Empty

I've missed blogging, more than I even knew myself, and I blamed a lot of things, like the relative ease of Facebook, and the crammed-upness of my calendar, and the dwindling hours in a day (they are getting fewer, aren't they? It can't just be me.) But the thing that I don't blame it on is my work, though I strongly suspect it is the main culprit.

I'm not supposed to complain about my work because when I went to school to be a therapist, we all said words like "rewarding" and "fulfilling" and "it's not about money" with stars in our eyes, but we meant them. I meant it.

And during the first years of my career, starting up, cutting my teeth, hearing stories and giving people direction even when I felt like a kid in a grownup suit, I still meant it. I meant it even more. I felt like I was really helping people. The first time you go home knowing you have categorically saved someone's life, that they are alive at this moment because of you, it's a pretty flush feeling. Your adrenaline gets going in those moments; you push aside your panic, the doubts you may have in your own capabilities, you crash through the outer limits of your physical and mental self, and somehow you become more. You become a bigger, stronger person than you actually are. It is exhausting but you cannot fail, to fail would be unthinkable, so you don't, you win, you win at any cost. When the situation resolves itself, you deflate in a slow whoooooosh, I've actually felt like someone was letting the air out of me while simultaneously draining the colour out of the world and the energy out of the room. But you live for this shaky sense of euphoria and relief and you go home proud.

While I'm technically a self-employed counsellor, I have worked for the past 4 years on a government contract. I work with a specific segment of the population that has experienced severe childhood trauma. I am a crisis counsellor. These are not clients with daddy issues or low self esteem. Every day, I deal with crises. Every day I listen to horrific stories, stories that have made me spend my breaks crying in bathroom stalls and my nights wide awake, afraid of what I might dream. Every day if it's not the 87 year old woman who is sobbing recounting being raped at the age of 6, savagely, repeatedly, then tortured, the left without a family to raise her, then trapped in an abusive marriage as she watched her children be taken away by social services until the day her husband died, leaving her penniless and homeless in her old, crippled age, then it's someone else with a different but equally soul-destroying story and they're looking to me for help. How can they live with this?

That's a question I don't always feel comfortable answering. Sometimes I really don't know. But I value life, and I value healing, and I believe that it can be done.

When I started this job four years ago, I believed that I could save them. Now I'm not sure that I can even save myself. I feel dead inside. Sometimes I get home at midnight and sit in the bath with a bottle of wine and the tears won't even come. I watch the clock because I know I'll have to be up in just a couple of hours to do it all over again. Crises don't hit Monday-Friday, 9-5. Suicides are not a business-hours business.

I feel like a fraud. I feel like no matter how many dragons I slay today, tomorrow there will just be a new herd of them, fiery and relentless.

It's called secondary trauma. I know this. When you're a front line worker getting assaulted by every graphic detail, it saturates you. It becomes you. I am not a rock. I am good at my job because I am sensitive. But how many stories of sodomy and starvation can one person hear? Whatever that number is, I think I reached it awhile back. They are sitting inside of me, like poison. I am rotting.

When you start out, you're all gung-ho about "self-care" , the stuff a therapist does for herself, on behalf of her own sanity. The things that put the spring back in your step. But the ghosts of your clients will follow you home. The sound of draino being gulped, a noose being thrown around a beam, the chair tipping back, the gun hitting the table, the heavy breathing of someone who's just cut into themselves. It's haunting. Saving on person's life feels great. Saving many ...

I don't know.
I don't know anymore.
I don't have words.
And so, I do not write.
A wordless writer,
a novel-less novelist,
a ghost of my former self.

A woman of a certain age.

I am 30.

Later this year, a birthday will occur that places me in the bracket of a woman "in her thirties."

Thirty is supposed to be terrifying. It's supposed to be old.
I remember when my mother turned 30, and her admonishment to answer "29" if anyone asked her age.
It was a big deal.
So I prepared myself mentally for turning that dreaded age, as well as anyone can, and planned an elaborate holiday to NYC to soften the blow.
But there was no blow.
30 felt a lot to me like 29, which felt a lot like 28 come to think of it, which felt not unlike 27.
Thirty turned out to not be a very big deal after all.

Except.
Except I am married to a man who is 5 years older than me, but looks 10 years younger than me. His hair is graying but he has a boyish face, a little imp of a grin. If he's anything like his father (and to my eyes, he's practically a carbon copy), he will continue to be fit and cute and vital for a long, long time and the gray at this temples just makes him look sexier. Damn.
Which presents me with an odd dilemma - even if I age gracefully and look good for my age, I'll still look older than him.
I do not particularly relish this suffering by comparison.
And apparently, this suffering has already begun.

Last weekend, a meeting of the sisters at my mother's house took place, and my sisters teased my husband about looking barely beyond the age of majority, and then turned to me and said that I looked "young at heart."

Ouch.

To my ears, that was was worse than "You look older than he does" or "You look 30" or even "You look 50." Young at heart is for an octogenarian who still wears a jaunty hat or likes a nip of whiskey. You can only be young at heart when you're old in body. And 30 may be no spring chicken, but I hardly think it qualifies as old.

A note about my sisters: my sisters, all 3 of them, are my younger sisters. Curses. It is literally a woman's worst nightmare to be the oldest of four girls. All of my life I will be pictured with and surrounded by younger women. As if standing beside my handsome husband is not punishment enough, I also have to spend my life being compared to women who look vaguely like me, only younger. Not awesome.

Until that moment, I didn't really take issue with how I looked. I like what I see in the mirror most days. Maybe I look 30, but what's wrong with that? I am older (and fatter) but I am also happier, with better shoes and a more expensive haircut.

Young at heart.

Okay, I admit it. I cried.

I tried to laugh it off. If you have my sisters, you grow a tough skin. All my life they have taunted my big lips, my "mama" sized boobs, even the shape of my bellybutton. But with this one, they have struck a chord.

It doesn't bother me a whit to look whatever age I am - 30, 40, 50, 60, whatever. The only thing that makes me cringe is thinking that somewhere along the line my husband will start to look like my little brother, or worse, my son. My worst fear is to look like we do not belong together.

There is no diet, no miracle makeup foundation that can help me with this. Demi Moore started going bananas with the plastic surgery and the anorexia the minute she married a younger man, and then it literally drove her crazy. Is a mental breakdown in my future too? Kate Winslet is vocal about being against plastic surgery, but at the ripe old age of 36, she's out there schilling anti-wrinkle creams. If she's worried, then I should going fucking ballistic! And here I am making do with $10 moisturizer like an idiot, meanwhile the city miles are wracking up on my face and I'm not filling them in with anything!

Apparently I've already started the descent. I'm already looking aged, says my sister, who will be as old as I am in just four years (which is small comfort, since she will never catch up, I will always be that much older, look that much worse) and who once offered the worst insult she could possible dredge up after someone gave her a makeover she didn't like - "I look like a 30 year old."

Well, 30 is coming.
It happens to all of us.
It happened to me.
And it keeps happening. I'm older now than when I started this post. I may look worse, but I feel better.
And if in 20 years I'm playing tonsil hockey with my super hot son, then so be it.

Pain is so demeaning when it stops you in your tracks.
It robs you of your personhood a little, it takes part of you away.
And the loneliness.
The loneliness of it is pain too, less acute, more hollow.

But it's amazing what searing pain can teach you.
You can reach the outer limits of yourself, that squibbly border where the universe slowly becomes me, where my skin and the thing next to it are virtually indistinguishable, where pain is just a thing, a thing inside my head that is in fact not bigger than I am.

Meditation is to conquer the beast.
To sit down and have an intellectual conversation with it.

Comfort is the bedside table: the chocolates that I don't even pretend to hesitate over, the books with unbroken spines, the blister packs.

Victory is sleep - despite, or in spite?
Just sleep.

For a long time, blogging was very fullfulling for me.

I started to see life in terms of how I would post it: something interesting (or banal but potentially still worthy) would happen, and my brain would ZING with words, excited to put it down and hit publish.

And then I fell away from it.

But you don't stop being filled with something that needs to come out.

I still have a lot that wants to come out and meet the world.

These days, I'm making connections with brides instead of bloggers.

I make wedding invitations.

I make really beautiful, glamourous, high-end, unique wedding invitations.

I make a small contributions to people's love and happiness.

I make something meaningful.

Sure it's business, but to me it's so much more.

I'm not trying to make a lot of money, I'm just enjoying being a working artist with a little studio and lots of lovely ideas.

Everytime I put a little sparkle into someone's day, a little bling, a little glamour, a little luxury - there's just something satisfying in that.

Taylor Made is a work of love - not just invitations, but wedding stationery: the thank you cards, the ceremony programs, the favour tags, the wine bottle labels...I love the layers. I love the love.

http://www.taylormadewithlove.com

The doctor calls it a herniated disc, but I call it a good excuse to stay home on a sunny day.

Destination Unknown

The term honeymoon apparently originated because friends and family were supposed to supply the newlywed couple with enough mead to last their "sweetest period" - which was estimated to be about a month.

Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe it was the wine making them sweet, and that if the couple kept drinking, maybe they'd also keep up the good times? Could we impact the divorce rate by subscribing newlyweds to the wine of the month club?

It's not that I wouldn't mind being showered with wine by our kith and kin - lovely vintages selected by Sean's parents, "flavoured" wines found in the 'party' section with a sugar content higher than alcoholic content donated by my sisters, random bottles lovingly given to my non-wine-drinking mother as end of the school year gifts from students regifted and probably still with original wrapping (and gift tag!) attached, and of course the cheap boxes of whatever was on the aisle and grabbed hurriedly by my broke and disorganized friends (sound familiar, Kate?) - it's just that my work (if not my liver) would probably object to this stewed state lasting literally until the moon had done its cycle.

The post-wedding vacation that we're craving might turn out to be almost as long anyway. We want to "do" Europe, as they say, and to do it well, we're going to need more than just a few days. But we're also going to need sunnier skies and more clement weather than February usually provides. So we're postponing it until summer and sunshine, knowing full well that it will more crowded and more expensive and more aggravating. But more us.

However, never the types to pass up an excuse to vacation, we're planning a February honeymoon ANYWAY. The kind with sunburns and sand and salllllllllty margaritas.

And king size beds.

But where is this?

Not the Dominican Republic, this much we know.
(I was married there in another life)

Probably not Mexico, or the Bahamas either, since I travelled to both those countries in 2010 and though beautiful, I like to expose my passport to new and interesting stamps.

So where does that leave us?

Pitch us your honeymoon! Tell us where to go! Where have you been? What did you love? What do you hear good things about?

Pick our honeymoon, and we'll be sure to send a postcard.

Peace By Piece

This weekend really ended well for having started out with sobbing. Big, fat, uncontrollable sobbing.


Friday was the anniversary of Rory's death. This is not the kind of anniversary you celebrate, just...mark. And to mark it, because I had to, because it has certainly marked me, I wanted to visit her grave. In theory.


In reality, to visit her grave, I'd have to also drive by the place on the road where she died. Where her blood soaked into the ground and now fertilizes weeds. Where she spent her last conscious moments.


At home I have gotten to the good place where I remember the good times, and smile about them. I can look at photos without dissolving into tears. At the cemetery I can think of her "resting peacefully", or elegantly disintegrating back into the earth, dust to dust. That's nice.

But driving by that spot, THAT SPOT, with the underwhelming marker that doesn't convey one ounce of her preciousness, the corpses of flowers dead almost as long as she...I come undone. Rory's legal death happened almost 48 hours after her accident, in a hospital bed, surrounded by unbelieving relatives, and me. But her life ended on the pavement. And that spot makes me dwell on those last moments, whether the last thing she saw was the road as it rushed toward her, panic filling her lungs, and then terror, and then dark. Or did she lie there feeling the life rush out of her, regretting, already missing her daughter, feeling the pain of crushed bones and organs and dreams?

So I didn't go.

Instead, I was kind to myself. I took a rare night off work. I drank in sunshine and good conversation, and yes, daiquiris. Mango daiquiris! Banana-strawberry daiquiris! Between those and the gellato (lychee and cantaloupe), I've had enough servings of fruit for the week!

We walked for miles and miles, sweaty hand in sweaty hand, just to see what we could see. The flats I wore gave me 9 blisters (my feet were made for heels) and really earned the humongous steaks we ordered for dinner, along with a sharing platter that held the most beautiful black olive tapenade and smoked salmon that could turn a doubter into a believer.

We went to the drive-in, passing by the house that Rory last called her home, and I felt fine. Finer than fine. I was good.

We a saw a truly terrible movie (The Expendables), followed by a pretty forgettable one (The Switch). And we didn't mind because we sat together in the back seat and acted like obnoxious 10th graders. It was divine.


We slept sumptuously, our concave little bodies cradling each other, and woke up smiling. Maybe we knew that good news was on its way: my sister is engaged. Yes, another one. That's 3 out of 4 sisters, in case you're keeping tally. My mother wants to throw up (from happiness, I'm sure. I know I've thrown up from happiness many times before. Of course, as far as I'm concerned, "happiness" and "champagne" are interchangeable.)

And now I'm back at work, a 13 hour shift, the first of 12. It sounds a bit brutal, but I am recharged. And, in the likely event that my batteries don't last the entire stretch of work, I've also got my eye on the next great weekend:

I'm booking a weekend at a thrillingly expensive couples-only resort (and trying not to work out in my mind the number of hours I'll have to work to pay for it), treating myself and my honey to a private spa villa that has a fireside jacuzzi, a sauna, a calming 4-headed rain forest walk-in shower, a bed big enough for our imaginations, 5-star room service, a masseuse who will come to the room, and enough space to grow my heart and be at peace. Really, really at peace.

I'm Still Here.

Wow, it's been a while.
Here we are in the Bahamas, and yes, we did come back.
We came back engaged!
(That ring on my finger, though beloved, was replaced by a diamond that was waiting for me when we got back).
He got down on one knee on the beach, at midnight, on our 6 month anniversary.
It was perfect.


We have 2 pups: Herbie is amazing, as always, and Gertie is his constant companion. They love the dog park, the cottage, bacon, and each other.

I got divorced!
Sean, conveniently, is a lawyer, and infinitely patient.

So now we're planning a wedding (for February) but not before my little sister plans hers first!
Perhaps not surprisingly, it's her wedding that has me all emotional.
Suddenly, she is a woman, in love, beautiful, and ready to start a family.
I feel old.
But also blessed, and excited.

And tomorrow marks the 1 year anniversary of Rory's passing.
Grief has changed me. Life has changed me.


I will miss her always.
I remember her laugh, her fingernails, the way she pulled on a beer, the dizzying feeling of embarking on an adventure together.
I remember the day she got engaged and barely took the time to say yes before she called me up and demanded my services as maid of honour.
The wedding never happened, but now, planning mine, I feel her loss keenly.
I bought my wedding dress by myself because I knew that anyone else's presence would just highlight Rory's absence.
I know that she would be happy for me, and I know that I am absurdly happy for myself, and I know that happiness multiplies, and I feel that, every day.

Against Medical Advice

The doctor assures me that Monday's surgery will go very well and that recovery, though lengthy and painful, shouldn't have any complications as long as I take it easy, keep my stitches dry, stay away from the sun to prevent scarring and don't risk infection by exposing the incision to the germs in hot tubs or swimming pools.

I'm going to the Bahamas on Friday.

Clean up in aisle 69.

Standing in the express lane at the grocery store, I wonder if the cashier will realize that all my items are foods I intend to lick off of someone's penis.

Sweetest Words.

Sean, a chronic un-morning person, has requested a morning wake up call, so I climb on top of him and put my tongue down his throat. Just a little.

Mmm, he says, you make waking up so good but actually getting out of bed so hard.

I'll take that.

Love & Loss

I met him this summer.
I fell in love with him this summer.
I am in love with him.

I knew that I was in love with Sean 4 weeks ago today, when my best friend's sister called me to say that Rory had been in an accident, and had hours left to live, and could I get to the hospital in time to say goodbye.

I was numb. I didn't believe it. Sean drove me to the hospital because I couldn't even get my fingers to hold a key. I really believed that it might be a prank. Even when the nurse confirmed that she was in the ICU, I didn't feel it in my bones.

I would have walked right by her bed had I not recognized the blubbering mass outside her room as her family. Her sister sat pale and still on one side of the bed, holding a hand that couldn't squeeze back.

The mess in the bed was not my best friend. It wasn't the girl who danced against me at the club, who clinked my glass before dinner, rubbed my back when I was sad, left dirty texts on my cell phone, borrowed my shoes, craved my mixed CDs. It wasn't just that she was unrecognizable, though she was. Completely. What was left of her face was swollen, purple, gaping, raw. The rest of her was simply mangled. Mostly, though, it was the emptiness of her. My Rory was gone, and I knew it even as I stroked her bloodied hair and held her limp, unfeeling hand.

Bleeding internally, her organs had already started to shut down. A pump emptied black blood from her stomach. Tubes forced her to breathe, because she would not have on her own. Her parents and grand parents had gathered to make their peace, and they made room for me, gave me the honoured seat by her side, and told me the stories that Rory had told them. They told me how much she had loved me. In their own grief, they consoled me. It took hours for her heart to stop, the longest hours that I've ever lived, and the last that she ever would.

He stayed.
He wouldn't go home, he wouldn't leave me. When I walked out of her room that first time, as the shock had begun to set in and the waves of grief and loss and anger and confusion had start to hit, he was exactly as I had left him, and he took me in his arms and held me until I soaked his shirt right through.

I felt like I had been fighting it for a while. I was resistant. I wasn't even sure if love would ever find me again. I'd had it once, and it expired, and maybe that was it for me. I wasn't looking for it, and didn't expect to find it. But I'd been feeling familiar twinges and wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it - whether I was ready, whether I could admit it, whether it was real.

But that night, that awful, awful night, I knew.
And it's hard to say that.
It should be impossible to feel your heart expanding even as it's contracting.
Shouldn't it?

Today I was in a store where I'd brought Rory just a few months ago, after she broke up with her fiance. I'd treated us both to pink sundresses that we wore to drink matching drinks on sunny days. That dress made her feel beautiful.
Mine is in my closet; hers is under ground.
I'm glad I didn't know then what I know now.

The past 4 weeks have been hell. Sometimes I go a couple of days between cries, and sometimes I'm lucky if it's a couple of hours. She would have turned 30 last week, but she didn't.

The past 4 weeks have also been beautiful. Sean is thoughtful and tender and he's good at knowing when I need quiet and when I need to be lectured on the brilliance of Randy Moss (actually, on second thought, note to Sean: never). He makes me laugh, often without trying, and he does this adorable squiggly thing with his eyebrows that he's not even aware of but that can make me melt. He sings wretchedly, and often, especially bad 80s tunes and country songs that he makes up.

And though he never met her (which kills me with regret, every fucking day), he tells me that he knows her, through me. Through the stories that he lets me tell and the photos and the memories and the tears.

A friend of the family had a baby recently, and 2 days later her father dropped dead of a heart attack. I don't like this cliche about life giving and life taking away. I don't think Sean is a replacement for Rory. A good thing happened, and a bad thing happened. They exist simultaneously, even if it seems incongruous. I walked out of that hospital room, shattered but alive. My life goes on, love & happiness, loss & grief, all of it together in a jumble that's hard to decipher sometimes. I'm still trying to figure it out. And I'm lucky. Not just because I have Sean, but because for a time, I had Rory.

Anatomy of a Birthday Gift

Jay: What are we getting Luc for his birthday?

Matt: I don't know, what do you get for the guy who buys himself everything he wants?

Jay: Um...something he doesn't want?

Matt: That works. At least then we won't have to worry about getting him the same thing as someone else did.

Jay: Exxxxxactly.

When everything seemed like the movies.

I am unsuspecting in my car when the radio serves me up a little piece of nostalgia: Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls.

I had just turned 17 the summer it first played on the air. More than a decade later I can still taste 1998 like it was yesterday (a mixture of skittles and peppermint schnapps and my mother's linguine salad).

I was in the middle of my first love. He brought me camping. He made me mudslides. He played me the Armageddon song on his guitar and I hoped that the starlight and the flames from our fire were not enough for him to see me blush. I still remember the thrill of another camper referring to me as his wife. It was glorious and it was heady and it felt so fucking important, like this was it, and I'd damn well better be paying attention.

I was.

I remember cherry lip gloss and wearing doc martens with shorts and sitting upside down on a bean bag chair to talk on the phone for hours. I remember sleeping until 1pm and stalking MTV to catch my favourite videos and The Smashing Pumpkins poster on my wall. I remember my short spiky hair and how cool it was and how much gel it took to accomplish and how it melted in the rain at the big outdoor festival we went to and got sunburned at.

I remember half-seeing movies at the drive-in theatre and skinny dipping in the river and a pair of oversized Rice Krispie boxer shorts I inherited from the dead client of a family friend.

I remember dancing to that song so many times. I remember the ill-advised long red floral skirt that I would wear and the way we would sway and how it felt when the lights got turned down low and how my heart almost permanently beat quickly because everything was so exciting all of the time.

I remember the terribleness at the dinner table when my parents told us they were splitting up. I remember leaving our home and moving to my grandparents' basement and the dread of changing schools, leaving my friends, missing out. The pity in well-meaning faces. My sisters, inconsolable. My mother, terrified and exhilarated, pretending to be neither.

I remember the stolen kisses and the not knowing and the secrets, some shared, others kept.

I remember tears and fears and learning what it means to be strong.

And I remember always, always turning the volume up when our song came on the radio, and for once really understanding what they were singing about.

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

Tonight, I cried myself through a movie, and my dog curled up on my chest to console me.
He's losing his baby teeth. I'm rubbing his gums and letting him use my fingers as chew toys.
I gave him a paw-dicure.
I'm teaching him how to high-5.
I'm thinking it's a good thing I don't have cats.

Excuse me, Miss...

A man walks up to me at the grocery store and says "I'd like to pop one of your tits out of your dress and gnaw on it like a gummie bear."

A total stranger.

True story.

Punchbuggy (black and) blue!

I had forgotten about this game, hadn't thought of it in probably a decade.

But for about ten seconds, it had been an obnoxious and not very entertaining way to pass time in the car.

It's one of those unforgiving, unskilled games that when played correctly leaves bruises.

What you do is: keep your eyes peeled.

When you zoom by a Volkswagen Beetle, be the first to scream Punchbuggy blank! (where blank is the colour of the car) while punching your companion in the arm with conviction and maximum knuckle.

It's an easy enough "game" to forget about, except when you're driving a little love bug yourself and witnessing (and in fact, inciting) incidents of abuse everywhere you go. Funny how they neglect to warn you about that at the dealership.

This blog is worth every penny.

Find a penny, pick it up
All day long you'll have good luck

But what's so lucky about a penny, really?
You know what's lucky?
A 20 dollar bill, that's what.
Or a gift card to the liquor store.
But a penny?
Pennies aren't even worth the effort of bending over to retrieve them when you accidentally dump out your coin purse.

The only thing besides luck that a penny will buy you is a thought.
And when people "penny for your thoughts' me, I tend to get insulted.
One bloody cent? Really? Is that all you think I'm worth? I'm sitting here with this really great, nearly original, somewhat lascivious thought in my head, and all you'll give me is a fucking penny? I don't think so, chump.

Luck and thoughts must be the only two things in the whole entire world that haven't suffered inflation. Even a one-cent stamp costs more than a penny (thank you, sales tax!).

Pennies are so ridiculous that they're worth more as raw materials than the amount they're stamped with as currency. If you melt a penny down and sell it to a copper dealer, they'd owe you about 2 cents. It takes 4 cents to make the 1-cent piece. It costs the Canadian people $130 million a year to keep them in circulation even though there are already 20 billion of them floating around. The reason? People don't actually use them as money. They throw them in fountains, collect them in pickle jars, fill up the cracks in their car seats with them (and then maybe clog their vacuums with them). Any reasonable human being would not stoop over to pick up a dropped penny (I myself will not stoop for less than $1) and some people will even throw them out, out of pure penny-disgust, I assume. This is such a rampant problem that they've actually made it illegal to put them to the garbage (this, of course, has proved largely unenforceable). Even homeless people, who dumpster-dive and fight rats for aluminum cans will leave pennies on the ground.

It's hard to take the penny seriously as currency when even the Currency Act says that no business is obligated to take more than 25 pennies during one transaction. If you can't use pennies to pay for things, and you can't stick them into ATM deposit envelopes, then aren't they...not actually money?

And if they're not money, then they're just grubby germ-infested copper discs that weigh down your pockets or misshape your wallet.

Only 37% of Canadians actually use them and they'll all be dead within a decade (not from using pennies, but from old age - because they're old). If you're in a rush, or you have to pee, or you can think of anything you'd rather be doing than standing in line at the grocery store, then it's guaranteed that a very old, very shaky, and nearly blind senior citizen will be rooting through his or her stash of coins looking for exact change. It's geezers like Matty's Aunt Penelope who keep the penny alive (barely). She remembers "when a penny was worth something." When told of our anti-penny stance, Aunty Penny fondly recalled a time when penny candy wasn't just a figure of speech. But for those of us with a serious sweet tooth, we know that a trip to Sugar Mountain can cost us quite a pretty penny. But this day in age, when the cheapest long distance rate is ten cents a minute, gum balls are 25, and calls from a pay phone half a dollar, pennies have become all but obsolete.

Our moronic Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, explains our $130 million annual expenditure on worthless coins with some nostalgia: "I'm a coin collector from way back and I'd hate to lose the continuity of the penny," he said.

Ah, continuity.
I love when people use the "because that's just how things have always been" excuse.
Such a valid argument.
Let's count our lucky pennies he wasn't around during, say, abolition.

In fact, it's statements like that which inspire perhaps the only credible alternative use for pennies.
I don't like to throw around words like 'assassination' , but a sock full of pennies might just teach an important lesson.

Oh, I kid, I kid.
I'm not the type to arm myself with coin-based weaponry.
I'm not even the type to wish any real harm to Harper, whom I'm sure is a nice enough guy if only he was in charge of, say, a hot dog cart instead of my country. I wouldn't mind sending him somewhere that would neutralize him a bit though...like maybe an ice floe up in the Arctic where he could learn some fucking respect for the baby seals.

In the meantime, I'll just keep giving stupid politicians my two cents worth by flushing my pennies down public toilets.
That'll show em.

Herbie The Wonder Dog

I had a couple of failed adoption attempts back in March, and they broke my heart. They reminded me of going to the SPCA in search of the perfect companion and walking by cage after cage of big dogs with sad eyes wanting so badly to be the one that came home with me that their pleading energy was palpable. I left because I knew that large breeds were unsuitable for apartment living, but was heart sick to leave them all behind.

I cried.

My sister adopted Tucker, a beagle mix, from her local SPCA and they both fell so immediately in love with each other that when she left on a week-long trip he suffered separation anxiety even though he was well cared for. Another sister adopted a golden retriever named Charlie who has boundless energy but doesn't bark because his previous owner duct taped his mouth shut.

I wanted one too, but twice the adoptions fell through at the last minute, leaving me emotionally attached and unfulfilled. But the moment I held Herbie in my arms for the first time, I knew it was meant to be. He was meant to come home with me.

Herbie is 5.5 pounds of pure crazy. He rips around my apartment as if it's his own personal obstacle course, deking around chairs, body-checking himself off my bed, bounding out of corners, flying off the couch, and all at the highest speeds achievable by 2-inch legs. And then he'll tire himself out, flop over onto his back, and sleep soundly with his belly exposed and all 4 paws in the air.

He loves car rides and walks. He makes friends wherever he goes. People constantly stop us on the street to say how cute he is, but they needn't bother, because he already knows it. His favourite part of the day is walking down the hall to the trash chute. He often finds treasures along the way: once some takeaway fries, and another time a coffee stir stick that he idolised for 30 whole seconds. Fortunately for Herbie, we take that walk many times a day because Herbie, though small, makes an impressive amount of waste.

Herbie has two girlfriends. One is a rubber chicken named Dolores whom he cuddles with at night and does naughty things to make her bawk during the day. The other is a border collie mix named Mika who is nearly 5 times his size. Mika licks him until he's dripping with her slobber and then they run together, Herbie running underneath her legs in perfect time. When Herbie grabs onto her, she swipes him around as if he's a mop, and they both seem to think that this is great fun.

Herbie has an excellent nose for fun. Everything is a game with him. He likes to collect all of his toys and pile them in his bed. He seems to believe that his bed is his home base, perhaps protected by a magic force field because if he hides something there, he truly believes that no one can ever find it. If he gets ahold of your shoe, guaranteed he runs toward his bed with it. Once it's there, it's his. And it's awfully funny to see Herbie carting around objects that are often bigger than he is. Even shoes can outweigh him, but he's persistent and tireless and he gets the job done. Underwear and socks are particular favourites of his and if I can't find Herbie, he's usually burrowed in my laundry basket having the time of his life. I'm pretty sure that when they say all dogs go to heaven, they mean a big stinking pile of dirty clothes.

Sure there are things I never thought I'd hear myself say until I had a Herbie:

Please stop licking my armpit.

Quit humping Max Keeping!

Make a poopie and then we can cuddle.

Please stop doing unmentionable things to my shoe.

If you keep sticking your head between the balcony rungs, it's gonna get stuck.

I appreciate your amorous efforts, but my arm isn't getting anything out of that.

But no matter how you slice it, no matter who has recently peed on my duvet or stopped to poop at a busy intersection or knocked all the bottles off the edge of the tub, I love this little guy. It helps that he has those proverbial puppy dog eyes. He's just too easy to forgive. But I know that I am fortunate, and that he was worth the wait.

He makes my home a happier place.

You just have to watch where you step.

I fell off.

Two girls walk into a car dealership.

No, that's not the opening line to a really bad joke.

That's just the next logical step in the life of a newly licensed driver.

Granted, it's kind of a big step for someone who's only had a license for 5 days, but I'm nothing if not impetuous. One salesman told us enigmatically that if we walked around to the lake, any big fish that we caught we could take home for free. Another one told me that the car I was test driving was for "girls and fags." I told him it was a good thing I was a little bit of both. When another asked if Rory and I were roommates (roommates mind you, the kind that induce eyebrow wiggling and crotch grabbing, not simply roommates that split the rent), we were starting to get just a little put out. A good (guy) friend of mine offered to come with me to kick the wheels and such but I was stomping around car lots with an I-don't-need-a-man mentality.

And I didn't, in the end.



Weird conversation with Litgo:



Litgo is admiring my killer silver heels.

Me: My shoes can do way more damage than your shoes.

Him: In more ways than one.

Me: ?

Him: My shoes are vegan.

Me: Your shoes don't eat meat?



Confession:

I fell off the bandwagon of the 40-day challenge.
Well, actually, I was pushed.
I fainted.
I took a shortcut to restoring my blood sugar and I'm not really sorry about it either.
But now I'm back on, and I'm willing to add on extra days for penance.