shawna lemay's site, capacious hold-all, is running a feature where women writers talk about their purses. as shawna puts it, "there has been a fascination with artist’s and writer’s workspaces." her challenge: "the purse has been seen as an honest time capsule, an archive, a little house, a portable boudoir. what do you take away with you in your hold-all? is it flimsy, sturdy, practical, frivolous? what secrets does it contain?" take a peek!
(yes, maybe i wrote something on hothead paisan and the birkin.)
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
My niece the feminist
my second-oldest niece, who's ten, has been reading a book about a girl in afghanistan who has to dress like a boy in order to be out and about in her neighbourhood. my mom asked laura, "what do you think about that?" laura said, "i think it's silly. after all, the first person on earth was a girl. everybody knows that." my mom frowns at the rush-hour traffic and tries to figure this one out. "you mean lucy?" "yeah, lucy." laura grows reflective for a second. "maybe that's why men want to run everything. but it's silly. everybody knows that the only thing men are better at than women is hot-dog-eating contests."
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Three good things
you know when you have one of those days when absolutely everything goes wrong? whatever is the opposite of that, that was today.
riding to the gym, i saw a woman on the bike path ahead of me who appeared to be littering. but it turns out, she was walking along collecting other people's litter. i was still smiling when i got to the gym, only to discover i'd left my gym card at home. "no worries," said the guy behind the desk, "we'll just look it up." when it was time to do yard work, a huge thunderstorm rolled in -- and now i'm listening to the rain hammer our sound tin roof while looking at a rainbow.
i know: this is so nauseating you're not even reading anymore.
riding to the gym, i saw a woman on the bike path ahead of me who appeared to be littering. but it turns out, she was walking along collecting other people's litter. i was still smiling when i got to the gym, only to discover i'd left my gym card at home. "no worries," said the guy behind the desk, "we'll just look it up." when it was time to do yard work, a huge thunderstorm rolled in -- and now i'm listening to the rain hammer our sound tin roof while looking at a rainbow.
i know: this is so nauseating you're not even reading anymore.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Excuses, excuses
i have neglected my audience. worse, i don't have a good excuse. taken individually, none of these things adequately explains a two-week silence, but altogether? maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
first, there was ron the roofer. he was here every day, except when he didn't show up. he would typically say, "see you at 8 in the morning." at 9:15 he'd call to let me know he was running late "but i'll be there by 9." most people would wonder at that, but not me. we signed a contract for this job in april of 2007; by late june 2008 i was convinced ron worked so slowly that he actually could move back in time. it was like a bad marriage, me and ron. i nagged and he acted sheepish. he'd want to explain himself ("you wouldn't believe the mess i had to deal with yesterday") and i wouldn't listen. as with so many bad relationships, ours ended with a stupid fight, this one about who put the good sheet over the printer. i yelled and slammed the door, he stopped speaking to me, and although he still has a housekey, i'm not keen to call to get it back.
then there was the bomb incident. about 1:30 AM we heard a loud bang. the next morning, we discovered a melted bottle on our front lawn. things with ron had not deteriorated to the point where i suspected him, and what with the egging and the graffiti earlier this year, we figured we should call the cops about this one (and by "we," mo meant me).
"yeah, uh hi. i'm calling to report that someone set off a bomb at our house last night? well, maybe not a bomb -- bomb is a big word, i'm sure this was nothing -- but then again there've been a couple other worrying incidents lately, and sometimes i take pictures of the drug dealers on the corner, though mostly it's a pretty good neighbourhood, but there was just --"
"ma'am, what is the nature of your complaint?"
"i'm calling to report a homemade explosive," i said, decisively.
"what makes you believe there was an explosive device, ma'am?"
"what makes me believe this? well, last night we heard an explosion and this morning we found the remains of a plastic bottle on the front lawn."
"did you retrieve the device, ma'am?"
"yes, i did. i'm sorry, should i have left it there?" i'm suddenly flustered: i've seen CSI, i know you're not supposed to disturb the crime scene. but they weren't really going to send out a team to investigate. were they? "i guess i should have left it there."
"ma'am, are there any burn marks on the bottle?"
i peer more closely. "no, actually, there aren't. now that you mention it." i'm starting to feel a little silly about the whole thing.
"what makes you believe the bottle was exploded, ma'am?"
"well, the side of it is totally melted. there's a milky white residue around the edges, though i guess that could be just be where the plastic itself melted... oh, and," i add triumphantly, "the lid's still on!"
"is there any sort of a label on the bottle, ma'am?"
"a label? uh, yeah. it's dasani water. lemon flavored. is that what you mean?"
"it's a lemon-flavor dasani water bottle with no discernible burn marks on it. is that correct?"
"yes."
"ma'am, it sounds to me like what we have here is a prank. what youths sometimes do is take mentos -- that's a type of candy -- and insert them into a bottle of flavored water or soda. when they shake the bottle, the combination of ingredients initiates a chemical reaction that can cause the bottle to burst. there are videos of this phenomenon on youtube, ma'am, if you're familiar with that site."
"yes, i'm familiar with youtube. and i know what mentos are!"
"does this sound like a possible scenario, ma'am? are there young people living in your neighbourhood?"
so it all fizzled out, so to speak. but as you can imagine, i needed a couple days to recover -- and to catch up on my david letterman stunts, since apparently even david letterman has done the diet-coke-and-mentos trick.
then there were four days in the mountains -- glorious! -- where i had a run-in with another caustic combination: spray-on sunblock and red flipflops. basically, the banana boat sunscreen peeled the red color off my flip-flops and deposited it onto my feet, turning them the color of sweet and sour chicken balls. when i came home that afternoon, i tracked pink plastic all over the hardwood. nothing seemed to lift the color off -- until i had the bright idea to spray the sunscreen directly on the floors: bingo. came right up, and left a nice polish behind. that's also how i cleaned the tub.
when we came home from the mountains on canada day, we discovered that ron had moved out while we were gone, leaving a certain amount of dust behind him. not one to dwell on bygones, i suggested that we tackle the upstairs bathroom, which we immediately set out to do. "pimping," i think kids today call it (or did, twenty minutes ago).
isn't it amazing what you can do in two days with a couple hundred bucks and a bottle of spray paint?
first, there was ron the roofer. he was here every day, except when he didn't show up. he would typically say, "see you at 8 in the morning." at 9:15 he'd call to let me know he was running late "but i'll be there by 9." most people would wonder at that, but not me. we signed a contract for this job in april of 2007; by late june 2008 i was convinced ron worked so slowly that he actually could move back in time. it was like a bad marriage, me and ron. i nagged and he acted sheepish. he'd want to explain himself ("you wouldn't believe the mess i had to deal with yesterday") and i wouldn't listen. as with so many bad relationships, ours ended with a stupid fight, this one about who put the good sheet over the printer. i yelled and slammed the door, he stopped speaking to me, and although he still has a housekey, i'm not keen to call to get it back.
then there was the bomb incident. about 1:30 AM we heard a loud bang. the next morning, we discovered a melted bottle on our front lawn. things with ron had not deteriorated to the point where i suspected him, and what with the egging and the graffiti earlier this year, we figured we should call the cops about this one (and by "we," mo meant me).
"yeah, uh hi. i'm calling to report that someone set off a bomb at our house last night? well, maybe not a bomb -- bomb is a big word, i'm sure this was nothing -- but then again there've been a couple other worrying incidents lately, and sometimes i take pictures of the drug dealers on the corner, though mostly it's a pretty good neighbourhood, but there was just --"
"ma'am, what is the nature of your complaint?"
"i'm calling to report a homemade explosive," i said, decisively.
"what makes you believe there was an explosive device, ma'am?"
"what makes me believe this? well, last night we heard an explosion and this morning we found the remains of a plastic bottle on the front lawn."
"did you retrieve the device, ma'am?"
"yes, i did. i'm sorry, should i have left it there?" i'm suddenly flustered: i've seen CSI, i know you're not supposed to disturb the crime scene. but they weren't really going to send out a team to investigate. were they? "i guess i should have left it there."
"ma'am, are there any burn marks on the bottle?"
i peer more closely. "no, actually, there aren't. now that you mention it." i'm starting to feel a little silly about the whole thing.
"what makes you believe the bottle was exploded, ma'am?"
"well, the side of it is totally melted. there's a milky white residue around the edges, though i guess that could be just be where the plastic itself melted... oh, and," i add triumphantly, "the lid's still on!"
"is there any sort of a label on the bottle, ma'am?"
"a label? uh, yeah. it's dasani water. lemon flavored. is that what you mean?"
"it's a lemon-flavor dasani water bottle with no discernible burn marks on it. is that correct?"
"yes."
"ma'am, it sounds to me like what we have here is a prank. what youths sometimes do is take mentos -- that's a type of candy -- and insert them into a bottle of flavored water or soda. when they shake the bottle, the combination of ingredients initiates a chemical reaction that can cause the bottle to burst. there are videos of this phenomenon on youtube, ma'am, if you're familiar with that site."
"yes, i'm familiar with youtube. and i know what mentos are!"
"does this sound like a possible scenario, ma'am? are there young people living in your neighbourhood?"
so it all fizzled out, so to speak. but as you can imagine, i needed a couple days to recover -- and to catch up on my david letterman stunts, since apparently even david letterman has done the diet-coke-and-mentos trick.
then there were four days in the mountains -- glorious! -- where i had a run-in with another caustic combination: spray-on sunblock and red flipflops. basically, the banana boat sunscreen peeled the red color off my flip-flops and deposited it onto my feet, turning them the color of sweet and sour chicken balls. when i came home that afternoon, i tracked pink plastic all over the hardwood. nothing seemed to lift the color off -- until i had the bright idea to spray the sunscreen directly on the floors: bingo. came right up, and left a nice polish behind. that's also how i cleaned the tub.
when we came home from the mountains on canada day, we discovered that ron had moved out while we were gone, leaving a certain amount of dust behind him. not one to dwell on bygones, i suggested that we tackle the upstairs bathroom, which we immediately set out to do. "pimping," i think kids today call it (or did, twenty minutes ago).
isn't it amazing what you can do in two days with a couple hundred bucks and a bottle of spray paint?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Saturday morning
one of the most marvelous contradictions in life is the constitive contradiction of saturday morning. lying in bed, mo still asleep, and early, i think of all the things i will do. this morning's list included:
i don't know exactly what happened to all those grand schemes of mine, only now it's quarter to one and i'm lying on the front porch day bed, reading and daydreaming, waiting for a yoga class at 2.
- yard work: cleaning up roofing nails, mowing the lawn, weeding, putting in a few more annuals, replacing my mysteriously dying basil, cutting suckers, rescuing the mock orange, tidying up the raised bed and, most satisfying of all, yanking caragana
- shopping: the farmers market, the italian centre, the greek market, antonio's
- baking: muffins, granola, flatbread
- riding: a longish bike ride through the river valley parks.
i don't know exactly what happened to all those grand schemes of mine, only now it's quarter to one and i'm lying on the front porch day bed, reading and daydreaming, waiting for a yoga class at 2.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Suffused with calm
i am still thinking about shawna lemay's reading at factory west on tuesday. her husband robert lemay is an artist who's recently been studying and painting still lifes. shawna read a marvelous essay from her forthcoming book calm things (palimpsest press). the piece was about many things: art, generosity, giving/gifts/giftedness, robins and crows, fragility, permanence, and that astonishing, agonizing shuttle between them called creation.
it was the kind of essay that keeps resonating for a long time, and one of the things it made me think is how wonderful it would be to live with a still life artist. the most commonplace things would be imbued with possibility -- the supermarket, for instance. you might wonder, as you heft the lemon, what it would look like with sunlight falling on it just so. you might rethink your aversion to eggplant dishes once you see them as gorgeous aubergine. who cares if you can't eat a dozen granny smith apples: their green against your dark brown table makes you swoon.
and yes, i think, it's better to live with a still life artist than to be one. free from the responsibility of decision, composition, execution, you would just get to revel in possibility. the banana, spotted and browned, might not be compost, but a study in degeneration. the unwashed cup, the china pot, the milk jug on the counter are all redolent with painterly possibility. and who would iron after you've seen RL's drapery?
it may be too late for me to procure an artist-husband; ron the skylights guy is looking pretty permanent at this point. (you'd think that might be a vocation with poetic possibility, but i'm here to tell you there is more mud than sky in roofing.) there must be a way to live like this -- what emily dickinson calls "dwell in possibility" -- without the man. i'm going to start by lying on the day bed on this perfect first day of summer, reading rebecca solnit and listening to the birds torment the black cat by my side.
it was the kind of essay that keeps resonating for a long time, and one of the things it made me think is how wonderful it would be to live with a still life artist. the most commonplace things would be imbued with possibility -- the supermarket, for instance. you might wonder, as you heft the lemon, what it would look like with sunlight falling on it just so. you might rethink your aversion to eggplant dishes once you see them as gorgeous aubergine. who cares if you can't eat a dozen granny smith apples: their green against your dark brown table makes you swoon.
and yes, i think, it's better to live with a still life artist than to be one. free from the responsibility of decision, composition, execution, you would just get to revel in possibility. the banana, spotted and browned, might not be compost, but a study in degeneration. the unwashed cup, the china pot, the milk jug on the counter are all redolent with painterly possibility. and who would iron after you've seen RL's drapery?
it may be too late for me to procure an artist-husband; ron the skylights guy is looking pretty permanent at this point. (you'd think that might be a vocation with poetic possibility, but i'm here to tell you there is more mud than sky in roofing.) there must be a way to live like this -- what emily dickinson calls "dwell in possibility" -- without the man. i'm going to start by lying on the day bed on this perfect first day of summer, reading rebecca solnit and listening to the birds torment the black cat by my side.
Today's gruesome find
you can buy caskets at costco.
of course i'm not kidding. you can't make this stuff up. and, really, why not take the empowered-consumer movement to the next level? 'cause after you consume that flat of beef and the barrel of cashews, you just might need to think about "the next level." before you get too excited, though, read the fine print, where you'll discover that costco online offers standard or expedited shipping but, unfortunately, they "cannot hold onto any orders for future delivery." so keep that 1-800 number right next to your deathbed.
i'm all for DIY, but there are some things -- say, embalming human bodies -- that i think should be left to the professionals. are you with me on this?
of course i'm not kidding. you can't make this stuff up. and, really, why not take the empowered-consumer movement to the next level? 'cause after you consume that flat of beef and the barrel of cashews, you just might need to think about "the next level." before you get too excited, though, read the fine print, where you'll discover that costco online offers standard or expedited shipping but, unfortunately, they "cannot hold onto any orders for future delivery." so keep that 1-800 number right next to your deathbed.
i'm all for DIY, but there are some things -- say, embalming human bodies -- that i think should be left to the professionals. are you with me on this?
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