megfowler.com

Via the lovely Miss604.

Today, my beloved roommate and bestest friend Catherine turns 27.

That’s pretty freakin’ young. Seriously. She needs to catch up to me.

She’s not even stomping into her thirties yet, but I guarantee you that when she does, she’ll do that decade up in style, too.

Catherine is — as you can see in the photos above — in possession of one of the best smiles EVER, and has a laugh that lights up rooms (well, they’re already pretty lit up when she walks in them. The laugh just adds another spotlight.)

She’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and the reason we end up breathless with laughter at least once every day in our little apartment with the Best Deck Ever.

So, on the occasion of her birthday, 15 Things I Love About Cat:

1. She’s one of the best listeners you’ll ever come across. She takes in what you say, and offers real advice and feedback in return.

2. She is just as weird as me about cleanliness, with a side dose of totally strange. She likes to rearrange the dishwasher, and sorting papers gives her peace.

3. She has a singing voice that will stop you in your tracks — and not in a bad way! She can sing anything and make it sound perfect. And when I say perfect, I mean WHOA.

4. She is as addicted to the coffee as I am.

5. She is smart as a whip, and has a beautiful blend of logic and creativity that means she could do pretty much ANY job.

6. She is Presley’s favourite.

7. She has a lot of intuition about life and people and what they need. And a lot of grace when they mess up.

8. She is a world class flirt. It’s something amazing to see. The world kind of sparkles a bit in response.

9. She is a great sister to her two younger brothers… always there if they need anything, and sure to be the most proud fan of anything they do.

10. She is a fabulous daughter to her parents — she loves them and worries about them and enjoys spending time with them. She makes those relationships a priority.

11. She is an incredible friend, as evidenced by how much people miss her when they can’t be by her side. Fortunately, that’s not me.

12. She has tremendous style, and I don’t just mean her hair. Though her hair is probably the thickest, healthiest crop of blonde I have ever seen in my life. And yes… that’s her natural colour. Mostly.

13. She shares my love for flip flops, hockey, sleeping in, true crime shows, MAC products, magazines, and long drives.

14. She accepts people exactly where they’re at.

15. She works hard at everything she does, and is going to be (or continue to be, I should say) a true success in every area of her life.

I’m so proud to call you my Hetero LifeMate ™!

Please join me in wishing Catherine a happy, happy birthday!

LOVE YOU!

Almost done my shopping. Aiyyeee! All I have left to buy are a couple stocking stuffers for our houseguest who flies in today for a couple of days.

That’s a great feeling, actually, because I LIKE EVERYTHING I GOT EVERYONE.

I think.

I just hope they do.

Sigh.

I’m one of those people who has two warring sides to their personality:

1. I think Christmas is most definitely NOT about gifts, that children shouldn’t get every damn thing they ask for, and that there shouldn’t be pressure on anyone to perform magical feats just to make a wishlist dream come true. No way. I was not raised to believe having everything was a guarantee of anything. At all. Your family and friends are the point.

2. If I AM going to buy a gift, man… I want it to be a good one. Not in terms of cost — that’s a terrible standard to hang your hat on — but in terms of value and enjoyment for the recipient. This makes me a little bananas every year, wanting to get just the right thing.

Hello, irony.

But there it is, and so I always spend the last couple of days before Christmas going eeek! eeek! Did I do the right thing? Is there something they might have liked better? Is that the right colour? Is that the right size?

I know it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t get the best thing, but I really like making people happy.

And what can you stuff in a sock for someone from California (perhaps some hydroelectricity?)

How has your experience with holiday shopping (any holiday will do) been this year?

Tell us about it:

1. Do you love or loathe buying gifts?
2. How many people do you buy for?
3. Have you ever chosen to give to charities or opt out completely instead? Was that a good experience?
4. Are you done all the shopping you’re going to do?
5. Who is the pickiest person on your list?
6. Who is the most fun to shop for?
7. If you’re part of a couple/relationship that shops together, who does the burden fall to in your relationship to get everything done?
8. Do you tend to go nuts, or hold back?
9. Do you give out of expectation or desire?

Monkey or giraffe?

Wood fireplace or gas fireplace?

Jump off a cliff into the water, or bungee jump off a bridge?

Almond or hazelnut?

Walk or ride?

Piano or guitar?

Roller coaster or ferris wheel?

Scrambled or poached?

Sunburn or windburn?

Jujube or jelly bean?

Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble?

Radio or music you bring with you?

Gloves or mittens?

Snow or rain (SERIOUSLY IS THAT EVEN A CHOICE)

Orange chocolate or mint chocolate?

Flannel or smooth sheets?

Bubbles or confetti?

Buffet or plate service?

The smell of cinnamon or the smell of vanilla?

I know.

I said I was “too busy to update”, which I was at the time and still am, but really? Leaving this place untended makes me itchy.

So, as Emily Litella would say (thanks, Dad): never mind.

How is everyone? Doing okay? Keeping warm and dry? TELL ME HOW.

AND CAN I COME VISIT WHERE YOU ARE?

Sorry.

How am I?

Well, I’ve got a giant, red toe. And not in any festive way, either, but because of a blister from shopping in the wrong shoes (SEE? SHOES BAD. FREEDOM FOR TOES GOOD) that has become this puffy miasma of pain. I can’t even fit it in a shoe. Maybe it’s infected, and will become a replay of the Great StaphLeg of 2003, where I nearly lost a limb because of a tiny cut from a van door and had to be on IV antibiotics daily for two weeks. Huzzah!

I also have a piece of hair that falls in my eyes every ten seconds. Or it did, until I secured it with a paper clip. Classy, no?

When you have extra-fine (and I don’t mean that in the Breck Girl sense, but rather the “hair of a four year old” sense, if four year olds had had to dye out some bad highlights in the early 2000’s and liked to use hot rollers fairly often) hair that flops about like a trout on your head depending on how the wind blows, you’ve got to use a fair amount of hairspray or several hairbands or a half-can of shellac just to keep any style in place.

Unfortunately, the weather in Vancouver does not care for my preventative measures and when I walked out my door this morning, WHOOSH…. I became Trout Head in a matter of seconds.

Without the scales and odd smell, that is.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore.

The point is, HELLO.

TELL ME ABOUT YOU.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAY.

DO YOU HAVE A BOBBY PIN?

WHERE IS MY COFFEE?

It’s raining in Vancouver.

HOW NOVEL.

I know that no one needs to read another post about how soggy it is here, but GOSH.

I can’t believe — even after spending years and years and years on the West Coast and breaking at least 30 umbrellas in windstorms (and one in an escalator, but that’s a long story) and owning galoshes and even sporting a yellow rubber coat when it was less than chic to do so in my high school years — just how WET our winters have become.

Every morning sky is gray like a sodden wool sock. Every patch of grass is a mini-swamp, roiling with ecstatic worms. Every street is a minor river system with lakes born of leaf-plugged gutters.

If you have to be outside in it at all, you’re going to get a little damp, even if you have a GoreTex “system” you bought at Coast Mountain or MEC for $700.

Why?

Because it’s also WINDY. No matter where or how you stand, you’re guaranteed a shower of droplets across your face and body. You can’t hide from it under awnings or overhangs, either, because the wind will blow the rain in at you. My open bedroom window even offered a small weather system this morning, with sprinkles of wet across the side of my face not squished into my pillow.

It’s COLD, too. Why is it so cold? According to the temperature, it’s not that cold, but I think the wind and the rain sink into our bones with a special kind of penetrative power (did I just say “penetrative power”? I think I read that phrase in my Spam Folder) that facilitates a day-long chill.

All in all, I’m kind of done with it. You can’t arrive at work dry unless you go from underground parking to underground parking, you can’t walk across a sidewalk without drenching your shoes straight up from the soles (goodbye, sweet Pretend Uggs), and you can’t make plans to do anything outside unless you’ve got towels ready for the drive home.

Ergh.

I’m lucky to work inside, I know. And I’m lucky that my city is so green and fresh and alive. Really, there are lots of people who LIKE the rain, including my wonky upcoming Californian house guest. I don’t even hate it when it’s more of a mist or a shower… or anything other than a fire hose as soon as you walk out the door.

But I wouldn’t mind a bit of nice, fluffy-dry snow and a nose-rosy day that didn’t send rivulets of water down my neck into my underwear.

(I know. Mental picture. You’re welcome.)

I’m not planning to move anytime soon, so I guess I’m going to have to learn to deal with it more effectively. I just have serious resistance to capitulating to weather systems I can’t stand, much like I have serious resistance to buying books with the “O” on the cover.

But this is the city I live in, and they put it on Faulkner. So.

Someone pass me a blow dryer. And a robe. And some waffles, just because.

If you’ve been around here long, you know that the Friday Love List is a bit of a tradition at the old MeggyF.com. Not that I’m always totally on the ball about KEEPING that tradition, mind you… but I do love me a love list.

(You can find old ones by searching “love list” over there —> Go ahead. We’ll wait.)

I do the love lists on Fridays because I figure it’s good to start the weekend full of love.

(You know, instead of workplace angst and eighty-nine stories about the non-functioning photocopier and that guy in Finance who picks at his hands and the elevator that shudders when it goes past the third floor.)

And I’m even MORE about the love this morning because I stood next to Attractive Bald Guy on the bus to work today and he smelled like MAGIC and though I was wearing a less than magical sweater-and-jeans combo I HAD remembered to put on lip gloss prior to getting on the bus which means I had little opportunity to poke myself in the eye in my efforts to make a hasty application of the same.

Run-on sentence!

The name of the lipgloss? Oversexed. Take that, product placement experts.

On that note?

Let the love begin…

THINGS I LOVE

This song by Sara Bareilles. Seriously. I CANNOT GET ENOUGH. I sing it all the time. It’s very Meg. Well, it’s more Sara than Meg, but if Sara knew Meg, she’d share. Of this I am confident.

I should just get it over with and marry a plate of french fries.

Suddenly, I’m wearing gold again, after rabidly exiling it from my life for years as a teenager and young adult. I thought gold was “tacky”, which horrified my mother. And still, my only real gold is found in the form of my grandma’s engagement and wedding rings, but I like how they appear to be sunshining from my finger. I’m going to start slow and see how it goes.

My red shoes are as fond of me as I am of them. And also — “stacked heel”? That’s how I’ve always thought of myself.

I’m having a love affair with our Christmas tree. Granted, that would actually be awkward, what with all the needles. Like dating Pete Doherty, really. But I do love our new colours and how it sparkles merrily into the night.

Chocolate-covered cherries are the bomb (cherry bomb?) I know, I know. Horrifying and sugary and NOTHING like ANYTHING I ever have professed to love before, but the cheapie Lowney ones are like crack in a box for me. And it’s the time of year for stupid sugar eating, right?

Um, hi, can I have this life? Ok, cool. I think the last time I was all effortless and chic and tanned like that, I was on vacation, and I probably spilled coffee on myself seconds later or bonked my head getting into Eric’s car. I’ve also not found myself rolling around in beach houses with a blonde man at ANY point. That, my friends, is what should go under “travesty” in Oxford’s Unabridged.

And speaking of ERIC! He’s coming to visit us on Thursday for a few days, and we couldn’t be more excited. Well, we probably could be, but that would annoy everyone around us and probably result in fractured relationships. Which would be okay, because we IMPORT ONES TO REPLACE THEM. Well, just the one. Eric.

Cold, starry nights are the best form of weather (well, tied with warm, starry nights, I guess.) When we get them, I can see stars through my window when I’m lying in bed. There are few things so lovely for a last waking image as those pinpoints in the sky.

Texting. Texting. Texting. Ahhh!

Oy, do I love singing. I cannot sing enough. ‘Tis the season for it, I suppose, but there are few feelings as satisfying as letting music fly out of my heart and bones into the air. I can’t sing even a quarter as well as my rather accomplished roommate, but we go on long drives and sing along with CDs and it’s perfect.

***

So what do you love?

Love it up in the comments, or at your own blog… but make sure to point us to it.

And it’s not a “meme”… it’s a way of life.

(Grin.)

Right now, our dear and beloved friend Eric (who is visiting in a week, but hasn’t updated his blog since two visits ago, and one visit to SD for us) is watching the Ducks go at the ‘Nucks in Anaheim.

That’s right. Eric — he of this entry — is at the hockey game, leaving jubilant voicemails for me about the Canucks being in the lead.

Since he’s a Canucks fan.

I think my work is complete here.

I’m not easily startled.

I’m one of those “keep a cool head” people who can wade into emergencies and stare down creeps and walk dark alleys without seeing a boogeyman behind every dumpster.

However.

Spiders? Turn me into a complete and total KNOB.

I see one — well, okay, a spider bigger than say, the palm of my (very small! very small!) hand, not just a mini spider fooling around on a wall, because hey! hi. it’s cool you’re here, I understand our ecosystems need you, just stay out of my pants — and my brain goes absolutely blank.

I want to be ANYWHERE BUT THERE.

Which is essentially what happened in my bathroom early this morning when I came rolling in with my happy white towels, ready for a hot shower.

There he was.

On the shower curtain.

A behemoth (okay, not really, but he wasn’t tiny AND I DON’T CARE! IT WAS SHOCKING AT 5:45 AM!) of a spider, just waiting to torture me with his very presence.

I made an immediate and involuntary squeak toy noise, and shrank back against the wall.

He was blocking my Portal to Cleanliness, and I was not impressed.

I got a magazine — Avril Lavigne was on the cover, I hoped this would help — and steeled myself to take a whack at him, but every time I moved to do it, he moved enough to startle me into dropping Avril on the ground. And there was nothing solid behind him to help the magazine out, either, so my hits lacked little punch when they actually connected.

Sigh.

That’s how I ended up not showering, pulling my hair back into a ponytail, and doing my makeup bent in from the doorway, one eye trained on the interloper at all times. I’m aware of how ridiculous that sounds, but I literally could not force myself to stay in the room with him.

Finally, he made a hardcore break for it, and that’s when I screamed.

Screamed.

At 6:15 am.

It was at this moment that three things happened:

1. I felt like a COMPLETE TOOL and started to cry. CRY. Partly because of the spider and partly because I WAS BEING A TOOL.

2. Catherine came flying out of her room (she was due up any minute, it’s okay!) to see if I was injured in some way.

3. Dean heard me scream upstairs, and texted Catherine (who he thought was the screamer) to lie and say she woke up the baby (The baby was already awake, as was Dean.)

Here’s where the story improves, mostly because Catherine has a morbid fear of mice and understands the Power of Irrational Panic in Enclosed Spaces with Unpleasant Creatures. She would do no better than I did, if it had been a mouse.

(Which it wasn’t. It was something much smaller, of course. Did I mention that I’m a tool?)

Fortunately, Catherine is NOT afraid of spiders — a power I’d been trying to access for 30 minutes by whimpering in the direction of her door (forgetting, of course that Catherine sleeps like the dead.)

Once she figured out why I was crying, she went straight into the bathroom, shut the door, and less than a minute later, I heard the toilet flush. Then she came out, patted me on the back, and it was over.

Well, except for the fact that I still felt like a tool.

It didn’t take me long to get past it once I got to work and focused on other things, but part of me continues to flail because I never wanted to be one of those girls who was scared of stuff.

Especially a screamy one.

And here’s the worst part — when I’d have a cabin full of terrified girls gathered around a much larger spider at camp, I wouldn’t hesitate to actually PICK THE DAMN THING UP and put it outside, or dispatch of it in a less poetic and earth-friendly manner with my stowed-away and incredibly heavy copy of the Fall Preview Vogue.

I was the rescuer! Not the rescuee!

I’ve become a screamy girl. LATE IN LIFE.

I think this is more depressing than the day I realized that Andrew Ridgeley was never really going to have a comeback.

And I’m still not over that.

Sigh.

When I think of you, I never think of a red paper valentine crumpled deep in my pocket, or a blue-purple prop of pulsing tissue invented for pretend surgeons to hold.

No, I think of a rosy stuffed satin heart my mother once received in a floral arrangement. When the carnations and roses died, the heart became a sort of weapon in our house.

We’d throw it at one another with a single, hissed syllable — “Flot!” — before running away to avoid the sure return of fire.

I’m not sure why we did it, but I like it better that I don’t remember.

I can close my eyes and see myself pitching that shiny heart a thousand times, giggling like a fiend as I made my escape.

If you threw it too hard, it would hurt. Too soft, and it would land short of your target. Then the cat would come steal it away, and you might not see it again for a week.

It was a pretty unlucky heart, that one.

But I guess you know how that goes, don’t you?

I’ve been tossing you around for years… sideways, up and down, aiming here and there and nowhere.

I’ve seen you glance off a few bodies and be caught by others.

Sometimes they hang on to you.

Sometimes you fall to the ground moments later.

Sometimes they throw you back.

But you’ve been airborne for so long that I wonder if you’d even know how to sit peacefully in my chest and beat like a good heart, keeping time and keeping counsel and keeping the blood flowing to my winter-cold toes.

It doesn’t help that my tosses are usually ill-calculated — a lack of skill evident in the rips across your surface and the bits of stuffing you leave in your wake.

You take the miscalculations again and again, though, and still manage to stay soft in my palm.

I often wonder if it would be easier for you if you could just harden up a little… but you don’t and you won’t and you never have.

Thank God.

Even when I choose the wrong places to send you, stay this way.

Even when I send you flying too hard, stay this way.

Even when you feel your seams ripping open, stay this way.

Even when you wonder how the hell you’ll beat again when I finally let you be… stay this way.

Because I’ll figure out one day that you are neither decoration, nor toy, nor joke, nor weapon.

No.

You are for blood and for life and for love and for those who hold you dear.

You are for me.

You are for the one I choose.

And most definitely not for the cat.

Love,

Meg