I miss grass.

When it snows, I look drunk.

This afternoon I was stumbling around the city, digging my heels into the snow, sliding and stumbling with wet socks and icicle fingers as I desperately clung onto my dream of not falling on my ass in public.

I tried admiring the snow, and then I tried appreciating the snow, but instead, I got it in my boots and became so delirious with the cold that I may have shouted, it's raining birdcrap, lady, for the love of Christ keep the kids inside! to one of our neighbours. Maybe.

He knows it's birdcrap.

My eyeballs are cold. THAT cold.

The mechanical pencil I use for Calc homework is cold. The dented bedroom doorknob is cold. The goddamn toilet seat is cold.

The other night, in an attempt to study for my Calc midterm, I burnt tea candles so periodically I could toast my fingers like marshmallows. Even the most fashionable students in the school's concourse have ditched their off-the-shoulder tanks for sweaters and ski jackets. On Monday evening, when I was walking from the bus stop to work with the wind screeching at me, I seriously considered the benefits of running.

Obviously I didn't run anywhere, that's just crazy talk, but I did make a pro-con list in my head. My biggest con was the knowledge that I would slip on ice and end up in a sprawl on the cement sidewalk, snow bleeding onto my jeans and into my shoes, while dozens upon dozens of cars zoomed past me on the highway. Actually my biggest con was laziness, but you get my point.

I've taken to blasting my iPod on the bus and skytrain to keep me warm. That'll work, right?

forty minutes at work shoveling the sidewalk in heels

It's snowing again.

This is why no one likes you, God.

An Open Letter

Dear Rotating Woman,

I fucking hate you.

Do you know how frustrating you are? Every time I see you, you're spinning the wrong way. And I know you're just a stupid depth perception test, I get it, I have figured you out.

And do you know when I figured that out?

In the middle of my Calc midterm, when the prof announced twenty minutes left and I suddenly realized I'd drawn a circle over and over and over again instead of finding the derivative of an irrational equation.

I see you and you're spinning clockwise. Then I blink and you're spinning anti-clockwise. I feel woozy just watching you and I'm not even moving and I have all these questions! How do you bounce if your foot doesn't move? Where did you buy your sports bra, or do you simply have implants? What kind of hairspray Is your hair plastic? You are so irritating!

Fuck off, Rotating Woman. No one likes you or your oddly crooked arm.

Sincerely,

Me.

1408

Halloween was a whirl of pumpkin guts and crinkling KitKat wrappers.

As trick-or-treaters began knocking, I was still stabbing out the letters of 'West Side Story' into my last pumpkin at the kitchen table. I heard my sister and mom outside, oo-ing over the pumpkins I'd already set up, and my sister rang the doorbell because honestly, does she think she's being funny?

I slid the knife out of the pumpkin crease and dragged myself to open the door and--children! An angel and a witch, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and suddenly I realized: I'm holding a knife. Not a plastic Halloween prop butcher knife either, a very real and very sharp Ikea knife with a heavy black handle and one helluva blade that had already slaughtered five pumpkins.

Flustered, I tried to palm it--and nearly hid it in the candy bowl before it ocurred to me that could be a dangerously stupid move--and showered them with candy. The door was half closed before they even cried 'thank you.'

If you look closely, you can see the intricately carved witch flying on a broom that dots the i. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

I did five pumpkins this year: Wicked, West Side Story, Avenue Q (that's kid-friendly, right?), Rent and Glee. I kept waiting for someone to pshaw, Glee is not a Broadway musical, but no one did. It's possible I'm the only one that cares about these things.



No one recognized Avenue Q. Apparently classics such as 'What Do You Do With a BA in English?' have been forgotten.