Christmas 2010

How come the italian bulldozers on Cake Boss can create beautiful cakes and I can't decently decorate a sugar cookie?

Exhibit A:


Gingers need representation too.
S'all about equality.

I tried to just use dots because even I have to be able to do that, and they looked okay on the trees and stars. Not so much on the snowmen. How come all my cookies look ill?

Well, at least these ones look happy. 



Naked, but happy.

But you know what kids craft I didn't fail at? Reese's Pieces. Booyah.

I guess there were other things going on other than my chocolate awesomeness. For example, decorations:

But then there's my decoration:

Feathers in my hair.
Waaay cooler than a Dancing Santa.

The rest of Christmas looked like this:

 

This guy sits in the kitchen and stares at me with his black eyes and scared felt skin.  Think Frosty meets Hannibal Lector. He's also at butt-level, which makes him even creepier.

 You see it too, right?

Did you know it's Wednesday? I didn't know it was Wednesday.

I did the math.

I need to get 2.4% on my final to pass.

And if I got that math wrong, I don't deserve to pass Calculus.


PS: Dear Calculus,

To stay focused and awake this evening, I was led to drastic measures. I hope you appreciate this gesture, as I would never have gotten through a full review without it.

That bag was about half full to begin with.
Now it is zero full.

I hope you're worth it.

Love,
Me.

Boiling Water: Attempt 3

I was in the office, glaring at my uncooperative photoshop layers, when they knocked on the door and asked if they could make tea. Of course, I said. Then I remembered that we don't have a kettle here. Or a stove. But we have an industrial-use-only, multi-pot, heavy duty coffee machine. That's got to be good for something right?
The machine had two buttons at the top, with little lights beside them, and a big slab of paper taped above them saying DO NOT TOUCH. I touched. I mean, I work here, I'm supposed to, right?

I attempted to make coffee without the coffee beans, 'cause that's just boiled water (right? this feels like something I should know). First it made a pot of lukewarm water. Then a massive pot of almost boiling water, which mocked me with it's almostness. Then it scalded my finger and dripped hate and anger onto the counter. Not cool, coffee machine.

To my great relief, an electric kettle was bought and delivered. But as I squeezed it out of the box and tore off the plastic wrapping, I realized that we don't have a teapot.

Sigh.

Once on a school trip, a girl plugged in an electric kettle, put it on the stove, turned the element on, and then questioned what that burnt plastic smell was.

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.

"How does your radio know we're on a highway?"

A friend's Mom once told me I have "child-bearing hips."

Whaaaaa?

I think she meant it as a compliment but I was fourteen. Also, kids are gross.

October 24th 2009

So this crazy thing happened today, Saturday, October 24th 2009.

A woman who I’ve done some shows before randomly—I rarely speak with her online—asked me what I was writing on Facebook chat. She said that she read my blog once and was inspired (inspired, I inspire people!) by how honest I was.

And then I gushed into a puddle of thought because that’s just so darn sweet!

She continued by saying that she is amazed at how wonderful I am (Me!) and how lucky I am to have my mom and sister supporting me.

First off, Me! Secondly, wow she has a good memory. She’s only met my sister once.

She said that she didn’t have a family that believed in her when she was younger so it’s really wonderful for her to see that I do.

This is a woman who is an actress, a singer, a producer and a mother. I’ve seen her in all four roles. She’s amazing. She’s Buffy (if Buffy could act, sing, produce or mother…). Superwoman without the spandex. This is a woman I respect.

Then said that she’s excited to be able to say she ‘knew me when.’

So that’s kind of corny but the sentiment still made me gap.

Seriously.

Seriously.

She’s like my cheerleader, my personal cheerleader. And I haven’t seen her in months!

When we were done talking, all I wanted to do was blog about it, except she reads my blog. I can’t blog about it and then have her read it, what if she doesn’t like it? What if she meant it to stay private? What if, what if, what if.

So that’s why this is being posted today, a year later. If she still reads my blog, then she’ll know how much this conversation meant to me and hopefully, enough time has passed that she won’t mind me sharing it.

It’s nice to know that someone (other than family that, you know, have to) has faith in me.

Thanks, Corisa :)

"My theory is healing with love"

Being sick is hard work, y'all.

For example, I had to suffer through a Calc class (apparently ln is a logarithm and In is the word 'in'), then an Econ and a CrWr class. It was awful. There was significant sniffling involved.

But I am a hardcore person. I sat through all of my classes and took notes--some of them even class-related. At home, I certainly did not eat half of an entire box of Wheat Thins and the whipped cream that's only a little expired and spend several hours in a bleary daze watching Greys Anatomy season two. No, I did not.

3 Things That Scare Me At School

1) The Army guys that buy Tim Hortons in the school cafe wearing head to toe neon camoflage (way to blend in, guys!). There aren't any military classes at my school. Where do they come from??

2) Push/Pull Doors. Fuck you, push/pull doors. You make me look really dumb. I'm walking along, feeling chic and adultish in my new black boots with my Calc textbook in my arms and my cell pressed to my ear as I check my voicemail and I push on the door and--nothing.

Nothing because you are a pull door and now I am neither chic nor adult, and you mock me with your giant rectangular PULL sign. Meanwhile, in the split second of nothing, twenty students have lined up behind me and each one is judging me and my lack of chicness and adultness when clearly, it is all your fault.

3) The Science chapter in my Calculus textbook. First off, Calc Textbook, why is there a violin on your cover? That is false advertisement. There is neither a violin nor violin music in you and I'm sick of getting my hopes up.

Secondly, your subject is Calculus. Math. So why the Science chapter? You know "sodium chlorate crystals" and "escherichia coli in a nutrient-broth medium" scare and confuse me (unless a nutrient-broth is Campbell's chicken noodle soup). Now I'm hungry. Look what you've done! Not  cool, Calculus textbook, not cool.