Muse

i sit and paint my self portrait
and listen to ani difranco paint my self portrait with her words
and i wonder how she can speak the words written in my head
and i realise though were different
were all the same
its the muse that makes us that way
it is heartsick
it is pain
it is love
and it is shame
and there are so many muses that colour the paintings we make
and there are so many people who are really the same
and there will always be a person
with a name
and a face
there will always be a muse
to take the blame
for all of the writings and paintings and songs that we sing

Friday Night

i am walking from the bus stop to the liquor store in the sketchbag part of town, cursing myself for being in this predicament, since i am dressed to the nines, tits and legs on proud display, possibly attracting unwanted attention. not to mention i am wearing shoes that have never fit me very well and my feet already hurt. experience tells me i have time for a cigarette on this walk, and especially this time, considering how slowly i am walking. my hairdo has already come undone and i havent even been to the party yet. sighing, i realise i am going to have to take a cab from the store to the party. after exiting the liquor store, heavy bag ready to be used as a weapon if necessary, i hobble to the nearest payphone to call a cab. while i wait, i end up having to redo my hair twice, finally getting it to stay put. i hope it looks nice. later people will tell me it does, but since i have no mirror at the moment, i can only hope. the cab arrives and the cabby is chatty, much better than the cabby i will tolerate several hours later on the way home. the party is lots of fun, although i am at least 15 years younger than everyone there, i am at least wearing the sexiest outfit. full of red wine and high spirits, i leave for niks show. the band comes on very late and i fall asleep several times waiting for them. in a fit of bad social skills i beeline to the door after, stopping only to use niks phone to call yet another cab. after a hellish ride with the aforementioned lousy cabby, i trundle up to bed, navigating my way across the sea of laundry and garbage on my bedroom floor. necklace gets put away, dress hung up on the scratching post, and at last, i rest.

When Days Are Hot, When Days Are Cool

so, here i am in kitchener, visiting my aunt and uncle. in order to keep up with my swimming over the holidays, i got my coach to write down a couple of workouts for me to do. anyway, i was pretty excited about having the opportunity to come here and swim at the waterloo swimplex. when i was a kid and we would come visit here, we used to go to the swimplex. since i have always been a keen swimmer, i relished the chance to go to the swimplex. in my mind, the swimplex was the greatest swimming facility ever built. it seemed so cavernous and huge, with its two level high dive, double regular diving boards, whirlpool, full size waterslide, mushroom, and fountain in the shallow end. i thought my cousins were so lucky to have such a beautiful pool at their disposal, and i looked forward to swimming there more than any other aspect of my visits. so, when i decided that that is where i would be swimming this week, i was pretty excited to come back to my most favourite pool. turns out though, that ten years is a long time for growing up, and the pool isnt as amazing as it seemed so long ago. yes, it is still a fantastic facility, but there are little things about it that make me realise it was my childs perspective that made the place seem so surreal. for starters, being bigger than i once was, the pool is not nearly as gigantic as i remembered. the lockers are the same system as they were ten years ago, wherein you put a quarter in and you have to keep track of your key for the rest of the day and then when you unlock it you get your quarter back. this kind of technology impressed and mystified me as a child, but now, its cumbersome and irritating to have to keep track of a key. when the shallow lanes are open, the deep end lanes are only 20m long instead of 25, which means i lost 20m off each 100 while i was working out. i was able to readjust my lengths for some of the drills to compensate for this, but it made doing 50s and 75s impossible. also, since its only 20m, the number of turns is increased and the amount of time doing a length is decreased, which is dizzying. other than that, i still had fun and it was still a nice pool, but it has gone from being my childhood wet dream (hahaha pardon the pun) to just another pool. i wonder how many other things i am going to find disappointing when compared to my childhood ideals. i guess this is the lousy side of growing up.

This and That

i never work as hard as i could, and i never study as hard as i should. i dont know what this means. i wanted to quote waiterrant on here about something, but i dont feel like searching for the quote. speaking of waiterrant, i have finally finished reading the whole entire thing. crazy and beautiful, i say. also, i have found, through waiterrant, a fake newspaper about restaurants written in the same style as theonion.com, called dont tip the waiter. www.donttipthewaiter.com. worth checking out id say. not as funny or endearing as waiterrant, but worth the read nonetheless. in other news, after having a huge argument with kyle over the moral implications surrounding the existence of veggie ham, i put veggie ham in the toaster and ate it on crackers with goat cheddar. it was delicious, but my crackers were a little stale. also, i am the proud creator of the best cheesecake i have ever had. ever. go me. that makes the list of things i make the best ive ever had include: key lime pie, cheesecake, vegetarian lasagna, honey dijon potatoes, tea biscuits, and blondies. my bread would also be a close second to my dads. not surprising since hes the one who taught me to make bread. anyway, so i should probably get back to half assing my way through russian. ps. you should all go see the fountain. very artsy and thought provoking. do it.

Let It Snow

c'est arrivée. in an unusual fit of hamilton weather, the snow is finally here, and i am extremely happy. so, to celebrate, i have decided to blog after rounding off two triple screwdrivers while i attempt to conjugate russian verbs. anyway, this arrival of early hamilton snow has gotten me thinking about why it makes me so happy. most of my friends attribute it to my being from "up north" and being used to it, but i have decided thats not the whole picture. yes, i love the snow because im from "up north" but not for the reasons my friends think. being from collingwood makes you love the snow, because snow is the blood running through the veins of the collingwood economy. late snow means no work, which means no money, which means a struggling and unhappy town. growing up in a town that is so intimately connected to snow forces you to love it, even if you hate the cold. so, even though some of us may not be the biggest fans of the cold, we grew up needing snow, depending on it, believing in it, and it is for that reason, that no matter how much you detest the temperature, being from collingwood is almost entirely synonymous with loving snow. so, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.