should old acquaintance be forgot

the opening lines of Auld Lang Syne always strike a melancholy chord in me.

at this time of year, you can’t help but hear that song in any number of christmas specials or christmas movies or new year’s eve celebrations, and it’s one i’ve always found strangely sad. should old acquaintance be forgot? should they? are they? and, if they are, what does that mean?

it makes me think of – makes me bring to mind, as it were – people i know, people i love, people i care about, people who have wandered out of my life, people who arrived into it, people who have disappeared, people who have metaphorically held my hand.

this year, especially, those thoughts have leaned on my heart a little more than usual. not in a bad way, just in a more tender way.

sometimes i wonder about friends i no longer hear from or see.

sometimes i wonder if the people i miss ever miss me.

and sometimes i wonder if, when Auld Lang Syne plays, the faint whisper of my name ever drifts through anyone else’s mind for a moment.

as people who have read this blog this year know, 2010 was a challenge. a year when i became well-acquainted with suck... so much so that i actually declared my 2010 over back in september.

for a while, it was a year of struggle, of personal and professional loss, and one where i definitely did feel forgotten. but, very slowly and much to my eventual relief, those things led to some personal and professional growth. i began to remember who i am and, bit by bit, started to put the pieces of me back together properly. it wasn’t always an easy process and, though i was sometimes caught up in the tangles of my own gloom spiral, i remained keenly aware of who stuck around through the tumult and who backed out of the proverbial room.

2010 was a learning experience on many levels, to be sure, and it came with its own set of important life lessons. thankfully, as a result, i’ll be entering 2011 with a touch more clarity, a few minor battle scars and my feet more securely beneath me.

and when the familiar strains of that classic celtic tune waft through the air today and tonight, i will put the year to rest with gratitude and peace. i will think of those faces near and distant, the ones i will always remember fondly.

and i will raise my cup of kindness yet.

for auld lang syne.

five fast NYE-morning facts

* my apartment has gone from very cold to very hot. i have the windows open and it’s still 24ºC in here.
* i have not received any mail since december 23rd.
* i am having Treats From the Freezer™ for lunch.
* today is the very last day of cosmic guidance from my calendar of lies.
* i forgot to use my coupon for a free DVD rental.

a pre-NYE blessing... or meditation... or thought... or prayer...

... or whatever you'd like it to be.

sealed

after three years of living with second-hand smoke drifting into my apartment from the hallway via the assorted gaps around my door, i have finally -- and with some degree of positional creativity -- sealed all those effing cracks.

the unstable girl at the end of the hall (she of the middle-of-the-night tantrums and police visits) smokes like a chimney some days and, on the days when that coincides with the wind blowing from the west, the breezes go through her unit and capture all that smoke, pulling it out the cracks around her door and into the hall. there, the smoke collects and then weaves its way through any available opening in its quest to find freedom.

usually, my door is one such opening.

and, frankly, i hate it. since the likelihood of the smoke's source suddenly packing her bags of crazy and moving out is slim-to-none, i realized a solution would have to come from me, within my own apartment. i needed a way to prevent that smoke from getting in.

the already-as-thin-as-it-comes weather stripping i purchased a few weeks ago proved too thick to fit between the door and the jamb. with a small test piece in place, i could no longer close and lock my door. dammit. i removed the test strip and figured i'd be stuck with the smell whenever my neighbour might come unhinged and light up.

and then, this morning, an idea.

40 minutes later, that weather stripping was successfully applied to the exterior of the jamb, so that its edges were pushed up against the perimeter of the door. i can open and close it without incident and, with a few tiny exceptions, there appears to be a fairly secure seal.

i'm quite proud of my ingenuity and handiwork, if i do say so myself. not only might this ensure i no longer have a bathroom, kitchen and bedroom that reek faintly of cigarettes a few times a month, but my white door now has a slender and spiffy black frame that matches all the picture frames nearby.

a host of holiday highlights

0 i spent three days chez YB. we had christmas dinner (well, lunch) at my parents’ house, then headed back to her place and hung out in our pyjamas until yesterday afternoon. we watched season one of my new favourite show (Sons of Anarchy, which is uh-may-zing), made food, snacked and loafed. it was great!

0 as an aside, there were many valuable life lessons for me to glean from the aforementioned new favourite show... not the least of which was recognizing when it’s time to stop putting up with crap and when it's time to take your life by the short hairs. as such, i’m thinking of embracing my inner bad-ass next year. also...

0 i basically didn’t speak to my father over christmas. i thanked him and my mom for their christmas gifts (all of which were chosen, purchased and wrapped by mom), but that was about it. i did wind up buying him a jar of jam so that there would be *some* gift from me. i didn’t do this for him, i did it to keep the peace and minimize the chance he’d throw some kind of spoiled-child tantrum to wreck everyone else’s day.

0 in germ news, i did wind up sending a very polite email to the parish where father malaria joe handed out cooties. i’m not sure anyone of note will ever see it – i kind of think the office manager or whoever handles incoming email will delete it upon receipt – but i feel better having sent it. especially since YB and i will likely attend NYE mass there on friday.

0 i’m trying to prep for a more creative 2011. i’ve begun reading julia cameron’s The Artist’s Way and will start her “course” properly in january. i need to buy a spiral-bound notebook in the meantime.

0 much to my panic and dismay, my daily-horoscope calendar of lies has, like so many of my favourite products, been officially discontinued. therefore, the page-a-day cosmic guidance on which i’ve relied for so many years (eight? nine? ten? i’ve lost count) won’t exist in 2011. i’m just not sure a sudoku-a-day or a crossword-a-day or a cute-photo-of-a-cat-a-day calendar will provide me the nudges, signs or motivation i need.

0 regarding this leather-bound journal from umpteen posts ago: it was a gift from a friend. its pages are blank and the paper is the sort of thick, rough stock that looks handmade. the cover is still stiff and the smell of leather is strong but nice. i felt a curious pressure when i received it, as though this was something one might give a poet or an author or some other scribe who writes under the shade of an oak tree or in a paris café. plus, i had no idea for what i might use it. then, as our lunchtime conversation continued, my friend suggested i use it as something of a gratitude journal – to write down one good thing about each day as it passes. and that’s exactly what i’ve done every day since. i think it’ll be interesting to read through it in a year and to look back on what struck me as the days passed.

0 further to writing, i had all these rich blog entries i thought i would write over the past week or so. i had a lot that i wanted to say – that i still want to say – but i just didn’t find a way to say much of it. then i started thinking about the other would-be posts that had fallen by the wayside this past year – most notably, the I Am From assignment of many many months ago. sometimes, i don’t write these entries because getting them out seems daunting and scary, content-wise. sometimes, i don't write them because i think, "really? who's gonna care about this?" and, sometimes, i just don’t write them because i get lazy, stay in my pyjamas and watch a bunch of bikers beat the crap out of each other for 13 episodes. in a row.

christmas eve mass with father malaria joe

you'd think we would have learned our lesson.

last night, YB and i decided to go to christmas eve mass. we opted to attend mass at the church that's within walking distance of YB's house. some of you may recall this parish, because it's the one we foolishly opted to attend back in april when we wound up sitting through the worst easter mass ever. we reasoned, though, that last year's christmas and new year's masses at this particular church were actually okay, and that the congregation would be outraged if the parish tried to eschew traditional holiday hymns for some awful, modernized hooey. plus, it was close, and we could walk there, and mass was nice and early in the evening.

so, off we went.

at first, everything seemed to be going well. there was no band, there were no screens or projectors with lyrics to songs no one had ever heard of before, and the mass began, as it should, with O Come All Ye Faithful.

however...

shortly after mass began, trixie leaned over to me and pointed out that one of the priests assisting with the mass clearly had one mother of a cold or flu. he wasn't presiding, but he was certainly participating.

his nose -- which he kept blowing over and over again throughout mass -- was bright red. he was coughing a lot. then drinking from the water bottle he'd tucked nearby. then coughing some more. then blowing his nose.

ew.

i was horrified -- he was like a giant petrie dish. i promptly dubbed him "father malaria joe."

surely, i thought, he'll sit out the exchanging of peace. years ago, when toronto was hit with SARS, the archdiocese instituted new practices so that parishioners and celebrants no longer shook hands. instead, you would offer a sign of peace in the form of a nod or a smile or some other gesture that did not involve any person-to-person contact so as to prevent the spread of germs.

yet when it came time for this portion of the mass, father malaria joe not only participated, he shook the hands of the presiding priest, the deacon and all FIVE of the altar servers. some churches now have pumps of hand sanitizer beside the altar so that everyone can quickly and easily sanitize before, say, handling the communion wafers or chalice of wine, but this parish didn't have any. at all. so, there he was, passing his peace and his germs to a whole slew of people who had nothing with which to clean them off.

despite my shock at father malaria joe's seeming cluelessness about germ-spreading, i was certain -- certain -- he would be sensible enough to sit out communion. there was no way he'd dare distribute communion with the same cootie-addled hands into which he'd just spent the prior 40 minutes sneezing and coughing. he couldn't be that inconsiderate or dense.

oh, but he could.

because, just a few moments later, there he was, chalice in hand, standing at the front of the church as folks queued up to receive communion.

without even looking at trix, i said, "no."

even worse, the section of church in which we were sitting was the one he'd been designated to serve.

"no."

i purposely joined another line, and received communion from a lay minister who'd been nowhere near father malaria joe and who hadn't had to shake his germy hand.

yet to my amazement, one after another, parishioners by the dozens stood before father malaria joe and took communion. some even had him place the wafer on their tongues.

and, just to punctuate the proceedings with one last spritz of viral nastiness, as he finished communion and headed back to the altar, father malaria joe let out one more set of coughs.

i was stunned. at the church i'd normally attend with my mom, the head priest would outright forbid ANYONE with a cold or flu from participating in mass at all. in fact, he's often reminded the congregation that, if they're sick or coughing, they should actually stay home so as not to infect their pew mates.

but not at this church.

in addition to his mass duties, father malaria joe finished the evening by standing in the rear vestibule to wish parishioners a merry christmas as they headed out. and so many of them were shaking his hand.

seriously.

i mean, i know i'm germ-phobic, but this was way too irresponsible on the part of the priest and the church. many of the people he was touching, or whose communion wafers he'd handled, are seniors. they really don't need to be taking a flu home along with the weekly newsletter.

as trix and i walked back to her place, we both expressed our surprise and dismay. i said, "i guess a bunch of people will be getting more than the gift of the holy spirit for christmas this year."

vignette: a merry mis-dial

last night, my phone rang.

i picked it up and immediately heard the distinct static of someone calling from a cell phone.

"hello?" i said.

"helllllllooooooooo!" came a happy reply. it was a woman's voice, but i didn't recognize it at all.

"yes, hello?" i repeated.

there was a pause on the other end.

"oh my goodness," said the woman as she began to laugh. "i've dialed the wrong number!"

"not a problem," said i.

the woman kept laughing.

"you sounded just like my daughter!" she said. "that's why i said `helllllllooooooooo!' like that!"

i smiled. "really, no worries," i assured her. "and, by the way, you sound nothing like my mom."

she kept laughing and apologized again for the misdialing.

"totally okay," i said, remarking at what was becoming the most pleasant wrong number i'd ever experienced.

"well, thanks," she said. "and merry christmas to you!"

"merry christmas," i replied. "bye."

and we both hung up.

better luck tomorrow

i had great plans for today. i had three, no... four!, writing pieces i wanted to get done and an empty day during which to write them. it seemed perfect. oh, i thought, the writing i will do on wednesday!

but i decided to clean the apartment.

and then go grocery shopping.

and then surf movie trailers and old christmas commercials on youtube.

then i thought i'd write later in the day, after everything was done and i'd had dinner.

but time ticked on and i squandered it watching The New Adventures of Old Christine, and an Iron Chef America holiday/sugar challenge with paula deen, and kathy ireland talking about christianity, socks and the holocaust (!) on a rerun of Larry King Live.

and now it's more than an hour past the time i was planning to shut off my computer for the night, and the computer is still on, and i've written only one of those four pieces: the shortest, easiest one.

(note: i'm not counting this entry.)

so, i'll try again tomorrow. or, perhaps more accurately, i'll actually try, properly, tomorrow.

christmas: spirit

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: sometimes, the universe gives you what you need.

for the past few days, i’ve been in a little bit of a pre-christmas funk. this is always a melancholy time of year for me, and this month, despite my best efforts to the contrary, i’ve found myself dwelling a lot on what was, what isn’t and what might have been. a recipe for funk if ever there was one.

i’ve also been missing christmas – more specifically, i’ve been missing the way christmas made me feel when i was a girl. i used to look forward to christmas all year long, and would then spend every minute of december, waking and non-, gleefully immersed in all things festive and merry and bright. but, as the years have gone by, that’s become harder and harder for me to do.

instead of anticipation, i feel longing, and instead of being up to my eyeballs in yuletide joy, i feel like there’s an invisible wall between it and me. i can see it, i can recognize it, but somehow i’m not a part of it anymore. not because i’m swamped with a christmas to-do list, or buried in party invitations, or rushing around in search of gifts and don’t have time to enjoy the season. i have loads of time, but connecting to christmas in my heart has felt... i dunno. like something’s missing.

all this to say, when i picked up my mail this morning, i found a surprise. there was exactly one item in my mailbox: a card addressed to “bernard the spaceman.”

many of you will recall bernard – i first stumbled upon one of his kind more than a year ago, but left him to fend for himself in the subterranean world of toronto’s transit system.

then, my friend lou – who’d been aghast that i’d abandoned my subway spaceman – decided i needed a spaceman in my life, so she sent me one and he arrived exactly one month later. i named him bernard, and he’s been all over the place with me. his exploits have been documented in photos and, sadly, one such adventure back in april resulted in bernard falling out of a tree and losing his communications transmitter.

i patched him up and he’s worn his black “X” of courage ever since.

until today.

i opened the card for bernard and in it was taped a brand new communications transmitter. 

!!!!!

the card came from a friend of mine and her five-year-old son, who’d received a Star Wars lego set for his birthday and wanted to send bernard (whose adventures he’d followed online) a spare transmitter. in the accompanying note, my friend explained they wanted bernard to have it “so he can call home for the holidays.”  

i’m not lying when i say i teared up when i opened that card. it was such a wonderfully sweet and thoughtful gesture. so simple and yet so meaningful to me. not only did i get a card, which is something i love, but my wee intergalactic buddy was returned to his former glory thanks to a pint-sized pal neither one of us has ever met. i felt warm and remembered and christmas-y.

the gift, and the delight it brought me, truly made my day and infused a little of what i’ve been missing back into my heart.

for that, i’m most grateful. (and so is bernard.)

a lumpy update

i spent the today out with my mom. we headed out after breakfast, window shopped, picked up the odd item here and there, and then enjoyed a late lunch. 

mom had been wanting to go to swiss chalet for their festive special for weeks, so that’s where we ate. it was a lovely day.

in my opinion, we both deserved our fun, relaxing outing after having endured a full weekend in the presence of my father without throttling him or completely imploding. 

we'd spent the past two days finishing the christmas baking; he spent the past two days generally behaving like an asshat. 

if they sold coal by the lump, i would buy him one for christmas. 

as it stands, he’s getting the same thing he got from me last year: nothing. 

with zero regret or remorse.

silent night

last night, just before 10, i stepped out of a subway station and into the most beautiful snowfall.

the sidewalks were already blanketed with the lightest, fluffiest layer of snow, and vast quantities of enormous, feather-like flakes were materializing out of the dark skies to float gently down from above.

there was no wind, so the snow was landing on tree branches and telephone wires and fence posts, coating everything like a delicate fondant.

the streets were virtually empty and i walked home, alone amid the magic. i stopped under a streetlight at one point, and just looked heavenward at the falling snow for a few minutes. the world had become a living snowglobe before my eyes, i wanted to pause to fully savour its splendor.

every now and again, when there were no cars passing, the air went almost completely silent. the only sound came from my footsteps as i continued on my way.

and, though i was struck with a deep pang of melancholy, i felt grateful for having been given such a quiet and wonderful gift.

present in spirit

i remembered.

and i sent you a bouquet of good thoughts.

with hope they reach you.

if not today, then someday.

sensory deprivation

my apartment is cold.

very cold.

right now, it's about 14ºC (57ºF) in here. and that's WITH the heat ON.

it would be even colder had i not battened down all the hatches before this latest cold snap arrived.

all my blinds are closed. all my curtains are closed. and the curtains have been taped to the wall along their bottom seams to further prevent the drafts from getting in.

as such, i haven't been able to look out my windows since saturday morning. it's like i've been living in a sensory-deprivation tank.

right now, i have on two bottom layers, three top layers, socks and slippers, and the fleece hat in which i also slept last night. my hands are still cold and i've actually been turning the oven on for the occasional blast of heat.

this is what happens when you have two giant walls of (old and poorly insulated) windows that face north, and the north winds kick up to 40km/hr for a few days. the view is gorgeous when it's nice out. no idea what the view is like on a day like today, though.

i'll be shopping for a space heater soon.

and p.s.

in case you're wondering: no, i haven't forgotten to write about/explain that leather-bound book photo below. i'm just sorting things through in my head, and figuring out what to write about first. it's coming...

today's lesson: apple cancer

this is a photo of what i term "apple cancer."

it's a silent (buzz)killer.

it occurs when an apple is perfect on the outside -- crisp, firm, unblemished -- but, unbeknownst to the consumer, 

is actually rotting from the inside out.

i have sliced open many a honeycrisp only to find apple cancer lurking within.

honeycrisps, and their abbreviated growing season, seem prone to this disease.

today's specimen was actually a fuji, though. 

and i have never seen a case of apple cancer quite like the one above.
usually, the cancer is in patches, within the flesh.
but this? this was like cutting open the apple and finding gross, sticky mush at its core.
i carved out the dead apple and cut the rest into the already-in-progress fruit salad i was making.
and you know what?
the rest of that cancer-free apple was insanely sweet and rather delicious.

more on this, and other stuff, later...

an open letter: cold-weather tolerance for the seemingly clueless

dear too-cool-for-school fellow hogtown resident,

guess what? you live in toronto, not miami.

winter's here. that means, wait for it!, temperatures drop. snow might fall. sidewalks can get icy.

here's a secret: dress appropriately and you'll magically discover the weather's not really that bad.

zip up your coat or jacket, which is inexplicably wide open and flapping in the wind.

wear a hat.

put on a scarf.

get some mittens.

add a sweater, or even a pair of tights or longjohns, under what should be your seasonally appropriate outerwear.

and, if it's especially brisk or snowy out, perhaps opt for boots* instead of your sneakers or heels. (*NOT unlined, rubber rain boots. WINTER boots.) at the very least, your shoes should be closed, not open-toed. seriously. it's december, fer cryin' out loud.

this way, the next time you're interviewed on the TV news and asked for your comments on the cold temperatures, i'll be able to take you and your ilk seriously if you complain.

thank you.

signed,
i love winter and stay warm with ease.

p.s. this letter is also directed squarely at you, frozen hipster dude in your late-20s, hurrying along bay street in a shortened schoolgirl kilt, matching knee socks and a scarf-less, hat-less, mitt-less jacket this morning. your cheeks were red, the exposed skin on your thighs was bright pink, and i couldn't help but look at you and think, "really? was today honestly the best day to try to pull off this look, mr. hipcicle?"

sunday, in short

* tonight, i cracked open a new pair of original njuta* slippers. in red. (*not the crappy, useless, paper-filled ones IKEA sells now. the fluffy, cozy, comfy, foam-padded terry-cloth originals they last sold about four years ago. i stocked up at the time, and have been rationing the remaining pairs.)

* it snowed today! no accumulation, though. that'll happen tomorrow (~5cm expected). i will put on my keen growlers and down jacket and thermal underwear and then frolic.

* my intestinal issues calmed, and then returned. the spicy pasta this afternoon was, in hindsight, a poor decision on my part.

* i hung YB's christmas lights for her today.

* my apartment is quite cold tonight.

* the new season of Celebrity Rehab has begun and, with it, a new crop of celebs -- some of whom desperately want help and others who are clearly there just to be on TV.

* the hearing date for the creep and the weirdo next door has been postponed until january. i haven't seen the weirdo in months, and i wonder if the creep is actually illegally subletting.

* i also wonder if the M.I.A. greeting card from my mom will arrive tomorrow.

* i bought a fresh sudoku book today. i do a few puzzles each night before bed because i find them meditative.

* soon, i will write my christmas cards.

what the eff?!

* seems my mail is, once again, going missing. my mother called me to ask whether i’d received the card she sent me nearly two weeks ago. i have not. she mailed one to trix and one to me on the same day at the same mailbox – YB received hers two days later, mine is still M.I.A. thankfully, i’ve kept a log of all the emails and (unreturned) phone calls i’ve made to canada post so, if i have to launch another complaint, i’ll be doing so to the ombudsman with a detailed account of this ongoing mail-delivery mess.

* yesterday, i discovered that my email has also been unreliable. i hadn’t yet received a screening notice for a film that’s being released next friday, so i emailed the publicist to find out if one had been sent out... and it HAD. “you were sent one because you’re on a group list,” said the publicist. it would have been sent about a week ago, yet nothing ever arrived.

* both of the above make me wonder how much mail i’m actually missing, since i only find out about the stray items when someone else tells me they sent something and i realize i never received it. what about the ones i don’t know about?

* mercury doesn’t go retrograde until next friday, so this all somewhat premature.

* i’ve had on-and-off intestinal distress over the past week and a half or so. it got to the point where i went on a 24-hour clear-liquid-only diet in the hopes of getting everything to untwist and settle down. it sort of worked, but i’ve now started taking lactobacillus capsules twice a day and having a cup of hot tea after larger meals to help with digestion. fingers crossed.

* i really can’t believe it’s december 4th, and that there’s less than a month left to 2010.

reward

the PC chocolate fruit fancies
[left to right: apricot (6/10), kiwi (5/10), bilberry (8/10), strawberry (7/10), mango (6/10)]