Back to the Future

We're back to a future that includes a trip to Victoria. It just won't be Easter, and air miles won't cover it. But, understandably, it would be nice to see my sister before she becomes a Mrs. Actually, it would be nice to meet the mister, sometime before a wedding! Should a wedding happen, that is. Far be it from me to mess things up by assumtion.

Poetry or Pith?

At what point of brevity does a poem become a pithy remark?

Victoria Victoria it is to weep.

Tired of listening to waffling (not of waffling itself: ask for a waffle and you're likely to get one) about where the kids would be over the giant easter break they get, I decided to just go ahead and book my flight to Victoria. Alas, alack and alay, it is not to be. No seats available for the time I want to go. Yes, one can drive. But I am not really much of a mountain driver; I have done the mountain thing, but I only did driving duties in summer, and with someone to take over when I couldn't stand it anymore. See, the thing is I awalys want to be looking around at everything. And I've heard that isn't the safest way to drive. I don't think I'd do so well on my own. Having the kids might make it easier - NO!, I don't let them drive - but also harder in a strange way. In the line of strangness, I could try to find a passenger, but we all know how that would turn out, don't we? I can't step out my own front door without something happening, taking a stranger to the coast...I might as well just step in front of a bus right now. Although just being murdered would be too straightforward for me. I would likely end up driving the pope to Vancouver and have to listen to dull pontifications the whole way.

The best laid plans o mice and KB gang aft aglay.

So there I was, on the first of two days away from the office, thinking how nice it would be to have two normal, ordinary, no weirdness days in my life. Last night, to the veggie juice blend I pureed beets. A lot of beets. I am on a quest to find the perfect vegetables to drink. Turns out that spinach is hard to juice, and beets stain your hands when you peel them.
Back to today.
Sitting next to someone who was re-doing the course (they call it "guaranteed learning": you can do a second round for free if you didn't get it in the first go-round), we were handing out papers, and the convesation from that point went like this:
Oh my God, what happened?
What?
Your hands, they're all bloody.
Beets.
What?
Juice.
What?
Beet Juice.
What about beet juice?
The beet juice... Turned... My hands... Red.
If you say so.

He looked at me sideways the rest of the class. Like I had murdered my co-workers prior to attending class, and had made up some weird story to cover the red stains on my hands. I thought about saying it twice, to guarantee that he got it, but I didn't want to scare him. So I just rubbed my hands and murmured "Out damn'd spot, out I say!". Yeah, that kinda freaked him out too, but sadly not because he got it. Sigh. Good class, though!

The French connection

I have been appalled to realize how much French I have lost living in Saskatchewan. (They beat you if you speak French here). I've only used it once at work, on the inquiry line, and not at all socially. So I've started listening to French CBC, and paying attention to things that have English and French on them. And you know, I really love some of the French stuff. For instance, instead of going to Lyn and Bron's to run on the treadmill, I can go and "roll on the carpet". Which sounds like my life is way more avant garde than it actually is. I can casually mention at work that I'm off for a bit of rolling on the carpet with the Hingstons. It's not like they don't look at my funny anyway, so I'm not risking anything. Who knows, maybe I'll be less of an odd duck for saying such a thing. Who am I kidding: these people know about the skirt incident on Dewdney, the escalator folly, the vacuums, etc. etc. I'll never win them over to thinking I'm just an average Joe. On the plus side, I could miss work and call in absent due to alien abduction and they would believe it.

But the best news today? I can take my skirt off without undoing it! No, that is not something I've been working on as an office trick. It means the thing is too big, not too small! Kayaking here I come.

Sugar Speaks

I seem to be past the difficult point of no sugar in my tea. I don't even think about it anymore. But there are other sugar issues in my life. I had to taste a mini version of a new and improved espresso cheesecake I was thinking of making for the restaurant. I took a bit, mushed it around and SPAT IT OUT! Just like some weird oenophile. Or like a regular oenophile. How can one be a pastry chef (not to mention cookie genius) and continue to snack on various veggie juice combinations? Note to juicers: spinach doesn't juice really well, and it cleans up even worse. That can't be grammatically correct, but you get the gist. Back to sugar. I went across the street yesterday to get a V8 juice and was tempted by one of those peanut butter/butterscotch/mini coloured marshmallow things. I don't even like them, but I swear I was swaying in front of the glass cooler thinking how great it would be to have one. Just one. I may even have drooled on the counter. I think I need to do something really totally cool if I manage to kick the sugar addiction. I'm not talking about going out for supper in that cream dress that currently doesn't fit, I'm talking about something huge: cooking class in Italy, sailing in the Balearic sea, walking the streets of Paris (in a non-professional manner, thanks very much). Something totally worth aiming for. Actually, ocean kayaking the next time I'm in BC should do it. Or camping. I haven’t gone camping for years. The one and only time I’ve camped as a single I was next to a campsite of beer swilling gun toting yahoos. I’m not making fun of them, they really were doing both. It was terrifying until the park people game with the law to boot them out. Apparently they didn’t realize you can’t shoot blankly at trees in a provincial park. Who knew?

Kayaking, camping: any suggestions?

What scares you?

People are afraid of the strangest things. We ordered lunch from a local Thai place today, and a co-worker picked out all the baby corn from her order because it creeps her out. Something about them being unnatural genetic mutations. I had to look it up, and it turns out that my guess at lunch was correct: baby corn is regular sweet corn picked really early. On the other hand, I kinda like the thought of mad scientists not trying to take over the world because they're too busy trying to come up with various fruits and veggies in miniature.
"No, Boris, put the time excelerator away - you have to help me genetically mutate these pears until they produce offspring smaller than your little finger".

Poetry and Dreams

Third post, and already I'm thinking of starting a different blog...something totally anonymous, so I can say anything I want to. I mean, my actual sister as well as my quasi-sisters can read stuff here. Am I ok with that? Not sure. I'm worried I'll start editing, thinking about who may or may not read this. I could start a new blog, a really-bad-poetry blog. Or I could just put it here. Sometimes the poems are ok, sometimes they're terrible. The only consistency is that I use poetry as a soul and heart purge. Stuff that is too much to just talk about, or that I can't talk about, or don't know how to talk about tends to come out in poems. Or dreams. I have one hell of a dream life.

Last night's dream was unusual. It involved time travel, which is fairly common in my dream life, but from a point of view that I've never really thought of. In this dream I was waiting for my son to come out of his Jazz class. I was in the school, sitting on a bench when this woman (I think it was a she) came up to me. She was wearing clothes so baggy it was hard to tell the gender for sure, and she had a hoody on, hood up, and dark glasses. Anyway, she sits down beside me, and says "listen, I don't have much time, but you have to listen: don't send him that email". I had no idea what she was talking about, and said so. She pauses, and then asks the date. I told her (treat the crazy people nicely). She responds with "oh no, I'm too early. I got it wrong" and then she VANISHED! The next thing I know, I am arranging for Madeleine to babysit Lyn's kids (a whole bunch, and at this point in time there aren't any!) when I realize that since I can send a "spirit me" back in time, I should go back and tell myself not to send a certain email. So I do, but when my spirit gets back, I discover that I went way before the fact, and had no way to explain which email. I woke up at that point thinking "Oh hey, I remember now. So that was me in the hoody trying to tell me not to send an email. Wonder which email I meant. Pity I screwed up the time" I was awake a full ten minutes before I was with it enough to realize that the whole thing had been a dream.

Bron and a Sandwich

I wasn't going to start a blog, ever. I figured people would know it was me (there must be a fairly limited pool of people who have vacuum cleaners catch on fire on a regular basis), and consequently I wouldn't write what I wanted, defeating the whole purpose. HOWEVER...Ms. B has a blog, as do her sisters. She said I should start one, and a sandwich experience worked in her favour. I mean, I can hardly whinge about a non-egg egg salad sandwich to my co-workers. They already think I'm a nut bar, which confirm it. But I have to deal with it somewhere, so why not the internet?

Sandwich story: I went to the place downstairs and ordered an egg salad sandwich. Which ended up consisting of bread, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, celery and a small dusting of shredded egg white. Yes, it was cooked egg white. Duh! Does this = egg salad in your universe? This even tops the caesar salad I had that was iceberg lettuce with no garlic or croutons. (I told the small town restaurant waitress that perhaps I had been given the house salad by mistake, but no, apparently they don't put garlic in their caesar salad. Sigh. Not really a caesar, then, is it?