Rhododendrons and salt water

Despite conceptualizing myself as complicated and nuanced at times, I can also be a very simple kind of girl. Take off my shoes and socks and toss me under the sun, and I'm generally a pretty happy camper.

Victoria Day long weekend is unofficially the entrance into summer for Canadians. Typically, as a way to spite us for pulling out our flip flops and tents, when, really, as denizens of the "Great White North", we should know better, the weather tends to be a little underwhelming.
This year, thankfully, was an exception to the rule, with my toes being bared to the world for the hottest May 17th in the city's history.

The Duke and I took the opportunity for a mini-escape to seaside community along an inlet. Just an hour's bus ride from downtown, with stops in areas as diverse as Chinatown to industrial areas decorated by bright yellow sulfur to residential stucco'd neighbourhoods, we emerged to this:


Though the water was still numbingly cold on my heels, the sun beat down and soaked through our shorts, and I began thinking of all the symbols of summer that were flashing before me.

The craving for ice cream and ice cubes on your tongue.

The sweet fragrance of rhododendrons mixed with the pungent odor of salt water.

The bizarre contrast between sweat and goosebumps when a breeze hits you.

The imprint of grass on your calves. The slickness of sunscreened skin.

The tickle of ants crawling over your mountainous toes.

The distinction between hues when enveloped in the sunshine versus the shade, making you reluctant to put on my sunglasses.

(I thought I caught a lovely moment above, but the Duke tells me its creepy to snap people I didn't know.)

The beach is also a prime location for people watching. It was fascinating to watch teenage girls learning the power of their newly acquired bikini-clad curves, their strutting down the boardwalk an odd combination of sexuality and awkwardness, their hips swaying as their arms are desperately clutched over their stomachs.

I grew up on the shores of a lake, so I remember well the first bikini milestone. It was striking how different I was perceived by mere virtue of a midriff. Suddenly I went from unremarkable to one of the girls being thrown off the pier after skin-to-skin wrestling contact with one of those boys.

Other milestones popped into my head as I watched the seashore, like the significance of the first swim of the year (usually done more for bragging rights than an actual urge to immerse oneself in glacially cold water) or the first time I was busted skinny-dipping (why we thought people stopped coming to the beach at 5pm in the evening I'll never know). Even though it was the first time I've been at that particular place, there was something about the landscape that just linked me right to those summery recollections.

After a sticky bus ride home, it seemed like the perfect way to cap off the evening was to stay outdoors, and head to a different beach to watch the sunset.


We sat on a driftwood log as the clouds faded from orange to pink to grey, before they melted away into the night sky. As the night air grew chilly, I shed my sandals, and ventured to the shore, with the wet sand clammy against my feet. I stepped tentatively into the blackened water, which seemed to envelop me a mere few paces in, and I fought back the urge to dive into that dusky water, for nothing is quite as freeing as night swimming.

Counting freckles

When my eyes fluttered open this morning, I was facing his shoulder, and I got the sudden urge to count the freckles scattered about his arm. It felt like the number was something I should know.

It is an odd thing, how you come to know a lover's body. It is not a cold process of memorization. Even if I had a smudge of artistic talent, I couldn't simply sketch every curve from memory. It is more a process of intuition. 

My hands just know what feels right. They sense where it is supposed to be soft or firm, smooth or rough, where my palm is supposed to curve. My fingertips rise in anticipation of the edge of a scar, and linger where something has changed, like the bump on an ankle, before I have even processed its presence.

When bloggers collide-- Part 2

The DS/PP extravaganza has drawn to a close, and while she is off to the sunny beaches of Southeast Asia, I am alternating between an office with no windows and a lab with no windows-- even though I can just feel that sunshine waiting for me just beyond these walls.

While I slowly pine for the breeze outdoors and collapse under rickets, here are some smatterings of lessons learned and images from our bloggie collision:

There is an art to fish throwing, though I know it is not something I should ever try my hand at.



Americans apparently don't use the term "kitty corner"-- they just say diagonal to, which is nowhere near as cute.

No matter how frequently I may catch a glimpse of the ocean through a train window, it always brings me peace to be on the seashore.

You can make guitar trees! And apparently even play them... from afar! (courtesy of the Experimental Music Project)

My long standing notion that I have no rhythm was confirmed by my attempts at playing the guitar, keyboard and drums at the EMP. DS, however, has hella drum skillz.

The idea of skunks running about downtown Manhattan is ridiculous, despite the fact that they are a nightly summer hazard on my side of the world.

The Space Needle can bite me. Zzzzzz

The Seattle-ites of yore didn't have tremendous success in the human waste realm. Initially, the unlucky folks residing at the bottom of the steep hill that used to make up Seattle were the lucky recipients of the sewage of those above them. However, when the newfangled Crappers were all the rage (that is actually the technical term for them, from the creator, Thomas Crapper. I swear), the city dwellers rushed to the harbour to purchase some for their home. However, Seattle-ites were again the victims of poor planning, because the sewer pipes ran directly into the ocean, with no concern for the flow of the tides. As such, at a particular time of day, if someone was lucky enough to flush their crapper, the pressure of the waste coming down the tubes from the hills above and the tide coming in from below led to a veritable explosion of sewage the exact opposite direction as expected-- up!!

Another brilliant Seattle plan... after the entire downtown core burnt down because of a paste fire (yep, from someone who left their paste on the stove for too long), the city decided to try to flatten the giant slope on which the downtown core was situated (the whole human waste fiasco seemed reason enough). The merchants did not want to wait for this construction, and thus rebuilt their businesses at ground level immediately, while the city went about raising the roads, sometimes as much as 30 feet, meaning that customers would have to climb down tremendous ladders to access the front door of the general store or the saloon. The city tried to cover up the high tumbling-induced death rates by labeling them accidental suicides!
Eventually, the merchants caved in, and filled in the sidewalks in front of their buildings, and raised their front entrances up a level.

All this info was gathered from the Underground Tour.
That's one of the skylights below.




DS and I apparently both turn into squealing children when in the presence of nerdy science fun. A sample of our conversations: "Oh my God! That dinosaur moves! So awesome! I'm gonna pose with it and pretend that I'm a dinosaur!"
Even the 7-year olds were rolling their eyes at us.

Giant praying mantises are scary, especially when their pincers moved. DS actually ran away from this one.



Butterflies, on the other hand, are always spectacular. Even when they are divebombing you.











Yeah, so I went a little overboard. Whatever. They're pretty.

You know what else are pretty?? Naked mole rats!!!


I hope these look familiar. They are prestigious winners of my Ugly Animal Pageant.
They are also exceedingly entertaining. We spent around 10 minutes watching this wee little mole rats clamor his way up a slope, only to have another, big (mean!) one literally climb right over him and push him back down the slope. They also have the tendency to get stuck on their backs in the middle of tubes, which is sheer comedy.

DS does genuinely have the worst travel luck on the planet. Outside of Mr. Dirty Customs Worker, my bus trip down was relatively smooth. However, the moment we got through the doors of the Seattle bus depot for our return trip, chaos erupted. People were scattered about in every which direction, with the clusters showing more resemblance to dodecahedrons than straight lines. Apparently the computers and the printers were broken down, with only two workers to stem the disarray, and DS without her confirmation number for the ticket she was supposed to pick up. The line was literally moving at about 1 person every 5-10 minutes for sometime, leading me to wonder if, despite arriving 45 minutes early, we would be able to get on the bus. DS and I frantically mouthed things to each other across the room... or, rather, she read my lips, and I tried to read hers, and ended up mostly just shrugging my shoulders.

Thankfully, the transport curse let up, and, tickets in hand, we maneuvered our way through the pseudo-line, where we managed to get the last two seats together on the bus, and bothered the kilted man in front of us with our chatter before he eventually decided that conversating with us was infinitely more interesting than eavesdropping.

Back on my side of the border, my lesson was apparently that life always gets in the way, visitors or not, so I had to squeeze meetings and errands in with my hostess duties.

We did, however, manage to go traipsing about through the tree tops!


It turns out that I apparently have better balance when dangling 230 feet off the ground than I do when my feet are firmly on solid earth.





I miss my tree house.



Apparently you don't see leaping trout every day in the Big Apple.


It was all rounded off by a display of chopstick and table barbecuing skills.

~fin~

(Because I can think of no wittier way to end than that)

PS. The mysterious Indie Bloggers post will indeed be appearing tomorrow!

Pseudo-post

#1- Back soon with exciting (and photo-filled) posts about PP/DS adventures. Also back soon to your sides of the Internets soon.

#2- I should be published tomorrow on Indie Bloggers. It is actually probably the most cathartic post I've ever written, so I am pretty excited.

And that's all, folks!

EDIT: Blogger is being an asshat, and randomly not loading tonight, so I couldn't finish my post.
Also, I swear, my post was supposed to be on IB today-- stay tuned...

In an empty hotel bar

While I’ve traveled alone a few times now, and greatly enjoyed my solo wanderings, my typical style is to stay in a hostel, which ends up being a fairly easy social environment, or to eventually meet up with a roommate at my hotel. Tonight is actually the first night I have stayed in a hotel alone (DS is meeting with me tomorrow, for those of you who were wondering), and it is actually a little odd. During the day, I don’t notice. However, when I returned to my far-too-opulent-for-little-ol-me room at around 8:30 tonight, I found myself wondering what I was going to do to occupy myself for the rest of the evening. While I have gotten past the problems of dining alone, I am not yet at the stage to venture into the Seattle nightlife alone. So, I struck a compromise, and here I am, in a dead empty hotel lounge, writing and chugging a glass of Riesling (chugging because it turns out the lounge is only open for 10 more minutes-- something that would have been good to know before ordering).

I was actually hesitant to venture to the lounge on my own. Visions of 60-year old business men drinking martinis and sidling up to me popped into my head—hence why I brought my computer as a date. If pre-occupation (or blogging!) doesn’t scare ‘em off, nothing will. 

***

But what does one write about whilst sucking back white wine and trying to look very intellectually preoccupied?
How about creepy customs workers?

CCW (creepy customs worker): So why are you going to Seattle?

PP: I’m visiting a friend.

CCW: Why are you staying in a hotel then?

PP: She’s coming up from California, and we decided to meet in Seattle.

CCW: Why do you have a friend from California anyways?

PP: (thinking “Answering that I know her through my blog and have never actually met her in person is probably not the right answer right now”) I’m a graduate student, so I met her at a conference.”

CCW: What do you study?

PP: I’m a PhD student in psychology.

CCW: That’s funny. You don’t seem like someone who would try to get into another person’s head.

PP: (thinking “Wow. Nice cliché. And what does that even mean that I don’t look like I try to invade other people’s brains?”) Haha. That’s actually probably to my advantage.

*insert part where he inquires about how long I’ve been in school, etc*

CCW: I don’t really understand. Why is she coming all the way up here and you all the way down here just for a visit?

PP: She had some air miles and has some other friends in the area, and I just decided to hop down for the weekend, since I live so close.

CCW: Can I see your return ticket?... So you’re just here for two days? Is this a romantic rendezvouz or something?

PP: (holding back laughter. Did he really just suggest that DS and I are lesbian lovers?! And how exactly is this relevant information at all?) *flustered* Oh no! We’re just friends!

After prolonging the inquisition a little more, he finally decides to let me go.
And the United States is saved from the terror of importing a craved Canadian lesbian to seduce one of their own.

***

Other highlights of the day?

#1- The most hilarious and offside gift ever for the Duke, which includes the most brilliant quote of the day ever. Unfortunately, that sneaky guy may be reading this, so I have to hold off on any further description.

#2- The most diet ignoring dinner on the planet (okay, I’m not actually on a formal diet, just trying to focus on eating healthy) by the waterfront—clam strips, fries, super yummy clam chowder and American iced tea (I forgot again that their iced tea is different—and substantially grosser—than the Canadian version).

The most entertaining part of this dinner was that there were masses of seagulls swooping along the perimeter of the patio—but it was almost as though there was an invisible electric fence, because unlike in my city, they remain on the water side of the fence. However, these were some talented seagulls, as they could catch French fries from mid air with incredible accuracy. And the funniest sight ever? A man in leather chaps, holding out a French fry over the water with incredible dedication and desperation, hoping for a little avian contact.

#3- As I made my way to the waterfront, I decided to walk down a random set of stairs. Before I made my first step, I saw two fellows sitting about halfway down, apparently sharing a bottle of something other than root beer. My first inclination was to look for another path. However, I have this little internal rule stating that it is good to challenge myself and go against my impulses every so often. So I walked down the stairs.

And, of course, as I walked by these two gentleman, who turned out to be around my age, they stopped me—apparently because they liked my jacket??
So I talked to them a little. They told me they’ve started up a rap label, and showed me their tattoos of the rap label’s name. One started telling me how he’s a chef, and wants to cook me a dinner while I’m in town, and how I should go to a baseball game with them.
I told them I was going to meet a friend.
They told me we should hang out tomorrow, and wanted my number.

(As a side note, I have a whole theory about how women in our society have no skills in telling men they aren’t interested. We feel like we can’t say no or “don’t talk to me”, because we are automatically branded as bitches, so we have to play along, even when we aren’t the slightest bit interested. This was maximized in my case because I was all alone in this city on this random staircase, and they were actually quite nice to me—it’s much easier when they are super pervy.)

Rather than just saying no (I know, I know), I told them I will take their numbers instead. As I was taking down their number, one of the guys said he would type it in. So I handed him my phone, at which point he called his phone using my phone, so that he'd have my number.

Fuck.

Strike one against being indirect.

***
Side note—I went to pay after chugging that glass, and they said that I could stay while they closed up, and offered me more wine.
Now, two glasses of wine later, I’m more than happy to be buzzed and watching What Not to Wear in my hotel room.

Quotes of the Day and Leaving on a Greyhound

"Having no memories is kind of great, because my past self constantly surprises and delights me." -- the Duke

....after I reminded him of this interaction, in which we were talking about how everyone wants to be perceived as unique:

Me: "In what ways am I like other girls?"

Him: "Cheese and Jack Johnson."

Touche.

***

I'm strapping on my knapsack in 20 minutes and hopping a Greyhound to Seattle for my weekend with Distracted Spunk! Will tremendous hijinks ensue? Stay tuned to find out what happens when bloggers collide!!

The stifling effects of contentment

I am beginning to see some truth to the adage that distress, to some extent, is at the heart of creativity.

Because I am just plain content.

And I feels like this leaves me with little to say.

Sure, things aren't perfect. There's always more work, and more work after that. Similarly, there is always a full collection of ludicrous anecdotes at my expense sitting in my back pocket. 

Such as? Well, today, as I was attempting to walk home with arms full of cleaning surprise and a mop in hand (yes, awkward enough as is, especially for a member of the uncoordinated such as myself), the back of my well-loved shoes decided to burst along the seam. This means I was not only on the side of a busy road weighed down by loads of Lysol and a mop, but that I had to motor around by hopping on one foot while precariously pointing my other toe upwards.

However, other than such ridiculum, life just feels, well, nice. I'm enjoying this whole domestic thing. I like waking up to him. 

And it feels like to say anything more than that would border on excessive.

The Wal-Mart Diaries

By popular demand...

When asked about life in my hometown, I usually reply with a series of praise about the scenery, the atmosphere, the people. However, I generally qualify this with a statement of "But you have to leave at some point, unless you want to continue working the same job you did when you were a teenager."

Because, when I was a teenager, I worked at Wal-Mart.

It is a little odd that there was even a Wal-Mart in my home town. This was the town that managed to keep out the mighty McDonald's by virtue of grassroots petitions and local paper headlines declaring the evils of corporations (it should be noted that other paper headlines included "Main Street Oak Tree to Be Cut Down: Locals Enraged"). Ever since its arrival in its 1990s take-over of North America, Wal-Mart has been pretty much a constant source of controversy in our town, from its underselling of local businesses to its desire to sprawl across the underdeveloped portions of the waterfront.

However, another quality of small town life is its lack of employment; as such, Wal-Mart became popular for the minimum wage crowd. Thus, despite my hippie sensibilities, I ended joining the ranks of the big-box employees for one summer.

What did I learn in my 4-months wearing a blue vest?

• Wal-Mart can't decide if they want to seem prestigious or all-accepting. This is the only way I can explain the fact that I had to go through three interview portions (including a questionnaire about my responses to employment related moral dilemmas-- "A co-worker confides in you that he has been smoking marijuana on his work break. What do you do?") to get the job, yet they still seemed to hire absolutely anyone (from the purple-haired to the retired many years prior) with few standards. Seriously, some of the people I worked with were the least socially skilled individuals on the planet, making me wonder how they even managed a 15-minute interview.

• Another sign they took themselves too seriously? Managers were forbidden from socializing with employees. I remember a poor 20-something assistant manager who moved from a major city to take over an open position. He worked really long hours, but was disallowed from even going for coffee with anyone from work. I remember actually having an honest conversation with the guy the day I quit about how ridiculously lonely such rules left him. It's Wal-Mart, people, not a law firm.
• 
  
• Working in the toy department had its pros and cons. Pro? Being able to wear a crown and boa while working with no one blinking an eye. Con? The second you turn a corner, your three hours of work cleaning the action figures aisle will be destroyed.

• Despite my prior glamourizing of the infamous Wal-Mart greeter position as the easiest job of the planet, it is also the most boring and the most humiliating. People will humour a 70-year old woman accosting them with stickers and salutations, but their responses to a teenager tend to be more characterized by pity and disdain.

• Some people took their job way too seriously. They would only speak about the company and Sam Walton in the most glowing of terms. They would frantically call out any break of protocol. They would lead the morning exercises (which included finger stretches) and the Wal-Mart cheer with utter gusto.
• 
  
• Ah, yes, the Wal-Mart cheer. Contrary to what you may have hoped, it is not an urban legend. Those of us lucky enough to open the store got to shout and gesture along to "Give me a W!"
•  The second best part? "Who's number one? Our customer, always!" 
• The best part? "Give me a squiggly!" (for your information, squiggly represented the dash-mark, and was accompanied by this odd wiggle-dip.)

• The day I wore a skirt to work was inevitably the day they sprung on me that I would unexpectedly be left to cover the garden department, and thus would have to haul 20 bags of manure into the back of someone's truck.

• On the same note, they seemingly never had enough people working on one day, meaning I would be covering literally up to eight departments at once while getting paged to run a till. Also, you were only trained for the department you *officially* worked at, meaning the customers looking at barbecues probably knew more than I did when I was called to help them.

• The customer's-always-right mantra gets rather tiresome in a hurry, especially when people would literally try to start bargaining with me or would return nasty, stained apparel without a receipt-- and the management would appease them. It was then that the customer would shoot me a nasty glare, as though I was purposely trying to screw them over by being willing to haggle with them over the price of an electric scooter.

• Kids getting excited about new shipments of Lego or Hot Wheels is cute. Grown men? Not so much. In fact, we had one man who would be waiting outside the doors before opening every weekend to raid the Hot Wheels section. Whenever someone new was hired in the department, he would scam them by telling them that the department manager promised him he could look through the new shipment box that morning-- which was a complete lie and would leave you with an utter mess of itty-bitty trucks strewn about the aisle.

Not to mention Wal-Mart radio is sheer torture-- a medley of non-offensive soft rock favourites and irritating repetitive jingles-- including one set to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" that chanted "Roll back, roll back, roll back some prices for me, for me!"

Oh, the memories....

House into home

Technically moving is just one step in the game.

Molding your space into a home beyond the presence of furniture and food is the next step-- and the one we never schedule the time for.

Life, as always, is getting a little in the way of this. 

So I write poems using magnetic words on my fridge between struggling, full-armed down the stairs to the storage locker and frantically editing a manuscript within the 36 hour time period my supervisor's "URGENT" email allotted me. 

These poems are my efforts to make this place a home, squeezed between the rest of life.

***

I'm still sadly absent from your side of bloggie land, I know. Soon, soon, soon. 

Put me in a packed apartment...

... and I go a little crazy.

I just can't sit around and watch TV when surrounded by boxes. The neurotic inside me cries out "What if you really need a hand blender and a pair of mittens?" As such, I am a compulsive unpacker unless literally dragged to the couch (which is now, amusingly, completely box-free due to my efforts). 

It probably doesn't help that I may be a little high off paint fumes. 

On the bright side, the actual move went phenomenally smooth. We had a whopping nine people shuttling our stuff up the horrendous purple carpeted stairs, meaning we were able to move both the Duke and I out of our respective apartments and into the new one by 3pm. Which included some serious maneuvering skills with the moving truck after the asshats doing construction a few doors down from me decided to park their enormous truck on one side of the narrow residential street, and their dumpster directly across from it. It was seriously a matter of inches.

My one pet peeve, however, is pack rat accusations. Inevitably, these always come from men who own three plates and one pan. Don't hate on me because I have the fixings to cook you up a casseroles and an angel food cake! 

I am happy to report that the apartment is even more fabulous than I recalled. The two of us keep on looking around in awe, saying "I can't believe this is ours!" We're used to being able to hear each others every move in my old place-- now we have to shout to hear each other when in different rooms. The only thing I find a little disturbing is the excess amount of mirrors. You know, the unfortunate "didn't-you-want-to-watch-yourself-pee" mirror, and the "hey-look-there's-me-first-thing-in-the-morning" mirrored closet right across from our bed. 

Now that the boxes are close to unpacked, I'm putting on my decorator hat-- which, by proxy, also includes my handywoman hat. Although I'm no superstar in this regards, I can hang a shelf if need be, and my toolbox actually kicks the Duke's toolbox's ass. However, after unsuccessfully negotiating a hammer, nails, tape measure, and leveler while standing on my kitchen table in an attempt to hang a set of in-wall candleholder in perfect diagonal fashion, and failing miserably (they looked level from 8 feet off the ground!), I feel like tucking my tail behind my legs a little. Especially after I tried to do the much easier act of hanging one of my paintings, only to find that the set of picture hangers I'd purchased yesterday bent in a matter of seconds. 

The 12-year old in me (who is consequently also high on paint fumes) tells me that I should play scientist with my new garburator instead, and see what I can plausibly shove down my sink. An entire block of styrofoam? A mango? Excitement!!