Quality Control

Sometimes when you have a borderline absurd idea in your head, all you need to do is say it out loud to a friend in order to realize how stupid you’re being. Example:

Me: “I want to start a business that [description of my awesome business idea]. But what if someone beats me up and takes my stuff? Or I get raped and murdered?”

Friend: *Incredulous facial expression that says, “Are you out of your mind?”*

Alright then — now that we’ve established that I probably am being paranoid and will not be raped and/or murdered, I’d better get started on my business plan.

Fight!

Basically the most absurd thing ever happened to me and my mom this afternoon. We drove down to the gas station at Gladstone and Bank to get gas before my cousin’s wedding. The gas station was packed. We waited in line for the pump while the lady ahead of us parked her damn car at the pump to get Tim Horton’s. She finally came out and then couldn’t drive away from the pump. There were two lanes of pumps and some dummy had parked directly in the lane in the middle of the two. No one could drive out of the lot.

My mom walked up to the car and calmly told the lady in the passenger seat that the car was blocking the parking lot. “This is normal,” she said. “People park here all the time.” [Ed: Not true.] “Oh, so no one has manners then,” said my mom and walked back to our car.

A minute later the lady’s husband came out of the store. She tattled and pointed at my mom. He comes lumbering over, glaring at my mom. He was what can be described as built like a brick shithouse. He was short and halfway between fat and muscular. “Go…fuck… yourself,” he said, in a scary, scary voice. He looked like he was going to hurt my mom, so I flew out of the passenger seat and around the car, screaming “Don’t you dare talk to my mom like that, you piece of shit!” My mom said she wished she had a camera to get a picture of my face, which she described as white with rage.

So then he turned on me. He started walking menacingly towards me, telling me to hit him. Seriously. This fucking middle aged man was trying to start a fist fight with me in the gas station parking lot. “Go ahead, go ahead. Hit me,” he said. I think he thought he would scare me by advancing towards me, but I just said, “You go first. Go ahead. Hit me first.” For a second I was actually kind of worried, because he looked like he was contemplating whether he should punch me or choke me out. He glared at me, but I had called his bluff and he walked off back to his car. “You’re a big man,” I called after him.

The whole thing was fucking absurd. We had simply asked them to move their car from where they weren’t supposed to be parked, and almost got into a giant rumble because of it. Everyone in the lot was staring, but I wasn’t embarrassed – he was the one who looked like a giant idiot. I’m pretty sure his wife was mortified that her meathead husband was trying to pick a fist fight with a 24 year old woman.

Ahahahahahahahahaha. This story will be good for a laugh every time I think about it.

The weight is coming off! (I think)

Previously, I failed at my attempts to lose weight (except for that one curious period where I ate poutine all the time and lost 15 pounds without even trying) because I would do a half-assed attempt, get discouraged when nothing changed and then give up. But since I’ve been off school, I’ve had time to do things properly, like exercising and cooking proper meals instead of eating chips for dinner. I’ve been working out every morning, really watching my calories, and doing yoga at night. And lo and behold, it’s working! My belly is less round and I can take my pants off without undoing them! Which is good news, but also kind of bad because I don’t have money to buy new pants right now.

I went a bit off the rails this weekend, not sleeping or eating properly, and generally not being healthy. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but my body made me pay the price. I felt like I had a hangover on Sunday even though I hadn’t been drinking on Saturday, and I could barely eat for a couple of days. That was my body telling me that this paying attention to my health stuff is actually good for me. Who knew? I’m feeling encouraged, thought it may not last long — I’m off to buy a scale to hopefully confirm that I’ve lost some weight. We shall see.

Update: Got a scale. I’m down about 5 pounds, maybe a bit more (I’m not sure of my exact starting weight). Wheeeeee!

New Song on my MySpace

The purpose of this post is twofold:

1) To tell you that I have a new song up at myspace.com/carlysok

2) To inform you of the existence of said MySpace, as it has come to my attention that I haven’t really told a lot of my friends about it.

The new song is called The Forest. I wish I had gotten it out sooner. I think it may be the best song I’ve written so far and a few days ago I really liked it. But as usual when I work on things too long, I’m now of the opinion that it may be a hot mess. I think a large part of that is the atrociousness of the drums — I really need a proper drummer. Anyways, give it a listen, s’il vous plait! But for the love of god, don’t listen on laptop speakers. I just did and I almost cried.

Gardening, garage sales, grrrrrr

I have been growing a little container garden on my balcony. Last year I had no outdoor space, so it’s a treat to be able to grow things. Or try to grow things. I have a knack for killing plants, except roses. Roses thrive under my watch.

But apparently so do tomatoes! My tomato plant now has 6(!) little green tomatoes on it, with more to come from the looks of it. My eggplant is starting to sprout its very first flowers, meaning it may actually sprout vegetables afterwards! And my purple pepper plant, which I thought had stopped growing with a few sad leaves, is green and growing again. It’s all very exciting. My neighbours must think I’m insane — I go out to look at them about a million times a day. “Oh, let’s see if anything has changed since I last checked an hour ago! Nope? OK then.”

But all this waiting and watching and labour intensiveness has got me thinking about food production. In the end, it will take far far far less time to gobble up the veggies than I’ve spent growing them. Weeks and weeks of attention for a few meals worth of food. I’ve always had great respect for farmers, who get a seriously raw deal, but growing my own veggies has made me realize how much goes into that tomato I pay like 50 cents for at No Frills. Then multiply that by the hundreds of veggies sitting in each supermarket every day. It boggles the mind.

On a related note, a man in the States is under threat of a $2,000/day fine for planting a “guerilla” garden on unused city property. He used a little boulevard to grow a bunch of veggies, some dumbass with nothing better to do complained and now the city is all in a lather about his trellises and other plant growing items. Seriously, these people need to get a grip. The land would have been otherwise unused, and now it’s growing food for people. Which is very useful, actually! Ugh.

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Ladyfest is having a fundraising garage sale on the 27th of this month at *Hotshot gallery in Kensington Market. It’s an excellent new gallery that has kindly offered up their space for us to sell stuff during Pedestrian Sunday. If you have any old stuff hiding away in the closet that you’ve been meaning to get rid of, we’d love to have it. Send me an email if you want to donate – we’ll have someone come by and pick it up, so you don’t even have to do anything!

If you don’t have anything to donate, but would instead like to procure things, stop by the sale on the 27th!

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Someone made a play about scleroderma this year for the Fringe Festival and I am going to see it tomorrow. For those of you who don’t know, scleroderma is the autoimmune disorder that my dad has had for the past 8 years.

Eye Weekly has a review of the play in this week’s issue that is absolutely infuriating, brushing scleroderma off as a “disease-of-the-week” and a “skin disease.” I can’t even express how ignorant that is. It’s so ignorant that I’m going to be writing my second-ever letter to the editor. They may not like the play, and that’s fine, but that’s no excuse to be flippant and callous about a debilitating disease. Scleroderma has never been anyone’s “disease-of-the-week” – it’s virtually ignored, which is why there’s no cure – and equating an illness with some kind of trend is disgusting. And “skin disease”? Like it’s a rash or dry skin or something. My dad just had surgery to have a feeding tube put in his stomach because his throat has become so tightened that he can’t eat enough on his own to be properly nourished. He’s a grown man, 5′ 10″ or 11″, who weighed 120 pounds a few weeks ago. Try convincing me that’s a skin problem, Eye. Jesus. This is why I gave up on arts journalism – writers who think it’s their duty to be a fucking emotionless asshole in the name of their criticism.

Microphone Mathematician

As soon as I have money, I’m buying this fabulous piece of art.

Not much is new, so I don’t have much to write about. I spend my days applying for jobs and watering my tomato plant, which has four little green tomatoes on it. I have a new song almost ready. I’m working on a website for myself. I also have arthritis or tendinitis in my big toe, although this isn’t new. My toe has been hurting for 2 years but I just lately realized what it is that’s causing it. I’m so exciting.

You want to hold your own

Yesterday was my last official day of school. (I have to go back for ISP presentations later in the month, even though the semester is over.) It felt somewhat anti-climactic — it was as though one day I had two weeks left and then somehow all of a sudden it was the last day of school. The whole year went by so quickly, it seems now. It feels like a few days ago that I was pining over my dream of going to recording school and thinking I’d never be able to afford it. It feels like just yesterday that I was so stressed out and afraid about school starting the next day that I worked myself into a tizzy that, coupled with a lack of food and water in the heat, resulted in me passing out at the ferry docks and whacking my head on the ground.

Now it’s on to a full-time job hunt. Job hunting is my least favourite thing ever. It’s exciting at first, thinking about all of the possibilities and checking out what’s out there. It becomes less exciting as it rolls on. It’s the ultimate self-esteem killer – you send out resumes to for jobs you think you’re 100% absolutely made for and end up waiting in vain for even an interview. It’s even worse when you’re trying to get into an industry that has approximately 0 jobs available. What I’m most terrified of is getting away from what I really want to do, out of pure necessity, and then finding a few years from now that I’m nowhere near where I want to be.

I won’t dwell on the negative though. Instead I’m going to focus on how great it will be to finally have money coming in, instead of just going out. I can finally start to chip away at my crushing student loan debt. 6 years after starting university, I’m ready to not be a student ever again. The time has come to leave the teat, as some people I know might say (loudly, in the presence of those who need to do it.)

And while I’m glad to be done school, it’s also kind of sad. (But not bad or mad.) I think I will mope around for a few days and get on with life. And maybe finally have time to finish some of my own songs and start a band (which I’ve only been meaning to do for about 10 years.) Anyone looking to have a band, please apply within. And by apply, I mean send me an email.