Saturday, June 11, 2005

The Adventures of CoronaBoy and TequilaGirl

Oy ve, what a weekend we are having.

It's not so much the heat, but the humidity which drives the temperatures up way into the 40s, that gets to you after a while. That, coupled with the constantly impending threat of severe thundershowers, might be enough to keep most people inside, but I think we've established by now that we're not most people, right?

So after spending the whole of Thursday outdoors, and not merely just sitting around and boozing (which I'll admit was a good chunk of it), but also being active and sweating a lot, we followed up with an encore performance on Friday, when the heat had reached dangerous levels, the kind that comes with warnings on the radio and spikes in water and electricity consumption. Ah, good old North America.

But between all the sweating and running around (and sometimes during), we were having a date, which is custom on Fridays. 16 hour marathon dates, because it's hard to have a definite beginning and end when you wake up in the same sheets, and shower together, and eat baloney together. It was romantic though, in our own way, our way that includes the great white moon that Jason presented to me on the bike path. As a gift, it was well-received. But the heat makes you do crazy things, and after a lengthy conversation about whether or not a particular caterpillar experienced any existential angst, we decided that we clearly needed more booze, and perhaps a little food, and so we made it (just barely) to our favourite patio of late for fajitas and margaritas.

There we settled into a long discussion about how brown I am looking (which for the rest of you might more accurately be described as slightly off-white, but for me is quite an accomplishment). And how not all of the brownness can be due to the onslaught of freckles that summer always brings for me.

Jason gave me a gift - a lovely new mp3 player, a sporty one that has a lap counter and a chronometre, which I realize is a french word, but if I know the english one, it has escaped me. He knows me well, that Jason, for he declared our Friday night date to be in honour of our upcoming anniversary and my upcoming birthday. He knows full well how much I hate my birthday, and so we've celebrated quietly several weeks in advance and can now let the actual date float by harmlessly.

So I unwrapped the gift coyly, because as much as I love getting gifts, I hate the actual receiving of them.

"Don't worry, it's not an ipod" he assures me, acutely aware of my hatred for the brand. And it's not just that they suck, and that everyone we know who has an ipod hates their ipod, but because I hate even the idea of ipod, along with ieverything, almost anything else that has had its moment of glory: Nike, sushi, Harry Potter, anyone who has ever said Wassssssup, reality TV, Star Wars...well, you get the idea. Jason says it's because I'm an Elitist Bitch with a Superiority Complex, and he's right.

"I wanted to give it to you early so you'd have it all summer long" he tells me, and I know what he is saying. Walking weather is upon us once again. Generally, I don't mind music-less walks because I find myself highly entertaining, and 1 or 2 hour walks don't even put a dent in the damage I can do to my own ear. But the problem with that is, I get to thinking. And then I don't stop. It impedes my writing. It makes sleep impossible. And then his beloved Elitist Bitch turns into Heinous Elitist Bitch with a Swing-Happy Fist. So you see why he thinks this is a perfect gift. And really, it is. I am a confessed music whore. I have music on all the time because it does work marvelously at engaging the rest of my brain while I am busy at a task so that no part of it lays fallow. I have to burn all thrusters all the time just to keep sane, and not so long ago in a not so far-away land called Ottawa, I listened happily to my mp3 player as I took 3 or 4 hour long treks from the St Laurent area down to Carlingwood. Well, not my mp3 player, but the one I filched from Jason, who had one 6 or 7 years ago before anyone else really cared to. Jason likes to have all the latest toys, and I enjoyed walking as far as my legs would carry me with Michael Jackson by my side (incidentally, it is impossible to walk in a straight line when Thriller is playing in your ear). But apparently mp3 players make for a tasty treat, and our hungry little cockapoo gobbled it up one evening, and neither of us could bring ourselves to replace it.

Remembering all of these days long past makes for interesting dinner conversation, but on the almost-occasion of our anniversary, we indulged ourselves. After all, Jason and I have grown up together. Or, at least, we continue to grow older together. I'm not sure if any new levels of maturity have entered into it, as evidenced by the movie part of dinner and a movie that so many classic dates consist of.

"Your pick" he says to me, not with generosity, but because Jason has never once made up his mind on anything (except possibly moi, but he still maintains that I twisted his arm on that one) in his life. And so, I picked The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl, in part because it was playing at The Port, which is an archaic remnant, the last in the city, in which my mother had dates, and my grandmother had dates. Three generations of our family have necked in the back row of that theatre, and it struggles to remain open now in direct competition with BigFatCompany Theatre across town. The Port only has one big room, complete with balcony, all of it outfitted in plush red crushed velvet, including curtains that adorn the screen. Movies there can be seen for $4.25, a rarity, which is why it almost never shows first-run movies. But there it was, SharkBoy and LavaGirl, on opening night, and I had never seen a 3D movie before. The draw proved irresistible.

The movie was directed by Robert Rodriguez, whose last directorial effort that we saw was Sin City, much different fare indeed. Critics have completely panned it, and I'll admit it was cheesy and cliched, but what the hell, it was fun. Plus, it had David Arquette whom I adore, and Kristin Davis who made me achy for SATC, and for my first foray into the third dimension, I was satisfactorily impressed. In fact, I shouted a few times when I believed something was being thrown at me, and all the small children turned to me with eyebrows raised, unsure how such a big kid could still be duped by such obvious tricks. Oops. The coolest part: we got to keep our glasses! I wore mine all night long! Shark Boy glasses for the boys, Lava Girl glasses for the girls. Dead sexy either way.

We capped the evening with ice cream instead of drinks, perhaps for the nostalgic effect, or perhaps because we knew we had a fridge full of liquor but no ice cream in the freezer. So we licked our hearts content and then returned home to lick our other parts content as well. Today I have a somewhat sore jaw, and I can't tell you which it was from.

Today Jason was off to work early in the morning, and despite another wall of humidity and risk of thundershowers again, I headed out, music in hand, for an ambitious walk, shin splints be damned. Incidentally, out of my many current playlists a new favourite has emerged: All These Things That I've Done, by The Killers. I'm not sure if it's a single or not, but I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of the CD. I've got soul but I'm not a soldier just may be the best thing I've heard all year. Heady stuff.

And so I enjoyed the day all to myself since it seems to me that every other human being on the planet stayed in the safety of the a/c. Prisoners in their own homes, I tell you. Not me. I've got a spring in my step and a love for the summer months that even my heat stroke never quashes.

This is the life.

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