After a good twenty-eight hours of traveling, M and I finally made it to Halifax safe and sound.
We had a long wait at SeaTac, so we enjoyed some wine and dessert at one of the airport’s lounges.
Wines from Spain, Argentina and Chile. We liked the Chilean the best.
It’s a hard life, but you know, we’re happy to take one for the team.
(It’s pretty nuts knowing that it’s cheaper for us to drive to a DIFFERENT COUNTRY and then fly back to Canada, than to just purchase tickets out of YVR, BUT! That is a post for another day – I am too relaxed, and the house smells too good, and I am wearing too sparkly of a skirt, and I have a too sleepy cat in my lap to care all that much.)
I am warm, and happy, and snuggly, and fab.
The city here is cold, but beautiful, and our house twinkles in the glow of tea lights and fire light, and the snow flurries wink as they dance past the windowpanes.
ALSO. We have big, BIG news!
My sister and her long-time partner Mel just got engaged!
This fills me with so much happiness it’s practically impossible to communicate just how truly chuffed I really am. They are a brilliant couple and I cannot wait to see them declare their love for one another in front of family and friends next summer in New York.
We’ve only been here but a day and things are rolling like rolling things.
Here are some snaps for the past twenty-four hours:
Fireplace mantel decked to the nines.Snoopy skating about the place. An all-time favourite ornament for all three sisters.Beauty sister.Basement cat Simon. Getting pats from Mr. M.Monsieur Rufus doing his own thing, despite our pleas for him to get off the table.Cousins are doing it for themselves. In flannel.Our tree trimmed with care.
Wishing you all the merriest of merries, and a Christmas filled with laughter and love, friends and family, peace and joy.
I, like most people, have some pretty weird day-to-day habits (that may or may not border on compulsions.)
Nothing too severe or debilitating of course – just silly things that sometimes throw a crank in my style, or cause me to write using awkwardly mixed metaphors.
For instance –
I cannot abide nails longer then the ends of my fingers. Even if they come close, I have to cut them down.
When I played piano, I could never start to practice if I hadn’t brushed my teeth.
I’ve written before about how I have to take the same shower every time I step into the bath. At night, I floss, then brush, then wash my face, then moisturize, then put in my mouth guard.
I also have routines for cleaning the bathroom, folding laundry, and making the bed.
I “chew” hot drinks to cool them down.
I had to cut and re-paint my nails to keep from going mad.
There are others, I’m sure, but these are the ones that immediately spring to mind when I think about the routines I employ within my life.
They are processes that make me happy, and that help order and becalm my days (and my nights.)
But!
You’ll never catch me trying to label them.
I just find that too many people (especially of late) like think it’s cool to claim they suffer from some kind of behavioral disorder or condition.
Words like ADHD or OCD are thrown around like baseballs or chakrams.
(Side note: I totally wish that I had a chakram.)
(OKAY FINE – I totally just wanted to use the word chakram.)
(Chakram.)
Enough!
For example, how many times have you ever heard someone say an iteration of the following:
“ZOMG. I’m so ADD!”
Or
“That’s just part of my OCD!”
Or what have you.
I mean, I really wish these people understood that these disorders aren’t sweaters one can casually model one day and then promptly shove to the back of their closets for the next six months.
These are legitimate conditions from which people suffer, and treating them like they’re accessories is a pretty solid way of stripping individuals – who actually spend their lives working through their symptoms (and as such, their consequences) – of the legitimacy they deserve.
And I understand that it’s hard, in particular when 1.) the individual doing the appropriation are likely doing so without malicious intent and therefore don’t fully recognize why what they’re doing could be harmful, because 2.) our society is pretty crap at educating people about these conditions (or really any illness in general.)
I mean, I’d wager a bet that if you typed in “why do I like to wash my hands?” into Google, you’d probably get a giant red banner screaming:
CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE OUR 1,000,000 VISITOR TO HAVE OCD. CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE.
The second search result would most likely be: BECAUSE YOU HAVE CANCER.
(Off topic, but never, ever use the internet as a tool for diagnosis. Stick to cat videos and ermagherd.)
Anywho, what I’m trying to say here is that this lack of knowledge and discussion hurts everybody, and sometimes making silly little statements about our silly little lives can (unwittingly) hurts others.
And goodness knows I’m by no means a perfect example of this – this awareness is something I work on every day.
However, I sure am I’m hoping that one day it will become routine.
I am beginning to think that I am the only one alive who still writes in cursive.
Talk about your dying art.
And it makes me sad.
You can wax poetic about the information age all you want, but the fact of the matter is so many individuals (of all ages) just cannot hand-write – either for the life of them, or, well, because they just don’t know how.
(I won’t even get into what this means for spelling and grammar because that is a chestnut for another fire, er – time.)
I can remember being a little girl and wanting so badly to learn how to write in cursive.
As a kid, I was always on the move, and when I wasn’t practicing my times tables in the car on the way to piano – no joke, I can remember reciting my sevens over and over again while trying to memorize all of my scales and arpeggios – I was badgering my mother to teach me how to make my g’s look just like hers.
(My mom makes great, GREAT g’s.)
I finally wore her down and she bought me a booklet that taught me the letters, and gave me the means to practice them over, and over, and over again.
I pretty sure I finished all the worksheets in the space of a week, because once I began to get a feel for the English cursive alphabet, I was hooked.
It was like graphology crack, only for an eight year old.
(Graphology Flintstones crack?)
I loved the beautiful lines, and the dramatic loops; the way my letters ran together, and how the ink didn’t.
Because I was also a dancer, I imagined my words to be a series of steps, intricate and dazzling, but outwardly effortless.
Hand writing always made me feel so very posh. Like I somehow wrote myself into a royal lineage every time I signed my name, or marked down the date at the top of my in-class quizzes and essays.
As I grew up, I could never understand how my classmates steadfastly clung to their printing, unwilling to hand-write at any cost.
It seemed archaic.
And wrong.
I was astounded to find out at university that fellow students would actually print during midterms and finals.
Didn’t that take forever? Wouldn’t that cramp your hand twice as fast?
Why oh why would anyone forsake the promised script? Who were these non-disciples of the cursive way?
The job I had whilst in grad school required me to write a final exam (very top secret stuff here folks) and afterwards my examiner approached me to tell me that out of all forty candidates, I had been the only one to hand-write my answers.
I remain to this day, shocked, appalled, and just a little bit smug.
(Just kidding. I remain only two of those things.)
In terms of my relationship with writing these days, well, my favourite letters remain ‘r’ and ‘m’ – I like the way they feel in my hand and the way they glide away from my pen.
I love writing cards for loved ones, signing my name in wedding guest books, and filling out comment cards at conferences.
I like to think that I leave a little piece of myself every time I write, whenever I write.
And I look forward to being an old woman, sitting at her desk.
I am actually apt to believe that this company is just trolling us all, and that their employees fill their days playing an endless game of “Sexy Madlibs” in an effort to come up with the most ridiculous costumes as possible.
In fact, because it looks so easy I think I’m going to play too.
Let’s start:
SEXY PLUNGER!
SEXY COMPRESSION SOCK!
SEXY ARMADILLO!
SEXY SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD!
SEXY BOARDING PASS!
SEXY SHOE HORN!
SEXY EUROPEAN UNION MONETARY POLICY!
SEXY AUSTERITY MEASURES!
SEXY WEDGE OF MELTED BRIE!
SEXY SWEATER VEST!
SEXY CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT!
SEXY PONTIUS PILATE!
SEXY JACKSON POLLOCK PAINTING!
SEXY HEAD GEAR!
SEXY NON-FAT PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE EASY WHIP!
Seriously, I want this job. Not only is it completely bonkers, it is great, great fun.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’ve never gone out on Halloween dressed as a slightly more tarted-up version of my normal self.
In first year of my undergrad, I went as a the Short Skirt, Long Jacket girl from Cake’s seminal work “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” (not my finest work, but definitely my most last minute); and the year after I was some sort of trampy vampire (although mostly I was stoked to stomp around in my new Doc Martin boots, flashing my sweet fangs to random passerbys.)
But mostly, I’ve taken advantage of Halloween to dress as either dudes from different decades or Hermione from Harry Potter.
(And not sexy Hermione either BECAUSE COME ON PEOPLE, THAT IS JUST AWFUL AND WRONG.)
I’ve been a 1920s golfer, an Extra Extra! paperboy, and Jerry Sizzler (a clearly insane man, dressed as a woman.)
This year, if I could actually get my act together I would LOVE to go as Psy (although I would have to make sure that I pulled it off and didn’t veer into 1970s prom territory.)
So where exactly am I going with this?
I’m not exactly sure. I mean, on one hand, I feel as though it isn’t my right to stand up and say that women cannot dress the way that they want – on Halloween or any other day of the year.
But on the other hand, the whole “sexy for sexy sake” trope really drives me nuts. It’s lazy and demeaning and ridiculous.
And yet, I also cannot help but keep going back to the line: In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. (From Tina Fey’s brilliant film Mean Girls.)
So. This is true, yes. But what do we do with it?
Let’s talk it through.
For three hundred and sixty-four days of the year women are judged and shamed every day based on their mode of dress (whether it’s too sexy or not sexy enough).
However, for one night each year, some kind of messed up amnesty is called, and a woman can put on whatever deranged outfit she chooses (let’s say, a sexy hamburger costume), and for the next five or so hours have the opportunity to subvert current social norms and attitudes, because sexy now IS the expected and accepted norm, come Halloween night.
To me, this is some messed up crap.
Instead of, oh, I don’t know, making a concerted effort to do away with the incredibly damaging expectations and implications we as a society have placed on a woman’s appearance, mode of dress, and sexuality, we create a night where it’s okay for a woman to be “sexy” and dress in utterly rubbish costumes (but just this one time!) because it’s only make believe and not real life.
Remember ladies: it’s okay to be a slut as long as you’re not really a slut!
TITILATE NOT FORNICATE!
This ludicrous binary of all or nothing sexuality – where it is important to be both chaste and sexual, the Madonna and the whore – is brutal, and restrictive, and archaic, and so alive and thriving it boggles my mind.
And it messes me up because I get all shirty and confused wondering if I am actually okay with women wearing these kind of outfits? Do they really want to wear that kind of costume or do they just think they should wear something like that? Are these choices symptoms of patriarchy or they conscious efforts to subvert it?
For the love of Pete, someone pass me a mini Twix bar.
The long and short of it is – I don’ t have the answer. So I will finish by saying this:
Ladies: Dress up however you wish, and remember – when the clock strikes twelve on November 1, you won’t turn into a pumpkin (SEXY! Or otherwise.)
No matter what you wear, you will still be the same person, the same heart, the same brain, the same soul. A costume, makeup, a mode of dress – none of these things can change that, no matter what anyone (or society) tries to tell you.
Now, if you excuse me, I think I may have just figured out the perfect costume. This year, I will definitely be going as a SEXY CAN OF WORMS!
Rant and Roll 