Little Cat

Oh my gosh, it's so hot. I went into the shower, and five minutes later I was sweaty.
Since my photographer-extraordinnaire husband went to shoot a concert until 1 am, I'm home alone with my dog, my cat, and some vodka and cranberry margarita mix. I wouldn't call what I'm drinking a margarita per se, but it's fruity, icy (thanks to my martini shaker), pink, and alcoholic. All things that I love.

Tomorrow morning, Dog and I are headed off to see my sister and her husband, and visit our grandparents in another city. My sister's baby (in utero name: Petri) is getting bigger and bigger, and my sis claims to be developing, in her words, "cankles". This is utter nonsense, as I challenge you to find a more beautiful and glowy pregnant woman than my sister. (Don't bother: you can't.) Our grandpa had surgery last week, and his lawn (more like a giant field) is in need of a mowing. My pregnant sis thinks that she will be the one to do it, though she is very pregnant (as mentioned) and will certainly burn to a crisp with her fair complexion. I told her that this is why we married Asians with skin cancer-impervious skin. (I'm totally joking, I slather SPF 45 on my husby every morning. Yeah, I will be *that* mother.)

If you happened to read my previous entries re: a certain ex-boyfriend of mine, I've taken them down not because I mind sharing with you what a silly, nostalgic, confusing creature I am, but because I realized that I'm simply not a gifted enough writer to communicate to readers unfamiliar with the intricacies of "moi" what I was trying to say from my mangled paragraphs. I'm really sorry.

I'm building an intricate wire contraption to encourage my morning glories to reach their trellis, so I must depart.

As a final note, why did we wait so long to buy a martini shaker? This thing's, like, magic.

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, have you ever seen one?

Nope, I don't! Dog, however, is extremely superstitious, and is afraid of ghosts. For this reason, we can never live within one kilometre of a graveyard, eat in a restaurant that used to be a funeral parlour (there's one in Chinatown, I got food poisoning there and yet do not make the correlation), or live in a building that used to be a church. I told him that we don't have funerals inside churches and hence there are no dead bodies inside, but he's steadfast. It's a shame, because there are some beautiful lofts near High Park in an old renovated church, which are way out of our price range anyway, but a girl can dream.

In the off-chance that you were unaware of this fact, I can be rather awkward. Dog and I have this friend. He's a brilliant photographer, very cool and popular, and EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVE. I mean this in an objective way, and I don't mean that I am attracted to him, but anyway. He shot our wedding as a gift to us, and I really like and respect him. He and my husband share all of the same hipster photographer friends, and they fish together. I'm terrified of him, like I used to be petrified of my friends' older brothers.

However. Because he's so ridiculously-good-looking, every time he tries to kiss me hello or goodbye, I freeze up and forget how many kisses he usually gives, leading to an awkward dance/face bashing/skull crashing ritual in which I just pause in mid-air, hug him and try to will the redness in my cheeks to go away before everyone sees. I've actually had nightmares of moving my face at the wrong time and accidentally kissing him on the lips. Trust me, despite what I said about his attractiveness, this is not a fantasy, it's a nightmare that leaves me with huge knots in my stomach!

Last week he had a gallery opening, and of course we went to show our support. I met his new girlfriend, kisses were initiated, and I thought I was prepared. But I wrecked the goodbye kisses again, and became so fixated on my poor performance that I actually made my husband pretend to be Lucas so that I could practice as soon as we got home! (All together now: first kiss on the left cheek, then on the right, for a total of two.) Of course, my husband is Japanese, so he really doesn't understand why we kiss each other at all.

There needs to be some kind of rule book on the number of kisses that should be exchanged. I'm getting confused! My Mom's francophone, so we always kiss twice in our family (except on my Irish father's side - no affection should be exchanged at all, haha). My Mexican and Belgian friends kiss only once, and non-Quebecois French seem to kiss three times. I even have a friend who kisses four times, which freaks me out.

Basically, just give me a hug, or you may get more than you were expecting.

I don't know why no one told me about Planet Unicorn before now! In case you too have been missing out on this brilliance, here's a clip.

I'm gonna get rid of these bags! Erykah is one of my favourite artists - a REAL artist, not one of those bullshit acts like "Girlicious". Gag me.

I've decided to take a moment's pause from my gleeful robot-dancing to thank everyone for their thoughtful advice and genuine concern and post an update to my TA situation. He apologized! The exam looks to be simple! And, best of all, my Chinese professor called to let me know that I don't need to make up either of the major tests or the giant three-hour final that I was cramming for, but that she will take an average of my other marks because she likes me. I'm bursting with glee.

This week has had another exciting dimension to it as Dog and I thought that I was pregnant. As impractical as it would have been with another year of school looming ahead, I was, much to my own surprise, extremely thrilled that I could indeed be expecting, and I resisted taking a pregnancy test just to enjoy the possibility for awhile longer. Today, nature sent a "no" our way, and a relieved Dog and slightly disappointed Cat have been left to live vicariously through our newly baby-endowed friends for awhile longer.

One thing that had me more convinced that I was pregnant was that I caught myself using a ridiculous expression lovingly spouted by old men, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" on my International Relations exam, causing me to believe that Pregnancy Brain had set in very early on. Now I have no excuse.

Now that I don't have to cram for my Chinese exam, I'm going to drink plum wine on my balcony.

I'm a reasonably good student. I'm well liked by my professors, and I do my best. I've been really, really unwell, and e-mailed my teaching assistant for one of my poly-sci courses to ask him to allow me to write the makeup exam a week after the regular one. I was very polite, I provided documentation from my doctor, and I expected everything to be fine.

I got an e-mail from him saying that he would need to check with the head TA, and that she would get back to me. I got a nice e-mail from the head TA, saying that she's sorry that I've been unwell, and that I am welcome to write the makeup. I was pleased, until I saw that under her message, she had accidentally forwarded the e-mail my TA had written to her about me. Obviously, I wasn't meant to see it, since it started with, "I'm so sorry you've had to deal with students like this all year long" and went on to describe me in a way that depicted me as a lying, manipulative person trying to cheat the system and gain additional time. He's NEVER MET ME. 

I feel like I've been punched in the stomach, and I've been brooding/crying over it for the past three days. What should I do?

So why did I decide that we should assemble the new BBQ this afternoon? Since we did this once before with a previous barbecue and it nearly killed us, I don't have a clue as to why I insisted that we do it again. It took four hours. The instructions were lacking in clarity. I swore a lot. I knocked a cast-iron planter off the balcony. Dog cut himself.

It's a marriage-buster, I tell you. I should have just paid Home Depot's team of bbq-constructors and drank a mojito in a sunbeam.

I'm the type of person who finds it difficult to commit to any one hobby. In the past three years, I've dabbled in knitting, painting with watercolours, photography (particularly using my lensbaby, like below), and an assortment of other things that will just make me more depressed should I force myself to remember them. I wouldn't say that I was very good at any of them. I really don't know what I'm looking for.

Chinatown

1 comment

My interest in photography was mostly practical and one of self-preservation. When we were newly married, my husband had a work visa that allowed him to work with one publication only, but that company couldn't give us nearly enough work to survive, and I was in nursing school. Because of that, we started our own company where I was the photographer, despite knowing nothing about photography, and I was forced to hire my husband as a secret, illegal worker. Because of those stressful six months and the constant threat of being caught, which could have resulted in jail time for me and deportation for him, I learned as much as I could so that I could pass for a "real" photographer. Ironically, we were shooting for mainly national newspapers, and on three separate occasions, my husband had to shoot front-page stories about illegals being deported, capturing their sad departures at the airport, all the time knowing that that could easily be us.

Soon after that, he became a Permanent Resident of Canada, and I of Japan, so that pressure was lifted. I think that the external pressure helped strengthen our marriage, and I look back on the experience with appreciation today.

Next week is our fourth wedding anniversary, so I'm spending time to reflect on our journey together.