original sin

A few nights ago my best friend in my home town, who we will call R, and I went off for an evening on the town. Since we both had to work the next morning, our wild night out consisted of watching March of the Penguins and heading off to a swanky restaurant for dessert.

R and I have known each other since grade eight when he had a bowl cut and no friends and I wore plaid flannel shirts and wanted desperately to be popular. (In retrospect it was no wonder I had no friends- plaid flannel shirts?!?)

R is witty, intelligent, self deprecating and a great observer of the absurd. Which serves him well as he is the only one of my highschool friends who has stayed in our hometown and never once ventured abroad to a larger city. He is the guy I call when my love life is in the toilet, when my house is about to burn down and when I need to laugh so hard I spew juice through my nose. He knows me better than I know myself most of the time, and he is one of those fundamentalist Christians who believes that Jesus is coming back next Monday at 4 pm, just in time to roast the sinners and the gays and to exalt the pious before a dinner of wings and watching the football game. I, on the other hand, am the kind of liberal Anglican who, if the big JC arrived on my doorstep, would offer him a beer and continue watching The Daily Show-extrapolating during the commercial breaks on the joys of pre-marital sex, the value of contraception, the importance of a woman's right to choose, why I think the phrase hidden agenda has been grossly overused by the Conservative Party, and the relative value of The Walrus vs the Atlantic Monthly.

Needless to say, R and I are the kind of friends who will be friends forever, even into the afterlife: our respective ideas of hell is where the other will end up, so I am pretty sure, if God has a sense of humour, we'll see each other there.

The highlight of the evening was dessert at the aforementioned swanky restaurant. A friend of mine tends bar there, and took great pleasure in plying us with various spectacular alcoholic creations. Dessert was (and I will put this in layman's terms for those not fortunate enough to work in the service industry) ginger creme brule, with apricot spring roll and roasted brandied apricot slices. AND... chocolate mashed potatoes with home made raspberry sorbet and coulis.

In case you missed that, I said chocolate mashed potatoes, people.

They were divine. One of those life changing experiences that happens in a split second, leaving you wondering how you could have lived your life up until now not knowing about chocolate mashed potatoes.

On the drive home R and I were unusually silent. For my part, I was savouring juxtaposition of the magnificence of the bleak and vast Antarctic landscape against the magnificence of the recently consumed potatoes.

I have no idea what R was thinking about. I like to think he was mulling over how to rationalize consuming something so obviously sinful. But he's evangelical, not catholic, so I am still at a loss...

15 minutes

If you were told you had 15 minutes to leave your house, what would you take with you?

my one bag consisted of:

1pr boxer shorts (bought in cardiff while at bording school)

1 marines teeshirt

lots of comfy underwear... totally forgot to pack bras...

1 pocket watch, courtesy of petit frere

1 pr red Fluvogs boots

1 pr grandmother's shoes from 1940 that fit and look divine

1 pr gold sequined flats. becase I had to.

2 prs of red shoes: the grocery shoes from first year uni, and the Boston shoes that are magical.

(how many shoes now...don't ask...)

1 pr jeans and 1pr lululemon pants

3 scarves from the middle east: one from Halab, Cairo and Damascus...

3 tees: one from paris, one courtesy of le frere from mtl. one a fave...

one scarf woven by mum.

my letters from the past 4 years, my camera, and some valuable jewelry.

It all fit into one duffle bag.

The photo albums, computer hardrive, and legal papers did well in laundry baskets.

Forest fires... the new way to downsize....

famous....

hahaha...

I have blog comment spam. Which is funny, as I think there may be about a sum total of seven people, plus my mother, who read this thing.

the new black

"Morgan Freeman is, like, the little black dress of cinamatography."

For better or for worse...

So I was at a wedding last weekend. Avec l'homme. And since a lot of our mutual acquaintances are getting married or planning to get married, weddings have been on the brain of late.

The weekend wedding was quite lovely, except for some parts where I was whispering to the Falklander that I was going to have to go throw up in the bushes for a few minutes, and that if the priest at my wedding called me a princess I would shove my bouquet down his throat and drown him in the font.

However, the bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, and the wedding party all charmingly attired and flowered. The wedding took place in a garden, the reception in a dining room with vaulted ceilings and huge windows. There were two ponds to walk around for exercise or to escape the small talk, and the weather was gorgeous. The whole thing was exactly as though it had been planned in two colour coded 3 inch binders for the past year. Which it had.

This particular wedding was full of celebration, which all weddings should have in abundance, but short on reality. It was the perfect fairy tale wedding.

I think the thing that really bothered me was that the wedding seemed not to reflect the reality that my dear friends were diving into. Marriage is hard, HARD work. The divorce rates show that, statistically, (the most heinous kind of proof), 50% of marriages in North America don't last. Children, finances, stress of living with another person and modifying ones own life to accommodate theirs takes its toll eventually. Perhaps the generation I belong to has less gumption and stick-to-it-ness than that of my grandparents or even my parents. Or maybe society has changed to recognize that a lot of the long lived marriages of the past were not the Hallmark card platitudes that we were led to believe. Either way, marriage in this particular day and age, seems-to the cynical-a bit of a waste of time.

But, cynical and black hearted though I am, I don't think this marriage was a waste of time. I think it was wonderful and necessary and one small public statement of the kind of love that we are short on in our troubled times. I just wish a few more things had been said:

A recognition that my friends are extremely brave. That marriage is difficult and challenging and terrifying, even for such young bright people. That hard times will occur. That they are both strong individuals and that marriage should not subvert their individuality, but strengthen both of them as people.

I hope that one day I will be as brave as they are, not stop running full tilt toward the precipice of the unknown and the unknowable.

Quote of the month

"the best thing about getting old is that I don't care anymore. I just put on my shoes and walk out the door like a doukhobor."

They'd rather shoot rats at the dump

To date, shoveling a bunch of pine needles and branches into a trailer and then taking it to the local dump to unload has not been at the top of my list of summer fun activities.

But when unloading said trailer takes one minute and forty eight seconds, even I am suckered into a repeat performance.

The dump, man. It's where it's at.

(insider trading tip... buy stocks in dairy queen. the way the falklander and I are putting away ice cream will guarantee you multiplying dividends for years to come.)

wine goggles

female customer: "you know, you really are a very beautiful girl. No, I mean it, you have such a lovely face."

momentarily flustered server: "ahhh.... thank you, um, that's very sweet..."

female customer: "oh don't pay attention to anything I say. I'm drunk, I don't know what I'm talking about."