Sunday Evening

Right now I'm in my apartment in Toronto. I had to drive back for a few reasons:

1) I had to get my funeral clothes. Enough said.

2) I had to get my birth certificate. The reason that I need it is that I need to get a new passport. My Mom and Dad are scheduled to fly to Santiago, Chile where they are to begin a South American curise. My parents had invited me to go on the trip with them when they signed up four months ago, but I told them that I would be working and couldn't afford to take two weeks off in the middle of February. We all know that that didn't happen, so I've decided to go with my Dad on the cruise so that we can be together and so that we can put some distance behind things, at least for a short time. It's not going to be a riproaring partyfest, but I know that my Mom would have wanted us to continue on; especially go on the trip. My Dad has booked the two weeks off and I ceratinly don't want him sitting around at home for two weeks feeling sorry for himself. Though I know it will be a hard trip I think that this will be good therapy. Apparently, I can get an emergency passport in 45 minutes and I think that this qualifies.

3) I was supposed to spend the weekend in Woodstock, Ontario this weekend attending my partner's sister's wedding. She left on Wednesday and she left me her keys so that I could look in on her cat (Cole) and make sure that his litterbox was clean and that he had lots of food and water. In my weakened state on Friday, I forgot to deal with her keys and I took them with me by mistake. She is scheduled to get in at 10:15 tonight, so I needed to be here to let her into her house and return the keys.

That's why I'm here. It's a bit of a mess, but that's the way things go sometimes. I'm heading back first thing tomorrow. My sister and her husband are with my Dad now, and family will begin arriving at the house tomorrow. My sister heads back to Toronto tomorrow afternoon. She has her pre-operation tests on Tuesday morning, so she needs to be back for them. It isn't the kind of thing that we want to put off.

As I write this, I am strangely aware at the absurdity of a blog entry at this time. Still, I have taken a great deal of solace in the kind emails and phone calls that I have received from all those people who mean so much to me. It's sad that you don't realize how many people love you until something like this happens.

I'd like to thank all of those people who have expressed their concern and extended their support. I know that we all say how sorry we are. When I've said it to others I never knew exactly how people must feel, but now that I am in this situation, I must say how nice it really is . Everyone is sad, of course, but it is comforting to know that people care. To think that they have gone out of their way to give you some of their time means so much. It really does help make things easier.

My Dad, naturally, is a complete wreck, but he is holding up surprisingly well. I know that a house full of people makes it easier for him, but when he comes home from work to an empty house, he will be in a lot of pain.

My sister seems to be okay, but I expect that her mind is on her Cancer surgery which happens on the 6th of February. It's especially hard on both she and her husband, but they have been very strong.

My Mom was what made this family what it is. She made me the person I am and kept us all together. I don't really know what I'm going to do without her. I miss her so much already.

It's as if a horrible joke is being played on me. I'm not sure who would do such a thing to me, or if I am really awake or asleep right now. I don't know what to do and I don't know how to feel since I have never had to deal with anything like this before.

My mother died last night in a car accident.

She had come to Toronto to return my car, and to take the leaky one back. She also needed to buy a dress for her trip to South America.

I missed seeing her as I was not at home, but I called her at 10:30 to try to convince her to stay overnight and not to drive home. I know that it isn't my fault but I'm just runnning through everything in my head.

She was killed instantly. My Dad said that she must have fallen asleep at the wheel and lost control of the car and she hit a transport truck.

Dad called me this morning at 6:28. He didn't sound good, but when he said, "she isn't with us anymore" I flopped around in bed in what can only be described as an uncontrolled fit.

I'm on my way home now to be with my Dad and sister. It's going to be a tough time, but I know that we'll get through. I'm headed to Union station to catch a GO Train to Ajax, and then my brother in law and my sister and I are going to Perth to be with my Dad.

So You've Decided to Steal Cable

Well the painting is almost done. I have to paint two doors, some shelves, and the trim in the master bedroom and then I'm done the second floor, for now. I still have to take care of the hallway, but it needs to be plastered first, and my Dad is paying a professional to take care of it.

Once finished upstairs I will have to clean up the huge mess that has amassed during the painting work, and then I' head downstairs to paint the living room. My deadline to finish was the end of February so I'm happy that I'm ahead of schedule.

My free cable got cut off today. I'm wondering which one of my friends decided to call Rogers and cancel it on me. They left an obnoxious slip of paper in the mailbox, as if I needed them to tell me that the jig was up. I'll probably cave and pay for it.

Early Morning Walk

My car is at my parents' house. They graciously agreed to look after it while it gets some minor repairs before it is officially certified and licensed. I have their 1996 Toyota Avalon instead.

Yesterday, I noticed a leak underneath the car and so I took it down to be checked out. I dropped the car off at 8:15 this morning and the guy told me that he hoped that someone would be able to look at it by noon. I was surprised that it was going to take all morning to give me an estimate, but I accepted the fact that I wouldn't be able to wait for it and I headed home.

I walked from Front and Spadina to my house at Bloor and Bathurst. I'm not kidding here, but when I was one block from my house the phone rang. They had finished the estimate and the damage was going to be $1800.

The car has 450,000 kilometres and that it is worth nothing as a trade in and I knew that my parents were not going to drop that kind of cash on the car. Even though I was within site of my house, I turned around and walked back to the dealership.

So I got my day's exercise this morning; about 70 minutes worth of walking. It wasn't that bad, and now I'm heading upstairs to paint for a few hours before I head out on more errands.

"Most Played" Songs of the Week

On Monday, I bought an iPod. It was an extravagant purchase considering everything, but you have no idea what it's like to spend a day painting someone else's walls. Certainly, I believe that it is an essential purchase; I was going out of my mind up there listening to the radio and to my CD collection circa 2001.

I'm still getting used to it but I will begin what may or may not be a regular contribution to this blog: My Most Played Songs of the Week.

10. Moonrock Mambo (Yo La Tengo)
9. Ageless Beauty (Stars)
8. La Ritournelle (Sebastien Tellier)
7. I Wanna Be Your Dog (The Stooges)
6. The Love Song (K-OS)
5. Glosoli (Sigur Ros)
4. Chicago (Sufjan Stevens)
3. Out of the Storm (Incognito)
2. Beautiful World (Colin Hay)
1. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Stars)

So I've reset my play count for the week and we'll see how the list changes.

Draining the Pool

I've been playing in a hockey pool this winter, and so far things are not going terribly well. I'm not sure exactly why since on paper, my team really isn't that bad, but when it comes to the format of the pool, I keep getting destroyed. Sure, my goalies are weak and my big name players are not performing, but these are minor details.

I woke up on Wednesday horrified to find that one of my stronger players (Zigmund Palffy) was retiring. I treated this much in the same way a stockowner who discovers that the CEO of a company has hidden millions in foreign banks and has fled the country. I decided to deal Palffy if I could.

Granted, I knew that this was unlikely to happen, since the only one in the pool foolish enough to trade for a retired player is me. There's a saying in poker that if you can't see the sucker at the table, then it's probably you.

After a tongue lashing from the commissioner for my generous offer of Palffy for Samuelsson, I felt badly about the whole thing. Remember that Seinfeld episode when Kramer fixes Elaine's sore neck in exchange for her bike? When she renegs on the deal he bawls her out: "I would have expected this from George, even Jerry, but not you Elaine. I always held you up here (hand above head). Now you're aww aawwllll the way down."

So I picked up the stupendous Dainius Zubrus of the spectacular Washington Capitals. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have gone through with the trade, or made it right in the end, but that's the way things have been going with the pool. Unless something happens soon, I'm going to finish 8th in a pool of 8.

Portrait of a Guilty Conscience

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday. I had planned to write one, but got a little sidetracked.

When I was in high school, one of the books that we read was Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, by James Joyce. Truly one of the great books by arguably the best writer in English.

I must confess that I didn't ever read it.

All this time, I haven't been pretending that I've read it, but when it would be mentioned (my friends are super cool, you know) I would just kinda of slink back and wait for another topic.

An English program at any university expects that you have read some James Joyce. I had read Dubliners, so I squeaked through my Modernist Literature course. At the same time, I felt a lot of guilt by faking it through high school. I recall, during the summers of university signing it out of the library as a book that I really should read. I also recall it sitting unopened on my bedstand racking up a summer's worth of overdue fines.

The guilt continues to this day, but I have begun to make amends. I'm 87 pages in and so far so good. It isn't as though I don't know what it's about or was the meanings are; I've studied it after all.

If I accomplish nothing during my transitional period, I want to at least take this burden of guilt off of my shoulders. Enough lies, enough hiding, enough being afraid. Next on the list is Ulysses.

Course Begins

My course started on the 10th of January. It wasn't until the 14th that I decided that I should look at the registration paper that has been posted on my fridge for 6 weeks. I thought that the course started today, but it started last week.

It didn't matter that I was late. There isn't anything that was urgent. The course is basically a bunch of written assignments. There are 5 units, each with six assignments. Over the course of the 10 weeks, the assignments for each unit are due bi-weekly. Fairly straightforward, right?

Though I've done nothing until today, I did manage to get an assignment done. I want to spend all day tomorrow getting the rest finished. I figure that I can get them all done in one day, but I really don't want to fall into the trap of leaving it until the last minute. If I was a teacher and my students finished two weeks of assignments the night before, I might be tempted to fail them. I don't want that to happen to me, and I'm not going to press my luck.

Lazy Sunday

I woke up early, much to my chagrin, and worked for 6 hours. It wasn't easy work since much of it was spent trying to get my parents on their way home. They left at 2:00 so you do the math.

After that, I tried to relax a bit. I took a shower, watched some tv, made some phone calls, and then decided to purchase an iPod.

I headed to a computer store on College, paid 55 cents for parking only to find out that they were closed. I decided to drive up to Yorkdale, because I wanted to check out Best Buy because they usually have open boxes at a discount, and if that failed I knew that I could zip over to the Apple store in the mall.

Well Best Buy was sold out, and completely unhelpful. As I made my way to the Apple store, I didn't hold out a lot of hope that I'd be walking home with anything but the relief of being out of a mall.

The overwhelming impression that I had of the store is how much I wish that I owned a store that needed four security guards, had a line up 25 people long all willing to spend hundreds of dollars, and whose aesthetics is the design equivalent to copulation.

After drooling over the products, I caught the eye of a completely pleasant salesboy. Not only did they have everything in stock, but as he was trying to sell me on the extended service plan, he let loose that there is a teacher's discount.

Now even though I am not working full-time, and turned down a subbing job not three days earlier, I am a card carrying member of the Ontario College of Teachers. It costs me enough so I was pretty happy when I found out that I will be saving 35 big ones. The only problem is that I don't, since the great wallet purge of 2005, carry my OCT membership card. Well, I don't think that I need to tell you that I decided to head home and get me card; I'll be heading back tomorrow morning before I get back to the hard work of sanding and painting.

Mystery Solved

Sorry about the earlier messes. It made sense at the time, but I can't make much sense of it now.

I have resolved to writing an entry everyday. I find that the more I force myself to write the more treasures I discover.

I solved the indian food mystery from last night. My brother in law ordered dinner from work for himself and his coworkers. The food was delivered to his old house rather than his work. The food had been paid for with a credit card so when it arrived my Mom and Dad just accepted it. They couldn't figure out why food was being delivered. My parents called my sister, and she called her husband, but when he called the restaurant, they were closed. So the food sat there waiting. My parents expected their son in law to pick up the food, but he couldn't leave work and so he ordered Chinese food instead. He shared the garlic nan and beef vindaloo with me this evening so that was pretty sweet.

I worked a bit on the house today. Stage two of the work has begun. I've finished two full rooms and with them organized and cleaned I can now move into the hallway and the master bedroom. I'm hoping that by this time next week, I will be finished the both of them.

I am very seriously considering buying an iPod in order to maintain my sanity as I work. I'm sick of listening to the radio. The whole day is repetition: same stories, same news, same traffic reports, same promos. It's getting to me and I'm thinking that if I have to spend 10 hours a day doing mindless home repair a 7500 song playlist might be the only thing that can help me survive.

Huh?

Just when you thought that you had made sense of the world.

After my previous post, I had convinced myself to go upstairs and steal an empanada. I did, of course, but as I looked at the receipt, I discovered that the Indian food had come to $89!

I left my parents at 7:25pm after just having eaten a meal of roast pork, turnips, potatoes, green beans, and gravy. I left after dinner to drink a lot of beer.

Why then is there $89 worth of Indian food on the table when I return?

There is no other explanation other than my parents were craving Indian food or are in the mood for love? Either way, ewwwwww.

What the hell is going on????

As I sit here typing (totally alone), I am completely confused as to what has happened as I have been gone. I've eaten two fantastic (stolen) empanadas but have been forced to put extra (as if unopened) food into the refrigerator. I have no idea what has happened here but even though I have questioned and questioned, I cannot piece the events of the evening together.)

All I know is that I really want more Indian food and am wondering what has happened to precipitate these very very strange events. Perhaps tomorrow will explain the sick sick events that no doubt have occured.

Teddy Teddy Teddy

Well folks, it's another drunken blog entry.

I'm starving hungry. I'm off to the kithchen to see what I can cook up, but I know that there is nothing to eat so I'm heading upstairs very quietly to steal food.

(Pause)

What the hell is going on? I go upstairs, and in the back room there is a light that I know for sure has never been on before. The next thing I know I go upstairs and there is, in the main living room and huge box of food that seems to have no home. I open up the bag and there is a delicious empanada. It clearly should be in the fridge since it is the first time I have ever seen an unknown brown paper bag. I look in the bag, and it is full (ie. heavy) of food. Either someone else has left this delectable food or my parents are completely drunk. "Hey, Mrs Nugget, let's get some curry!"

So I stole upstairs to get food and I find a goldmine of food. I took one empanada, but am seriously considering going up for more. I had planned to steal a bagel and the light peanut butter, but this is way better.

I got completely shitfaced with an old friend tonight and am in dire need already of getting shitfaced again. Isn't it weird how you cannot see a person after ten years and suddenly catch up as if enverything was exactly the same as always? Isn't it weird how you go upstairs to teal peanut butter and you end up with unbelievable indian food? What is even more strange is that I know I will wake up before my parents and remember far more than they will, but al the same time not be abnle to explain the indian food on our breaths?

Textbook Nugget

When most people have bouts of sadness and self-doubt, they keep it to themselves. Most people have a few drinks. Most people eat a tub of ice cream. Most people take the dog out for a walk and have a cigarette. Most people watch a mindless movie on television. Most people spend the day in bed. Most people go shopping. What I do is publish it on my blog for the whole world to see.

For all those people worried about me; please don't. I'm fine. Promise. Though there is something vaguely satisfying about receiving an email which begins, "Bloody depressing post..."

If you're looking for something a little cheerier, I went to see a taping of The Rick Mercer Report and had a delicious hamburger, mediocre fries, and a good pint after the show.

When I got back to my apartment, I realized that I had locked my keys inside. It's about as cold as it gets in Toronto (a laughable -5C) and I was worried since the upstairs neighbours weren't home and my spare key is wandering around bars in London. I called my sister and her husband offered to bring me a key tomorrow morning. I figured that that would be the best thing to do since there was no way that I was taking the GO Train to Ajax.

As I paced back and forth to the front and back of the house, and up and down the front steps checking the doors to see if they were, in fact, still locked, I resigned myself to couch crashing. I called Andrew but got a machine. I began walking over to his apartment, but then remembered that I had a friend's spare apartment key, and would go stay there. Moron! I didn't realize until I just now that the key, obviously, was on my key ring with my own apartment key. Clear thinking is lost when you're locked out.

Luckily, I walked back past my apartment and suddenly remembered being locked out this summer. I had managed to jimmy open a window and crawl in. I hoped against hope that I hadn't fixed the loose window at the same time hoping that it wouldn't be that easy to break into my apartment.

Though not nearly as simple as it had been in the summer, I did manage to get in. It's no mean feat considering that it's a half window for the basement. God bless the 32 inch waist; my non-jock physique pays off!

I did manage to smash my finger but it doesn't matter since I'm warm and soon to be snug in bed ready to face another day of plastering, painting, and listening to 9 hours of radio.

Knock, knock. Who's there? Boo.

I'm not sure exactly what to say this week since things haven't been too fantastic. It seems like so long since my last post and there isn't a lot of cheeriness round these parts.

Site Feed

As per Brian's request, I have placed a site feed link on my blog. I'm still not sure exactly what this accomplishes, or if I've done it correctly, but I have tried. From what I can guess, Brian is sick and tired of checking back to my blog hoping for a post and not getting one. I can only speculate that the site feed will solve this problem for him.

Adios, Mr. Kotter

I had so much hope that I would have a job this next semester. I have spent many days over the past few months subbing at my old high school. I hoped that a job would open up and that I could slip in there for a full-time gig.

In November, I found out that a teacher in the English department was going on maternity leave. I had subbed for her many times, and had chatted with her frequently. She had suggested strongly that I apply.

Of course I did apply, but on Tuesday I got the old "screw off" letter. Something about many applicants, more experience, best of luck in future endeavours. All that crap. I resisted the temptation-- and it was strong-- to give them a piece of my mind ("The bridges I've burned light my way."). I suppose that it was nice that they sent me an email saying that I wasn't one of the four people being interviewed; at least they gave me that much courtesy.

I suppose that this could be one of the nails in the coffin of my teaching career. I am very seriously considering throwing in the towel and doing something else. I don't believe that I've done everything that I wanted to do, but I haven't been given the opportunity, and at this point it doesn't look like I will. I am frustrated with the bureaucracy and disheartened by seven months of unabashed rejection. At what point does one decide enough is enough?

I really am questioning my abilities as a teacher, a writer, a thinker, and role model. I feel ineffectual and I wonder at which point someone will just come right out and expose me as a complete fraud.

I know that I was foolish to hitch my wagon to this star, but I really thought that after dozens of days visiting the school, chatting with teachers, and making contacts, I thought that I was an obvious choice. I suppose they don't want a teacher who makes a your/you're error in the subject line of an email, or one who makes dozens of other mistakes on their blog. My thick glasses and non-jock physique might have been a factor too. Who could blame them really?

Home Repair

My parents and I are in the process of doing some renovations in my house before they put it on the market and try to earn their retirement money. I've been busy plastering, painting, scraping, scrubbing, filling, stripping, and sanding. I'm exhausted and haven't had the energy to blog much. Sorry.

The work is going well. Slowly but surely, I suppose. At this point, there is so much to do that it's hard to believe that it will ever get done, but we'll pick away at it over the coming weeks and it will get done somehow. I will be doing most of it so that will keep me pretty busy. The only problem is, of course, that the work is generally very mindless and I have nothing to do but to think all day about the state of my life and to beat myself up over things.

General Malaise

There isn't much that I seem to be doing right lately, and no matter how hard I try to make good decision and to try to make things easier for others, they just end up getting more complicated and I end up looking like an idiot. I just can't get a break. It seems that no matter what I do or how hard I try, I end up fouling it all up. Sooner or later, I'll end up being all by myself and wondering what the hell happened.