It gets better for everyone

I've been looking at Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project, and it occurs to me that it's more broadly applicable. I must emphasize that this in no way intended to minimize or trivialize the unique hell that queer kids in closed-minded places go through, just to build on and expand the message. If you're a kid or teen being tormented for something other than being queer - because your peers don't like your clothes or your hobbies or your tastes or your looks, or for some other unnamed breach of some unspoken rule - it gets better too!

In the real world, if someone thinks you have a big nose, they assume you already know and get on with their life.

In the real world, if someone doesn't like your clothes, they don't give it any further thought because they have bigger concerns.

In the real world, if someone doesn't want to be your friend, they're cordial when you're both in the same place at the same time and just don't make any overtures towards spending more time together.

In the real world, if someone sees you walking around without any friends with you, they assume you're a competent person going about your own life and your friends are also competent people going about their own lives.

In the real world, if someone doesn't like your hobbies or interests or taste in music, they leave you to it and go about their own lives.

In the real world, there's an online community (and, in any good-sized city, a real-life community) that's into whatever you're into. And they don't expect you to be into all the same things as they are either. Your gaming group isn't going to care if you like a different kind of music than they do. Your band isn't going to care if you don't play ultimate frisbee.

In the real world, if for whatever reason you find yourself in a situation you don't like or that makes you uncomfortable or where people are being idiots, you can walk away. You aren't trapped in school until the bell or stuck in the schoolbus until your stop. Your siblings and parents aren't trying to barge into your room all the time. You can come and go as your please. You have a car and/or a subway station around the corner and/or a cell phone and cab fare in your pocket, and you can always leave and go home and lock the door, or leave and go somewhere else that's more fun. In the real world, you can come and go as you please.

In the real world, you can look like you look, wear what you like, love whomever you love, do what you enjoy, and come and go as you please. People who like it will join in, and people who don't like it will simply disregard you.

The problem with fake pashminas

I recently bought a few fake pashminas. They claim to be made of cashmere and silk, but clearly aren't because they only cost like $4 each. The fact that they're fake doesn't bother me - I bought them because the shape and colour was right, and I didn't want to spend too much money since decorative scarves are a new toy in my fashion arsenal and I wasn't sure how much use I'd get out of them.

The problem is that the washing instructions on the tag are washing instructions that would be appropriate for a cashmere-silk blend. Handwash or dryclean, both of which are inconvenient.

I know it isn't really cashmere and silk, I know it's really some sort of polyester, they haven't tricked me into thinking they're real and I'm not trying to trick anyone else into thinking they're real, I just want some nice colourful playthings. So why can't I have the real washing instructions?

Things that are harder than translation

Let me tell you about my job. I am given a document. It can be about anything, I don't know what it's going to be about. It's written by someone who has enough expert knowledge to write the document and knows the entire context. Oh, and it's written in another language. I take that document and rewrite it in English. To do this, I have to study, learn and research the context and subject matter so that it sounds like it's written by an expert who know the entire context and that it was originally written in English. If there are mistakes in the source text, I correct them. If the author of the source text borrowed wording from other sources, I find those sources even if they're not cited. If the source text does not say what the author intends it to, my translation will. I do this every day, on tight deadlines, always competently and sometimes very well.

And yet I can't get my hair to hold a curl. I can't keep my apartment organized. I can't get my manicure to last a week. I can't park a car in an indoor/underground parking garage. And I really have to work up my nerve to walk into a store that's staffed by people who are cooler than I am (even though they're paid specifically to be cool, whereas I have to fit in being cool around full-time work).

Mother Nature gives us a quickie

It went up to a sunny 16 degrees today, and the wind was pushing 50 km/h. At lunch I went for a walk. With no coat on. And my hair down. Wearing my sunglasses for the first time in 2009. The wind (warm! comfortable! pleasant!) bounced off all the tall buildings and came at me from every direction, whipping my hair in front of my face, then trailing it in a ribbon behind me, then blowing it straight up in the air and making it settle in a cloud over my shoulders.

I came back to work flushed and tousled, and all was right with the world. Then I put my regular glasses back on, put my hair back up, and got back to work.

Parents vs. dog people

I like to interact with dogs, and sometimes I feel moved to interact with children (damn ovaries!). I start the interactions the same way with both: by smiling and (if appropriate) saying hi, then I continue if the creature responds positively.

Somewhere between 50% and 75% of the time, the dog people try to temper the dog's interaction, by making it sit or scolding it about approaching me. I'm not sure whether this is intended to protect the dog from me or to proect me from the dog. (And I'm not sure what an appropriate response on my part is - I want to pet the dog and it seems to want me to pet it, but I don't want to mess up its training. But it doesn't seem fair that dogs with stricter training should never get to play with a willing passer-by.)

But I have never in my life had anyone try to temper my interaction with their child, not even total strangers. They let me say hi to their kid, they let me do finger-grabby with their baby, they let their kid tell me all about Dora the Explorer, they let me convince their kids to press elevator buttons for me, I've even had strangers stand by smiling while their toddler hugged my leg like I was her new best friend (I thought she had the wrong person, but even when I looked down and made eye contact she just kept hugging my leg and smiling back up at me).

I'm not sure what this means. If it had to be one or the other, I'd rather get to play with the dogs.

Things I want

1. Punk carols. Not that I particularly want xmas music, but if there has to be xmas music it should at least be punk.

2. Fierce boots! If only I could justify spending $500 on boots...

3. An Iggy mashup youtube. Michael Ignatieff vs. Iggy Pop. Not that the entertainment value would be particularly high, but it seems very much like the kind of thing that should exist on the internet.

4. Black roses! Except real live ones (which currently do not exist).

5. Everyone who thinks its appropriate to saunter two-abreast down the subway stairs when there are trains at BOTH platforms and dozens of rushed people on the stairs behind them to be banished from the realm.

Waking up

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think is "WTF?" and the second thing I think is "Gotta pee!" However, between "WTF?" and "Gotta pee!", I remember everything.

Today is Wednesday. I have to finish that medical file by 3. If the clothes I hung up to dry last night aren't dry yet, I'll wear a black shirt. It's the first week of my current pack of pills. It's supposed to snow today. I ate pierogi last night. DS9 is on tonight. I need to buy cheese and Scrubbing Bubbles. I didn't have time to do a beauty routine last night so I'll have to do it tonight. I'm sore there because I did core strength yesterday. I meant to blog about yesterday's Dear Abby column. Xmas is not at my parents' house this year. Walmart might have those hair curlers I can't find anywhere else. The acne scar on my forehead is almost gone and should only need foundation today. My friend might know that guy in the elephant picture.

In just a few seconds, after having spent 6-8 hours comatose and hallucinating vividly, I know who I am, where I am, and what I have to do. That's really weird if you think about it.

Pacing

I decided to see how much I pace. I'm working at home today, so I put on my pedometer when I turned on my computer at 7:30 a.m. Now it's 5 pm, and I have 3,729 steps on my pedometer. This is after a day spent theoretically sitting at the computer all day. Realistically I'd go to the kitchen for food or coffee, and I was doing laundry so I was walking back and forth from the bedroom to the bathroom, but still, that's 3,729 steps within a 500 square foot apartment while doing 9.5 hours of computer work. Apparently we're supposed to walk 10,000 steps each day which is equal to about five miles, so that means I've walked about 1.8 miles today, just within the apartment. I haven't even done my grocery run yet!

So maybe people can stop telling me to walk for exercise now?

Today I passed!

For the first time in my life, I wasn't carded by an LCBO cashier who was carding regularly! W00t!

The problem with abusive relationships

The problem with abusive relationships (apart from, you know, all the real problems with abusive relationships) is that they've ruined walking into doors for everyone.

Last night I actually did walk into a door. I'd left a closet door open that I normally leave closed, then I forgot about it when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning any lights on. And the only think I could think is "Shit, I hope I don't get any bruises, no one will ever believe me!" Then I lay awake trying to think of excuses for my door and come up with a convincing story that wouldn't lead anyone to conclude that I was being beaten.

Luckily I didn't have any bruising when I woke up, just a teeny little bump with no discolouration (not even a goose egg, a robin egg maybe) that no one will even notice if they're not looking for it.

Things I learned today

1. It is, in fact, possible for a black dress that looks perfectly innocuous on the rack to make me look fatter than I do naked. No, it wasn't the bad empire waist phenomenon, but I can't tell what specific aspects of its design created this effect.

2. Two Always Ultra Thin Long with Wings and three O.B. Mighty Small are nowhere near sufficient to absorb 500 mL of water spilled in your purse.

3. The face I make when I unexpectedly encounter an impossibly adorable puppy causes my earbuds to fall out.

4. Those teenage boys who walk along the sidewalk taking up the whole sidewalk so people have to step onto the road will move aside for me if I look them in the eye with a look of "Yeah right, you have GOT to be kidding me."

Where my priorities are

Long story how I came to be thinking about this, but today I realized: I don't care if someone steals my cellphone. I'd just buy a new and better one, not a huge deal. However, I would care very much if I couldn't get my phone number back (I don't know offhand how permanently attached to the SIM card the phone number is) because it's a 416 number. For a cellphone. I think I'd even decline to switch providers for a better deal if I couldn't take my number with me. I've been here long enough to have a 416 cell number, I want my Toronto cred dammit!

Telecommunications

Telecommunications companies have this really quite remarkable talent for making me feel like I'm getting screwed over when I'm not. Whether it's Bell's habit of making touchtone service a separate item on the bill even though it's mandatory, or Roger's pricing their home phone service entirely too high but it all evens out once I bundle my Rogers services, or Fido's obscenely high data fees, I always come away from any telecommunications billing change feeling like I've been cheated somehow.

It's really weird that they manage things that way. Most, if not all, other types of companies I do business with try to make me feel like I'm getting a good deal even when they are screwing me over. Reitman's tags their clothes as though they're on sale even though I don't think they were ever the "original" price. My shoemaker has a loyalty card - 10th heel lift free, as though I'm going to get 10 heel lifts within any reasonable amount of time. People on ebay constantly overcharge for shipping, but the products themselves are so ridiculously cheap (or commercially unavailable in Canada) that I still feel like I won. But with telecom, they aren't even trying to make me feel good, they know I'm dependent on them and their prices are close enough to the competition's to make switching pointless, and they're rubbing my face in it every day.

How to get me to stop using bottled water

I don't use bottled water for the water, I use it for the bottles. Once I've finished the water that comes in the bottle, I refill it from the tap and keep reusing it until it dies or until I get sick and have to replace the bottle. It's just that I want to have water with me in my purse, and a water bottle is the easiest way to do that.

So to stop me from using bottled water, I will require a reuseable water bottle that is no less convenient than a standard 500 mL bottled water. That means that it must:

- Hold at least 500 mL
- Be no heavier than a 500 mL plastic bottle
- Fit easily in my purse. In addition to the regular goods and chattels, I always carry a small umbrella, a 500 mL water bottle, and a (usually hardcover) library book; my purses are sized accordingly. I would love to use smaller purses and would embrace a bottle that allows me to do this, but if the bottle is too big for the purse I want to use, I'm going back to "disposable".
- Close tightly (I can't guarantee it will stay vertical in my purse) and be able to put up with being treated with no care whatsoever.
- Stand up to being washed in the dishwasher, and fit comfortably into my 3/4 size dishwasher. I don't want to have to wash by hand or plan dish loads around the bottle.
- Be obtainable without going out of my way. Go to a website and click on a button good. Go somewhere on the Yonge subway line good. Get on a bus bad.

Snowday vibe

My building has a bit of a different vibe today. I've been trying to articulate what it is, and I just realized: it's like res on a snowday.

It's kind of subtle. There's a little more music playing, and it's a little louder than usual because it's less likely that your neighbours have to go somewhere. There's a higher than usual proportion of sweatpants and pyjama pants on the people walking around in the building. The TV that you can hear from behind your neighbours' doors is of slightly lower quality. It's like everything that's good about a sick day, but without being sick.

Irony

You know how grocery stores are trying to sell us tote bags so we won't use (and throw out) plastic bags?

Well, despite the fact that I use plastic bags, I seem to have acquired a number of totebags. And I can't find a good place to keep them. And I never use them, at all, ever, for anything. So I'm starting to consider throwing them out.

Did someone die?

From my normally eerily prescient iTunes:

Aerosmith's Full Circle
k.d. lang's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah
The Beatles' Let It Be

If someone died, I think I'm going to delete all my music and never listen to music again...

Etiquette puzzle

I'm in a conversation with two other people, A and B. A asks B a question. A and B have every reason to believe that B is the most qualified person to answer the question. However, I know at least as much as B, if not more, and have every reason to believe that I can explain it better than B.* Should I chime in, "Oh, I've translated about that! Here's how it works!"? Should I wait for an opening and then put in my two cents, if I have anything to add on top of what B says? Should I passive-aggressively ask B questions to lead them to providing the information that A needs? Or should I just shut up and let B be the expert?

*Really, this isn't ego. Something about how I learn things when translating about them seems to make me far better able to explain them to outsiders than insiders can. In other cases, I've experienced something firsthand and studied it academically, when B has done only one or the other.

I am superwoman!

Update to the "OMG the paper towels are behind the dryer!" saga:

I was trying to fish them out with a hook cleverly* fashioned out of a wire coathanger (yes, it only took me 2 days to think of that) when I gave the machine a frustrated push.

AND IT MOVED!

So long story short, through sheer brute force, my wimpy out of shape 150 pound body managed to move this big hulking 350 pound machine a couple of inches, which is enough to get one of my scrawny arms into the space between the machine and the wall and pull out the paper towels. The mirror is still back there somewhere, but at least it's not flammable.

That pill I missed yesterday must have upped my testosterone level or something.

*This cleverness is negated by the fact that I tried to move the machine back while the washer was running, and couldn't figure out why it was heavier all the sudden.

Technojoy!

My new cellphone arrived. It has a still and video camera and apparently can connect to the internet. And it is small enough that I palm it in my hand such that no one will see it unless they're specifically looking for it. And it is a starter phone - the cheapest one currently available. And it was unexpected delivered COD, but it was cheap enough that I was able to pay for it with the emergency cash I keep stashed in my apartment.

I love the 21st century!