Shot in the head

I just had the oddest dream that I feel like writing down because I know I will forget it otherwise.

I was attending a political meeting, together with top politicians from all over the world. Oddly enough my parents were there too, and this meeting was held at a junior high school.
The Russian president either to step out or he changed seats with me, because for some reason I was sitting in his seat.
Suddenly, I don't know, I became aware that there was an assassin somewhere in the room. A sniper with a rifle. And he was after the Russian president, and since I was sitting in his seat I became the target. In an attempt to shield myself I burrowed into the people that were sitting around me so that he wouldn't hit my vital body parts. However, he still managed to shoot me twice in the back of the head.
I just remember feeling a slight, stabbing pain, like a headache, other than that I was lucid and talking like normal. I was explaining to the people in the room that I had been shot twice in the head, and that I needed medical attention. Everybody kept assuring me that I would be taken care of, but the meeting still continued so I suppose any medical attention would have to wait for the meeting to end.
I started looking around for the assassin and when I looked up towards the ceiling I noticed four vents located high on the wall. Behind one of them I could make out a rifle and the outline of a man. Clearly this was the sniper that had shot me. He was just calmly hanging around.
I leaned over to my dad and whispered to him "I found the sniper. He's behind the third vent up on the wall. Look!"
My dad barely reacted. He just calmly said something like "Yes, I see".
It was all a remarkably subdued affair. The fact that I had been shot in the head twice was given no more attention than a hornet buzzing around the classroom would have. Yes it was a problem, but nothing that stopped the meeting from continuing. And absolutely no one bothered to go after the assassin, even though there were other presidents and top politicians in the room.
The meeting carried on with me feebly pointing out that maybe an ambulance was a good idea. Although I was feeling fine. Just slightly uncomfortable.
Then after the meeting there was another meeting for pregnant mothers, held in the same school. At this meeting, parents got to find out their unborn babies' IQ as well as 5 personality traits that the baby already possessed, even though it hadn't even been born yet. All you did was enter some information in a computer program and wham...the computer spat out a neat row of personality traits. These personality traits could be things like:
"Cheerful
Neat
Hot headed
Slow
Good cook"

For anyone who has ever played Sims 3, they will know that this is exactly how you choose your Sims' personality traits when you create them.
Because I still had the bullets in my head I had a hard time focusing on my computer screen, but I think my unborn baby had traits such as "Stubborn" and "Genius", and that's all I could remember. The IQ was high but again, I was too out of it because of my gunshot wounds that I couldn't remember.

Eventually I think I staggered off and finally got treated for my wounds. It was no big deal. I was out of the hospital in no time. The next day I was walking around like normal, and trying to tell people what had happened, and getting no reaction at all.
"You know that Russian president shooting"?
"Yeah"
"That was me, I was the one who got shot instead."
"Oh."

I kept trying to find a way to access that computer program again to find out for sure my baby's personality traits and IQ, by searching on Google, but I couldn't find it.

At this point I woke up.

Quite an eventful night.
The latter part of the dream is pretty obvious, I'm curious about what my baby will be like, and apparently intelligence must be something I would value because why else would IQ and genius be a part of it. The fact that the list of personality traits looked so much like it does in the Sims 3 tells me I have been playing it too much.

The first part of the dream about me taking two slugs for the Russian president remains a mystery though. The part about me not getting medical treatment and no one taking my getting shot seriously must mean that I feel I'm not receiving attention or care when it comes to some problem I'm having.

Dreams are cool, as long as they're not nightmares. As odd as this one sounds it wasn't a nightmare, even though the feeling of walking around with two bullets in my head wasn't exactly pleasant.

Leaving your baby alone outside

I always found this odd, that some parents will leave their baby in the stroller outside while they're in a restaurant or in their apartment. It would only take 10 seconds for somebody to walk by and grab the baby.
A Swedish woman is being charged with bad parenting after she left her baby in its stroller outside a restaurant while she went inside to order food. She claims that it's normal in Sweden to do this, and that she had her eye on the stroller the whole time. I don't know, is this normal in Sweden? I do know that I have lived both in North America and Sweden and while I have never seen a lone stroller with a baby in it anywhere in Canada, I have seen it many times in Sweden.
I wouldn't do it myself. It would be nice to trust my fellow human beings, but the fact is I don't and I would certainly not be willing to test out this life affirming attitude on my baby. Call me a cynic if you must. If I lived in a village where everybody knew each other I might consider it, if I was close to the stroller, but even then it seems like an odd thing to do.
If I had a crucial need to buy some tacos, I would just simply have to forgo that particular pleasure. If I wanted my baby to sleep outside for a while and get some fresh air, I would just have to bring out a chair and sit next to the stroller.
Like I said, it only takes 10 seconds or less.

A baby

I haven't been blogging much lately. The reason for that is that the inspiration hasn't really been there. There is also another big reason for my recent laziness.
In the beginning of May we found out that we're going to have a baby. I'm going to be a mommy. I entered my second trimester recently and we just found out the other day that it's a boy. So, naturally there have been a lot of thoughts flying around in my head. Am I going to make a good mother? Is he going to look like me or like Nick? Are we going to always be able to provide for him? Should we move to a bigger place? Things like that. The practical details don't seem to matter as much as the emotional ones. The biggest concern for me is, am I going to be able to provide him with an emotionally stable life? I never even wanted children until just a couple of years ago, when the idea started to fester inside my brain. Then when a girlfriend, who had told me that she was never planning on having kids, suddenly told me she was pregnant a couple of years ago it got me to thinking. I asked her why she had had a change of heart regarding children, and she said that she didn't want to grow old alone. This made perfect sense to me, since there are certain holes a life partner just can't fill. I suddenly saw before me what it would be like to never have kids and to watch your friends and relatives have their own families while your life always remains the same, quiet, low-key affair. And I realized that it's time I create my own family. I also think that at some point, most of us realize that we want someone to pass on our own legacy, or something to that effect. A part of ourselves. This and the fact that I started constantly seeing babies and kids everywhere, noticing them in a different way, and thinking of how my baby would look and turn out, made me finally take that plunge. We wanted to wait until we're back in Vancouver, but I'm not exactly 23 anymore and how long can we afford to wait? We were surprised at how quickly I became pregnant. In fact, due to my overly realistic assumption about how long it would take to conceive, our baby is due to arrive around New Year's Eve. Had I been able to choose, I would have wanted him to been born any other time but around the holidays. Imagine having your birthday on New Year's Eve, or worse, on Christmas Eve. Oh well, it is what it is now and what really matters is that he's born healthy and that the rest of the pregnancy is as relatively smooth as it has been so far.
Apart from fatigue, I have had surprisingly few pregnancy symptoms. Although this second trimester seems to so far be filled with emotional ups and downs. I feel like a walking bottle of nitroglycerin, waiting to explode at any second. I am feeling extremely irritable, but it's hard to tell with me if that's due to the pregnancy or not since I'm usually a rather temperamental person. I'm guessing it's a combination of hormones and my normal crabby self.
I'm also experiencing a fierce protectiveness of my unborn baby, and I get angry with anything and anyone that I feel is a threat to us. I think I'm paranoid when I think that any stress, emotional or physical, is a direct threat to the baby. I cringe at raised voices because I know the baby can hear everything that's going on, and I don't want him alarmed in any way. I guess I want to give him the stability and happiness that I didn't always have when I was growing up. That's why I worry about not being a good enough mom to give him that. I'm afraid that we're powerless against genetics and upbringing, and that we're doomed to repeat our parent's mistakes. I suppose it's normal to think that way. I'm just glad I can recognize my shortcomings and do my best not to let them overpower me. I know I'm far from perfect.
If I am to be honest, I had visions of this little girl with long, dark brown hair and my eyes. So yes, I suppose a part of me dreamed of having a girl. Probably because passing on a part of myself becomes all the more tangible that way. Now it'll be a little Nick instead, which is just fine.
But really, 15 years ago I would never in a million years have thought that I could be a mom. I didn't even think I had it in me. I didn't use to have a maternal bone in my body. I worry that I'm just enchanted with all the perks about having a baby, like be able to buy tiny baby clothes and dress him up like a little doll, and cuddles in bed and seeing him smile for the first time. In reality there are a lot of tough times ahead with lots of sleepless nights. And nothing will ever be the same again. Someone else always has to come first now. I realize all this. I wonder if everyone who decides to have a baby does.
Well, whether or not I will suck at it or be good at it will be apparent in about 4 and a half months.

Bye bye vibration

I finally realized that you can turn off the vibration option on your cell phone. I have tolerated it for a long time now, but with the new model I'm currently using, a Sony Ericsson F100i, I have found that the vibration is strong enough to wake the dead.
Why have a mute option if the vibration is going to be as loud as the ringer itself? There have been times when I have muted the phone so as not to be disturbed, and even placed it between two thick pillows to avoid hearing it vibrate. With this phone, even that doesn't work. You can be in a deep sleep, and still wake up from that bloody phone. The only way to avoid being bothered by it is either turning it off or throwing it off a cliff. The second option has become more and more appealing lately.
What's even worse is when I'm teaching a class, or worse, in the middle of an interpretation, and the thing starts ringing. Everyone can hear the vibration, and all over the room you see people looking around, peering anxiously at their bags going "Is it mine??" "No I think it's mine". And then I have to confess, "No, I think it's mine". Or if it's someone elses I do what everybody else does and check my phone too, just in case it's mine, even though it's totally inconsequential since I'm not going to answer while I'm working anyway, but I habitually check it anyway, as most of us do. They invented the mute button so we could avoid this, but I'll be damned if it doesn't happen anyway.
Is the vibration function supposed to serve as a sex toy as well? Because given its strength, I can certainly see how that would be possible. Is this what they had in mind when they designed the Sony Ericsson F100i especially for women? It's small and dainty and the buttons are tiny, but what it lacks in size it definitely makes up for with its vibration function.
Anyway, now I can blissfully say that this no longer is a problem for me. Praise the option to turn off the vibration! No more "BZZZZ...BZZZZZ...BZZZZ!!!! A sound I have slowly grown to despise, as much as fingers on a chalkboard or gum being chewed.
Yay!!!

I hate animal movies

Not because I don't like animals, but because I love them and it seems to be a must in any Hollywood moving featuring an animal that the animal must in some way get hurt or die. I just can't bare to watch this. Why would I want to see that? I don't care if it's a supposedly happy ending where the animal is at peace because it sacrificed its own life to save a human being. To me this is a terrible ending. The animal dies while the human lives! I mean, no offense to humans, but I'll take animal over a person any day.
Yesterday I caught the ending of this horse movie called "Amanda", and was appalled when they used the horse to drag a flipped-over jeep upright so that the people inside it could get out. It was apparently some kind of emergency. The horse died a painful death in the process, blood seeping out from the wounds it got from pulling on the reigns. My god!!! Why do I need to see that?? And it didn't help that seconds after the horse had gotten the truck to an upright position, we hear rescue sirens approaching. If they had waited 2 more minutes the people in the car would have been saved and the horse wouldn't have had to die to save them! This made me so mad. It was supposed to be one of those sappy Hollywood moments where we cry tears of happiness over the fact that the horse gave its life for its owners. Well all I could do was curse their stupidity and lament the fact that this beautiful animal had to die such a sad death. I couldn't stand the little boy, played by Kieran Culkin, who was the main character, and who came up with this brilliant idea in the first place. It was like nails on a chalkboard watching that whole agonizing scene and I wish I had changed the channel instantly instead of putting myself through that horse crap (pun intended).
It doesn't matter how happy the ending is, I refuse to watch a movie where an animal dies. I cried my eyes out watching "Eight Below". Yes, the dogs were eventually rescued, but what about the ones that died? I just can't cope with it. I should be able to, since they're only movies, but when it comes to animals it's like my common sense and rationality fly out the window.
Then I remind myself that horrible things actually do happen to animals on a daily basis. Like that awful case of a beautiful German Shepherd who had to spend 10 years tied up in a backyard in her own filth with no toys, no comforts and being abused by her owners. If I got my hands on her owners, I don't think I would ever stop hitting. I'd subject them to the very same treatment that they inflicted on their poor dog. I.e I would pee on them, tie them up and let them soil themselves and allow them to live in their own feces etc. See how they like it.

I'm slightly hormonal today, and rather cranky, and am realizing that this post turned into somewhat of an angry rant. Oh well. When it comes to animal abuse, I'm slightly psychotic. I'd like to form a vigilante and go after all those morons who get their jollies out of torturing animals. A mere fine just isn't enough of a punishment.

I better end this post now and take a few deep breaths, and try to get that lame horse movie out of my head.

Elvis is my king

Never in my life have I been so affected by a singer as when I discovered Elvis, at the age of 18. It was like being hit by a bolt of lightning, as corny and cliché as that might sound. There's just no other way to describe it.
I was working in a photo frame store in a mall at the time. I was bored with the job, as I always am with repetitive things, and it was hard to get the days to pass without letting out a scream of frustration. It was a slow day, and as always I let my mind wander. Suddenly Elvis crossed my mind, and I swear it was like this jolt inside my stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you see someone and realize you're in love with that person. All of a sudden I was hooked, and on my lunch break that day I ran up to the library and started digging out any information I could find on him.
An obsession was born. As always, whenever I really like something I go overboard. My whole world became Elvis for years. I bought his music, his movies, his biographies, framed huge posters of him and hung them on the walls of my girlhood room. I dyed my hair jet black to look like him and even tried to dress like him. Bright pink and purple shirts and black suits. On the anniversary of his death I lit candles and placed a red rose in the memorial garden in the local cemetery.
The obsession eventually wore off when I went out there and got myself a life of my own, but the love for Elvis and his music is still there. There has never been anyone like him in my opinion. I find it amazing that he can have such an impact on someone like me, who was barely out of diapers when Elvis died and who was never exposed to him or his music growing up. Yet for some reason he grabbed me, the same way that he continues to spellbind people, young and old. Isn't that pretty amazing, considering he died in 1977 and his music style is so far from what's popular today. It may not be cool to like Elvis, but the fact is millions of people still do. And I don't really care if it's cool or not. I still love his music from the 50's, when he just had his breakthrough. I don't count his movie music from the 60's when I say I like Elvis's music, however when he made his come-back in 68 his voice had deepened and although I by far liked his 50's stuff so much better than what he did in the late 60's and 70's, I really like his voice here. You can hear the depth of it in the remix of A Little Less Conversation, which by the way rocks.
The only other person who comes close to having that special quality that his voice contained is K.d Lang. As far as charisma goes, I don't think there is one singer out there who even comes to close to Elvis.
He's magical. He's my hero. And yes, I am aware that he died fat and strung out on prescription drugs in his bathroom. So what? That doesn't change who he was in the 50's.

Mayhem at Ikea

I haven't written anything in a while. That has its reasons, which will probably be the topic of a later post, if anyone cares.

Going to Ikea on a Saturday is never a good idea but it is an especially bad idea to go right after payday. This means that it will be even more crowded than it usually is.
As always, the place is laced with a slight feeling of general mass-hysteria.
It started in the restaurant, where we came to have lunch after our 2 and a half hour car ride just to get this mekka. Rows and rows of people lined up like cows on their way to the slaughter. It was as if we were all animals being fed. Pigs at a trough. Although the lines were long everything was surprisingly efficient and a mere 15-20 minutes later we had our food. Salmon and steak. My dad and I had salmon, my friend Nina had steak. It was actually not bad.

Then the actual walk through that maze of furniture began. Since I was with my father, who could possibly win a gold medal in department store sprint, if there was such a sport, there wasn't much time to look at anything. Besides, it was too crowded and too noisy for me to be able to find the peace of mind to really take anything in. If I'm in a store and it's crowded and people are all around me grabbing on to things and everybody is tripping over each other, I can't manage to buy anything. I get stressed out by the frenzy you see in some people's eyes. Shopping is bloody serious business, so you better not get in their way.
So we run a marathon through the store, and both have to use the washroom, one after the other, since we both have this inclination to do number 2 every time we're in a store. My mom says it's psychological. Apparently I inherited this particular trait from my dad, because we both have to do it every time we set foot in a department store. It's odd. Anyway, it always boggles the mind how serious people seem to take Ikea. It's like they're on a mission. It's serious business.
I suppose I must do it myself, without knowing it. Let's face it, all those things, all those lamps, carpets, pictures, bed linens, it's mesmerizing. Although I'm never willing to put myself through long lineups and insanely crowded stores, even for a bargain sale. When it comes right down to it, it's just things and I don't need it that badly. However, I love coming out of a store with a bag full of goodies. I love piling things into the shopping cart. I feel like such a moron if I walk around with an empty basket. Like a pauper who can't or isn't allowed to join the party. An outcast. Like there's a group that I'm not a part of and I shouldn't even be there.
This time my shopping bag was meager, since I only emerged from the store with a measly 4 drinking glasses and two sets of bed linens. Oh but I musn't forget the big bag of toffees. That was the first thing I added to my shopping bag.

So we drove the 2 and a half hours home. Kelly got a hot dog since we forgot to bring her dinner. And those were the adventures of the day.

Contemporary horror movies...bleh

I just don't like today's movies nearly as much as I do those from earlier decades. I will gladly watch an 80's movie, provided that it's not an action movie, but when it comes to newly released movies I'm very picky. This is especially the case when it comes to thrillers or horror movies.
Atrocious is the only word that comes to mind.
It boggles the mind that movie makers of today seem to have learnt nothing from their predecessors. The only director who comes close is Wes Craven, and even he goes overboard with the gore sometimes. The body count doesn't need to be 200 for the movie to be good.
Sadly, I decided to watch Rob Zombie's version of Halloween, and I wish now that I had chosen a more fun activity, such as going to the dentist or jabbing a fork through my forehead. Anything would have been better than the utter garbage that Hallowen a'la Rob Zombie offered up. I have fervently tried to forget ever having watched that, err.."movie"... but unfortunately it still lingers in my mind, and not in a good way.
It seems that the only aim of horror movies today is to gross the audience out as much as possible, unlike the older generation of horror movies, such as Halloween, whose aim was to freak us out in a psychological way.
To me, seeing some guy saw off his own foot is gross but it doesn't scare me. All that accomplishes is making me feel slightly nauseous. What I want is the kind of drawn-out suspense that we see in Halloween, Friday the 13th and Jaws, where we don't at first see the killer, we see everything from his/her point of view. By not being so damned literal and graphic, the movies were that much more scary. Less really is more. Understated really is a thousand times more effective than over the top, something that Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and Bob Clark (director of 1974's Black Christmas)understood. Today's movies are loaded with graphic violence and gory details, almost as if the directors feel the need to shove as much as possible down the audience's gullet just to satisfy their need for gore and special effects. The reason for this is that people have become so desensitized that without a certain level of violence they won't find the movie interesting. This is a rather disturbing trend if you think about it.
Although no one can accuse the older horror movies of being intelligent, it's almost as if audiences have become dumber. They can't think for themselves anymore. They need everything served on a platter, and in large quantities.
With the older generation of movies, such as Jaws and Friday the 13th, the audience had to rely more on their own imagination to get scared. It's like children having too much entertainment at their fingertips, so they're never forced to invent their own games, and thus never really develop the creative skills that kids 50 years ago had to in order to amuse themselves. In a similar way, when we watch horror movies where we can't see the menacing creature/killer, we are forced to imagine what or who it might be and what it looks like. The unknown threat is always much scarier than what we can see.
I'm referring mostly to horror movies here but in fact I find contemporary movies in general to be lacking something. Some of them are really good and I highly enjoy watching them, but there hasn't been one single movie in the past 10 years that I have felt like "Ooh, I need to buy the DVD and keep it for my collection so I can watch as much as I want!".
The last time I felt that movie magic was with Forrest Gump. I can't remember one movie after that where I got that same feeling. I mean there are movies I really appreciate, such as Bridget Jones' Diary, About a Boy, but none that I ever feel like I must own. Maybe I'll feel differently when a sufficient enough time has passed and I can look at them through nostalgic lenses. Could that be the why I prefer older movies to newer ones?
No, certainly not in the case of horror movies. I still contend and will always contend that the art of making good horror movies is a thing of the past.
There has not been one single remake of the old horror classics that I can honestly say that I liked, with the possible exception of When a Stranger Calls. I think they did a pretty good job with that one. The Hills Have Eyes however was atrocious. I don't often turn off a movie and I've never walked out on a movie in the theatre, but with this one I turned it off 20 minutes into it. It was just so obviously violent and in bad taste and in the kind of way where they just shove in your face in an attempt to gross you out as much as possible. Yes, Friday the 13th was also violent, but it was harmless and not so...in your face. With The Hills Have Eyes, I took no joy in watching a girl get raped by some misfits while her parents got murdered and mulilated, one of which got burned at the stake. Lovely!
Hence, I turned the damned thing off.
The original one didn't have to employ such cheap tactics to get under its audience's skin, why did the remake?
And my poor Black Christmas, the classic stalker horror movie, did not deserve to have such a horrible "remake" with the same name. The two movies don't even fall within the same class, not even close.
Same goes for the remake of Friday the 13th.
Please! Directors, watch the old horror movies, pay attention, learn!

Fashion trends I will never embrace

Fashion trends come and go, and sometimes they make a come-back. I can't go back in time and embrace old fads, I just can't. I refuse to wear clogs again, I put that behind me ages ago, I will not wear those huge ugly-ass glasses ever again and a shoulder pad will never again be a part of my wardrobe. Call me unfashionable if you want. I wish I cared.

Here's my take on some of the fashion trends:



Pointy-toed shoes. Actually this item is quite clever and versatile, since it can be used both as a shoe and as a sharp weapon. You can look trendy and be able to protect yourself by stabbing a potential attacker with your shoe at the same time.




Large framed glasses that cover half your face. I wore them during my awkward teens, and I don't care to see them again. They only remind me of Michael Myers in Halloween when he dressed up in a sheet and put on glasses belonging to the guy he just killed. I only wished he would have murdered the glasses too, and buried them deep in fashion history where nobody could ever track them down. Alas, somebody did.




I used to wear shoulder pads. I looked like a linebacker for the Chicago Bears.







A clog? Or a Russet potato?






I would have killed for these when I was 10, and they're hot pink too, my favourite colour at the time. Now I think that leg warmers are bad enough, but the colour hot pink is even worse.





Acid washed jeans, high waisted no less. Throw in a short, brown suede jacket, large framed glasses and frizzy hair and what you get is me at 16.





This is perhaps the ugliest fashion trend to ever have been inflicted on human kind. It looks like you've just dropped a huge load in your pants.





Gladiator shoes. These skeleton-like shoes look like oddly shaped bandages wrist supports but for your ankle instead of shoes. Looks like something you'd wear if you were in physio. They're grotesque.



I just can't make myself embrace the fashion trends from my childhood. Whether it's because I associate them with being a child in the 80's or if it's because they're really tacky I don't know, but I suspect it's a mix. I would gladly wear a Jackie Kennedy skirt suit from the 60's or bell bottoms from the 70's, but I won't wear 80's fashion unless it's an 80's theme party. Fortunately, I don't have to wear something I don't want to wear. It is true that I probably look unfashionable, but that's the penalty I will take. To each his/her own. We live in a world of diversity. Although, isn't fashion rather anti-diversity since it encourages us all to dress alike?

I made a decision

It's not a momentous one. It's simply that I have decided not to suggest any activities to any of my friends anymore. Apart from this one person, whose enthusiasm has to be admired, I can't even remember the last time a friend took me up on a proposal to do something. Either all my suggestion are really lame or most of my friends only like to do things when it's initiated by them. They may call me with invitations to do things but when the tables are turned and it's me doing the asking they're either busy or want to do something else. Hence, I have decided that I am not going to ask anyone to do anything again, with the exception of this one enthusiastic friend. Nor am I going to always make myself available to other people's suggestions.
I don't see why I should always get turned down yet always be available whenever someone wants to do something.
On the other hand, I really don't want to become the kind of control freak that mother is. She has such a remarkable need to be in control that she won't do anything unless it was here idea. There's no doubt in my mind that people who are like this are control freaks. Some people can't do anything unless it was thought of by them. These are truly frustrating people, and I do hope I don't develop this trait. So far I'm ok. Although I do have some control issues, I still enjoy doing things suggested by others.
This Easter has been rather lethargic for me. I have felt listless and a bit glum. While other people love spring and get all energized and happy, I experience the opposite end of the spectrum. I get physically tired, listless, and down. I believe the term is seasonal depression. Whether it's due to physical causes or mental ones I have no idea, but there you have it. I'm an autumn person all the way. Autumn doesn't stress me out the way spring does. In the spring I feel so stressed everytime I'm not making the most out of a sunny day. There is the constant pressure to be outside and to be doing something. What if you have nowhere to go? What if sitting in the sunshine bores you out of your skull? What if walking around aimlessly isn't your cup of tea and it depresses you rather than makes you happy?
I think the Swedish poet Kristina Lugn had a similar sentiment, what if you don't live up to the expectations of what spring and summer should be like? It feels as though everybody in the world is doing something but you. Stressful.
I admit that although this trait of mine appears to be inherent, since I have always felt this way, it's partly due to my own expectations and demands. Rather than fill me with peace, sitting on a blanket on a meadow makes me restless, unless there is an animal present. Even a rabbit will do. Barbequing with friends is nice but cliché and it doesn't make the earth move. Going downtown to eat an ice cream and watch people stroll by annoys me almost as much as it does when other people stare at me. I still think people watching is rude and I refuse to do it. People like to call it "people watching" to make it sound more sophisticated but really it's just plain old staring. I don't know exactly what it is I should be doing in order for me to feel as though I'm making the most of my summer, but I suspect that anything less than being right smack by the ocean falls short, or at least a body of water. We used to take daytrips to this wonderful place called Buntzen Lake, where we would sit and eat, drink and, if it was warm enough, go swimming. That was marvellous. I must have been a mermaid or something in an earlier life because the water is the only thing that gives me peace and true enjoyment and makes feel like I'm alive. I remember the feeling I got when we were in Crete two summers ago, and I first got to sit down right in front of the water and the waves were crashing in. Amazing and lovely are the only words to describe it.

Home is where the heart is

Imagine if someone told you that you should pack up your belongings and leave your home and move to another country. What if they asked you "So when are you gonna stop living here and finally move?" What if they dismissed it as your home and referred to it as some kind of adventure or a phase, as though you're escaping reality or something, while for you it's home. This is often what happens whenever someone chooses to live in a country that is not their home country. It's ok to move to a different country for a while, maybe 2 years, even more, but then you get to a point where people start to demand your return. This can be very stressful if you really don't want to move, if where you are living now has become home to you and you couldn't imagine leaving it. You might get accused of being selfish.

To those people who have never felt the inclination to live somewhere other than the country that they were born in, I say good for you, but consider that not everyone is cut from the same cloth, and consider how it would feel if someone told you that you should leave your home, and labeled your life temporary, fake, an adventure etc.
It's a bizarre feeling actually, to be made to feel as though your reality is not really reality. You may have thought it was during these years but it really isn't and it's time for the adventure to stop and for reality to begin, and the only way for that to happen is if you drop everything and move "home". Quit your job, say goodbye to the friends that have you have made there, leave the apartment/house that you have lived in for the past years. But what if "home" isn't really your home anymore? What if in your heart, this other place is your home now? Doesn't matter right, because how could you not want to live in the place you were born? You may travel and try living elsewhere, but in the end you should live and die where you were born. It's that simple.

Well...it's really not that simple. For some of us, living our whole lives where we were born is simply not an option. It may be hard to believe, but we don't all love our hometown, or our home country for that matter. Some of us feel more at home somewhere else. That cliché "Home is where the heart is" may be old and worn out but it's true nonetheless. What's to say that we must live and die in the same spot, or at least in the same country? If we feel happier somewhere else, why can't we live there instead?
Yes, there are family connections, and there is such a thing as roots. Although it's hard to live so far away from family and old friends, it sometimes just can't be helped. And as for the requests made by family and friends that you should move "back home", I can reverse that request and ask them why they can't pick up and move to where I am, since they miss me so much. That's ridiculous and unrealistic of course, they would answer, and they'd be right.
But at the same time it's not unfair to ask me to pack up and leave my home as if the past 5 years or so didn't even matter?

You can be born in one place and grow up there but feel the pull towards a completely different place. It's not so clear-cut for everyone. We don't all love where we come from and feel that we belong there. And it's not so easy when everyone else seems to assume that you should just easily be able to come back home and resume your old life, while everything inside you tells you that you don't want to.
The love one person has for their hometown might just be the same kind of love that you have for this new place. Who knows.

And if something bad should happen to you in your new country, the people back home would immediately go "Oh see, this would never have happened if you lived here! You should come home now!"
What, shit never happens in my home country? If I lived there I would never get mugged, have my heart broken, get into a car accident, have my house robbed?

So, imagine if you were constantly told that you had to leave your hometown that you love and would never want to leave, then try to put yourself in the position of those who feel the opposite - they don't want to drop their new life to come back to a place that they obviously must not have felt completely happy in, or else why would they have left it in the first place?

Buying sanitary pads shouldn't be embarrassing

But for some reason it is. Not for me anymore though. I don't really care who knows what brand of sanitary pads I buy. The fact is that I'm a woman and I haven't gone through menopause and therefore I menstruate, and everyone who's taken biology knows it. It's no big secret which needs to be kept in the closet. When I was a teenager I found buying sanitary pads incredibly embarrassing, and especially putting the pack of sanitary pads on the conveyer belt at the store. I almost tried to sneak it in between the milk carton and the loaf of bread so that the person behind me wouldn't see it. If the cashier was a man it was sheer torture.
The question is, why is it embarrassing? Is it because we don't want any guy to be reminded of the fact that we bleed from our vagina once a month? Everyone above the age of 10 knows about it but yet it's something that's best kept quiet. Is that why they always use blue ink in the sanitary pad commercials? Nobody likes the sight of blood, or even the thought of it. Or more specifically, nobody likes blood that emerges from that particular area. Why is that? Is it because those areas are very private and intimate?
Men don't like buying sanitary pads for us either. It makes them uncomfortable. They can buy condoms without any hesitation, but sanitary pads is a whole different ball game, even though condoms are just as private as sanitary pads. They end up in the same general area. Is it because condoms say "I'm gettin' some!" and sanitary pads say "I'm whipped, my wife/girlfriend/fianceé has me buying her sanitary pads!"?
My father is the expection. When I was growing up he bought sanitary pads for both my mother and I without feeling ashamed. This is probably due to the fact that he doesn't really care what people think of him. My common-law dislikes buying my sanitary pads. He will do it, he just doesn't like it. When I asked him why feels this way he couldn't give me an answer, he just said he simply doesn't like it. It's almost as if men don't want to come anywhere near those products, even when they are still in their package and haven't even been used.

Another thing that's embarrassing but that shouldn't be is when we slip and fall in public. When I slip and fall, my first thought is not about the pain but about whether or not I was witnessed falling. At the moment it's happening it is worse to be seen falling than to get hurt in the process. Why is that? Why do we put our egos ahead of our personal comfort?
It doesn't help that some people actually laugh at other people falling on their ass. This mystifies me, since I fail to see what could possibly be amusing about that. If I was 5 years old I might find it funny, but I think my sense of humour has evolved since then.

Free will or determinism?

I was in a thoughtful mood yesterday. I started thinking about whether or not our lives our relatively mapped out at birth, or if the future is wide open.
Believing that our lives were predetermined at birth is perhaps making things a little too easy for ourselves. If we believe that no matter what we do, our lives will suck and we'll fail miserably, we have a good excuse not to even bother trying and we have the perfect scapegoat. It's easier to have something to blame, that it was fate, rather than admit that the problem lies with you and not with some grand plan thought up by the universe.
Personally, I don't think that every little thing is planned out in advance. For example, I don't think that me sitting here writing this right now was predetermined. However, I do sort of think that the larger things might be mapped out for us at birth. Such as the kind of person we're going to marry, or not marry. How successful we will be in our careers. How much money we're going to have. These are things that appear to be rather set, partly because we're very likely to live in the same social sphere as our parents. However, whether or not these things are due to some predestined plan or due to our upbringing is the question. Which begs the age-old question of nature vs nature. Are we born fucked up or destined to be mediocre or do we get that way because of what we experience in our childhood? Conversely, are we born with marvellous personalities and a nack for succeeding or is that also due to child rearing? It can't all be due to how we were raised. How then would we explain some people being sociopaths? How would we explain Ted Bundy? It can't be all child rearing.
So I think that although nurture is crucial, some of us were born to succeed while some of us were meant to be less successful, or less happy, or more happy. There has to be an even ratio of happiness, success, unhappiness and failure to go around in order for the universe to be balanced. Some people are only meant to reach a certain level of happiness and success while other people are meant to have a smoother ride through life. Sure, we all go through hard times, but it just seems that for some people it's more and for some it's less.
How we were raised plays a huge part in our level of confidence, harmony, courage and happiness, but I think that ultimately there are some people that will not succeed no matter what they do. They're the ones that will achieve something really great one day only to have something tragic happen to them the next, almost as though the universe needs to balance it out. As if the universe goes "Oups! How did he slip through the net? He's supposed to be one of the less happy ones, better fix this!" And vice versa.
Then on the other hand, I'm much more inclined to go with the nurture theory. Our personalities may be predetermined in really broad strokes, like what kind of temper we're born with, but the rest comes later. But if we can be born a sociopath with no ability to feel empathy, which apparently we can, what's to say we can't be born to be winners or losers? It's not all that black and white I know. Who's to say who's a loser and who's a winner. To me, a winner is someone who's happy. Isn't happiness what it's ultimately about. You want that great job because it'll make you happy and you'll earn good money, which will also make you happy. You want that girl or that guy because you think they will make you happy. Happiness is the ultimate goal, no? Even if you're in it just for the money, you want the money because that'll make you happy.

A Friday night

And I have some observations.

As I went outside, the dark streets were echoing with the usual sounds of people going on their monthly payday bender. All over the neighbourhood, kids are standing around on their balconies with their cider and beer bottles, smoking and talking loudly. Everywhere you look, you can see boys in their late teens walk through the snow in pairs, with pants halfway their asses and those wellknown liqour store bags in their hands, heading to a friend's house so they can spend their Friday evening getting hammered.

Have you noticed how in all Nora Roberts novels, the heroine always has milky white skin? The people around her usually have normal skin tones but she always has this really white, almost see-through skin tone. And everyone who's coloured always speaks in a Southern drawl. In fact, everyone but the heroine speaks in a Southern drawl. Even if she grew up in the deep south just like the rest of the characters in the book, she still speaks the kind of English that they would speak in the Northern states. Why the lily white skin tone? Is it more attractive for a woman to have pasty skin than to have some colour?

Some things are odd

Like for example when a guy goes missing and it doesn't get much attention in the media, but if a girl goes missing it's splashed all over the tabloids. It's as if a man going missing isn't as news worthy, or not as serious. There is a case of a missing young man in Stockholm right now, but the only reason I know about is because his family and friends have a created a group on Facebook trying to find him. It hasn't even been mentioned in the news and he's been missing for more than a week as far as I know. It was briefly mentioned in one of the local papers today.
Odd, because if he had been a girl it would have been front page news. Is it less serious if it's a guy missing or is it that a girl going missing is more exciting and interesting? Just a reflection. Although it is more frequent for girls to be the victim of crimes, sex related or otherwise, that doesn't guys are immune to it.

Why aren't you allowed to wear your bathing suit in the sauna? Furthermore, why do I seem to be the only one who is not comfortable with getting naked in the sauna? I don't appreciate stripping in front of strangers anymore than I like seeing their naked bodies out there on display. Sorry, I'm a bit of a prude on this score. I would never fit in at a nude beach.

Why is it that the first thing on my mind when I slip and fall outside is if anyone saw it, rather than whether or not it hurt. Is my ego more important than pain?

Why are dentist allowed to cancel on us last minute without any penalty but us patients are not without being charged a fee? Are dentists God? The answer is a roaring yes. George Costanza had the right idea when he told his massage therapist that he requires a 24 hour notice for cancellation.

Why has Anne Hathaway risen to fame?

How can people voluntarily eat cereal when there are other things to eat for breakfast? Cereal is and always will be a desperation breakfast for me.

Just some thoughts.

Dogs make life so much sweeter

I can be a in situation or an environment that would otherwise be boring or uncomfortable but which is made so much better just because there is a dog around. Dogs make my life so much better. It doesn't matter who I'm with, as long as there's a dog present, I'll be alright. I can tolerate the owners as long as it means being able to spend time with their dogs. This goes for all animals in general, but there's something special about dogs. I'm a dog person, there's no doubt about it. I'll take dogs over people any day. For that matter I'll take any animal over people. I feel more for animals than I do for people. Whenever I watch those cheesy western movies, or any movies where there are horses and battles, I fret over the horses. When the rider of the horse gets shot or pierced by a deadly arrow and both he and the horse topple over, I cringe at the sight of the horse falling but don't really give a hoot about the person. I suppose that makes me rather cold? Well it's because the horses have no choice but to follow along with whatever nonsense people get up to. You think if they had a choice, they'd choose to participate in those movies? Animals are at the mercy of people and their whims, and I suppose that's partly why I muster up more sympathy for them then I do for people. Animals don't have a choice. They have to rely on us. That's why when I hear of car accidents where dogs have been involved and where their owners were driving drunk or speeding, I worry about the dogs but not the people. Even in accidents where the owner wasn't speeding or driving drunk, my thoughts go to the dog.
Dogs are amazing. So spontaneous and honest, and innocent. Rather like small children.
I can put up with a lot as long as there's a dog around. What would crowded places be if there were no dogs there to stare at? I hate crowds, but will gladly suffer them if they come with dogs. The problem is that I usually get so preoccupied with looking at the dogs that I don't watch where I'm walking and tend to stumble and walk into other people.

Random funny moments during the past week

Or at least smile or chuckle.

Nick's comments when he watches daytime soaps. He'll tackle just about any romantic dialogue and add his own dirty comments and change the words around. I could go into it and give some examples but I'm afraid I might get in trouble if I write about it here. The funniest thing he said this morning while Days of Our Lives was playing was "Everyone's pregnant again??!" when he discovered that two women were pregnent.
For some reason, it just sounded funny.

Then there's Kelly, who always makes me laugh and smile. Let's see, what has she done this past week. Well there was the time when Nick was telling her that she shouldn't play right after she eats because she can get something called bloat, which affects large dogs and which can be fatal. It was how she reacted that made us laugh. She wasn't paying any attention to what he was saying of course, sitting there looking around for a toy to grab, meanwhile Nick is going on about bloat: "...that can be really serious and make dogs really sick and they can even die!..." and at the sound of the word "die" she snaps her head around, sharpens her ears and stares seriously at him with her head cocked to the side, as if saying "Die?? Are you serious?"

There is one very good reason to watch the Eurovision Song Contest try-outs, and that's watching it with Nick in the room because you get to hear him change the lyrics around and make them dirty. He doesn't actually watch, the T.V is on while he is on his computer, but he can still hear. It's hilarious. Not everyone appreciates that type of humour but I do, oddly enough, as childish as it may be.

Me telling a friend that coconut balls are actually quite a low-fat snack, and she responding sarcastially "Yes, you lose 10 lbs with each one you eat!".

A Facebook friend having "Well I'm gonna go pee now" as his status. That wouldn't have been funny normally but the way he said it was so casual and so simple that it made me smile.

A tiny chihuahua that would have fit inside Kelly's mouth doing its best to bark at her but all that came out were these whimpering sounds.

A 3 year old asking Nick if he was my dad.

Come on, take your top off!

I don't know why, but I suddenly got to thinking about being 13-14 again and being told by my relatives that I should go topless around the yard. Every other female did. Why I don't know. To get the best tan possible I suppose.
I refused.
From the moment I started developing boobs I refused to take my top off and parade my rack in front of my father, grandfather, uncle etc. I still don't think this was an unreasonable refusal. What 14 year old girl is going to want to run around half naked in front of her her family? Hell, what female, regardless of her age, is going to want to run around half naked in front of her family? Not me.
Call me a prude, but I still think that going topless is a tad too personal. If you feel like going topless, go for it, but I wish they hadn't made me feel like such a freak when I was 14 and didn't want to take my top off. It was this whole issue, me not taking my top off. 'What are we going to do with Linda!'
I overheard my grandfather talking to my grandmother in hushed undertones, wondering about the fact that I refused to sunbathe topless.
It's bizarre now that you think about it, knowing what we know about skin cancer and how harmful the sun is to our skin. What's even more bizarre is my being urged to go topless at all, especially at that age.
I remember feeling like such a freak because I was the only one not going topless. It wasn't until many years later that I realized that it wasn't that weird of me.
You still won't catch me topless in public places. There are some things that should just be remain private. This is just my opinion of course. Is it really that vital to tan your boobs? Really? Unless you're planning to display them to a lot of people, what's the point?

By far, this has to be the worst time of the year

At least for me, it is.

You linger in some kind of suspended half land between winter and spring. The ground is covered in snow that used to be white but which has turned into this soiled, brown mush. It really opens your eyes to how much filth we actually expose ourselves to when we walk along roads. The only reason we can't see it during summer and autumn is because there's no white snow there for it to get stuck in. It blends into the soil and grass the rest of the year, but in winter/spring it's visible for us to marvel at.
It's not only the horribly off-white, filthy colour of the snow, it's the roads and their condition. It's almost impossible to take a walk. I went for a walk with Kelly this morning and we were both slipping and sliding all over the place and Kelly didn't even want to walk. Then as the ice starts to melt, the gravel takes over and you end up dragging it into your house. The vacuum cleaner tube sounds like maracas when you vacuum.
It's difficult at best to cross-country ski, because the track is so iced over you look like bambi on ice when attempt to enter it. You either end up sliding back and forth like a moron or you slide to easily that it barely takes no effort to ski at all, and that defeats the whole purpose.
Then the sun starts to peek in through the windows and you're mercilessly faced with just how dusty your apartment really is. Everything just seems so much messier in the March and April sunlight. What was previously masked by the comfy darkness of winter is now brought out into the daylight, and the result is not good. The winter/spring sunlight is brutal.
It starts to get light out earlier and earlier in the morning. Most people see this as a good thing. I'm not one of them. For the past few weeks I have started waking up painfully early, even though I'm still in need of more sleep, and I lay there unable to go back to sleep. I eventually manage to catch some more sleep, drifting in and out of restless sleep, and when I get up I still feel tired and headachy.
The pressure must have changed too, because I have a headache pretty much every day.
It feels as though I start each morning with getting clubbed over the head and face the after-effects for the rest of the day. March for me is zombie month. It's the month when I walk around dazed and disorganized, like I'm perpetually stoned, but not in a good way. I'll take any month over this month, with the possible exception of September which always seems to bring with it some form of drama, such as family members dying or horrible public scenes.
April is no party either but at least here we have Easter to break the monotony. I would love to be able to head up to the mountains this Easter but for some idiotic reason Easter falls at the latest possible time this year and it'll probably be impossible to go out on the ice, or even to ski. I don't do downhill skiing but I do cross-country, and it's usually very hard to do as of early April since the quality of the snow will have changed. Considering the warm weather right now, I'd say it's going to be damned near impossible to ski in April. So unfortunately it looks as though Easter will be spent in the city, which sucks ass. I would still like to go to the mountains but since nobody else does it doesn't seem to be in the cards.
No, at the risk of sounding like a whiny bitch, I have to say that I dislike this time of the year. I know I'm in a minority here, I do tend to go against the grain. While other people love summer, I prefer winter (but not in Vancouver) and absolutely love autumn.
Although, nothing beats a Greece summer, or even a Vancouver summer.
No March though, please. If I could hibernate until June, I would.

Thank heavens for call display!

I remember the days when call display had yet to make its debut, and almost nobody had cell phones. When the phone rang you actually had to pick up the receiver in order to find out who was calling. It was like playing Russian roulette. Was it someone you wanted to talk to or was it a nuisance call? You had to pick up or you might miss out on a real call. You'd answer the phone completely oblivious and hope for the best.
For a while in my teens I had a 34-year old alcoholic stalker who used to drunk dial me on the weekends when I was alone. He'd go into these drunken monologues over the phone and I was too timid to hang up on him. Since our family wasn't into answering machines and there was no call display I had no way of knowing if it was him when the phone rang, so I came up with this dense plan of taking a short clip from a movie where a man answers "Hello, Levander!", Levander being a last name, and record it onto a cassette tape and then play "Hello, Levander!" into the receiver everytime the phone rang so it would sound like he had dialed the wrong number. It didn't work. The sound was awful since I had taped it straight from the T.V, and cassette tapes weren't exactly of stellar sound quality. And he never ended up calling that weekend anyway so I wasn't able to test out my brilliant idea and after that I forgot to use it. With the sound being so terrible it would never have worked anyway. He would have slurred "What?? Linda, is that you??" into the phone and I wouldn't have had the guts not to say anything and would have ended up listening to his drunken ramblings anyway. "Your eyes are really blue...the pig managed to escape and shit all over the house..."
I can't even imagine living without call display now. Blindly answering the phone with not the least knowledge of what moron is calling? It could be telemarketers, salespeople...stalkers. I just wouldn't be able to go back to the not knowing. I already dislike phonecalls as it is, imagine what it'd be like if I wasn't able to see who's calling. Being able to see who's calling is a blessing for those of us who would rather avoid the telemarketers and stalkers of this world than having to tell them to bug off. I'm just not good at that.

Why you will never find me queuing to get into a club

It's degrading.

If the club is that full that you have to stand outside in a line-up like a sheep on its way to the slaughter, what's the point?
Why should I allow myself to be bullied by some surly security guard and stand there and hope that he'll let me in. If they don't want my business, I'll just go somewhere else, and if they don't want my business, I'll just go home. There is no way in hell I'd ever cater to security guards and bouncers. Play up to some steroid case on a power trip in order to pay a cover charge to get into a no doubt over-crowded establishment where the staff is surly and snooty and the customers wasted and stupid? No thank you!
The line-ups for some clubs look pathetic. People standing there like morons freezing their asses off in their skimpy clothes just so they can get into the current hotspot just so they can be there. Just because someone hip and trendy decided that this is where you should go on a Saturday or a Friday night. There's something sad about it, when you think about it. All that pushing and shoving like cattle trying to get to the water trough during a drought, total disregard for your fellow human beings. Girls with lost expressions in their eyes.

Now there are exceptions to this of course. Clubs aren't all like this, naturally. I would gladly go to a place where people actually go to dance, such a latin club for example. I like dancing. I'm not referring to actual dance clubs, but to clubs where you go just to get drunk, or worse, places you go when you are already hammered. If I want to sit around and booze it up and talk at the top of my lungs where the majority of the conversation goes something like: "HUH??", I can do this at home.

I'd rather have a root canal done than stand in one of these silly line-ups.

The reason for this rant is that I just read a story in a newspaper written by a girl who really did get seriously injured in this type of freakshow.

A smelly army base is heaven

I grew up being what you might call an army brat. We never moved around like a lot of military families but my father's army regiment still played a large part in my life.
They closed it down sometime in the late 90's and now it holds several companies and businesses. I had occasion to visit one such business the other day when we had to take Kelly to the vet. The vet office is situated in what used to be the medical building.
As soon as I walked through the door I could feel that special smell. You can't put your finger on it. It's like a mix between coffee and shoe leather and something else. Impossible to define. All I know is that I love it. The mess hall also smelled like that, but with a hint of food thrown into the mix. It's funny how some of the buildings still smell the same. It's as though the smell is firmly permeated in the walls.
The barrack buildings were these huge, yellow concrete buildings that always smelled of musky, old socks. They were sparsely furnished with metal bunk beds and simple chairs. There were attics and nooks and crannies, and I loved being there. Everything from the smell to the stale cookies that were always available in bulk boxes in the coffee room. I'd tag along with my father while he taught telecommunications to young guys doing their military service. I would sit there with my nose in a book or pretend that I was working there too, by stapling papers together or something like that.
All the military men were dry but friendly. When they joked with you, you were never quite sure whether they were kidding or not.
I miss that army regiment, just because it was such a safe, happy place. It smelled weird and it was stiff and dreary but it was a place of excitement. Even today that smell brings back fond memories and makes me feel oddly safe.

High class problem in the city of Östersund

Crisis in Libya, crisis in Egypt not too long ago. People fighting for their political rights, dying for the cause.

Meanwhile in the town of Östersund, the inhabitants are faced with their own crisis - the local dairy company changed the design of the milk cartoons, making it more difficult to open. Local newspaper features a page with angry protests made by readers.

Yes, there is a hint of sarcasm there. Reading the local newspaper of Östersund always evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand I'm appalled at the things that people here find to get enraged about, on the other hand I'm relieved that a place like this will never have to grapple with the type of things that people in Libya, Egypt, Congo, and many other places, have to deal with on a daily basis. I have never lived in any of these places. My biggest concerns have been the size of my hydro bill, my student loans and the buses going on strike in Vancouver. My perspective is very different from that of a woman living in Congo for example. It's easy to overract to minor problems when you're used to high standards. Still, I consider it a high class problem to complain about milk cartoons and not being served a fresh salad buffet at local elementary schools because of the parasite in the water. The kids didn't get their usual salad buffet because it wasn't possible to rinse the vegetables in the tap water. They still got vegetables, just not fresh lettuce.
It's necessary to add here that kids in Sweden don't need to pay for their food in school. It's already been paid for in taxes.

Confessions of the uncool

There are a number of reasons why I will never be referred to as cool or highly cultured.

1. I still get shivers when Daniel san beats Johnny at the end of Karate Kid.

2. I still cry when I watch Bobby Ewing dies after being hit by a car.

3. I like Dolly Parton and especially "Working 9 to 5".

4. I talk to my wall calendar of dogs.

5. I get the inclination to skip when I'm outside, although I mostly refrain from it.

6. I still love the Golden Girls.

7. I think fashion is for drones.

8. I can find daytime drama dialogue moving and sometimes even profound.

9. I still get a kick out of the old Nintendo video games like "Paperboy" and "Popeye".

10. I like dramatic songs and gestures and romance, ala Celine Dion and her performance of "My Heart Will Go On" at the Oscars. It should be added that I tired of that particular song a long time ago but that doesn't mean I find Celine's stage manneurisms corny. As long as a person is being sincere, and I do believe that she mentioned in an interview that this comes natural to her when she performs, you should respect that. This goes not only for Celine but for everyone and everything in all areas of life. We shouldn't be so jaded and cynical.

Do I care whether or not I'm cool? No, not really.

My philopsophy when it comes to commercials

If a commercial is on too much and if it contains a very annoying and repetitive tune then I will deliberately not buy the product. I know it's silly but it feels somewhat like a form small of punishment for having a terrible commercial. I don't appreciate their blatant attempt at trying to nestle their way into my subconscious by ramming their crappy signature tune down my throat, or into my ear, to be more exact.
Then there's that little delightful thing on my remote control called a mute button. I use it frequently.
I was at the grocery store a while ago and on the T.V screens that they now have above the cash registers, a particularly annoying whistling tune blared out for about the 500th time, and I vowed that if I ever heard it again I would be berserk in the store. My father, who I was with at the time, agreed with me. He hates it too. We're a very testy family. We were the only family on the block who'd call the cops or complain when the neighbours had loud parties at late hours.

Those paparazzis!

I was flipping the channels while sipping my tea just now and on a channel called Star! I came across a show about paparazzis and stars who live their lives on the edge.
I know it's all about the money for them, selling their pictures to the magazines, and I suppose money takes the place of dignity and self-respect. If I was 45 years old, I think I'd find it more than a little embarrassing to make my living driving after 20 year olds all day and hanging out outside their house in the hopes of taking a picture of them whiping their ass or blowing their nose. I wonder if the prospect of making a lot of money would make me forget all about pride. I can't imagine it. I know it's easy for me to sit here on my high horse and judge since I'm not in that situation, but I can't imagine that I'd be able to live with myself. Not because of the moral issue of harassing people and shove a camera in their face, although that's ridiculous as well, but because I'd find it incredibly pathetic if I spent my life doing this.
Can you imagine, day after day, taking candid pictures of total strangers doing mundane things such as eating salad leaves or carrying a cup of Starbucks coffee. I think I'd want to shoot myself if I had to do that. What's even worse is that verocity that these guys go after their prey. Driving around wildly in some jeep with a manic facial expression all day. Is it dollar signs in their eyes or just sheer obsession?
Moreover, this whole thing begs the question of why people are so interested in these nonsense snapshots of celebrities doing ordinary things. There wouldn't be paparazzis if there wasn't a market for this crap right. For some reason, people are fascinated with celebrities and that extends to seeing them perform even the most trivial tasks. I don't get it. When I was 16 I might have gotten it but not as an adult. I like Kiefer Sutherland but that doesn't mean I want to see him coming out of a gym all sweaty or wearing sunglasses while having lunch in some restaurant. Nor would I be interested in seeing a blurry picture of Lindsay Lohan, or anyone else, driving by in a car.
Oooh...she's driving car! Look, there she goes driving down the street! OOOH...she's getting out to get a slurpee!!! Oh and look, there's Beyoncee coming out of her gym!!! She's all sweaty...oh...my...god...how sensational!

Bizarre!

It's later this evening and my mood just took a nose dive again

I just came back from teaching a course. When we were leaving, one of my students came up to me and looked at my belly and sort of touched it, and asked me quietly if there was a blessed events in the works. In other other words, she asked me if I was pregnant!

I have put on some weight lately, but it never ocurred to me that it was that visible. We're not talking that much weight gain. Although my stomach has felt bloated lately, why I don't know, but it could have something to do with all the chocolate I've been eating lately.

This was the cherry on the top of the cake of my day.

Ms. Crabapple

That's me at the moment. During the day I was rather sluggish and a little bit irritable but after my workout I suddenly became really agitated. I had to rush the workout so I pushed myself, that might be the reason. Perhaps I'm simply fatigued.
Then the neighbours downstairs start making noise again. This time they're slamming their balcony door and shouting on their balcony, as if someone was having a gigantic argument. This was not the case here though. What he have here is simply a case of numbskulls who don't have enough sense to be considerate towards their neighbours.
Noisy neighbours is one of my pet peeves. I have zero patience with them. I don't want to hear their lousy music or their shouting and slamming doors. I want them to consider that they are living in an apartment building and not a hut in the forest. Is this really that hard to keep in mind? Even such pea brains as the people downstairs must be able to grasp this relatively simple concept. Alas, they don't.
It doesn't matter if it's the middle of the day or midnight, you play your music at a level where your neighbours can't hear it. That's just all there is to it. If that's not a rule, it ought to be. I don't care if they need to blast it in order to enjoy it properly, that's not my problem. My problem is that I can hear it in my apartment.
If this makes me a pissy bitch, so be it. If it makes me a square old lady, so be it. When it comes to this, I guess I shall just have to be a pissy bitch and a square old lady.
The neighbours are not the only reason for my irritation at the moment though. It's not PMS or anything in particular, it's just plain, unidentified anger.
I hope my mood will lift later in the evening.

Happy Valentines Day!

I found a red rose in the middle of the road on my down to an interpretation assingment today. It was frozen solid but apart from that it was in almost perfect condition. Somebody must have dropped it there. Odd place to drop it.
I picked it up and brought it with me to my assignment. People probably thought it was a rose that had been given to. I wonder if people thought it odd that I had picked it up from the road. Is that an odd thing to do? I don't think so. I'm a sucker for roses, and I somehow think that they're living things and it seemed ashamed to just let it lay there and freeze.
It's soaking in warm water in my sink, and we'll see if it's beyond salvation or not. The poor thing looks pretty beaten up now. But, today is not the day to be giving up on symbols of love, so I should at least give it a shot.

Other than that, this day has been commemorated with a gift from Nick, which I didn't like, I'm ashamed to say. He went out and splurged and bought this rather overpriced eau de toilette called Pink Sugar. It's very sweet smelling, rather like vanilla. I wish I liked it but I don't really care for scents in general, especially not if they're sweet and strong. The only scent that I have continued to stand is White Musk. I have bought expensive perfumes over the years and even though I love them when I first get them I always tire of them after a little while I and then I can't even stand to smell them again. My nose stings and I associate the smell with events and settings from when I wore the scent and everytime I smell it it reminds me of that time, which is not always a good thing.
Anyway, this Pink Sugar is very sweet and sticky but I suppose I will wear it sometimes anyway, for Nick's sake. I would have been perfectly happy with chocolates though, but oh well. He meant well.

Ode to Jaws

There have been many shark movies in the past 35 years, but there is only one true shark movie and that's the one that started it all - Jaws.
I'm watching it right now, and as always when I watch it I'm amazed at its brilliance.
No shark movie after it came near its brilliance. For me, there will only ever be one Jaws. The sequals, entertaining though they may be, especially number 3, don't travel in the same league. Not even close! Jaws is a piece of movie history. Steven Spielberg created something truly amazing. There has never been anything like it since. Other directors may try to assimilate Spielberg but they don't even come close
For me, this movie is like a part of my childhood. I didn't have very stereotypical parents. My dad was absent a lot because he was in the military and my mom let me watch horror movies from the time I was 7 years old. Jaws was our favourite. We almost constantly rented the Jaws movies. We had one of those old Beta video players. We were the first ones on the block to have a VCR and you could almost always find either Jaws 1 or Jaws 2 at our place. I loved Jaws, and I could never get enough of it. I could watch it over and over again, still can.
I could never bare to watch to the part where Quint gets eating inch by inch by the shark. First it's his feet that are in the shark's mouth, then his legs, then his waist and then his torso, until we only see his head with blood sipping out through the corners of his mouth while he screams in agony. I still can't watch that part and I never will. I also can't bare the part where Alex Kintner gets eaten. When I was a kid I wouldn't bare to hear his screams underwater because it made me feel like it was me being eaten. I still can't watch it. I don't like the actual attacks and the blood and dying, I just like the building up to the attacks and the way Spielberg created it. By hiding the shark from the audience and just allowing the audience to see things from the point of view of the shark he made all the more scarier.
It's not just the building up to the attacks though, it's everything about the movie, the music, the dialogue, the characters, everything is just perfect.
I just wish I had been able to watch it in the theaters when it first came out. I can imagine that watching it in a theatre would be amazing.

Scenes From a Mall

I've just watched one of my favourite movies, Scenes From a Mall. I was able to buy it thanks to Ebay. I haven't watched it in about 15 years so it was a real treat. I love Bette Midler and Woody Allen and together they're amazing. The only problem is that since sushi features pretty much all throughout the movie I now have this gigantic craving for tuna sashimi.

Sometimes we need to place our trust in the law, and sometimes not

Some girlfriends were over the other week and we got to talking about this incident that happened when we were kids. There was a flasher roaming our neighbourhood. He flashed himself in front of me and one of my friends. I must have been 7 or 8 at the time. At around the same time there was also a man in the same neighbourhood who liked to stalk women. My mom came across him one night, as he was stalking this young woman who had come running up to my dad begging him for help. Since this was shortly after I had been flashed my mom got it into her head that the stalker was also the flasher. She became enraged and rather than run away she told him that he would now lose the very body part that he liked to go around showing little girls. With those words she ran inside the house to get a large knife. Unfortunately the man had run off by the time she came back out. All I can say is, GO MOM!
Then my girlfriends and I got to talking about how to best handle an attack by an onknown assailant. I said that having your keys in your hand while you're walking is a good idea because then you can stab him with the key. I've heard about women doing this. They said that if you do that then you will be the one who gets into trouble, not him. This to me is outrageous! Someone attacks me and if I defend myself I get charged? I told Nick about this and he said that even if the guy attacks you and you harm him, he's hardly likely to press charges and even if he did, it would make him look quite the fool wouldn't it since he was the one who attacked me in the first place. Also, how would he find you if you are strangers to each other? Would he take out an ad in the newspaper?

"Attention! You who shoved your key in my forehead as I was attacking you on Main St. on Tuesday night, please come forward. I would like to press charges aganst you."

Attacker

No, it probably won't happen that way. Even if it did, it still wouldn't stop me from trying to inflict as much damage as possible if I were to be assaulted. No idiotic law is going to dictate how I defend myself if someone tries to harm me. It's the law of jungle. Eat or be eaten. I someone wishes to do me harm, you better believe I'm going to try to harm him back. If the law expects me to run with my tail between my legs, which would assure that the guy gets away and will be free to do this to somebody else, it's sadly mistaken. Now I don't know how I would react in a situation like this. I may run, or I may fight, who knows. One will never until one is in the kind of situation. I would like to think that I would fight with every fibre of my being. It's my body and my integrity and no law in the world is going to tell me that I can't defend myself. I would never unprovoked hurt another human being and I hate violence, but if someone attacks me then he has forfeited his right to be treated like a human being.

Don't you just love friends who won't give you the time of day when they're in a relationship

Once I had a friend whom I loved to hang out with. She would always bitch to me about her best friend who had suddenly turned weird on her after she had found herself a boyfriend, and they never spent time together anymore. Then as she made up with her best friend it was adios amigo as far as I was concerned. I had been her bitch-friend for a few months, and someone to fill the void during her conflict with her best friend.
There are friends, and then there are friends. There are two different categories of them - true friends and friends who are just looking for company. The latter category, although they can temporarily be fun, aren't really worth much. Real friends aren't dependent upon their relationship status when it comes to how they treat their friends. They'll be your friend when they're single and will continue to be so even after they meet someone.
Ever heard of the expression "Fair-weather friend", who only wants to be your friend when your life is smooth and there are no complications? Well there's also the "Foul-weather" friend, who is only interested in being pals when their life is empty or crappy.
The "Foul-weather friend" wants to be your buddy and hang out when he/she has nothing else going on in his/her life, but will conveniently forget all about you when things pick up and who will seek out other friends then. Normally this expression is used for people who want to be friends when you're life is down the toilet but it can be used when the situation is reversed. You gotta love these people! Makes me feel kind of like a breeding mare who has served her purpose and can then be cast aside until the next time. Makes you doubt yourself too. Did I do something to offend this person? Was it something I said? Was I only good enough when she/he was lonely and suffering from a life crisis but not good enough to be with when things are great? You mull over it and wonder to yourself what it was and if there's anything you can do to change it. Perhaps a peppy email or a breezy phone call, saying that you just want to catch up, phrased as though nothing has changed, will do the trick? Some of the old jokes perhaps? The same old jargon...

"Hey, what's new. Long time no see! What ya been up to? Let's catch up sometime soon. See ya soon I hope! : )

P.S. I had gravel and milk for dinner tonight! ; )

There, that oughta do it! That was nice and casual right? Not intense or pushy in any way right? Nothing like the way you've been acting lately. Yeah, this oughta get things back on track. Show that you're not pissed or weird or anything.
A nice touch might be to add some inside joke at the end. Like a catchy P.S or something. Yeah that's a good idea.
Nothing's changed right?
Wrong.
Things have changed and you better roll with the punches.
Then as time goes by and you hear nothing or you get a distant demeanour in response to your attempts to stay in contact, you realize that this person is on the way out. Unfortunately it's a part of life and the best we can do is distinguish genuine friends from these "Foul-weather friends" and stay away from the latter. Or, don't allow yourself to develop any deeper sentiments for this person and just enjoy the ride while it lasts. People come and go and most of them will not stick around forever. That's how it works. We all fulfill a purpose in each other's lives, whether it's a permanent purpose or a temporary one depends on the person. Some people we will continue to need in our lives while others lose their luster once something or someone else comes along to. I can honestly say that I'm not the type to be inclined to cast friends aside once I meet someone or something new happens in my life. Sure, I might become busier and spend less time with friends, especially in the beginning stage of a relationship, but it's not in my nature to just drop them from my life completely.
The good thing for me is that I've become very good at letting people go gracefully these days. What's the point of trying to hang on to something that's a thing of the past? It's a waste of time. Once it's been made clear to you that they no longer desire to be friends, and you have made an attempt to stay in touch or to heal whatever went wrong, the best thing to do is to just let them go. Who needs these people anyway.
As a girl, I can understand why a guy might not be able to spend as much time with his female friends after he's met someone. I certainly wouldn't like it if Nick spent a lot of time with another woman. However I wouldn't expect him to break off all contact with all females that were in his life before me. He's free to correspond or do stuff with other women. I'd be weirded out if he started spending all his free time with another girl and that would of course present a problem but I do think that men and women should be able to be friends even when they're married or involved.

Lame-ass job offer and the trials of teaching ESL

In a crappy mood, for no particular reason really. It's not due to PMS or something like that. I don't know why this sudden irritation came over me. It has been a long and tedious day and I came home to a sink full of dishes and a big, black garbage bag full of dried food in the kitchen. Plastic bags are so ugly, particularly garbage bags.
Then I check my email and I read an offer to teach English classes in technical English at some company located miles from the city. We're talking technical instructions manuals here, at some company in the middle of nowhere.
Even if I did drive I wouldn't do it. I'm so sick at feeling like I have to take these lame job offers. I suppose I'm bitter because I still have to accept offers to tutor.
Well this one offer I did turn down. It would probably pay pretty well but there is no way I am travelling for 45 min to try and teach technical manuals to some factory employees. It'd be the blind leading the blind. And as always with these courses I don't get paid until after the course is finished, something that I am sick of.
For some reason, the smaller language schools here never bother to test student's language levels before placing them in an English class. I hate that. Yeah I get that these small schools are more informal and that their motto is that education should be for everyone regardless of their background and financial status. But that doesn't work with language courses. You can't just pile anyone who's interested in the same course and expect them to learn. I feel like a bitch sometimes these days because my patience is running pretty thin with this stuff. There have been too many times where the schools have formed classes consisting of a wide variety of levels, and then the students get snotty with me when they realize that the other students in the class are way too advanced for them, or vice versa. I take the flack for the schools' incompetence and if they want me to do that they better pay me more money.
One school once surprised me by admitting 13 students to a conversation class, and half the class was advanced and half was low. I wasn't even told of the newly added students. I just showed up to teach the class and they showed up and before you knew it I had 13 people in front of me who expected to learn something. We had to split the group up into two classes naturally. But if that happens again I'm going to go ballistic. I've now created the rule that they are not to add more than 10 students in a class, and if they do they have to find themselves another teacher. Conversation classes are supposed to be smaller, that's just plain logic. How are 13 people going to get a chance to speak much in 2 short hours?
It's bloody well time I grow a backbone and start speaking up. I always think that I don't have a say in anything and that I should just be grateful to get offered work but that's just not true. I have a lot of experience with this now and I do know what I'm talking about and I'm a person and not a machine, and I'm an adult too, not a kid, and I'm going to make it a point to protest if I feel like something is not right. If the result is that they find me difficult, so be it.
Not the biggest problems in the world, but right now I'm crabby and in the mood to vent.

The best comic in the world

The coolest comic, Lilla Fridolf. Most of the time, I have read it while laying on my bed eating candy. Now it has become my reading material in the washroom, although that doesn't mean I like it any less. It's a real shame that this comic has changed beyond recognition since a new writer took over after the old one passed away. A new illustrator also replaced the old one, changing the look of the characters to the point where I don't even want to read the comic anymore. That's normal though since no comic can last forever. I consider Lilla Fridolf no longer printed. It's a comic of the past and they should just let it rest in peace and not continue to soil its good name. I will always cherish the old comics though and I will gladly search through flea markets to try to find any old issues that I don't already have. It's rare to come across them so when I do I get almost ridiculously happy. I look like a racoon searching through a garbage can when I rifle through piles of old comic books. When I come across a Lilla Fridolf I almost gasp out loud. "WOW!"
That happened yesterday when I visited the flea market downtown, which I do every now and then just to see if they have gotten in any Lilla Fridolf. They rarely ever do. This time they did! I was ecstatic. I was able to find over 10 issues. Unfortunately I only had cash for 6 but the guy let me have 8 for the price of 6. I guess he could see the desperation in my eyes as I stood there with the comic books in front of me, searching through my wallet for any coins that might have hidden in the corners.
So now I have a new stack of comics, some of which I have never read before, so it's a real treat.
There is something so comforting about old comics. They're so safe. They conjure up images of childhood and bright colours and imaginary worlds.

21-year old me

I just watched an old home video of a birthday party that took place when I was 21.
Watching myself on video was as always a self-conscious, embarrassing affair.
Frizzy dark hair that hung in disorganized curls around my face. Round, bulging face with thin lips and prodtruding teeth. Hovering around the punch bowl, sipping the welcome drink with the delight and curiosity of a kid who's just been allowed to have alcohol for the first time.
Conservative light blue skirt suit that I had bought inspired by Jackie Kennedy. Shoulder pads that made me look larger than I really was.
When this video was shot I had had virtually no life experience. I remember being so idealistic and naive. I reckon that I was also regarded as something of a freak because I was living at home and had still not had a boyfriend, had not even dated, and didn't have a job or any prospects for the future. I didn't have a life. I was living inside my head, always captivated by some celebrity. For several years it was Elvis, then it was JFK jr, then for a very brief time it was Bryan Adams. This was how I survived. Reality was so boring that I had to obsess about something in order to just get through the day. With Elvis it was more though. I still love Elvis, just not in such an obsessive way as back then.
Idealistic youth. This was when I still believed that everyone I met really was nice and when I thought that everything was about me. I didn't need to go to any effort with people because it was enough to just show up and be me. I could see that in the video. My social skills sucked ass and to top it off I was kind of a snob. I don't proclaim to be perfect in the present but at least I'm not as bad as I was back then.
This was before I had been in a relationship and therefore still held the belief that love was like in the movies and there would be a prince charming out there somewhere waiting for me.
15 months later I went to Canada for the first time, and the rest is history.
I find myself wondering how much I've really changed since that video was filmed. Do I still look like that? We always think we look better now compared to in the past but that's not always true. We just don't want to admit that we really look like that. Given that this was 15 years ago I would assume that my face has changed somewhat.
Personality wise I would say I am more polished and more cynical. Not that I'm a polished person, but compared to 21-year old me I am. There weren't very many places to go but up on that score.
Then there were the relatives and friends in the video who have passed away since this birthday party. It was particularly sad to see the grandparents. Seeing my grandpa with his large, black glasses that were always kind of crooked on his thin face. His thin hair which was always unruly and that I always liked to pull to tease him.
So, was it better to have gotten out and experienced life even though the experiences I would soon come to have could hardly be described as positive?
Or would it have been better to stay in my hometown? God knows when I would have moved out of my parent's place and gotten a job. I might still be living with them. Or maybe I would have eventually conformed and found myself an office job and a local, down-to-earth boyfriend whom I would have moved in with. I refused to conform, which is why I was still living at home and not working, apart from office cleaning two nights a week.
I suppose what happened was meant to be. Life is never smooth. We are all bound to have bad experiences. That's how we grow. Cocooning in my childhood room forever and avoiding any unpleasant experiences with the real world versus heading out there and facing hard times? Clearly I would still choose the latter despite knowing what I do now, I would have just made different choices that's all. Living at home at 21 and living in a fantasy world had its comfortable aspects yet I remember lots of moments of tears and loneliness, thinking I'd be alone forever.
Some things I've learned is that the whole does not revolve around me and not all people have good intentions. I think I've become better at distinguishing the rotten apples from the good ones.
Anyway, I sure hope I've changed some since then. Sometimes I worry that I have come full circle and am right back where I started without any progress. I know this isn't the case but living here plays tricks with my mind. It's almost like living in the Twilight Zone.