Well, it looks like my housing situation is solved. The girl I'm subletting from isn't coming back until January now, so I'm moving into the room she would have been coming back to (she would have been switching to the smallest room), and staying there until New Year's. It'll be super-small, but also cheaper, so that works. It's much better than having to move.

This past week, I decided to go through some of my stuff and get rid of a lot of crap, since I'll be moving to a smaller place and I'm realising that my pack-rat tendencies are as strong as ever. I threw out five years worth of bank statements from 4 different banks. I found all my letters FROM Dalton, so I'll scan and post them sometime. I found letters from friends from over the years, most of which I finally recycled. I gathered about 100 snapshots that have been sitting in various boxes, bought a photo album, and organized them. I found a ton of encouraging cards from friends, sappy little letters from my mom about how she loooooves me (aww!), and gifts that I had totally forgotten about. Sometimes I really puzzle about what to do with things. Like, when I was 16, and a boy proposed to me with a ring from a candy machine... and when the 25-year-old me still has that ring and thinks it's awesome, but what to do with it? I'd also like a way to file cards from people. I guess I could find a photo album type of book, one that doesn't have photo-sized slots, because most cards don't fit in there. Most cards can go to the recycling bin, but the "thank you for being part of my wedding" ones, the "I think I'm losing my faith" ones, the "you have been such a good friend to me" ones, the "hann, here is a year's worth of birth control placebo pills" ones (what can I say, my sister is the funniest girl ever!) — these cards are important to me. I've always been a words of affirmation kind of girl.

I think I'll always have a box of sentimental crap. I just need to learn to limit the size of that box.

I spent the weekend at my parents' place with Jonathan and Linda! First off, my parents are silly and cannot bring themselves to pose nicely for photos:



Next, this sign shows how often we have to try to convince people that it's not "Gan-an-oh-cue":


Some random shots:


And my parents' garden:

THINGS I LIKE

1. The man who brings his little bird (in a bird cage!) to Grange Park every morning and either rests the cage in the grass in the sunshine or hangs it from a tree. In fact, I like Grange Park in general. I've been thinking that it could be interesting to sit there for an entire day and photograph the different groups that come through. People doing Falun Gong exercises. The almost-in-sync aerobics people. Dog walkers. Picnickers. Homeless people napping on the benches. People reading. Frisbee players. Little kids running around. The scores of old Asian people who sit on the benches in the evening and stare at me as I walk by and make comments that I hope are positive, but I never know, because I only speak English. The people who were wearing chicken hats, who I was afraid to inquire about.

2. The Show by zefrank. It's like a lofi version of The Daily Show, with more fart jokes, accents, and the occasional music video. Also, he is constantly referring to newspapers as "like a paper version of the internet except you can't change the font!" and that makes me laugh. What's YOUR power move?

3. When my boyfriend goes on a business trip to the Caribbean (note: gets PAID to go) and I get to clean the cat litter for a week. Wait, no, this should be on the other list. Or perhaps, on the list of Things Christopher Likes.

4. MetaFilter Music (or 'HiFi', though I was partial to the 'RockMe' short form myself), where MetaFilter members submit mp3s of songs they've written. There's some really incredible stuff on there! Current favourites: 5, a song for chococat's daughter's fifth birthday; Sobering Up, a song about trying to make it in the music business; Olivia, super-pretty.

THINGS I DISLIKE

1. Being told that I can't move into a place because I'm not willing to commit for two to three years. I'm not commitment-phobic, but HOLY HECK. I have a life that will hopefully move beyond renting a little room in a weirdly-shaped house where I have to share the common rooms with strangers. Hopefully it will move beyond that sooner than in TWO TO THREE YEARS. Sorry crazy renter lady. I'm hoping to put my poor student days behind me someday.

2. Clenching my teeth when I sleep. Classic sign of stress (check!) and it gives me a headache.

3. Change. No, well- okay, I am looking forward to a lot of the changes that are coming up. Linda is having a baby. Yay! I will find a job! (Right?) I will find a fabulous place to live. (Err... yes? Maybe?) Janice is getting married. Yay! Etc. Etc. But until those things happen, I have questions. How will my friendships adjust to big life changes? What will it be like? What if I'm unemployed for a long time? What if I find a place and it SUCKS? What if I really can't find one? And then my STUPID PESSIMISTIC BRAIN goes into overdrive and I just want to crawl under the covers and not come out. And I dislike that feeling. So, perhaps: fear of the unknown. Things could work out to be better than ever, but it's hard to see that from here sometimes.

Last Sunday, Chris and I went to the Festival of India on Centre Island with some friends of his, and discovered Commerce Court West and its statues on the way. The big elephant is Tembe, Mother of Elephants, and the little ones are behind her, clinging trunk to tail. The festival was nice, with lots of good (vegetarian!) food and posters about how eating meat leads to disease and bad karma. Apparantly eating the meat of animals who were killed by humans leads to a lack of compassion, and therefore you become a bad person. Anyways, there was also traditional Indian dancing about everyone's favourite sheep-herder/casanova, Krishna, and Chris has a nice picture of it here.



I learned this morning through some clever googling that these flowers are called field bindweed, and that they are quite a nuisance. I think they're lovely. These are just down the road from me, spread all over a fence and part of a lawn.

A quick aside: I didn't get the apartment mentioned before. Clearly finger-crossing is ineffective.

Last Shot (video blog), featured on Vidlicious, a collective of female photobloggers. Last Shot is a reflection by a woman on taking her last testosterone shot and abandoning a female-to-male gender shift.

Shooting Full Force: Menstruation suppression: for women who don't want to have their period (video blog) on how to use birth control pills to stop your period, information about the debates surrounding this, and recommended (and scorned) literature on this topic, by a woman who did her Masters thesis on the topic.

Molly Saves The Day: For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual - a guide on how to set up a safe and effective abortion clinic. Even living in a city with incredibly accessible and cheap birth control, abortion clinics and post-abortion counselling (Bay Centre for Birth Control), this is interesting to read, because I am curious what exactly happens during an abortion. It's surprisingly not that complicated. Something to be extremely careful with, for sure, but not the intensely mysterious procedure that I had anticipated.

If you're wondering why people are thinking of setting these up, read this Metafilter thread about the rapid disappearance of availability of abortion in the USA. I agree with this comment in that thread, particularly this section:

White protestant conservatives don't want to end abortion. Or at least, their behavior is inconsistent with the hypothesis that their goal is to reduce the number of abortions or eliminate them entirely.

If you want to reduce the number of abortions to as low as possible, the answer is clear: widespread accurate sex education, easy access to reliable birth control, and direct education on how that birth control works.

People who support abstinence-only sex "education" (pertinent rant here), who don't make an effort to alleviate poverty, who limit access to birth control, who refuse to fill prescriptions for Emergency Contraception, these people are not helping to solve the problem. No one WANTS to need an abortion. I fully support abortion and would have one if needed, but I certainly never want to be in that position, and I'm fortunate to have easy access to affordable birth control, a doctor who is open and honest and non-judgemental, pharmacists who are not allowed to refuse to fill prescriptions for me, and access to sex education. So I probably won't be in that position, but there's always a 0.01% chance that I will be, because no birth control is 100% effective, and I'm not letting that fear run my life.

It's not like the thought doesn't bother me. I put effort into making sure that I don't get pregnant because I really hate the idea of needing an abortion, almost as much as I hate the idea of bringing a child into the world when I'm scrambling to feed and house myself, when I don't have health benefits, when I don't have a job that would give me maternity leave, when I'm not married/in a super-long-term relationship, when I'm not anywhere near ready to take on parenting.

And yeah, I went to the Bodyworlds II exhibit last winter and I saw how incredible a fetus looks at 12 weeks, when it's smaller than a contact lens and you can see fingers, and I thought, "Oh man, I'm allowed to abort that? Really?" It bothers me. But I feel that it would be the responsible thing to do. And that's up to me, because it would be my nine months of bloating and sore feet and a kid kicking me in the ribs, and my 20 years of feeding and housing and teaching and attending to another person, and my future, and my life. I want to do all those things, but I want to do them well, and that's not possible right now.

There's a reason why The Onion's article I'm Totally Psyched About This Abortion! is good satire. No one feels this way. We are not pro-abortion, we are pro-choice. We are pro- doing what you have to do in a scary situation.

And yeah, no one's been commenting on my blog lately. Nothing like a good inflammatory topic to break that pattern, right?

Well, this is my third design for this site since January. First we had the bananas, then some trees, and now the monkey herself. Like (supposedly) all blogs, this one is getting more and more self-centred. :) This design is also centred on the page now! I had to do some tweaking to get that to work with CSS and eventually settled on this trick. With tables you could just say align=center, but with CSS you have to employ deviousness. I'm keeping a collection of screenshots of past designs on the about page (scroll down), just in case you all get nostalgic. See how much I care for you? SO MUCH.

I went to see an apartment last night that I really want. It's in this neighbourhood, lower rent than I had dared to hope for, has a fair size room and really interesting roommates who seem like people I would love to get to know, AND features an outdoor cat. The thing that's causing me to bite my nails in worry is that they are interviewing a whole whack of people (as to be expected with such a lovely place), and I have to HOPEHOPEHOPE that they liked me better than any of the people they're interviewing now. We did get along and joke around a bit, and their sarcasm was well-received and met by mine, and we made fun of York's architecture and politics, so MAYBE I have a shot. I find out Monday. Please cross your fingers for me!

HAPPY THING OF THE DAY: Receiving an email from an old boss that said "I really miss having you around here." Aww!

Recent search terms that have led people to my site, with commentary:

- racist kitty: You will find no racist kitties here! They are mostly mulattos. Not that that precludes you from being racist. Hmm. Maybe I should have a chat with the kitties in my life and make sure that this issue is clear. ("No racism so long as you eat and sleep and purr under my roof, do you hear me young kitten?! DO YOU HEAR ME???")
- labia dye: What in the hey now? Like... you want to dye your... I don't even want to know. Kids these days, they are so crazy!
- it's all about me, jesus: When the music fades, and all is stripped away, and I simply come... Why did I never realise before how strangely sexual that first verse is? Crap, now I'm going to have this song in my head all week.
- i know i have monkey toes: Now, do your toes qualify as 'monkey toes' because of their hairiness or their finger-like flexibility and strength?
- and it bothers me achewood: Oh honey, come and sit on Achewood's lap and tell Achewood all about it.
- ratio of clitoris to vulva: Hoo boy, a little anatomy lesson needed? The clitoris is PART of the vulva.

The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition was this weekend. The otter above was carved out of a piece of driftwood. It was a really nice piece, with three otters swimming through the piece of wood and chasing fish. The paintings of children, which are awesome because she manages to capture such great emotions, are by Kirsten Johnson, who also makes very evocative and funny paintings of touchy-feely socks. There was glasswork, jewellry, felting, quilting, painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, sewn monsters, and tons of other stuff. I love going to this event every year, but it's so huge that it's impossible to take it all in. I might have to break it into two visits next year!

South African War Memorial in the median of University Avenue north of Queen Street West:


Chris's cats being nosey:


Bonus: ANIMATED GIFS
Dune: Eating his foot or kicking himself in the face?
Dune and Metro: Dancing or playing peekaboo?

This week is The Scream Literary Festival! Tonight, I'm going to Eye Scream IV in Kensington Market, which is a mix of art and photography and readings, including spoken word by Sandra Alland! I saw her a couple of weeks ago at Get Your Lit Out, a night of readings by women in the queer community for Pride Week at Art Metropole. Some of the other women read novels or short stories or more traditional poetry, but Sandra Alland did spoken word and made shivers run down my spine. She did this one poem that was a response to a phone call, and the whole thing was just her saying "Ouch." over and over, and it sounds silly, but she did it so well that Linda and I were both sitting there trying our best not to cry. I have no idea how she managed to get that reaction from a whole room of people, but holy heck. You've got to hand it to her.

I've been going to the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series pretty regularly for the past few months, and it really varies from reader to reader. Sometimes I'll go and I don't really connect with anything. I can tell from their poetry that they probably have some pretty complex things going on, but sometimes you need to sit down and read it in order to absorb it, and it's too fast when it's live. Sometimes it just doesn't hit me. And sometimes a reader* will get up there and completely startle me with just how GOOD they are. They'll get up and the rhythm is perfect and the turns of phrase are clever and unexpected, and the emotion is high, and they have the rapt attention of the audience, and I'm left thinking, "Holy shit. How did they DO that? More!!" And most of the time, these readers are more into spoken word.

So, I've been looking for more spoken word performances lately, and yesterday I found this site where you can download mp3s of some really good performances: Poetry Slam, Inc. Downloads. My favourites so far:

- Lit by Cristin Okeefe-Aptowicz, a break-up aftermath poem
- Have You Accepted by Tom Budday, a response to a street evangelist from a liberal religious person
- Check by Versiz, a bad date story & rant about playing games in relationships

It's certainly nothing like the poetry I learned about in high school!

*Readers who I particularly enjoyed in the last few months: Kevin Fortnum (dude was amazing and had everything memorized!), Michael Knox (also a teacher at Jane & Finch, a rough part of Toronto, and had some interesting stories), George Bowering (Canada's first poet laureate, infinitely entertaining)

I've been a fiend for fresh tomatoes lately. They're so sweet and juicy and YUM! Here we see potatoes, peppers, eggplant (a.k.a. aubergine), avocado, and lychee. Also bought today: papaya, Korean melon (haven't tried it yet, not quite sure what to expect), coconut juice, and strawberries.



Have I mentioned yet that Christopher has a photoblog and blog now? Visit now to read a lovely little rant about urban planning.

Chris and I have started reading You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen, and I'm rethinking some stuff from my Language and Gender course last year. My L&G prof pretty much spent the semester laying into Tannen and John Gray (he of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus fame). Their thesis is generally that women and men are raised in different, gendered social circles and thus learn different social and communication rules and norms, and so cross-gender communication is cross-cultural communication. They try to illustrate the differences between these cultures and suggest ways to bridge the gaps between them.

Current theory on gender (Judith Butler's theory of performativity) flat-out despises this, preferring to say that gender is performed and can be performed in a variety of different ways. Thus, it is silly to say that Women do This, since the class of Women includes such disparate creatures as the high school cheerleader, elderly knitter, stern librarian, burlesque dancer, and soccer mom, not to mention women who don't fit into any of the WASP categories. Likewise, Men are not easily generalized. So, say the performativity fans, let's not talk about gender in general, because that would be WRONG, because it obscures other factors. We are all individuals and we decide how to be 'feminine' or 'masculine' every day, and this is always shifting.

Not only that, but authors like Tannen and Gray, and Robin Lakoff (who started this whole discussion of language and gender), tend to rely on anecdotes to make their point, anecdotes which might confirm the stereotype, but which aren't necessarily representative of reality.

These are good points to bring up. Generalizations don't apply to everyone, don't even apply to MOST of us. But what if they apply to me and my girlfriends and the boys we date? What if these anecdotes are a useful jumping-off point for discussions about how we view the world differently and why we inadvertently misunderstand or upset one another? And, if Tannen's approach is theoretically suspect and Butler's approach is theoretically solid, why does Tannen's approach seem useful and Butler's useless? Where is Butler's performativity theory supposed to get me? How the hell does it help me to understand the people around me?

So, for this month at least, I'm giving Tannen a chance to shine. I'll have to repent if I ever go to grad school, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

This is Metro, one of Chris's cats. He's cute, and surprisingly fat these days. He has a big solid round belly on him, and he is super-soft. He has the dubiously entertaining habit of seeking cuddle-time at 3 or 4 in the morning, hauling his fat ass onto your sleeping frame (usually positioned squarely on top of your bladder), purring like he just won a lifetime supply of catnip, kneading his paws on your chest happily, and rubbing his head on your hands or your face, while you groggily wonder what the hell is happening. In daylight hours, he is content to sit in the kitchen quietly chirping to himself. That's right, chirping. Metro doesn't often make a full-out meow, but will sit there muttering to himself with these happy little bird-like sounds.



Metro is also locally known as "the least racist kitty in the world" due to his variously coloured skin. He has pink toes and black toes, and a few pink and black TOGETHER toes, and parts of his mouth and nose are different colours too. I am very curious as to whether or not he has black skin beneath his black fur and pink skin beneath his white fur like pandas, and I have suggested shaving him to find out in the name of SCIENCE (or just parts of him! I am not unreasonable!), but Chris is staunchly anti-science. This disappoints me to no end, but I persist in suggesting the idea in the hope that one day he will relent and allow the scientific method into his home. Metro's nipples are all pink, and they are all in the white-fur zone, which suggests that my theory may be correct, but I need more data to make a conclusion. Data which my boyfriend stubbornly witholds from me, despite claiming to love me.