23

Apr. ’10

Apothecary Now!

Last week one of my oldest friends from childhood came to town to stay with me for a few days. She also brought her Aunt Flo. My Aunt Flo caught wind of this visit and came barrelling over bringing along her twin zits. My Aunt Flo loves a party and never misses a vacation. She also enjoys weddings, funerals, yoga classes, and long walks on the beach. She should have her own Facebook profile. This post isn’t going where you think it is, no clogged toilets, doggie waste dispenser invasions, or hormones gone wild. My friend has started using a contraption called The DivaCup. During your mense (in case you haven’t figured out the true identity of Aunt Flo), instead of using tampons, you insert a cup made if health care grade silicone up your vagina and it collects all the goop, for hours longer than your super plus regular protection. The coolest part is that you have the satisfaction of seeing how much you actually produce and it’s not the Humber River in March like you thought. You clean it out and you use it again. Follow the instructions, I’m not going to go into more details about this thing except to say: go get one now before menopause hits and you waste your pension on paying $8.99 a month on a box of ‘pons. The DivaCup retails for under $40, do the math. I found my DivaCup at Beach Apothecary, 1854 Queen Street East. What a great place. Michael Bushey ordered one for me and it came in a couple days, just in time (My Aunt Flo comes in like a lamb and out like a lion). Beach Apothecary specializes in Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), pain management, and veterinary compounding. They have herbal products and homeopathic remedies. It’s a very friendly atmosphere, definitely a pharmacy worth checking out for the whole family!

Posted by . Categories: Do This Not That, go girl, Handy Hints. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment

23

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Golden Years

Where Am I? Hint: Not in Kansas

I know most of you know me as the Wicked Witch of the East but I do love a broom ride to the west side. One of my “retirement” case scenarios is that I’m an old bat in a vintage Juicy Couture velour sweatsuit (it’s the future!) living with a barrel bodied, overfed chihuahua in a bedsit right in the heart of Kensington Market. I don’t really know what a bedsit is, I think I heard the word on Coronation Street but I am sure they have them in the KM. Everything is in Kensington Market, even forgotten time. I visit it every so often, like a tourist, and I am always surprised that the shops take Canadian currency. Architecturally, it’s a couple of blocks of crazy. It looks like my Grade 4 Project where I recreated an African village using shoe boxes, pipe cleaners, and plasticine. It seems like you could drop a match and the whole place would burn….but why would you? It is one the sweetest hoods in Toronto.

Yes, go home Frank Gehry and leave an old lady alone with her popsicles sticks and glue gun. Kensington Market should be its own little municipality like the Vatican. The shopping here is actually holy. Back in the early 1980s, my very first “serious” boyfriend (I use the word serious with curlicues on the side because I can laugh about it now but at the time it was as maudlin as anything Morrisey ever moaned about), took a trip to New York City with his buddy and we he came back, he trilled, gayly: “The shopping! You can get anything in New York!” My present was a five foot long fully functioning pencil. A giant pencil…no joke. He couldn’t get on that plane now because they would have held him in customs for being an asshole. Move on (he turned out to be a hoarder, amongst other things)….Blue Banana is a giant, two level store on Augusta where you can get anything as long as you’re not looking for it. Two levels of really cool, unique, stuff and not a giant pencil in sight:

Take that for loads of crap, Manhattan!

And after parusing this store (trust me, it could take hours, your butt cheeks will chafe for sure), trot across the street to Waterfalls for a pint and some Indian Tapas:

It’s a great place for people watching, Flying Monkeys on tap, and somosas and bajias. Don’t feel sad for me when I’m a batty old lady because I will the Queen Of Kensington! (feel free to perform an intervention if I become a hoarder)

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20

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Sharp New Brows

Most things can be fixed with duct tape. Some things can be saved with a Sharpie pen. Off I went this morning to Staples to get a stamp made for my business cards saying “visit my blog: mytorontoeh.com” AND for a black Sharpie pen to cross out a certain line to save myself from ordering another 2000…it is Earth week after all. I love a small chore and a visit to Gerrard Square. I never come out empty handed, am a sucker for a kiosk where they have some really good ones for iPhone covers and danglies for the rearview mirror. Today I wasn’t really there to browse because I meant business and so did the cholita who served me. Lovely girl and amazing service but! eyebrows that were part Joan Crawford and other part Grade 6 Geometry, all angles and arches and curves in perfect symmetry and coloured in with the precision of a true artiste. I relate to Joan Crawford who once called her one wild, curly, errant eyebrow hair “Oscar” and she refused to let her makeup artist pluck “him” out. Me, I’m not so attached to my Oscars as they make me look like a grouch. So off I went to The Brow House to get my brows “designed” for the first time in all my 80 years. Yes, I have been using tweezers but also kitchen shears to trim them. I am the pot calling the kettle black when I obsess over other people’s eyebrows. Eyes may be the windows to the soul but the brows are their gossip columns.

The Brow House 1256 Queen Street East, east of Leslie

The ladies at the Brow House take eyebrows seriously. They combine art and science when creating the perfect brow. The fuzzy small hairs are waxed and the long ones are plucked. Oscars are brushed and trimmed. The absentee ones that you lost from old age or overplucking are reborn with a special wand filled with cholita dust and feathered on with precison strokes that God should have done in the first place. Does it hurt? I don’t know, who cares? Do I look exquisite? Yes, I do:

Next trip: Botox Village

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16

Apr. ’10

What to Wear? Hint: Not Yoga Pants

Stupid Lululemon.  In my winter of discontent, I wore black yoga pants almost everyday…all covered in dog hair, with visible panty lines in a misguided attempt to cover up the camel toe.  Initially I trusted them make me look cute at the gym but instead all they did was cradle my expanding girth.  The irony, and oh, the humanity.  But Spring has sprung, my leaky nostrils and quivering loins tell me so…and as you know through recent posts I have been Eating Better (except for the fry truck, gravy shot at CanTire,shhh) and I have been hula hooping, getting the old mojo pumped.  Today I took a Pilates class for the first time and I liked it!  I`ll keep up with it in the summer, there is no way I will wear Spanx in July.  With the turn of the season, the age old question is what to wear?  I am a Lady Of a Certain Age with the mentality of a 12 year old boy.  Earlier this month at the One of a Kind Show, I bought a dress from Precocious.  They make dresses out of old tshirts:

They even do custom work so you can wear your ex- boyfriend’s Ed Hardy tshirt mixed in with some other remnant, like the ubiquitis 3 Wolf Moon shirt from 2009….yes, I have one:

I can’t wait to see what couture they come up with this …www.precociouscouture.com and by appointment 416-895-8537.

Also at the One of a Kind Show was IF: Indivially Fashioned  http://www.iftoronto.com/ with some very cool dresses that would appeal to women of all ages.  This Sunday, April 18, there is a special sale at Praxis Gallery 1614 Queen St WEST (West!!!  Go west this time, which is why it is a Field Trip), 3 blocks east of Roncasvailles, 11 am to 5 pm…sounds like fun and I hope to get there after the Sprockets Festival (see previous post).

Last Fall, I particularly liked Banana Republic for it Madmen theme …http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/ and duh, obviously I am Joan.  For my Real Estate Lady outfits, I embraced saturated colours and pencils skirts.  And Spanx, of course.  But I’m going to soften things up this spring and shop in this store, Sweetings, on Queen Street East:

Here is Maria, the shop owner’s daughter with her favourite dress.  There’s lots to choose from here and I love to support local clothing boutiques because they have unique pieces.  Sweetings is at 1920 Queen St East, 2 blocks east of Woodbine  http://www.sweetings.ca/  So If I am caught wearing yoga pants this summer, it is because I am to and from a Pilates class and didn’t have time to change, that’s my story for now.

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15

Apr. ’10

Purple Haze

What fresh hell is this?  Well, there goes the neighbourhood!  They’re finally building the condos at the corner of Rainsford and Queen Street East starting from $500,00 to $2.5 million.  Yes of course it’s thrilling for a realtor and a resident(cha-ching) of the immediate neighbourhood known as the  Beaches Triangle.  But sometimes it is sad to see things go…this is the Purple Patch of Queen Street (I`m going to write a song about it)…the place where the man (crazy or eccentric?  I’m not the judge) in a manic frenzy painted the entire block purple one summer, including his neighbour’s houses, the street signs and newspaper stand.  He got in big old trouble by the city of course, so he painted everything white….and then purple again….oy!  That’s a lot of work for a joke….I wish he’s come and paint my porch, I could use some purple in my life.  This is his house now.  I like the yellow accents:

And what small child (and raccoon) doesn’t delight in the koi pond under the bridge?  I’m sad to see it go.  Its frontage is a landmark.  And as an aside (and shameless plug), the backyard was used as Happytime  Sushi in my son’s short film for this weekend’s Sprockets Film Festival: http://sprockets.ca/default.aspx You can click on to Freddy’s film here called “Box Boy” (don’t worry it’s short and funny): http://www.youtube.com/user/FJ033

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13

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Big Box

The French Fry Truck at Canadian Tire, Leslie & Lakeshore Blvd East

Okay, I know how the good citizens of Leslieville are in a kerfuffle over big box stores. The idea of a big, fugly Walmart killing all the cute shoppes along Queen Street doesn’t thrill me either. Besides I actually enjoy my drive to the suburbs to hunt for sold-out game systems in the land of Best Buy and Future Shite. But I hate when people say something bad about my Canadian Tire, the one in Leslieville. Please do not refer to it as “Crappy Tire”-it was funny in 1991, (like when people call Target, Tar-jay, ho ho ho). I don’t care what anyone says, I get my car serviced there…I do not have an “in” with one of those little mechanics on Kingston Road and I never know what you’re talking about when you say he’s east of Main on the North side behind the flower shop, I will not go there. Canadian Tire has all my info in their computer, your mechanic doesn’t even have opposable thumbs much less a proper address. And I love the Pit Stop. The name conjures up something romantic in my imagination. The last time I was there, the young, ginger buck at the desk had lips so chapped they were bleeding. I went to the Shopper Drug Mart while I waited for my wipers to be replaced and I bought him a CHERRY CHAPSTICK! How grateful was he….sigh! Also I love the smell of Canadian Tire….intense rubber. It`s the same exact smell as the Canadian Tire in Beloeil, Quebec that my Dad used to take me to when I was a child. I would wander the aisles, intoxicated by the smell and pretend the hoses were snakes and I’d run and try and find him. He`d always buy me ball at the checkout…that kind you put in pantyhose and then knock against the wall, remember that game? Why don’t kids play that anymore? Oh yeah, because they are all inside playing video games FROM BIG BOX STORES! To me Canadian Tire isn’t a big box store as much as a tradition…hoses and balls and rubber…okay it’s also a bit of fetish. And another thing as a child, we used to hit the french fry stand called Patateville for the world’s greatest fries. These are the fries that set the standard for the rest of my life, by the way. In all my years in Ontario, all (except the ones at Prohibition…future post) have paled in comparison until today. As though the gods of nostalgia were smiling upon me when a saviour, known for now as the fry man, opened up a french fry truck a couple of months ago that is permanently parked in the parking lot of The Canadian Tire on Lakeshore. I’m telling you, these fries are little golden slivers of heaven…LOOK AT THEM:

and yes, that’s a little tub of gravy…so what? Sometimes a lady needs gravy now and again.

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12

Apr. ’10

Saturday Night’s Alright for Freddy

The Burger Shoppe, 688 Queen Street East, west of Broadview

By the way, I’m still on that Eating Better kick, just so you know. But I have to say, on weekends I do love my takeout. There’s me, my daughter Evangeline 16, and my son, Freddy,14, whose hankerings are often in competition. “Why is Friday always pizza night?” my daughter always complains, Because Freddy says so. You do not want to mess with tradition. Last Friday though, we sent him to the movies and ordered Indian behind his back. Evangeline has expanded her palette greatly over the last 2 years but! since her biology class dissected a pig a month ago, pork products have become verboten. The pickled piglet in question resembled our barrel bodied, stumpy legged dog, Betty. Pigs are now too cute to eat. I don’t care about pork chops but I love bacon in all its forms so when I’m out, you can be sure I order it. Il Fornello makes the best fig pizza with proscuitto, by the way. And how can you eat a perogi without a bacon bits? Don’t get me started….anyway, last Friday we ordered a bunch of lentils and chick peas from Makkah (1020 Danforth Ave 416-406-2500) and it was yum! The next night, Freddy, aka Jughead Jones, demanded burgers. Now I will eat almost anything happily but I usually feel kind of meh about burgers and of course, Evangeline is slowly becoming more righteously vegetarian but no one felt like arguing so off we went to The Burger Shoppe. http://www.burgershoppe.com/newsite1/splash.html

They use naturally raised beef (a happy cow is a delicious cow) and have all kinds of cool condiments…I amost ordered bacon for mine but I thought that would be kind of overkill so to speak. Instead I had carmelized onions, chipotle aoli, and blue cheese and it was fantastic. We all agreed, best burgers around! This Burger Shoppe is a small place but really cute and they have other locations in the west end. Here we had a choice of exotic sodas like spruce beer. The burgers themselves are just the right size, not like those massive ones a few doors east at Dangerous Dan’s who gets his inspiration from the Double D’s across the street at Jilly’s. They make them how you want them, rare, medium, well done. Ours were medium (ever so slightly pink in the middle) which were perfect. It’s a bit pricier than your average burger anywhere else but definitely worth it. And Freddy forgot about pizza. Another tradition is born.

Posted by . Categories: Eat & Drink. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments

08

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Mojo Rising

my hula hoops: the answer to core conditioning or potential dust collectors?  We shall see!

This story starts with a hula hoop and ends with pot stickers, just follow along.  You know how people always say “everything happens for a reason” as though there is some all knowing force with a hidden agenda maneuvering us along like some kid at a Nintendo console playing Pokemon Stadium?  It’s a frustrating concept, believe me I know, as though losing your job or getting dumped feels good knowing you’re going to have to come up with a resume or make up a profile on Plenty of Fish when all you want to do is take to the bed.  For me, I feel the gods of fate just seem just make their abitrary moves at commercial breaks so I don’t really take them all that seriously.  I do, however, notice signs.  You know how when you learn a new word and then you hear it all the time….it`s not like that word didn`t exist, it`s just that you weren`t paying attention. I learned the word `kiosk` in university and even though I had been going to the Orange Julep stand (aka. kiosk) all my life, I didn`t know what it was called. What a revelation!    Well the other day, I was at my gym, doing my usual meandering, fantasizing, sighing combo, when I noticed a hula hoop resting against the wall.  I love to hula hoop!  At least I used to, and I even won a hula contest in the Bahamas years ago on a stage, in the wind, in a bikini.  But I was too afraid to try it…I was in the gym afterall, where people go through great painstaking measures to ignore you, yet they are watching all side eyed so you better act normal.  But the next day, I was skimming through the Star and there was Marisa Tomei (she`s a LOCA, too…lady of a certain age) talking about how she looked so good naked in The Wrestler thanks to….the Hula Hoop!!  Well who doesn’t want to look good naked, if even just for the neighbours across the street?  So back at the gym, I picked up that hoop…and guess what?  Fish to water!  I shimmied for 15 minutes straight.  I knew I needed one for home because things at the gym come and go and there was only one of its kind there.  This one is rubberized and weighted, not light and plastic. The trainer who brought it in said he got it at T&T which is an Asian grocery store.  Wow, weird…but convenient. 

T&T Supermarket at 222 Cherry, just south of Commissioners

So Amy (another trainer) and I hightailed to T&T and sure enough, there were 2 hula hoops left.  Don’t get excited, we took the last ones and I also got another one that can be dismantled with with “massage balls” on the inside.  I have a ring of bruises around my midriff thanks to the massage balls but it is a heavy hoop (the heavier the better) and if I wear a sweatshirt, it might be okay.  But hoops aside, T&T is fantastic.  First of all, I love grocery stores and I go to my usual one  pretty much every day.  Even on vacation, I love to grocery shop.  As a kid when we went to Florida, we didn’t go to Disney World, we went to the Piggly Wiggly.  I love grocery stores the way Tiger loves the ladies…I might be married to Loblaws at Leslie and Eastern but I like to dip into others.  T&T has all things Asian: a whole display of Hello Kitty and Astro Boy and two aisles dedicated to the Ramen noodle alone.  And mulitiple flavoured Pockys, who knew there was caramel?  The best part was the ready made section where they have hot dumplings and pot stickers. How I love pot stickers especially when someone  makes them…I’ve been back twice since.

Anyway, the hula hoop:  I will keep you posted as to how my progress is going.  It seems to be doing something (other than bruising).  According to Marisa Tomei, it’s the tiny muscles that make all the difference, the little ones hold the guts in.  It’s definitely more fun than Pilates and I can feel a little pull in my pelvic region.  Maybe my mojo will wake up and roar again. Until then, I have pot stickers and a Hello Kitty tattoo.

Posted by . Categories: Do This Not That, Eat & Drink. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments

06

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Cool Spot

The skate park at Coxwell Ave and Lakeshore Blvd East

I have to say, every time I swing by this park, I smile.  I know what you’re thinking and no, I am not some crazed cougar prowling for prey…By the way, I call myself a LOCA (lady of a certain age), but you know cougar is okay too. Own it, as I always say.  The reason I love this park is for the simple fact that the city of Toronto built it.  You can pass by this place at any time during the day, and you will see kids hanging out on their boards, probably ditching school!  It’s as though the city is encouraging bad behaviour!  And why is this a good thing?  Because as an ex-Montrealer, I am tired of defending Toronto and its puritanical ways. Sometimes it’s embarassing like years ago, the mayor banned the Bare Naked Ladies from playing at city hall because their name is offensive.  I pretend it doesn’t really matter that that the cheese curds in our poutine does not squeak (this is actually heartbreaking for me), but we can turn right on a red light, though!   There are so many rules and  unspoken social mores  here in T.O.  In Montreal, a man can walk into a corner Depanneur wearing a speedo and no one bats an eye…the best part is, he can buy beer! It gets so oppressive here that a LOCA such as myself in order to rebel will purposefully disable a grocery cart at Loblaws by pushing it over the invisible locking line in the parking lot.  The skate part is a symbol of hope, a graffiti’d beacon for slackers.  And here they are…and some of them are wearing helmets, you can’t take the good completely out of Toronto:

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05

Apr. ’10

Kristin’s Deep Fried Easter

What would Jesus do?   I’m sure he’d be out in his groovy sandals with his bunny ears strapped on, passing out business cards at the annual  Beaches Lions Easter Parade on this fine day.  Me? Been there done that.  For two years in a row, I was The Beaches Easter Bunny, and got to put on a Peter Rabbit suit (fantastic, with a waistcoat and boots and a giant head) and sit in a convertible mustang with real agent extraordonaire, Gerry DeClute.  What fun!  I was The Bunny at the end of the parade,waving at the adoring crowds,  on the local news and in the Toronto Star the next day (haha, that’s me in that bunny suit, I’d say to the barrista at Starbucks and the men picking up the recycling the next day).  The second year, something happened.  It was as though the Vegas strip came to the village. There were floats with rap artists (“rap artist”, an oxymoron, I know) and show girls in bikinis!  The killer though, is that there were dozens of bunnies doing cirque de soleil style acrobats giving out i-Pods and Toblerone bars and mingling with the ogling pedestrians.  And I was just another bunny in the same old rented Peter Rabbit suit at the tail end of the extravangaza of the millenium, sitting in the back of an old red sports car driven by old Gerry DeClute in an old tuxedo that should have been rented but one he probably bought for some ReMax awards ceremony at a roller rink…talk about a lunch bag let down…seriously, there can only be one bunny in an Easter parade, who did these imposters think they are?  I quit then and there. What a confusing holiday anyway…feels like Sunday when it’s Saturday, liquor stores are closed, and hot cross buns are dryer than biscotti, what’s the buzz with those?  Furthermore, what kind of religion can concoct such a strange brouhaha of non sequitors?  I’d like to see documentation of the evolution of a crucifiction leading to an egg hunt.  Germany must have been involved somehow….and by the way, question to Cadbury: bunnies don’t lay eggs but they drop brown pellets, what exactly are you trying to sell?  I’m not bitter about my bunnydom, I did do some pre-parade mingling and I did discover everyone loves a parade, especially all things cute:

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