched my Boxing Day traditional movie, Metropolitian, while drinking straight champagne. GIF prooof:

Then I ate a box of crackers. And a wedge of gorgonzola. And some chocolate.

Freddy, also in his pyjamas, ate two McCains Delissio Rising Crust pizzas. Caligula in training.

I couldn’t even finish writing this post yesterday, I sugar-crashed mid-afternoon.  Somewhere in the haze, I watched Jane Eyre with Evangeline which actually gave me nightmares last night.  I was Rochester’s crazy wife, locked up in a room without tv or interwebs.  And I woke up with the intense urge to go to Walmart and stock up on toilet paper and toothpaste.  It is orgy week after all, 6 more days to go!

I’m going to check in with you later this week and see how y’all are managing.  Right now I’m going to get some proper air. I will leave you with this, my favourite YouTube video of the year.  If Tim the Tambourine Man doesn’t make you happy, no one will:

 

 

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07

Dec. ’11

Tale of a Christmas Ho

I think it’s politically okay to celebrate Christmas in public again.  Remember when we couldn’t even say the word and the kids had “Holiday” pageants and had to sing “Woot Woot Kwanzaa” sung to the tune of he Fifth Dimension’s “Stoned Soul Picnic?”  In class, they made dreidels out of polymer clay with wire hooks so we could hang them on the tree as an ornament, killing the J-bird and the C-bird with one stone. Smart hockey, teacher, keep everyone happy. Just make no mention of the sweet baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, mangers, wise men (they don’t really exist anyway), and from now on Santa has no denomination. But sitting on his lap and giving him your list of wants and desires while he drunkenly calls you a “ho ho ho” has never really gone out of style, thank Gods (plural).

I love Christmas and I will say it loud and proud.  It’s all about the build up:  The lights, the decorations, the shortbread, the Brie wheels, the booze, and best of all the bombardment of made-for-tv movies on the W Network.  There’s a bunch of them, all filmed in Toronto, all starring Hollywood D-list “ageing” actresses with Can-con leading men, that they replay over and over again.  A typical plot:  A woman, once married to an evil rat bastard who leaves her for his sex-atary, becomes homeless.  She gets a job at a diner and starts baking cookies that sell like hotcakes. The man (whose name is always Nick) that runs the diner is a nice but seemingly hapless hunk that she is sexually attracted to but she has no time for because she has to get back on her feet for the sake of her hipster daughter who is away at college and doesn’t yet know she is broke. The story-line arcs when there is a misunderstanding involving false pride (hers) and blue balls (his) and she falls into the depth of despair. But! It turns out he is actually super wealthy. Her cookies become a multi-million dollar industry and she and Nick fall in love just in time for Christmas and her daughter comes home to her happy mom and new daddy and a house full of prezzies. The end.

And speaking of baking cookies, I gave that chore up for Lent 4 years ago and never really got back to it.  I used to get invited to various “cookie exchange” parties…I know, right?  Bake a dozen million cookies, put them in a trunkload of cookie tins and take them to covenant of estrogen-based ho-bags and sit around and drink wine and talk.  That’s not really party *per se,*  Not without bone and mistletoe! Bitch, please. What is with all these grown women wanting to go out on “girls’ night?”  A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends e-mailed me: “We’re going out on a girls’ night, want to come?”  I e-mailed:  “Can I bring my nephew?”  To which the reply:  “Ladies only!”  Ugh, to that!  Seriously, I can’t handle being in a mass of women, or a “snatch of beavers,” plural form. I need man energy to drive me to take the next breath. This is why I don’t mind when my teenage son has a room full of boys sleep over in the tv room.  The sweat and Axe Body Spray all condense in one spot over night so that when you open the door in the early afternoon to see if they are still alive, you are bombarded with a pheromone bomb so potent, you have to wear panty liners for a week.

But I’m looking forward to this cookie party. My friend who invited me has called this the “rebel cookie exchange where anything goes!”  I asked:  “Do you mean there will be man-whores and bourbon?”  “Oh, goodness, no,” she laughed, “You can actually bring squares, before they were sticky about that rule and it was cookies only.  Lindsay is making fudge!”  Fudge!  I love fudge.  And cookies. Nothing says Christmas more than a chunk of extra ass-flab made out of butter.  Ho ho ho!

And with that I leave you with some Can-con, my mother’s favourite Christmas carol, Little Drummer Boy, done by Sean Quigley of Winnipeg. This is cool and love his teenage ‘stache:

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05

Dec. ’11

Little Room Got Bigger

I just got a laptop last month as some of y’all know which means I’m not typing all hunched over from my “ugly room.”  My PC is still there, in the space off the kitchen where the washer and dryer hold hands tightly while the spiders in the Ikea shelving make a 5 story web condo. Check out the view, Charlotte: Soup cans and vacuum bags. We have a third story shelf with Mac n Cheese, if you want a unit, they’re going fast. Mice are taking over! The entire second floor with the Kikkomen noodles are sold old but there’s space behind the George Foreman grill on the bottom shelf, so hurry!

With the AirMac, I can blog anywhere and every where. In a box.  With Green Eggs and Ham.  Like a child, I am in awe and wonder what I find each day on the tip of my fingers. I know it’s nothing new to you pervs, and I, too, have I’ve been fingering my phone for years but now it’s all blown up ALL THE TIME.

Which is awesome but!  A chained up PC computer in an ugly room has a purpose.  A lap top Air Mac is a whore with a whole other agenda.  In one single month I have logged on so many miles on random tangent fuckery that I am afraid that my brain has been compromised by too much imagery of LOL Cats, porn, funnies, “Before and After” pictures of the Khardashians, et cetera, that my own voice has been compromised.

And not that my voice is a big bag of chips, but it is my little squeak and it came from the ugly room that is my private sanctuary.  Condensed and restrained, I could collect my thoughts and then spew like the food processor on the fifth shelf.  That stool I hunched over was one from my childhood that my dad reupholstered in vinyl snakeskin with which he sent me off to university.  Sometimes people come over to my house and I have to show them something on the computer and when they sit on the stool, inevitably they will say:  “What the fuck? How do you fucking sit on this fucking thing and fucking type?”

I say, watch your expletives.

This was my spot.  I could tap on my kepyboard while I did laundry and gaze out the window and watch the clouds and the birds. And sometimes see the neighbour walk his dog in the park and think to myself:  “What in the name of God’s jizz nuggets are you doing with that woman you’re married to…hello, is it me you’re looking for?” And then go on YouTube and cry a little bit.

Now I can tap shit out anywhere. At Starbucks. Your mother’s house. Wherever WiFi bleeds out a vein, I got access.

I am not so sure how to harness this new-found energy.

I am just saying so you know and that you stay with me because I think it’s going to be a fun ride. I hope! Because otherwise I have nothing, and with that I leave you with this:

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16

Nov. ’11

Occupy Yo Mama

Last Saturday, my 15-year-old son Freddy and I were driving along King Street after he had just finished raking up some leaves at a friend’s home in Parkdale.  A good honest afternoon of manual labour had put the apples on his cheeks, and strangely a Movember ‘stache on his upper lip appeared that turned out to be smeared dirt caught on his peach fuzz.  I didn’t say anything because for a couple of hours because I honestly thought he miraculously grew an actual moustache.  My friend and I had a lovely visit in her kitchen, watching him rake through window, and even her dog was impressed by the boy in our midst.  Freddy with his plaid jacket and dirt moustache was the kind of boy we would have crushed on in high school.  Fine young men are our precious commodities, as we were just reminded by Remembrance Day, when we honoured our fallen soldiers.  Crazy hormones and hyped up adrenaline makes them want to fight in a war.  It’s so very admirable to me because all my hormones ever want to make me do is shop and eat.  And fantasize about a certain mancrush who shall remain nameless but has a dark Movember moustache that makes him look like an outlaw during the Prohibition era. And I have bathtub full of gin, baby, if you have the beef jerky. God help me and make December come quick.

When we drove by the Occupy Toronto camp headquarters at St.James Park, I was struck by two things:  THERE’S A BRIDAL PARTY HAVING THEIR PICTURES TAKEN WITH THE HOBOS IN THE BACKGROUND!  THAT IS SO AWESOME!   And secondly, what is the point of this again?  All these unwashed people in tents are protesting Corporate Greed?  Do they actually think camping out in a public space for two months will make Gordon Gekko have an Aha! moment?  Now don’t get me wrong, nobody hates a suit more than me.  Nothing worse than a man faking it in those shoulder pads and pretending to have friends by wearing a blue tooth in his ear.  But you cannot stop the nature of the beast.  In fact by staging these “Occupy” events, you are only giving the one percent a big old corporate boner.  They don’t feel the guilt.  They are the honey badgers of the jungle.  Y’all might want to go home and take a shower, come back later in a clean ironed shirt and some trouser pants and then get Medieval because really, hippies became extinct for a reason.  Stinky B.O.

And here is a lesson from the honey badger:

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14

Sep. ’11

Dear TIFF

Dear Madonna: A hydrangea by any other name would smell like your spent panty liner. Don’t kid yourself. You simply stink.

It’s TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) week in my fair city. Nobody loves the hobby of celebrity watching more than me, I won’t lie. They are not so easy to spot as they are shrinky-dink versions of what you think they might be because you normally see them in a confirmed and designated spot where they take up the entire confined space that is your tv set or cinema screen. They are ENORMOUS in there. And luminous. But in real life, they don’t stand out that much. A few years back a friend and I went to Yorkville to “starwatch”, and as soon as we got to prime territory, I spotted one. She wasn’t wearing makeup but she had an “entourage” with her, all of whom were laughing at what appeared her witty rapport. Her wingspan was possibly a half a block wide.

“We just passed Maggie whatshername,” I nudged her as we were walking west along Bloor Street.

“Who?” She whipped her head around.

“Maggie Gyllen-something, she was in that movie where she was a perverted secretary and she has that brother, Jake, with eyes too close together, in that movie with Jennifer Aniston where he killed himself, ugh, I forget the last name…” Bear in mind, I am trying to explain this pre-Brokeback Mountain.

“No way, that’s not her,” she says.

“Yes, it’s her! It’s the Film Festival, we are in front Holt Renfrew, why wouldn’t it be her?” Seriously, it’s not like I told her I saw the Easter Bunny. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as though she appears from vapours on special command by a sorcerer from Planet Prada. Celebrities are not regular folk, let’s just say it right now. Maggie G-Hole`s shit doesn’t stink and I will tell you why: I have learnt to spell her last name since that day. I do not know how to spell my own mother’s maiden name, true story, because there is an “i before e” scenario that I never remember is part of a rule or the exception. Later that day, we both concurred that we did indeed see Nick Nolte and he was drunk. We gave him a toonie for a cup of coffee, he looked like he could use one.

I`ve become less enthralled by this whole TIFF thing as the years go by, only because it’s become so popular. I’m a star-ho but I’m also a snob because I went to film school. It`s all pompous semantics. Movies versus Films. What’s the difference? You “rent” a movie but you “watch” a film. Let’s make a metaphor: The first is a hooker, the second your neighbour’s wife. Movies are disposable, films are coveted. One plays every second weekend on Peachtree, the other you saw only once, one Tuesday afternoon at a film festival, like the TIFF. And you are lucky if you ever come across it again. Never on Netflix, which is run by the Taliban, so you are left with only foggy film memories. I’ve got a whole archive of cinematic favourites stored in my otherwise dimly-lit theatre of grey matter. As a film buff, I have these fan letters:

Dear TIFF: Keep on trucking and keep your eyes on the road. This isn’t Hollywood.

Dear George Clooney: Shave the “beard.” We all know the truth.

Dear Brad Pitt: It’s okay, we all make mistakes. Add some Borax to your bathwater and it will wash off. Just go home. To Oklahoma! Love you!

Dear Ryan Gosling: Call me!

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11

Sep. ’11

Pro Tennis Strike!

Relax, just jokes, there is no “pro tennis strike.”  But that is my name, Kristin Peterson,  in an anagram.  Cool, huh?  I figured that out using some loose Scrabble tiles when I had no one to play with.  My family and I were once big on Scrabble, we played all the time.  I don’t play any “board” Scrabble anymore, just the mutated on-line version called “Lexulous”  featured on Facebook.  Talk about upping one’s game.   If you make up a word, it won`t let you put it down.  There is an on-line dictionary of all the finest words known to humanity, including the English Sowpods version of the word `jiz`with one zed or zee.  When I (and my Scrabblemaster Goddess sister, Sue) started playing this a few years ago, the rest of the family began to look like nitwits.  One Christmas, our normally brilliant graduate student nephew challenged us on words like “qi,”  “xu,” and “za.”  “These are not words!”  He protested, more than once.  “Yes, they are words, we have learnt them on the internet and we are better than you at this game,”  I said, trying to be patient.  When at one point he put down “Iran” and everyone let it go because we are easy-going Petersons, I had to put my foot down.  “IRAN IS NOT A WORD, IT’S  PROPER NAME OF A COUNTRY!   I CANNOT POSSIBLY PLAY WITH YOU PEOPLE ANYMORE!”  It was too painful, I would rather play X’s and O’s with a small child.  I think that was the end of that family nonsense.   I look at a Scrabble board with no sense of nostalgia whatsoever.  I am in a much better place, I can play Lex on my i-Phone!  Anytime!  With strangers even!

I write this while the US Open is on.  Watching tennis is my porn.  I can spend a nice sunny day sitting inside, happily watching a match during any given Grand Slam.  The US Open is the show pony of the tennis season, for sure.  Certain smug players have worn sequins and tuxedo shorts during their matches.  I have seen real life tennis and I have watched it on tv and I will pick the latter every time.  The camera picks up everything that you can’t see and then some.   I’m talking about the stands.  They love to shoot the players’ girlfriends if they are super hot, which they always are, all blond with their Versace sunglasses and stoney expressions on their vapid, chiseled faces.  The US Open always has a celebrity or two in the midst.  Famous people sitting in an audience of anything is just such a weird juxtaposition, like seeing your teacher in the grocery store and you look in her basket to see what she is buying  and suddenly she is the most fascinating person ever with her haul of  celery, Triscuits, and Laughing Cow cheese.  Today, the enigmatic Stanley Tucci put his bald head on the blimp’s radar and the who-the-hell-does-he-know-to-get-such-great-seats on everyone’s minds.  Such an elitist sport.

What I love about tennis is that while I might plunk my English Sowpods arse on the couch and start cheering for a certain player, I will inevitably end up all adrenal red in the face, yelling at the tv, because I am now on the other player’s side.  I realize it is the excellence of the sport that  I am cheering.  And even a lesser player can show a unique style and elegance that can be celebrated.    These odd players make the greater ones up their game.  When the top seeds are shining it seems like it will last forever.  And in a way, it does. They become legends.   Bjorn Borg?  I’d still hit it.  Call me!

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04

Sep. ’11

Singing The Labour Day Blues

I hate this weekend. Every second that passes fills me with dread. It’s like death spread over three days. Labour Day weekend. I can’t even say it out loud. In fact, it’s so quiet out that the cicadas, those bugs that `sing`with that constant white noise, are fading, the buzz is no longer long and shrill but short and abrupt. For them, it’s last call at Squirrely McMaggot”s. The cold is coming, so it`s time to drop some eggs and squirt some juice or whatever it is an insect will do to keep next year’s Bugapoolaza a happening event. Finish your concert and take a short flight off that tree you’ve squatted on for 3 months. Jackie Frost is making his way to town. His fat ass is white and fluffy, charming and delightful at first but after a few weeks, he becomes mean and slushy. We hate him. And when he comes, it means we have to wear socks. And when you wear socks, you are also going to have to wear proper shoes. And when you wear proper shoes, you might as well just sign your organ donor card. You know it’s over when the fat wasp can’t even make it into the beer can to drown. Sadness. I love summer so. And flip flops.

But you know what? I’m not going to get all bummed out or ruin your weekend because while summer is great, autumn has its perks. It’s a new start, a chance to reinvent yourself. I remember in Grade 8 was my turning point year of taking the new school year on by the short and curlies. I was a gawky, awkward nerd in Grade 7. But after that summer, I had a new haircut. Short and sassy. A peasant top tucked into a pair of high-waisted white washed super flared jeans. Some kind of leather twine necklace that some boy gave me that summer in Cape Cod. If I could only remember his name, I would be all over his Facebook. Oh you know me too well…of course I remember his name: Brian Bohane from Boston, there’s more than one and I am sure I am just another one his disposable “cicadas.” He was 16, I was 14, and it was my first romance. Ish. And when I say “ish,” I mean he would stare at me at the tuck shop and I would look back, and he would look down at his feet. I would look away, and look back, and he would be looking. When he caught me looking back, he would look away. I would look away. Then when I looked back, he would be looking away. Then when I looked away, and looked back, he would be looking.. This safety dance led to one make-out session on the eve of the end of the vacation that included a one-way genital grope, not mine because earlier that day he saw me at the tuck shop buy a box of Tampax. My first! Tampon! Ever! A bone in the hand is worth a ‘pon in the bush` became my motto. That gave me the power to trot through the hallways in September. It`s all about what you wear, inside and out.

So fall will always be about wardrobe planning. A pair of Frye boots might not make me a different person but it make trudging through the snow a far more powerful beast. So will the cashmere sweaters and the Burberry scarf.

Cicadas, shut your pie holes. Your shrilling vocal text messages disturbs my television watching. And the rest of you bugs and birds, take your business down south via the I-95. Make your needs known down there with the snakes and lizards because it’s over in this neck of the woods. The mice and the raccoons have their own pension plan up here in the north but that`s okay. I got some traps and poison.

And I leave you with this:

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11

Aug. ’11

The Remainder Man

Last night I slept on my daughter’s windowsill on the third floor of our house which looks on to the street.  I had houseguest from the U.K. and I gave them my bedroom because I figured I could sleep with Evangeline up in her room.  We had spent the evening on the back deck drinking beers and reminiscing over our teenage years.  They are one of those couples that I would aspire to be if I had the coupling gene.  They also told me their secret to a successful marriage but I’m not going to tell you what is because my M.O. is to make everyone single again, like in our twenties, so I can level the playing field.  Suffice to say, as a duo , they are actually fun to be around and you never think when is he/she going to dump his/her ass?  Anyway when I went up to my daughter’s room, drunk-ish, there was no way she would have me in her bed.  I was wearing my bathrobe and I left my pyjamas somewhere downstairs.  She made me sleep on the window seat behind the curtains so she couldn’t see me and my snoring would be muffled.  When I woke up at sunrise, my robe had swung upon and my bare buttocks were pressed against the window.  Delicatessen hams for sale!  She didn’t even give me a blanket!

In my hangover-ish state this morning I had pangs of anxiety which is really my Spidey senses on high alert.  Whilst I made us all wild boar bacon in the George Foreman grill, scrambled eggs from the free-range  chicken farm, my guests and I gossiped about a gay couple that we know.  He said: “I can’t even tell them apart, they are morphing into each other!”  I think they have always looked alike, two slightly different versions of Cary Grant, which is why they coupled up, as some kind of extension of their Narcissism.  I read about this coupling strategy in Marie Claire, opposites might attract but they don`t stay together.  My ex-husband`s more simplified theory is that you should marry someone with the same colour hair as your own.  Mine is chestnut-brown and his blond is the colour of wet concrete which was by his estimation, the basis of our demise.  He is happy as a clamdigger with his fiancée who`s blondeness is maintained by a professional.  There`s a punchline there somewhere that you can come up with yourself because I am still slightly hung over.

When my guests were packing up to leave around noon, we sat on my front porch to gather our wits, when a man on a motorcycle pulled up in my driveway.  And from what I could see, he was cute!  And then he took off his helmet and it was Bob!  Who is Bob?  You might wonder.  Bob is my soul mate.  No, I am not some delusional single gal, projecting fantasies on to some poor sap and why, if he is my soul mate, do I sleep alone with my ass in the window?  Because Bob is my Remainder Man.  I know it’s not quite as panty-creaming as The Notebook but the concept of a Remainder Man is actually quite romantic.  Let me explain.  But hold on, I need to get a beer first.

I met Bob 11 years ago, when my kids were little but not hanging off my teat.  I was hot stuff, in my prime.  It was a hormonal thing beyond my control.  My previously dormant mojo had taken its nursing bra off and was acting like a 16-year-old boy on Chatroullette.  We went to the same gym and he would take care of his girlfriend’s two little kids so we be became acquainted in the daycare.  The very first time I saw him, I felt like I had known him for a hundred years.  And because he is the most gregarious man on the planet and I, the horniest  lady, we hit it off immediately.  We would have beers together at the gym restaurant.  His girlfriend eventually dumped him for a ginger man!  At the time, that was unheard of.  Gingers, in the pre-Prince Harry era, were perceived kind of wimpy and Bob is the opposite.   He is burly, muscle-y, walks with a jaunty gate, and when he smiles he has dimples and his eyebrows move back.   In case you were wondering, his hair is the same colour as mine, chestnut-brown, but he buzz cuts it and has the best widow’s peak ever.   His hands are good too (clean fingernails) and he can fix stuff.  She was stupid to dump him, I remember thinking back then, and she actually married that ginger dude and moved to country.  And Bob became my Remainder Man. 

The most important thing about the R-Man is that it is kept strictly platonic.  His role in your life and your role in his is to be there when you are both too tired or disgusting to bother to get in the game.  You must have a certain amount of sexual tension with your Remainder Man but do not act upon it, otherwise it will complicate everything!  You need to be kind of proud your R-Man because sometimes you need to prance him around the village like a show pony so that people will see you together and wonder if you are an item.  The humiliating image of you sleeping on a window sill with your bare ass pressed against the glass will be erased when they see you riding on the back of a motorcycle with your R-Man.  Sometimes the reason the R-Man is not your actual boyfriend is because his flaws are deal breakers. Bob likes country music (shudder).  In theory, when the timing is right,  those things won’t matter.  And by the way, when we get old, pretty much everyone ends up with white hair.  The nursing home becomes the most level playing field of them all!

When Bob got another girlfriend two and a half years ago, he kind of disappeared out of my life.  She is an introvert and disapproves of his party-animal lifestyle.  As it turned out, Bob bought a motorcycle last week.  And he and his girlfriend broke up last night.  She doesn’t get his nature and is tired of his camel-toe staring ways.  Her loss, my gain.  For now, at least, my Remainder Man is back but there is no way I`m going for a ride on that motorcycle!  Too scary!  And with that, I leave you with our song:

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