Directionally challenged

I’ve become the kind of person who gets stopped on the street for directions.

“Where is the washroom?”

In the corner of the food court – next to the deli.

“How far is University Avenue from here?”

Two blocks east.

“Where is the nearest subway station?”

You’re standing on it.  The entrance is on the corner.

I think you get the picture.  I clearly look like someone who knows where I’m going and how to get there.

I attended a funeral last week.  It was the first time I had been to a funeral in years, let alone a church. 

I stood around outside the church before the ceremony.  I was uncomfortable.  I was nervous. I was surprised at my discomfort, because while I hadn’t been to a funeral recently, I attended many when I was younger.  I didn’t recall this feeling. 

It was a clear day and the sun poured in through the stained glass windows of the church.  There was a large organ, and music and singing.  And a big, loving family, and many friends.  Kind words were spoken.  Tears were shed, but there was a sense of belonging and an undercurrent of togetherness.  There was grief, but also a kind of joy in the knowledge that one person’s life can continue through others.

And it was then that I realized, taking all of this in – as though I was floating above it — that I realized that I had no idea where I was going.

Square peg

I peruse the rows of books.

Why Men Love Bitches:  From Doormat to Dreamgirl

What Men Won’t Tell You But Women Need To Know

I shake my head and move on.  The rows are categorized alphabetically by last name.

Become Your Own Matchmaker:  8 Easy Steps for Attracting Your Perfect Mate

Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man

“It’s not here, of course it’s not here,” I mutter under my breath.

An overly-eager sales clerk pops up.  “Can I help you find a particular title?” she chirps, like some kind of mechanical bird.  Oh come on, she knows what section of the bookstore this is. 

The Loser section.  The section people turn to when they are looking for justification.

“No, thank you,” I mumble.  I hope she hasn’t heard me talking to myself.

The truth is, I have no idea what I’m looking for.

Why Mr. Right Can’t Find You:  The Surprising Answers That Will Change Your Life

How To Make Someone Fall in Love With You in 90 Minutes or Less

I laugh despite myself.  This is not my section.  The book I’m looking for isn’t here.

The book I am looking for will explain why I don’t want what everyone else seems to want.  The book will explain why it’s very common, but no one ever talks about it. 

I began searching in the bookstore after I read the following on Salon:

At 29, I’m not looking for a man. I’m six months out of a nearly two-year relationship so void of passion and emotion that I might as well have been alone the entire time. For the past few months I have enjoyed traveling by myself in Asia, avoiding all offers of romance. One pale Englishman in Laos asked me, his eyes wide and moist, if I wanted to have a bit of fun with him.

“Fun for whom?” I asked and went to bed early that night with my book, happy that I only had to share my room with the large frog on the wall of my bathroom.

“Oh my God,” I wrote to a friend.  “Is this what people think I believe?”

It is not what I believe.  Far from it.  In fact, it may be the saddest thing I have ever read in my life.  Claiming to prefer the company of an amphibian over an Englishman (however pale), or any other human being, is a bit much, don’t you think?

Blame it on thousands of years of conditioning.  Blame it on “Eat, Pray, Love”.  Blame it on feminism, or any other “ism” you prefer.

But I don’t believe in it.  Not for me.

Women imposing abstinence upon themselves, telling themselves that surely some kind of enlightenment will come from not acting upon their sexual desires.  Where is the choice, exactly? 

Where is the joy?

Are we simply wives and mothers?  Or sluts?  Or celibate singletons, proving our self-worth by denying our sexual pleasure?  Where do these perverse ideas come from?

I want to read the book that tells me that it’s alright to enjoy a life that includes love and yes, perhaps sex (gasp!), without the confines of tradition.  I am still relatively young, independent, successful and intelligent.  If I don’t want a traditional full-time committed relationship, does this mean that I give up a lifetime of love and passion?  Must I sign up for the whole package or walk away, empty handed?  If things don’t work out with the Prince, must I choose the frog? 

There must be another choice, I tell myself.  There must be another way.

And so, I continue to search.

The Five Minute Post

What a week.

Random thoughts.

This blog was initially created as a showcase for my writing skills.

Why are you laughing?

Right now, the only writing I’m doing is in relation to HR 3933.*

Don’t click that link.  Unless, of course, you enjoy reading arcane bills relating to the U.S. tax code.

What was I just saying?

Oh yeah, writing.  I promise that I will write more interesting things in the future.  And by future, I mean December.  Possibly January.

This morning, while I was walking to work, I enjoyed the best five random iPod songs ever:

Bolero – Ravel

Across the Universe – The Beatles

No Myth – Michael Penn

Shame for You – Lily Allen

Sunday Morning – No Doubt

Yes, yes, I’ve posted this song before.  But this version features Arsenio Hall. Check out the hair and jacket.  Classic.

 

 

 

 

* Which, by the way, is unduly onerous and will place unreasonable reporting burdens on foreign financial institutions.  But hey, what the hell do I know?

Today is Tuesday, right?

I’ve been slowly but surely recovering from what some people have suggested might be the dreaded swine flu.  I’m not so convinced.

But it would make for a great T-Shirt, no?

“I went to Washington DC, and all I got was this lousy case of swine flu.”

Between the illness and the fact that I am now preparing at work for an event that will either make me a *star* or will seal my fate as the cutest illegal immigrant housekeeper Lilu and B ever have*, I have let a few things slide.

On Saturday, I decided that it was a good day to clean up the leper colony Shoebox.  You know, open the windows, do the laundry, take out the snotty tissues trash. 

Goal:  Find gloves that are undoubtedly lost somewhere in giant pile of sick-girl unwashed laundry.  Or under the bed.  Or somewhere. 

During the search, I come across the envelope (that I had been keeping in a safe, hidden location), containing my subscription tickets to the Canadian Opera Company.  What can I say, I like a little culture from time to time. 

I open the envelope.

“Madama Butterfly…two tickets for…Friday, October 23rd, 7:30 p.m.”

Last night.

“Fuck.”

Epic scheduling fail.

New Goal:  Organize calendar on blackberry/Outlook* to include important, expensive events like the Opera.

Opera tickets, meet shredder.

This is almost as bad as forgetting my PIN number while standing at the checkout line at the LCBO on Friday.   Nothing says “early onset of Alzheimer’s” quite as much as having a complete brain freeze while holding two bottles of wine in your hand.  

“Here’s a tip,” the cashier oh-so-helpfully supplied as the words “FINAL TRY” appeared on the card reader, “You may want to synchronize all of your PIN numbers so that you don’t forget.”

Really?  Thanks for that helpful fucking hint, Heloise.  Here’s one for you: You may want to consider keeping your “tips” to yourself before I breathe the swine flu onto you.

“Uhhhh,”  I stammered instead.  “Lemme give you cash.”

 

 

* Now, THAT’s a sitcom waiting to be written.

** If you have sent me an email or a Facebook message over the course of the past, oh say…month…I promise you are getting really close to getting a response.

I’ll retrieve my own soul, thanks

So it’s come to this, has it?

We live in an age where we officially have more money than sense.  We’ve gotten to the point where we must purchase life experiences.

Victims Participants paid $10,000 to  James Arthur Ray, “new age guru”, to engage in a 36-hour “vision quest”.  The vision quest required participants to fast alone in the desert.  This was followed up by a two-hour “rebirthing” experience, during which participants were sealed into a makeshift dry-cleaning bag sweat lodge.

Three people died.  A “channeler” (whatever the hell that is) was called in by Mr. Ray after the incident, and told participants (and presumably, their lawyers), that those who had died during the experience “had left their bodies in the sweat lodge and chosen not to come back because “they were having so much fun”".

I’m not making this up – it was in the New York Times.  Mr. Ray has appeared on Oprah.  This is not some backwater operation.

Leaving aside the legal issues of civil liability or whether or not this constitutes criminal negligence causing death, I think this brings up a number of other serious questions.

How spiritually and intellectually bereft is our society that some of us feel a need to purchase services such as “soul retrieval, vortex healing and dolphin energy healing“?

Can we manufacture life-altering change?  Can someone give it to me for $10,000? 

I suppose that in a world where we have turned love into a commodity, anything is possible.  Why bother having the journey, when you can purchase a ticket directly to the destination?

When I read articles like this, I fear that North American society’s spiritual account is officially overdrawn.

Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before

As you should have gathered by now, I don’t write about my current place of work.   However, since this story blurs the line between personal and professional,  and only happened to take place in my office, I feel obliged to share.

Maybe “blur” isn’t the correct term. Perhaps “obliterates” is more appropriate.

Anyway.

More than a few months ago, my boss walked into my office, and turned to close the office door.  For the uninitiated, this is the office signal for “important conversation”.*

“I have a proposition for you,” she says as the door clicks shut.

Please, please, please extend my contract.

She smiles.

“Would you like to go on a blind date?”

Damn.  What?

“Uhhhhhh.”

“I know, I know, blind dates are scary.”

“I’m not afraid of first dates, really. I think I make an excellent first date.”

Shut up, shut up! Now is not the time for bragging!

“Good, good! This fellow is a lawyer at XABC Bank.”

Great. A lawyer. I don’t know any of those.

“That’s…nice?”

“He’s a friend of my friend. He’s in his early forties.”

I must be sitting in what can only be described as shellshock, so she continues.

“He’s very nice, he’s just shy.”

Right.

I must still look unimpressed.

“His parents own a house in Rosedale.”

So does Conrad Black.

“And he really wants to have children.”

Is this an argument for or against?  Hello, have you met me?

“So, what do you say?”

“Uhhhh.”

“You can think about it if you like.”

“Uhhhhhh…well, I’m not against meeting new people, in principle.”

“Great! Normally I wouldn’t do this, but my friend was mentioning that she’s wanted to set this poor…uhhh…nice fellow up on a date since forever, and I said to her…

Wait for it…

“I know someone who could really use a date.”

Aaaaauuugh. Must. Not. Stab. Own. Eye. With. Pen.

I smile weakly.

“This is so perfect!  You’ll hear from him, I think, sometime this week.”

Aaaaauuugh.

“Thanks for thinking of me.”

As she opens the door and dances away down the hallway, clearly thrilled with her work, she sing-songs:

“Just be sure to mention me at the wedding!”

Apparently, I have been deemed acceptable and have been recruited for blue-blooded breeding purposes.

And then a horrifying thought occurs to me.

Please, please, tell me that he does not live in that house in Rosedale with his parents.

 

*AKA “Shit is going down.”  “Please pack your Securities Act and go.”  “We’re firing Bob and giving you all of his files.”   Yeah, I think you get the idea. 

In which I am (almost) speechless

Oh, Steve.  Now I know an election is imminent.

 

Just in case you had it all figured out

I was enjoying a hangover-curing triple-decker grilled cheese sandwich with a friend at Shanghai Cowgirl when I happened to mention a disagreement I had earlier in the week.

“So,” I said,  in between bites of greasy, cheesy goodness, “This other male friend of mine was upset because he received some less-than-polite responses to his attempts to be a gentleman.”

“What kinds of attempts?”  My friend was enjoying eggs (over hard…ew…what’s the point?), after wrestling with a patio umbrella in a failed plan to protect my other-worldly pale extremities from also frying to a crisp.

“Well, for example, he complimented a woman on her shoes.”

“He’s gay?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.  Yeah, that’s not right.  Men don’t compliment women on their shoes.”

“That’s what I said!”

He paused.  “Unless they’re really great shoes.  That may not be a pick up.”

“It’s always a pick up.”

“You always assume that a man is trying to pick you up?”  My friend feigned indignance (quite well, I might add).  “We’re not always trying to pick you up, you know.”

“Have you ever been stuck in an elevator and have a man sniff you?  And ask you if you’re what smells “so good” in the elevator?”

“Now that’s just creepy.  And wrong.  Just wrong.”

“Yeah, those were the longest sixteen floors of my life.   But I think my friend was justified when he mentioned that he lit a woman’s cigarette.  That woman shouldn’t have assumed it was a pick up.  It’s just being polite.”

“No, that one’s definitely a pick up.  Why else would you light a cigarette?  There’s no other reason to smoke really, except to be around women who smoke.  That’s always a pick up.”

“But you just said it’s not always a pick up.”

“No, we’re pretty much always trying to pick you up.”

“…”

***