so long, 2012!

you were a pretty good year! while 2011 was a year of transition from a bad place to a better one for me, 2012 was more about building on the good stuff of the previous year to create something even better.

in 2012, i rebounded financially. i earned a healthy wage while still, technically, freelancing. i enjoyed about three months off in total, and still made more than i did when i was working full-time. i managed to save a nice chunk of change, which is why...

in 2012, i restarted my home hunt. more and more, i was feeling the need to put down some roots in a place that actually belongs to me and not a landlord. at first, i thought my budget would be limited and my options few but, upon closer examination, realized i could afford more than i thought. i went to see a slew of condos, found a couple i liked and collected invaluable data that will no doubt help me find my perfect pad in the year to come. more importantly, i suppose, in 2012 i went from thinking it might be time to move... and then panicking about it, to knowing i'm ready to do it... and feeling right about the decision.

in 2012, i became senior editor of a third magazine -- a high-profile publication that will launch in the spring of 2013 -- while still working as senior editor on the other two. and, as the year drew to a close, whispers of yet another, much more massive, potential opportunity began. it's too soon to know how that will unfold, or if it will unfold, but my boss should know by the end of january. regardless, where my professional plate was once completely barren, it's now filled. and there's also the monthly gig for the entertainment magazine, too.

in 2012, i interviewed CEOs and celebrities and super-interesting folks, wrote about travel and toys and technology and tom hanks, and researched everything from income-tax credits to in-flight entertainment systems and seemingly infinite stuff in-between. i learned about people and places, found fun facts and expanded the scope of my writing and skills more than i thought i ever would.

in 2012, i made my very first cheesecake. and it was delicious! i also learned to make a perfect tomato sauce from scratch.

in 2012, i made some great new friends and, more importantly, gained a better understanding of what i value in a friendship. growing into a more secure, stable place in my emotional life brought new revelations and helped me reevaluate what's important to me.

in 2012, my family bid a sad farewell to our beloved furry friend, mr. poo (kyle). but we also said hello to our huggable, sent-from-heaven new furry friend, george.

in 2012, i learned new skills (hello, indesign!) and discovered a new passion in the process. well, not "new" really, since i've always practiced visual arts and the like, but i certainly developed a new affinity for the realm of graphic design and blissfully lost myself in it for hours on end.

in 2012, i had fun. trix and i went on our first road trip in more than a year, mom and i went to florida and, while there, we hung out with moob and mr. moob. i went to film festivals and empty bowls and spent a day trekking in the autumnal wilderness at my sister's boss's stunning retreat. i walked around the toronto islands to take photos of the beautiful emptiness and discovered a love for outdoor* manual labour. [*in any season when all the bugs are dead.]

and, in 2012, i regained a sense of self that had been lost for a while. i felt confident and accomplished, and i restored my self-worth alongside my self-esteem. i felt more secure about my place in the world, and more okay with the way in which i am carving that out.

so, thanks for everything, 2012! please tell 2013 to pick up where you left off.

i am made of snot and phlegm

my nose has become a faucet and my lungs are trying to heal themselves by oozing sludge. good times.

i know this is my body's attempt to rid itself of cooties, but i'm going through kleenexes by the dozens and i'm fairly certain the sounds of my grotesque hacking have my neighbours wondering if they need to call paramedics because "the lady upstairs is trying to cough up her spleen."

i've done nothing but lie on my couch and watch TV for the past two days. i went to bed just after 10pm yesterday and didn't get up until after 8:30 this morning. i stopped taking sinus medication today and, know what?, it really made no difference... which i'm taking as a good sign. obviously, blowing my nose four or five times an hour is just as effective as swallowing a slew of chemicals.

the climate inside my apartment is downright tropical. i have pools of condensation along all my window ledges (i towel them off a couple of times a day), and my plants all think it's august. it's warm and humid and is comforting when begermèd.

hopefully, all of my aforementioned neighbours will be going out to celebrate new year's eve and not, say, hosting a party that rattles the walls well into new year's day. i'm so not interested in spending tomorrow evening wishing for quiet, and my cooties + my cough mean heading to YB's or my parents' place is out of the question.

hopefullier, my stupid cooties will start to die off tomorrow so that i can get better and re-enter the world outside my door on january 1st.

well, poop on a cracker

i think -- nay, i'm fairly certain -- i've developed bronchitis.

this morning, i coughed once and a red-hot burning sensation went through my upper chest. it freaked me out. i've never had that happen before.

i googled "cough with burning chest" and every single result was: bronchitis.

seems my bronchial tubes are MIGHTILY pissed off and inflamed (not surprising, since i spent two days dry coughing at YB's place and outside in the cold), and that causes the burning. it's actually surprisingly common during/after a cold or flu. go figure.

though my efforts to soothe my cold at a general level -- with rest, epic amounts of fluid and plenty of warm, steamy air today -- have *dramatically* decreased the frequency with which i cough (yay!), the few instances when i do cough feel a tiny bit like setting fire to my lungs for three seconds (boo!).

the cure? time. departure of cooties. and the stuff i've already been doing. but this means i likely won't leave the warm, humid comfort of my apartment for at least the next couple of days, which means i will be spending new year's eve by myself.

covered in cooties

this year, i got cooties for christmas!

boo.

i woke up with a sore throat on christmas eve, fought off germs with moderate success for two more days, but caved yesterday and am now eye-deep in snotty, phlegmy germiness.

thankfully, i don't really feel too bad, just a little tired and congested, but i sound really gross. so much so that, earlier today and while we were wandering the aisles of a large grocery store, YB turned to me and said, "stop trying to talk!"

a number of curious things have happened over the past week, and i'll write about them tomorrow as i convalesce in my apartment, in my pyjamas. tonight, though, i have a date with a hot shower, warm pyjamas and a healthy dose of nyquil.

five things that have happened since my last post

1. my ass has gone numb. well, not my whole ass, but my left side. and not so much "numb" as "weird and tingly," sort of like a pins-and-needles (or twelve million ants) type feeling. once in a while, a section of the left side of my back will do the same. it's freaky and mildly disconcerting, and it happens when i'm standing or lying down. if i correct my posture or twist a certain way, it subsides. usually. my chiropractor believes it's an irritated nerve; i concur, and figure it's from the epic amounts of sitting i've been doing these past several weeks.

2. my mom and i began our christmas baking. unfortunately, due to my work schedule, i'll miss the majority of the baking, but we crossed two types of cookies off the list this past weekend.

3. it has yet to really snow in toronto. it's been unseasonably warm and virtually snow-free, save for the occasional flurry weeks ago. i don't want another green christmas. it does not feel christmas-y. it feels like march.

4. i bought myself a christmas present: a jacket from eddie bauer. it's down-filled and is actually called a "down sweater" because it's meant to be worn as an underlayer beneath something else. but it's super-packed with down and, thus, super-warm despite weighing (per the tag) exactly one pound. it's red and feather-light and very soft and cool-looking and can be squashed down to the size of about a paperback novel (because it's designed for mountain climbers who need to pack their clothes into veryvery small spaces). i was assigned a bonus story for the movie magazine, so i justified my purchase that way. this is it!

5. mom and i went to her church's christmas concert last wednesday night, and it was really lovely. very small town-ish and homey and sweet, with some really impressive performers. then, on thursday night, YB and i went out to dinner before strolling the downtown core for a couple of hours to check out all the lights, holiday displays and christmas windows. the tree inside the eaton centre really is quite hideous this year.

five good things that happened today

1. i wore my brand new shoes -- which i ordered online for 50% off on cyber monday and which fit PERFECTLY -- to walk to and from work, and they could not have been more comfortable!

2. one of my friends at the office makes the most AMAZING shortbread. he made it last christmas, and i've been pestering him to make it again ever since. yesterday, he brought a big box in for the entire department... then gave me a beautifully wrapped bundle just for me. :-D "go pilfer the box upstairs first and save these for yourself later," he said. so, tonight (and after having eaten probably a dozen cookies at work yesterday), i cracked open my personal batch. they are so very very good, and it was a very very thoughtful gift.

3. the new editor is rubbing many people the wrong way and underperforming. this isn't good for her, but it makes me happy. so, my boss had a sit-down with her today, to basically say, "yeah, you need to start doing things differently." (which also made me happy.)

4. i submitted a bunch of story pitches (that i think are quite good) nice and early.

5. one of my co-workers and i invented a new in-office game that we've just now dubbed "shazzamies." it involves a tiny (pencil-eraser-sized) supermagnet, a metal filing cabinet and an elaborate set of targets of differing point values.

misadventures in exotic produce

let's get something out of the way right now: i love grocery shopping. one of my favourite things about grocery shopping is bringing home a new and exciting product, and then sampling it. (speaking of sampling, that's another favourite thing about grocery shopping for me: free samples!)

lately, weekend grocery-shopping outings have included stops at the new whole foods that opened way out in the 'burbs. not only are there copious amounts of free samples to be sampled (a recent visit found YB and me enjoying no fewer than 14 different food items!), but their produce section is ridiculously pretty and features all kinds of unique or heirloom-y or not-readily-available-elsewhere fruits and vegetables.

so it was that, a few weeks ago, i audibly gasped when, upon trawling the tubers, i found a bin of purple (!) potatoes. now, i have searched for purple potatoes for a long while, but have only ever found them in bags of assorted potatoes… and, even then, it would be one tiny purple potato in a bag full of mostly yukon golds and reds. i could not justify the purchase of five-pound bag of potatoes with that kind of pathetic ratio.

but there, that night in whole foods, was a bin of purple potatoes -- in bulk! i could choose as many or as few as i wanted! so, being cautious (i mean, what if they sucked?), i selected a medium-sized purple potato and decided that would suffice for my inaugural PP purchase.

then, next to the purple potatoes, i spotted two large bins of yams -- golden yams and garnet yams! i'd never heard of either before, but the garnet variety was calling out to me because of its reddish skin and the promise of deep deep orange flesh. i picked up one of those, too.

at a different, much cheaper grocery store, i picked out a handful of brussels sprouts and imagined how wonderful my impending meal of wildly coloured, perfectly roasted vegetables would be. i also imagined the super-nutrients i'd be absorbing with such a vibrant, healthy, organic (well, save for the sprouts) meal -- earlier that week, i'd written a feature story on what different food-colour groups offer, vitamin-wise.

so, i knew that the purple potato was packed with anthocyanins, that the garnet yam would be chock-a-block with carotenoids, and that the brussels sprouts (members of the brassica family of vegetables) would fill my belly with heart-healthy, cancer-fighting goodness.

and, i have to tell you, my plateful of those roasted vegetables -- wonderfully crispy on the outside (they'd been tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with garlic and herbs), tender and juicy on the inside (maybe not "juicy," but still) -- was DELICIOUS. after i was done, i felt a bit like popeye after scarfing a can of spinach (ooh! i also bought frozen spinach, but haven't yet used it) -- jacked-up on power foods and ready to rock.

instead, though, i loafed on the couch in my pyjamas. but i felt like i could rock, if needed. oh, and not all the adventures in exotic produce turned out as well as the above: the organic jonagold apples i also bought a WF were mushy and mealy inside.

things that happened when i could have been blogging

* i had a tiring week at work -- it's been five days a week for the past three weeks, which is unusual. normally, my five-day weeks are reserved for production time, when we're readying pages for the printer... but we're nowhere near that yet. it was lots of chasing down interviews, having those interviews cancelled, rescheduling, having folks bail and so on. on my lunch hours and after hours, i was working on my next feature for the entertainment magazine. so, the best-laid plans for five blog entries in five days kind of evaporated.

* i spent the weekend getting my parents' house set for christmas, which entailed putting up the lights -- an extremely frustrating undertaking because, after last year's lights went kaput, YB and i had unknowingly purchased one string too few of replacement lights... which meant some creative redesign to the window-light pattern i've used for the past umpteen years. trix and i also put up their tree, under george's ever-watchful, ever-curious eye. we're not sure if he's ever seen a christmas tree before so, for the next week, it'll stand with lights only, just in case he decides to try to climb it or something. if all goes well, we'll try a few ornaments. he pounces (gently, but still) on ANYTHING that moves, so we're a little worried that the delicate, decades-old ornaments will (by force of the furnace air or someone walking by and creating a breeze) sway or otherwise somehow invite george's excited wrath.

* mom and i went shopping yesterday morning, and we witnessed the christmas spirit in full un-swing at the mall. two women got into a heated argument while standing in a line at old navy -- i found out later (from mom, who was standing two spots in front of them while i browsed elsewhere in the store) that one had apparently made some kind of under-her-breath remark about the other's misbehaved children... and the rest is history. good grief, these women would NOT give it a rest! yelling at each other, frightening their own kids, drawing all kinds of unwanted attention from everyone else. finally, another mother farther along in line chastised both of them, reminded them that their children were having to listen to this argument, and then encouraged both of them to just "let it go." ten minutes later, mom and i were in another store, and one of the women came in, still ranting to her mother and rehashing the whole thing.

* after the above, i bought three shirts on sale -- regularly $23 each, but i got all three for $30. :-D

* trix and i have cracked open the holy crap. it's good, but the chia seeds give it a slimy consistency when prepped in milk. in yogurt, though, it's great! you only need two tablespoons, which is why the bags are so small but will still last a long, long time.