I'm a pre-teen

This is clear, as I sit here wiggly with excitement waiting for Everwood to come on. Tomorrow night I'll watch The OC with almost the same degree of wiggliness. And on Monday night, despite much less anticipation, I'll still likely tune in to Degrassi: The Next Generation. What do I get out of shows about people who are supposed to be half my age? I don't know. And I don't care. One more hour until Ephram!

Things I can see from my office window

1) Tire of neighbour's BMW station wagon.

2) A few beams of sunlight glinting off rim of tire.

3) Small square of the beige stucco on my neighbour's million dollar house.

4) My landlord's shoes as he walks to my mailbox.

5) The writing on the wall saying it's high time I moved above street level.

On crushes and crushing

Been thinking about both of the above of late. I was reminded of my very first crush (on someone who I haven't seen or heard about in ages) when he showed up in a weird dream the other night. The crush began when we were in kindergarten - he was the blonde kid who lived down the road who would remain my sort-of friend as we grew up, the crush taking me no further than that. Anyway, being reminded of him got me thinking about my second major crush, which was on an animated fox - Robin Hood. The appeal there I think was mostly that he was voiced by a guy with a British accent, but he was also a pretty foxy-looking drawing. I remember cutting him out of books and pinning him up like a Chad Allen poster. (And you know, damned if I don't *still* think Robin's kinda hot whenever I watch the movie.) Thankfully, I didn't become entirely preoccupied with cartoon animals and moved on to (equally useless) crushes on boys who called me Beaker, though I did relapse with some strong, wrong feelings for the hero rat in The Secret of Nimh. At any rate, you don't have crushes without some crushing involved, so I've got that word on the brain as well. Especially as I struggle with writing (and sending) a message with some potentially difficult to hear news to someone whose feelings I don't wish to crumple. So for a week I have put it off, knowing that I need to reveal the information in order to stop crushing myself with it, but still not quite able to hit "send". And so I blog instead.

Too soon old

Seems my dedicated audience of three readers is getting a wee bit perturbed with my lack of updated entries. So, before they desert me completely, here we go.

Visited with my parents a couple weekends ago and while it was great to see them since I hadn't in a while, I left them feeling a little baffled by some of their "helpful" advice, which they both seemed to be full of. My father seems to think that my life would be vastly improved if I moved into my sister's and brother-in-law's basement in Hickville, Ontario, mostly because I would be saving money by doing so. When he brought it up, I thought he was joking, but as he launched into great detail about how he saw it all going down, I realized he actually seriously thought it was an excellent idea - to shuffle myself into yet another basement, a basement in the house of my little sister and her husband, in a wretched town where I know no one. Ok, Dad.

My mom's two-cents about my life were a little more abstract. I don't remember exactly the context, but at one point while out on a walk, she said to me: "You are too soon old, Karen", a foreboding phrase that sort of hung there in the snowy spring air, leaving me unsure if it was intended to spur me into great life-changing action or send me spiralling into a complete panic. Now, don't get me wrong, my parents are caring and wonderful people who love me and who I know only want to help me, but...what am I supposed to do with this particular brand of help? I ask you.

Anyway. On an entirely unrelated note, the irony of my last blog (posted weeks ago) being about how I need to write more is not lost on me. So, more bloggin' to come, my dear readers - don't write me off quite yet.

Whisper to a scream

When I was 24, I remember reading an article about the author Russell Banks in which he said he didn't find his writing voice until he was 30. And I remember thinking, "Shoot, I've got a truckload of time, then. Guess I don't have to really try to write anything for six more years!" Because procrastination is an evil comfort. Except now I'm 31 and the voice, if there's indeed one at all, is barely a damn whisper. And so now I guess the real work begins, of beating back the procrastinating demon and dragging out that voice, kickin' and with any luck, screamin' its fool head off.

Still have my shiner

I've been doing a lot of observation of my birthday black eye, peering at it every time I pass by a mirror, taking photos of it, generally marvelling that I actually have a black eye. Though I'm not sure why it continues to surprise me. I have walked around in the past with all sorts of weird afflictions on my face obtained by ridiculous means. A bubbling welt on my mouth from pepperoni falling off a piece of pizza. Gash on nose from a chunk of ice randomly crashing on my head (during what was essentially a job interview, albeit an informal one - I didn't get the job). And so on - you get the idea. So, I'm used to having to explain stupid things on my face. But a black eye is a new one. I can only hope that it heals faster than the bruise I still have on my toe from when Pax stomped on my foot about 20 times while dancing at T's prom party -- last May.

Black-eyed birthday

So, this was my birthday weekend and it got off to a hilarious start - drinking and hanging out with the bizarre, yet charming dudes from this band: http://www.knorkator.de/home/index.php and then witnessing their even more bizarre and charming performance, which involved songs in falsetto, fun fur, cardboard keyboards and a thong leotard. Excellent times!




The next night I was all set for birthday drinking at a pub, but when I showed up at Pax's pre-pub, it was a surprise party instead! Which was a very cool, complete surprise, and I had a great time hanging out with my lovely friends. At least until I took getting birthday drunk a little too far. You know how you're aware that you're three sheets to the wind, but it's just a delightful, harmless thing - and then you suddenly and fiercely realize that you are absolutely obliterated? And then you barf immediately following that realization. You barf a lot, becoming more intimately connected with a toilet bowl than you'd ever wish to be. And then you get carried to bed, thinking the barfing is done with, but then you barf some more on the floor. And then you put the humiliation icing on the cake when you fall out of bed, directly into the barf -- and you wake up the next day, 31 years-old with a black eye. Oh yeah, and while lurching and stumbling and barfing, you also break a glass object and probably very narrowly miss cutting yourself to ribbons with said broken glass. Some might call this doing up a birthday right. I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but I will say that it made for a pretty damn funny 31st birthday story. And a worthy second blog entry. Why did I think I'd have nothing to write about?!

My first blog

So, my first blog entry. And where to begin? I was encouraged to start one of these things by KP and Pax around the time KP started hers, but of course, never got around to setting it up. Which Pax rightly figured I wouldn't, so he went ahead and set it up for me the other day as an early b-day present (thanks again, man) - and I guess now I've got no excuse to not be blogging. My wariness of the whole blog world is this: who's really going to give a rat's ass about the random thoughts in my head and every entry will certainly end up being dead boring and who'd read it, anyway - 2, maybe 3 people? But then I realized all that's not really the point, at least for me - I need to view it as a writing tool beyond my journal and the occasional story or poem that I manage to compose. I need to view it as a gym membership for my atrophying writing muscles. And so I shall. Or at least try to. That said, I can't promise that I'm not going to bore stiff my 3 readers with most entries -- but they can always stop reading, should stiffness start to set in.

I should explain my blog title for those who (whoever you are) might not know the story behind it. On a sweaty fall day, Pax and I took KP's car and drove it to the zoo (sans any insurance information, as it turns out, which was kinda funny/stupid). The zoo itself was much fun, but as the day wore on, it became clear that I was getting increasingly more dumb or had suffered a small stroke. Blame the heat or the armies of children constantly in the way or the stink of the animals - for whatever reason, tongue and brain were not coorperating with each other. "Look at that zeba," I said to Pax, who, naturally, looked at me as though I must be drunk. And then, not long after and completely unawares, "Wow, those bamboons are really neat". Very amusing, of course, is randomly fucked-up language and much mirth followed both strange episodes, but still...what was wrong with my head? Anyway, that is how in my world zebras became zebas and baboons became bamboons. And even as I wrote bamboons right then, I thought to myself, "Well, that looks right - bamboon is the right word." So, still a bit dim, apparently. And I guess I can't blame the zoo at all. Gotta be another stroke.