Pros: Cheese

A year ago, I would have never believed you if you told me I would be writing a list of pros and cons about moving to Wisconsin.

And I really wouldn't have believed you if you told me the pros would greatly outweigh the cons.

Then again, a year ago, I still believed a paint-by-number, careful, detailed approach would lead to an entirely predictable future.

How naive is that?

Things change, no matter how precisely and effortfully you take the "right" steps-- like when you nearly pull a muscle trying to stretch your short legs to fit your feet in the snowy tracks of someone else to avoid any more snow in your boots.

You always trip and fall into the snow anyhow.
(At least I do. But I'm exceedingly clumsy.)

Okay, I know I'm being cryptic. Suffice to say, things haven't turned out exactly as expected, and I've spent the last month scrambling, working on what feels like 12 potential back-up plans at once. Life has truly become an exercise in rolling with the punches.

Oddly enough, the punches are pointing towards the Midwest, which, up until recently, is never where I foresaw this West Coast Canadian girl ending up.

Even though there's a lot of panic and planning involved (and I must have nearly given myself carpal tunnel syndrome with all my frantic googling), there's something wonderful about how random this all is.

I mean, why the hell not move to Wisconsin?

Things I know that I didn't want to know, thanks to Facebook

Apparently my cousin got her, and I quote, "pussy pierced".

Apparently it initially hurt really badly.

Apparently it will be back and ready for action in 2 weeks.

Apparently it looks great.

Not only do I now know more about my cousin's genitals than I ever hoped to, but so do the rest of her Facebook friends, her aunt, her brother, and her mother.

Oh yes, and her grandmother.

TMI is a vast understatement at this moment in time.

Viva!

Less than a year ago, the Duke took his first trip to the U.S. in 13 years. As often happens for us Canadians when we haven't crossed that omnipresent line not too far South of us in a while, he expected it to be some sort of some fundamental je-ne-sais-quoi you can feel in your bones, telling him that he is somewhere different. Outside of the bottles of energy drink the size of our heads and slabs of beef jerky the side of our legs at convenience stores, the presence of Jack In the Box, much cheaper alcohol, the difficulties in finding playoff hockey on TV, the ten cents difference in the value of a dollar, and the annoyance of having to convert kilometers to miles... well, things weren't too different.

It was rather funny watching Glenn Beck ranting about the evil of compact fluorescent lightbulbs on television (we also don't get Fox News in Canada, making it a bit of a legend we needed to see for ourselves) right in the middle of laid-back Portland. The two didn't quite fit.

He remarked again, as 2009 passed, how the U.S. we visiting didn't quite seem like the U.S. we saw on TV, the one with the bling and the angry people shouting about public health care causing the downfall of the universe. While I agreed, I also reminded him that the three places we'd been that summer, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, weren't exactly the epitome of the America that is supposed to be so diametrically opposed to Canada.

As such, I eagerly anticipated our first visit to Las Vegas this January. I figured that if any place could capture the cliched "I-saw-it-on-TV" version of America, Vegas would.

And, in many ways, it did.

There was no such thing as the dark. It was also never quiet.

Everything you can imagine is done up in lights. Even disturbingly eerie clowns...

... and Denny's.

The portion sizes are absurdly enormous. The Duke was only feeling slightly peckish, and thus ordered a fruit plate-- the smaller one on the menu. He instead received this, enough fruit to feed a family of four for a week. (Note: This picture does not include the accompanying loaf of banana bread.)

There are breasts the size and shape of genetically engineered watermelons, and skirts the size of a postage stamp.

There is more Ed Hardy than should ever exist. The designer even has his own nightclub-- entrance probably incurs a dangerous risk of a Jon Gosselin encounter.

You can get a $1 marguarita, but later on that night you will pay $10 for a vodka and soda. You can also pay $50,000 for someone to bring you some Dom to your table, or $450 for that very same bottle of vodka I have sitting in my freezer at home.

You will go crazy at the sound of people flicking call girl trading cards at you, and will start to wonder if your personal bubble ever really did exist.

Nothing is original-- every single concept, particularly in architecture, is just a plaster version of something that has been done before. Yet there is something insanely creative about all of it.

One of the first things that greats you off the plane is an ad offering you to try shooting a machine gun.

It is the middle of the desert, yet literally millions of gallons of water are used every fifteen minutes for a free fountain show.

Every washed up and/or random performer can have faith they will find a home in Vegas. Carrot Top, Andrew Dice Clay, Wayne Brady-- you name it.

Somehow topless showgirls are different than stripper. I don't know how.

Hot dogs are $1.99 but bottles of water are $5.

Tickets for the "Eiffel Tower" exclusively forbid unauthorized weddings, as apparently these are more rampant than the average person expects.

There are buffets with multiple different kind of mashed potatoes. And more mousse than any human could ever process.

And people really do gamble at 7am.

You can really sum Vegas up in one word: excess. Utterly and completely.

But it was still unexpectedly pleasant to be overwhelmed in the midst of all those lights, not quite knowing where to look next.

Spinning around to reach full circle

Call it coming full circle or something.

I opened up my computer, deciding again to write. I then looked at that plane shaped icon on the monitor in front of me, to find I am once again hovering over Lake Michigan, 37,000 feet this time. And Wild World started playing in my ears once again.

And my head is all muddled.

Perhaps I expected these trips to help resolve all this uncertainty, this stomach tightening ambiguity that makes what used to be statements suddenly become punctuated with huge bold question marks. But there was no real epiphany. None of those movie-perfect revelations in it all becomes clear, that this is where I’m supposed to be.

I briefly thought I might have found it in one city, navigating through deliciously pulsating neighbourhoods. As I tend to do when I develop a crush on a city, I began the detailed process of imagining myself living on the 5^th floor of a specific building and deciding where I would shop for groceries. It didn’t hurt that the placement I was interviewing for looked absolutely dreamy on paper. But it wasn’t so swoonworthy in the pain in the ass world we call reality. It felt overly competitive, painfully bureaucratic, yet hypocritically disorganized.

And then the programs that made me especially giddy are in cities without that spark. One is a city I already spent a handful of years in, which, though convenient and reasonably effortless, seems devoid of any sense of adventure. And one is just really damn cold.

So, while there is clearly some indication of the right direction to go, I kind of hoped I wouldn’t have to go through that painful formalized step-by-step decision making process. I wanted to just know.

Really, though, this is such a silly debate this is to be having with myself. I still could end up at any of them, and I could make my own little life there for a year. I would learn immense amounts from any of them, and it would still be a pretty epic success to end up at any of them. And, after all, it is just a year.

I think I need to come to terms that major life choices don't operate like the quintessential lightbulb above the head. They are never so clear and instantaneous. Real life doesn't operate by love-at-first-sight rules.

Love harder

Our plea:

Our friend Brandy is a brilliant writer, a wonderful teacher, and a generous friend. And she is in love with a man who has just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

We are raising money for the Multiple Myeloma Research Fund in his name. For the price of a cinnamon dolce latte, half-caf, hold the whip, you can be part of an effort to cure a disease that affects approximately 750,000 people worldwide.

http://www.loveharder.org

Every dollar brings us a dollar closer to a cure. And every donation brings a sliver of hope to a girl who needs all the hope she can get.

Love Harder,
Princess Pointful


What You Can Do

• Give. Be part of a worldwide effort to cure a disease that affects approximately 750,000 people worldwide. Every dollar helps.
  
  
• Pass it on. Forward this story to five people. Share this blog post. Become our fan on Facebook.
  
  
• Love harder. Life is short, love is unbending, and no one knows what could happen next. Tell someone you love them today.
  

Where Your Money Goes

• The American Institute of Philanthropy recently named The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundationone of the best organizations to give to in terms of their accountability and use of resources.
  
  
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So far, an amazing $2000 has been raised today alone by people like you! Please continue this wonderful trend!

Love to the internetz, the amazing Lilu and Laurie for all their hard work on this project, and the wonderful Brandy (who's story you can also find here).

PS. Brandy and your Hot Awesome Dude... this one's for you. Love, The Internet.

32,000 feet over Lake Michigan

It’s an odd thing when flying becomes so routine that the fact that you are hovering 32,000 feet over Lake Michigan isn’t the slightest bit daunting. It seems perfectly natural to be suspended in space, eating complementary Bits and Bites and watching your vessel’s progress via an airplane shapes icon in front of you on a 5 inch by 5 inch screen.

Until I graduated from high school, I had only taken a single round trip on an airplane at the age of 6. At 17, I took my second such trip, and spent the entire voyage in awe, nose pressed against the glass, marveling at the consistency of the clouds and speed at which the building became full-sized again. In the just over 10 years since high school, my number of flights have skyrocketed. I have four such round trips in this month period. I sit in my compact grey seat, not skipping a beat on my keyboard as the world flies past me at 500 mph.

How on earth did this life ever become so normal to me?

I remember at 19, two weeks before I was set to leave my hometown for a big city university, my then boyfriend and I took a road trip to find an apartment. I had never been to this sprawled out on the prairies city before. We had left after work, and, as such, were driving under the big night sky. Each time we came upon a new smattering of lights, I would look at him expectantly.

“No, that’s not it,” he’d say. “You’ll know when it is.”

And I did. The sky exploded in scattered orange lights, covering the horizon. I couldn’t believe that one of those lights would somehow become my light.

Sometimes I can’t believe that this girl who learned to rollerblade in the yellow church’s parking lot and thought that excitement was going to the nearby town with a McDonald’s is the same one negotiating trains in cities of millions and flying across the country by herself to go to interviews.

It’s hard to map out exactly how these changes happen. They just do. And it is often only by virtue of being able to compare yourself to your memories that you realize how much you’ve changed. The Duke recently told me I was one of the most independent people he knew. This set off a feeling of minor triumph in my head, for I never used to be independent. I used to be downright gloomy about the idea of doing things alone, maybe even clingy, certainly naïve. And now I'm not. I don't quite know how.

I just know that 32,000 feet above Lake Michigan on my way to a hotel in a city I've never been to but might move to anyhow isn't nearly as scary as my 19 year old self would have thought.

(Oddly enough, as I type this, the playlist he made me for my travels sings into my ears, the one he forbade me to look at before hitting play. Song four is Wild World by Cat Stevens.)

Little sister

My little sister is getting married. True to her, it is happening in cyclone-like fashion. Move in after 2 months, engaged at a year, marrying 6 months after that. If it was anyone but her, I may be out of breath, especially in comparison to what may seem like my slow-and-steady tortoise like pace through similar choices. But, over the past year or so, I've had to come to accept that this is just who she is, how she operates, even if it seems foreign to me.

The main thing is that she is happy-- which she is.

I sometimes think that the differences between my sister and I were somehow created by everyone else's need to dichotomize us, rather than any inherent variability. The more automatic aspects of us are eerily alike- the way we speak, our sense of humour, our mannerisms, our smile, our clumsiness. But at a young age, my tendencies to voraciously read and hers to dress up in pouffy dresses for the most minimal of occasions were somehow magnified. I became the smart one. She became the pretty one.

Somehow everyone became invested in maintaining those categories. Despite the fact that we regularly become mistaken for twins, I was always more insecure, more critical when I looked in the mirror. Despite her almost constant appearance on the honour roll, she never considered going to university. I make practical decisions, she makes spontaneous ones. She spends money, I save. Despite being three years younger than me, she had boyfriends with cars before I did.

It sometimes feels like she got to make the mistakes I was always too scared to make.

We're living pretty different lives these days. After five years in a big city, including a few changes in direction, and a big heartbreak, she decided that a small town is where she wants to be. And so, she's back in our hometown, getting married, living in a big beautiful home, and likely to start a family very soon. I don't know where I'm going to be living by the end this year, let alone the year after that, although I will be in the city. My life may seem a lot more jet-setting, in some ways, with me about to embark on another cross-country zigzagging trip, with a end of the month conference in Las Vegas, but it is also a lot more modest, given that I have yet to move out of one-bedroom apartment territory. I'm with my big love, too, but despite being together for much longer that her and her fiancee, a wedding is still far in the future, with other practicalities getting in the way.

Despite the fork somewhere in our paths, though, there's still a thick rope stretching across that distance that neither of us want to, or could, shake. When she's hurting, her first instinct is still to hop a plane and fly my way. And for me, she'll always have the spirit of that 12 year old who called my 16-year old boyfriend to scold him for treating me badly.

She sometimes hurts me more than she realizes, not because of malice, but rather than she occasionally forgets that she needs to slip her feet into my shoes for an instant, as they do fit a lot differently. She did so recently, and it still feels more raw than I would like to admit. But I still couldn't help but tear up as she twirled around, beaming, clutching a bouquet in what will be her wedding dress outside the dressing room. Hurt goes away, after all-- but she won't.

Quote of the day- New Years Eve edition

"Celine Dion is basically the White Canadian Puff Daddy."

(I leave it to all of you to brainstorm the similarities. Alcohol may help the process along. And, please, spare me the update on Puffy's latest name.)

Resoluting.

Perhaps it is just sitting under a ceiling full of glow-in-the-dark stars, harkening back to my days of compulsive diary writing, that leads me to want to write so urgently again.

The other day, the Duke, doing a random Google Reader check, said "I didn't know you were blogging again."

"I don't know if I am," I replied.

Blogging, in its current form, doesn't seem to just be about writing anymore. It seems to have exploded into this bundle of networking, commenting, twittering. And I just can't do that right now. I used to literally dedicate hours in the evenings to this endeavour, and those are hours that simply don't exist anymore.

Over the holidays, I have spent a little more time online than usual, and read a lot about the latest round of blogging drama. I don't care to place myself in the debate, but the fact that it even exists is what kind of made me flee for the hills for a little while, despite having a lot of love for writing and the people who do it. I'm 28 years old now, dammit. The idea of secret undercurrents behind the writing is ridiculous and bloody exhausting. The fact that I have let my feelings get hurt over some of this stuff in the past is even more absurd.

Perhaps, ironically, by virtue of blogging, I know myself a lot better now, and one of the things I know is that I will absolutely, without a doubt, need this outlet again. With the moving across the country, alone, to somewhere I will potentially know very few people, this space will be essential. Even now, without it, I find my head swimming a bit too much, and my text messages are getting far too long to be practical. And I know that there are still a lot of wonderful "portable" friends here that will provide that slice of home when I'm feeling lonely.

Until then, though, I'm trying to get back to just writing. Simple as that. Because I sometimes find it sad that I got so caught up in comments and statistics, and lost that spark.

So, my secret 2010 resolution is to blog on my terms. To write because I want to write. And read because I want to read. Not because it has been a week since my last post or because my reader is too big or my funny posts get more comments. Only because I have something to say, or I want to hear what you have to say.

That can't be that hard, can it?

The big city girl and the magic hammer

I grew up in a small town.

The type of small town where everyone remarks how oppressive and smelly big cities are.

The type of small town where you don't know everyone, but you surely know everyone in town by two degrees of separation.

The type of small town where the bus driver yells at you for standing up before the bus stops because you may get hurt, instead of yelling at you for not being at the door yet.

The type of small town where locals frustrations about the state of a particular road are headline news, and people rally around the cause of saving an old oak tree.

The type of small town where a friend's father declared me to have become "big city" when, a year after leaving, I showed up for my sister's graduation ceremony wearing a skirt I'd purchased at a garage sale. (I'm convinced it was because of the size of my earrings.)

And I live in a big city.

I ride the bus standing up with a coffee in my hand, go everywhere with headphones on, belong to a yoga studio, am fond of assorted martinis and am pretty good with chopsticks-- but I like to pretend I am not "big city".

I ran some errands downtown the day after I arrived home for Christmas, including one for my mother. She told me that the hardware store had some sort of innovative new hammer, that had a weird angled head that was meant for small corners. She said they would know what I was looking for if I described it to them.

They did not know what it was.

In fact, the second worker's words were, "Sure, we have a hammer that goes around corners. It's right over there by the striped spray paint and the sky hooks."

Even when it was determined what she actually meant (some out of stock multipurpose tool), I could hear them roaring, aisles away. "A hammer for around corners!"

I left, my tail tucked between my legs, and promptly ran into an old family friend, who also burst into peals of laughter when I recounted my story. "Was your mom pulling your leg? Did she actually tell you to ask about a hammer for around corners?"

So now I'm the big city girl who doesn't understand that you can use a hammer on both sides of a corner.

Dammit.

I might as well show up at the co-op decked out in bling, Dolce & Gabbana and stilettos.