Monthly Archives: December 2007

choose ye: random choices that have no correlation.

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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?

never mind.

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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?

down came the rain… but I don’t think all the spiders got washed out. damn.

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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.