Blogosaurus Vex

In furtherance of our no satellite policy (I mean really, isn’t TV watching just about 80% time wasting?) Husband and I are doing some strategic downloading of TV shows that don’t suck for the occasional viewing.  I know, that’s still kind of watching TV – only with the element of “gee now that it’s on I guess I’ll sit here for five hours” removed.  And commercials removed too.  Okay.  So I am appealing to you for advice on good shows to acquire.  Because I’m really not up on pop culture and don’t know what the good series are.

Basically, I enjoy a good mystery or crime drama or just about anything as long as it is NOTHING like CSI.  Holy crap, how can anyone watch that?  Seriously.  I cannot handle an hour of nothing but wise cracking smart assery and dominance plays- it’s like a fourteen year old jock’s idea of what adults might be like: angry, petty, hostile, and immature.  People just don’t interact like that and, while I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, this just pushes it all way too far.  End rant.

Shows I have enjoyed include Deadwood, Cracker, Dexter, Wire in the Blood, and I’m just starting to watch The Shield but it hasn’t fully passed its “not like CSI” test so I may not finish the first season.  This is also why I deleted The Wire after watching only the first episode.  Hostile cops who just shout at each other is so over done.  Please, can we watch shows about people, not stereotypes?  (I do have some rumbling Wire guilt since everyone seems to love it but I dunno… if it’s all like that first episode I’ll hate it.)

What would you recommend?  What have you loved?  What should I spend my precious bandwidth on acquiring?  It doesn’t have to be new, just good. And by good I mean NOTHING LIKE CSI.

kthxbai!

Posted in Ranting, Watching | 4 Comments »

Just got home from dinner and drinks with Husband’s good friend Z.  I am a serious lightweight so my two drinks have pretty much ruined me for useful purposes.  Such as talking, walking, et cetera.  When did this happen?

I used to be hardcore.  At one time I worked for the Vancouver Food Bank (data entry – not recommended).  I was friends with the guys who were in the shipping and warehouse departments, and every Friday we’d be off work by 3 or 4 – and down in the Ivanhoe or the pub in the Patricia Hotel within half an hour.  I know.  Super classy.  But at that time it seemed like there was a certain cache in drinking at the scuzziest bars the downtown east side had to offer.  Now I’m just glad I didn’t get hepatitis.  Anyway, at that time we were always ordering pitchers and I always ended those Fridays staggering and barfing – but I earned it.  I drank a lot of beer, cheap beer, and staggering and barfing is what you sign up for when you drink cheap beer at the Ivanhoe.  It’s not what you sign up for when you have one pint and one highball at a reasonable pub, but now that I am older and more reasonable the result is the same.  Less liquor, same punishment.

No wonder I don’t drink often.

Anyway, I am nervously monitoring my internal processes for barf-sign.  You know what I’m talking about.  The grumbling tummy, the weird physiological disombobulation, and finally, the mouth sweats.  When your salivary glands kick in you know it’s all over.  So far I’m okay but having imbibed two whole ounces over three hours is, if you are me, dangerous.  So I wait.  And blog!  And hopefully don’t get sick.  I will, as always, keep you posted to my gross bathroom habits.  You know you love it.

Oh!  I totally forgot about the bites!  Oh man!  About five days ago I put new sheets on the bed (green, to match the summer duvet cover), and I guess there was some kind of biting insect folded into the linens because I woke up with NINE bites.  A cluster of five on one thigh, a pair on my ankle, and one on each hip.  And holy shit did I have a  bad reaction to them.  The bite zones swelled up, turned blotchy purple, itched like fuck, and grew a red, inflamed rings all around them.  They look like big, swollen hickeys.  Seriously, my thigh was puffed out about a centimetre, in an area the size of a baseball.  And all purple.  Totally gross.  Husband has been monitoring them and giving me dire warnings about skin infections, but finally they seem to be abating.  I tell you, if my digital camera hadn’t just bit the biscuit I would post pictures because the insane reaction is hard to imagine without a visual.  It looks like I got bitten by a nuclear tarantula.  What the hell was in my sheets?  Gives me the creeps, I tell you!  And – overshare coming – I sleep without underpants, and have serious heebie jeebies imagining whatever it was having access to, you know, my private bits.  Yecch!

Posted in Health, Personal | 5 Comments »

I try not to drive in the city because it really sucks. But today I was forced into it because I had to take Husband’s laundry in to the drycleaner, and since I’ve procrastinated on it, there were about forty dress shirts to be lugged. It turns out forty dress shirts weigh about eighty pounds. You wouldn’t think it’s possible but it is!  So there was no way I was going to lug all that stuff on the skytrain.  But the laundry must be done, so I needed the car solution.  And that’s life as me in this marriage.

Boy, didn’t that opening sound just painfully domestic/sexist? Disclaimer: my husband doesn’t oppress me. Not even a smidge. We decided early on that we didn’t want to argue about household stuff, which is what happens when people share chores. So we divided up the household labour. Also, Husband has a good paying professional job which he works full time at, and I’m a student who is currently qualified only for jobs that pay as well in a month as what he makes in two days. And finally, I get contentment and satisfaction from keeping house, including cooking and cleaning. Combine these three premises and you get an inescapable, logical conclusion: Husband goes to work and brings home the bacon (but not literally), and I stay home and do the household work. Somehow our carefully thought out and discussed division of labour resulted in a thoroughly fifties style living arrangement. Except I’m in school and he doesn’t call me “toots.”

I’ve probably explained all that before but anyway, here it is again.

Point being, that I managed to do my errands in under an hour, which included a stop downtown and one in east Van, plus coming home after and two different parking lots. It’s a miracle! I’m tickled pink, frankly!

Now I’m off to walk to the local bank and get papers for rolling our coins. Husband offloads his change every night when he gets home from work, and it collects in a pair of plastic tubs on the kitchen counter (one for loonies and toonies, one for the smaller change). I pilfer from the bigger change liberally but finally the volume outstripped my ability to spend it and it’s time to roll it all up.

Okay.  So this isn’t an exciting post.  But I like it, because it’s like the parts of my life that I like best: relaxed, low key, content.  I see it like this: there are exciting and wild times in all our lives, but if that’s your only source of joy you’re in trouble.  Taking a sense of fulfillment from the every day mundane things ensures you will never run out of sustenance.  So here’s me, enjoying my mild day.  I feel great!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Seriously, how can one little car be such a pain in the ass?  I know Husband loves it (it was his gift to himself after finishing his first graduate degree) but I am already planning the nice, comfy sedan, complete with back seat, that we will buy as soon as this car bites it or we have a baby.  You can’t have a baby in a Sprite Car.  You should have it in a hospital!  Ba-dum-bum!

Anyway, today I was driving to Chilliwack during what I didn’t know at the time is the coldest April since 1964.  I know we’re in Canada but we’re in the south west corner of it and we don’t get any winter here!  We certainly don’t get winter in April!  So imagine my surprise when it started to alternate between snow and hail on the highway.  I immediate freaked out because, as I go on and on about here, the stupid car weighs like three ounces and has summer tires (I know you’re thinking, buy some all season radials, woman! but who would think you’d need them in VANCOUVER in the fucking SPRING!?).  I’m terrified of dying in a horrible snowy crash, not only because the car slides if you breathe wrong but also because it is a convertible and I always imagine flipping over and something hard and skull-crushy coming through the rag top.  (By the way, we do have a roll bar of the proper height, but what if the car flips and lands right on a rock?)

So I slow down, and turn on the wipers, and WHOOSH, the driver’s side windshield wiper rips right off and flies away.

Then I crapped my pants.

And then I drove reeeeeally, reeeeeeally slowly down the highway from Langley, where the Sprite Car fucked me yet again, to Clearbrook Road, which is the first exit that has humans and therefore the potential for a garage which stocks wiper blades for my car.  Because the whole assembly flew off.  All that was left was a metal bar sticking out from the place the wiper arm originates, just naked with its hooked end with nothing on it even slightly capable of pushing snow off a windshield.

I kind of panicked and kept the wipers on anyway, watching the little stick that was left scrape back and forth across with windshield, and give credit where credit it due, I must say it did a great job of clearing the snow off a strip of glass about forty centimetres long by about .3 millimetres wide.  Alas, my ocular endowment is not so powerful as to take advantage of the narrow window of visibility and I basically drove blind, squinting and trying to “look past the snow” the way you “look past the lights” of oncoming traffic at night when it rains.

Also, I was trying to not have a major regressive meltdown and just cry, because, hello, this car obviously has it out for me.  But then who would steer?  Ha ha, maybe someone who could see?

I finally make it to Clearbrook and got lucky (not literally… wait, is “get lucky” a literal reference to sex? If it’s a reference it must be figurative.  Okay, I literally got lucky) and there was a garage right off the highway that had a wiper assembly they could sell me, which went on with no trouble and I didn’t even get charged for labour.

I did however pay in years off my life because can you imagine anything scarier than driving blind in a snowstorm on summer tires in a car that will lose the inertial battle with any other car it hits?  Gah!

Okay, there are plenty of scarier things.  They are all very serious and you know them all anyway so I won’t make a list but the point I was trying to say is, I am very, VERY sick of finding myself in danger while engaging in routine activities (driving) in what are supposed to be safe conditions (Vancouver after March).

So here is my list of requirements for the next car we get, whenever that may be:

1. A sedan.  Four doors, back seat, trunk big enough to put more than two little carry-ons wedged in tight.  It will have a good solid weight and tires that don’t morph into skates when on snow.

2. Has air conditioning (SC does not)

3. Has a smooth ride.  I want to feel like I’m driving a sofa.  SC feels like you’re driving a vibrator.  And not in a sexy way.

4. Has good visibility.  Not only is SC very low, but it has a strangely engineered body shape wherein I never feel 100% sure of what is around me.  I drive much more conservatively in this car as a result.

The only thing I’d keep is the great responsiveness of the wheel – SC jumps when you twitch the steering wheel, and that has probably saved my life twice.  But that’s it!  The rest is so gone!

Gone I tell you!

Posted in Ranting | 1 Comment »

My mom and I have always had a kind of weak relationship.  When I was growing up we were basically strangers; it seems to me now that month passed where all we said to one another was “when’s dinner?” and “do the dishes.”  We didn’t do things together, we didn’t sit and talk, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t like each other too much.  The reasons for that are many and varied, and probably too personal to go into.  But anyway, when my parents divorced when I was in college, I decided I was going to make an effort to forge a relationship with her.  Because otherwise I knew we’d never see each other again.

So I carried that torch for years.  When we saw each other, it was basically because I called her, I drove to her place, I made the effort.  Now, not exclusively of course.  Sometimes she called me.  But not too much.  And I’d go through phases of being pissed off at the state of affairs and declaring that I would no longer be doing all the contacting.  But I only talk big, and of course I’d decide it was more important to stay in touch with my mom than to expect her to call me, which clearly wasn’t going to happen.

Then I got married, and she did tons of stuff for me around the wedding.  Really, she went above and beyond.  It was incredible.

And then everything went back to normal.  Right now, my mom lives about five minutes away from me on 7th and I haven’t seen her since Christmas.  We have talked on the phone once in that time.

So are we the busiest people on earth?  Sort of.  I’m often out of town in Chilliwack and with school going on I always have things to do.  Though I always manage to have time to watch my shows and so on, so that tells you how busy I really am.  My mom works full time and does a lot of projects on the side (she does hair, makeup and styling for photographers), so her time is probably even tighter than mine.  But whenever I talk to her she’s always reporting doing all kinds of fun things with my step-siblings, bike rides and day trips and things.

So we’re not that busy.  She just doesn’t make time to include me in her life, and I’m sick of doing all the work.  And I’m now at a point where I no longer really care that much if I see her.  I don’t usually have much of a good time with her, since she’s wound up like a clock spring (probably because we don’t see each other often and she’s nervous) and I find the conversation often pretty dull.  That stuff never used to bother me, but now I find I just don’t care to be bothered tolerating it.

Recently she emailed me about visiting, and it was this really brash, insistent email about how We Must See Each Other! This Weekend! I Mean It!  And it really put me off, because hello, what gives you the right to get all pushy with a visit when you haven’t spoken to me in months?  I know she was trying to be enthusiastic and funny, but it doesn’t make up for years of pseudo-ignoring.  And it went over very flat with me.  As it happened it was a school weekend so I didn’t have the time to see her, and of course neither of us bothered to try and make a reschedule.

Here’s an interesting point: the relationship we’re falling into is exactly the same as my mom’s relationship with her mom.  Transgenerational transmission of neurosis is alive and well!

I know the thing to do is just keep on maintaining the contact, because that’s the right thing to do, but I lack the motivation.  It’s hard to summon up the energy to stay in touch with someone who doesn’t really want to stay in touch with you.  Well, she always says she does, but the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and my phone ain’t ringing.

But then again, neither is hers.

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments »

Aaaand, just in case you thought I would only do one incredibly stupid thing today, I actually did another: got wrapped up in gossip at school and totally needlessly dragged out an argument, which should never have happened in the first place, upsetting someone who will now probably never like me again.  There’s been an ongoing drama for a couple of weeks and I jumped in feet first.  I’m feeling guilty and remorseful.  I have apologized for my role in the unfolding drama to the innocent victim involved, but how can you undo the damage?  You can’t really.

So today I have managed to utterly alienate two people, one of whom I am in a school program with and must see regularly… and be reminded of my insensitivity and nastiness on each of those occasions.  The other is a stranger but I’m still all bothered by it.

Then Husband and I got into one of those Serious Talks that basically involves a lot of unhappiness.  And yeah.  Today I have burned bridges, been insensitive, caused damage to relationships, and otherwise been a royal pain in my own ass.  Ugh.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

You know how everyone learned ten years ago that fighting on the internet is stupid?  Yeah… missed that one.  Got to learn it the hard way today.  I am such a dope.

It started innocently enough.  I came across a vegan podcast which was full of interesting facts and arguments, but hosted by these two incredible jerks who just trash talked everyone who disagrees with them, and actually cackled on the air about how stupid other people are.  Even Husband and I, who are vegans, found it unbearable.  I’m close enough to meat eating to take offense when people call carnivores retards.  And besides, if you want to get more people eating in an environmentally friendly, cruelty free manner, surely shaming and mocking  them is not the way.

So, from the best of intentions, I wrote to the hosts of the show.  I was careful to let them know I’m a vegan, that I support their work, that I agree with basically all their points, but I made two of my own: one, are they aware of how they come across on the air, and two, would they consider a change if it meant reaching more people?  If the show is by vegans for vegans, then fine, go nuts.  But if you want to reach meat eaters, you’re going about it in a way that will surely result in more alientation than anything else.

Well.  I got a total hostile response in which I was called superior, mocked for my beliefs (conversion through respect and niceness, as well as utilitarianism as an intermediate step), and shamed for not having a weekly audience of six thousand.  Oh, and anyone who can’t handle being mocked and harassed (like me) has no sense of humour.

I forwarded that to Husband, and appended my own commentary, which was that I was sad at the response, wanted to reply but didn’t know how to do it without sparking more hostility and a fight, but come on, it’s not that I’m too insensitive, EVERYONE is too sensitive for that crap, except other self congratulatory assholes.

Which is pretty much a quotation… and here we enter the dark world of my unconscious, which prompted me to not send that email to Husband, but RIGHT BACK to the asshole.  D’oh!  I’m convinced it was a parapraxis.  I have never accidentally hit reply instead of forward, or reply to all, or whatever.  I’m aware of it and very careful.  But I think this one can be unraveled in a single simple interpretation, which is that I wanted to tell him what I really think (asshole) without culpability.  Viola – accidental email, which is a beautiful ego compromise between shameful urge and my knowledge of what is right and proper to do.

So of course he emailed me back making fun of me for not knowing how to use email (which I guess I deserved), then said I’m incredibly smug and need to reflect on that.  Oh and it was a waste of his time to even reply to my first comment because I’m obviously such an idiot.

Here I indulge in a huge sigh.  Because, in all seriousness, I approached him respectfully and with good intentions.  And he was a total dick from message one.  Clearly he has a lot invested in being right, in putting others down to feel good, in deriving narcissistic satisfaction from his superiority.  I knew that from his podcasts.  But somehow I magically thought he would be approachable with a critique.  And no surprise, it ended up with me looking stupid, and unable to even really call him on his bullshit without a) perpetuating the stupidity of an internet fight and b) looking totally defensive myself.  My mis-sent email just clinched it.

So I did what I could to undo the damage.  I apologized sincerely for my insult, agreed it was stupid to send and admitted embarrassment.  I explained that the source of my frustration was feeling unheard – I never intended to come across as superior (undoing the projection) and that my main interest was in how to reach an audience in an effective way, and in how people of differing philosophical stances can work together for a single movement (challenging his contradiction wherein he espouses acceptance for differing approaches to advocacy but also shit on me for utilitarianism).  Of course he didn’t reply.

Why!  Why did I do that!  Stupid!  Stupid!

Posted in Personal, Psychology, Veganism | No Comments »

Today for breakfast I had whole wheat toast with peanut butter (natural, of course – nothing but peanuts in the jar) and honey.  Lunch was a nice minestrone soup with red lentils in for body and nutrients.  Snacks of plump green olives and sweet grapes (not together of course).  Dinner is potato and chickpea curry with rice, baked.  Dessert?  Perhaps some frozen mango blended with a little soymilk for a smoothie.  Or just a glass of our nice port.

Food is meant to be enjoyed, and dammit, I’m enjoying it!  It does make me feel content and proud when I have a good day like this, full of fresh whole foods in a variety of types, representing a variety of flavours and textures.  And everything easy to prepare.  I eat to fullness without a heavy, yucky feeling.  Only the honey is questionable – most vegans don’t eat it but I don’t know the issues involved and, at this point, don’t feel particularly worried about how bees feel when their honey is removed.  So for now I am enjoying it.

Also, did you know Clint Eastwood is a vegan?  Dude’s badass!

Posted in Cooking, Domesticity, Veganism | No Comments »

I just finished making one of those 100 things about me pages.  It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but by the time I figured that out, I was already so far in I couldn’t bring myself to quit.  Now that it is done, I think it is possibly the most self-absorbed thing I have done, and that’s saying something for someone who blogs regularly about themselves.  Nonetheless, it might be interesting, so you could check it out.  Or not.  I won’t mind either way.  The narcissistic urge is satisfied by publishing alone.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

You know, the more I obsess about my weight, the worse I do.

…I just now occurs to me that the causality may run the other way – I might obsess because I’m getting heavier.

Anyway, I am currently not obsessing and, surprise, I lost some weight.  Without trying.  Because I am a vegan, and that’s how it works.  If you avoid total shit food and just stick to the plant food, you get skinnier.  Viola!  Except I have this crazy self destructive streak that loves to eat even when I’m so full I ache, or when I know it’s atrocious for me (potato chips anyone?).

This has gotten me thinking about body image.  I read a lot of blogs and, though my reading habits do not constitute a representative sampling of anything (except possibly self absorbed people – is anyone more self absorbed than bloggers?), I have noticed a trend among women bloggers.  It is this: long, righteous, desperately optimistic and falsely confident posts about how they have decided to feel good about their bodies and reject society’s standards about weight.

God, those kill me.  They just kill me.  Here is why: they are so obviously lying.  These posts are never one-offs.  No one decided to feel good about their body and then just ran out and did it.  Okay… maybe one person did.  But that someone isn’t self obsessed and isn’t blogging so I wouldn’t know.  The bloggers I refer to write repetitive posts, forming either periodic reaffirmals of their self-love (“This time I really mean it!”) or an ongoing series (“Today’s method for achieving self love is mindfully enjoying cheese.”), but in any case, what becomes apparent quite quickly is it isn’t working.

You can’t just decide what you think about something.  You can’t.  You can decide what you’re going to do, but your thoughts and opinions aren’t a matter of policy.  They just happen. A good example is religion.  You can’t decide to believe in God.  Either you do, or you don’t.  You can decide to say you believe in him, or decide to go to church, or decide to pray daily.  But in your heart, your belief status is untouched.  Sure, beliefs can change.  But through an act of will?  I’m not convinced.

So I just roll my eyes (which is the defining expression of contempt) when I read these posts.  They hate their bodies today and will hate them tomorrow.  Declarations otherwise are a waste of time.

Why is this so popular?  Why do so many women make these declarations?  I think one reason is the unacceptability of admitting how you really feel, if you dislike your body.  That would make you a traitor to the gender, to feminism.  It means you think women are just sex objects.  I means you’re shallow.  It means you’re not trying hard enough, that you’re lazy, or whiny, or passive aggressive and seeking strokes.  It should just mean you’re honest, but that’s fantasy for you.  You can’t always get what you want.  So now we have a system where women can’t really get help for their body image concerns because they’re not even allowed to admit they have any.

I don’t know what the cure for bad body image is.  One option is to change your body.  Another is to change society’s conception of beautiful.  A third is to change yourself inside so you truly have a different opinion.  I’m sure there are plenty more.  But one thing I do know, simply saying you will change your mind doesn’t work.

So, in defense of honesty, congruence, and the right of women everywhere to speak their minds, I admit that I have body image problems.  There are parts of my body that I really like, and parts that I dislike intensely.  “Should” isn’t a factor – this is just me, reporting reality from my point of view.  I like my mouth and hair.  I like my overall shape, which is curvy, but not my overall weight, which is too fat.  I have what someone once referred to as a “mom-butt”, which was heart breaking to hear but totally true.  My feet are very nice and when I am fit I have good legs.  But I am saddled with a belly that is always round and pot-belly shaped, no matter what my weight is, and this is the part of me that I actively hate.  I have a weak chin.  My skin is poor and, at almost thirty, that really sucks.  But I have green eyes, which are unusual, and I prize them.  My fingers are short and kind of stubby.  I’m average looking in terms of facial beauty, which is fine unless you want to be beautiful, which I do, and never will be.

So that’s the list, good and bad.  But you know what? The truth is that, despite my flaws (which generally feel enormous to me), I like myself quite a bit.  If I just met me, I’d want to be friends.  And I don’t mean to say that personality makes up for looks, or that one is entirely separate from the other.  It’s more like they are different aspects of my selfness and, on balance, I think I come out ahead.

But I still wish I had a flat stomach.

Posted in Personal, Veganism | 3 Comments »