Long Weekender

At 9:30 last night, I exited my room holding a bottle of laundry detergent in one hand, a box of dryer sheets in the other and found my roommate, Nik, slouched on the steps with her head in a basket full of sheets and towels, ready for the wash. "You know, we don't have to do this tonight. We can do laundry tomorrow. Really, we can do this tomorrow." I waited for a response that would be a testament to how tired she really was. I honestly just wanted to go to bed.

"But we've been laaaazy. And we were supposed to do laundry this weekend. Sunday's a good day for this stuff." Her head was still in the basket.

"But we've already done a load and our darks are clean now! We can do sheets and towels tomorrow! Really! Tomorrow!" I was hopeful, but I knew I couldn't win.

Eventually, she pulled herself up and I trudged behind her into the basement and there it was, my Sunday night at 9:30pm: filling the washer with sheets and towels, and checking on our darks in the dryer. It's funny because it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not. My weekend was exactly what I wanted it to be, even if it did end with lots of laundry.

Friday saw me sleeping in after a night of much fiesta-ing and I woke to an empty house, delighted that I was left to my own devices with no responsibilities. I had a small chocolate themed brekkie (half of a chocolate chip muffin and chocolate milk), got dressed in a super summer outfit (because it was 28 degrees baby!) and went for a walk. I checked out little shops, a used book store, gathered some things (movie listings for the local indie theaters, voice lesson info, prices for hemming jeans), popped in and out of a tea shop and an art store, and bought a money tree. On my way home, I saw a sign for a garage sale nearby. Why not? I thought. So I walked over with my little tree in a bag.

Standing in the giant driveway filled with old housewares and knick-knacks really made me realize how badly I want a home. You know, like, a real home. Of my own. I have no idea how long I spent there, but it was long enough to strike up conversation with the ladies who were running the sale and daydream some more about one day having my own bed and breakfast. After much deliberation, I left with:

- a set of 7 deep red glasses
- a very ornate napkin holder
- a glass spaghetti jar
- a puzzle
- wooden salt and pepper set (one shaker and one grinder, I love freshly ground pepper)
- a vintage weekend bag (I call it a weekend bag because it's the perfect size for a two or three day trip)

It's true, I don't really need any of these things. I already own enough cups and mugs to get me by, and I don't really use a lot of napkins, nor do I need to put them on display in a fancy holder for everyone to see. My spaghetti is fine in the bag it came in, I've already got a salt shaker and pepper grinder, and I have more than enough travel bags. I bought the puzzle because it was marked at 35 cents and my roommate and I just love them. 'Not needing it' wasn't really the point for me that day. I had to restrain myself from buying bake-ware, dishes, old luggage and furniture too. The truth is, I love old things. Which is why I've probably been to more antique stores than the average twenty-three year old. Old things have history and I love using something while wondering how it was previously loved by its old owner. Anyway, I came home with more than enough swag, and still, I suggested going back to get more things when my roommate came home.

That evening, Nik and I both went for a run, I made a nice pot for my money tree, put on some tweed pumps and took a bus across town for a house-warming party. If you have never ridden a bus with a small plant before, I would recommend it. It felt like a small child, my small child, and holding the pot close to me was, in two words, very nice. "This is probably as close as I'll get to parenting for a while," I thought. My friends loved the plant and I loved their dinner party. There was a big backyard, a giant kitchen, and three whole floors for three recent grads. There were platters of fruits, veggies and dip; a spread of crackers, cheeses and meats; there was wine and a whole bar of liquors and liqueurs; and then there was dinner: thai mango salad, four different kinds of meat skewers, and home-made potato salad. And I mean home-made; the potatoes were from the family farm. And then! There was dessert! Chocolate fondue! With amaretto, all sorts of fruits, macaroons and marshmallows! I hadn't ingested that much food all week. I came home full to the brim, my ab muscles just that much tighter from laughing so much, and with a Hong Kong postcard written with much love and friendship in April.

And that was just Friday.

Saturday found my roommate and I at the train station in the morning (after fluffy pancakes with fried bananas on the sun porch), headed north to Amish country. We rode the train with the kiddies, wondered at the countryside and I spoke to the river as we chugged along the bridge that ran over it. We spent the morning wandering in and out of little shops in St. Jacobs and spent lots of time in children's toy stores. Nik bought a puzzle-map of the world (see, what did I tell you about the puzzles?) and a book entitled "Tomorrow" made me cry. We took the train to the market, bought cheap clothes and wandered along aisles of farm fresh produce. I bought jalpeno havarti and she got an empire cookie and sesame seed bread. By three I was exhausted, so we came home and hours later was my favourite part of the weekend: we cooked dinner together (mince and tatties) speaking only in English accents (our meal is properly pronounced "mince and tah'ees").

You won't believe what I did on Sunday morning. I did not sleep in. We went to an aerobics class. At 11am. For an HOUR AND A HALF. During the 45 minutes of extreme cardio workout, I thought I was going to drown in my own sweat. And I swore I could feel my muscles being ripped to shreds inside my arms during the toning part. My thighs were still feeling my run from Friday and I've never done so much exercise in such a condensed amount of time before. Today, I will fully admit that my whole body is feeling that workout from yesterday morn. But it was indeed, the most incredible workout. Aerobics instructors have the best, positive energy and I felt fabulous afterwards. I might even go next Sunday. After taking the World's Best Shower when I got home, I met with my dear friend Ashley for lunch (dim sum! without my parents!), a trip to the mall and lots of catching up. I came home to do some reading and then the roommate and I cooked breakfast for dinner (omelettes, hash browns and sesame toast). We took out the garbage and the compost, and had a reading party. And of course, we did laundry. And it was fabulous.
1:41 pm

Monday, September 17, 2007

Let's Get This Started

Confession: It is officially the sixth day of school and I'm already sitting in a computer lab on campus all alone at nearly nine o'clock at night. Who does this to themselves, you may ask? A girl who has no computer, that's who. I'll get into the story later, but for now, my attitude towards technology is somewhere between Damn, I really hate you and Please come back, I need you. Which is actually not unlike my attitude towards relationships at the moment, but again, that's for later.

My luck the past month and a half that I've been back in the country hasn't been the greatest. First my family gets caught up in a heck of a lot of drama that apparently I started, then I get broken-hearted, then my online identity gets hacked (later!), and then my bike breaks. I'm now computer-less and bike-less, and this is why, ladies and gentlemen, I am sitting here in this lab all by my lonesome. If I wait just a little longer, I'll get home at about the same time as my roommate and maybe we can have another reading party or have some tea and cake. That'd be nice, among the other not-so-nice things going on right now.

Classes suck (see: marketing, accounting and finance in the same term for a non-business student, and an extremely dull third-year sociology class for a fifth-year seminar student who's SO OVER lecture stylez) and I'm trying to stay busy (because that means earning money) and do things I like (which means spending potential money-earning time doing things like acting and taking voice lessons which, unfortunately, do not earn me money. Yet) all with a very tight schedule that mysteriously formed because the last time I checked, I swear I only had four classes that only started at four pm each day. Any free time I have is spent wondering what my life will be like in three and a half months, trying to figure out the weather and reading Eat Pray Love. I think I like it, but not like everyone else. It's strange to read someone else's account of India and Gurus and the such when I experienced it myself, and so differently too. I am, however, not riding my bike nor going to the gym in my free time. I hope this will change.

I've already taken off for a weekend and enjoyed myself immensely in our nation's capital. Ottawa is a fabulous city and I fall in love with it every time I go back. I did the jail hostel thing, I did the tourist thing, the market thing, the clubbing thing and oh yeah, the meet-the-man-of-your-dreams-thing. Meet Joel. Joel has a bachelor apartment right in the market with a Cambodian bedspread and a Mac. Joel had platters of sushi and exotic fruits and berries waiting for his guests when they arrived. Joel owns a tagine (and cooks with it!) and a hookah. Joel has been to nearly every part of the world that I adore and he takes amazing photographs with a big fancy SLR. Joel lived in Taiwan for two years and speaks Mandarin and French and Spanish and learned photography in Mandarin and his shelves are lined with all sorts of language, international, globalization-type books. Joel? Has a girlfriend that he's been dating for four years. Of course, I say now that he's probably too much like me for my own good anyway. Somebody that likes everything I like wouldn't keep me interested for too long. It'd be like dating myself. Oy.

Things I'm looking forward to include:
- acing my audition tomorrow night for a play
- discovering that my singing voice has not all together upped and left my sorry arse behind
- having a life that somehow balances loads of free time and enjoyable work
- fiesta social! housewarming party!
- having money again
- nuit blanche
- finding my dream job (with a side of dream man wouldn't hurt, either)

9:56 pm

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Smells Like Home

What do all those studies say again? Something along the lines of how our sense of smell is the strongest of the five, and can recall memories most immediately and vividly...? I was skeptical of this for the longest time; being a visual learner, I trusted my sense of sight to be more accurate in recalling the past. There's nothing like a good, sharp visual cue to bring something specific back to mind. Besides, smells are generic; doesn't the smell of freshly cut grass remind everyone of summer? And the smell of turkey and cranberries of the holidays (unless you don't celebrate it that way, of course)?

Since I'm going to segue into talking about Greg anyway, I might as well say now that it is because of him that I love the smell of a good cranberry candle. I walked into his house one winter evening pre-2003 and wow, just wow. This is also another reason why I associate cranberry with Christmas (it has nothing to do with the sauce on the turkey).

It wasn't until the other day that I did a double take upon smelling something that made me think twice about this whole smell-brings-back-memories jazz. I turned to my ex-boyfriend-now-friend Greg and asked, "Are you still using the same deodorant as you did five years ago?" He blinked, said something like "Oh, yeah", and then launched into a story about how he tried all these organic deodorants that made him smell like gravy, roses, and shit, respectively (and he still smelled like b.o. too). Only, he found that he didn't quite like smelling like any of those things in addition to his b.o., so it was back to his trusty Right Guard Sport. Because I didn't mean to be creepy, I didn't tell him that I had been smelling that smell for hours by then and whenever I got a particularly big whiff of it, all of the sudden we were nineteen again and it was the summer of 2002 and we were in love.

When I smell Axe, it reminds me of being on vacation with my brother in Asia. It was hot and he would put on loads of that body spray stuff every morning before we set out. Travelling together meant being best friends for over a month, and it also meant getting ready together in the mornings, and that meant seeing, hearing and smelling my brother spray Axe all over himself everyday. He doesn't like the way he smells au naturel and owns lots and lots of cologne. Every now and then I'll smell Armani on someone and say, "Hey, you smell like my brother." It usually catches people off guard, but I say it anyway because it makes them stay a while longer and it's a very familiar, comforting kind of smell.

I don't think I ever said this to J when we were dating, but his smell was like home to me. At that time, there was nothing more comforting, reassuring, and wonderful to me than to smell his scent. Without even thinking about it, I would place my face right up to the side of his neck when we laid in bed at night and I would press my nose against his skin and I would just breathe him right in. He could have been clean or he could have not showered for a week and I would still do it. He smelled faintly of mandarin oranges for a few months and when he felt fancy he'd wear Swiss Army. After we broke up, every time I caught some orange or Swiss Army in the air, it felt like I had just breathed in a dagger through my heart. I'm convinced that his smell - his real smell, the deep smell of his skin - stayed in me even after I stopped breathing him in at nights. I didn't keep any of his clothes, I even showered regularly, and yet, I could smell him everywhere I went.

My brother is self-conscious about the way he smells, and this is a quirk that he and I share. My family used to tease me a lot about my b.o. when I was going through puberty and what Asian kid doesn't remember the first time someone tells them they smell like rice? Or noodles? I doused myself in all sorts of fruity body sprays and Clinique perfumes through high school hoping that my signature scent would be something like dryer sheets. I was fully aware and (self-)conscious of the way I smelled sans chemicals and I couldn't imagine anyone ever liking it.

Until I met Adam, of course. He'd put his face right up to me after I came back from a run and I squirmed for the shower, feeling sweaty and gross. I suppose it was just a different kind of romance. It took me a while to get used to his scent. I slept with my face just a little farther away because I hadn't gotten accustomed to it yet. And then one random day, I unthinkingly put my nose against the skin on the side of his neck and I breathed. I just breathed. I didn't know how deeply I had fallen for him or how deeply it hurt to not be with him anymore until I started to miss smelling him. "That's how you know," I explained to one of my girlfriends, "It's when they start to smell like home. That's how you know."

2:11 am

Sunday, September 02, 2007

What I Got

Today, with its perfect sunny-twenty-something degree weather, I went to The Ex (the CNE, Canadian National Exhibition - whatever tickles your fancy) for the third time this week. I got:

- a jumbo hot dog, a bite of 99 cent spaghetti, half an ice cream cone
- a black cardigan for $2.99 + tax
- a sunburn/heat rash
- broken up with

I admit that I was half-expecting that last item so it didn't come as a huge shock, but that doesn't mean that it didn't hurt like hell regardless. I consequently got big, red, swollen, puffy eyes that burn and a splitting headache. On the way home, I got looked at by passers-by and fellow public transit riders. I also got a stomach that began to eat itself because I haven't ingested anything since noon.

What I don't got is a Facebook account with its news feed-stalker feed ability to let all my Friends know what's going on in my life, ie: my current Status. No, no one will log in to their account in the next few days and receive an alert that I have now changed my Status from "In A Relationship" to "Single", because even though, technically, I am single again (fuck!) I'm not all that interested in sharing with the world the news that my heart got hurt again (...FUCK!).

12:22 am